Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Beetham, Florence (O1998.18.1) |
| Interviewee | Florence Beetham (FB) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 08/08/1998 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O1998.18
Interviewee: Florence Beetham (FB)
Date: 8th August, 1998
Venue: Rickneys Farm
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
PR: Could you wire Flo from your position and I'll just start by saying, This is Peter Ruffles speaking to you from Rickneys Farm and the home of Flo Beetharn, well-known to many, many people in Hertford. It's the 8th of August. it's very hot. Flo's house is really just one - what would you call it of flowers? What's a collective noun for flowers? Not a florist's shop, that's commercial. What can we say? I've got myself into a corner now on the tape. There are flowers everywhere and most are vases made ready for tomorrow in the Methodist Church in Ware Road and Flo will, how will you get them there?
FB: In the back of Joan's car! With difficulty!
PR: Ah, yes. So you take out the water do you?
FB: Tip it out, stand them, put bricks round them and go very carefully round the roundabouts, otherwise they tip up.
PR: So, with me also is Jean Riddell, scribing, Purkis I have to say, do I? Scribing and watching for any interesting spellings she may need to make a note of. But I've known Flo all my life because you knew Mother, didn't you?
FB: Yes, I did. I knew your mother. I knew your father slightly but not as well. But I knew your mother from fairly early times.
PR: How did you meet? Was it at school?
FB: No, it wasn't school, was it, because I went to All Saints and then to Ware Grammar. I don't remember. It might have been at some sort of church meeting, I should think.
PR: I'd assumed it was Ware Grammar. You were in Durrant's or Russell's?
FB: I was in Sheffield's doing my apprenticeship. Then I went to George Lines' during the war and then I went to Russell's, with Mr. Kitch.
PR: Great friend of Len Green's.
FB: He's died, hasn't he.
PR: Yes.
FB: But he was good fun actually, very easy.
PR: Lived in North Road Avenue, didn't he, or…
FB: North Road, opposite the cemetery, behind that hedge.
PR: Now, we'd better put some order in our conversation. Flo said, “Don't ask me exactly where I was born, put London.”
FB: Well, yes, because the whole family moved in 1917 and I was born in 1916. We moved in September 1917 when my younger sister was 2 weeks old, and her birthday's 10th September. We all came to the East Station and had to walk to Ware Road, where we arrived with no furniture and no curtains. We all went down onto the floor and the people next door brought us a few curtains, I think, I don't remember this, it was just told to me, so we could put the light on. And my father was transferred to Hertford because of his health.
He went into the army eventually (before this) and he came out having done two weeks on home defence, because he wasn't fit to go abroad. And he got worse and worse. His digestion was so bad, he couldn't take the food. They billeted them on some sort of skating rink in the middle of winter with no special bedding and so he spent most of his time in hospital. And when he was discharged as C3, with a complete 100% pension, he went back to his job with the Pearl Assurance. And they moved him to Hertford because he was in London and it would have been too much of a strain. So that's why we all came to Hertford.
PR: Gosh, all down to the Pearl.
FB: Yes, that's right and father retired early from there, aged 58, and he reckoned that he'd had more money in pension than he'd earned all the time he was working!
PR: Oh, so he lived on.
FB: He lived to 82. He didn't do too badly, but he had special attention. He never got up before breakfast and he used to have to take raw egg with something like Bovril, but a German one, Liebig's Extract of Beef to keep him going. And I think he was the first one to have a car in the Ware Road, which made him very unpopular as you can guess.
PR: Yes, but he would have needed it, would he?
FB: Yes, because of his health. He used to have a motorcycle and sidecar, but he had a car eventually, from the Meadside garage. And we had that house and behind it was a plot of land which went right down to Tamworth Road. And it wasn't directly in line with our garden, but it was that much that we could get through to the place at the bottom where we had the garage, where we learned to ride our bikes up and down Tamworth Road.
JR: So what number did you live at in Ware Road?
FB: 119.
JR: That's still there?
FB: Yes, it's still there. It's concrete, the whole of the front, and they put two cars on it now. That piece of land we had at the bottom is now built on. It belonged to Mr. Brett.
