Danny Howell writes: Some recollections about the clothes and shoes I wore in my pre-teenage years during the 1960s –
My mother used to knit my jumpers. She didn’t buy new wool for knitting. She would go to a jumble sale and buy an old jumper. She would then wash that jumper and unpick it. The wool was then wound into balls and was soon afterwards used to knit us a jumper. My mother was a very good knitter and she spent many an evening knitting. I can ‘hear’ now the clicking of the knitting needles. She had a box full of old knitting needles in all sizes. And she had loads of knitting patterns, either saved and cut out from women’s magazines or acquired from friends or family members.
The jumpers my mum knitted for me were not always plain ones. She could do the more fancy styles and sometimes did things a bit different for the collars or cuffs, and sometimes the top of the jumper would be in a different style to the rest of the jumper. Occasionally she just knitted a plain jumper. Some she did with a v-neck and some she did with a polo-neck. They were good jumpers she knitted. The only thing was the colour you got depended on the colour of the wool from the old jumper she had been able to get at the jumble sale. Usually it was okay, you’d get a nice maroon or a dark blue, but I can remember once I ended up with a garish orange jumper. I can’t say I enjoyed wearing that to New Close School. (In those days there was no school uniform). Still, I had no say in the matter. You wore what your mother told you to wear or what she had knitted you, and that was it.
The jumble sales I really remember were the ones that were held at the Town Hall in Warminster on a Saturday morning. My mother used to take me with her. Again, I had no choice in the matter. If she said I had to go with her, then I had to go. I can remember us having to queue outside – the jumble sales were very well-supported and there would be tens of people, mostly women, lined up along the pavement, sometimes as far back to Kendrick’s shop next door or round the corner into Weymouth Street. I can remember standing there, very impatient, and one thing stands out vividly in my mind – nearly opposite, on the north side of the Market Place, just a few yards along the street, was a large clock on the exterior wall of the first floor above what was Chamber’s shop. It was a big clock, a wooden one, with an ornate surround of flowers and fruit carved out of wood and above it was the wooden head of a carved cow complete with horns. I used to look at that and I was quite intrigued by it. I used to like to see it.
When they opened the Town Hall doors for the start of the jumble sale there would always be a big rush as everybody charged in, eager to get some bargains. You can imagine what it was like. I’ve got a feeling the jumble sale was held upstairs because I distinctly remember a large staircase. I was only a little boy, so I suppose the staircase looked a lot larger than it really was. It was certainly far larger and grander than the simple staircase we had at home. The room the jumble sale was held in was a big room, and there were tables with all the old clothes and things heaped up on them. Old clothes, books, toys and bric-a-brac, the usual stuff, but mostly clothes.
One thing more than anything stands out in my memory about that place. I can remember seeing a tiny staircase, a narrow one, that went up the side of one of the walls (above the staircase which goes to the first floor). I used to wonder where it went and I can remember playing about on the bottom step of it while my mother looked for bargains at the jumble sale. I can ‘see’ that little staircase now. It’s funny what odd memories reside in one’s mind. (When I visited the old Town Hall during an open day in 2011, I noticed that the narrow staircase up to the roof is still in situ – so my memory is serving me fine.)
We didn’t wear second-hand underwear. That was a no-no. My mother bought us our underwear – our vests and pants and socks – brand new. Of course, my mother’s sister, Diana Turner, my Auntie Di, was the owner of the Baby Shop at George Street, Warminster. So I expect my mother would have bought our vests and pants and socks from there. Yes, she did. I dare say my aunt would have let my mother purchase those things for a bit cheaper than the recommended retail price. I expect my mother would have bought my underwear from any shop in town where she could have got it cheap. It wouldn’t have been dear in any case. It’s not like today when some people have to buy only designer labels and pay over the odds for a certain brand. I think that’s ridiculous. I certainly wouldn’t pay big money for a designer label. I’ve got more sense than to do that. There were no designer labels when I was a child. Yes, there were well-known brand names but you bought whatever was the cheapest. It didn’t really matter what the maker’s name was. No-one could see your underwear – unlike today when youngsters go round with their jeans sagging to their knees so that they can show the tops of their underwear specifically to expose the brand name of their boxers. When I was a boy your underwear was definitely kept out of sight. I don’t remember boxer shorts being worn when I was a youngster. It seems they’ve become more popular in more recent years. In the years of my youth, boys wore briefs – usually plain white jockey briefs or y-fronts, and I suppose men wore briefs – again y-fronts (like my father did) – or they wore long-johns. Older men, like my granddad, wore combination long-johns. That was the fashion in those days.
