Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Walton, Joan (O1998.20) |
| Interviewee | Enid Futter (EF) Stella Parcell (SP) Muriel Govier (MG) Joan Wal |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 12/08/1998 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: 1998.20
Interviewee: Enid Futter (EF) Stella Parcell (SP) Muriel Govier (MG) Joan Walton (J)
Date: 12th August 1998
Venue: 54 Tudor Way, Hertford
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Susie Hunt
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
[This recording had a great deal of over-talking]
PR: I am at No 54 Tudor Way, Peter Ruffles reporting to the Museum, on the afternoon of August 12th (1998). 54 Tudor Way is the home of Mrs Enid Futter very well known Hertford resident born in Hertford. Enid? [later, Enid’s sister, Joan arrives]
EF: Yes.
PR: And the mother of two super-brainy sons and with Enid this afternoon Is Mrs Stella Parsell from what number Stella?
SP: 38.
PR: 38 Tudor Way … and Mrs Muriel Govier from number 3 Tudor Way, who’ve come to watch the fun bit I’ve taken their pictures and they’re going to fill in a little form in case they say anything later, by mistake and we’ve got their permission to use it. So Enid let’s talk about the brainy sons - l normally start at the beginning, saying where were you born?
EF: Well, I was born in Port Vale and later moved to George Street.
PR: You and your family. Now Malcolm and David were born in?
EF: Port Vale no 38. After we married my husband was in the Royal Navy during the war and I stayed at home with my parents. When he was demobbed we had a dreadful job to get a house and at last we got one at 38 Port Vale, and my two sons were born at that address, until we moved up here when these houses were built
PR: You were first in?
EF: Yes, we moved in here as soon as the houses were built, so they put tenants in them.
PR: We’ve been recording with Mrs Smith at No 36 Port Vale.
EF: She was Joan Darton.
PR: Oh was she?
EF: Of the Darton family. Her father and the Dartons mother were brother and sister
PR: Oh.
EF: So Joan Smith was auntie to Peggy Darton?
PR: I’ve just had Peggy on the phone, that’s what made me a bit late. She got stung with stinging nettles hanging over the path in the twitchell coming down Byde Street. The person pushing the wheelchair couldn’t push over enough out of the way and Peggy couldn’t see them. So I’ve got to go and chop them off. Let’s just move David and Malcolm on, before we go back to your early days. They went to Port Vale School (yes!) Both very energetic, Malcolm especially for earning his pennies (yes, yes) he was the younger one and both super brains. So what’s happened to them now then?
EF: Well, Malcolm, he became qualified. In his last year or so at medical school he met this New Zealand young lady - I believe it was the Whittington Hospital in London and they fell in love and were married. Likewise son David, he went in the Special Police and that’s where he met his young lady and they fell in love and were married.
PR: So one’s in New Zealand and one’s …
EF: In Bengeo.
PR: So David hasn’t rolled too far, from Port Vale to Bengeo. Down the valley and up again and now, just before your sister Joan came in – she thinks she’s missed her photo being taken - I was photographing the covers of some magazines, now who is that?
EF: That’s Malcolm’s eldest daughter, Kate Futter.
PR: And how old is she?
EF: She will be either 18 or 19 this September.
PR: And how did she get into the modelling business? Is she going to be a professional?
EF: I don’t think she’ll be professional - it all started as fun, taking her photo one day he spotted and said you’re very photogenic, I think we could go a bit further with this and somebody picked her up and had some photos taken, hence it led to modelling. I can give you a write-up on it.
PR: Oh yes, that would be useful. Now can we go back to your own personal beginnings in Port Vale? Which house?
EF: No 8. It was on the left hand side coming into Port Vale.
PR: Wait a minute - on the right going into..
EF: On the right - I don’t remember, but there was a shop there, but what they sold I don’t know. Next door was Mrs Parcell’s shop cum a little grocery business. Then there was us.
PR: And now they’ve got Russell Court Mews.
EF: That was just called Russell Court as far as I can tell you.
PR: Are there 2 or 3 cottages down there?
EF: There used to be 4.
PR: So your family were you the first? I know you weren’t the last.
EF: No I had a brother older than me, now deceased.
PR: And what was his name?
EF: Leslie.
PR: Remember him quite well, Bridens. And then you..
EF: Yes, then Ernie then Joyce then Joan and then another sister who had a short life - Sheila, she only lived until she was 5.
PR: Where did she come in the……….
EF: She was born in George Street, I was about 16 when she was born.
PR: I can remember your mum but not your father. Was she a widow when I would have known her coming into the shop?
EF: My dad died before she did. He was 72 when he died, he was still working. He was one of these chaps that couldn’t give up.
PR: So where was he working - same kind of work as he’d done when you were young?
