Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Flunder, George (O2002.2) |
| Interviewee | George Lambert(GL), George Flunder (GF), Pam Lambert (Mollie) (P |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 06/01/2002 |
| Transcriber by | Jeam Riddell (handwritten 27/28 June 2011) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no. O 2002.2
Interviewee George Lambert (GL), George Flunder (GF) and Pam Lambert (Mollie) (PL)
Date 6th January 2002
Venue 51 Brookside Hertford (Pam Lambert’s House)
Interviewer Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcribed by Jean Riddell (handwritten 27/28 June 2011)
Typed for archive by Marilyn Taylor August 2011
************** = unclear recording
[discussion] = untranscribed material
TAPE ONE - SIDE ONE
PR: We’ve (Pam) just been talking about Sister Major she’s quite often referred to in these tapes
GL: and Sister Whiting as well – Bertha
PR: and Nurse Pat
GF: That’s Bertha before she was married and became Mrs Whiting (then shows a picture of his parents)
PR: They’re at Hertingfordbury Railway Station. Can I just do my official start? This is peter Ruffles at Auntie Pam’s house and she is referred to as Mollie by everyone else here at no 51 Brookside and George Flunder and George Lambert both here. I have had lunch with brother in law George Lambert cooked by Ian (kitchen) and its now after lunch and we have has a glass of red wine and we’re just about to ramble through a few, chiefly Hertingfordbury events. It’s the 6th of January 2002 – Sunday afternoon. I am looking at a back number of Herts Countryside where there is a picture of Hertingfordbury station after it had closed, tracks are up, but nevertheless there’s Mrs Flunder, George’s mother, it says seven years after closure, just about to go into her booking office, Herts Countryside 1972- April. Can I ask you each to say when and where you were born?
GF: I was born on 8th October 1929 in Boston Lincs. and I moved with my family, mother father and sister to the station house in Hertingfordbury when I was 5 years old so that would be 1934 and at that time we had the station house, no electricity, no gas and the sewage disposal was a cess pit the other side of the railway line, which meant that when the local council came to empty the cess-pit every 6 months they had to come when there were no trains coming because they had to put the pipe across the railway tracks and they parked the vehicle on the road – there’s quite a long road up to the station. The cess-pit was on the St Mary’s Lane side, there was a fence, I think they used to go through that somehow.
GL: I can remember when George first came down from Lincolnshire aged 5 &a bit and at Hertingfordbury School where we both attended he had got the Lincolnshire accent and he had everybody roaring with laughter& Miss Bolton the teacher made him repeat "Little Jack Horner put in his thumb and pulled out a plum" with a broad Lincolnshire Accent.
GF: I had to go around each class and recite this; she thought I was highly amusing! George Lambert, George Flunder and Pam Lambert
PR: So how did you end up in Hertingfordbury, of all places, from Lincolnshire?
GF: My father worked on the railway and he thought it would be more healthy in Hertfordshire than Boston in Lincolnshire. – I think he up malaria while he was serving in Greece, in Salonika, during the war and he thought it would improve his health if he came to live in the country, which of course the station is right out in the country.
PR: Would there have been an advertisement for Station Master?
GF: No, he wasn’t Station Master he lived at the house but the Station Master lived at Cole Green, he was in charge of the two stations. My sister Monica did work in the booking office.
GL: She used to be a booking clerk at Hertingfordbury and Cole Green and because it was only a single line railway she’d give the tickets out at Hertingfordbury, get on the train go up to Cole Green and give the tickets out there before it went on to Welwyn Garden City. So they were even saving money in those days.
PR: How old would Monica have been when she arrived at Hertingfordbury?
GF: She’s 20 months older than me so she’d be 7
GL: I was born in the White Horse Hertingfordbury, in one of the bedrooms overlooking the front car park on the 4th February 1929 (8 months older than George Flunder)
PR: and your brother John, whose house we’re now in, Auntie Pam’s husband, was how much older?
GL: Nine and a bit years he was born in London and my parents moved out to Hertingfordbury in the 20’s and my grandfather and grandmother, they kept Trust Houses all over the country. They were at the Newlyn Courtney Trust House when my grandfather died, and then my grandmother came to live with my mother and father at the White Horse and helped them out.
PR: Giving good advice to the next generation.
GL: Yes, my father had recently come out the army, a few years later they came to the White Horse in the early 20’s and in those times it was just a beer house and my mother and father were offered the freehold of it for £200. I shall never forget that as long as I live.
PR: They made a personal name for themselves and the family – the Lamberts of Hertingfordbury in really quite a short time.
GL: I think right up until the time they died they were looked upon as outsiders, it’s one of those country traits, unless people have been born in the village they are outsiders. Mother and Father both came from Hackney and they were complete strangers.
PR: and yet from the town point of view we knew Lambert’s of Hertingfordbury, it was almost synonymous with the place. So they thought they were still working their passage when the community around thought they were central to the action. So what kind of premises were they running?
GL: Yes, it was just a beer house there was no accommodation (when they first arrived) and anything they made on accommodation and food was theirs. So they built that side up. In those days it was the Home Counties Trust, not Trust Houses Ltd, then Trust Houses got the Rose and Crown at Tewin and The Cowper Arms at Cole Green.
PR: Yes a near rival as it were.
