The edited transcript of a tape-recorded interview Danny Howell made with George Blagdon, at his home, Sherwood Close, Warminster, Wiltshire, on the afternoon of 31st July 1998. This transcript was first published in Danny Howell’s book Wylye Valley Folk Volume One (Bedeguar Books, July 1999).
“My dad was Herbert William Blagdon. He spent most of his life in the Deverills but when he left school he went working down Lymington way somewhere for a while. His parents were local. They were Salisbury Plain people. My grand-mother’s name before she got married was Emma Grant. She was born at Imber. Her family were farming people. They worked on the land. My grandfather George Blagdon was born at West Lavington. I’m named after him. I knew my grandfather very well. He was of medium height and he had a moustache. He was a shepherd all his life. He went all over the place working. He’d work for one farmer for a while and then he’d move on, and so on. That’s what the shepherds used to do years ago. They went to hiring fairs. They’d get talking to farmers and find work that way.”
“When I was a kiddy I used to go and visit my grandparents. At that time they were living in the Deverills. They were at Hill Deverill. Grandfather was the shepherd at Manor Farm, Hill Deverill, for a long while. Another time he was a shepherd for Neville Marriage when Marriage had a farm out there. And another time he was a shepherd for the Stratton family. That’s the sort of people he worked for.”
“My dad’s parents were just ordinary country people. They were religious in their ways. My grandfather and grandmother are buried at Hill Deverill. Grandfather hasn’t got a gravestone. The grave is all covered up in any case. The churchyard at Hill Deverill is messed up now. The church has been converted into a house and you’ve got a job to find the graves there now.”
“My dad didn’t come from a big family. There was just him and one brother. There were just the two boys. Dad’s brother was Sidney Blagdon. He lived in one of the council houses at Hill Deverill with his wife Elsie. They didn’t have any children. After working on the farm for most of his working life Sid went up the army camp in Warminster, working as a groundsman, cutting grass and doing things like that. He outlived my father. Uncle Sid died in 1965 [on 3rd March] and is buried at Hill Deverill.”
“My dad was a shepherd for most of his working life but he could turn his hands to just about anything on the farm. He’d do thatching or haymaking or harrowing, whatever the boss wanted him to do. He wasn’t mechanically minded but he was capable of doing any of the general farm work. He was really a shepherd cum farm labourer. He sort of followed in his father’s footsteps. He worked with his father at one time, and also with my uncle. Dad worked for different employers. I can remember him working for Mr. Stratton at Manor Farm, Longbridge Deverill. Mr. Robins has got it now. I can also remember him working for Mr. Jefferys at Lower Barn Farm. That’s going back a bit. Dad didn’t serve in the First World War. He was wanted on the land. He was in like a reserved occupation.”
“In the spring he had lots to do because it was lambing time. In early summer he had haymaking to do and in late summer and autumn it was corn harvest. He didn’t get much in the way of spare time but whenever he wasn’t at work on the farm he spent his time gardening. He had a fairly big garden and an allotment. He grew everything in the garden. Potatoes and all. There used to be some allotments at Crockerton. When we children came out of school we had to change into our old togs and help out on the allotment. We had to do our share.”
“Dad was very strict. We children had to toe the line. We couldn’t get away with things like children do today. Dad would take his belt off and give us a whack if we needed it. Ha ha ha. You daren’t hit your children now, you’d be had up, but I think it held us in good stead to a fair extent. It taught us right and wrong. We knew we had to keep out of mischief but we used to get up to a certain amount of it though, even so. We knew how far we could go and we knew when to stop.”
“Dad spoke with a bit of a Wiltshire accent. He used to use some of the old Wiltshire words. Dad might have been a lowly farmworker but he knew a thing or two. He was a self-taught musician. He could read music. He used to be in the Heytesbury Band years ago when Heytesbury had a band. He played trombone. He had a trombone in home. It was hung up on a beam in the kitchen. He was a very good player. Mother didn’t mind him playing it. He played marches and hymn tunes. Dad’s trombone ended up with Warminster Town Band. Dad swapped it for a cornet. We had the cornet here for a little while but it got knocked about a lot. I used to play the cornet. Dad taught me how to play it. I got on alright. I could play a tune but I didn’t get very far. The family used to have musical evenings. My parents never had a wireless in the early days and you had to make your own entertainment. Dad’s father played a violin and my uncle played a euphonium. My brothers and I used to go to grandfather’s and we’d sit round the table playing away. There was an oil lamp on the table for lighting because there was no electric.”
“My dad was of medium height. He had brown hair but it turned white in later years. He also had a moustache. He wore his working clothes in the week and his Sunday best on Sundays. My dad was religious. He went to chapel. There was a Primitive Methodist Chapel at Sand Street in Longbridge Deverill. It’s not there now. It’s a shed now. Father went there regular. He used to preach sermons there as well. He pushed his views on to others, to a certain extent. He could hold his own alright. His politics were Liberal in them days. He would voice his opinions on that too but he had to be careful because his employers, the farmers, were Conservatives. He had to toe the line there a bit.”
“Dad never took much notice of sport and he didn’t belong to any clubs or organisations, except for the Longbridge Deverill Flower Show. He used to be on the committee of that. He did a lot of work for the flower shows years ago. Apart from that he kept himself to himself most of the time. The blokes on the farm were his mates. I never knew him go to a pub. He wouldn’t drink. I never knew him touch a drop of drink. He was a teetotaller. That sat side by side with his religious views. I never heard him swear. No, never. And he didn’t like other people swearing. If he heard someone swearing he would always make some comment about it afterwards.”
“Dad never smoked for years and then all at once, just before the Second World War, he started smoking again. He never earned a lot of money and he couldn’t afford to smoke before, with seven of us children to bring up. He smoked Woodbines or he rolled his own. He smoked cigarettes and I can remember him smoking a pipe. That was his pleasure later in life.”
“Dad had good health all through his life. He lived until he was 71. He died in the 1950s [on 16th September 1959]. My father and mother are buried at Crockerton Churchyard, in the little narrow bit top side of the church. They’ve got a gravestone. They’re buried on the north side of the church. That’s a house now. Mum died before dad. Mother died in 1949 [on 19th January]. She was 66. My father re-married. His new wife was a widow called Nelly Lane. She was a Longbridge Deverill person. She was originally Nelly Baggs. She had been married a couple of times, I think, before she married my dad. She had been Nelly Mullins and she had been Nelly Lane. My dad met her at the Methodist Chapel at Sand Street, Longbridge Deverill. When he married her we didn’t call her ‘mum’ or ‘mother’. We called her aunty Nell.”
“My mother was Emma Coles. She was a Crockerton girl. All her family were Crockerton people. Her mother was Ellen Maria Coles and her father was Daniel Coles. He was a farmworker. He was a shortish chap and he always had a moustache. He didn’t go far. He used to work for Dufosee’s at Church Farm, Longbridge Deverill. Daniel Coles used to live at Clay Street, just path the Bath Arms, in Crockerton.”
“My mother had [two] brothers [called Frank and Charles], and [three] sisters [called Elsie, Ethel and Annie]. Her brother Charlie Coles died in the First World War. Her sister Elsie married a chap called Wilkins from Horningsham. He was a carpenter. He worked on Longleat Estate at one time but he got a job as a carpenter on an estate near Yeovil. That’s where Elsie and her husband went to live after they got married.”
“My mum was a small person. She was very short and she was pretty good looking. She used to tie her hair at the back. I would say she was attractive. I don’t know how my mum and dad first met. They never used to talk about things like that. I know he was living at Deverill at the time. She was living at Crockerton. She was in service in Bath before she married. She used to come home at weekends from service in Bath. They must have met somehow. They got married at Longbridge Deverill, I believe.”
“My mother and father set up their first home at Foxholes, between Crockerton and Longbridge Deverill. I think it was No.144. It’s not there now. It was pulled down just after we moved out. It had got dilapidated. It was an old-fashioned place. The house was one room up and one room down. That’s where we were brought up. We were all born in that house.”
“I had five brothers and one sister. I was born first on 21st November 1914. The First World War was on. I was only four years old when the War ended but I can just remember seeing the Australian soldiers who were about here. They were in camp at Sand Hill, Longbridge Deverill. They used to come out into the fields below Foxholes, where we lived, to do their drilling. I can remember seeing that. I think I was christened at Longbridge Deverill Chapel. Being the oldest child I got put on. I had to help mother with the others.”
“My brother Arthur Edward Blagdon came next. He was born in 1917 or 1918. He went to work at International Stores in Warminster Market Place, where Payne’s [Balfour News] is now. He was an apprentice there. He served his apprenticeship for three years but he gave the job up and went as a carpenter for a builder in Warminster. He was a carpenter for the rest of his life. His wife was Joyce Toghill. She was from Swainswick, near Bath. She used to be in service at Foxholes House at Crockerton. That’s how Arthur met her. They got married just after the Second World War but they didn’t have any children. Arthur and Joyce lived at No.1 the Council Houses, Crockerton. Arthur died at Warminster Hospital in 1965 [on 8th October]. He had a tumour. He was only 49 when he died. He was out in Burma, fighting the Japanese, during the War and that’s how they reckon the trouble with the tumour started. He was ill for a long time. The last couple of years were very bad. He’s buried at Crockerton. His grave is next to my mother and father’s.”
“Dennis came next. He was born about 1920. When he left school he went to work for Simmonds, the drapers who had a shop at Warminster High Street. Den stuck that for a few years and then he went in the building trade. He worked for Holdoways. When the War broke out he and two of my brothers were in the Territorials and they were in camp at Semley. Den met a girl while he was there. She was from Semley and her name was Nelly Bennett. They got married and they had a big family. They had seven children. Dennis died about two years ago and he’s buried at Longbridge Deverill.”
