Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Skipp, Barbara (O2005.1) |
| Interviewee | Barbara Skipp (BS) |
| Interviewer | Jean Riddell (JR) Gill Cordingley (GC) |
| Date | 07/06/2005 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording No: O2005.1
Interviewee: Barbara Skipp (BS)
Interviewer: Jean Riddell (JR) Gill Cordingley (GC)
Date: 7 June 2005
Venue: 8 Revels Close, Bengeo, Hertford
Transcriber: Jean Riddell
Typed by: Freda Joshua
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
Mrs Barbara Skipp: childhood in Bayford
JR: Mrs Skipp has been looking at some questions that Gill asked her and she’s written out some bits to tell us, and we can chip in with questions when we want to.
BS: My parents went to live in Bayford in 1920 and I was born in 1921, followed by my sister and two brothers. We lived at no. 25, a very small cottage, no water or sewerage, paraffin lamps and candles for lighting. We all went to the village school, which was later rebuilt opposite the church hall, flats have been built on the old site. My sister and I stayed at the village school until we were 14. The school consisted of three classrooms. The teachers were Miss Bentley, who commuted every day on the train from Hertford, Miss Hurford, who took the middle group, and Mr Woods, the Headmaster.
JR: So how many rooms in the school?
BS: Just three rooms.
JR: So each of these teachers would have a class?
BS: They had the old round fireplaces to warm us in the winter months, no central heating.
JR: So you had mixed age groups in each class?
BS: Yes, whereas now it’s one year and the next year?
JR: Was it 5 – 14? (Yes) So it was classed as an elementary school, whereas now they are called primary schools.
BS: It was a C of E school.
GC: Did you use slates?
BS: Yes.
JR: How about things like playing fields? They seemed to have been in short supply at some of these schools. Did you do any form of physical activity?
BS: Well we used to play rounders on the bit of grass and we had a piece of ground there that was called the school gardens. The boys and girls used to go up and do a bit of gardening in the summer months and they grew vegetables. There was no swimming or anything like that.
JR: No. And you went home for dinner? (Yes) How long was your dinner break?
BS: An hour and a half, 12 o’clock ‘til half past one.
JR: And did all the children live in the village or did some come from other villages?
BS: Brickendon children came. You know where the garden centre is, along the lower Hatfield Road – some children came from those little cottages – I don’t think they’re there now. And some came from Bayfordbury, which was a long walk. Little Berkhamsted had a school so they didn’t come.
GC: When you said in your house you had paraffin lamps and candles and things, what did this mean that you did in the long winter evenings?
BS: Well we used to play board games, you know, but you see, out in the country everybody went to bed early. We were all in bed just after 6 o’clock in the winter. I don’t know about Mum and Dad. And in the summer we used to play in the fields and other children all used to congregate, play cricket, the boys and that. There wasn’t much they really could do in the winter months.
JR: And was the water heated on the fire – was the boiler part of the fire – what kind of fire did you have?
BS: A range. Mum used to cook on that. And we had a big copper in the back part of the house and she used to do the washing in that. That used to be heated up on a Monday and the water [was] heated there for us to bath on a Saturday night, cleanest one in first!
GC: Were you expected to do certain jobs to help your mother?
BS: Oh yes, that used to take time up which children don’t do these days. Used to have to fetch the milk when we got in from school to where Dad worked at the big house, used to get it in cans.
JR: The milk had to last you until the same time next day, did it? How did you keep it fresh overnight?
BS: We used to get it twice a day. But it was very rich milk. Mum used to put it in a bucket of water to keep it cool because there were no fridges. I can’t really remember any milk going sour.
GC: Was there a long cottage garden, did your father grow vegetables?
BS: Yes, we had a garden at the side of the house and he grew potatoes and runner beans. And he had an allotment too. That allotment ground was where the new school is now. There were several allotments.
GC: Did he ever keep a pig?
BS: No, we didn’t have any animals and he didn’t like women gardening.
JR: I know somebody else like that! Do you want to carry on.
BS: I loved my time at school and I did quite well considering it was a village school. Actually I sat the 11+ but in those days there weren’t many farm people’s children went to grammar school, and I didn’t pass anyway. I stayed on until I was 14. We all had to go to work at 14 and there wasn’t much room at home and the girls had to go into domestic service and I went to the Manor House at Little Berkhamsted.
I had a half day a week and every other Sunday afternoon off. And I had to work very hard as well, but I used to come home on the half day a week and every other Sunday, cycle home. Dad used to bike home with me to make sure I got home safely. I was only 14 when I started having a boyfriend, he used to see me home. Dad worked for many years at Bayford House, looked after the livestock. Mum used to go up to the big house as we grew up a bit, and worked in the house. And after the war the Drake family moved to Walkern and my parents went with them. I managed to do war work during the war down at Wickhams so I got away from the domestic scene. I lived over at Ware during the war years, my husband, they’d got room there so I lived with the in-laws.
JR: When you were working at the Manor House, Little Berkhamsted, what sort of jobs did you have to do?
BS: Well, I started as a scullery maid and the next job I got moved up to kitchen maid and then I was cook, at Sacombe Park, well I wasn’t all that old then.