PR: Your mother was pretty robust, was she?
FB: Yes, she was pretty tough, except that she had a stroke when she was 69. She wasn't as tough as she thought she was really, but she lived to 85.
About the Ware Road, of course, there were no houses opposite us. The green roofs and others where Mr. and Mrs. Francis used to live, they weren't there. We used to toboggan down that slope in the winter when it was snowy. There weren't any houses there. There were the odd few nearer Hertford.
PR: Yes, I'm just trying to think of the age one would put on them architecturally.
FB: Well, the funny thing is, people used to say that at the beginning of the century, or even earlier, Norris and Duvall walked into Hertford and put their marker on these plots where we lived and built houses. I don't know who the ground belonged to but I think they just claimed it. They were built about 1900.
PR: It's the sort of story you could believe, happening in those days, especially with those two families. So things moved on. When you think of Flo, you think of flowers and you think of beauty and the chemists and you can see the result, healing and singing. If you go to the Methodist
Church and you're at the front, you'll hear Flo, who's at the back! Beautiful!
FB: I had two sisters, one older and one younger and we all used to be in the choir and the reason we went to that particular church was not that we were brought up as Methodists particularly but it was the nearest.
PR: I was going to ask you whether you'd bought Methodism with you.
FB: No, my people were Anglican, but that was the nearest place and being a big family I think my parents were pleased to see the back of us sometimes, in the afternoons, afternoon Sunday School in those days.
PR: So, where shall we go next with Flo, into the schooling? We'll put a time order on the conversation, then. You've landed very very young.
FB: Yes, went to All Saints Infants with Miss Baker. Remember Miss Baker, Currie Street?
PR: Yes, I know the name.
FB: A bit fierce, and then with Kate Davies in the next up until I was ten.
PR: Oh, she was, you moved up a class, probably quite a mature teacher by the time she taught you, wasn't she?
FB: She didn't do a lot of teaching, but she did a lot of threatening. Walked round the classes complete with cane, which she hung on the blackboard. I think I enjoyed school really.
We used to spend a lot of time swimming at Hartham which was a bit crude if you remember. It was just that little bit of river boxed in, very slimy at the bottom and with old Mr. Cannon - do you remember him?
PR: No, I only know about him from the, well, people's conversations and he's been mentioned several times in the recordings because learning to swim with him was a big event for others.
FB: He put something round your waist and he used the broom handle and shoved it through - walked across this board you see. And if you did put your feet down it was so slippery, all green slime, that you were glad enough to put them up again. Sometimes when we went I know it was as low as 62° in the water, perishingly cold, but we still went and thoroughly enjoyed it. Those were the days!
We had season tickets. We used to go about three times a day in the holidays on our bikes from Ware Road, sometimes walking and rushing through the Eastern Railway Station, which is boarded and made the most tremendous echoing noise. We enjoyed life really.
PR: And then did you have to pass the scholarship exam to go to, Ware Grammar?
FB: Yes. Eleven+ I suppose it was (later) called. And I liked Ware Grammar School. It was old Miss Brough. Mary Brough was a film star and the Miss Brough that taught us, I've forgotten her Christian name, was her sister. And she was very dramatic, but a lovely woman. Always took English, and woe betide you if you looked at the time when she was there. 'Don't dare look
at the time during my class.' She would say.
Some of the time when she wasn't teaching, that school was made up of several houses, if you remember. So we had great long corridors and little rooms and some of the time we were upstairs over the office in which she worked on her papers. And a notice came up one day: 'Please will you ask Flo Fisher not to laugh quite so loudly, she's disturbing me in the office!'.
We had some fun really, because where some of the rooms had been boarded through, there were two streams of students there, scholarship and non-scholarship-paying. And we were A and they were Alpha. There used to be a lot of knocking on these boards to signal what was going on next door.
PR: I think Mother must have been an Alpha - a paying. I think so, because there were questions about the expense of going to school and I guess it was the fees rather than the equipment.
FB: It was a lovely spot because we had beautiful magnolia up the wall there and about six tennis courts.
PR: Does your love of flowers stem from there?