Another thing that’s quite noticeable these days is that you hear about people, particularly women, who own hundreds of pairs of shoes. To me that’s crazy and a waste of money. When I was growing up my parents had a couple of pairs of shoes each and it was the same for me. I had my school shoes, which were bought new, and my shoes for playing in. The latter were often acquired second-hand from a jumble sale or were your old school shoes when you got new ones for school. I wore a pair of black lace-up shoes to school. If I remember rightly they were a brand known as Tuf. I should think my parents bought my school shoes either from The Baby Shop at George Street, Warminster, or one of the shoe shops, like Frisbys, in Warminster Market Place. We knew the latter as “Frisby-Joe’s.”
I can remember being told to take care of my shoes. I was not to scuff them and I had to make them last the longest time possible. They would have been a big expense in the household budget. Father used to keep my school shoes polished with some black Kiwi polish. I never had to clean my shoes, myself, when I was a child. My father always did it for me. Same as he always did the whitening of my daps (plimsoles) for me when they got dirty during gym at school. Dad always made sure they were spotlessly white for the next time I needed them. My father was very good to me. I can remember at one time having some little metal studs being fixed in the bottom of the heels of the shoes I wore to school, to stop the heels from wearing down so quickly. Father would have bought those studs from a shop – probably from Mr. Christopher’s, who I shall write more about in a moment – I shouldn’t think the studs cost very much – and father would have tapped them into my heels.
What I do remember is that my parents didn’t go and out buy a new pair of shoes for themselves when the shoes they had became worn. They would get their shoes repaired. There was a shoe-repairer, a cobbler, called Mr. Christopher and he had a little wooden shed at the bottom of Boot Hill. His name was Herbert Christopher, but we always knew him as “Mr. Christopher.†My father would take his shoes or mother’s shoes there to be repaired. I can remember going there with father when I was a very young boy. It was only a little shed but it had a window with shoes and shoe accessories like bits of leather and laces and shoe polish on display. You stepped into one little room and there’d be Mr. Christopher sat there, usually repairing a shoe. He would be working, but talking to the customer at the same time even though he would have some tacks or little nails (for nailing leather) gripped between his lips. Most people of a certain age in Warminster, will remember him talking while he had some nails held in his mouth.
I can remember seeing a thing called a last in Mr. Christopher’s shop. I dare say there was more than one in there. It was made of metal and resembled three up-turned prongs. A shoe for repair was placed over one of the prongs so that it could be held in place while he worked on it. In those days most men wore hob-nail boots – something you don’t hear so much about these days – and Mr. Christopher would have done a roaring trade I should think by supplying and fixing hob nails. It was usually the norm for someone to leave their shoes or boots at Mr. Christopher’s for repair. He would give you a receipt and you would go back a few days later to pick up the repaired footwear. I can remember my father having to do that. I used to like going to Mr. Christopher’s. For a start it was in a different part of the town, and in my young eyes the inside of that little shed always seemed a bit unusual.
That little shed is still there now [2009]. In recent times it’s been used by other little businesses but at the moment [August 2009] it is empty and has been empty for quite a while. Not long ago someone, I think it may have been Steve Martin from Highbury Park, was seeking planning permission to knock those two little sheds (there’s two of them there, side by side) down and build a house or two there. From my researches I discovered that Mr. Christopher had previously used a shed on the opposite side of the road. I published a photo of that in one of my books (Warminster In Old Photographs). I can remember seeing that old shed all derelict and overgrown with ivy. But the other shed, the last one used by Mr. Christopher, still stands (for the moment) with its neighbouring shed, and looks very much like it always did.
My mother used to have the Empire Stores mail-order catalogue. Anything that she and father wanted, which couldn’t be obtained locally, was purchased from the catalogue. Of course, the advantage of that was that mother could pay so much a week and if other people ordered out of the catalogue, via mother, then mother earned a little bit of commission. Only a few pennies but it all made a big difference. Other women at The Dene had catalogues too but from different companies. For instance, Bet Marmont at No.63 The Dene used to have the Grattan catalogue. My mother and Bet and one or two others would borrow each other’s catalogues, just to see different things, and they would order from one another if they wanted to. It was a way of helping each other out.
So, as you can see, my parents were able to obtain our clothing and shoes from various places and by various methods, and the jumble sales, the cobbler and the catalogue companies enabled them to make the most of what little money they had – my parents lived within their means and were thus able to get by.