Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Browne, Baden (O2012.18) |
| Interviewee | Baden Browne (BB) |
| Interviewer | Janet Holmes (JH) |
| Date | 04/05/2012 |
| Transcriber by | Stephen McEnally (using Otter.AI for initial transcript) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording No: O2012.18
Interviewees: Baden Browne (BB)
Date: 4th May 2012
Venue: 18 Post Wood Green
Interviewers: Janet Holmes (JH)
Transcriber: Stephen McEnally (using Otter.AI for initial transcript)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
JH: Good afternoon, Baden. It's kind of you to talk with us about your memories of Hertford. And perhaps you could start by telling us a little bit about growing up in Hertford and about your family?
BB: Well, I was born at number five, Nelson Street. And - er - I have very little memory of Nelson Street because we moved up to Bengeo when I was three. My father built number 43 Bengeo Street [indistinct] 43, The Drive. And - um - we moved up there - um - just as - the beginning of the war. I can remember hearing the Declaration of War. We used to have an old bakelite radio with a little boy holding a wand in front of it, a pilot radio. I can distinctly remember that - err - morning that they came on the radio and said that war was declared. And I remember the friend of my parents - um - Tony Burgess, had come up to see my dad about Scout meal business. And he was there at the same time. And I can - distinct memories of the dining room that we had at 43 The Drive with my dad's desk in it with the radio on it. And also had memories that he had started off as an engineer in working for Turner's in London as a brass founder on, on lathes making things like taps and ball valves. And then he'd gone further on before I was born. And he'd worked as a lift engineer. He went all over the place doing lift engineering works into Morocco, Algeria, into Italy. And then he'd had a bad accident in London. He got his head caught in a service lift in Threadneedle Street. And he came to work for my mother's father who was a builder.
JH: And this was in Hertford?
BB: In Hertford. And - err - that was George Collins’ Builders that were on Cowbridge. And - err - I can, you know, have memories of Dad's engineering books being in the cupboard opposite where his desk was. I always used to love looking through those. Dad's engineering and building skills were quite phenomenal, because he used to make all my toys. And during the war - I may switch backwards and forwards a bit over this - but during the war, as he was in charge of the Scouts, the 3rd Hertford Scouts, they used to hold a fair once a year just before Christmas and sell homemade toys to raise money to send food parcels to the Scouts who were in the forces.
My Mum, for instance, always collected tins, cake tins and biscuit tins so she could pack cakes that she made and sent out all over the world, to the chaps who were in the forces. So, I can remember my dad making me a wooden castle, making me an airport, making me a farmyard. It was the very early days of dinky toys. And I had an obsession with having an army of dinky toys. But I always ended up with sort of secondhand ones. But I see them now as collectors’ pieces and think I had quite an array of them. But dad would make… like I had a wooden train made out of something, I think they used to call Zimplan. So, they bought the plans and then made the toys up from the plans.
JH: So, he was a very skilled man, your father by the sounds of it?
BB: Yeah. He was a skilled engineer. I mean, later on in life, he taught me to do something which I did the other day for my daughter, which I don't think many people can do, is actually splice wire ropes. And I learned things like tying knots and splicing and that sort of thing with things that I learned from my father.
JH: Did your mother - she came from Hertford did she?
BB: Yes, my Mother - if you'd like me to go back on - she came from the Collins family. She had a sister and a brother. Will Collins the brother worked at McMullen’s as an architect. He never took a qualification as an architect. It was the days when you could join the Architects Association by paying money and you became an architect.
But his stamp is well on - round Hertford buildings like the old Sele Arms. I think they call it The Bridge House now. That was one of Will Collins's designs. And if you go out to The Robin Hood on the Ridgeway, that was another one of his designs. But he worked at McMullen’s. So, the family rented - the Collins family - that's my Grandfather - rented the property in Cowbridge, where Collins Builders were, from McMullen’s. And it was - Grandfather - was a Collins and his brother had a builder's yard in West Street - which Jean Riddell found out the other day, which was very interesting. His builder’s yard was opposite the builder’s yard of Andrews, the people behind the Museum.