GL: The managers always kept in touch with one another, we always knew when the district manager was coming round because he always turned up and they’d ring round and say "he’s with us now"
PR: So it was in their licensees’ interests to build up the "added" beyond the beer house
GL: Yes and of course when they built it up and it did grow up quite nicely because my mother was a very good cook and then Trust Houses realised how much money there was in this side of the business& they started to invest in it, but took over the profits and paid them a salary!
PR: What was the local rivalry with the Prince of Wales? Did you get different villagers in?
GL: That’s right yes. Very much so. It was very seldom that anyone who used the Prince of Wales as a Public House would come down to our place or vice versa. There was almost a demarcation line.
PR: And yet they were on a par in the early stages of your parent’s time.
GF: But they didn’t do food?
GL: I shouldn’t think so, no, they certainly didn’t do the meals that we had, no, I don’t know whether pubs did bar meals in those days?
GF: No the didn’t, they could make enough profit from the beer.
PR: Now they are a world apart.
GF: Nowadays you can’t drink and drive so you’ve got to make your money out of meals.
PR: But the White Horse, to go in there for a coffee you really feel you are somebody & that’s the growth of 60 years.
GF: Of course it has been extended a lot.
GL: Oh yes, they had put on the dining room when we left there in 1955. But all the back accommodation, that wasn’t there when we were there.
PR: Do you have a special pass, do they give you free……..?
GL: No! We do go in there, I go in there with Mollie (Pam) quite often because we go up to the grave where my Mother and Father, Grandmothers buried as well as my wife and Mollie’s husband and we go into The White Horse & have a snack & I’ve never introduced myself. I often think I would love to go upstairs and see the bedroom I was born in, I think it’s one of the front ones and they have not altered that. But the place itself id altered a tremendous amount, it’s quite difficult to find out where the Public Bar was and the Lounge. The dining room is just knocked into the extension. The front entrance is still there, that’s the one……..
PR: Do they still use that ? I thought you all had to go round the side now.
GL: No, that’s the hotel part at the side but people do come in from that front entrance.
PR: Harry Edwards and his famous "sticklebacks…………." Book & this most recent one - he’s done Hertingfordbury an absolute treat in that book. Have you read that?
GL and GF : I think I have (together
PR: Sugar Mice and Sticklebacks is it called?
GL: Yes that’s right
PR: Was Harry the same generation as you?
GL: Yes he was 2 years older & when you are 12 he’s 14 & He’s a lot more grown up whereas John his younger brother was really our age and we always played about together
PR: Where were they living then the Edwards?
GF: It’s the first house on the right hand side as you go towards the mill. The block of houses before the mill.
PR: Was there a sort of pilot light flickering – a cobblers?
GF: Yes just before that.
GL: Jim Plumb wasn’t it? A funny old chap, very much Victorian dressed, he was old when I was there.
GF: Yes there was John and Harry Edwards and his father Harry as well.
GL: He was a road man…………..
GF:……….who used to give us a haircut as well.
GL: Yes! He used to be the hairdresser and he did our garden
GF: 6d for a haircut!
GL: Was it? I don’t remember but he did our garden at the White Horse and his first wife, Flo., She used to be a waitress during the war……….
GF: ……with my mother
GL: With your mother yes and Harry Edwards used to help behind the bar. He was so trustworthy, the older Harry, which is a nice thing.
GF: He features in that film (to PR) you’ve seen the film, the video?
PR: No. If I have I have forgotten, what’s …………….
GF: Well George’s father had a cine camera which was unusual in those days.
GL: 8mm cine
GF: .and he must have spent quite a lot of time filming and John your nephew (John Kitchen) who had it made………….
GL: All the films were 8mm taken in the 1930’s and cracking up and they were kept in a biscuit tin and when John Kitchen found them he took them away and transferred them (to video)
PR: Yes I have certainly seen bits, that would be a good thing to sharpen up on for the museum.
GL: the things that are shown in that film where the 1st tanks were coming through in 1939 in the village and this chap John Plumb, where they were building the sewerage, this was all done in the 30’s and it was quite incredible scenes- there was Eric Hiatt walking across the road in his gaiters and long coat, he was a Green Line driver and he was dressed like some chauffeur, it shows you how the Green Line was looked upon in those days.
GF: and there was the AA man
GL: Oh Tom the AA man!
GF: and the policeman, Len Scott, on his bike and what I was quite amazed about the British legion, when they paraded through the village and through Letty Green.
GL: I think the thing I remember most of all is when the LDV (Local Defence Volunteers later the Home Guard) was first formed at the memorial hall and my father was up there with his camera and because the war time came he couldn’t get any more 8mm film so he had to dispose of it, but he filmed the starting of the LDV and all these chaps from the "Greens" and Hertingfordbury, they all came there with their pitchforks and shot guns.
GF: It was a real Dad’s Army.
GL: Charlie Wiskin who was in the Guards. I think he was the chap that started it and ran it.
GF: But your father was in charge?
GL: No, not in the early days, my father started off as corporal.
GF: But he was Captain Mainwaring to finish with!
GL: Oh he was Captain Mainwaring at the end yes! But at the beginning it was just corporal and Charlie Wiskin was the chap who used to operate the LDV but if you have seen the Dad’s Army film’s it was way before them, there were no uniforms, they were in their ordinary working gear. I thing that it is a fabulous bit of film.
GF: And then they used to parade in the White Horse yard didn’t they sometimes?
GL: Mostly in the bar!