JR: You moved from Little Berkhamsted to Sacombe?
BS: Yes.
JR: You applied for another job?
BS: That’s right, yes.
GC: So how long did it take you to go from scullery maid to cook?
BS: Well from 14 to about 20, and that was going up the scale quick in those days. It got that people couldn’t get domestic servants and they were bringing in Austrians.
JR: I suppose it was coming to the end of the era when people could afford to have servants.
BS: And, of course, girls wouldn’t do that work now, they go into factories. Of course, it was circumstances at home.
GC: What was your bedroom like when you went to the Manor House?
BS: That was very nice and I had to share with two more girls. But when I moved to Sacombe, very nice. That house had all been refurbished and the servants’ quarters were as good as the tenant’s really. And, again, I had to share with two more girls.
GC: But you were cook and didn’t get your own room?
BS: No, no, and that was all right, yes. We had good food there, in some jobs the girls didn’t get good food.
GC: Who were the family who had Little Berkhamsted, what were they called?
BS: They was Rochfords who did have the nursery, Joseph Rochford. They were Catholics and there was quite a lot of staff there – three in the kitchen and three housemaids, housekeeper, butler.
GC: Yes, but you were quite well-treated there?
BS: Yes, earned about 10/- [shillings] a week and your keep.
JR: And who was at Sacombe Park?
BS: That was the Fletchers. He was an MP actually, and they did a lot of entertaining there. And they had a big shoot there as well, you know, in the winter months. All the toffs came there and they had a big dinner there at the end of the season.
JR: Anyone famous?
BS: Being in the kitchen I didn’t really [-------] the other maids got to know the posh ones that came.
CG: Were you in charge of the cooking when the grand people came?
BS: Well, yes, with the others, you know. They used to have caterers in for these very big dinners. They used to entertain quite a lot. I was there at the beginning part of the war and this artist, I think his name was Kelly, all his pictures came down from London. They stored them in the cellars there.
GC: How did you decide what the menus would be? Did you have to discuss that with the lady of the house?
BS: There was another cook but she was very elderly, used to do that. They kept her on because she’d been with the family for years, so she dealt with all that sort of thing.
JR: How did you cope with rationing when that came in? For those banquets and things?
BS: Well, I was there before the war, there was plenty of food then, hadn’t really tightened up. War had been on about a year before I ------ because all these girls got called up, you see, and all these people were left without servants, bit of a blow for them because they’d never done anything for themselves, never been in the kitchen!
JR: A lot of these big houses were requisitioned for various purposes, was that…?
BS: I don’t think so. In latter years it was turned into offices but I don’t know who’s there now.
GC: Did they let you have access to the larder and the food or did the housekeeper of the mistress of the house check up that you weren’t pinching things?
BS: Well this other cook had her own way over it. There was always plenty of food. They’d got big gardens there as well, loads of vegetables. Gardener come up early morning to see what was wanted and then they’d come up with the veggies for the day.
GC: But did you get to eat nice meals there?
BS: Yes.
GC: Was that before or after you’d served the grand people?
BS: Afterwards.
JR: Did you have deliveries from local shops, say in Hertford?
BS: Groceries used to come to Bayford House, I don’t know about Sacombe. Brewsters used to come out [fish] and Rayments [baker], Cook and Dranes [grocers] used to deliver there. They used to deliver to all the big houses there, used to come out 2/3 times a week. For the ordinary cottages there was also people came out 2/3 times a week with stuff and Mum used to put an order in one week for the next week and they’d bring it out.
GC: And did the housekeeper – was she really the boss of the whole thing?
BS: Well, they had a lot to say, particularly at Little Berkhamsted. She was a bit of a tyrant, we were all frightened of her!
JR: So was it quite a culture shock for you to go from being in service to industry?
BS: It was.
JR: Which one did you prefer?
BS: Well, it did me good in a way, I was a bit on the nervous side. You didn’t have much of your own say in service. You mixed with all sorts when I got down to Ware, men and women all working there
GC: What were they making in Wickams?
BS: Parts for the Mosquito, that kind of thing. It was all war contracts.
JR: They did railway stock, didn’t they? (Yes). So it was a completely different life for you there.
BS: Altogether, yes. We had to be a work at half past seven in the morning until six at night. On Saturday mornings we had to work. Then I used to go home to Bayford and stay the weekend until Sunday night.
GC: On your bike?
BS: Yes.
JR: Had you met your husband when you were working at Little Berkhamsted? (Yes) Was he from Bayford?
BS: He came from Ware.
JR: You didn’t meet him at Wickhams?
BS: No, met him before that. I was married at 19. He came to work on the building and it all started from there. We knew each other quite a while before we got married. He went into the army, then there was talk of him going abroad, so he wanted to get married. So we got married and that was the time I was living down at Ware then.
CG: So when you were at Wickhams, did you miss the old days in the big houses?
BS: I think I was glad really because it was a hard slog. You really did have to work. You never got much time. You had to wash and change in the afternoon and then you’d got to get ready for the evening because they always had dinner at night, staff had to have supper as well. It was 10 o’clock before you’d finished.