FB: No, I think it was my mother. She adored them. But then when I left I went to be trained as a pharmacist, which is very difficult to say, especially when you say, 'pharmacist's assistant!'
We always cycled to school. And we moved from Ware Road. My father had a house built at Great Molewood, as you go to Waterford. When the office was moved to St. Andrew Street. And we all moved out there, when I was 13 and we still cycled to school from there in all weathers, sometimes a bit much.
PR: Especially for girls who wanted to arrive looking better than we chaps would have bothered about.
FB: And if it got very cold, I was likely to faint. When we were on the platform, the choir, I would collapse and so I was not allowed to be on the platform in cold weather in case I should faint and fall off. We were the only people who were allowed chairs because the rest of the people were sitting on the floor in the hall with these brass rubbings. We had enormous brass rubbings in that hall. I don't know if they still keep them anyway, knights in armour.
PR: It's an odd collection of buildings as you say, private houses.
FB: That's right and there was a barn where we had to take our national exams. It was lovely really and of course there weren't many people there. Miss Brough used to stand in the corridor at the beginning and end of every term and shake hands with everybody. And also we always had a holiday book. We had to read every holiday and every first morning of term you sat down and
answered questions on same.
PR: So now we've got the family at Molewood and you soon to embark on a career.
FB: I think I went when I was 17 to old George Sheffield. Remember him?
PR: Mm, yes, Peter of course much better, the son.
FB: And the girl, Margaret. George Sheffield was in the First World War and he was full of shrapnel and they could never take it out of his legs so, of course, he used to drink rather a lot in the mornings to bring him round. I think he used to have a couple of raw eggs but after lunch he would sleep over the shop and then if a traveller came, some mug had to go up and wake him! It always seemed to be my job. I was the youngest there at that time. So I went up there. Bang on the door first and you don't get any response.
I don't know what happened to Mrs. Sheffield but she never seemed to be about at that time. She was probably resting somewhere else. Then I'd go in and of course he didn't make any movement. 'Mr. Sheffield!' and he'd wake up (with a gasp) and then probably he didn't want to see the man anyway.
I used to set up the chemistry set for Christ's Hospital as part of my apprenticeship while I was there and of course we kept open from half past eight in the morning until 8 o'clock at night and 9 on Saturdays. I worked on Sundays also, taking it in turn with other Hertford chemists. But we didn't do full time obviously, we did half past eight 'til six, or twelve 'til eight, but it was quite long hours.
Do you want to know about the dispensing?
PR: Yes, you'll be our very first dispenser!
FB: Well, we had ledgers of course, before National Health came in, so that all the prescriptions were private ones. and we wrote them all in a book daily. So if people wanted them repeated and you hadn't indexed that particular ledger, you had to search back to find it again. That was all right. We had two full-time errand boys at that time delivering, and incidentally I saw one the other day, when I went to the doctor to have my blood pressure taken. And there was a chap standing on the step there and he said, “You don't remember me, do you?'
And I said, “No, I don't'.
And he said, “I used to be your errand boy when you were at Sheffield's. And his name was Mead lived on the Ware Road somewhere. He was a rather different shape from when I remembered him. And of course the Gealls were also errand boys for us.
PR: Yes, living in Bull Plain, just opposite, well…
FB: They lived just opposite the URC some of the time.
PR: Yes, yes, Cowbridge, yes.
FB: They had to go to Sunday School at Ware because Mr. Sanders who was manager for Liverpool & Victoria, next door, took the Ware Sunday School, and he took them with him. That's how he got to know the Methodists and Jill!
And the other thing about Jill Menhinick was that is the reason Eric had this farm. Eric's father knew Jill's grandfather - all Methodists. And Eric was looking for a farm after he'd done his training and Menhinick told old man Beetham that this place was going and that's how it happened, in 1924, I think it was, came here. I think Menhinick, I think her father and mother are still alive. And Eric was here from 1924 until he retired in 1974.
About 52 harvests here and when it was sold and the Beetham from Hertford who sold it to Horace said, “I'll give you a pound for every wild oat you can find on this farm.” And he didn't find any. And it had come up from nothing because it's a terribly gravelly place. But he worked very hard on this
place. I remember one year when he was so pleased and took me round and we had a field of wheat that you could almost walk, on, it was so solid and strong and not a single weed. And of course it went down to the river which was lovely. And that piece of land is now up for sale which is sad.