And grandfather Collins - his family - his mother was a King. The Kings were gypsies who lived up on the Heath here. And they married into the Collins family - or one of the Collins married a King girl. And that was my Grandfather's - and he had two brothers, Charlie, the one who was in the builder's yard in Castle Street. And Fred, who I’ve just vague memories of him coming to family parties. But he was always three parts worse for beer. But George Collins went as a young lad into the Marines. And he was in the Boxer Rebellion in 1901. And there's a book on the shelf up there that came from him, a Chinese dictionary, that he looted when he was in China. So, he ran the business and when my father who had, had this accident in London, came to work for him. Because he had - it would be about the time of the sort of recession - and it was a job to get another job. And because he was injured, his firm, the Express Lift Company, didn't want to have anything to do with it.
JH: So, there's no compensation in those days?
BB: No, no. I remember my mother saying that she went to see him in hospital. And she thought, as he’d been squashed in this lift, that his head would be all flat. And when she got there, it was enormous. It was all swollen. Anyway, he, he came and worked for granddad, and he was working for granddad when I was born.
But he went as a plumber and of course he was an engineer and he had no knowledge of wiping lead joints on lead pipes. So, my Mum used to say that when we lived at Nelson St, he used to bring home bits and practise in the kitchen, so that he could learn to do - wiping a lead joint on a water pipe. I've still got some of his - in fact - I was going to say some, - I've got his tools. And my son has taken his big engineering box that used to go all round the world with him. Nick’s got that, cos he's got a bigger storage than me. But I’ve got certain tools that Dad made for the engineering trade. He actually made the tools himself, his squares and his plumbob and all that sort of thing. Dad made those.
JH: So how long did you live in The Drive for?
BB: I went there when I was three. So, it’d be ‘39 and I moved down to my grandmother's when I was eighteen.
JH: Right. Why did you move to your grandmother’s?
BB: Um - [pauses] I can't exactly remember why I moved but I know I moved down there. My grandmother - that was on my father's side - they were Fareys who came from - that was the name, Farey - came from Hitchin. The Fareys family - um - I've researched that a bit. They lived in the - house there - they lived in the back end, that outshot on that house there. And granny Farey was housekeeper to the Russells. The Russells in Hitchin were famous for being tanners who made leather for books. And granny Farey had very small gaps between her pregnancies. She had thirteen girls, and they all went to work for the Pollard’s at Whitebarns at Pirton.
JH: Right.
BB: And my grandmother was lady's maid. And she lived on her own. And I can tell you this story of her and her husband - that's my grandfather, Thomas Browne. And I went to live with her, mainly to keep an eye on her, because she was getting quite, quite old.
JH: So, they lived - ?
BB: On Port Hill. Number 14, Port Hill. I’ve still got the sale documents for the building of 14, Port Hill. We built for 120 quid.
.
JH: When was it built - approximately?
BB: Oh - eighteen fifty something? 1860s? And, of course, I've got lots of memories of going down, because when I was small, I - my parents - Dad - was working as a builder. He didn't go in the Army because he had a hernia. And in those days a thing which they now do with, sort of, remote control nearly - treat a hernia. He always wore a truss and the army wouldn't have him. So, he was very much involved in the messengers in Hertford. That's the Air Raid Precaution, the ARP messengers. And the messengers were all boy scouts.
So, Dad, as a scouter, had to look after those. And if you think they did have telephones, - but we didn't have one at home, - not in those days. And communications were, sort of vital and the messenger boys, which I can remember some of them - err - before they went in the army - some of the younger ones at the beginning of the war, used to congregate at home. The house had always got [pause] scouts in it. And one of the main reasons, I think, me Mum was a very good cook. And she, she was forever cooking and I learnt my cooking from a mum at home and it's ‘cause - it's - you don't waste anything. You use the minimum. We kept rabbits, chickens in the garden. We go - gleaning - for food for them over the fields. When the fields were harvested, I can remember next door neighbours at The Drive were a family that came from east London. They were a big family - granddad . I remember old granny Bradbury always used to organise us kids off to go across the fields, gleaning. And, of course, we’d then make a picnic of it, and those sort of things. And I can remember those fields, which are now part of Molewood Estate, when they were just covered in strips of corn.
And when I was the latter end of living at The Drive, I took up going out every morning with me gun and me dog, keeping the rabbits off what was then Bengeo Working Men's Club allotments which were bordered to The Drive and went right back to about where the shops are in Molewood Estate. And, obviously, you get to know your local area very, very well. One of the things I can remember, as a scout, wanting to learn to play the bugle. And we used to go in - round the Water Tower. And there was an old boy, who had an allotment there, was a first world war bugler and he taught at - err - Kingsmead School. He was taught shoemaking to the boys at Kingsmead School. And he taught me to blow the bugle and we had a lot of fun out of that with the scouts.