“Fred came next. He went to work at Jefferies’ glove factory in Warminster for a while but he had consumption (TB), so he had to pack in gloving. He had to get an outdoor job. He went on for a building and removals firm. He got posted to Swindon during the war. He married a girl from there. When his war service was over he got a job with a steel plate firm in Swindon. They made car parts with steel presses. He married a girl called Dorothy. Fred and Dorothy are both dead and gone now. They were both cremated at Swindon.”
“My sister Kathleen came next. She worked at Hibberd’s, the drapers, at the Market Place in Warminster before joining the WAAF when the Second World War was on. She got married and had a family. She married Sammy Marchmont. He was a farmworker. He worked for Marriage at Rye Hill and they lived at one time in one of the cottages near the junction of the Maiden Bradley to Longbridge Deverill road and the road that forks to Shearwater (on the corner with the road which goes down to Lower Barn Farm) and he was also responsible for looking after a reservoir in the Deverills. The reservoir was next to a road but I can’t remember exactly where it was. Kathy is dead and gone now [and Sammy Marchmont died on 22nd January 1950].”
“Frank came next. He worked for Holdoways as a bricklayer. Frank didn’t get married. He had bad luck. He was courting a girl but she got friendly with another chap in the Army and that put Frank off for life. Frank spent most of his life in Warminster. He lived next door to the Globe Inn [now the Snooty Fox] at Chapel Street. He’s dead now. He was cremated at Bath.”
“Leslie, my youngest brother, also worked for Holdoways. Leslie married and had a family. He married Mary Trim. She was from Crockerton. Leslie and Mary lived in one of the council houses on The Green in Crockerton. They had several children including Linda, Marian, David and John. [Leslie William Blagdon died on 7th December 1990].”
“My brothers and my sister and I got on alright as children. I’ve outlived all of them. I put it down to good living. I never smoked much and I never drank much. I would have a couple of pints on a Saturday night and that was about my whack. I stopped smoking in 1947. I gave up just like that. I said ‘Next time they put the price up I will stop,’ and I did. The wife had just got me a hundred fags and I wouldn’t smoke them. The wife was cross. She had to give them away. I haven’t smoked since. They say it’s bad for you and I suppose it is.”
“My mum never smoked and she never drank. She used to go to the Women’s Institute at Crockerton. She was just an ordinary member. She joined in with what they were doing. That’s about the only thing she belonged to. Mother was religious. She was church-going until she got married and then she went to chapel with father. We were brought up as chapel. Mother went along with what dad was doing. It didn’t cause any friction. Mum was happy-go-lucky. She would tell father to sort us out if we got up to anything. She was more lenient. We could sometimes get away with things with mother.”
“When I was a child I had to help my mother in the home with things like washing-up and I also had to lend a hand with the gardening. I didn’t get pocket money as a child. The only money we got was if we did a few errands, if anybody wanted us to go in to Warminster to get something. Mrs. Parker, the farmer’s wife at Shearcross, would ask us to do errands and she’d give us a few coppers. We used to save the money until we had a few pennies and then we would go to Warminster Common. There were quite a few shops there. Mr. and Mrs. Dodge had the post office, bakery and shop on the corner of Deverill Road and Fore Street. Mrs. Dodge was alright. Mrs. Carter had a shop on the corner of Chapel Street where the hairdresser, Minty’s, later was. She sold groceries and sweets. Max Holloway had a bakery at Chapel Street, around the corner from the Bell And Crown pub, and Sam Burgess had a grocery shop and photography business at Brook Street. We went from shop to shop before deciding what to buy. That’s why we went to Warminster Common, to try and get the best value for our money.”
“Warminster Common was a rough old place though. Years ago the people always used to be fighting there and the cottages and streets were very run-down. It’s all been done up now but when I was young it was an awful place to live. We used to get a lot of cheek from the boys there. They used to set upon us sometimes and chase us out. We had to be brave.”
“There was a little shop in Crockerton. It was a house really. It was on Clay Street, opposite the Congregational Chapel, near the corner with Broadmead Lane. The shop closed years ago but the house is still there. At one time Mrs. Eeles ran the shop in Crockerton. After a while Mrs. White ran it, and there was Mrs. Godfrey later on. It was the same shop. The woman’s name was above the door of the shop but I can’t remember any signs being on the place. There might have been some. As well as groceries the shop also sold paraffin. The paraffin was kept down the cellar.”
“My mother used to buy bits and pieces at the shop in Crockerton but for the main shopping she had to go to Warminster. She used to go in International Stores. She walked in to Warminster and walked back to Crockerton. Mother would go into town during the week if she wanted something but usually father did most of the shopping on a Saturday evening. He had a bicycle and he’d cycle in. We kids would sometimes get sent into Warminster to get some shopping if mother and father were busy.”
“People came round Crockerton delivering. Payne’s the bakers from George Street brought out bread. Mother got her bread off them. It was good fresh bread. It was delivered by a horse and van. That was the transport in those days. Mr. Payne came out on a Monday afternoon and got mother’s order. The van would then bring the stuff out. It was a regular thing. They would come out two or three times a week. The Co-op, in Warminster, used to deliver bread as well.”
“In the old house at Foxholes there was a big bake oven. Mother used to bake her bread in there years ago. You put the wood faggots in there and when you took the faggots out the oven was warm enough to put the bread in. You burnt wood because you couldn’t afford to buy coal. My parents collected firewood from wherever they could get it. They used to take a trolley up to the woods near Crockerton. No one ever stopped you or turned you out. Lord Bath owned the woods and you got a permit off him for collecting wood. You had permission. Lord Bath allowed you to gather any fallen wood. You daren’t cut anything down. You only gathered what had fallen. There were a lot of fallen branches in the wood that the wind had brought down. Lord Bath was happy for us to have that.”
“Mother cooked on a range in the kitchen part of the house. She turned out some good stuff on that range. We had mostly rabbit stews. Father used to bring home plenty of rabbits from the farm. There were a lot of rabbits about in those days. You didn’t keep meat for long because there were no fridges. The milk was kept in a bucket of cold water in the summer. We used to get hotter summers in those days. You got a month of good weather in the summer but it was pretty cold in the winter.”
“Mum got her milk off Frank Parker, the farmer at Shearcross. He had a couple of cows and he used to sell milk. He was alright and so was his wife. The Parkers belonged to the Baptist Church at Crockerton. They were strict on that. Mrs. Parker used to go round the village with a can and a measuring jug, delivering the milk. She would bring us along some skimmed milk sometimes. Mother was only too pleased to get that. She made rice puddings with it.”
“We had a roast dinner on Sunday. We usually had a bit of beef. Father kept about a dozen hens so we could have a few eggs, and he also fattened a few cockerels. We generally had a cockerel for Christmas. We looked forward to Christmas. We had a Christmas tree in the house. We used to get it out the woods. If we couldn’t find a tree we had a branch instead. I believed in Father Christmas until I was a certain age. We hung a stocking up on the mantelpiece before going to bed on Christmas Eve. In the morning we couldn’t get our hand in the stocking quick enough to find what was in it. We usually found an orange, a few nuts, and if you were lucky a little toy. Very often it would only be a bit of chocolate, maybe a sweet sugar mouse, and a penny. We were thrilled to bits to get that. That’s all we had to look forward to. It’s very different for children today.”
“My parents didn’t have much. They had to make do and mend. Mother used to make our clothes. Our boots and shoes came from Dodge’s shop at George Street. We used to play hopscotch and things, which soon wore our shoes out. When we scuffed them they had to be repaired. We took them to the cobbler Mr. Christopher. He had a little shed at the bottom of Boot Hill in Warminster.”
“There was a well in next door’s garden and we drew our water from there. The well had a hood and a windlass where you turned the handle. There was a long rope. It was quite deep. The well water was good. It was good clear water. Sometimes you’d bring a frog up in the bucket but that didn’t bother us. You just threw the frog out.”
“With seven children my mother had a lot of washing to do. She was kept very busy. She washed the clothes on Mondays. Mother did the washing in an old coal boiler. There was an outhouse on the back of the cottage at Foxholes and the boiler was in there. Mother washed the clothes in soda and she used a dolly and a washboard. The clothes were dried on a line in the garden and then carried back in for ironing. Mother had some flat irons. She heated them on the bars of the fireplace. It was hard work but she got on with it.”
“There was no bathroom. A tin bath was hung on a nail on the end wall of the house. When you wanted a bath you carried the tin bath indoors and placed it in front of the fire. You put the boiler (in the outhouse) on to heat up some water. You carried the water into the cottage and poured it into the bath. It was hard work in them days.”
“The toilet was at the top of the garden. It was a bucket one in a closet. The bucket was emptied out on to the garden every so often. Father always saw to that. It made the vegetables grow. People don’t know nothing about it today. We tore up newspaper for toilet paper. Something like the Warminster Journal. There was no soft tissue like today. We tore newspaper up into squares and hung it on a nail. We knew no different.”
“My parents didn’t have a lot of furniture. They had a couple of armchairs and a sofa. There were a couple of other chairs. They had lino on the floor. Mother used to make a rag rug to go on the floor in front of the fire. The stairs went up the side of the fireplace. We went to bed with a candle but we had to be careful because of the thatched roof. We had to make sure we put the candle out before we got in bed. We had a chamber pot under the bed. That was a must in those days. There was one decent size bedroom and a small bedroom. Six of us boys slept in one room. My sister slept in the other room with mother and father. It was cramped and there was no privacy.”