PR: Good memories though, of good times.
FB: After I'd served my apprenticeship for three years, I moved to George Lines, and all through the war I was there. When the siren went, George Evans went down to the clinic, in Bull Plain, on duty as a warden. We shut the shop and I went over to the Shire Hall, down into the vaults at the bottom, which was alright except that the caretaker's wife always had hysterics as soon as the siren went off. Being down there in those vaults with her screaming her head off was not funny. So eventually I decided I'd rather take my chance and stay in the shop and keep it open which I did.
PR: Pauline Sledge told us about those trips over to the Shire Hall. I don't think she mentioned the hysteria.
FB: Nothing fell on the town itself, but we did have a bomb at Goldings. It was a Sunday and we were all hymn singing at the Rush's and we all trooped over to Goldings after this thing had fallen and there were lights of cars and everything. If only that plane'd come back with more ammunition they could have wiped the whole place out. One chap was killed, wasn't he?
PR: I get muddled up with what damage…
FB: One of the staff was killed. He was getting all the boys, they had trenches, had been cut where they could go and he was last one out and standing on the step and he got the blast and it killed him.
JR: I haven't heard about a bomb. I'd heard about a land mine that got caught in a tree and had to be guarded (at Goldings)
FB: I don't remember that. My father was a fire warden and I was a fire person. He was an orderly warden with Mr. Allan - 'Thousand pound Allan!' Do you remember. Mr. Allan who won the Irish Sweepstake.
PR: 'Thousand Pound Allan' yes!
FB: No,.I think that was a bomb that actually fell.
JR: Yes, I must look into that. What about, did you find a scarcity of ingredients to make the prescriptions up during the war?
FB: No, no I don't think we did. No, because we used to do horse powders. And all that kind of thing and that was another thing; old Mortis, if he came and saw us making one of these things up we had to spread this paper on the floor, because it had to be jolly big to make a horse powder, he would put razor blades in which he'd pick up from the side. He thought that was very funny. I didn't think it was a bit funny.
PR: Dr. Mortis's sense of humour!
FB: When Eric used to play cricket up at Balls Park and he (Dr. Mortis) called out 'run', and he ran and Mortis said, “I didn't mean you to run. It was only 'run' with a question mark.' He ran him out you see!
The other thing was the dispensing. When we hadn't any dispensing to do, we were supposed to pack things for the drawers - Little Liver Pills, and all those sorts of things, in little tiny pill boxes, 3d and 6d. And we'd have to stick a label on each one and wrap them in white demy. And we had all these sheets of white demy. And you cut them into special sizes for 602 bottles, 802 bottles and 1202 bottles and you wrapped them, having sealed your cork with sealing wax and having put Mr. Sheffield's trim on. Then you wrapped them. You had to practise this, do the shoulder and seal top and bottom. Then let the boy take them.
We spent a lot of time and you want to try wrapping, which you won't now because boracic powder is no longer in use. Boracic powder is so slippery. You had to keep practising it until you got it just right, without it all shooting out.
JR: There was boracic lint as well?
FB: Yes, that's finished as well. Boracic lotion they used to use for eyes, if you remember?
PR: Mm.
FB: That's gone. And zinc, do you remember zinc ointment, can't get that either. You can get zinc and castor oil for babies, but you can't get zinc ointment. Funny that.
PR: Yes.
JR: These pills that you were putting away in the little boxes, what did they contain, was it something really innocuous?
FB: No, well we didn't know. They bought them in, you see, in bulk.
JR: You didn't make the pills.
FB: No, we didn't make the pills. We did have to make pills when necessary but not these. You see, Beecham's Pills are only soap and ginger.
JR: Beecham's Pills?
FB: Beecham's Pills. Do you remember those?
JR: I do, yes.