JH: Perhaps you could say a little bit about your parents’ involvement with the scouts?
BB: Well, yes, my Father had been involved in the early Christ Church, Port Vale group. And, as my mother grew up, she got involved with the wolf cubs. They both ended up as district commissioners, dad for scouts and mum for the cubs. The whole house revolved round scouting. I mean, I've got copies of the old 3rd Hertford, which was the Christ Church group. They met in a building, which is now the COPS theatre. And I've got the Court of Honour books. So once every fortnight there'd be a meeting at home of all the scouts - because I used to love that cos Mum would make a cake for it [chuckles] and that sort of thing. And I can remember - and I've got copies of the Court of Honour books, that were the third Hertford's - these were used when Ken Hartfield wrote the scout book about Hertford and he used a lot of photographs. I've got masses of photographs of camps and of - one of the things I have got is a lot of early eight mil movie stuff which I want to get conserved because it's quite unique of us loading up the lorries for camps and camps away.
JH: Where did you go for your camping?
BB: Um [thinks] - well, during the war, we didn't go very far. My earliest memories of Hertford Rover Scouts having a camp on the hill in Bayfordbury. It would be the hill opposite where Riverside Garden Centre is. The other side of the road up there, just up to the arbor - um - can't pronounce it -
JH: The arboretum.
BB: The arboretum that goes up there. I've got a very early - I must have only been three or four when I went to that. Ummm - got a photograph somewhere in amongst my collection of me sitting on Baden Powell’s lap at a rally in Hatfield Park, because my mother went to it. And I was only two.
JH: Was he impressed that you were named after him?
BB: Yes! [laughs] But being named Baden, in actual fact, was quite a convoluted story. I think my mother had a flair for her - second cousin, Baden Mercer. And Baden Mercer was born on the day that Mafeking was relieved and that's why he was called Baden. And I did meet him during the war because during the war, we went up to Birmingham and we journeyed across to where the Mercers had a pub in Wolverhampton - um – to see them. So, I met once the person I was named after.
JH: So, you were named after him rather than -? So indirectly after Baden Powell - ?
BB: Yes, indirectly after Baden Powell. But - um
JH: So, you remember meeting him up on the - Baden Powell, that is - up on the -?
BB: No, I got - I can't remember going there. That - too young. My mum always told me the child’s story with the photograph, me perched on his knee. Um - but I know I was two years old when they went to camp at Bramfield and most of the 3rd Hertford camps - and other groups in the town - but mostly we went to Bramfield. I've got vague memories of the old white bell tents that the 3rd Hertford had in Bramfield. And having them covered in camouflage. They scrounged army camouflage off and draped them in those. So - they would be in the early days of the war - the early part of the war. And then, cos later towards the end of the war, we ended up with brown bell tents and marquees that came ex-army surplus. But - err -
JH: There were always scouts in your house and always -?
BB: Yeah. I can remember there was, there was Jim, Jim O’Smotherly in the navy. He, his mother lived in Balfour Street, and we used to go and visit her quite a lot. There was Trevor Powell, who I don't think had any parents. He was an ex Barnardo’s [pause] - um - boy. He learnt printing in the Barnardo’s Print School and eventually, when it moved down to Mead Lane, him and another one of those, Ron Stackwood, they ran the Barnardo’s Print School down there. But they originated from Barnardo’s, but I think, I don't think Ron Stackwood, not sure, because his father was once the chief gardener in the castle grounds, and of ‘cause when he was in the war, my mum used to go down and see his parents. So, I can remember going into the, those cottages by the gate into the Castle to the Stackwoods - go down for tea. And - um
JH: So, you were involved with the scouts throughout your - growing up - were you?
BB: Yeah, I mean, I went through a phase of being a cub and the most difficult thing - cos if your mum and dad were the scouters you got - you got - well, sort of, quietly bullied and coerced and what have you. Um - but I was quite young when mum wasn't well and I took over the cubs and actually ran the wolf cubs with a temporary warrant to do it. Until she came back again to run the cubs. I then was involved in the ordinary scouts - um – [pauses to think] - regularly - and - um - my biggest memory is walking up Byde St, home to The Drive, and sort of - scurrying to the side when we're walking up late at night near [indistinct] went.