GF: We made ourselves armbands for the LDV
GL: We were runners weren’t we? (George to George seeking affirmation). When they got their uniforms they became the Home Guard.
PR: Did you get involved in war-time in the village? Where you there then, you’d have been 12/13?
GL: Yes, I was a spotter for the Fire guard and I got my defence medal at the end of the war. I think my son and his sons have run off with it. I can remember in the early days of the war when the German’s were bombing & they used to come over & hit the ack-ack batteries that were surrounding London and they dropped their bombs indiscriminately. They dropped 3 around the station.
GF: Yes just missed us, the other side of the line.
PR: Was that when the Rectory got hit?
GL: Yes I was coming to that, I can remember this big canister of incendiary bombs came down and didn’t open so all the bombs dropped out unexploded and one of them must have dropped through the Rectory roof and on to the Rector’s bed & we all piled up there & I can remember Reg Rayment extinguishing it personally & we slung the mattress out of the window.
GF: It may have been because they could see the railway line shining because I can remember one night they did drop them right along the railway line & we had to go up & put them out, but they didn’t amount to much these incendiary bombs.
GL: Well they dropped on wet farm land didn’t they & I was up there next morning, a 12/ 13 year old boy collecting these incendiary bombs & there was a chap in the middle of the field – "what are you doing picking those up?" "ARP mister" and he said "Oh there’s some up here" and he was a policeman!
PR: (for posterity) what is an incendiary bomb and what did it do?
GL: They were about 15 /18 inches tall & they had a diameter of probably 2 inches & they’d got green fins at the top end and the rest of the body was aluminium & in order to make these bombs safe, I don’t know who taught us to do it, but we had a pair of Stillson’s* which would undo the cap at the end & the cap would come off – this is the detonator part & we used to use a screwdriver to knock the thing that was holding the aluminium powder out, knock the powder out, put the detonator back in screw it in, throw it up in the air so it landed on the road, it went off bang which exploded the detonator part but because there was no powder in it, it couldn’t do any more than that & they then became souvenirs for everyone in the village.
* ( transcribers note –Stillson’s were a name for a type of pipe wrench)
PR: So if it had worked according to the German’s plan how much damage would it do?
GL: I don’t think they ever intended to drop them in the village & very few of them exploded & the ?? canister way lying there in the same field – 6 or 8 inches long, 2 inches wide & they were all packed into this, so it must have all come out the aeroplane together.
PR: Was that part of what they were doing – unloading before going back?
GL: They were put into the aeroplane and were meant to open.
GF: I understood that a lot of them didn’t explode because they’d been made by slave labour who deliberately made them………………
GL: We heard that but I don’t think it can be the case because the detonators exploded on all of those that I worked on, so I think they just didn’t explode because they didn’t land on anything hard.
PR: In his second book, Harry Edwards, about the print mostly, he refers to Sir Henry Richards & having some HQ’s at The Dell or Dell Cottage he calls it.
GF: Oh yes he lived up there
GL: he used to walk past the White Horse to the station every morning and get the train from Welwyn garden City up to the City
(Transcription notes from PR "Did he say that? could be right.)
GF: I had to go and see him when I needed some books for my banking exams & he gave me some money towards them.
GL: Oh yes that was the Village Trust wasn’t it
PR: The Walter Wallinger Charity? (probably) But was the relationship between the White Horse & The Dell at this time quite important because he was, according to the book, that’s just come out recently, he was the commander of some sort of war time activity similar to the one that you’re describing that met in the bar of the White Horse or the bar.
GL: To my knowledge he never came into the White Horse
PR: He didn’t have a similar captain Mainwaring role?
GF: No he had precious little to do with the village
GL: Well only this trust thing. I didn’t know he was in that even.
GF: I don’t know how old he would have been, he was pretty old.
PR: He lived to be 88 I remember when he died. He had these plus-fours, walking up through the woods. The bluebell woods to Panshanger we used to see him & Lady Richards when I was a kid & I think he had a green Daimler. Can we do railway talk for a bit? About the use of the line & the number of passengers.
GF: Well there were regulars I remember Mr Hogg who lived next door to the White Horse, he was rather short sighted I think & Mr Bagenal he was an acoustic chappie.
PR: Leaside was it?
GL: I don’t think we ever called it Leaside; it was down past the gamekeeper’s cottage on the right.
GF: There were perhaps ½ a dozen. Mr Gregory.
END OFTAPE ONE SIDE ONE
TAPE ONE - SIDE TWO
GL: The triangle going up St Mary’s Lane
PR: Oh Seckers are there
GL: It was Gregory though (then)
GF: They made a film at the station – Jack Buchanan was in it. It was called "When knights were bold" and one of the scenes involved opening the carriage door & 2 pigs came out. Well they were all ready to shoot this & they opened the door & they realised the pigs were facing the wrong direction, it was one of the compartments with the long seats down so you couldn’t turn the pig round so they had to take it to Welwyn Garden City where they had a turntable in those days, turn the carriage round and bring it back again.
GL: I think ½ the village saw it being filmed and I can remember the train puffing off in one direction then puffing back & they must have been re-shooting all the time.
GF: Mother was busy making cups of tea but Jack Buchanan was there & I think Monica had her photograph taken.
PR: So only really a handful of regular passengers? Did the villagers use the line to go to Cole Green or would they have gone on a bus?
