Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Sewell, Betty (O 2011.4) |
| Interviewee | Betty Sewell (BS) |
| Interviewer | Trish Goldsmith and Susie Hunt (TG and SH) |
| Date | 06/03/2010 |
| Transcriber by | Susie Hunt |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no. O 2011.4
Interviewee Betty Sewell (BS)
Date 6th March 2010
Venue River Cottage, Great Amwell, Nr Ware
Interviewers Trish Goldsmith and Susie Hunt (TG and SH)
Transcribed by Susie Hunt
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
SH: I think we are recording! I will test it in a minute. Can you say something like... What is your full name Betty?
BS: Elizabeth Cecily, after my mother, Mease, after my father’s mother, Toyne, that was my maiden name.
SH: And now Sewell.
BS: Yes.
SH: And the address is?
BS: River Cottage, Great Amwell, Nr Ware, Hertfordshire.
SH: We are recording again are we?
TG: Yes we are recording.
SH: So the next thing I am going to ask you is your date of birth.
BS: 1911.
TG: Month?
BS: Er, 6th of July
SH: And where were you born?
BS: I was born up at near Haileybury, on Hertford Heath.
TG: Oh! And did you live in Hertford Heath as a child?
BS: No. Only until I was 18 months. My father was head of the History department, S.M. Toyne, very well-known I think to Haileyburians and my mother was a daughter of the Bursar, Col. Young and he was a retired engineer, they often had retired army people.
SH: Still do!
BS: And erm the doctor, Dr Lempriere, brought me into the world. My father always said he stopped to shave, the wretched man, and I was getting frantic, but they remained great friends and his dear wife Sally who was a New Zealander, wasn’t she, and he went on a ship in the summer holidays to be the medical officer and she was on t he boat and when he got home he sent her a telegram Will you marry me? And she telephoned Yes, and he came back! (laughter)
TG: How lovely! You’ve always been associated with this area and Haileybury.
BS: Very much so, very much so. And that’s why it’s so lovely that I still and in touch with them.
SH: Where did you go to school?
BS: Well, first of all when I was very young, erm, we were in York, remember, I went to the York College for Girls.
SH: Right. You moved to York?
BS: Yes.
SH: How old were you when you moved to York.
BS: At 18 months my father was appointed Head Master of St Peters School York. And erm, so we went up there and we lived in the school house, which was just across the drive from the main building of the school and er, it was the oldest, it is, the oldest Public School in England because it was founded by Alquin in 627! Hope I’ve got it right! 627, as a choir school to York Minster. That’s when it was founded. My father being a historian discovered this you see. But Kings Canterbury was actually founded in 624, so thet disputed it but my father found that for four years it had disbanded, so, but St Peters was continuous.
SH: Right, so that was the winner!
BS: He said he made great friends with the Head Master and they said well let’s just clinch it with a rugger match.
SH & TG: Ah! (laughter)
BS: And my future husband actually played in that 15!
TG: So you stayed in York until all through school....
BS: 26 years we were up there. But we were there when the Zeppelins came over. Now there was no air raid warning and so the masters used to go up a very steep staircase on to the flat roof and keep watch and then when they saw it coming, they, I don’t suppose they
telephoned, I suppose they ran down, one of them and we were all taken to the huge basement kitchen and the boys living in the house, and I, wrapped up in blankets, went down there and my mother always kept a tin of chocolate biscuits especially for that occasion! When we came up they had bombed the Minster, and they had completely demolished my future husband’s godmother’s house and luckily she wasn’t in it, she had gone next door to see if they were all right, and the little girl living there had got a bit of shrapnel in her head and she was trepanned there and then in the road by the light of a torch and so, later when I was a few months older, we went to the same school, and you know little girls are jolly nasty and they always called her tin head. But she was sweet girl, yes. So I suppose there aren’t many of us that remember those sort of things in the first war.
TG & SH: No, no.