I can remember the COPS Theatre, as it is now, when the trains used to rumble past because the railway line that was there - I can remember that distinctly - the trains there. We used to practise abseiling over the – over the wall from the road down into the yard in front there to about a 10/15 feet drop. But we used to do things like that. I can remember my dad doing things like - this would be – [long pause to think] yeah, probably during the sort of late 40s, 50s bundling the scouts into his car taking them out 10 miles, dumping ‘em out with a compass and a map saying ‘Now find your own way back’. And - things which scouters today would go spare over - We had a foggy day. He used to go and take a stand in the middle of Hartham and say ‘Here’s a compass. Find your way across Hartham’
JH: And did you?
BB: Oh. We learnt to do orienteering and the use of a compass and I think those things have stood me in good stead because I can stand anywhere and just know which is north, which side, and the time of the day, you look for where the sun is, you know where you are instinctively, you look at the way things grow, you can tell the direction they’re leaning which gives you - they’re all basic things that we learnt - from, I suppose, the original Scouting for Boys, which was - but -
JH: Interesting. So, were you involved with the other scout groups?
BB: Yeah, in Hertford there was a, I think, a unique scouting thing that - they had a gang shows. This was - I don't think it started during the wars. I would have to look at the dates because I'm terrible at dates. But they organised a gang show. Do you know the sort of thing that they were?
JH: Ralph Reader?
BB: That's it! He, he did most of the organising and - of the London gang shows - my Dad had been in a scout pageant in London, and Tony Burgess had too - and I mentioned him earlier. Tony Burgess lived in West Street. He ran the 1st Hertford Sea Scouts. And Tony, later on in my life, when I was about 17 or 18, I went and asked him to teach me to sail properly. And he did teach me to sail and I've had a lot of sailing out of it. I've got - still got big Gaff rig cutter. And Tony was the producer of the gang shows. Dad was the stage manager and mum did the dresses. She was the wardrobe mistress. She used to have, once a week, all her ladies come up to do the organising of the sewing of the dresses. I could go on about gang show stuff for ages. She also got involved with Peter Dunlop, who was the costume maker for Ralph Reader’s London shows and mum was one of those people, you could give a coat and say, ‘Can you copy it?’ And she would - or give her a drawing and she'd make a paper pattern and make a dress and she was very, very good at doing that sort of thing. When I was young, she made all my clothes and I've got photographs of me in - a sort of naval outfit with the reefer jacket, a little peak cap, and she would make – I remember her making the first duffel coat, when duffle coats came out of the war for people on the, on the boats. And I had a duffle coat but I had a proper reefer jacket.
JH: So, she was making the costumes for the - shows?
BB: And she made the costumes for the gang show and she made some also for the London gang shows through Peter Dunlop. So, she got - err - involved. We used to get the wigs from the gang show from somebody in St Albans and it was one of the first – my introduction to go into St Albans, for us to go with my Mum to pick the wigs up.
JH: So where were the shows - where were the shows held?
BB: They were held in the Corn Exchange. We did things - and I was talking to the Museum about this. This is why I've made these figures - my training for that came with making the stage props, and Tony Burgess, he was a carpenter by trade. He'd worked for J Arthur Rank when they were at Welwyn Garden City. And when I was about 17 or 18, I went over there a couple of times with him. I remember one project he had to make a Spitfire but we made a complete dummy Spitfire. And we brought part of that to Hertford for one of the gang shows. They had a song called Flying High. And the front end of this Spitfire. I mean, the tips of the wings had to be cut off because the stage wasn't wide enough, but there was a full-size front end of the Spitfire on there.
JH: So, these shows involved all the scout groups – in the area?
BB: All the scout groups. Yeah - which was the 1st Hertford Boy Scouts and Cubs; the 1st Hertford Sea Scouts; the 2nd Bengeo. And the 2nd Bengeo was run by an original 3rd Hertford scout. Jacko, we used to call him. I can't remember his first name, but Jackson was his, his later name, his surname. And he ran the 2nd Bengeo’s and they did then start – I think, they were called the 5th Hertford - they were at Sele Farm. So, there was [pauses to think] the 1st Hertford's, the 3rd Hertford's, the 2nd Bengeo’s. So, you got to know them and we would camp. Often, we’d go to Bramfield camping at a weekend. And the scouter there would be from the 1st Hertford’s. Do you go out as a patrol with no sort of real body in charge.
JH: But it's a good idea to make lots of friends.