GF: I don’t think many of them went to Cole Green. We used to go into Hertford sometimes. During the war we had some relatives who had a butchers shop in Bromley Kent & they moved out to us when the bombing was going on & they used to get up & get a train about ½ past 6, and you get your workmen’s fares on the early train & I can remember going up with them to London. I think you always had to change at Welwyn Garden City onto a London train.
PR: So you’d have done that in preference to going to Hertford North station & straight up?
(Transcription notes from PR "hence the question above about Sir Henry’s direction".)
GF: Oh yes it was a faster train because in those days it used to take ages from Hertford North and there weren’t that many trains (from Hertingfordbury) of course they couldn’t go in both directions (single track) there used to be this quay (bay?) at Cole Green there were two tracks so trains could pass each other at Cole Green. (possibly a reference to a ‘key’ sometimes called a ‘token’. There was just one key (a large baton) for each length of single line track. An engine driver couldn’t proceed without it – it prevented head-on collisions)
(Pam comes into the room)
PL: We took you (Peter Ruffles) on that train to Welwyn garden City to have that photo taken. That nice photo you’ve got. You were only a few months.
PR: Oh it was Welwyn Garden City was it I thought it was George Blake.
PL: No Lisa somebody in Welwyn Garden.
PR: So you and my mum took the train, Hertingfordbury, Cole Green, Welwyn. Auntie Pam and my mum were friends from Post Office days, 1938.
GL: Do you remember the old plate-layers that used to walk along that length of the old line between Hertingfordbury& Cole Green & they used to find all the pheasants that had been hit by the train & they used to take those off as booty, they used to call at your mother for a cup of tea.
GF: One of them was always in! He lived in Hertford, up Nelson Street. He was a grand old boy
PR: There used to be some sidings there, in the station. One of two winters I remember going up to earn a bit of money loading up sugar beet. It was nearly always sugar beet, till your hands felt like frozen sugar beet themselves. Were they straight off the field?
GF: Retallics used to bring them in from the field opposite
PR: Under a gauge a white post
GF: There was also a built up area where tractors would drop stuff straight in, further up, near the gate.
PR: Which way would the loaded trucks go off then to Hertford or Welwyn?
GF: Mainly go towards Hertford
PR: there was some marshalling down at Cowbridge station.
GF: When we moved to Hertingfordbury we were offered the house at the old Cowbridge Station but it wasn’t terribly pleasant there in those days.
PR: And the country air of the village & you might never have met George!
GF: George was my friend before Monica came into it.
GL: It was only through George that I met Monica. Do you remember that track that used to run past the station, past the greenhouse, Jansen’s? And where you turned off right to Jansen’s cottage do you remember the bomb that was dropped there & they had the Royal Engineers digging down for weeks. They must have gone down 20 or 30 feet into the ground & they never found it & there was a hole there – Brickfield Cottages.
PR: Where did he come from Jansen’s – Dutch? (Yes) and they had been here a long time?
GF: The father had a Dutch accent.
GL: yes very much so
GF: But John and Kathleen & what were the other boy’s names?
GL: he lived in the village until recently, one of the other boys; he lived next to the Church, between the Church and the cricket field, the lodge.
GF: I thought that was John who lived there.
GL: I thought John was the oldest, the one that had the tumour on the brain.
GF: No I think John was the one that used to have a stall on the covered market.
PR: Tell us about that curious bit of track that went off to Horns Mill. How was that worked?
GF: There’s a siding there & there was a gate which led into Webb’s factory and they used to take the trucks right into the actual factory
PR: I can remember putting out a pole under the wheels of a wagon……………
GF: ………..and pushing it?
PR: Yes, was there ever a locomotive that used that stretch?
GL: This is the plate-layers trolley, a little truck, the way they propelled it along.
GF: That was a flat top platform they had.
PR: Yes that was different, I remember those plate-layers trolley’s but to get a railway wagon into Webb’s at Hornsmill it was over a couple of little bridges that looked as though they wouldn’t be strong enough for a Loco & you had a garden fork or hoe type of thing under the flanges of the wheel, truck, on the rail & pulled & it lifted the ……….. But whether we were just doing it for a few feet or all the way into that yard I can’t remember.
GF: There weren’t any horses?
PR: Could have been, yes. I wonder whether you remember.
GF: No Monica used to go down to Webb’s when she was working at the Station, something to do with what was taken in there?
PR: That would be worth researching because it’s a long stretch of track. Here comes the football score.
Ian: 3-0
PR: Who’s this?
Ian: West Ham
GL: West Ham won?
PR: they only beat Macclesfield! Thanks Ian very good lunch.
PL: Are you still recording? (JR Note. She may well wonder!)
PR: We can pause any moment shall we pause?
PL: Would you like tea?
Chorus: Yes thanks no sugar.
PR: Hertingfordbury village was more self-sufficient in earlier years with having a baker, Post Office, haircuts & cobbler & a tailor, Spratt’s –n how did the Hertingfordbury Community relate to the Green’s. Letty Green, Birch Green, did the people on the Green’s look to the village of Hertingfordbury head centre?
GL: I think we didn’t recognise them and vice –versa
GF: It was below us!
GL: No we didn’t really mix until we got to the school
GF: And the cricket club & Football club – they bouquet us together.
GL: Do you remember old Tom Hipgrave on the cricket field, how many times could he knock a six over into the churchyard.