BS: And then when it ended my father organised the whole school, crossing hands all the way round, it had an entrance here, a drive which went round the front of the school and out of the other gate and right across the road to sing Auld Lang Syne, and I remember I was 7 then and I was allowed to watch out of the window. (laughter)
TG: So your husband played rugby. When did you actually meet him?
BS: Well, I met him when I was, first of all, he knew me when I was 5 because I used to go across to the housemaster Mr Yeld in the Grove and he used to teach me to sing and my husband was born in Uganda and his mother sent him home to his godmother because she felt he needed a better education than he could get there. A great sacrifice by her but he had a lovely godmother, Miss Martin Leake the sister of that Dr Martin Leake who is buried in a village near here, and I can’t remember which churchyard, anybody would tell you, and that’s where the grave is. So, he was down to go to Miss Martin Leake’s brother who was head of Dulwich prep and to give him a little extra coaching, he went to this housemaster and listened outside the door and giggled of course, little girl singing! And when he said do you think I could go to St Peters instead of Dulwich because I do like it so much, she had to tell her brother, sorry, and he went to the Grove ******and erm then, what happened, when he was a bit older he came into the school house, which my father and mother lived in you see and they used to have snowball fights between the houses, and he was still at the Grove at that time and he threw a snowball and he
got me in the eye and so he rushed and - what have I done to the Head Master’s daughter? - (laughter) rushed up and pulled out the most gorgeous silk handkerchief and his mother had sent them to him from Uganda and dabbed my eye. I had to be off school! And then a bit later my mother was a wonderful Head Master’s wife, and all the boys knew her and doffed their caps, and she stopped and said Where are you going for your Christmas holidays? And he said well I’m not quite sure because I’m with my godmother and she works and so mummy came home and said to daddy do you think that boy could come and have Christmas with us? And so he said, Yes of course. And there was another boy in the same house who’s mother was in India -Am I going too fast?
SH: No, no
BS: And the same thing happened to him and he didn’t know where he was going and so they both really made their home with us, always came back to us and even when Pat was older he’d still come back, and Leslie. Leslie went to Cambridge and then went out to Rhodesia and Pat went into the Army, of course and when he got leave he’d come back here you see. Really that’s where it all happened.
TG: Right, so when were you married?
BS: So I was married in 1934.
TG: And where were you married?
BS: Well, on St Peter’s Day, that’s June 29th at St Peter’s School, in St Peter’s Chapel.
TG: Oh how lovely!
BS: And our youngest son is called Peter! (laughter)
TG: How very appropriate!
BS: Yes, and we had of course the church choir, the chapel choir and the Archbishop, William Temple, married us.
SH: A well known name!
BS: Yes, isn’t it just. Yes, and the present Chaplain at Haileybury comes down to see me once a month and brings me Communion. Chris Briggs. And he said, Oh William Temple, I so admire his books and I was christened, I mean confirmed, oh I didn’t say where I went on to boarding school. I went to Queen Margaret’s Scarborough and Cosmo Gordon Lang the Archbishop was a visitor to that school and he confirmed us.
SH: Oh right. All very important names.
TG: Absolutely, yes. So what brought you back down here?
BS:[********]much too expensive so they looked further out and they found Little Acres, my mother called it Little Acres, in Ware at the top of a hill over looking the town of Ware. Little Acres, and she called it Little Acres because they had lived in Many Acres up in York and to this day that house is called Little Acres, and there is a whole lot of building of houses now where his big garden was, and there’s a whole lot of houses, and they are all called Little Acres! (laughter)
TG: And what about this house here?
BS: Well, then, oh dear, now then my husband went into the army and so he was all over the place and erm I think, yes he came eventually came towards the end of the war he went through Belsen concentration camp and got typhoid B. He used to chew the side of his fingers and what he saw was so appalling so utterly appalling. He was with a corps division which the erm Commandant of the Prison said I’m just about to open the gates and we’ve got - what’s the more dangerous thing than that Typhoid, I can’t remember now
SH: Cholera?