EF: As far as I know, yes. He used to work for Wren’s, Josiah Wren, well then Jack Skinner decided he wanted to start this business up, because it did belong to a man named Briden, and his father, I think, financed him, I’m not too sure, and he (took) my father with the business knowing he’d got a good man and it was my dad that made him what he was.
PR: And he was still at Bridens when he died?
EF: And he was part-time - he retired but he wouldn’t keep away. We lived next door and over the building. Skinner didn’t worry. Dad was part of the furniture anyway.
PR: So what number was your mother living at when her husband died and she was a widow?
EF: She was 6 George Street.
PR: Into George Street on the right hand side.
EF: Before he had the shop in Port Vale he had a shop in George Street and you can see part of it in that photo. Originally that must have been a house and Mr Briden must have made it a bakery and then a shop and an office and of course there was vast ground there, all the flour sheds at the back. or stables.
PR: It must have gone towards Port Hill - did it go beyond those Russell Cottages?
EF: No it backed onto Russell Cottages that we were talking about. It’s quite an area of ground there
PR: Then when they came onto the front, Port Vale proper, the shop - 20 Port Vale, did they then close the shop in George Street?
EF: Yes, but they didn’t move out as such, just expanded then, opened up more to join the shop in Port Vale. He couldn’t get rid of it because all the bakeries were there. And as Joan said what was once the stables, they were all the big lofts and the flour, big storage, he had garages there as well.
PR: So the business progressed from bakery to catering.
EF: Well catering was the other side of it.
PR: Was that Mr Skinner building it up in his time or was it already?
EF: No, he built it all up in is life time.
PR: He got robbed once in the shop, didn’t he?
EF: I don’t remember it.
PR: I seem to remember Pat Skinner telling me
EF: Well in those days, believe it or not, he very rarely locked the place up, it was open day and night. Rosie had a flat over one of the shops (Rosie Crane) and she was absolutely scared living up there, anybody could get in and come up the stairs. She used to bolt the doors.
PR: Well, that’s your dad and your mum stayed on living there.
EF: Well she stayed there for her lifetime - should have but it was too big for her and we moved her to Farm Close 78 or something when she died the house and garden at Bridens was too big for her and she didn’t need it.
PR: So how did you meet your husband, leading question on the tape. He wasn’t a Hertford person?
EF: He was, indeed he was. Born in The Folly, Thornton Street. Did you not know him?
PR: I knew him, yes, great shiny face coming through the ticket office.
EF: His family were mainly railway people. I only briefly knew his father, his mother died before I met him. He had one sister and one brother. Then when the war came he had to give up his house in Thornton Street, his sister was married and his brother was married. I went to work at the Co-op in Maidenhead Street and in those days it wasn’t an easy job to get. You had to pass exams to work in Co-op shops in those days. I can remember going to Enfield for my exams and my mum came with me. It was quite a gruelling experience. Anyway I got the job and Ron was a butcher, worked on Old Cross with Ern Cook and Ruskin - he was a Hertford family came from Bengeo. Anyway through Fred Brown that then was, he introduced Ron and I to my disgust at the time, however it blossomed and then Ron went in to the Royal Navy.
We got married in ’41, a crafty move what he thought was when he came home on leave he’d got nowhere to live, he could have gone to live with his sister who lived in Harrow, and his brother lived at Chigwell but he didn’t want either, he wanted to come home to Hertford, so mother put him up and he said this is no good we might as well get married. So I wasn’t obliged to go into National Service, so my part of the war effort was working at the Co-op and I was sort of in charge of all the rationing. I used to have to work out all the rationing and do all the ration books, stock. I love it.
PR: How did that work then, the customers would come in with their ration books
EF: Yes, and it all had to be recorded.
PR: So when you made a purchase you took your book with you and then the shop assistant - what would happen?
EF: They cut the points out then they had another idea, you stamped them, then I think there was an idea where they could leave the book with us for safe-keeping so they were “registered”.
PR: The loyalty thing developed.
EF: Yes, then when servicemen came home on leave they were given a card for 24/48 hours leave - how much they were entitled to. I do believe they were more versatile, they could go anywhere. They didn’t register as such, where their parents shopped, they would go there, and add it on.
PR: Then you as the trader, what happened - you sent your
EF: Figures, figures. We liaised with the Food Office, in those days in Fore Street. What used to be Mence Smiths - next door. Don’t forget there was a manager of the Co-op as well. We would work together, he would always check my work, but there was sheets and sheets of papers and documents, you had to work out how much stock was left, it was a case of credit and debit and that sort of thing.
PR: The Co-op you worked in was in Maidenhead Street on the left hand side as you came from the Castle Gates, next to Woolworths, Pearks, International Stores - it was just a few years really.