FB: But you didn't know what was in them! And syrup of figs is compound syrup of figs. It's got lots of other things in as well. We didn't make those things but we had to make suppositories and cachets and ointment. That's another thing, people would come bounding down the road at eight o'clock at night with a prescription for an ointment that was going to take you 20 minutes to make. And I said, “Do you really need this tonight?'
“Oh, yes, please.”
So we'd get the slab out and mix them all and put them in pots.
And what else? Pills! I was with a friend and we went up to Joan' s, she lives in Bengeo and I was telling this little boy about dispensing in the old days.
END OF SIDE A
SIDE B
PR: What shall we go back to?
JR: In case we missed it on the other side, can you just tell us how you made pills?
FB: Yes, you put all the ingredients together in a mortar, mash 'them all up and then you made them into a stiff paste and then you roll it out on a board with a special roller like you roll out pastry. Then you had a special thing that had grooves in it, brass grooves, and you cut it all into those pieces. And then you put it into a little thing like a large egg cup and you rolled it about until they all went round, rather like meloids. And then you either varnished them with edible varnish or dusted them with some sort of powder and then you put them all in boxes.
JR: And had they hardened by that time?
FB: Yes, you don't have them very soft. It's quite a job. It's the same thing with medicines, of course, we had all the ingredients and if they weren't going to dissolve in water, you'd got to put some tragacanth (?) in to hold them in suspension in water, which is the dispenser's job. The doctor won't put anything like that on it. You've got to know what you're about.
Things like aspirin don't dissolve in water and if you have an aspirin mixture you've got to make it so that it's suspended in the fluid. So it's quite an interesting job, and the people are quite fun, too.
PR: So did you come into it because you'd shown in school some particular aptitude?
FB: I don't know. I quite liked the sciences and botany and also even then I thought I'd like to do something to help people and I really can't stand the sight of blood, so I shouldn't be a nurse, so that was the next thing, to be a pharmacist.
PR: One of my earliest memories of your face coming from behind all the bottles, we haven't reached this point yet. This was on Mill Bridge. And I knew what was going to happen - you were going to appear! And you did, with a big beam, and came round to the first counter. Mr. Kitch's cameras were on the right as you came in the door. Sometimes instead, it might be Florrie Alderton.
FB: Yes, that's right.
PR: But if it was you, there'd be a great big beam.
FB: Of course, there was another Flo - Hummerstone, when I was at Sheffield's. Very fashionable name for that period, Florence.
PR: I think Florrie Alderton was always Florrie, wasn't she?
FB: I think she was. I think I was always Florrie when I was younger.
PR: Oh, so now you've left Sheffield's and you've gone across to Lines'
FB: I was alone quite a lot of the time. We also sold all the tickets for the amateur dramatic and operatic things.
PR: Oh, yes, of course, you had another dimension there.
FB: The family lived upstairs of course and I saw quite a lot of them. Gwyneth and Pauline were at the RC school and Mary was very ill while I was there. She was a very good singer. And her people came from Cambridge. They had Miller's the piano shop in Cambridge. I think it's still there.
PR: I think Pauline Sledge told us a bit about that. Then how did you come to be on Mill Bridge?
FB: I moved from, I don't know why particularly. I think I probably wanted more money or something or more company because I was more or less on my own apart from George and he used to spend quite a lot of his time elsewhere. My people lived at Hook in Surrey and I went there and had an interview and then I decided I didn't particularly want to leave the area.
I don't think I was particularly popular because I moved into (within) the same town, but I moved to Old Cross, to Russell's. But it isn't Russell's any more.
PR: No, is it called Kingsway Chemists? (Kingswood).
FB: There were about half a dozen Russell's Chemists eventually.
PR: Yes, Letchworth seemed to be the…
FB: Buntingford way, I think there was one.
PR: Baldock and…
FB: There were quite a few and every Christmas we had a party, at Letchworth probably. All the staff of all the shops went to this party. It was a bit ordinary and the Russells, I don't know whether they were Quakers, they gave me that impression, because the Gravesons were, weren't they?
And this woman who was the sister of the brother that had the shops always wore the same dress every year. She was quite elderly but it struck us as very, very funny. We were young, you see. You felt, “They can't be that short of money!”
PR: Yes! So your time at Russell's would be shortly after Russells took over Durrant's, or were you there in George Durrant's time?