BS: Yes, so I think you’d better come and come in and occupy. So Pat took the senior medical officer up with him and it was horrific, absolutely horrific what he saw. It wasn’t like the gas chamber place, the other one, but quite bad enough.
SH: Skeletons of men...
BS: Absolutely. He went up in a jeep and he walked about **********the commandant at once and Pat said no shut him up somewhere, he’s got to be tried publicly. People have got to know what’s gone on here so there was no ************and with fear so he thought he was being tortured which was the sort of thng he would have done and of course he did stand trial. Yes, mm.
TG: So, back to this cottage.
BS: So then in the meantime I used to go back to my mother, you know when I had
SH: To Little Acres?
BS: To Little Acres. When I had two children, my sister needed to come back, she had no where to live and her husband had been taken prisoner and so a friend of my mother’s said she knew that the Tollgate, which was a lovely little house, and is still there, in Ware, was to let. So we went to live there on Pepper Hill, it is.
TG: Not that far away!
BS:
Yes, that’s right. And we had a very happy time there. I had two children by then, Cessa and Tim and, er, then Peter was born in Hertford and I went and stayed with my mother and Tim went to one, Cessa went to my mother, and Tim went to my sister, and he stayed there and when we got back to the Tollgate it was the end of the war. Of course the people who owned it wanted it back. By that time Pat was back on his sick leave for four weeks I think and erm, was posted to Cairo, and erm, and he heard that this was to let but I was left to
organise it all with Lee’s and of course Roger Lee is still in the village, and erm, they had various people who had first choice but we got it and er we were able to move down here. It was extremely damp. It did have gas but no electricity. Of course, erm no
TG: What year was that? Can you remember?
BS: Well it was the end of the war 1945. Yes.
TG: Now tell us, because we are interested, I’ve heard various sort of snippets about how the Madrigals started but can I hear it from you?
BS: [*************]so he just got a few of us together and I and my sister joined them and one of the men was Major Fair who was house master of Trevelyan and Jean Tennant who was the daughter of another master, who lived at Highwood, where my grandparents had lived and Sally and I joined them too and we sang at 6 o’clock in the evening, you couldn’t have lights you know after that and people just walked out from Ware and local people of course, and just stood up there and we were on the bridge here *******the garden and I never thought I would be living here and inviting the madrigal people to come into the garden again.
TG: So it’s happened pretty well every year
BS: Yes, ever since
TG: So which year was this?
BS: 1940 and my husband had just got back from Germany I suppose and was sitting on the river bank to listen.
TG and SH: Fantastic
BS: So then eventually when we came to have this house we used to come again and I used to have them into the garden and it’s gone on ever since
SH: Yes, for years and years
TG: Do you have a favourite madrigal?
BS: Yes - The Silver Swan!
SH: Oh I thought you might say that one!
BS: And they always sing it.
TG: Any others you particularly like. Any that you particularly have memories of?
BS: I’m just trying to think - (sings) My Bonnie Lass She Smileth.
SH: That’s a lovely one a nice lively one
BS: Is there another one that you like, Susie?
SH: Yes, I like that Finzi one - not really a madrigal but we do sing it - The Blue Bird
BS: Yes, lovely. I’m very very lucky because I love singing and because up in York my mother asked Edward Bairstowe whether he would give me lessons, and he said bring her back when she’s a bit older, 18 I think, because I don’t like teaching young girls. It strains their voices. So I had lessons with him. He was rather a frightening little man. I mean eventually he was Dr Bairstowe and then he was knighted, wasn’t he, Sir Edward Bairstowe and erm I was going up, he had his music school near the Minster, and I had to go up the back stairs, and as I was going up I met the pupil before me coming down in tears, and I wondered oh dear what am I going to be like. And he got very cross with me one day because I said I can’t come next week because I’ve got to do something else and he said I don’t teach anybody who thinks anything is more important than singing, so my goodness me I went (laughs). But he was a wonderful teacher, and I still have the collection of songs here that he taught me.
TG: Do you remember what they were?