EF: Oh, a terrific number of shops.
PR: Greens round the corner in Bull Plain
EF: Bates.
PR: Bryants on Old Cross
EF: Walkers Stores - there was a big Walkers Stores before you got to the Co-op – yes.
PR: Yes Abbey National (now Santander) Was Bengeo Co-op- operating then as a grocery shop - did you have anything to do with that?
EF: I didn’t, no.
PR: There’s a butchers and grocers there.
EF: Not a butchers now, there was a butchers, no, that came quite a few years later. I don’t think I was working at the Co-op then, I was then a housewife bringing up the family.
PR: Oh! Now we’ve got Ron married then off to the war again.
EF: Oh yes, married in ’41.
PR: Did you marry in church.
EF: Christ Church, Bengeo, The Rev’d Laker married me [whose father wrote a much acclaimed History of Deal]
PR: Slim Jim.
EF: And I had my reception at what was The Mayflower where the Sele Arms pub is now.
PR: That’s where my Mum and Dad had their reception, same time.
EF: We had about 4 days honeymoon and off he went. It was what they called embarkation leave because he was assigned to the submarine and it was due to go to the middle East, however he didn’t go straight away they done trials up in Scotland and he went about 5 months later and I didn’t see him for 3/4 years and I grew from a very slim girl to a great one and he didn’t recognise me when he came home and I think he wished he hadn’t married me! We didn’t have children , we never had our family until we moved into Port Vale which was 9/10 years later.
PR: But when I knew him he was working in the ticket office on the railway.
EF: He started off working at the North Station. He came home from the Navy and rationing was still on and oh, he couldn’t stand that, he couldn’t abide it, no, he said, he was restless. His family were big railway people, one of his offsprings [?] was an engine driver, guards man, all that sort of thing and he said I think I’ll try the railway he would have gone into the Police Force, his brother was in the Metropolitan Police, he wasn’t tall enough, you had to be a certain height, so the police was out. I think I’ll try the railway, and he he had to go away to college, and he left me with the children. He had to pass numerous exams, he went from pillar to post and when he died he was in the London [main or mail] office. And he died just before it was electrified that North line. He died at work - he’d gone up to work that day. So that’s tragic.
PR: Yes - How old was he then?
EF: 57.
PR: That job isn’t just selling tickets at the gate.
EF: And when he finished up he was more on long distance trains, all the running of those, that’s what he was actually doing.
PR: David joined the police?
EF: Yes, strange, his dad nicknamed him they always called him Toffer, he never called him David and he said Toffer you would make a good policeman you’re got the height and as soon as his father died he joined the Special Police and I’ve never known why and he loved it and I think he done quite a number of years till he was 40ish when he gave up - just too old for this now and besides his commitments and his job.
PR: Lets ask Muriel where she was in the war. Were you in Hertford then?
MG: No. During the war I was at Great Munden, the church, my Mum and Dad are both buried there, I was christened there, married there. I lived across the road from the church.
PR: Oh I didn’t know that. So were you married?
MG: No, ’44. I loved the railway then, and I lived at Ware for a while and I went back on the railway then for three years. I think and then we went up here in 1953 [a bit unclear, here]
PR: So how did you come to be on the railway then because there’s no railway at Munden.
MG: It’s not far though, was it. Used to cycle down there into Puckeridge, five o’clock in the morning sometimes up until about 1.0’clock because we used to do the workmen’s trains.
PR: So you used to cycle to Puckeridge?
MG: Braughing Station.
PR: So what job did you do?
MG: Well from 5.0’clock until half past 6 it was the workmen’s trains. It was quite busy, lots of people still living out of London and then after that you’d do all sorts of things, cleaning up, anything that required doing down by the station.
PR: And then 1.0’clock.
MG: I went home. Then the next week I used to come back at 1.0’clock til 8.0’clock in the evening.
PR: I suppose you knew the customers?
MG: Oh yes.
PR: Which was the busiest station?
MG: Hadham was the busiest. You had more out-of-London people from the Bank of England and that [Montague Norman - Gov!]
PR: First Class waiting room. Braughing Station was a little way out from the village.
MG: Yes it was.
PR: So then you married, rationing was still on, was it? And came to Hertford.
MG: Yes I forgot now, we were registered at ********. We were still rationed after the war 4/5 years. - the co-op, that’s right. [over-talking]
PR: So you were first in as well [at Sele] .
MG: Yes was new.
PR: Cherry Tree Green was the first bit?
MG: There was some houses there. Salvation Army used to have a hut opposite.
PR: So where was the hut?
MG: On the green where the flats are
EF: I don’t remember the Salvation Army hut there, my memory!