You was up at six in the morning. When you’re young at that age it’s hard work. They were working hard anyway so you just kept going. It was hard work at Sacombe as well. It was better conditions there because it’d all been modernised. It was a nice house to live in. The war actually broke out when I was at Sacombe Park.
[It was while she was here that Barbara got married].
Everything was rationed. Mrs Burgess made my wedding dress – she was a court dressmaker and I had a lovely dress really. It was very plain. There weren’t many girls lucky enough to have something like that and I had my sister and my husband’s sister as bridesmaids, and it wasn’t a wartime wedding in a way.
JR: did you have a reception?
BS: Yes, Mum made a wedding cake and made all the food. It was the beginning of the war and we had a lot of presents as well because things weren’t getting bad then. It was linen and cutlery which, as the war went on, there was nothing about, you see. So we were very lucky
JR: Had the coupons come in by that time?
BS: Yes, they had to give up coupons for this dress material. I think we had a bit of a collection around the family for that.
GC: When you went to Wickhams, did you get a letter saying what you must do?
BS: Because I was married I didn’t have to go into the forces. All the girls that were born in 1921 were called up into the services. I’d not been married long but I didn’t have to go.
GC: So as far as Mrs Fletcher [Sacombe] was concerned their whole way of life was coming to an end.
BS: It was, and never been the same since in that sort of household.
GC: And these girls that were going into the forces, were they excited?
BS: Well, there was another girl there – do you know Hazel Suckling?
JR: Yes, I know her.
BS: Her sister-in-law, Mick Suckling’s sister, she worked with me as well, she went in the RAF and stayed in it all the war years. She didn’t marry until after she came back from the war. And her parents lived at the bottom of Port Hill where those houses are built, coming up on the left, little cottages way back there. And when my husband came back, he’d been away five years, we got some rooms at Byde Street, shared a house there for a while, then we got the council house up here in Bengeo, then that house had to be pulled down and I’m in the bungalow now.
GC: Did you go to work after the war?
BS: I went to work when Ian [son] was older.
GC: Did that seem like a rest?
BS: Well, women didn’t work a great deal then, just after the war. A lot of them married and had children – got away from it all for a while. When the children were growing up they went back to work.
GC: Did that seem like a holiday?
BS: Must have done! But food was on ration so you had to go and get your rations. There wasn’t much convenience in that little cottage. There was the washing to do by hand, cooking and that.
JR: Did they still have those outside loos at the side?
GC: They’re still there! They’re of historic importance!
JR: I’m sure they are.
GC: But I’m sure those cottages sell now for what, £200,000?
JR: But in your day there, was there a water supply?
BS: The water was laid on and gas and the electric (Pause). Shall we go back to Bayford? (Yes). I can remember the blacksmith there and I can remember him shoe-ing the horses. We used to stand and watch, you know. And there was this little shop next door, but I think they only sold sweets. We had a Saturday penny to spend on sweets.
JR: It wasn’t run by a family called Burgess was it?
BS: No, Cheeks was the name of the people there, and they ran the blacksmiths as well.
GC: Was it part of the Bakers Arms?
BS: No but it was beside that, right on that corner. There was a cottage there and it was right in there.
JR: He had plenty of horses to shoe did he?
BS: He was always busy, yes.
JR: Were there any cars in the village?
BS: The schoolmaster had a car and the vicar had a car, big houses, they all had cars. You didn’t see a car very often.
JR: So who owned the horses, was it mostly farmers?
BS: Yes, because they used those – didn’t have tractors. Everyone went to church on Sunday, quite good attendance. We went to Sunday School at 11 o’clock then we went to Evensong with Mum and Dad, that’s when all the gentry used to come.
GC: What service was it in the morning, was it Matins? (Yes) Did they have Holy Communion, perhaps every now and again?
BS: Well they must have done. I wasn’t confirmed until I was 40, up here [Bengeo], but my brothers were. So I went off to work at 14 and at that time there must have been a lapse, there wasn’t a parson there or something. I got missed out one way or another, then I didn’t get round to it.
JR: Who was the vicar there?
BS: Reverend Brown, then. He married us – ‘cos the Rectory now, that’s turned into flats. You know Risdon’s the rector, Little Berkamsted man.
GC: But I don’t think they did have communion as much as we have it today.
BS: I don’t remember my parents ever going. They’d been confirmed in their day.
GC: What was Sunday School like? Was that held in the church?
BS: That was held in the school. We used to get little texts for attendance.
GC: And did you have to learn a lot by heart?
BS: Yes, we learned a lot. I go to church now and sometimes you’ll start on one of the, especially the New Testament and I think I learned that when I went to school.
JR: You can say it with him.
BS: More or less, yes. You don’t forget do you/
GC: No, not when you’ve learned it by heart. They’d give it to you one Sunday and you’d learn it by heart and repeat it the next Sunday.
BS: Yes, quite a lot of children went to Sunday School because it was somewhere to go, I suppose.
GC: Did somebody at home help you learn it?
BS: Well, I can’t remember. Never had much time I don’t think. I remember my mother was always singing hymns. She used to sing a lot.
JR: When did gas and electricity arrive in Bayford – have they got gas now?
BS: Don’t think they’ve got gas. Electricity must have come in after the war. They had it at Bayford House – they had a great big machine.
JR: A generator.