BS: Not very well, no. (sings a bit) I was trying to think what else. I can’t remember Oh, My Heart Ever Faithful, that sort of thing.
SH: Do you remember the madrigals you sang on the first, in 1940, the first
BS: No I can’t really.
TG: The Silver Swan is obvious, of course, in this setting! You can imagine the swans gliding by
BS: One year we did! Do you remember?
SH: Yes, I do!
BS: Yes, and in those days the Special Constables would control the traffic and then one year to my horror they said they couldn’t do it any more, they took them away and so from that time we had to have friends in the village and they wern’t allowed actually to stop them, but you could ask them could they go round the other way you see and only one man said no and came whizzing through. But before all that time when we didn’t have that we were just singing To be a Farmers Boy (Betty in good voice!) and the farmers cart came by!
TG & SH: Oh, how lovely!
BS: And another time when we sang The Silver Swan a neighbour up here knew the swans were just down the other side of the far bridge so she kept some bread and she enticed them across! And in those days you could sit on the river bank and they did and the children dangled their hands in you know. But then Health and Safety!
TG & SH: Oh, yes, H&S!!
BS: Absolutely! And so that was stopped and of course about then, they were not actually allowed to close the - so then people were very good, very good.
SH: And you’ve got some very good helpers
BS: Yes, very and people would help to - the men did the wine for me and the friends helped with the food, you know and we used to put candles in jam jars to guide them round and then for some reason it was always the bell ringers that organised the lighting and one of them is still alive, Seth,
SH: Oh, Seth, yes.
BS: He and his wife come to see me regularly. He used to put a light in my garden too.
TG: It was certainly a very special occasion
BS: Absolutely magical isn’t it, and then last year it was brilliant. I could hear every word and you know you came and sang under the window.
SH: We are going to do the same this year!
BS: I could hear every word you sang. It was lovely.
SH: We have new trainer now of course.
BS: Oh yes. Quentin?
SH: James
TG: Very enthusiastic
BS: So I gather, yes.
TG: How are you feeling, are you getting tired?
BS: Not a bit, no! I say, when you’re my age better to wear out than rust away!! It’s a well-known saying!
SH: That’s right. So, for your Big Birthday, when it comes what are you planning or what are they planning for you?
BS: Well a family gathering because I am so fortunate. I’ve got a gorgeous family. Three children, 12 grandchildren, and I’ve just had my 22nd great-grandchild! (much happy laughter)
TG: They’ll fill the garden!
BS: Yes, they will, yes. And then very kindly the vicar came, we’ve got a lovely vicar, Anne Donaldson, and her mother, Patience, is a great friend of mine, and she said um, I know the village would like to do something. We thought you’d like you to choose your favourite hymns for the service that morning, and so I told her you know, Praise My Soul, which everybody has at their wedding, God be in my Head, which the school choir sang as an anthem and then I remembered the third one. She said write it down when you remember and the communion hymn, And Now Oh Father Mindful of the Love, and so they’ll sing that, which is lovely isn’t it?
TG: Is this actually on your birthday or
BS: I think immediately after it, the Sunday after, something like that. I think so. But that is so kind, coming to see me, and of course I’ve
known three generations in the village, the mothers and their daughters and I taught the little grandchildren. I became a school governor and helped appoint two of the Headmistresses, and the present Headmistress, Sue Robinson.
TG: Is this St Johns?
BS: Yes, St John the Baptist school here. Yes.
TG: It’s a lovely school.
BS: Gill came to me and said Betty they’ve had a good reputation for music always. I’m so distraught this year the children that are coming in now really haven’t been sung to and don’t know how to sing. And I said what are you asking then Gill? Well, could you come in one afternoon a week, and take them. I was a bit dubious because I’d heard that children were a bit disobedient, you know, can I keep control . However I did. I sat them all on the floor all round me and I taught them nursery rhymes and some nice things, some action songs and I had a bag of triangles, tambourines, and things like that you know. They learnt a lot and two children aged 5 had got perfect voices, absolutely could get the note immediately and erm they were the only two I allowed to sing solos. We did a little concert for the parents every year you know, and that boy went on to be a choirboy at Hertford and his sister after him.
