Introduction by Danny Howell
During the early part of 1999, Dorothy Bigwood, who lives at Bishopstrow, suggested I record the memories of Mrs. Freda Barnes. Dorothy’s eldest daughter, Julia, is married to Freda’s grandson, Stephen. And so it was, that on two afternoons during March 1999, on the 10th and the 19th, I went along to Freda Barnes’ home at 37 West Parade, Warminster, with my tape-recorder, to hear what Mrs. Barnes could tell me about herself, her early years, her family, her working days in service, the people and places she had known, the experiences and challenges she had met, and her current life in retirement which included her pride of being not only a mother and a grandmother but also a great-grandmother.
Julia very kindly came along too, not only to introduce Mr. Barnes and myself to one another, but to sit in while Freda answered my questions and reminisced about times past. I think, for all three of us, those afternoons were enjoyable and interesting, and the “nitty-gritty” of the conversations that took place now forms the contents of the text that follows below. I have, almost without exception, put Freda’s words into the text exactly as she said them; my only changes being to omit my questions, to remove any repetition, to check dates and the spelling of names, and to arrange the story into some sort of readable order. Occasionally I have added a date or some factual confirmation of what Mrs. Barnes said but this has been kept to a minimum so as not to intrude too much into the story. These additions are printed in square brackets: [].
Unfortunately, in September 1999, Mrs. Barnes suffered a fall in her home, and had to be taken first to Westbury Hospital and then to Warminster Hospital. It became apparent that she would not return to her independent way of life at her West Parade abode, and in January 2000 she moved to Sutton Veny House Nursing Home, where, despite great care, love and attention, she passed away on Wednesday 3rd July 2002. She was 92. Her funeral was held at the Parish Church of St. Denys, Warminster, where she had been christened and married. It was her wish that she be interred in the grave of her parents (Alfred and Lucy Rowe) and her husband (Charles Barnes).
When I recorded Mrs. Barnes I quickly realised that she was a very contented lady, even though she was house-bound, arthritic, and was becoming increasingly deaf, having spent the last 17 years of her 89 years as a widow. She had a determination to retain her independence and to be cheerful with it. Indeed, in the summing up of her life, she said: “I try not to be miserable.” I can certainly say that she was anything but miserable and was an example to us all. I hope the special qualities of this lovely lady will somehow radiate out from the words below. It was certainly my pleasure to meet her and to spend some time in her company, to ask her questions about her life and to listen and record her recollections.
I would like to thank Dorothy Bigwood for originally suggesting I “interview” Mrs. Barnes, and I would also like to acknowledge the time and assistance given by Julia Barnes. I must also record my appreciation to Graham and Maureen Barnes for their help too.
Freda Barnes said:
“My mother’s name before she married my father was Lucy Maria Ford. I think she came from a big family. I think there were about eight or nine of them, I’m not sure. My mother was the eldest of the girls. Her sisters were Kate, Ada and Polly. I say Polly but her real name was Mary Ann. They always called her Polly. The boys were Harry, Bert, Arthur and William. How many is that altogether? Eight. That sounds about right. They were all brought up at West Street, Warminster, but before that, mother’s father, Tom Ford, had been a blacksmith at Park Street, Heytesbury. He was only a little fellow but he used to work hard. He lived out Heytesbury and he worked at the forge there for quite a while.”
“A little while ago there was a letter in the Warminster Journal from a man, with the surname of Lacy, who said his wife was descended from the Fords and he was trying to trace her family tree. His wife’s family had used to live at Heytesbury. There had been three men in the family. One had been a blacksmith, one had been a carpenter, and I can’t remember what the other one did for a living. It all seemed familiar to me. So I put pen to paper and wrote to this man. He lived at Westbury On Trym, which is Bristol way. I didn’t know if I was doing a wise thing or not. This was at least three or four years ago I suppose. [The letter was published in the Warminster Journal on 16th July 1993]. I had ever such a nice letter back. It turned out that this person’s wife’s mother was my grandfather’s sister. We worked it out, we were sort of first cousins or is it second cousins? Anyway, we were related and we struck up a friendship. The man and his wife came to see me. They had a car. Unfortunately the man has since died and I don’t see his wife now because she can’t come. She writes to me now instead and she phones me about once a month for a little chat. We got to find out about each other through that letter in the paper and we still keep in touch.”
“My grandfather, Tom Ford, came to Warminster to work when, I suppose, the forge at Heytesbury closed down. He went to work at the Brewery in the High Street, Warminster. He used to deliver the barrels of beer. He had an accident one day when he was out with the lorry. He broke his leg and he ended up in bed for a long time. You had to lay still if you broke your leg in those days. He couldn’t get about. I used to go and see him, three times a day, to see that he was alright. He was living then, at West Street, just above the Cock Inn. There was a little drain way, an alley, next to Mrs. Hill’s shop, and my grandfather’s house was round the back of there. It looked across to Cley Hill. Like I say I used to go there three times a day and every time I went I took a farthing for luck. When he died I found the tin money-box with all the farthings in and I had them back. I’ve still got some here now. You wouldn’t get much with a farthing today but that was a lot of years ago.” [Tom Ford died, aged 82, at 59 West Street, on 29th November 1924].