GF: It was Blanchard’s who were great cricketers
GL: Yes Harold and Bob
PR: And they lived up behind the Price of Wales somewhere? (Yes) Butt there was a little bit of difference between Birch Green & the rest of the village communities.
GF: Yes, although Monica had her friends didn’t she?
GL: Oh yes, well the girls were different. She used to o to Quenby’s farm quite a lot- Elizabeth Quenby
PR: Where were they farming then?
GL: There was George Quenby at the top of the hill & then Harry at east End Green, his was very isolated.
GF: There was a place up there where we used to go swimming out sometimes
GL: And we used to swim in the Mimram. We spent most of our childhood at the Mimram; this is one of the things I’d love my grandchildren to be able to do because our parents never saw us in the school holidays at all.
GF: No we had free range, playing in the fields all the time. If there was snow it was tobogganing ……………….
GL: ………..down the hill behind the White Horse
PR: Where would you have swum in the Mimram?
GL: I went up there a year or so back & I hardly recognised it – but its somewhere where the road now crosses – we used to call it the swimming pool.
GF: That’s right because there was a board (diving)
GL: Yes, just before you got to the rifle range (all west of the village in grounds of Panshanger?) but the river was really silted up on that bend& if you put your foot down you went 6-12 inches in silt.
GF: whose field was that?
GL: It was Vigus’s at the time.
GF: But he never minded us ………………..
GL: No body worried about us at all
GF: We used to go camping up there sometimes and there were extensive watercress beds from time to time…………there was a watercress man who used to cut the stuff.
GL: we used to drink the water on that side of the river, cup our hands and drink the water because it was a spring just by – he used to have a little hut.
GF: And he was always up to his hips * in water, cutting watercress all the time. Then they had this scare about Polio & that rather put it off.
(* there is an unclear indication that he wore waders)
PR: The Mimram’s noted as being the purest of water of all of them that come into Hertford now, the Lea & the Rib & the Beane & the Mimram’s the first one to get back certain fishes & otters – that’s just modern times.
GF: These watercress beds ran parallel to the Mimram there were 12 or 20 feet between the tow of them and I can’t remember where they joined up to the Mimram. Certainly we could walk between them, right up as far as we were allowed to go. There was a wooden bridge – the old brick bridge – there then there was a wooden bridge further up & nobody took any notice of us as long as we didn’t go beyond that wooden bridge. After that we were in trouble with the gamekeeper.
PR: Cress has been grown more recently at Tewin at Poplars Green in that same water course – you need good quality flowing water
.
GL: I can remember at the White Horse between the wars in the 30’s we used to have tea rooms at the back where cyclists came along, these big cycling clubs & we even built covered racks, they used to go in the tea rooms & have their tea & that’s when the watercress was required.
PL: My cousin used to come * he’s still in touch with someone in Ware who used to come. My cousin lives in Birmingham now, but he used to come out from Totteridge or Barnet.
GL: Before the war cycling clubs were enormous compared with what they are today.
GF: I found that when I was routing about.
PR: Oh now we have the coronation celebrations 1937 May 12th in the village. Programme of sports – to be held at the Cricket Ground. There’s been a cricket ground for a long long time.
GF: There’s a story attached to it, it used to belong to the Panshanger estate & there was a possibility that they could have lost it when they lost the Memorial Hall (now the Mayflower) which of course was sold off – a sore point with the villagers – but the Roland Smith’s who were the squires – where the school is now.
PR: Where’s that, because it does say "presentation of prizes – Mrs Leslie" now she was at Epcombs wasn’t she and Mrs Roland Smith
GF: Of Hertingfordbury park
GL: It wasn’t called that in those days was it?
GF: I think it was.
PR: What is now the nursing home? (Yes) so did the village save, buy the ground somehow?
GF: They managed to get it put on an official basis & Mrs Roland Smith bought it & then charged the village £1 per year rent. Now I think it does belong to the village.
PR: It’s a lovely programme of events – 3 legged race of course & the potato race for the girls and the potato race for the boys & Wheelbarrow race for boys, skipping race for girls, girls couldn’t do wheelbarrows for obvious reasons & you’ve got all sorts of age groups for 40 yards, 60 yards, 80 yards, 100yards & then the adults events which start at 6.30 the children’s ones at 3.30. The 100 yard handicap for men aged 30-45, 80 yards for men over 45 & then open races, tug of war, from Hertingfordbury, Staines Green, Birch Green, Letty Green, East End Green & Pipers End & then the blindfold driving race & the slow cycling race for ladies only & the thread needle race in pairs, one lady one man, a mixed event & finishes up with "God save the King". So what other people were around – were the priests important?
GF: I can remember the Rectory – it was quite near the station, so one day a week the vicar would go to Birch Green School to start off the day with religion. I remember going in (to the Rectory) & having to wait for him to finish his toast and marmalade.
GL: But just before the war there was a chap by the name of Bond & he became a padre in the Army & when my brother was out in the Middle East he looked him up & they saw quite a bit of one another.
PL: and he married us George.
GL: Oh he married you as well.
PL: Yes, he came to Ware to marry us
GL: he subsequently emigrated to Australia?
PL: New Zealand
GF: he had a car – we used to call them puddle jumpers- I think they were Austin 7’s & on frosty mornings – there were no heated windscreens in those days – the engine was covered by a bonnet cover which undid at the side so he would wedge something under the front where the windscreen went along so that warm air from the engine melted the ice on the windscreen.