BS: That’s right. And the chauffeur was in charge of that and he used to start that up every day for 2/3 hours.
JR: It’s just another kind of engine.
BS: Yes!
GC: And what about your water – you had a stand-pipe outside?
BS: At the end of the road. A group had to share.
GC: Did that mean you mother had to go down to the tap with buckets?
BS: Dad used to mostly fetch the water. When we got older we had to fetch it – you don’t realise what a lot of water you use. We filled the pails up a few times every day.
GC: I suppose all the rich people, Bayford House and the Rectory, they had their own water?
BS: Yes, they had baths.
JR: Indoor plumbing. So did you have a loo at the house that was water-fed or an earth closet?
BS: No, that was an earth closet.
GC: So once you were in service you had running water for the loos?
BS: Yes, that was all the better. And, of course, the schoolmaster used to play the organ, that wasn’t fed with electricity. My brother, David, as he got a bit bigger, he used to pump the organ, of course, if he got a bit lax it used to -----! And we were all in the choir at some point. We had some very bad winters when I was a child. Really severe. Everybody had coal fires, of course.
JR: What about care of the roads in those days, did they have snow ploughs?
BS: My brothers used to clear the snow.
JR: With shovels?
BS: Yes, the road wasn’t made up. It was a road but not tarmac-ed.
JR: This is the main street.
BS: Yes. There was a Sunday School outing to Clacton each year and Mums used to go. And Clinton Bakers, who owned most of the property in the village, had all the school children up there once a year in the school holidays and we used to have a lovely tea up there and it never rained. I never remember it raining. We had games and races and all that sort of thin and they used to lay all that on for us. But that was a long way to walk through the village, through the park to Bayfordbury, that was two miles.
JR: When you went on the Sunday School outing – that was a coach or charabanc?
BS: Yes.
GC: Did your brother get paid for pumping the organ?
BS: Well he got paid for being in the choir, so I suppose so. Mum was a good cook so we always had plenty of good food, plenty of good milk. We shouldn’t have all these hip replacements and things because we should have had good bones, but we’ve all of us had trouble in that direction. We had bags of milk with all the calcium and that. Dad used to earn £1.19.6 a week, that’s all he had.
GC: 19/6?
BS: Yes, not £2. There were 2/3 other men, gardeners and that and they never gave them their money until Monday morning and they were always grumbling about that, and that he had a tied cottage [the family also had free eggs].
GC: What was his official job?
BS: Well, I suppose you’d call him a stockman. He did the milking and worked out in the fields. There were quite good fields attached to that house. They didn’t have any grain, it was just hay for the cows. And as regards entertainment there was the pub there and the village hall and the WI and Dad would perhaps go down on Saturday night and have a game of darts. Saturdays sometimes we used to go on the train to Hertford if we wanted to buy shoes or clothes. Sometimes we’d walk to Hertford, buses came later. We’d walk down Broad Green to the Lower Hatfield Road and come into Hertford through West Street.
JR: So when you got out of the train at Hertford did you feel you were in a bigger much more bustling place?
BS: Well, we had that walk from the North Station and it used to be Saturdays we went down there and there was a big market in Hertford and they had the China King there and the vegetable man with the bananas. They used to sell stuff off cheaper after about 5 o’clock at night. That was the time when we used to go in, on the 5 o’clock train.
GC: Did your father go as well?
BS: Oh yes, he took us.
JR: So were all the shops open at that time?
BS: Oh yes, Saturday nights opened until about 8. It was a bustling town in those days.
JR: Did you have to come in for things like the dentist?
BS: Yes, and the optician. The dentist was along the Ware Road opposite Tesco [in today’s terms]. And the optician was above a chemist in Old Cross.
JR: Russell’s?
BS: That’s right, used to be an optician there.
JR: When your Mum was a member of the WI what did she do?
BS: They had meetings in the village hall. I don’t know whether they had speakers in those days, and they used to put little playlets on between themselves and have tea and spend the afternoon
JR: So it would just be the mums doing that?
BS: Yes, I remember going once when I was quite grown up, must have been my half day, and I went down and joined in. Never joined or anything.
JR: Did they have dances?
BS: Yes, they used to have dances in the village hall, Mum used to go to those. I don’t remember going but then, I was away from the village, you see. I used to go to the dances at Little Berkhamsted. Yes, they used to have dances quite frequently. That’s where lots of them met their boyfriends.
JR: It was a big dance era, wasn’t it?
BS: Yes, you’d get dressed up, you know.
JR: Not a bad idea really, a bit of exercise as well. Did anybody ever show any films or slides?
BS: I don’t remember anything like that, no. Don’t think that kind of thing had come about.
JR: They might have had lantern slides. Sometimes people had cinematographs and they showed funny jerky films. What about the pub? That was really for the men, the women didn’t go to the pub, that was a bit frowned on.
BS: The roads weren’t made up so Dad was always mending the shoes at weekends. I was married at Bayford Church, my brothers and my sisters as well. And, back to school again, I think the boys went on to Longmores at 11 but the girls didn’t, we still had to stay at the village school. But we used to come in on a Friday to Port Vale School to learn cookery and laundry and housework.
JR: How did you get in?