BB: Yeah. And one of the people who got as much memory as me, I'm sure he’s still around. We always called him Titch Murkin. Don’t know if you heard of him - no - he lives down Tamworth Road end of the Town and Titch ran the 1st Hertford’s. The Rovers Scouts in Hertford came from all the different groups. So, the older ones - that's the ones over 18, the Rover Scouts - they joined in the gang shows. I mean, I could go on for hours about the gang shows, some of the things that we did! It was a great - um - thing joining together. I met the other day that girl who - girl, elderly lady now! - who used to play the piano. And she was one of the things because we - she played the piano at the rehearsals and when the rehearsals was finished, we all got keen on ballroom dancing. So, we used to get - she became Joan Hawkins. I can't remember her name. But anyway, I met her at a party the other day in Maidenhead [Baden may be referring to Maidenhead Street] - we used to get her to play music so we could practise her dancing [laughter]
JH: So how long did you stay involved with the scouts for?
BB: Till I was about 24. And what happened, my dad had a dream of building a new scout hut. And we built - and it was designed in our workshop. We built a place - um - if you go along Port Vale just before the, what was the bridge, there's the new scout hut in there, but it's not quite on the same site.
We built a wooden scout hut. I got involved in going to Norway. I went to Norway when I was 23 and I got a lot of knowledge of timber buildings. That again is another side I could go into because I've done a lot of research into timber, use of timber and we built the Scout Hut as a group scout headquarters down Port Vale. And it was really the brainchild of my dad. And I was working on that and I, I was only married - the first marriage for 2 ½ years - and I lived over my grandmother's in Port Hill. And to be honest, I spent too much time mucking about with the Scout Hut. When I - I always look at it now and think I spent too much time there.
JH: Not enough time with your wife - !
BB: And my wife went off with somebody else. And that finished and I was fed up with that - was living in Port Hill on my own after she'd gone and I answered an advert in the Sunday paper looking for people to go on an expedition into north Norway. So, I volunteered for that, ended up going for an interview down in Hereford. And that was run by scouters. But scouters who were members of the - when the SAS first moved down to Hereford -
JH: I was going to say - sounds as though it was linked to the SAS -
BB: So, we had - I went to Norway, and still is - one of my best mates is Norwegian. Here, he's due to come at the end of May a bit. He’s – um - We went on different expeditions. And after the second one I moaned about us running out of sugar and salt on one of them. And the next year I got a letter saying you're duly appointed Quartermaster to the Nansen Club. So, for five expeditions, I was Quartermaster to it.
JH: So, going back to building – ?
BB: So, I stopped scouting
JH: Ah yes, that’s -
BB: And got involved in -
JH: And was the Scout Hut completed by the time you - ?
BB: Yes, the Scout Hut was completed.
JH: And whose land was that built on?
JH: McMullen’s gave the land. But is it the same [?] - when my first wife left and I started getting involved in going to Norway. That was only for a month at a time. The longest I ever spent away, I think, was eight weeks. And I've done expeditions in Norway, in Greenland - um - I've been into Patagonia- um - as one of the quartermasters. And I've done the Atlas Mountains as well.
JH: What was the focus of the - the purpose of the - ?
BB: The Nansen Club was started by a scouter from Hereford. And he just wanted to tie scouts together internationally. And, I mean, the first one I did I remember I went down to Hereford to this interview and at the same time my grandmother's garden ran down to the river. So, I got involved in keeping ducks. And when [chuckles] I, I kept ducks down the garden and I also got involved in showing ducks at the agricultural fairs. And I ended up at this interview having collected a duck from somebody at - near - um - Shrewsbury. And we all slept in this big scout hut. And I had ducks in a basket which I left in the house -
JH: So, they got away - ?
BB: Yeah, no, they ran, ran, round the place. But- um - that side, I got a lot of fun out of breeding poultry and ducks. And- um -
JH: You were telling me, going back to Port Hill, and you're living in Port Hill that your first wife was involved with the riding stables?
BB: No. My first wife’s, father worked for Permanite. I actually met her sister, who was bridesmaid at my first wedding. About a year ago - heard that my first wife is - she's through her fifth husband. She's quite interesting [chuckles]
JH: OK.