PR: Any other characters?
GF: The Desborough’s (Panshanger)
GL: we used to go there for Christmas parties
GF: I thought it was during the summer, we’d play out on the lawns
GL: They used to give us an orange – I thought it was at Christmas, probably was at summer
GF: At Christmas I thought it was the British Legion, put on a party at the Memorial Hall & there used to be a present for each child and I can remember the school putting on an entertainment- I think it was a mime thing we had to do, up on the stage.
GL: I’m just thinking who else I knew – Tim Muxworthy who used to live at Holwell Court where Cicely Courtneidge, Jack Hulbert’s daughter also lived, at Holwell Court. & (T M) was a farmer & he used to go up to Market in this pony and trap every Monday & the pony used to know it’s way home & used to automatically stop at all the hostelries on the way home!
(Transcribers note Cicely Courtneidge was Jack Hulbert’s wife, their daughter Pamela married Tim Muxworthy his real name was Edward)
GF: and then there was Captain Shaw, at the Old Rectory, during the war & he was Bernard Shaw’s cousin. He used to come to the White Horse.
PR: So let me just ask about the routes into town – was the main road the best route.
GF: No I would go through the brickfields come out in West Street & I used to go backwards & forwards to school that way.
GL: I used to go with you that way, we used to cycle and we had a bit of trouble with Marian Roland Smith because we never bothered about asking anybody and she caught us one day, she was alright after we had asked permission.
PR: Was it not a public right of way?
GL: I suspect it was in those days!
GF: It was along the railway line but I’m not sure
GL: Along the side there, then you crossed over that siding towards Webb’s & you went round under the bridges & that’s when there was the path out from Roland Smith’s place – used to join up there & she objected to us going through past the football field. We’d been doing it for so many years no one took any notice of us.
PR: But you wouldn’t have had this "right to roam" as they say now.
GL: It was accepted. With these fields we were allowed as far up as the wooden bridge, we were allowed in the first part of the woods & that dug-out bit, we were allowed there. But we kept to the boundaries.
GF: They used to be sand and gravel pits. We used to get a tin tray and slide down.
PR: When you say "we" what would be the early teenage population of the village?
GL: Well there was George and myself Alan Stratton, John Edwards, Harry would have been there, the Eastwood boy’s Leslie, Ashley & Robin.
GF: Ashley’s died – I heard that.
PR: Girls? (Some chortling)
GF: We didn’t have many girls in the village, Mercie Crane she didn’t join in with anything.
PR: She went to St Andrew’s school
GL: So did Stan Stratton- ah we used to tease him about Mercie - we did
PR: Ah – they were off to school together, in the other direction
GF: and there were the girls from Birch Green – Mavis Muncer
GL: That’s where most of the girls came from.
GF: Joan Bowmore or Bowmer
GL: Fred Barton had a sister, Audrey Barton; she lived down the alleyway opposite the White Horse on the way to the Old Rectory.
END OF TAPE ONE - SIDE TWO
TAPE TWO - SIDE ONE
PR: Can I ask about the retail trade
GF: The Harvey’s were in the Post Office Jean & Anne Harvey
PR: Tell us where the Post Office was
GL: It was going towards the Memorial Hall you go up the track.
GF: There’s a little row of cottages, the old cottages.
PR: The oldest ones around the Prince of Wales? (No) So you go further up that twitchell & then you cross the bit coming up at right angles to the road up the next little bit towards the allotments and the Mayflower and the Post office itself was in one of the ends of these Panshanger Houses?
GF: The Post Office itself (PR note 260 he thinks) was a wooden building, little more than a shed. They sold sweets & cigarettes and stamps Rayment’s sold……………
GL: At one time they (Harvey’s?) used to sell groceries
PR: Was it Mrs Harvey who was the Post Mistress? Was there a Mr Harvey?
GL: Oh yes I remember him quite well – I don’t remember what he did but I thought he might have been the Postmaster.
GF: All I can remember about those cottages along there, some of them had very low ceilings & you had to duck when you went through a door (way)
GL: I don’t think any boys lived up there, because when we went to Birch Green we used to meet up (on the way)
GF: Ron Warby – didn’t he live up there? (Yes) Ron and Jim Warby they were two.
PR: Were they people working on the Panshanger Estate because they were all built like Panshanger houses were and dotted around the Greens as well, with those yellow bricks as if they were built for estate workers, Mrs Bolter lived at the far end & her husband, I know, worked at Panshanger. (Georges didn’t know)
GL: If you extend the row of houses you go into a field with pine trees. At the beginning of the war they dug trenches up there, sand trenches.
GF: I remember we did at Birch Green School. We spend a long time digging air –raid shelters. In the field at the back of the school.
PR: Were those trenches for the people living in the row of houses.
GL: I didn’t know what they were for, we used them for playing in – we were attacked by the boys from the Green’s. A lot of sand came out – unless they used them for filling sandbags. It was very early in the war. There was quite a long trench 20 or 30 yards of it, no cover to it.
PR: But Mrs Harvey in the Post Office was a straightforward kind of lady – not fearsome or…….
GF: Oh no she was very pleasant.
PR: What I have forgotten is the Motor Factor – Shepherds – Harry
GL: Old Bill Shepherd,
PR: Bill with his glasses on his forehead.
GL: He built that house underneath the bridge.
GF: It was a bungalow. I remember he had a black dog that bit me.