MG: It was all blackberry bushes and…
EF: I remember it all being open, because the flats came much later [over- talking]
PR: Muriel, can I just talk a minute about the start of Sele Farm. When you arrived, this being part of the earliest bit of development did it all start at this end?
SR: There was a block of houses up there which were Aiery type, they were half built and we got the key to no 38 and there was one block no numbers, nothing else and it was 38 and we couldn’t understand why it wasn’t no.1. And there was willow-herb growing out of the staircase. It was half built and so we came back and there was building over Cherry Tree Green at the same time [crackling prevents hearing] and there was nothing else only Cherry Tree Green, there wasn’t even a road.
PR: No 38 - in Cherry………..
SR: No, in Tudor Way.
PR: After the block of flats the first house was yours. Let’s get the position of these [Airy House] Stella, past Hawthorn Close, on this side……
SR: You know behind the cemetery there’s a service road, and it comes out, well almost opposite there. We came into this, and people next door The Beechams [possibly Beauchamps] there were lots of open spaces, lots of foundations being built. My son was 18 months old, no fences, no roads just sand and gravel, the soil was orangey and there was rabbits and whole broods of pheasants used to walk down the road and all these rabbits you could see out of the window. It was amazing and the grass was like this, and Peter used to go off and - I couldn’t find him - he’d follow the workmen and there was the bulldozer round the back there and these men used to bring him home and in the end my husband bought some wire and made a wire netting fence - much to his annoyance. The gas men used to leave all their things down the side of the house and this thing where they used to bend the pipes, all kinds of tools and he used to go round there and I used to hear him banging with these tools. 15th May 1953 we got the key.
PR: So it was good weather.
SR: Oh yes, there was no buses, you pushed your pram into town and eventually you could get a bus from the station into town - 6d return from the station into Hertford.
PR: Oh, they turned round there.
SR: Where the bus stop is now.
PR: Same sort of position. So you always had to go down onto Bramfield Road - couldn’t get along Windsor Drive.
SP: No, we always went down Bramfield Road.
PR: When we were children we used to come up Thieves Lane across Welwyn Road and then onto Bramfield Road, just went straight across the cross roads, Cutthroat Lane - was that closed by the time you……..
SP: My husband worked at Hatfield and couldn’t go that way, he had to go down to Hertford first, the lower road to Hatfield he used to go. It was a long time before they opened up the lane.
PR: So they closed off that lane the same time as they were building here?
SP: I remember the trees, one came down there right across the lane; Pete used to go on his bike up and down there, but you didn’t go on anything else but bicycles.
PR: So was Muriel’s house quite soon after Stella’s?
SP: Yes that was the first block after, and then.
EF: We had the chance of either taking one over there or this one.
SP: The block where Muriel lived was next to ours, that’s no 1, starts at no.1. Then Mr Brady who lives in the next house was offered a house in this block and he turned it down because they wanted one with a bigger kitchen, this must have been before that 2nd one, they were all in the process you see, there were so many workmen up here.
PR: It was all done by Moss the first stage was it?
SP: Most of it, yes they even built the flats, I remember this big manager foreman, he’s the one who used to make a fuss of my lad kept bringing him home. There were some carpenters up there and they used to give people the off-cuts when they were doing the roofs, cutting off bits of wood.
EF: You know our Danny of Hertford, he actually was a foreman up here before he took the wrong road.
PR: He’d be very good, he was a person to work with.
SP: They were workers weren’t they, the Irish, still some of them about.
EF: Danny was.
PR: O’Grady. Are all your neighbours still there or have they moved?
EF: No I’m the only one in my block. Opposite me, Mr Brady he’s still there and Corbetts, they’re still there the originals, oh yes Dunnage next door. Yes, Fred Dunnage, used to be a driver on the buses.
SP: There’s just an odd one in each block, I suppose, of the originals.
EF: Dennis’s, it’s the girl that’s there now.
SP: Quite a few of us that are up here are (now) getting on, a few of them died recently.
EF: I can remember, there was only a year and three months between my two children and David was the lazy one unfortunately, and he wouldn’t walk up the Bramfield fields and I had this pram loaded with shopping and one night, it was very dark in winter and I thought this cow was behind me because it roared and I don’t know how I got up the hill, I just run! Was frightened to death.
SP: There were no street lights.
EF: Complete darkness.
PR: (to E). We’d better go back to earlier in your childhood in Port Vale - no-one frightening, no-one nice, no-one peculiar.
EF: Well, a life-long friend of mine, who now lives in North Wales, Doris Currie, we were inseparable, we grew up and there were the Stackwood family, Joyce Stackwood and Ron Stackwood, Joyce was one of Danny’s fiends.
PR: Where were they living then?