SH: Obviously a musical child
TG: They need that encouragement you see and you provided it for them.
BS: Well it was lovely and I’ve still got the song that Mr Yeld taught me as a child and now Cecily my eldest child said, do you mind if I borrow it because I’ve got a very musical grandchild and so it’s going on down the family which is lovely, isn’t it?
SH: Do you see very much of Cecily and Tim...
BS: Oh they are so wonderful, one of them comes every week and hands out housekeeping money to the carer, you know and some of the grandchildren and I even had little grandchildren to see me. They love coming back especially the grandchildren will say to their children, this is where I played in the garden.
TG: What a delightful spot to be brought up in
BS: And feeding the swans on the bridge. It’s a ritual you know.
SH: I see you’s got the bird feeder outside your window, that’s lovely, and I ‘ve just seen a bluetit
BS: Yes, yes, and the other day I had a Pied Flycatcher. I didn’t know. I saw people taking photographs on the bridge. Lots of people take photographs from the bridge of the area and then turn back and take the house and erm, this woman said, came to the door and said to the carer, will you tell whoever lives here that I have seen a Flycatcher, and she said come up and see her and er I’ve seen it again, lately.
TG: Do you think they are nesting?
BS: They fly down and they make a nest here and then fly down from there.
SH: They’ve got the water and the flies flying around.
TG: That’s reminded me that one of the things we have to do is to take your photograph! Do you mind?
BS: No, of course not! (laughter!) Luckily for you I’ve had my hair done this morning.
TG: You look wonderful, yes. (much merry laughter) So if I just - that’s fine
BS: I’m not very beautiful I can tell you that!
TG: Ah, that’s lovely. (click) Sorry about the flash; that’s fine, but I’ll take one more. Sorry about it flashing but ...
BS: I don’t mind! So long as I don’t spoil it.
TG: No you won’t spoil it at all! It’s great. Do you want t see it ?
BS: I don’t know whether I can.
SH: Oh, it’s excellent
BS: Is it?
SH: I think you might be able to see it. Can you?
BS: Just, just! (laughter) I always say I’m as blind as a bat, deaf as a post, lame as a duck!
TG & SH: You’re all right in your mind, and that is the important thing.
BS: Yes, that’s the important bit isn’t it.
SH: Yes, because if you’ve lost that you’ve lost everything somehow haven’t you.
BS: Yes. Up on the wall there there are a lot of photographs, the ones coming down there, the big ones. The top**********and then there’s me with my father and all the bridesmaids ‘cos we walked across you see
TG: You look incredibly happy, may I say (laughs)
BS: I was. I was thrilled cos I’d waited four years from being engaged and then at the bottom I’m coming out with my husband, Pat.
TG: Lovely. So when did Pat die?
BS: Oh, he died after we got back to the cottage. He loved the cottage and he was, um...he went up to hospital. He was diagnosed with cancer. But we had three good months I think before it actually hit him completely, and he died here in this room of course, because ...
SH: Which year was that, do you remember?
BS: Yes I was just trying to think how long ago now.
SH: Probably quite a long time ago
BS: Oh it is you see. Oh, I know after we’d got back from America because thanks to His Majesty, as it was in those days, we travelled the world erm and er the*********was America and then, so it was 1948 we bought the house and I’m trying to think how long we lived here. Oh golly! [long thinking time] We bought it in 1948, and then he retired of course and we were in Singapore and he was flown home from Singapore and that’s when they discovered it.
TG & SH: Oh dear.
BS: That would have been in the 50’s? Yes, ‘51 but we had lovely times here first, before it was diagnosed.
SH: So the children were not that old when he died, then.
BS: Yes, Cessa was my rock, she was 20. Tim had just gone to Sandhurst and Peter was 16. It was very tough. [NB. So it must have been ‘61 not ‘51 because she says Cecily was born in the early ‘40s and Pat died when she was 20]
TG: Yes, it’s very hard to lose your father, though even at that age. You think they are coping but I mean, my son lost his dad when he was 21 and I thought he’d got through it fine but, he suffered a lot more than he let on, you know. It’s difficult.