GL: Our meeting area was by the Church & we were on that road leading down to the Prince of Wales & all of a sudden this beat of a dog shot round the corner from the village, came up the hill & bit him on the knee.
PR: So Shepherds was there in your heyday was it? (Yes) what would they have been selling?
GL: They used to do electrical supplies to garages. Harry was a pilot during the war on Lancs. (Lancaster Bombers) he was out of the village as far as I was concerned from about ‘39 onwards. But the old chap used to come into the White Horse for his ½ pint and he’d always have his old trilby. He’d leave the car running & the headlight on all the time.
PR: what about the Spratt’s and their role in the village? (Tailor)
GF: He did suits by order & it was really for the higher classes. I can’t remember going there for anything. Mrs Spratt was Irish and she was lovely.
GL: and next door to them was Frank Crawley. His father the Crawley’s had that place, the Spratt’s, the first one then Frank live there.
GF: and they also had the next house didn’t they on the end of Stan’s block
GL: Paul (Crawley) was in the Ghurkha’s
PR: Was it Paul that shot himself?
GL: that was Frank’s son
PR: I thought he was called Paul
GL: I think he might have been
PR: Shot himself down at the small holding behind Roland Smith’s. But that was much later?
GL: Yes because Frank Crawley had that.
GF: It was his son Paul that shot himself.
PR: and then the Rayment’s - Eric and Ralph
GF: Ralph had chickens and stuff behind the White Horse and ducks on a pond
GL: and do you remember the goose that used to go for us whenever we used to cross over from the corner of the White Horse towards the rifle range? Every time we went over there, which was every day during the summer, the damned goose used to try & cut us off put it’s head down, go towards you & it didn’t half give you a bite if it caught you.
PR: We’d better get the location of the rifle range for these people in the year 2020
GL: The pathway from the door of the White Horse cut across the field diagonally to a wooden fence and there was a row of willow trees & you went alongside those and an enormous great Elm.
PR: Are we up below the Mayflower?
GF: Oh yes past the Mayflower, coming down the bottom to the White Horse, almost heading diagonally towards the river. The row of tree went parallel to the river and there was a field that literally went at right angles to the river but we used to cut straight across to the rifle range. And that was the left had side of that field, there’s a wood up there and there was a brick built bridge across the river but the rifle range was on the Birch Green side of the river & actually the butts they call them, there was a bank going up to the woods and the Rifle Range was dug so that any spare bullets would go into the sand.
PR: So whose range was it? (No coherent reply but it must have been on Panshanger land)
GL: the old range warden he used to some into the bar every day of his life & he was an ex-navy chap & he was recommended for the VC on the Zeebrugge raid. He didn’t get it but he was recommended. But at the age of 12/13 he used to take me over there with a 303 rifle & let me practice on the butts & the 100 yards was on the same side, the 200 and 300 yards were on the other side of the river, that what the bridge was used for.
PR: Lets get Auntie Pam in now; did you go courting in Hertingfordbury?
PL: Yes before he went in the Army I used to be over there.
PR: How did you meet him? (sc. late husband, John Lambert, older brother of George)
PL: In the Post Office – he was downstairs at the counter & I was upstairs as a telephonist. The telephone exchange was in Fore Street over the counter.
PR: Where you had a coal fire in the Telephone Exchange
PL: That’s right & I used to walk through there and he just saw me
PR: Do you remember the first time you went out to the White Horse? (Yes) Were you impressed?
PL: I suppose I was I Remember your father (GL’s) sitting by the fireplace in the bar, when John introduced me.
GL: He’d make sure I was out of the way first!
PL: That was a year before he went in the army. Every other Sunday I went there & every other Sunday he came to Ware. When I was at Hertingfordbury I was expected to help, to butter the bread for teas because I would go in the afternoon & they were doing teas in the lounge.
GL: Do you remember the old lady who used to live in the old Post Office opposite – this old Mrs Shepherd she used to wear one of these early Victorian black hats & she used to dress in black & she used to come across & shell peas & peel potatoes & sit outside of the kitchen peeling away there.
PL: Yes and who was it who came to wash up?
GL: Mrs Beadle, she came from Hornsmill.
PL: She used to do all the washing up in those deep wooden sinks.
PR: Who were the customers at that time?
PL: The local doctors from the hospital- surgeons.
PR: The genteel types as it were
PL: and Miss Dye
PR: Kathleen Dye
PL: With her men friends
PL: With her gentlemen friends
PL: and they served 20 lunches, 20 dinners every day and Mrs Lambert did all the cooking herself & Graham did the carving, little Graham
PR: Oh I am glad we got you over a domestic touch in the kitchen.
PL: She had an old fashioned knife & she used to carve the meat so thin, because it was rationed & you had to make it go a long way. They were allowed a certain amount of ration meat & the rest you had to buy – offal, tongues, hearts.
GL: I can remember there was a certain baker in Hertford he used to come out & collect the swill & in return we used to get some very choice pieces of pork.
PL: One of the favourite things she cooked when I was there, she would get a tongue, which wasn’t rationed, & she boiled it & made a white sauce & that used to be very nice.
GL: Mum used to make her own ice cream & I can remember turning the handle.
GF: I can remember coffee beans
PL: and another thing was to put the soup through the sieve every day, because it was home-made soup – she cooked on the kitchener she didn’t have anything else to cook on, she lit that fire every morning & her cakes & cooking were wonderful and the saucepan of soup was always on the hob to put it through an old fashioned wooden sieve. Parents from Haileybury always came for meals or they would book two bedrooms if they could. I wonder who they were.