BB: So - but I haven't seen her for ages. Then I got involved - one of the lads who worked for me, plumber’s boy from Waterford, lad Smith, he’d gone riding and he was telling me how much fun he’d had riding with Bengeo Riding School. And Bengeo Riding School ran out of - err - Duncombe Rd in Bengeo with a lovely lady to - who I owe an enormous debt, Ruth McMullen. And she operated out of Hertford and we used to have a mad career and I fell in love with one of the girls who worked for her. And [pauses] we got married, still carried on riding, I had a horse, she had a horse and we used to keep those two, just the two horses, in the yard on Port Hill. And then when Ruth decided to move down to Norfolk, because she was going more into training eventers and she's trained quite a few very well-known - um - people in the, in the horse world - international competitors and we carried on riding - running the Riding School from Port Hill. And we did it for about seven years, bought a cottage next door so we lived in there, and that was [thinks] 43 years ago now ‘cause Charlotte was born in that cottage.
JH: So, whereabouts was that one?
BB: Next door to it, little house with gothic windows on the front. And we had that. And my second wife’s father bought the second, third one along there and lived in one of those. And I had the ambition to buy the whole of that row of cottages and, as we owned the land as a family where the stable was, the stable yard - converted it from - it was a builder's yard and my - the big garage that my old granddad used to keep his car in - we turned into a big stall. And we bred quite a few horses from there which was quite, quite intriguing. And I rented land from McMullens, which is now all the Port Vale estate, down there, all the new estate. I had the fields down there round the Scout Hut. I rented land off the Council under the Warren and up to St Leonard’s Church. I rented Molewood field that's against the North Road. I had Lys Hill field and the field at the top of - um - we used to call it the pits - it's where the V2 Rocket fell in the field. I think, I think the hole’s still there and I haven't been up there for a while but - um - we built a, an enclosed arena, which is still there - err - against Lys Hill. And I got - was quite involved, up to the point where we took the Riding School over, in doing the ducks. I was secretary of the British Waterfowl Association for three years. We used to go and put - stand up - and be at things like the Dairy Show and the Agricultural Show in London and the county shows.
JH: So, going back to the Riding Stable, when did you move on from that? When did you sell that or -? Somebody took it over from you?
BB: Um – [pauses to think] No, nobody took it over for us. We gradually phased it out. We moved from Port Hill to a place called Little Gobions and in fact, we were in the house on Port Hill, wondering how we could manage to deal with two children in a two bedroomed cottage. And we were talking about it and the lady rang up and said, her drains were blocked again. And we went out to deal with that, ‘cause I remember that it was one of my plumbers was sitting - we were sitting in the bathroom seeing how we could make another room out of this complex, this little, tiny cottage - and went out there and she said she was fed up with living in the country. And - err - we did a swap in effect.
And we moved out there and built it up. And my father wanted to sell the yard. That was the other thing. So, we cut down on the amount of horses we had. We sort of - the peak - when I was doing the - err - the Riding School and the livery horses - the peak was when we had all the Knebworth jousters’ horses and looked after them. And that came out of the old County Day shows when the jousters came over for that. We looked after their horses for that weekend and then they stayed on for a while. And - um - we quit that and moved to Little Gobions and cut the Riding School part out though we kept our own horses. And I'd started because we had livery people - err - with us - with the Riding School. Notably, one of the Christie family from Hoddesdon, Miss [?] Christie. And I used to go take her hunting and I started to go hunting. So, I joined the Puckeridge hunt and I hunted for - aww - a hell of a lot of seasons with the Puckeridge. And it was easy because we had a big horse box and moving about horses was easy. And I've started to collect carriages. I ended up with 14 restored carriages which the ponies could pull. And I used to store them in the Old Maltings in Port Vale. Now completely pulled down. Part of that is the school playground. And part of that I just - I used to rent the whole building from McMullens for £2.50 a week. But I had to get out soon as I was told. It was an agreement -
JH: So, what happened? What did you do with the carriages? What - ?
BB: I sold them all to buy - no - not all of them. I sold all but two to buy Little Gobions. To put the money. So, we bought Little Gobions with money - and we had a sale at Reading Cattle Market of the carriages and -
JH: So, you took them all over to Reading?
BB: Took them all to Reading. I remember loading them onto a great big low loader, which I hired from Robinson’s in Ware, the Hauliers. And we loaded them up in McMullen’s transport yard which was at the back of that Maltings then. And we put them all on this one great lorry. And I took a trailer down as well. And we had a sale - had a sale on my own of all my carriages. And about two years before that I bought a saddlers up in Hitchin, St Ippolyts, and we'd got lots of harness and that sort of thing and I just sold it up to buy a decent house. Quit the Riding School which had financed my driving and hunting and what have you, and concentrated - and at that time my father, semi-retired, and so he retired from running the business which he'd taken over from grandfather – and I was -
JH: So, what happened to the land?