EF: In George Street. I think all the people in George Street are now dead. They were more elderly people. Many of them owned their own houses in George Street even in them years ago. Coming back round into Port Vale before we got to George Street there was a family of Pryors and a family Haynes, now one of the boys of Haynes lives just over here, Hawthorn Close, I think, - you cut through and come out into Windsor Drive, Sydney I think his name is. One of the brothers to Haynes was on that picture, Aubrey, but he got killed in the war, and I think various ones have died but I’ve lost track, and I think the Pryor family there’s none of those around now. Then there was the Sadler family their father had a coal merchant business and also ran the Greyhound, Russell Street. On the corner there. Then there was one who I still call Mary Chapman, father, he mended shoes in the little lodge and beside that lodge you could go right up to the top of Port Hill where there’s a round house.
[unclear addition from Joan re: a railwayman who used to distribute (?) the Watchtower]
EF: Chamberland [probably Chamberlain] .
J: He was a big man.
EF: No, his name wasn’t Chamberland, give me a minute - they lived on Tamworth Road and he was on the railway for years, that’s right and she was in a wheelchair. And when the houses were built up here the son lived across the road.
PR: In the end of Russell Street there were the Bunyans.
EF: He was the watchmaker at Evans shop [Evan Marks] and the Miss Bunyans, link with Christ Church, Sunday school teachers.
PR: They were his sisters?
EF: Yes.
PR: I remember one lived on after he died didn’t she?
EF: One of the younger ones, Doris, she used to work at Botsfords the China shop and she died quite young and she was married to a chappie who lived down Currie Street.
PR: In George Street, Silversides, were they there?
EF: They were at the top but one, the Isaacs family were right at the top, there was Les Isaacs and two older ones no the Silversides came after the Isaacs, they were the end terrace ay the top.
PR: I know who else lived in George Street, used to give us the run around in Fanhams, Mrs O’Donnell, now she worked at Bridens.
EF: She worked at the OC shop, Jim O’Smotherly I don’t know whether he’s told you but his father was the baker in Chambers Street.
PR: He did.
EF: But that was before Skinner bought. I forget who who owned it then. When we lived in George Street previous tenants used to live there, at one time we had a policeman lived up there. It wasn’t Eames, it was Howard or some such name like that.
PR: Were there McMullens workers living there?
EF: Port Vale, they owned those houses in that block where the Greyhound pub was and some farther along Port Vale.
PR: One of them still had an outside loo [someone was moved out recently aged 91]
EF: Big Mrs Smith.
PR: She’s only just moved out of a McMullen’s house to Beane River View.
EF: Is she still alive?
PR: Yes, because after she’d had a fall they wouldn’t let her come home unless she had an inside toilet.
EF: McMullens had quite a lot of property, there’s a big house that was opposite Christchurch. The Starkiss family lived. there. Starkiss was kind of a yard foreman. I used to go to school with Kit Starkiss; She’s married to Graves, still lives there.
PR: Then there used to be a house opposite Russell Street, Captain somebody.
EF: Captain Howes.
PR: He used to have all the evening papers, Star, Standard and News.
EF: He was a military man wasn’t he. He did work at McMullens. He had a daughter, Daisy and she used to go to a private school round the cattle pens and she had two older brothers and one always used to drive racing cars along Port Vale, the younger one, and the eldest one he had an artificial arm. And it’s just come to me the family we were referring to whose wife was in a wheelchair was the name of Holder.
PR: Now, there was a bloke used to frighten me from McMullen’s with a great booming voice as he wound his way down Port Vale.
EF: A Mr Ball. Bill Ball.
PR: I was the right name for him.
EF: He was a lovely man. He loved those horses they were his life, but he thought he owned those horses and those carts.
PR: Did he live in Port Vale proper, then?
EF: Yes. And again I don’t know if they were McMullen’s houses or not. He lived right opposite Briden’s shop. There’s a row of houses there and I don’t know if you can still see it, they had porters ales, you could just read it and we reckon there must have been a pub there [the George, or George !V from C1840?] I know no history or nothing about it.
PR: So was that the one next to the school now or would it be further………
EF: No it was about three doors from the school.
J: He swapped houses with his next door neighbour, Mrs Swan.
PR: I only remember Mrs Swan living right down the end of Port Vale, same Mrs Swan?
EF: No, the Mrs Swan we knew was in a wheelchair. Her little husband doted on her, wheeled her round everywhere, no sooner he died she was on her feet walking about, all round the pubs, round Hertford and even Rosie will tell you - nothing wrong with that woman.
PR: You don’t remember what happened to Peter Boltwood that was opposite the other shop 49 Port Vale, husband and wife and son who’d be Malcolm’s age?
End of side 1
Side 2
EF: Old boy called Wilson used to have a Daily Telegraph, the only Daily Telegraph on the round. He lived about no. 51 Port Vale close to the other shop. You tend to think people have been there for ever when you’re a kid - he may have only been there three or four years.