BS: We used to come in on the train and walk from the station to Port Vale School
JR: And that was paid for by the ......
BS: Yes, we didn’t have to pay and some of the girls came from Stapleford and Waterford, so only the older girls, over 11.. So there was only about 3 or 4 of us, 3 or 4 from Stapleford, about a dozen girls to teach. And, of course, the boys had to touch their caps at the vicar, policeman and everything! And there was the village nurse, she was the midwife.
JR: Do we know her name? (No)
GC: And did people have to pay her each time?
BS: There was a fund they had to pay into, about 2d a week. There was no National Health then. She looked after everybody and came and saw the children in school, looked at their heads. I’ve been up to Bayford Day several times, you don’t see anybody you know though, all strangers. Girls who went to school have moved away now. It’s nice to go up to the village and have a look around.
GC: And your cottage is still there?
BS: Yes, that was open one year when we went there, a young couple. I went with Jean Ferridge and she said ‘Barbara used to live here’, ‘well come in and have a look’
JR: So had they made a lot of additions to this cottage? A bathroom?
BS: They had built out the back. But the old fireplace was still there, I was pleased they hadn’t taken that away. We only went into that room. Our garden was all open and open to the fields, but they’d got trees and thing around and were enclosed in. You couldn’t see across the fields. [Earlier] you could see across to Broad Green and way over there, because Bayford is very high, you know, one of the highest points in Hertfordshire.
JR: If you wanted to get to your cottage now, how far is it up from the pub?
BS: Only about five minutes up towards Ashendene, just beyond the village hall, same side as where the new school is.
JR: Is it still No. 25? (Yes) I’ll go and have a look one day. What sort of period was it?
BS: Don’t know. It was very old, hadn’t got a date on it. Some cottages had a date. It was red brick.
JR: Ah, red brick – that gives me some kind of clue. Not yellow – red?
BS: No, red. There was two cottages together there.
JR: I must ask you to tell us something about Bayford House. Who were the family living there again?
BS: They were the Drakes
JR: And what did they do?
BS: He was in sugar business. He used to go to London pretty well every day. They had 3 children, a boy and 2 girls, and the boy got killed in the war, sadly, aged 20 in Italy. The older daughter, they were all younger than me, has died within the last 10 years, but the younger daughter still keeps in touch with me at Christmas, and she came to my Mum’s funeral because they were very fond of Mum and Dad and, of course, Mum worked in the house, especially during the war. They went to live in there during the war because they’d got no staff you see, kind of finished up there and our little cottage was let to the people that got bombed out at Broad Green, they went and lived in our cottage for the rest of the war.
And Mrs Drake was my godmother, so of course she had a little bit of interest in me, as well, and she left me £100 in her will, which was a lot of money then. It was a surprise anyway because I didn’t know anything about it. It came here, actually, the address was 69 Revels Road, which must have been on the documents. That was a big surprise! Yes, she’s been dead some years. So that was the Drake family. They had a governess there and as children they had to have all their meals separate from the family. I wasn’t cooking there, Mum was cooking there and for the children, ‘cos they’re younger than us. And that was called the Nursery – food had to go up to the Nursery. And the governesses which they had were awful to the children, really. They used to make them live on rice pudding and stuff like that, whereas in the dining room they were having all the luxuries and that, strawberries and cream and all the nice things. You’d expect them to – well, I mean, our children you’d give them the best but not in those sort of households.
JR: Who governed what the children would eat then, the governesses?
BS: Yes, she set the menu
JR: The mother didn’t?
BS: They never had much to do with them.
JR: The mother? Oh, gosh!
BS: And she used to teach the children [the governess] and she lived in.
JR: They were pretty much in her charge all the time, were they?
BS: The children were, yes. And when we used to fetch the milk, they used to look out at the back window and used to like to talk to us village children. It wasn’t a very nice life for them. I think as regards life we had a better life than they did. Although we didn’t have the luxuries, we had family life.
GC: I suppose they were [eventually] sent away to school, were they?
BS: I don’t think they did. They had the governesses there and that was coming up to the war years. One of the girls went into the WRENS, the younger one went to nursing. They would have been about 18 I suppose. Then they drifted away, married.
GC: Going back to the village, do you think she was a trained nurse or was she a capable person?
BS: I should think she was because she wore a uniform, but she was very capable. She delivered the babies and that and saw to anybody’s minor aches and pains, because you had to pay for the doctor in those days so you didn’t call the doctor out very often.
GC: So if you had an emergency, you’d knock on her door and she would come.
BS: That’s right.
JR: That brings me to something else, were there any telephones in the village?
BS: Yes, at Bayford House.
JR: If an ordinary cottager wanted to use the telephone, would Bayford House let them?
BS: I wouldn’t think so.
JR: How did they contact the emergency services?
BS: Down the Post Office perhaps there was a phone that they could use. There weren’t any telephone boxes.
GC: The nurse might have had a phone?
BS: I should think she might.
JR: Who was running the Post Office then?
BS: That was a Mrs Parker ran the Post Office and her son or her husband delivered the mail every day. We used to get the post ever so early, 8 o’clock in the morning.
JR: Sounds like a going concern, probably would have a telephone there. Did they sell food as well?
BS: No, only things like stamps.