“The cottage wasn’t a very big place. It was very run-down and the thatched roof used to let the water in occasionally. There was a scullery room and a living room downstairs. We had oil lamps downstairs. A chap came round with a van selling oil. His name was [Edgar] Charlton. He had a place at West Street and he only had one arm. He used to come round with the paraffin once a week.”
“I believe the cottage belonged to my mother’s uncle years and years ago. She looked after him when he was getting on. When he and his wife died they left my mother the house. There was no rent for my parents to pay. They didn’t have to struggle with that. They had to pay something to the parish every year though. There was a house built on to the cottage, with a very big garden. Although our cottage has gone, that house is still there. Somebody named Mrs. Yuill lived there. Afterwards someone from London bought it when they retired and they lived there. We lived at Foxholes until about 1937 or 1938 and then we moved to 112 Clay Street at Crockerton. We never used to refer to it as Clay Street though, we always called it Bradley Road.”
“I was about four when I started school. I went to Longbridge Deverill School. That was Church of England. It was where the village hall is now. I went to that school rather than Crockerton School because living at Foxholes, we were closer to it. We only had to just go over the brow of the hill. Crockerton School was further away. We rolled our hoops to school and home again. Children in those days always had hoops and tops. I can remember having a top. My dad’s brother bought it for me. That was my uncle Sid.”
“Uncle Sid lived with his parents at Deverill. He didn’t get married until he was getting on in years. He married Miss Shepherd from Longbridge Deverill. She worked at Longbridge Deverill Vicarage for the Reverend [John Wilfred Royds] Brocklebank. She was Brocklebank’s parlourmaid and she worked at the Vicarage for a good few years. Parson Brocklebank used to come in the school every week and give us a talk. We used to look forward to it. He was a nice person. He was always friendly and he always took an interest in us children. He was a tallish chap. Brocklebank had a gardener called Frank Lane and I used to be pally with Mr. Lane’s son Donald. The Lane family lived in a house belonging to the big house. I used to go over there. Parson Brocklebank would come along and start telling Donald and me about all the flowers. He would explain them to us.”
“I didn’t mind going to school. There was a blackboard in the classroom and a tortoise stove. The school caretaker, Mrs. Gray, looked after the stove. The room was always warm in the winter. We went home to dinner. The break was about an hour and a quarter. If it rained on the way to school we would try and shelter under the trees. There was nowhere really to dry our clothes when we got to school. We had to line up outside before going in to school in the morning. Someone would ring a bell and we had to march into the classroom. The teacher took the register and then we had an assembly. We would say a couple of prayers and afterwards the lessons started. We did reading, writing and arithmetic, and we did a bit of PE. I liked drawing. My schoolmates included a boy called Trollope from Lower Barn. All us children were about the same. We came from the similar backgrounds. Most of the fathers worked on the farms and didn’t earn much money. A lot of the children had holes in their clothes and patches on their trousers. If someone was particularly rough and ready they would get picked on by the others.”
“There were six to ten children in a class and there were three classes. One for the over 11s, one for the middle ones, and one for the little ones. Mrs. Morgan taught the senior children. She was the headmistress and she lived in the school house, by the church. She was pretty strict. You knew you had to pay attention when she talked to you. You had to behave. The school teacher had a job because some of the boys could be quite a handful. She would use the cane. Quite a few children got the cane from her. I got it once or twice. I was messing about and she caught me. I went home and told my parents Mrs. Morgan had given me the cane and my parents gave me a hiding. Miss Smith taught the children in the middle class. She was okay. She was very homely. Miss [Ethel] White was in charge of the little ones. She was pretty good. She lived opposite the school, across the road from the almshouses. There was another teacher at Longbridge Deverill School when I first went there. That was Miss Heath and she was from Bishopstrow.”
“We used to have a school trip to the seaside once a year. We went in Mr. Cornelius’s charabanc. We spent all year looking forward to it. We went to Weymouth or Weston Super Mare or Bournemouth. That was the farthest we ever went as children. We took some sandwiches and we played about on the beach. There were donkey rides at Weston. I think we paid a little bit towards the trip. Most of the cost was met by the school though. They used to hold whist drives to pay for things like that. Sometimes our parents came with us to the seaside but usually it was just the teachers and us. If the parents could afford to go that was all well and good.”
“I went to Longbridge Deverill School until I was 14. I only went to the one school. That’s all. We took exams in the last 12 months. I could have gone to the Technical School in Warminster but my father couldn’t afford to send me, so I had to go out to work. I think my education was sufficient. It took me through life alright. My parents used to tell me certain things. My parents used to buy a newspaper or two. Father used to read the Daily Herald and the Warminster & Westbury Journal. He would read things out of the paper to us kids. My parents would tell us things if we asked them. Sex education was unheard of though. That was never talked about in home.”
“I left school when I was 14, in 1928 or 1929. Times were hard then but I didn’t have any trouble getting a job. My father worked on Stratton’s farm at Deverill and the blacksmith used to go up there, to Manor Farm, shoeing the horses. That was U’ey White’s son, Norman White. He and my father must have got talking because father came home one day and he said to me, ‘Right, George, you’re starting work on Monday.’ I said ‘Where to?’ He said ‘At Norman White’s. He’s going to give you a job.’
“Uriah White and his son Norman had a forge at Weymouth Street in Warminster, where the car park is now at the bottom of Chinn’s Yard. There was a big chestnut tree there. It was only felled a few years ago. The forge was by that chestnut tree. There was iron work all about the yard. There was just enough room to get a horse through there to the shop. White’s place reached from the big building, where they sell pet food now [J. & K. Burton’s] to the park. It was a big place.”
“U’ey White was the boss but Norman was doing all the shoeing. White’s had a good trade. There were four blacksmiths in Warminster in those days. There was Albert Dewey at Emwell Street, Alec Fitz at the Furlong, Alec Fitz’s father [Ephraim Fitz] at Button’s Yard, and White’s at Weymouth Street. There was another Fitz [Ernie Fitz] with a forge at Boreham. They all had a good trade before farming got mechanised.”
“Uriah White’s trade was mostly concerned with shoeing horses but he also bonded wheels. He did any repair work needed on the farms, like with ploughs and things. Most of the customers were farmers. He also made a lot of gates. He made the gates and the hinges for the church doors at Christ Church. If you look at the bottom of the steps of the Athenaeum, you’ll see a couple of metal scrolls. White’s made them for Mr. Egerton Strong who did the stonework. Those scrolls were just for decoration. I think one of them is probably still there.”
“Egerton Strong was the monumental mason at Portway, where Curtis & Son, the undertakers, are now. That’s where Mr. Strong had his yard. He did a lot of the gravestones you see in the churchyards. Uriah White and Mr. Strong often worked together on buildings, Mr. Strong doing the masonry and Mr. White doing the ironwork.”
“Uriah White owned the business at Weymouth Street and Norman worked for his father. I had to do what both of them wanted. I just did what I was told. Norman was alright to work with. When I went there first of all there was a chap called Vincent working there but he left and went gloving at Westbury. That was Lionel Vincent. He lived at Chapel Street, at Warminster Common. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for when I started at White’s. I knew of Mr. White but I didn’t know much about him.”
“Uriah White was a fattish chap with a beard. He had plenty of money. He owned a lot of property in Warminster. He used to go to the auction sales and buy a couple of houses at a time for £100. He used to let the houses. He had quite a few houses around the town. He had been a blacksmith all his life and I think his father was a blacksmith before him. Uriah White lived at No.3 North Row. It’s still called Forge Cottage today. Mrs. White was alright. She was attractive in her way. They had a son called Norman and a son called Billy. Billy White was a blacksmith at Heytesbury.”
“The day I started work at White’s it was snowing. I set out at quarter past six, from Deverill, to go to work in Warminster. It was a bit grim. The snow was deep and I had to walk to work in short trousers. That’s all I had. My father gave me a pair of puttees he used to wear in the First World War. I wrapped them around my legs to try and keep warm. I can remember walking to work in the snow.”
“I can also remember the first job I did for Uriah White. He had some houses at King Street, down at Warminster Common. Some snow had got in under the roof of one of those houses. Uriah said to me, ‘I want you to go down to King Street this morning with Frank Grist to clear the snow out.’ Frank Grist was an old retired mason. We went down there. I had to stand at the bottom of a ladder. Mr. Grist put the snow in a bucket and lowered it on a string down to me. I had to chuck the snow away. We carried on like that until we had cleared it all out. The occupier of the house, Mrs. Holton, offered Mr. Grist a cup of coffee. She shouted out ‘Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr. Grist?’ Mr. Grist said ‘Yes please.’ I didn’t get one. I wasn’t even asked. I felt bad about that. I had to hang about froze. It was a good start to work, wasn’t it?”
“When I started on the first morning Norman White said ‘I’ve got a bicycle you can have. You can take it home with you and you can pay me for it when you can.’ It was an ordinary old-fashioned bike. He wanted ten shillings for it. I took the bicycle on and paid for it a bit of a time when I could afford it. I saved what I could to pay for that bike. To begin with I earned eight shillings a week. That’s 40 pence now. I gave my mum the eight shillings and she gave me back three old pence. She kept the rest.”
“To help pay for the bike I used to do a couple of odd jobs for people. If I did some errands I could get a few pence. There was a chap named Andrews who had a cobbler’s shop in Mr. White’s yard. Mr. Andrews was a very nice chap. He mended boots and shoes. He had worked for Frisby’s years and years ago but he started up on his own. He had a shed on White’s property. Andrews’ place was owned by White’s. After finishing blacksmithing at the end of the day I used to go and help Mr. Andrews in the evening. I would clean the shoes he had mended. He would give me a few pence for doing it and I was grateful for the chance to have a bit of extra money.”