FB: No, because he'd got that dolls' hospital you remember at the back there. But he was still about. No, it was Russell's.
JR: Did he have a soda water factory or works at the back there?
FB: No, but he had leeches, if you are interested!
JR: Leeches?
PR: Did you?
FB: Yes, leeches at Sheffield's, in the cellar. Horrible - I wouldn't handle them, but we had a chap called Kitteringham time as me and he always used to do that. We used them, they're starting to use them again.
PR: Yes!
FB: They say they are very good for cleaning poisoned…
PR: Yes, particularly when there've been burns. They clear the area.
FB: They are using maggots as well now on wounds. I don't think I would do that either, but I suppose it's better than getting so full of anti-biotics that they're not doing you any good. That was an interesting thing. Penicillin was just coming in when I was at Lines'. It was all very crude though, but it's got very sophisticated now.
And Kitchingham (Kitch, I think), he was optician as well, he used to do people's eyes upstairs. Do you remember that?
PR: Er, Kitehingham or Kitch?
FB: Kitch, I'm sorry. In Russell's.
PR: Yes, I'd forgotten that. You went through a door to the left, and up.
FB: That was a funny old shop really, building, because they'd had that bomb on the bridge and it was supposed to be a temporary building and you could see through the cracks everywhere.
PR: Asbestos roof, yes.
FB: There were several of us. It makes it very much better, a staff with several people than just you. It's quite a responsibility, dispensing. You daren't make too many mistakes.
PR: But you remember Florrie Alderton from St. Andrew's. Was she really just a shop assistant.
FB: Yes, I don't remember actually working with her.
PR: No, I can't remember, but she sometimes did a little receptionist's job at Dr. Bevans. She was a lot older than you. But she'd come into the job and learned in the job. Lived in North Road Avenue but I think she was born, certainly lived as a child, in St. Andrew Street in the cottages near Roche's shoe shop and that gave her, I suppose, a link to the doctors nearby. So then marriage from…
FB: Russell's. Yes. I was living with Mrs, what was her name, anyway St. Andrew Street. I was in digs because my parents moved away down to Surrey. And I was there and was married from there in 1954, and came here and my sister-in-law moved in with her sister in Hertford. Her sister lived at, that great house in Ware Road. She lived there and then her husband came down in his plane up at the back of the North Station there between North Station and Welwyn and lost his life and so she then moved to Queens Road. And then my sister moved in with her. Then they both moved to 10, Gwynns Walk. And then she died and Muriel lived on until about 94.
She's in the same year as the Queen Mother. She moved over to her niece's over at Radwinter.
PR: (to JR) Have you got names of in-laws and things from Flo for your spelling?
JR: No.
PR: Do you want to just check those. I can't think which house it was Flo.
JR: Opposite you?
FB: Well you know where - it's been demolished. There's a series of houses there now with a swimming pool and things. Where Vera Jasper lives. Now what was it called?
PR: Yes. Beechwood Close and Copperwood, but I can't remember. I've forgotten what was there before.
FB: It was one house and Marjorie lived in it with her husband, Leslie.
PR: I can't picture it at the minute.
FB: A lovely place. She had a beautiful garden. Two lots of water coming down - hilly at the back.
PR: We can always look it up in directories.
FB: That's where they lived. Then Leslie had a 'plane and he wanted a better one and he went over to Essex somewhere and got this other plane and he went up and down with the pilot a couple of times. Then went up on his own and the propeller or something dropped off and it hit the ground and burst into flames and that was it.
JR: That was somewhere near Panshanger was it? That way.
FB: Yes. That's where he went to, Panshanger.
JR: What was his name, was he…
FB: O'Connor. Leslie O'Connor. He used to go to Christ's Hospital. He was very clever. He was one of a family and he was brilliant. Funny, you get one sometimes. And he went to Christ's Hospital and then he had a very good job, one of these fuel firms in Belgium. Then of course the
war came and they came over here, but he still worked for them. I think he was awarded an OBE or something like that for his job. Charming chap.
And it seems so tough that he should have to go like that. He was always over here flying. We always had to go dashing out waving.