JR: It wasn’t a general store?
BS: No, you couldn’t buy any food in the village.
[Pause]
JR: Did everybody have coal fires or did they use wood as well?
BS: Well, they did use wood but we had a coal fire – the coalman delivered and at Bayford House they had a mountain of coal or coke, and that must have come out as a lorry-load. In those big houses several fireplaces on the go all the time in the winter.
JR: And the paraffin was for lamps and heaters? Or ....
BS: We didn’t have heaters, they came later. We had a great big boiler at the back or the house which was coke, and that heated the water.
JR: It had to be stoked.
BS: Oh, several times a day, that all had to be fetched in. I’ve got a feeling Dad used to do that, those sort of jobs he used to do round and about. Oh, about the butter and that. Now there was a dairy there at Bayford House with these big pans that the milk used to be put into and all the cream used to come to the top and that used to be skimmed off with a skimmer and part of it was used as cream but a lot of it was turned into butter, and it was made there and it was put into a big churn.
When we were living in there we used to sit and wind this churn and in summer it used to take ages and ages to churn and you’d sit there for 2 or 3 hours. It used to be the most beautiful butter, bright yellow and, of course, we were able to have that as well as wages. And that kept the household going in butter and cream and stuff. And there was a little bit of bombing during the war. One of those big land mines came over, they came over on a sort of parachute. They had a bad one in the town, didn’t they?
JR: Yes, Tamworth Road.
BS: And by the Castle Hall there.
JR: That was the V1, that was what they used to call a doodle bug, but the land mines were on parachutes.
BS: Right, well, that came floating over there, right over the houses on Broad Green, as you come up the bottom road into the village. About half a dozen council houses, all sold now. And it caught on the first 2 as you’re coming up the hill and nobody was hurt but it blew the place to bits and they moved into our cottage, I can remember. So that was nasty and there was a lot of these Molotov Cocktails, incendiary things and that. There was a lot of noise up there during the war. I used to catch the train back to Ware Sunday nights and I used to walk right down from the top of that hill to Bayford Station, and searchlights and things were all on the go. It never worried me to catch the train and the bus back to Ware.
JR: Apart from the ones you’ve named were there any more major war incidents there? I know it’s not exactly on your doorstep but near Roxfords a plane that had bombed de Havillands and was coming back, it’d been shot at and winged really and landed down in those lower fields, which is not exactly in Bayford but not far away.
BS: No, I don’t know anything about that. There was a lot going on and nobody was supposed to talk about it, and I don’t remember my parents ever talking about that. Dad belonged to the Dads’ Army – what to do you call it
GC: Home Guard.
BS: He was right into that because he’d been in the First World War. He’d spick and span himself up, that was all the men in the village. They’d come into Hertford for training.
JR: Were there any shelters – did you have an air-raid shelter?
BS: No, no. I don’t remember any shelters.
GC: Was Bayfordbury requisitioned for anything during the war?
BS: No, I think the Clinton Bakers must have been living there still.
JR: It was Brickendonbury that was the spy school?
GC: There were quite a lot of those.
JR: When did you move in with the Drakes – during the war, wasn’t it?
BS: Yes.
JR: And did they ever go back to their old cottage (No). So once they moved into the big house they were resident there?
BS: They were really tied then, they couldn’t get away from it. And they moved to Walkern Croft and there was a lodge at the end of the drive. It wasn’t all that big a house, but there was this lodge and they promised Mum and Dad that that’s where they’d live and it never came to anything and they worked up there for several years, never had any privacy at all. They bought a little cottage in Walkern and they were there for many years with my young brother, he never married.
JR: And did they continue to work at the house?
BS: No, they cut themselves off, they couldn’t get away from them. It was not very nice really, they commandeered their lives. It was a shame really. Dad hadn’t retired, he went to work on the council at Stevenage Council.
GC: I meant to ask you, you were working as a cook and then you worked at Wickhams, were you getting better wages than before?
BS: Well, yes.
GC: And you felt more independent?
BS: Of course, you didn’t get your keep but it was more in the long run. I lived in Ware for about 4 years, I suppose. I got on well with the family there. They’d got 3 bedrooms there so I more or less had my husband’s bedroom, because if you had a spare bedroom you’d got to take evacuees and mother-in-law had some evacuees. Boys came and went and then when I had to do war work she said, ‘why don’t you come and live here’. So it worked out very well, really
JR: Well if you were living there as a war worker they wouldn’t have had to take evacuees. What about the Drakes? They had a big house, did they have to take evacuees?
BS: I don’t think there evacuees there, I can’t really remember. Thinking back, those people that were bombed out at Broad Green, their name was Taylor, they had them in there until the house was put right, but I don’t remember anybody else there. They had a big house
JR: From what I’m learning, when the evacuees first arrived, those that weren’t the first chosen by the locals, had to go to the big house where there was room for them all.
BS: I don’t think there was. You see Mum and Dad had moved into the house by then, and with one brother, so that filled some of the house I suppose. It might have been an excuse for them not to have any!
JR: So what other properties in the village were interesting at the time?
