Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Pegg, Dora (T1993.13) |
| Interviewee | Dora Pegg |
| Interviewer | Dora Pegg |
| Date | 13/10/1993 |
| Transcriber by | Eve Sangster |
Transcript
HERTFORD ORAL HISTORY GROUP O 1993.13
Interviewee: Mrs. Dora Pegg
Interviewer: Grace Eve
Eve Sangster
Date of Interview 13th October, 1993
Transcribed by Eve Sangster
Typed by Eve Sangster ?
Dora's D.O.B. 28.5.1911
(Mrs. Pegg has written an account of her life in an exercise book.)
GE: I'm Grace Eve and I'm here in Little Berkamstead, (Orchard Close), talking to Mrs. Pegg and Eve Sangster is with me. And Mrs. Pegg has lived here all your life, haven't you? Well, you came from Yorkshire when you were ….
DP: That's right. I came from Yorkshire when I was 14, with my mother and father and my father came to work for Bertram Mills.
GE: Your brother worked for -
DP: No, I was an only child. I didn't have any brothers.
GE: Oh! Your mother came to work for Bertram Mills as well.
DP: No, just my father. My mother and I came down here, yes. And we used to have some of the grooms lodge with us so I helped my mother then, you know. There was quite a lot to do, with cooking and all that sort of thing.
GE: Was your father working as a groom, or with horses, rather, in Yorkshire?
DP: Yes, he was. He was with …. perhaps if you watch Horse of the Year, the man, Massarella (?) who is responsible now for the team that goes abroad and my father worked for his grandfather. And we came down here because my mother got a bad chest infection and the doctor said if we stayed up where all the chimneys and the smoke was she would only live about 2 years. So that's why we came to live down here.
GE: You came to Hatfield Station?
DP: That's right. Yes. And we was met by a chauffeur who took us to Little Berkkamstead and the Estate Agent, Mr. Podmore, was there waiting for us and the things were so late in coming that we had to go down and sleep at Mr. Bond's, further down, in the bungalow, for the night, you know.
GE: He was the Agent, was he?
DP: Mr. Podmore was the Agent, yes.
GE: And this was at Little Berkhamstead House, The Manor House, was it?
DP: Yes, The Manor.
GE: And where did you live?
DP: We lived at North Lodge, the first lodge, at the top of Stockings Lane, on the right-hand side. Then we moved down to the bungalow, after that, yes.
GE: What, the end bungalow?
DP: Yes, that's right.
GE: And how many people were working then, outside in the gardens, do you remember?
DP: About six gardeners, I think. Yes.
GE: And, of course, old Mr. Thresher was the head gardener.
DP: He was the head gardener, yes, yes.
GE: And then, in the stables ….
DP: In the stables there was 3 or 4 grooms and there was old Mr. Walden, who lived up in the village, old Mr. Simpson's father-in-law, who used to live up here. He used to work down in the stables with my father.
GE: Was your father head groom?
DP: Yes. Yes, he was.
ES: But I assume they didn't have anything to do with training the horses.
DP: Well, he always broke his own horses in. If they had a foal he would train it.
ES: What, your father would?
DP: Yes! Yes!
ES: Yes, but they didn't train them for the circus?
DP: Nothing to do with the circus, no, nothing to do here. In those days the circus things used to be down in Ascot, I think.
ES: What, including all the circus horses? So these were just the horses for the house?
DP: These were just his horses for exhibition, like when you see the Horse of the Year Show. That is the sort of thing my father did. That's my father behind you. Years ago, mind you.
ES: Oh yes, that's a lovely photo.
DP: That is my uncle, the other one.
GE: Did you …. I mean, those stables aren't very big …. how many ….
DP: Well, they had the stables round by the lodge, at the bottom, in The Manor, in the drive, and then they had …. then he bought the farm up by Mr. Reynolds, and that was all stables. Two lots of
stables, you see.
GE: Oh, there was stabling up there, was there?
DP: Yes, yes, there was 2 lots. Yes, 'cos he had a coach, as well, you know, and six horses. He used to go out in the morning and ride round the village.
GE: They were quite big coach houses, weren't they?
DP: Yes, because one bit was the part where they kept the cars. 'Cos they always had two chauffeurs, yes.
ES: What cars did they have?
DP: All American cars, Studebakers and that sort of car, except he had one Rolls Royce which he thought rather a lot of. He sold his cars every year when the circus had finished, at the end of
January. Those cars which he'd had for one year he sold and bought new ones. And there was always these big American cars around.