JR: What year did he have the accident?
FB: Must have been in the Sixties I should think. Because Colleen his daughter was expecting Johnny and Johnny is handicapped which is sad. He's out in Essex. now at Holt with specialist handicapped people. He must be 40 now, but could never speak properly - very sad, the whole business, wasn't it?
Then she herself died at 56 with cancer. And Marcus, he's a Ridsdale-Smith, re-married and has gone up to live at Skye. They were very keen on going on retreats. His brother lost his wife - she committed suicide. She was a lovely girl but she was 'over-churched', if you know what I mean. She'd got a father who was a bishop and I,don't know the cause of the problem but she used to get the most terrible bouts of depression. Then she'd come out of them. They had a family and he used to teach, Christopher and then she just finished her life. I think he's re-married. I think he's gone to live in Australia, but they've been a very sad family really.
PR: Ought we to ask for anything else - Methodist Church.
FB: Don't ask me about that at the moment, no!
PR: There have been lots of changes obviously since you first went there.
FB: Well, Methodist ministers always change about every seven, it used to be every five years. They had to be invited to stay, but it got so that the children's schooling was difficult, if they kept moving all over the place. Sometimes they'd do as much as nine years if the children were in the middle of exams.
But it can have its benefits and also the opposite. If he's a nice chap and you want him to stay and then he goes, then somebody who doesn't altogether fit in arrives. As I've said many times you have to 'about face' every time you get a new minister. They've all got different ideas as to what to do and they all want to make changes.
PR: Yes. But at the time of the demolition of the old church, you and your husband were both very active.
FB: Oh, yes. Eric reckoned he wrote a thousand letters to Longmores about that property. And also he bought half of that anonymously. You knew that, did you?
PR: Yes. Explain that to us.
FB: Well, he bought that anonymously when that old boy was there, the hairdresser and said he could live there for the rest of his life for nothing. In the event he only lived a year and then, not Mr. Pullum, the other chap who's moved to Market Street was there, and then he moved and Pullum…
PR: The optician
FB: Yes, that's right. It was stipulated by this annonyrnous donor, which he was until after he died, that half of the money from the rent should go to charity, which it does still.
PR: Ah.
FB: The rent is £6000 something, so £3000 is given away each year which is good. And I said that these people at the church should raise £3000 more to match that because they're jolly lucky to have it, aren't they.
PR: They are. Yes, they ought in realistic terms behave as if they weren't receiving that income.
FB: Yes they should and I wrote a note to that effect in the newsletter the other week.
PR: So you watch the progress, and has it been a successful redevelopment?
FB: As far as the building goes, I think if we hadn't rebuilt we wouldn't have had anybody coming because people are far more particular nowadays and that place was just like an old barn. It used to grow mould. It had no damp course you see up the walls and the back premises were even worse.
Little tiny vestry and a minute kitchen, where we had to walk on duckboards it was so wet, which we opened every Monday evening for the troops in the war. You knew that, did you?
PR: No.
FB: We did, for a quiet time. There wasn't room for them to play table tennis so it was for writing letters home or reading the paper. We used to go down every Monday evening and do sandwiches and coffee and tea and so we worked hard on that because the place was very poor.
And the Sunday School, they only had one room. Sometimes we had a hundred children from the
gaol you see, before they demolished that. Then they all got moved up to Sele Farm. On Tuesdays Jack Rush and I used to have them for Junior Guild.
When I left the shop I used to go straight there and we had the kids – took them on Hartham if it was summer. If it was winter we used to make up different games. And then we had the Senior Guild after that on the same night because we only heated that back room about twice a week, once for that and once for Fridays for the choir practice. We didn't heat the church for choir practice. We had old Mr. Lawrence, do you remember him? Laurence, the dentist's brother.
PR: Oh - no I don't remember!
FB: He was an accountant. He used to do the rents for the council, sitting in the Shire Hall on Friday. And he used to play the organ and he used to grunt. He used to alternate with my sister-in-law Murial Beetham playing the organ alternate Sundays. But when he played - he was very short in the leg and with the pedals he used to groan - aah, aah. And also we used to pump it by hand. Do you remember John Doige? He died recently, but he used to help pump. So did I.