BS: There’s the Round House, coming back into the village and the next one coming down was next door to our cottage and the man who lived next door [semi-detached], he worked for that house. Their name was Powell and he was a bit artistic. He was interested in the children and he used to have them there for plays and he used to do all the scenery, costumes and things, and they used to put on little plays.
GC: There’s another road going down to where they play cricket – there’s a manor house there, very old, that was another big house, beautiful Cedar of Lebanon trees.
JR: Did you have much to do with that?
BS: Well, we used to go and watch the cricket. And the children used to go down there to play cricket from school. The girls used to play rounders and the boys used to play cricket [There was a cricket club but none of Barbara’s family were members]
GC: So we have come to the end of what you wrote there?
BS: I think so.
GC: So as you look back, do you feel very sorry for your mother?
BS: I do really, yes. I think they had it rough – she lived to 98! Dad died, he was only 76, he got diabetes, but she lived to 98. Her mind was good as well. She mixed in the village life there, as well.
GC: Was she in the WI in Walkern?
BS: Yes, she went and did a bit of work down at Wrights Cider Mill, the lemonade factory there, just for a few hours. And she used to do needlework, alter curtains and finish skirts and blouses, so a little bit of a social life with people coming and going.
GC: Once you were married and living a family, ordinary, life. Did you use any of your cooking skills that you’d learned in the big house?
BS: Well, I still like cooking and I’ve just made 2 wedding cakes!
GC: Oh well! And did you ice them as well?
BS: Yes, I hadn’t made any for a long time. I do like cooking and if there’s anything on in the village I usually make apple tarts.
GC: Oh yes, you’re famous for apple tarts.
JR: Can I ask you one question on my own behalf – I’m an abysmal pastry maker, I just cannot get the hang of it. What is a good recipe for pastry?
BS: Well, I use self-raising flour and Stork hard margarine and half as much fat as flour.
JR: You don’t put anything like Trex in it?
BS: No, perhaps a little over half, makes it a bit nicer, well, it’s like breadcrumbs.
JR: So if you’ve got 8oz flour, say 5oz fat?
BS: Yes, no more than 5oz, put 4 and add a little bit more. Rub it in like breadcrumbs and just mix it with cold water. And you mustn’t handle it too much.
JR: So long as it sticks together.
BS: That’s right.
GC: Another thing that occurs to me, this is a hard question, it’s about taste. Now we buy eggs, tomatoes and things in Waitrose, but looking back, this fresh food from the garden and eggs from the hens, do you think it was nicer food?
BS: It was. I think it tastes better when it’s straight from the garden. And the milk and the cream.
GC: On the other hand, none of us would want to go back, would we…
BS: No. It was a job to get your washing dry in the winter, now you don’t have to worry – central heating.
GC: And we’re warm and comfortable.
BS: I can remember when we had this range and Mum used to put those house bricks in the oven and in the winter us children, we used to have a blanket to wrap round that brick and take it to bed - don’t forget your hot brick! So we were warm in bed, never had hot water bottles
On Tape 2 Barbara describes coming to live at Bengeo.
.
JR: What was it like living in Bengeo at that time?
BS: Well, my sister lived down there as well and then my son came along, and she had a son as well. We used to go into the town shopping. I used to go to evening classes, flower arranging and cookery, icing and that sort of thing and we used to go to the pictures because the cinema was there then. I didn’t join anything until I got up here because we were tucked away a bit down there.
JR: How long were you in Byde Street?
BS: Ian was 2½ when we came up here and he was born down there so we were down there 2½ years, I think.
JR: Where was the evening class centre?
BS: Scott House and also Ware College. Used to go over there on the bus, there was buses in the evenings then. You could get out and about then.
JR: What sort of house was it – an unmodernised house at Byde Street?
BS: Very basic. 2 up and 2 down. A kitchen range – it belonged to a man, this house, and he used to come weekends so he had the other bedroom, we only had the front bedroom. And it wasn’t very nice either. My husband cleaned it up and decorated and that. We managed. There was a gas cooker to cook on and a copper in the corner for your washing. There was a garden at the back, he got digging and got veggies in there. Outside toilet, as you know, down (the side). But we were happy enough there. That man, I think he’d got a lady friend, he didn’t interfere with us at all. He slept there at weekends. I didn’t have to look after him or anything.
GC: I suppose when you came up here there were a lot of other young people
BS: Well yes, because the whole estate, everybody had got children, all about our ages. Everybody was about on the same level, what the husbands earned and that kind of thing, so there wasn’t any feeling of superiority. We had some nice neighbours [the children] all went to school together, there was never any problems, no vandalism or fighting. Some had got 2 children, mostly got 2, some had got 4 or 5. But they’d come from the pre-fabs at Hornsmill, they’d already been housed up there. When they came to 5 years-old, no school, had to use the village hall.
GC: The baby boom!
BS: Yes it was. There must have been about 40 all started together. No play schools or anything like that then.
JR: How long did that school last before they pulled it down for flats?
BS: Well, Ian had one term up that new school and then went down to Simon Balle and he was 12 when he went down there. He was born in 1948.
JR: About 1958/60 then?
BS: About, and that’s how long those flats have been there.
JR: Did you have anything to do with Holy Trinity or St Leonards?