“There were one or two other businesses, as well as Mr. Andrews’, in White’s yard. Mr. Hamblin had a butcher’s shop in the yard. He had once worked for Eastmans, the butchers at George Street, but he started up on his own. Someone else had a shop in the yard selling sweets and tobacco as well. They rented these shops off Mr. White. The shops faced out on to the pavement but they’ve all gone now. Norman White also had a garage there, selling petrol. Cyril Titt ran the garage. He had a lot to do with motorcycling and grass track racing.”
“I worked at White’s for about five years. I got a wage rise of a shilling every year. The first year I was there I got eight shillings. By the fifth year I was getting thirteen shillings. My mates were working at the Crockerton Brickyard. They were getting more than me, so I asked Mr. White for a rise. He said ‘No, I’m sorry I can’t afford to pay you any more. If you want more money you’ll have to get another job.’ I said ‘Fair enough. I’ll look for another job.’ He said ‘Yes, you better do that.’
“On the way home that night I called in at the brickyard at Crockerton and saw the foreman Jimmy Pinchen. I said ‘Any chance of a job?’ In those days the brickyard was a seasonal occupation. They used to shut down in the winter and open up again in the spring. They used to dry the bricks in the open and they couldn’t dry the bricks in the winter. Jimmy said ‘We are sure to put some staff on when we start up again. How can I let you know?’ I said ‘Let Percy Bundy know.’ Percy worked at the brickyard and lived next door to us. I said ‘Let him know and I’ll come and see you again.’
“About a week after, Percy came and saw me. He said ‘Will you come and see Jimmy in the morning? He’s got a job for you.’ I said ‘Right, I will.’ I went and saw Jimmy. He said ‘When can you start?’ I said ‘I shall have to give White’s, where I’m working now, a week’s notice.’ I told Mr. White. I said ‘I’ve come to give my notice in.’ He said ‘What?’ I said ‘I’ve come to give my notice in.’ He said ‘What’s up then?’ I said ‘I’ve done what you told me to do. I’ve got another job.’ He said ‘How am I going to manage then?’ I said ‘That’s too bad, you’ll have to manage without me.’ He said ‘What are they going to pay you?’ I said ‘I’m not worried about how much exactly they’re going to pay me. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s more a year than you pay.’ He said ‘I’ll have to get someone else in then to work for me.’ He got Bill Stokes after me. Bill lived at Chapel Street but I think he got killed in the Second World War [William Stokes died on 12th February 1944].”
“Uriah White died [on 12th July 1936] before the War started and Norman took the business over for a while until he was taken ill and then he had to give up. Norman had some children. He had two boys called Doug and Ken, and a girl called Brenda. They lived at the bottom of Boot Hill. Norman White didn’t last very long when he got ill. I think he had some complaint. It was a funny thing but he used to say to me ‘George, I shall never make old bones.’ I said ‘What do you mean?’ He said ‘I’ve got a feeling I shall go long before my time is due.’ And he did. When he died [11th February 1949] the yard closed up.”
“That yard was chock-a-block with metal until the Second World War started [3rd September 1939] and then it had a good clear-out. All the iron went for the war effort. It was a surprise to see that yard cleared out. It stayed empty for a while until Curtis & Son had a builder’s yard there with a lot of timber. The big building [now used by J. & K. Burton for pet food sales] was later used by Mr. Slyde. He lived up Weymouth Street. He ran a business called Building Essentials, which sold Warmwey products. You can still see the old signs painted on the building but they are fading away now.”
“The job I got at the Crockerton Brickyard was temporary to begin with. As I said just now, brickmaking at Crockerton was only seasonal, from April to October because they dried the bricks outdoors. They told me they would be having a new kiln built the following year and then they would be making bricks all the year round. They were going to have a drying shed built, with boilers. I was happy to start temporary. I was happy to have any job to survive. I started in April and worked until October. They couldn’t make bricks after that because of the frosty weather. It had to stop then. I got laid off and I was without work for about a month.”
“I had to sign on the dole. The Labour Exchange was in the Market Place. It was where the estate agents [Taylor’s] are now [Taylors closed December 1998], next to where the traffic lights are. There were a couple of rooms there. The Council Offices were there as well. There were quite a few men on the dole. There wasn’t much work about in those days. The farmers were getting rid of their horses and going mechanised with tractors. A lot of men, like the carters, got pushed off the farms. A farmer would get a tractor driver who would do the work of three or four men.”
“I signed on three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I got a few shillings a week, about ten, when I was on the dole. It was paid to me at the Labour Exchange. Mr. Pullin was in charge and he would send people out looking for work. If they found a job for you they would send you off to it. They had nothing for me. I didn’t get sent anywhere. I wasn’t worried about not getting a job because I knew the brickyard at Crockerton would start up again the following spring.”
“I was coming home from Warminster one day and the manager of the Crockerton Brickyard, Mr. [Herbert] Hankey, stopped me. He said ‘Mr. Blagdon, could you do a job for me?’ I said ‘I could.’ He said ‘I’ve got a job which would suit you temporary.’ As well as running the Brickyard he also used to run the Birds & Bryer Ash coal yard at Station Road. He wanted help with the coal in the winter. He said ‘If you help there, I’ll promise you a job when the brickyard starts up next year and that will be permanent.’ He promised me that.”
“Birds & Bryer Ash had a big set-up next to Warminster Railway Station. The coal came in by train from Radstock mostly but some also came in from Wales. It was good coal. It burnt well. Birds & Bryer Ash had quite a trade. They did a lot of work. They had four or five horses, hauling coal with carts. The horses were kept in stables near the Station and in some fields near Beckford Lodge, at Gipsy Lane, before the houses and bungalows were built up there. The Co-op also had some fields at Gipsy Lane where they kept their horses. There were some mares up there in the fields. They weren’t shires, they were punches. The horses were used to deliver coal in Warminster and the surrounding villages. When lorries came in they did away with the horses.”
“Stan Bush worked for Birds & Bryer Ash, and so did Charlie Maddock. I had to fill the bags up and load them up on to the carts. It was back-breaking. I got as black as the ace of spades working with the coal. I did half past seven until five o’clock Monday to Friday and half past seven until one o’clock on Saturdays. It was hard work but I was glad to have a job. Mr. Hankey paid me about a pound to 25 shillings a week. I got on very well with Mr. Hankey. I used to have the odd argument with him now and then but on the whole we got on alright. He always treated me with respect and he kept his word about getting me a job at Crockerton Brickyard when it re-opened in the spring. Once the Brickyard had its new kiln Mr. Hankey finished with Birds & Bryer Ash. He gave the coal business up.”
“I started at the Brickyard the following April. The new kiln had been installed. It was a big continuous one and they made bricks all the year round from then on. They fired bricks in one chamber before moving on to the next chamber. It had 20 chambers. When they got to the twentieth they started again in the first one. They made millions of bricks. The clay was dug out of a pit. There were three or four chaps digging out clay all the time. I can remember Herbie Dyer, Bill Maslen, and Cecil Ladd doing that. They were from Deverill and Sutton Veny. The clay was put into skips. The skips were wheeled on rails out of the pit to the turntable. The pit was 16 to 20 feet deep and the skips were pushed by hand. They were then winched from the turntable, with a machine winch, to the top.”
“The clay was put through the brick-making machines. It went into hoppers where it was chopped up into little bits. Then it went through a series of rollers and was pressed down through some more rollers into a die. It came out of the end of the die in the shape of a brick. They used to come out on to a slab and ended up as so many bricks on a table. There was a hand machine with a lever which poured water over a set of bricks and then they went into the dryers to be dried. They spent ten or 12 days in the dryer and then they were ready to go in the kiln. The kiln was fired with coal. The bricks were built up in the kiln about 12 or 14 feet high. They covered the top with sand. Along the sand there was a series of holes through which the coal was poured down into the bricks. The fire was drawn up through. The bricks were in the kiln for 10 to 14 days. Then they were taken out and stacked up to cool.”
“All the bricks went out by lorry. The Brickyard had two lorries of its own and Billy White, who had a haulage business in Warminster, used to send a lot of lorries in. Builders also used to bring their lorries and collect. The bricks were loaded by hand on to lorries. Very often the bricks were still hot. The men wore rubber pads on their hands when they were loading. The pads were made out of old tyres. You didn’t hold the bricks in your hands for long when you were loading because you had to get the loads out as quick as you could. The drivers didn’t want to hang about. They couldn’t get the bricks out of the yard fast enough. I’ve seen lorries going out of the yard on fire because the bricks were so hot. The lorries would turn round and come back to the yard to get some water to put the fire out.”
“Before the Second World War started there were a lot of bricks in stock at Crockerton. At one point they told us they had a million and a half bricks on stand-by. When the Second World War was imminent they started to build barracks on Salisbury Plain for the soldiers. Within about two or three months every brick in that brickyard had gone.”
“During the War there were some Italian prisoners of war working at Crockerton Brickyard. They were useless. The first thing they wanted to do when they got there in the morning was go off to the banks of the river Wylye getting willows. They would bring them back and start making baskets. That’s all they wanted to do all day long. They didn’t like making bricks. They were from a prisoner of war camp at Westbury, where the West Wilts Trading Estate is now. There were about six Italian prisoners working at the Brickyard. There was no soldier to see over them. One of the Italians was put in charge of the others. They were not considered a threat. They had to look after themselves. One or two of them could speak English. They didn’t bother me. I didn’t have a lot to do with them.”