PR: Mrs Pitteway has died, sadly.
EF: Yes, that’s right, she worked at McMullen’s for a time but there were ones before her used to live down there. Bob Ballem many years ago.
PR: Those ones where Sally lived always looked more tumbledown and rickety, I think they’re a bit older, those opposite the Mill Stream a very very narrow little garden and you go down steps into them. They always seemed to me older houses as if they were the first.
EF: Yes. And Joan and I were only saying that the end house down there was a sweet shop. The front room was the shop and I believe she lived with her grandmother and we used to go down with our ha’pence and our pennies - got an idea she is still alive, the granddaughter. She’d be roundabout my age and I’m trying to think what her name is now, is her name Eileen? And she lives up in Fanshawe Street near our MU treasurer, in that block, she had little Yorkshire terrier dog.
PR: Mrs Emsley.
EF: Yes Mrs Emsley is one end and I think this person lives the other end and I think she is still alive because a few times I’ve been past in the car I’ve seen her walking her dog in Molewood.
Transcribers Note : We think it was actually Mrs Elieen Smith
PR: Oh I’ll track that down, that was a little shop.
EF: They used the front room, yes.
PR: I think the Woodcocks.
EF: They were next door to the sweet shop, yes.
PR: All these little communities were in a way separate. One street was not the same as the next street. Then there was Mrs Brackens…….
EF: The Seymour family, yes, then I was saying to you about Abbey along here. I don’t know whether he lived down there, it was his family or an uncle but the Abbey family now some of them worked for the Sele Roller Mills, opposite the hospital so whether they owned those houses I don’t know. It’s possible because Betty Seymour’s father worked for the Sele Roller Flour Mills. Seymour was it?
PR: No , I think it was Seymur. The researchers will look it up [!]
EF: I was racking my brain last night and except for Dorothy in North Wales there’s not an awful lot of us alive that used to live along there. You see the Sadler family, there’s not many of those alive now. Olive, well she was about Joan’s age, oh, she was older than you, ah, then she was more Joyce Stackwood’s age if Joyce Stackwood had lived.
PR: What about the pubs. You’ve got The Two Brewers, Rose & Crown up the road, Rising Sun, Millstream, and there was an off licence in Nelson Street.
EF: And next to my grandparents in Wellington Street there was another sweet shop cum grocery shop
PR: Oh, on the left.
EF: Oh, on the left.
PR: Oh, we’d better talk about your grandparents.
EF: Don’t know a lot about them really. We just know they lived there. The front door was in Wellington Street. The Garden was in Molewood Road. There were quite a few rooms on the level and. Then what you’d think was the cellar downstairs to some more rooms.
PR: So whose parents were they?
EF: My father’s. My mother’s parents lived in George Street and I’m not sure whether my mother wasn’t born there. Her name was Scrimshire/Skrimshire. And Earls the butchers started in George Street. And theirs was the house with the big double gates next to the pub. They actually slaughtered there.
PR: Well, that’s worth knowing.
EF: I can remember mother telling us.
PR: I thought their slaughterhouse was in Brewhouse Lane?
EF: Well it might have just been Earls done their own slaughtering - however, they done it in George Street there.
PR: And the cattle pens - anyone up there that we know?
EF: There was the Carter family, there’s only about one of those left. Lidhams [?] the oil merchants started there, Miss Hucks private school.
PR: Yes, whereabouts was that [no 7 Port Hill].
EF: You know those big high buildings on the corner, didn’t Lutyens live there, the architect [his nephew] at one time?
Transcribers Note: Number one Port Hill was the home and office for Mr Lutyens in the 1940s
J: I thought they came during the war, the lady used to collect pigswill with a horse and cart. She was charming but he was an absolute snob, the husband. They had two boys, they went to Eton eventually. After the war they moved away.
SP: Then in our young days next to them lived a family of Rumbold but afterwards now do you know the Childs/Charles family George Charles, well they lived there previously before the old man moved back to Scotland. You know George Charles and he had a brother Carl.
PR: I know Mrs Charles with a Scots voice.
EF: Yes, well they lived - well when I was a young girl Mrs Parcell lived there, her mother-in-law had the milk shop in [`Port Vale] ‘cos you could get to her garden by going down that passageway by what was the milk shop and many a time Carl - I think he come from Bramfield used to bring his cattle, and walk ‘em down the Bramfield Road, cross Beane Road through Port Vale to go to the Cattle Pens to put them on the railway. Many a time a cow got loose and used to come down that passageway and you didn’t see my mother for dust ‘cos they’d come round the back of our houses. During the war Mr and Mrs Charles moved back to Scotland. Then I think it was the unemployment exchange National Savings. Then I think you’ll find the next house was Miss Hucks school.