BS: Well, when Ian started school I must have said to somebody I wouldn’t mind a little job now, at the school. And one morning there was somebody knocking at the door and it was Mrs Briggs. It had got to her ears and she wanted somebody and, of course, I went round there, used to go 2 mornings a week.
GC: And that was The Rectory up here?
BS: No, in Byde Street. It was still here then, I think it was flats [the old rectory in what is now Boundary Drive]. So that was how I got introduced to the church life.
JR: What about your neighbours on the estate? You said some had come from Hornsmill, did they come from other parts of the country?
BS: No, they were all local. They’d mostly been living with their parents.
JR: Did you have anyone like soldiers who’d been billeted in the town and decided to stay because they married somebody?
BS: Oh yes, like Joyce Craig’s husband, he married a local girl. A lot of the Scottish soldiers did who were billeted in the town.
GC: Norah McKechnie.
BS: Yes, she was one and they were all in Revels Road, and I expect, if I thought about it, there was a few of the men. And, of course, there were some women as well, Welsh women. Hertford lads had been billeted up in Wales and brought the wives or girlfriends back, came back to live with their parents in Hertford and got on the waiting list.
JR: How long did you have to wait?
BS: Oh, it was a long time
JR: Were you waiting all the time you were in Byde Street?
BS: We reckoned we’d been married 10 years before we got a house.
[Pause. Talk returns to the big houses]
GC: Looking back on those upper servants, do you have a respect for them?
BS: Yes, and the butler, you had to be most polite to the butler, and the housekeeper.
GC: Do you think they were able and efficient people?
BS: Oh yes.
GC: Nowadays, those sort of people would be running hotels and restaurants.
BS: Oh yes. And then there was the lady’s maid. She was very close to the lady of the house and she had quite a lot of sway about what went on.
GC: And again people with those sort of skills would be hairdressers, shop managers.
BS: Yes, older people of course, than what we were.
JR: Did the lady of the household ever do much for herself? She had someone to dress her ....
BS: I truly don’t know what they did with themselves all day, except the diary, did embroidery, wrote letters.
GC: Yes and they kept changing into different clothes!
BS: Always changed for dinner. They didn’t do a thing really, until the war came along and they just had to…
GC: Yes, that must have been a shock!
BS: And, of course, we had to be in dead on time at night time, they locked the door and I know that often we had to shout upstairs to the other maids to come and let us in.
GC: I was at Wimpole Hall earlier on in the summer and you’ve got the wonderful fine rooms and thick carpets and chandeliers and then you end the tour by the servants’ quarters, north facing and partly in the basement, very plain stone floors, cold. Was it like that, was there really such difference where you were?
BS: Well, some of the households were, yes. I was lucky in that I had a job in between Little Berkhamsted and Sacombe, but I only stayed a week, Mother fetched me home! It was awful, it was at Codicote and they had kitchens and things like you saw at Wimpole Hall with a great kitchen range and I think I was about 16 when I went there and she fetched me home and she went after the lady of the house and told her what she thought of her! Even the beds were terrible, it was not fair. They really treated you as servants.
GC: Had you written home to your mother?
BS: I must have done because she came and fetched me
JR: What were you expected to do in the day?
BS: You was up at 6 in the morning and at that place I never stopped all day, it was awful. Scrubbing and plucking pheasants and these great big fish coming in. They’d been up Scotland fishing, these great big salmon and you’d got to deal with those. I expect it was beyond me really. But then I went to Sacombe which had all been completely redecorated inside and the servants’ rooms, everything was new and the kitchen was all up-to-date. It was really lovely.
GC: Were these jobs advertised in the local paper?
BS: No, there used to be somebody in North Road which was called a domestic service agency.
JR: I remember reading about that.
BS: Was it Mrs Cain?
JR: Cain, yes it was Cain.
BS: Well you put your name down there and ladies rang up to see if they’d got anybody on their books. So that’s how you came about getting your jobs. I had a job for one of the royalty down in Slough somewhere. Didn’t want to go all that way away.
JR: It wasn’t Windsor, was it?
BS: No! It wasn’t as royal as that! It was ----
JR: Never mind.
BS: No, but it was quite a big household, yes. And I was quite happy at Sacombe because I could bike there from Bayford.
GC: Do you think the skills you learned in service stayed with you for the rest of your life? And can you say that about the job you did at Wickhams?
BS: Not really, no.
GC: But then you must have a certain pride because you’d done your war work. It’s no good having the pilots if you haven’t got the planes.
BS: I was on an inspection team there that inspected the work that came off the machinery. A lot of women went, because they never had women there, it was all men, but they had to take a lot of women on and it really opened my eyes to life in a way, meeting different sorts of people after village like. Knocked the corners off me a bit you know. It was a growing-up stage in a way.
JR: Were you glad to leave or were you sad to leave it?
BS: I left when we came over to Byde Street and my husband didn’t think a lot of me working down there
JR: One thing I didn’t say to you was when your parents went with the Drakes to Walkern, I got quite a lot of it on the other tape, but it was a bit indistinct – they took them into the house with them.
GC: And promised your parents that they would have their own cottage, and your father got fed up and took another job, didn’t he?
BS: And they bought a little cottage in Walkern and they were there right up to the end, yes
Recording finishes