“Some German prisoners came after the Italians. Those Germans were the best workers. They were worth their weight in gold. They did a lot of work. To begin with they dug clay out by hand with spades but the boss bought an excavator. I was driving it in the clay pit one day, digging some rough stuff out. I was swinging the excavator round when an accident happened. I looked up and I saw something coming down towards me. That was a fall of clay. It smashed the excavator up. These four Germans came running across straight away and got me out. They saved me. They dug me out. I didn’t pass out but it shook me up. I broke my ankle and bruised the other one. I had a lucky escape. It could have been a lot worse. I got taken to Warminster Hospital to have my foot seen to. Dr. Graham Campbell treated me. I was off work for about two months. I got some sick pay through the union. They fought the case and got me some compensation. One of the German prisoners was a blacksmith. He got the excavator repaired and mended.”
“Mr. Hankey was in charge of everything. There were a couple of women in the office. In fact, they had come from Birds & Bryer Ash’s. One was called Wagstaffe and there was someone called Gray. They did the paperwork and saw to the wages. There were about 30 blokes working at the brickyard. I started off on a machine, slicing the bricks through. The foreman, Jimmy Pinchen, came to me and said ‘I’ve got a job that would suit you.’ I said ‘What’s that, Jim?’ He said ‘I want somebody to look after the boiler and tend to machinery.’ I started doing that. It was a good job. The only thing was I had to work 12 hour shifts, from six in the morning until six at night, and it was seven days a week. There were no holidays. You didn’t have holidays in them days. It was rather monotonous but you had to do it otherwise you’d lose your job. Sometimes they’d come up in the middle of the night to my house and say ‘George, the boiler fire’s gone out.’ They’d shout through the window to try and wake me up. My wife would say ‘Don’t take no notice of them.’ I used to have to go to the yard and sort things out. I only had to go across the fields to get to the Brickyard.”
“The Crockerton Brickyard was a big concern at one time. It came to an end, like a lot of places came to an end for the same reason. It started off as a small job. It was known as the Warminster Brick And Tile Company. It got took over by the Wiltshire Brick Company. Of course they had different ideas. They sacked a lot of the chaps who had been there. The new company had its own way of doing things. They could produce bricks cheaper. A lot of the bricks were made with waste ashes and clinker. I saw millions of bricks during the 15 years I worked at Crockerton Brickyard.”
“My mates and I used to go to the pictures. There were two cinemas in Warminster, the Regal and the Palace, and there was also a cinema in Frome. We’d very often ride our bikes to Frome. We watched the Westerns with Roy Rogers and those sort of people. They were good films, not like the rubbish they make today. We used to go to the fair in Warminster, twice a year, every April and October. It was a good fair. It was a steam one and was held all the way through the Market Place and the High Street, from the Post Office to the Athenaeum.”
“Apart from the pictures and the fair there wasn’t much else to do. We would walk into Warminster and meet the girls. I had one or two girlfriends but nothing serious. One evening I went for a walk with Eric Randall. He lived at Crockerton. His father used to look after the pumping station. He met Dorothy Pearce from Kingston Deverill and I met Mary Garrett. Mary worked for the Jemmett-Brownes at Foxholes House. She was the cook there. I bumped into her while I was out walking. It was love at first sight for me. Mary didn’t think a lot of me at the time. She wasn’t interested but I had my eye on her and I asked her out. We started courting.”
“Miss Grace Jemmett-Browne was the owner of Foxholes House. She was alright. She wasn’t too bad. She lived at Foxholes with her brother [William Kellerman Jemmett-Browne]. He was known as Kelly. He liked smoking but his sister used to stop him. He smoked behind her back. He would ask Mary to go to the shop and get him some fags. I used to go to see my wife when it was her half-day off. I’d go in the evening. If he was there he would say ‘Would you mind nipping to the Bath Arms to get a packet of Players for me?’ I would go and get them for him. He’d say ‘You better have one for getting them for me,’ and he’d give me a cigarette when I got back.”
“I think the Jemmett-Brownes had money in copra, the coconut stuff, before the First World War. They had invested in that in Germany. When the War started they lost a lot of money. They only had the two staff at Foxholes House. That was Mary who did the cooking and cleaning, and Joyce who was the parlourmaid. It was hard work. The house had stone floors. Mary would scrub them clean and Mr. Jemmett-Browne would come walking in with his muddy shoes on and mess up the floor.”
“Mary had one evening a week off and every other Sunday. She was under the thumb at Foxholes House. She lived in and she had to be in by ten o’clock. The Jemmett-Brownes would come into the kitchen at night to see she was in. Mary earned £1 12 shillings and sixpence a month. That’s how much she was earning when we got married. She gave up work when she got married. She didn’t go to work again until much later, when she worked for Mr. Humfrey at Brixton Deverill. That’s when all the kids had grown up and left home. We never left our children alone. They always had someone with them.”
“Mary’s mother came from Longbridge Deverill. Her name was Rose Hunt. She met her husband George Garrett and went to Wales to live. He wasn’t Welsh. His parents lived at Pound Street in Warminster. His father used to work in the malthouse at Pound Street. George went to Wales to work in the mines. He was a coal miner. Mary’s mother died when Mary was born. She never knew her parents. Mary was born in Abertillery. She came to Warminster when she was 10 days old. Her aunt brought her to Warminster. She must have gone to the funeral in Wales and brought Mary back with her.”
“She was brought up by her aunt at 25 Marsh Street, Warminster, until she was about ten. Then her aunt went and stopped with U’ey White’s wife. If anyone was living on their own and dying she’d get in with them so that when they died she could get all their money. That’s what Mary’s aunt would do. Mary didn’t move with her aunt to Mrs. White’s. She wouldn’t have Mary there. Mary went and stopped with the Hiskett family at [18] Bread Street. They were alright. Mr. [Charles Herbert] Hiskett worked for Butcher’s the builders. He was the yardman at Butcher’s Yard at George Street. If you wanted any cement or sand you had to see him for it.”
“Mary only saw her father once. He came out to Crockerton, after we had been married ten years or more. He found out where we lived and came out to see her. Mary told him to push off. He went and he never came back. She never saw her father again. He’s dead now. The woman he lived with wanted Mary to pay to have him buried but Mary wouldn’t have nothing to do with it. He hadn’t been a father to her.”
“Mary and I went out together for about five years and then we got married on 7th July 1938. We made a joint decision to get married. We got our wedding ring from Thick’s in the Market Place. It cost about £5. You couldn’t afford much in them days. There wasn’t much of a choice in the shop. He gave us a cut glass celery jar when we bought the ring. It was a free gift. You could have one of those or a tea strainer. Thick’s shop wasn’t very big. It was where Gateway’s was later on. Mr. Thick was alright. He didn’t have a lot to do with the shop. He was getting on. The gift was an incentive for us not to go to another shop like Chambers’ but we didn’t even consider that. We just went to Thick’s. We didn’t look elsewhere. We did buy some things from Chambers later on, like a cutlery set. I remember Mr. Whitford (who ran Chambers’ shop] said the forks would last a lifetime and they have because we’ve still got them. We still use them today. Funnily enough we use silver every day and have got stainless steel in case anybody comes. Believe it or not.”
“We got married at the Congregational Church in the Close, Warminster. The Reverend Geoffrey Nuttall married us. We didn’t really know him. He lived at Tullos, at Boreham Road. He had just come to Warminster not long before we got married. We had been attending the church though. I didn’t have any in-laws to deal with. Mr. Hiskett gave Mary away. She didn’t have any bridesmaids. Mary had a spray of flowers from Scott’s Nurseries on Boreham Road. They were carnations. She got married in a coat and dress she bought special in Bath. I had a suit from the 50 shilling tailors in Salisbury. I went there special to get it. My best man was my brother Arthur.”
“We didn’t have a professional photographer. I can’t remember who took the wedding photos but it was someone we knew. We had about 50 guests to the wedding and most of them came to the reception afterwards. We had our reception at the Magnet on the corner of Sambourne Road and Silver Street. It’s now the Farmer Giles Hotel. Some people called Howell had the Magnet. It used to be a temperance hall. We had a drop of wine at the reception. Our wedding cake came from the Co-op. We’ve still got the little silver vase decoration that was on top of the cake.”
“We went on honeymoon to Bournemouth. We went to some friends who had a boarding house. The weather was very nice. The summers were a lot hotter and longer years ago. We haven’t had any summer this year [1998]. We’ve had no sun. We’ve had nothing but rain. When we came back from Bournemouth we got off the bus at Crockerton, at the top of the lane to Job’s Mill. We had a house to go to at Bull Mill.”
“Before we had got married Mary went to the village shop in Crockerton one day. She got talking to Ivy Brown. Ivy told her the Curtis’s had to get out of their house at Bull Mill. Mary said ‘Why?’ She said ‘I don’t know why but they’ve got to get out.’ Mary told me and I went down there and saw Sammy Paradise. The house and the farm at Bull Mill belonged to Lord Bath but was rented to Paradise. He had a few cows and a horse there. Paradise had been renting the house to Curtis. Mr. Curtis didn’t work on the farm. Mr. Paradise didn’t have any workers. Sammy Paradise said I could rent the house for ten shillings a week to begin with. That’s where Mary and I set up home together.”