PR: So did you have quite a lot of missions across in the gaol area? Did you see that?
FB: Well, they were the nearest children, weren't they. There weren't any buildings up Gallows Hill. I can remember that laundry place and that was it. All up the hill, none of it. There was just that and the hospital at the top, where my sister Grace went with scarlet fever.
PR: Isolation, yes.
FB: I remember one winter when there was a lot of snow; it was absolutely magnificant up there. Nothing to spoil it. Now we've got the manse up there!
PR: Yes.
FB: I think that's a great mistake. It's a long way away from the church.
PR: You didn't see anything of Rosemary Fitzjohn then?
FB: Oh, yes. She came the other week to visit us, to a meeting. She was in Sunday School when I was teaching. She came a few months ago to the Women's Fellowship. I, like a fool, have to play to the Women's Fellowship because nobody else is left to play. I haven't played for 30 years so you can guess what it's like.
PR: A honky-tonk!
FB: I have to have them in advance. so I can practise. Awful hymns with lots of changes and accidentals, you know. Never mind, we've got Myrtle singing.
PR: Oh, Myrtle's there! Myrtle was a great friend of Jack Rush, the leather shop as well. And we recorded Myrtle a few weeks ago and I've spoken to you together at one point. It is better to have done you separately because…
FB: I was very fond of Jack Rush because of course we lived opposite him at Great Molewood and that's where we used to go on Sunday nights with the troops; didn't come to church. All troop up there and perhaps walk as far as Watton and back and then we'd go in there and have peanut
sandwiches and sing hymns and I played the piano! Those were the days!
And I had a beautiful hat and I came out of church and it blew off into the road and this great sergeant dashed onto the road and put his foot on it! It was never the same!
I was in Lines' when the Black Watch people were in Hertford and one of them was billeted on the Lines and he allowed me to where the buses used to congregate on the back there, where they did
their last drilling before going abroad. And they were nearly all killed in one go if you remember. But it was a magnificent sight, they were all in tartan and puttees, amazing, really was, with the band, splendid. Seems such a waste, though.
PR: Oh, that's the awful part of that memory. So Rosemary came home to the Methodist Church then, that's rather good.
FB: Oh, yes. She came to the old ladies! I go to Ashwood now every fortnight, Ashwood Old People's Home in Ware, been going for over 30 years now! There was an old lady there last week and they were trying to get them to sit out - they've built a bit on there. “No!” she said, “I don't sit out now. I'm 99!” She wasn't wearing glasses, could hear, “Well, when are you 1OO?”, I said.
“Not until June 21st,” she said. Old Brown, who was at Western House, said, “Don't just come for a few weeks and stop coming.” I said, “No, that's not me.”
And we went because the Friends of Western House had given up and it's very sad for the old people if you just go for a few weeks because they wonder what's the matter with them. So we try to keep going. Mrs. Taylor used to come with us. Now she's dead. Murial Walton – has also died. Vera's now given up. Cynthia Bland from the Baptists and Gerald goes and I go, Peter and Beryl. We don't meet up with Beryl because she always gets there a lot later than us.
PR: Peter's managing that. Peter's quietly in command of Beryl's movements.
FB: I'm afraid so. She had to go out every day for a fresh loaf of bread for Peter. Every day he insisted on it being fresh you see.
PR: His father was a baker.
FB: I remember him as a boy, not too small, still walking into Hertford holding his mother's hand. He lived near you didn’t he?
PR: Yes, that's right, he was a weakly child, his mother used to say. His father began as a baker on Old Cross.
FB: Oh I didn’t………I seem to remember they were a bit short of cash and the father’s sister lived off the Ware Road somewhere there.
PR: Oh I didn’t know that
FB: Yes yes she did and she………what did they used to call her? ..I can’t remember. We had great fun when we were dispensing I remember when we were at Sheffields and Miss *** was there before me and if we were a bit slack and we hadn’t got any wrapping up to do or anything we used to push the shutters back a bit and one of us would dodge down if someone was coming in we would decide what they were going to buy you see…..
End of side 2