PR: The Mr Charles now…….
EF: He died, he’s been dead about a year.
PR: That’s the other side of the bridge.
EF: Next to where the Stocks’ live, 31.
PR: He was one of the missing people.
EF: Oh yes, he caused quite a ….yes they had the police up, police dogs - he just went off - I think he must have had a mental relapse. I tried to comfort Jean, I was up there all the time it was quite a ….you know.
PR: How did he come back?
EF: Well, his father was a merchant navy man and probably what happened, when they came to live in Hertford he was an engineer at that laundry at Gallows Hill.
PR: Reliance.
EF: Then the war broke out and he went back into the merchant navy and she was lonely down there so they moved back to Scotland and took George and Carl with them and George met Jean ‘cos she’s Scots, isn’t she, and then they moved back to Hertford again and lived where they now are, 31.
PR: A big house.
EF: Yes, I think Jean’s eventually going to sell it.
PR: I knew he’s died.
EF: Yes, he died a year ago.
PR: Did he just give himself up then, after he was missing?
EF: No, no but he never really had a secure job after that, he wouldn’t drive, he had no worries at all. [we still don’t know where he went, or why!].
PR: And there was a son, Francis.
EF: Yes, he now lives Oxford, Beds, way - he was a bit reckless because he got expelled from the grammar school.
PR: I knew he was a live wire.
EF: I got to know them because you know how shy David was, he was the only one that David could get on with - they fought like cats and dogs but he got on with Francis and that’s how I got to know Jean and that. Anyway he got expelled from the grammar school. He married very young but now he’s been back to Oxford University in the Commonwealth Government or something and he’s got a great job. And the youngest boy’s a professor.
PR: All I remember is that he was a live wire, so why did he get the boot in the end?
EF: I’ve got an idea he got tangled up with some shooting and some guns and I’ll tell you who it was with, a boy who lives along here, now you ladies know her, she’s a docile little thing - they live further along here - it was motorbikes too, they were just naughty children. However, he’s a married man now with grown-up children. And their daughter, she done fencing, is it going to be the Commonwealth Games or the Olympics - she’s going to represent that with fencing and the younger son’s a professor, lives down near Windsor. Ian was a different boy altogether they were all brainy. I can remember when we used to go to Christchurch when we were children Carl was an auburn-haired boy, he was a quiet boy but George he would be flicking papers about. He was in the choir, flicking hymn books about, he was a rascal. Christchurch, we had quite a community going there. I can remember the Lakers, they had the vicarage in Warrenfield Road (Warren Park Road) and they put this pageant on and I was Queen Elizabeth and I’d love to know because they done a movie on that and I would love to know whether that movie is still around. And of course, we were linked with all the boys of Hertford that are now gone, disappeared.
PR: Well, Laker’s son and daughter are about aren’t they. They don’t actually speak to each other
EF: I’ve only just found out recently the the son’s wife has been enrolled as an MU up here and her sister-in-law who lives at Bramfield - the Kilby’s - she’s married to one of their offspring and she came to her and that’s how I found out, I thought she said my sister-in-law, I went over to her, I said I’m not being nosey nut you mentioned Laker and that’s your sister-in-law and I know she was Laker and I said are you…….and she said yes, I’m married to her brother, or I was married to her brother [hope it’s finally clear!]
PR: That’ll be John’s wife. Were the Walby’s in Sandy Nook, Welwyn Road at Christchurch, and Akers?
EF: Yes, Akers, very much they lived along Molewood Road. Gordon Akers who worked for Longmores, he moved along the Ware Road. The Earls and the Akers and the Stockses ran Christchurch. Oh I must tell you about Arthur Earl’s wife, they lived in Eleanor Road. She always put me in mind of Queen Mary. Us children we had to go to church morning noon and night as you know, in those days and they always had the same pews, they were the Earl’s pews and we children were sitting there devils we were and we’d say Mrs Earl isn’t here yet and she would come, great big tall woman and little husband strutting behind but she always was late when she’d got something to show off, new hat on, or new shoes and us kids - she’s got a new hat!
And we used to say it out loud so she could hear us. Jimmy O’Smotherly lived in Balfour Street.
PR: Archers?
EF: Archers, yes, the yard which is now all built on with houses, isn’t it. And the Peck family lived in the bungalow, the Picks stonemasons.
PR: Monica Gilbert was a Peck, a Miss Peck, lived in Fore Street, she lives in Beane River View now, coming up to 90. The Emerys were along there.
EF: The Emerys yes.
J: The youngest one bought the house next door to us when we first got married.
PR: The other side of the arch or further up?