“We got our furniture from Ossie Coward at Station Road, Warminster. He had a shop where the Labour Exchange [the Job Centre] is now. Ossie Coward delivered our furniture to Bull Mill. Ossie gave us a little polished table with the furniture we bought. I don’t suppose we spent more than £100. That was a lot of money. We had saved up. We bought everything ourselves. No-one helped us. It was alright starting a home in those days. I don’t think it’s harder for people today, not if they use their brains. It’s what effort you put into it. Mary was a good housewife. She shopped at the Co-op in Warminster to get the divvy.”
“We had oil lamps to start with because the house had no electric. We had to have the electric put in ourselves. I think it cost about £30 to have one light and a plug. We did that and added to it later on. The house had seven rooms. There were three full-size bedrooms. You could get two bedroom suites easy into one bedroom. It had been part of the mill years and years ago. It had got dilapidated, they pulled it down, and built the house there. The old stone walls that were next door to us are still there. Our place was nearly brand new when we went there. There was another house at Bull Mill and Maggie Ball lived in there. Her husband was killed in the War.”
“The Second World War started in September 1939. I didn’t get called up. I was in a reserve occupation at the brickyard. They asked for volunteers for the LDV [the Local Defence Volunteers]. I was doing 12 hour shifts at the brickyard. I thought I haven’t got time to do that, so I didn’t volunteer. After a while the LDV was phased out and the Home Guard came in. Captain Hayes, who lived at Job’s Mill, went round Crockerton one Sunday morning getting recruits. He asked me what I was doing. He said ‘Would you like to join the Home Guard?’ I said ‘Yes, I don’t mind joining the Home Guard.’ That’s how I joined the Crockerton Platoon.”
“I had to be at work at six o’clock in the morning and I didn’t finish work until six o’clock in the evening. Then I had to go on Home Guard duty once a week. It kept me out of mischief. The Crockerton Platoon met at the Bath Arms. That was a good place for us to meet. We were issued with uniforms and we had guns. I had a Lewis gun. We went over to Mere on Sundays and practised firing at a range there. The Army taught us and we also trained at drill. I enjoyed it. It was the same as you see on Dad’s Army on television. There were some queer cockers in the Crockerton Home Guard. There was Captain Hayes, and a gang of us including Charlie Carpenter, Abner Brown and Bill Holton. Bob Dufosee was in charge. We had to guard places. We used to go to the reservoir at Bradley Road on Sunday nights and then we’d tour around. We never saw any action but we saw planes going over.”
“A landmine was dropped near Job’s Mill one night. It wasn’t dropped on a specific target. What happened was, a German plane was on its way home and it was being chased by one of ours. This German plane had to let its landmine go. The blast blew our front door out. The glass went across the yard. We were under the stairs. There was a big place under the stairs and we used to get under there when we heard planes going over. After the blast I went out and had a look. Me and the old chap from next door walked up the lane. We couldn’t see anything. I said ‘He can’t be far away, Jim.’ He said ‘No, it can’t.’ The next day we found out where it was. It was about two fields over. Some cows had been killed. The dead cows were at the Marsh. I expect they belonged to Mr. Hannam, the farmer at Butler’s Coombe. That landmine was about the only bomb Warminster got although they did drop a series of incendiaries up by Crockerton Church one night.”
“Mary and I had to take some evacuees. Someone came out and said we had to do it. They were pushed on to us. We were told we had room for 14 and that’s how many we had pushed on to us. We were given no notice. The evacuation officer looked at the house one day and told us we’d have them the next day. They were mostly Cockneys but some came from Liverpool. Their surnames included House, Bates, Reynolds, and Matheson. One or two were a bit mischievous but the majority weren’t too bad at all. We had to cope with them as best as we could. We took it in our stride. Mary had to do all the washing. Half the time we had to clothe them too. We didn’t mind because we had their ration books and their clothing coupons. We used to flog the clothing coupons. Mary knew several people who would buy them and she’d find them something to wear. When you couldn’t get any ration books or coupons things were bad. They had to have what we gave them.”
“We had evacuees the whole time of the war, up until 1945. We were busy. We had started our own family by then. We had three kids of our own and 14 evacuees, making 17 kids in all to look after. The kids went off to school during the day and came home at tea time. The teachers used to look in their sandwich boxes to see that Mary had given them decent food. You couldn’t dodge it.”
“One Sunday one boy had his family come to the house. Mary went to the door. The boy’s mother said ‘I’ve come to see this boy’s dinner. He’s told me he doesn’t have any dinner.’ Mary said ‘You better come in and see what he’s got to eat.’ He had told his mother a lie. Mary said to the boy ‘You’re going tomorrow, I’m not having you here any longer.’ We got rid of him. We didn’t have anyone in his place for a little while. Later on the boys went and then a family came – a man, his wife, and several kids. They were a family of 14. They were alright. They kept themselves to themselves.”
“After we had been at Bull Mill for a few years Lord Bath took the farm and our house back from Mr Paradise. We had to pay our rent then to Lord Bath. By that time, instead of paying £2 a month we paid £1 14 shillings and sixpence a month. It had gone down. I don’t know why and we didn’t query it. Eventually we had to get out of the house at Bull Mill. Longleat Estate wanted the farm to make it into a craft studio. They wanted our house as a residence for someone to look after the studio. Longleat Estate asked us if we would be prepared to get out.”
“We put our name down on the council housing list. We moved from Crockerton to one of the council houses at Mere Road, Hill Deverill. We moved into No.5 Hill Deverill. Our neighbours included the Carpenters and Mrs. Tryhorn. She moved out while we were there and somebody else moved in. It was alright at Hill Deverill. The houses are a long way back from the road. I think they built them that far back because Neville Marriage was on the council and he owned the farm at Hill Deverill. The land, where the council houses are, belonged to him. That’s how they came to be built. We had a lot of garden there. There was 90 feet of garden at the front and a big garden at the back as well. Some of the tenants bought their houses. Stanleys bought theirs first. We had the chance to buy ours but none of our children wanted it so what was the point? They didn’t want to go out there to live. That decided it. If we had the money we still wouldn’t have bought it.”
“By 1949 I could see that the brickyard was going to close before long. It had already changed hands once and I knew it wouldn’t last forever [It closed in 1954]. Things were getting tight. I thought to myself the first job I see available I’m going to try for it. I saw an advert in the Warminster Journal for a maintenance engineer wanted in Warminster. It didn’t say where in Warminster. It said apply to someone in Chippenham, so I wrote off to the address.”
“What happened was, Frank Moody’s bacon factory at Fore Street, Warminster Common, had closed down during the Second World War. It had got turned into a cold store. The people who had the cold store gave it up and a bacon factory in Chippenham took it over. They were connected with the bacon factory at Calne. That was Harris’s of Calne. They used to call themselves the Wiltshire Bacon Company but they were taken over by Harris of Calne who got took over by the Fatstock Marketing Corporation. It was the Fatstock Marketing Company who re-opened Frank Moody’s old bacon factory at Fore Street. They retained the name Frank Moody’s.”
“I had a letter to attend the office at Moody’s, at Fore Street, at a certain time on a certain day. They said ‘Someone will meet you.’ A chap came from Chippenham and he interviewed me. He gave me the job. He said ‘You seem alright, when can you start?’ I said ‘Whenever you like.’ I gave in my notice at the brickyard and I went to work at Moody’s bacon factory. I told the manager at the brickyard I was going to work for Harris’s. He came and saw me several times after I started at the bacon factory. He said ‘Oh, won’t you come back to Crockerton to work?’ I said ‘No, I’m doing alright now. I’ve settled down. I shall stay where I am.’
“About 20 to 25 people worked at Moody’s. I had to look after the boiler, do the machinery repairs and look after the engines. There were pig pens at the back where they kept the pigs. They used to kill about 100 pigs a week. There wasn’t a lot of squealing when they killed the pigs. You’d be surprised. It was done by electric. They brought the pigs in from the markets, sometimes from quite a distance away. They used to bring a lot in from Sussex. There was a big slaughterhouse at the factory and a big cellar where they cured the bacon. The meat was cured and sent out to shops and factories.”
“A lot of people had kept pigs during the Second World War and before. I kept a couple when we lived down by Bull Mill. There were some sties there. Warminster had a pig club during the War. That’s how I managed to get the food for feeding the pigs, through a club. We fed them on barley meal and potato peelings. We used to make some swill in a bucket of water at the bottom of the garden. We’d boil it up. You could buy little pigs from local farmers. I bought my pigs off different farmers like Mr. Arnold at Sutton Veny. Perhaps I’d buy some at Frome Market. If you saw a pen of pigs you fancied you’d buy ’em. A young pig was about £4 or £5. We fattened the pigs to eight score. Once they got over that they were getting too fat. You tried to get them to seven and a half to eight score. You had the best choice of bacon then. You sent your pig into the bacon factory when it was fattened. The factory would have half and you would have half for yourself. The factory gave you the market value. It was worthwhile. You made a profit. We hung the bacon up in the loft. You sliced some off when you wanted it. It was good stuff.”
“I worked at Moody’s for 15 years until it closed down in about 1964. It had been taken over, with a lot of other places, by the Fatstock Marketing Corporation. They closed a lot of places down. They decided to close Calne and they decided to close Warminster before they did Calne. Even though it was only a small place, they were making money there, but they decided to close it down. I knew the Warminster factory was going to close. The manager cried his eyes out. He said ‘I’ve got some bad news to tell you chaps. They’re closing this place down next week.’ I was made redundant and that was that.”