BB: It was sold [long pause] - just trying to think - to somebody - it ended up being sold to the undertakers that developed out of Scales the Undertakers. And that's how it got to Austin’s. And, yeah [long pause to think] - it was at that time I sort of moved out of Hertford. Still - I was then – err - took over the building business from my father. Because I left school at 14 and went as an apprentice to Richard Ginn’s in Hertford. Did an apprenticeship. I didn't finish it completely there because one I got a - a scholarship. I went to Hatfield Tech. Through that got a scholarship working for Cement and Concrete Association and spent six months at Iver in Buckinghamshire, their research place, which was quite an interesting job and I only got it because my, my father indulged me. He supported me in all these sort of things I did and when we were running the business together, I could have time off because he was there doing it, anyway. So, I was very lucky. But I, I completed my apprenticeship officially with my grandfather. I transferred from Ginn’s.
JH: So, what was the apprenticeship?
BB: As a carpenter and joiner. Is what I went initially for. And then - because I'd been involved with granddad's business, when I went to Hatfield, I was there the first year that was a Technical School. It was primarily built for de Havilland’s - the Technical School there. But they had a very good building section. And the trade examination was City and Guilds. And I'd already been in the, in the building industry for two years and they said you got to do the first year. Well I was well beyond that. So, it was suggested I went in and took a National Building course, which I did. I found it took me three years to do the final the highers, because I never had a really good basic maths foundation. And I've got this dyslexia, which held me back quite a bit. But I eventually got the Higher National Certificate. But I'd run into - I was married - I'd run into working with my father who took over from Granddad. The last years of my apprenticeship, granddad still ran the business, but my dad gradually took over and then he took over completely and then I built up with him until I took over from dad. And it was when dad sold - got out of Collins - I carried on the building business. And - umm - when I stopped living at Port Hill, and turned the top of the offices at Collins into a flat. Just a two-roomed flat and lived there. When Jane and I first got married, we lived there -
JH: And then you moved to - out to -
BB: We moved over the road to Port Hill. And then we went to Little Gobions, and we sold Little Gobions. I was going to buy a farm at Benington called Gregory's. And Jean’s dad was living with us because he was getting infirm. And he went and died on us and he was part of the finances to buy Gregory's so we had to not buy Gregory's and we moved into Hertford where in between times I had helped Archie Loveday from Beckwiths - you know Beckwiths the antiques?
Well, Archie and I were - he was a great guru of mine. We built the Weir Cottage. You know the one as you go out of St Andrew’s carpark? And you go across - that one right at the front with the pargeting and what have you. It was the only - the site was the only medieval garage in Hertford. It was a - an old site, medieval. And it had a tin shed on it that Archie used to keep his car in when he lived in Old Cross Cottage which is near the Library. And he decided he would like to build on it. And he bought the Maltings that go down there, before that was sold for development. And he built Weir Cottage with the idea that his wife would – with him - would move in there and, as she was getting older, she'd have less distance to walk to go in the town. But she flatly refused to move in there so for the first year, when it was completed, Jean and I and the two kids lived there. While we waited to find somewhere else. And there was another Hertford character, David Mason, lived at the rear of Barber’s nearby. And he used to spend a lot of time with us. And he - when we at Weir Cottage - and he was the one who found us Whempstead Farmhouse, and Whempstead Farmhouse was sold up because they wanted to get rid of the farmhouse but not the farm. So, we had just one field with Whempstead Farmhouse. And I bought that off Mary Pearman who built a cottage for herself or a house herself, a very nice one, next door. So, we moved to Whempstead.
JH: So that was when you moved out of Hertford. That's the last time you lived in Hertford, was it or did you come back again?
BB: Oh, no. I, we came back. And - um - I still kept the flat over the offices going. When we were at Little Gobions - one of our apprentices - his parents moved away. And he came and lived with us. And he's still around the town. Peter and he, he lived with us in the old-fashioned sense of an apprentice living with the Master [chuckles] which - we're still good friends. The [pause] move from Little Gobions to - um - Weir Cottage was quite a good move because my son had - he’d started off at Port Vale School. And then he went to Lochinver at Potter's Bar [Lochinver House School]. And because there was five or six families with kids going there, we only did one day a week. And it was easy for us because we, because we had the fields and what have you. We had a Land Rover. We used to take six kids to school in it. We just shared it.