(She describes the horses which were kept, the hunters, the driving horses and the jumpers for the Horse of the Year Show; how Bertram Mills, up early, went hallooing round the house beneath his sons' windows to stir them from their beds; how he was a perfectionist who expected his employees to be the same; how her father had nothing to do with the circus animals except once when 'Tiny Town' was staged at Olympia and he cared for the miniature ponies ridden by midgets; how the Circus, attended by Royalty, featured more largely in peoples' lives; of the daily inspections of the Circus by the R.S.P.C.A.; of the horses being walked to Hatfield Station en route for London; of the
annual visit in May to Falls Bridge, Belfast, horse show. Dora speaks of her working life: a year spent helping her mother in the house and then to Mrs. Widows in Howe Green, the first in a
succession of jobs as a daily woman.)
ES: You hadn't thought to take …. was that the easiest thing to do, to go as a domestic?
DP: My mother's idea was that I should. I hated it.
ES: 'Cos you easily could have been in Hertford and had a job.
DP: I hated it. I hated domestic service. I can honestly say I did.
(She recalls the move to Pollard's Wood and the pre-fabricated centrally-heated American bungalow erected there for her family. Her father's subsequent row with Mr. Mills and employment with
the Rochfords. Dora speaks of meeting, aged 17, her husband-to-be at a dance in the village hall; of cycling in to Hertford for the cinema and leaving the bike, for 6d., in stables behind the Blackbirds P.H. in Parliament Square; of cycling to a wedding at All Saints; of her parents' disapproval of her own prospective husband, and of her daughters, Sonia and Doreen, and her two sons.
(end of Side A)
(Side B)
(Dora speaks of Little Berkhampstead School under Mrs. Noble; of the school closing and the children going to St. Andrew's School in Hertford ('a terrible school', 'a dirty school') where she
could not keep their heads clean, of similar problems at Longmore's School. She tells of an enemy plane being brought down in Grubb's Field and of bombs dropping by the war memorial, in the Pegg's back garden, in the Woodward's garden, outside the school and by the side of the shop.)
ES: In the war did you really think that Hitler would invade at any stage? Had you made plans to hide your children?
DP: No, I don't think I ever thought about it. Well, I probably did because he was only that little way from us, wasn't he, over the channel and he could have been over to us. Yes, I think I probably did, yes. When the war first happened you all stayed indoors and then you gradually went out, you know.
ES: And then you realised you could live life normally.
DP: Yes, and you went shopping and everything. But when it first happened, for about 2 or 3 weeks, you sort of stayed indoors. You didn't sort of ….
ES: What were you doing when war was declared, that Sunday morning?
DP: Cooking the Sunday dinner. Yes. My husband was at work.
ES: And what was your reaction? Were you so expecting it or did it take you by surprise?
DP: I don't think it took me by surprise because I didn't think at the time that Chamberlain was strong enough. Not that I think now that would have made any difference. If he'd have been
Churchill I think he still would have gone into Poland because that was what he did and they said if he went into Poland we would be at war, didn't they? No, no, they didn't ring the church bells. Because, after that, the church bells all through the war wasn't rang. Only they would be rang when there was victory. No! No church bells rang. We just spoke to one another that war was declared and that was that..
GE: But, I mean, how …. did you have your own wireless set?
DP: Yes, yes. I'd got that on and I remember Chamberlain coming on and saying "We are at war with Germany."
ES: There was no question that the children should be evacuated?
DP: No, they evacuated children here.
GE: Yes, because they evacuated a lot of children to Hertford, didn't they? Horns Mill was supposed to be full of London evacuees. I remember that because, hearing their voices when I first came he~
I knew they weren't Hertford people.
DP: They'd be sort of Cockney voices, wouldn't they? Yes, 'cos I hadn't any room for evacuees so it didn't affect me, you know. My mother had an old lady from London. I think she was bombed
out.
ES: You lived quite well during the war, with friends on farms?
DP: Well, I used to have 2 butchers in those days. 'Cos I'd got 4 books and I had 2 books with a butcher who used to deliver round here then and then I had 2 books with the little butcher opposite
the fish shop, Claydons, what is still in Hertford now.
(She describes her routine of working, shopping and walking back from Hertford. She speaks of the tradespeople who delivered; of Bates the Grocers delivering goods from the chemist and of the postman doing the same; of being in Hertford when the sirens sounded and doodlebugs went over; of keeping chickens and of government incentives for people to keep pigs; of the pig at the Rochfords' who used to come in and sit before the fire; of going potato picking. She recalls Mr. Horn's tearooms, at the back of the shop, used during the war as a factory making compressors
for Lancaster bombers, and the wireless there playing "You'd Be Better Off In A Home", and her daughter winning first prize in a fancy dress competition during the village Victory celebrations.
She tells of dances held in the tea rooms and of the sports being transferred there on Coronation Day when it poured with rain, and discusses with Grace the force for good of a village school. The tape ends with Dora recapturing an early memory of two German soldiers standing outside the pub opposite the family home in Yorkshire at the celebrations to mark the end of WW1 and of her mother saying, "I wonder what their thoughts are now?"