GF: I seem to remember at one time, out in the yard there was this big car & I think they were Spanish. They were eating these onions – Raw!
GL: After ’51,’52 mother was cleaning the front door & Jimmy Edwards walked in & she recognised him straight away & about the same time, after my father died in 1951, I was serving in the bar & Yvonne deCarlo came in the Public Bar & she was supposed to be quite a looker in those days & she stood across the bar from me & her face was absolutely pitted with pock marks, and Jack Buchanan certainly came in when he was making that film.
GF: and do you remember John Wheway?
GL: he was the one that made that spy film (an amateur production)
GF: "On this Rides" which you must see
PL: I’ve got a copy of it
GL: There are bits of this film that they all took part in Old Longey
GF: Where was he from?
GL: East End Green & talking of East End Green there were the Cannons, old Bill cannon & Ruth
GF: and what was the boy’s name?
GL: Bill Cannon the father, the chap who did the estimates for Mosley the builder at Cole Green.
PR: We get references to Bill Cannon at the swimming pool in Hertford. That was separate Bill? But quite recently there was Mrs Cannon living opposite the White Horse.
GL: They weren’t related. Mrs Cannon was Doris’ mum; Doris lives up in Birch Green.
PL: What about the Selby’s & Joe North – 2 cottages on the way to Hertford beyond The Dell
GF: Joe Thorpe
GL: In the video there’s a picture of his wedding – he was Mrs Leslie’s chauffeur & she left him the car & he set up as a private hire business.
GF: Did she leave him the house as well?
GL: Yes, he lived there until he died, he got peritonitis. But when Monica and I got married in 1951 & we had our honeymoon in Blankenburg & he took us up to the train on the day we married in Mrs Leslie’s Daimler as was.
GF: I remember him in his peaked cap & leather leggings
PR: You can’t settle a little dispute of no great importance? I’m sure I remember a gate in the fence opposite these two cottages where he lived, so he’d come down his steps. Across the main road, as it was, Miss Selby who lives there now, who was their neighbour – her father also worked for Mrs Leslie or Thompson – McCausland's, denies this, but I can remember a gate in the low fence. He used to go across the road & down an unofficial footpath.
GF: It’s a fairly steep bank though.
PR: Yes, that’s true; I am beginning to wonder now. I can’t find anyone to support me on that.
GL: You knew there was a V2 bomb landed behind those cottages? Blew all the glass out of the White Horse bar, about 100 yards behind those cottages.
PR: Up over towards Thieves Lane, that way?
GF: Where the estate is.
PR: I’ve been up there trying to find a crater – I thought I remember one as you went up Thieves lane looking over to the right – there is a kind of *********** but it’s quite near to Thieves Lane & people have described it as being near Hertford way, as you’ve just done.
GL: It was funny because that nigh the V2 landed we’d been that afternoon to collect my mothers sister at Walthamstow because she was bombed out & she was terrified & then that same night we got this bomb & she was really terrified.
GF: There was that Junkers 88 that was shot down & landed just the other side of Shepherds, up the pathway, beyond the sandpits & Ted Chapman’s father was on the anti-aircraft gun at deHavilland & one of his shots bought it down & it landed just there *. There was the mine at East End Green it came down by parachute.
*this is well documented
GL: and the land mine that landed along the Ware Road
PL: (to PR) I was at your house that night, I used to sleep there if I finished at 10 o’clock at night – I used to walk there instead of going to Ware. (62 Hertingfordbury Road)
PR: There were a lot of people in the County Cinema that night & a current of air lifted it away from the cinema, miraculously and dropped it at Raynham Street (Tamworth Road) – it still killed some people.
GL: We were up by the cricket field, the gate to the cricket, fire watching, there was a crowd of us there & we heard this doodle-bug coming straight towards us & it was getting lower & lower & all of a sudden the engine cut out & every one of us hit the ground so fast & it landed at Haileybury in the end. I could have sworn it was somewhere up by the station.
PR: Can I just ask you about Peet’s of Birch Green? Wasn’t there a school truant officer.
GL: Oh that’s right didn’t he used to wear plus fours?
GF: Where did he live then?
GL: I am not quite sure, I was terrified of him. If I took a day off school he’d come into the White Horse & I was off like a shot.
END OF TAPE TWO SIDE ONE
TAPE TWO SIDE TWO.
GF: They had goats on the Green (The Peet’s)
PR: She was actually living on the main road, last cottage on the right
GL: When was that?
PR: When I was younger. She had 3 daughters one of whom married Knight of Wheatley and Knight & she’s now 91 she’s just moved into Riversmeet, one of the flats.
GL: That video that we’ve got they’ve got Joe Knight who was the policeman – in the spy film that John Wheway wrote – Joe Knight from the garage.
PR: My father was born 1896 so he would be 107 so it could be Joe Knight’s widow. Her sister Hilda married Knapp harms of Scales the builders & there was another sister Mabel who called herself Dabel who worked in Fore Street in a dressmakers & used to cycle up to Birch Green. It’s a little bit after your time, but I don’t know where they were in your period.
GL: Well Malcolm was a year or two younger than I was.
GF: Malcolm Wheatley – he died didn’t he?
GL: Yes