JH: You did one a week.
BB: Yeah, and at that time, because I was involved with the horses, before we moved to Little Gobions, had a lot of grass to look after. And, very fortunately, met up with a farm manager who ran Windy Ridge Farm at - on the Bramfield Road. And when the man who owned that died, Fred Phillips was looking for a job and he came and worked for me as a - on the building side. And we organised and I ran a small farming contracting business. So, I had two big tractors and two small ones. And we had a couple of chats and we go round, especially orientated towards people with horses. We’d cut the weeds, do the hedges, fencing, any sort of field work.
And I, I had at that point, about 300 acres of grass. So, having Fred as a guiding thing, I started to keep cattle and some sheep. And I was also running a sort of farm bit on the side. When we moved to Little Gobions we were right in the middle of - I always call him my Uncle George Little from Waterford. His son George still farms that land, still a good friend of mine, and Uncle George Little was a very good stockman. He used to have a thousand pigs down there at a time, always had cattle of good quality. And being as I had a great big horsebox, we had lots of trips to places like Banbury market and what have you. And that time when we moved to Little Gobions, we had our own house cow. And Tinker Bell, we kept in the field next door and we never bought milk. We always used -
JH: You always had fresh milk!
BB: We always had fresh milk, and if we ran out somebody had to nip out and go and milk Tinker Bell. And she was, she was lovely. We had a lot of fun with her - and my - the nice thing now is that my daughter, especially, she runs the same sort of life. She's got a flock of [pauses] rare breed. She's got the old Wiltshire horned sheep. And she keeps chickens and my grandson's got his little [raft? rubber?] of ducks.
JH: So where do they live?
BB: They’re down in Wiltshire, in Tisbury.
JH: So, when did you move back to Hertford after your period of time at - ?
BB: Well, from Weir Cottage we went to Whempstead, and then, unfortunately, one of my managers and my wife struck up a relationship. And I decided I didn't want that and I, quit. And Jean and I got a divorce and she went off and lived with him. But I'd made her a partner of the business and she got all the cash. And I kept the business which I survived with. Then she went off, but within two and a half years, they'd run through all the cash. And she came back asking me for help. And with what she had left, we bought another house on Port Hill.
JH: Oh, so you moved back to Port Hill?
BB: I didn't move in with her - but - we bought the house and we did it up. And by that time, I'd found the girlfriend out at Bulls Green, and we'd started spending time there but I've always kept a base in Hertford. When I moved from Whempstead, I bought number 24 Fanshawe Street and did that up and lived there on my own for a while. And Val became a steady partner. So, I was in Fanshawe St for four years. And then because my cash had gone, the bank foreclosed on me. And when you look at it now it’s a ten grand, and that is - not regarded as a lot nowadays!
JH: It was!
BB: It was. So, I decided to go on my own and not employ people, anymore. So, I wound the business up and - err - best thing I ever did was stop working for other people. And - err - but I I've had and I still keep - I used to have what I called - um - customers, clients or patrons. The patrons were the ones who gave you a job and the cost didn't matter. And I'm very lucky that I'm still looking after two or three of my patrons.
JH: Are you!
BB: Yes, so that's how I survive at the moment.
JH: And you come now you’ve lived in Hertford Heath for - ?
BB: Yeah, well then - um - I moved from Fanshawe St back to - um - Cowbridge, the flat above the offices and stayed there for a while and then I went in and bought 39 Byde Street and lived there. That's where I met - err - Sue [indistinct], my third wife, and we did 39 Byde St up. And sold it and decided to do a couple of trips around the world. So, I've been - um - first of all based in Jordan, and explored the Middle East fairly well. And her family was where we, we stayed. And I've done a lot of archaeological stuff out that way, looking at things that I'd never dreamed of going and we went to India for a long stint, too, and Nepal. And those have been - that was [pauses to think] - oh, the last time I was in the Middle East was at the beginning of the Iraq War, which was, what, 2003? - I was actually in Iraq when the war started which I -
JH: Interesting!
BB: Yeah, I can tell a story about those adventures. But - um - I feel like a drink - can we stop - ?
JH: Yes, I think, I think we've talked -
BB: - enough!
JH: You've given us a very thorough - um - review of what sounds like a fascinating life, Baden. So, thanks very much.