SH: My eldest two lost their father when they were 8 and 6. When Tony Casimir died, you know.
BS: I know yes, yes.
SH: They were very tiny.
BS: Cessa was an absolute rock. She said, does the village think I should be the daughter at home and I said I don’t care what the village thinks you’re not going to - you are going to go ahead. Visit here always when you want to. She had a job in London and shared a flat and erm used to come home every weekend, you know with the washing and things and it was nice for me . It kept me young.
TG: I’ve got down here your occupation - I mean did you ever...
BS: Oh, yes indeed! I was, the school wanted to put me in for erm university and I did essays and things and they said erm we’d like her to try again in a year. She’s just a little bit immature as I was only 17 I think, and my father said well I can’t afford to keep you at school another year and a friend knew about Geneva, and had been to Geneva, and so I went and lived with a delightful Swiss-French family called Gania-Bain and I lodged there and they did this course for forty different nationalities and I think forty of us ***********and every nationality and I made great friends with a Swedish girl Kirsten Viden and I visited her in Sweden and she came to us, here. I kept up with her for years which was lovely. It was very good french and so when I got home****************I was waiting to see, we were still in York of course, I was waiting to see whether I’d get a job and the Headmaster of the Prep School of St Peters, St Olaves, Mr Ping, said to my father, do you think Betty would like to come and teach here? He said well, ask her! And I said I’d love to and he said well I want you to teach singing and french from the age of 7 until they leave at 14. I adored it. I really did. I did that for four years until I was married, and I really loved it and the first time I was going to take a singing class, the bottom class, I went in and there were four little boys at the top with painting books and I said, sorry it’s not painting it’s singing. Oh we’re non-singers Miss. So I said there’s no such thing, so come on down and stand round the piano. One of those was Pat’s youngest nephew, Freddie Butler, and he’s just been 80 and we were remembering this, and I got him singing and he actually was one of the choir boys at our wedding!
TG: Oh, how lovely! (laughter and chatter)
BS: And then Peter, my youngest son, got a choral scholarshiip to Caius College, Cambridge while he was going to do his training to be a doctor afterwards. He is now a surgeon but he sang a lot. Always sang at the family weddings - sang the anthems and you know. Music’s been....
SH: In the family?
BS: All through. Cessa sings, well did till recently, in Hereford Cathedral, in the Three Choirs Festival and she goes to concerts and things a lot, and Tim and Jenny sing in their church choir, where he lives now and Peter organises in ******his village, and he’s a church warden in his church, so it’s lovely, the gift of music, and when I was widowed I joined Hertford Choral Society and also then I asked to join the WI which I never had before and then I was asked to conduct their choir and we used to go and sing to various villages, you know, round about and erm they used to practice here and I used to ...I got somebody to play the piano and I’d conduct them. To my delight they still come to sing for fun. They aren’t the choir any more and about 8 or 9 of them come and my last accompanist was a much better musician than I am. Absolutely delightful woman, Diana Schofield, and so she took on training them as well as playing and every other Wednesday they come here and we put the baby alarm around the other way and I can hear them, you see. They say we’re doing so and so and it lovely. **************stairs and stand all round here and we sing a couple unaccompanied and then some rounds and it’s enchanting and we give them coffee first. There’s a lot of talk first and then I hear Diana say Come on girls its time to start. (laughter)
SH: I actually know that that happens because when I rang to make an appointment to come and interview you your very kind carer, said well I think we can’t do it that day because we’ve got the WI choir coming.(laughing)
BS: I say. you don’t do it for me do you? No we love coming! They go and look round the garden see what’s up you know! They are all lovely people. It’ super.
TG: Well, I think we ought to stop there. You’ve done very well.
BS: Is that all right?
TG & SH: Wonderful, really good. I’m going to stop it now!