[indistinct reply and cannot hear who they went on too talk about]
PR: The day before she died she stopped me in Beane Road with her bike and said she didn’t want them to turn the land where the cows graze into a car park and she stopped me and thanked me, it must have been in the paper, I suppose. And then she died in her sleep or quite suddenly.
SP: Getting on though wasn’t she?
EF: They all appeared old to us in those days
SP: I don’t know how many sons she had
EF: She had three, I believe.
SP: [something about one son and an orchestra?] He didn’t go out to work he used two work at home something scientific to do with books.
PR: He was interested in railways.
SP: He sold up after she died and left there
PR: We had a very good customer along there at no. 32 called Carter. They were elderly he was a gardener, unless I’m muddling him up with Mr Taylor from Wellington Street. They lived almost opposite the tin hut [Balfour Street].
EF: You are right, Carter, yes. They had a daughter.
J: There was the Chapmans, too they had a daughter, she lives in Wellington Street.
PR: Oh the builders!
SP: Very old-fashioned couple.
PR: And that daughter is still around and she’s got a glamorous daughter when you see them out together.
EF: She lives along Molewood, you know those mock Georgian houses, sorry Wellington Street at the end.
SP: Is that hut still there?
PR: No it’s been built on.
EF: Very tiny houses, what are they like?
PR: No, haven’t been in them.
SP: There was a school there, Mr Perrotts class.
EF: What, in the tin hut? I don’t remember. It’s got memories for me.
PR: You weren’t a naughty girl in the tin hut?
EF: I wasn’t good!
MG: When we first came up here we had a school teacher, Wilkinson, living next door who took children down too the tin hut for Sunday school
SP: Port Vale had to expand a bit and Peter was in Mr Perrotts class in the tin hut.
MG: What school was that then?
SP: Port Vale. The younger ones, they were going to build Hollybush and I don’t know how old Barry was, about six I suppose and he had to go to St Andrews and some of the Port Vale went to St Andrew they’d moved St Andrews up here.
PR: Waiting for Hollybush.
SP: Then all the mothers who used to walk down to Port Vale carried on so much about it they laid on a bus to take these children to St Andrew’s school for a year or two, Miss Kiddell was there then.
PR: Oh yes, and Miss Stocks.
SP: Actually she was a nice lady.
EF: I think the limelight of the head mistresses was Miss Davis. She taught me, it was a girls’ school then. Major Upton before a girls’ school. It was a boys’ school then and they moved to the old Longmore School somewhere that part of the town and then she came from, we never heard, the last of All Saints Girls School. She came from the last of All Saints Girls School stop Port Vale and she was head mistress. Well, the stories I could tell about her, she was hilarious, she had this great bun on her head and delighted us because she walked round all day with a cane, a bendable cane, even made the teachers laugh. Now don’t know if you remember Miss Thorne - they used to live on the corner - Grace Thorne.
PR: Yes.
EF: In tears, she made her cry more than once - she knew she could make her cry and she made her cry. Nothing delighted us more than to get her rattled and see that bun of hair drop down over her shoulders. And Phyllis Halls can back me up on that. The Fisher girls we were all at school together. You know Jaqueline Fisher and Joan?
PR: She often comes up in the tapes that Kate, the oldest person to mention her is 97 now. So she must have been teaching quite a long time because Ruby Henry whose now 97 talks about the day she hit Kate Davis, she wasn’t going to be hit by Kate so she got in first.
EF: There would be no delinquency or crime if she was here today because she would see to that, and sorted that out
PR: But did she teach you anything?
EF: Oh yes, she was a good teacher, she didn’t actually teach, just now and again she would take a class. She was the headmistress. She wasn’t meant to teach. She was above the classroom teachers.
PR: Well I think we can blame Ruby for setting her up because once you’ve been hit by a pupil you’re extra cautious. She’s got a lot to answer for - I’m going to mow her lawn tonight
EF: You see, I was born left-hand [sic] and she made me write with my right hand and she tried to make me do everything else with my right hand Used to turn the work around especially with needlework. I don’t know what I did do to impress her but I was using my right hand I couldn’t master it. So many times I used to suffer with awful chilblains when I was a child and I used to take my shoes off in class and it was Enid come out and read and I put my shoes on quick somehow She was a tartar.
PR: You don’t remember Ruby Henry’s fish and chip shops, Watts fish and chip shops in Railway Street?
EF: No.
PR: Rosie remembers them.
MG: I was at school with a girl whose mother and father had a fish and chip shop along Railway streets. Can’t remember what her christian name was.
PR: Ruby’s were before Donoghues’s and Tovells
EF: That’s right there were 2, side by side, the Donoghues owned one.
PR: And Tovells the other. Ruby’s father had two shops, one near the Quakers and one round behind the Diamond.
END OF RECORDING