“I was on the dole for six weeks. I had no choice. The Labour Exchange was at Weymouth Street then and there were quite a few people signing on. I had to wait and see what turned up. The Labour Exchange told me there was a job going at Geest’s at Copheap Lane in Warminster. They suggested I try for it. I went up to Geest’s and saw Bob Ruddle who was in the office there. I got a job packing bananas. I must have handled thousands of bananas. I got sick of the sight of bananas but it didn’t put me off eating them. I still like to eat bananas now.”
“The bananas came to Warminster by rail. There was a siding next to the factory. 15 to 20 trucks would come in at a time from Barry in South Wales. The bananas came into the factory on hooks on an overhead rail. We had to lift them off the hooks and carry them into the ripening rooms. The temperature was controlled to ripen the bananas. It took about 10 days. When they were ripe they were taken out of the rooms and graded. They were weighed in 28 pound lots and packed in boxes for the shops. Geest’s had their own lorries, about a dozen, which would go off every morning.”
“The bananas came in nearly all year round. The only thing that really effected things was if they had a storm in the Windward Islands, where the bananas were grown. A bad storm there would blow the plantations down. Then we would have to wait. We used to find a lot of big spiders and different insects, including a lot of scorpions and big locusts, in with the bananas. They were still alive. Some of the spiders were quite rare. They were mostly tree spiders and some were nearly as big as your hand. They used to send anything special to Bristol Zoo.”
“We used to get tree snakes as well. They would coil themselves up, in the wild, in the stems of the bananas and would be shipped to England with the fruit. We handled the bananas in the factory without knowing the snakes were there. We never knew they were there until we went to take the bananas out of the ripening room and then we’d find the snakes all over the place on the floor in there. They had come out of the bananas as the temperature rose. We found a lot of them. The snakes were green and about two or three feet long. I never heard of one being poisonous. We picked them up in our hands. We caught them and put them in sacks. They went off to the zoo as well.”
“There were four of us packing the bananas. That was Lennie Smith, Don Collier, Sidney Haines and me. It wasn’t a bad job but it was piece work. We packed the bananas and put a slip with each box. At the end of the shift the foreman counted how many slips were yours to see how many boxes you had done. We worked Monday to Friday, Saturdays sometimes, and Sundays as well if we were busy and there was a lot of bananas to get out. We started at half past seven in the morning and finished at five. There was an hour for your dinner break. They had a canteen. There were not more than a hundred people working at Geest’s. Bob Ruddle was my boss. He was in charge of us. Mr. Hilborne was above Bob. David Dodge worked in the office and there was a fellow called Ray Slater.”
“I worked at Geest’s for eight years until I was made redundant. There was a shortage of bananas. They said ‘Don’t come in until we let you know. We’ll send you a note.’ We were off work for two or three weeks and returned when the bananas started coming in again. Then it got that bad they started cutting staff down. The last ones on were the first ones out. I was one of them. That’s when I was made redundant. I accepted the situation. I didn’t mind because I got another job straight away with Unigate Dairies at the Ham in Westbury.”
“My son-in-law John Jones worked at Unigate Dairies. He drove a fork-lift there. He came home one day and said they wanted some men there. I went down and saw the manager. He asked me what I could and couldn’t do. I was glad to do anything. He gave me a job in the reclaim room. They used to get cheese come back that had been rejected by the shops. We used to tidy it up and make it into smaller blocks for sending out again. It was a six day week. I started at half past seven in the morning and finished at five in the afternoon. I had a car for going to and from work. I had a Morris Traveller. I bought it at Octagon Motors in George Street, Warminster. It was secondhand. It was only cheap but it got me to work.”
“There were quite a few people working at Unigate. There were a lot of women working there as well as men. My boss was Tom Hayward. Bert Windle was another foreman. The manager was Mr. Williams. They were alright. Working for Unigate didn’t put me off cheese. I like it. There was a staff shop selling cheese every Friday. If you wanted some you put your order in. You could get whatever you wanted. It was cheaper to buy it that way.”
“Unigate Dairies had a big trade. They brought cheese in and they processed it. They had machines for making the various cheese sizes. There were chaps cutting up the cheese and adding emulsifying salts. It was boiled down to a liquid and the liquid was carried to the machines and turned into cheeses triangles. They used to do a lot of cheese triangles. The orders had to be got out on time. Unigate had their own lorries delivering to the shops.”
“I was at Unigate Dairies for five years until I retired in 1979. I had reached 65 and I had to call it a day. You had to finish at 65 there. I was looking forward to retirement. I wanted to potter about in the garden. I did a few odd jobs gardening for people until my eyes got bad. My blindness came sudden. I lost my sight over two years. It gradually got worse all the time. The inner part of the eye has completely gone but what they call the periphery is alright. I can just see out of that. I’ve been like this for four or five years now. It has effected my lifestyle. I miss things like gardening but I can’t see to do it. I have to spend my time in other ways. We have the television on but it is a load of rubbish. Mary doesn’t watch it a lot and I can’t see it with my eyes. I listen to it. We follow the soaps. We like Coronation Street, Home And Away, Eastenders and Emmerdale Farm. We don’t bother with the others. I go up to the Blind Club at the Beckford Centre. Apart from my eyes I feel alright. As you get older you get all sorts of things the matter with you but you have to put up with it.”
“Mary can no longer walk. She used to walk miles. She has got a zimmer to get around with now. Without that she couldn’t get to the toilet. They can’t do anything for her. It’s arthritis. She says it could be worse. Mary had a bit of a stroke and she couldn’t get up the stairs at the council house in Hill Deverill. We asked the council if we could get a bungalow in Warminster. That’s how we came to move here, to this bungalow at Sherwood Close. We’ve been here three years come Christmas [1998]. We like it here. It’s alright. If we have an accident here we can get some help quick. We’ve got a warden. We only have to ring the bell and the warden will come running to us. That’s a good thing.”
“We wouldn’t go back to the village now. It’s not like it used to be. Village life has completely changed. In the old days you knew everyone in the village. As they died, people from outside, like retired generals and retired captains, came in and bought the houses. Those sort of people took over. They are not country people with local connections. They’re incomers and because they’ve got money they think they know everything. They’ve ruined village life. I can remember when we had our own football team in the village and a youth club. It was a thriving youth club years ago. There’s no football team or a youth club now.”
“Mary and I were founder members of the Crockerton Flower Show when it re-started after the Second World War. It had been held for many years before the War. My father used to show flowers. He was well known for that and I sort of followed in his footsteps. I was very keen to be part of the flower show when it got going again after the War. The Home Guard was just finishing up. It must have been in 1945. Somebody on the Home Guard suggested we have a flower show as a way of keeping in touch. We thought fair enough. A committee was formed and we joined. Mrs. Fitz was on the flower show committee for several years. Among the other stalwarts were Albert Sharp and Charlie Carpenter. Our meetings were held at the Bath Arms in Crockerton or Crockerton Reading Room which was a little tin hut at Foxholes.”
“Two shows were arranged each year, one in July and one in September. We never made any money on the July show. It was always a loss. There were a lot of entries for it and the George Inn at Longbridge Deverill, the Bath Arms at Crockerton, or the Crockerton Reading Room, our show venues, weren’t big enough, so we had to hire a marquee to accommodate all the entries. The hire of a marquee was the main expense. The September show wasn’t so big, it was just for locals, and we didn’t get as many entries for it as the July one, so we could hold it in the Reading Room or the Bath Arms. We didn’t have to worry about the cost of a marquee then. We usually made a small profit on the September show. It was difficult to organise the shows. There was a lot of hard work involved. Lady Bath and people like that gave out the prizes.”
“The regular winners used to know all the tricks for getting the biggest and best exhibits. If you wanted the longest runner bean you’d get a long lamp glass and grow the bean down through it. The heat would draw it down. That was part of the trick. The other thing was to tie a lead weight on the bottom of the bean to stretch it.”
“There were different classes at the shows for flowers like sweet peas, chrysanthemums and dahlias, and all sorts of vegetables. I used to enter. I used to grow all sorts of vegetables and flowers. I’d have a go at entering anything. We were forever watering and feeding plants. Mary used to get up at four o’clock in the morning on show days to help me. I won several cups.”
“It used to be the same people running the show all the time. They couldn’t get any new blood on the committee. The old people in Crockerton died away and the new people in the village, the retired colonels and the like, would step in. They would say ‘I will do this,’ and ‘I will do that,’ and when it came to they hadn’t done nothing at all. They didn’t want to do any work. All they wanted was to hear their own names mentioned. These ex-army people think they can buy into a village and start running everything but it falls flat. The real villagers won’t have it. We thought enough is enough. Mrs. Beth Davies, who lived at Frog Lane Farmhouse, at Sand Street, Longbridge Deverill, was knocked down [on 12th December 1994] on the main road [opposite the Almshouses at Longbridge Deverill], by a car [a red Citroen van driven by 56 year old Mrs Gwyneth Comley of Chippenham] and she later died [at Odstock Hospital]. Mrs. Davies [who was 65] was a member of the old Beaven family from Warminster. She was good. She was very eager. She used to do all the running about for us. I think that was the final straw when Mrs. Davies got killed. When we left the committee it packed up. We had served on it for over 50 years.”
“Mary and I have just celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary [7th July 1998]. When we got married we didn’t realise it would last 60 years. I shouldn’t think many of the younger ones getting married today will last 60 years. It’s an achievement. We’ve had our ups and downs but we stuck to it. You’ve got to give and take. We’d quarrel and we’d make up. You haven’t got to take any notice of it and get going again. It’s too easy for people to get married now and its too easy for them to get divorced. People these days seem to be married for about five years and then they start messing around with someone else because they want something different. You hear of people who get fed up after a fortnight of being married. Then they want someone else. They don’t stick to their marriage vows. I think they should do.”
“We’ve got four daughters called Rosemary, Mavis, Val and Daphne, and a son called Malcolm. Rose is now Mrs. Gray. She lives nearby, at Savernake Close. Her husband Ken is a driver. Mavis lives at Burgess Hill, about eight miles from Brighton. Her married name is Prince and her husband is retired but he worked on the maintenance at Gatwick Airport. They have got two children who are both married. We always used to go to our daughter’s at Burgess Hill but we can’t go there now because she hasn’t got a downstairs loo and we can’t get up the stairs. She has to come to us. Val lives at Corsley and works at the Bath Arms at Crockerton. She’s married and has got two boys. Her husband John Jones is in business as a builder. Daphne is married to Ian Burgess who works at the REME [ABRO] workshops. They live at Portway but they haven’t got any children.”
“Malcolm is married with two girls. When he left school he worked for Sykes, the poultry people, and he was with them for a long time. He was interested in landscape gardening, so he got a job doing that. He now works for himself as a landscape gardener and he lives near Oxford. He lived in an old place. It had old walls made of the real Cotswold stone. Someone came along and offered him a price for that place. He said ‘You can have it.’ He bought a bungalow and dug the lawn up for a garden. I shouldn’t think it’s any bigger than this room but he’s got everything you could think of growing in it. Potatoes, cabbages, peas and beans. He’s got green fingers. The kids went off to school and brought their friends back to see it because the kids there hadn’t seen a garden before. People don’t bother with gardens there. They build these new estates, they get as many places as they can on an area and don’t worry about leaving enough for a garden.”
“Look at all those houses [Hillbourne Close] they’ve built on the old Geest’s site at Copheap Lane. They’ve pushed as many houses as they can get away with in there. It’s a lot of little cul-de-sacs with everyone looking on to everyone else. Each one has got a postage stamp for a garden. It’s the same at Burgess Hill where my daughter Mavis lives. They build houses without much garden and people pay over the top for them and if anyone has got a garden they get planning permission to build a bungalow or another house. They spoil their own place to get some money.”
“I’m proud of all my children. We’ve got ten grandchildren and eight grandchildren. They come to see us. We don’t go far these days. The wife does a good shop on a Saturday. She hates going out during the week to get stuff. She’s organised. She was brought up like that. Mary goes to Medlicott to play bingo with some of the other old people now. We go up to the Blind Club at the Beckford Centre and I get the talking newspaper for the blind on tape. When we were young we used to go to different places and do a bit of square dancing. Everybody seems to be dressing up as cowboys today, doing this line dancing now. That’s not my idea of dancing, that’s just standing in a line, stepping backwards and forwards, putting your head down, like you’re kowtowing to someone. It’s a craze that has come in from America. In a year or two’s time it will be forgotten and there will be another craze with something else.”
“We used to go on holiday to Butlin’s once a year. We went to different places. We went to Bognor, Minehead, Clacton, and Camber Sands but that was a Pontin’s. We enjoyed ourselves. We used to take the kids. We played bingo and the kids went to the activity clubs. It was good clean family fun. If you went to a show now it would be a comedian with a lot of filthy language and blue jokes. Butlin’s have changed during the last few years. They’ve gone more the American way. I don’t want to travel very far now. It’s not safe anywhere now.”
“We had a scare last Saturday night. It was late at night and we had gone to bed. Someone was walking on our roof. They slid on the slope and jumped down by our door. It must have been kids. A neighbour saw them jump off the roof and she phoned the police. The police were here in about five minutes but it was too late. The kids had gone. They’d scarpered somewhere. I don’t understand these kids. They should be in bed at night. The parents have let them get out of control. The parents don’t seem to worry. When we were kids we wouldn’t have dreamed of walking on someone’s roof.”
“We had two girls come walking in here one day. It was a Saturday. I was led on the bed having forty winks. I heard the front door open. I thought it was my granddaughter coming in because Mary and I were expecting her but it wasn’t her. I came out of the bedroom and went into the living room. There was a girl standing there. I said ‘What do you want?’ She said ‘We thought we would come and see you, to see how you’re getting on.’ I said ‘We don’t know you.’ She said ‘We’ve seen you about.’ I said ‘We?’ She said ‘My friend doesn’t want to come in. She wants to stay out there.’ Her friend was standing by the front door. This girl started talking about our stereo unit. She told us she’d like to get one. My daughter Val turned up and she rung the police. They caught these girls in the end. They were from Bristol. We keep the doors locked now and our daughters have got keys so they can get in when they want to. You’ve got to be careful.”
“People would knock you down for ten pence now. They wouldn’t have dreamed of doing that years ago. You had respect for people and you dared not get on the wrong side of the law. The village copper was on the beat and you had to take notice of him. You kept out of his way if you could. People’s attitudes have changed. They don’t seem bothered about going to prison now and a lot of people are stealing and robbing to pay for drugs. I can’t see the sense in drugs. They are a big problem today. They’ve took hold. They can’t stop it now. Nobody ever heard about drugs when I was young. I don’t know how it all started. I suppose they came in from America.”
“I’ve got no regrets about my life. There isn’t anything I would change. I’ve often wondered what the blacksmith trade would have been like if I had stuck to it but I don’t think it would have been good because the trade went right back as soon as motor cars and tractors came in. The farmers got mechanised and got rid of their horses. People got rid of horses and carts and got cars and lorries. I think I made a wise move at the time, even though working at the brickyard wasn’t easy. It was hard work all the time.”
“People are better off today. Most people have more money than they’ve ever had before. I don’t know where they get it from. Half of them don’t seem to work but they always seem to have money for alcohol and cigarettes and gambling. People don’t save anymore. They spend as they get it. Money comes easy to some people today and they turn straight around and pay over the odds for cars and clothes. When we were young there weren’t so many cars about. Only doctors and parsons had cars. They were the only people who could afford them. Now everyone has got a car. Some families have two or three cars. I suppose people want their freedom. You could say they are selfish. The people in the world today want their own way too much.”
“I believe in God. To me, religion is having a Christian spirit. I think if you do someone a good turn you are a Christian. I don’t think you have to go to church to be one. I very seldom go to church these days. Half the people who do go to church now are not Christians. They only go to be seen and to see what other people are wearing. The church has changed. Vicars have lost their respect now. They don’t seem to agree amongst themselves. They are still arguing about women priests. I’m not for women priests. I think priests should be men. My wife Mary thinks the same.”
“Religion seems to cause a lot of trouble in the world. They’ll never stop the trouble in Northern Ireland. That’s to do with religion. Catholics and Protestants. I don’t think anyone has the answer to it. They should let them get on with it, let them fight it out among themselves. We don’t have to get involved with it. The politicians are letting a lot of these IRA people out now. I suppose the violence will start up again.”
“On the whole there are a lot of good people about. If you look at the world on the whole it is a better place. There have been lots of improvements. They can even build cars with computers and robots now. It’s beyond me. I don’t know nothing about computers at all. I’m lost with them. I don’t know whether computers are a good thing or not. One computer can do lots of people’s jobs. There are not enough jobs for people and the Government has to pay out unemployment benefit and income support. Some people get hundreds of pounds a week in benefits. When I was out of work and on the dole I got ten shillings a week. That wasn’t much. I think the money situation has gone the other way today. It’s too easy for people to get money now. The years after the Second World War seem to have been the turning point. After the War there was money all over the place.”
“A lot of people are against this country being in the Common Market because of what happened in the Second World War. I think it’s time the War should be forgotten. It was 50 odd years ago. Not all the Germans were bad. The Common Market has brought in too many regulations though. They are going to change the currency next. I had a job to get used to decimals, so I can’t see as I’m looking forward to the Euro. We will have to fall in with Europe. I don’t think being in Europe will do away with the monarchy.”
“I am a Royalist. I support the Royal Family. Since Princess Diana died they’ve cut back. It cost too much money. There were too many hangers-on but they’ve had a shake up. Same as the Royal yacht Britannia, they’ve scrapped that because it cost far too much. It was a waste of taxpayer’s money. It’s a pity they don’t scrap this Millennium Dome in London. The Conservatives started it and Labour have got to finish it. I suppose the Government want to make a show with it but I can’t see much sense in it myself. It’s millions of pounds being spent on it. I think more money should be put into the Health Service instead.”
“I think the new Labour government are doing a good job so far. I’m a Labour supporter. You’ll never get rid of the Conservatives around here. They’ve dug their heels in. I think Tony Blair is doing a good job. If I was Prime Minister I’d sack all the rest of these politicians. Ha ha ha. I think more should be done for the old folk, they could be given more money, although I think senior citizens are better off now than they’ve ever been. They get a good deal now but they could do with a bit more.”
“It was them and us years ago. We knew our place and we had to get on with it. There was nothing we could do about it. We never thought about having the money and the things the well-to-do’s had. They never seemed happy with it anyway. They were always worried where the next lot of money was coming from. We knew we had to get up in the morning and go to work or we would starve. People won’t starve today because the state will look after them.”
“Everyone should make their own way in life and not have to rely on others. These unmarried mothers can get everything now. They get themselves in the family way and then everything is done for them. That’s not fair. I think they should be made to realise their responsibilities. They shouldn’t get pregnant in the first place. This thing now about girl power is ridiculous. It’s only a craze. In another year or two there will be another craze. I don’t mind my grandchildren listening to pop music but I don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t interest me. Young people will have to sort the world out. I suppose you’ve got to let younger people have their own way. You can’t change them. If they want to dress like they do and make fools of themselves, then let them. ‘Live and let live,’ is what I say.”