“My grandfather was a lovely man. I liked him. I think I must have been his favourite because I was the only one of all his grandchildren to have their photograph taken with him. I was aged about four and in the photo you can see I’m holding a toy rabbit. The photographer was Mr. Joyce, who had a studio in the Market Place, where the Gateway supermarket was later on [now the Cristettes store].”
“They used to say I was the living image of my mother but I don’t know. She was short and stubby. Of course I’m not as stout as I used to be. She was a happy-go-lucky person and I would like to think I’m the same when it comes to that. My mother could be a bit serious at times, when the occasion warranted it, but she was never a miserable person. My mother had mousey-coloured hair. It wasn’t a distinct colour. Her hair wasn’t auburn, it wasn’t brown, and it wasn’t black. She used to wear it tied up in a bun. She used to wear long dresses, so she would be in fashion today, wouldn’t she? She had her Sunday best clothes, like all of us, but she always had an apron when she was doing her housework. Her picture is in one of your books.”
“My father was Alfred Rowe and he was from Horningsham. I can’t remember much about his family because we weren’t told things when we were little. I don’t think he came from a big family. I’ve got an idea they might have lived at Pottle Street but I’m not sure. It was definitely out Horningsham though. Father was a bricklayer. He’s in a photo in one of your books too. It’s the picture of the men who built West Parade. He’s mentioned as Fred Rowe but his name was Alfred really. He worked for Mr. Butcher at one time but he’d work for anyone who wanted any bricklaying done. My father was married twice. He got married, first of all, at the Minster Church in Warminster.”
[The marriage register for the Parish Church of St. Denys, the Minster, shows that Alfred Rowe married Jane Edwards on 30th May 1887. Alfred’s details record that he was 21 (probably an approximation), a bachelor, and that his occupation was that of labourer. His place of residence is given as Warminster. His father’s name and occupation, which should have been written in the register, were omitted, which suggests that Alfred did not know the details. He might have been born out of wedlock. Instead, the section for his father’s name, has ‘Elizabeth Rowe’ written in it. She was probably Alfred’s mother. Jane Edwards’ details tell us she was aged 19, a spinster, was resident in Warminster, and was the daughter of Francis Edwards, a carter. Alfred and Jane both signed the register. The marriage was officiated by the Reverend James Phillips. The witnesses were Francis Edwards and Bertha Franklin].
“My father had three children, all girls (Polly, Alice and Gladys), with his first wife, but she died when the third daughter, Gladys, was born.”
[The Burial Register for St. Denys Church records the interment of Jane Rowe on 15th March 1899. The register records that she was aged 29 years and was resident at 64 West Street. The funeral service was conducted by the Reverend H.R. Whytehead.]
“My mother, Lucy Ford, lived at West Street, and she knew my father. They lived near one another, and that’s how they met. They got married at the Minster.”
[The Marriage Register for St. Denys Church records the marriage of Alfred Row (the ‘e’ was omitted from the end of his surname) to Lucy Maria Ford on 14th September 1901. Alfred’s details note that he was aged 30 (again an approximation), a widower, a labourer, and was resident in the parish. Again his father’s name and occupation were not recorded. He didn’t sign the register this time but made his mark with a cross. Lucy Maria Ford’s details include that she was aged 27, a spinster, was resident in the parish, and that she was the daughter of Tom Ford, a blacksmith. Lucy signed her name in the register. The Reverend Whytehead married the couple and the witnesses were Walter Richard Edwards and Mary Ann Edwards.]
“My parents lived at Pound Street. My mother, when she married my father, brought up the two eldest daughters, Polly and Alice, but father’s mother, the granny, brought up the baby Gladys.”
“When the First World War started, there were a lot of Australian soldiers in camp out at Sutton Veny. Gladys fell in love with one of these Australians and they got married at the Minster. This soldier wanted Gladys to go back to Australia with him. I can always remember father saying to the man ‘If you are going to take her to Australia you must look after her.’ They went off to Australia and she came back here once, for a little holiday, just before my father died. I saw her that once. Her surname was South. She’s been dead a few years now.”
“My other two step-sisters are also dead. We all reached the age of 80 and more, but I’ve outlived all of them.”
“Polly became Mrs. Abbott. She married Frank Abbott. He was a Warminster man, from Pound Street. His father was a carpenter, working for Claude Willcox, down at the Warminster Motor Company. Do you remember Mrs. Christopher? That was one of Frank’s sisters. Mrs. Scane was another. Frank’s name was really Francis John Abbott but we always knew him as Frank. He couldn’t get in the services during the First World War. He failed the entrance test for some reason. Instead of going in the army he had to go and work in the munitions factories, up in the Midlands somewhere. He was a plumber really. To begin with he worked as a plumber for Stiles’, in Warminster, because in those days Stiles’ were not only ironmongers but were also plumbers and gas and water fitters. Later on he worked as a plumber for Butcher’s, the builders. He was alright. He was very popular with people and he liked to go to the Lamb Inn, at Vicarage Street, to play darts. He and Polly lived at [No.38] West Parade, Frank Abbott died in Warminster Hospital [on 8th October 1963]. He was in his seventies when he died. [He was 76]. He died on his [76th] birthday. He was buried at the Minster Churchyard. The Reverend Freeman did Frank’s funeral. Polly carried on living at West Parade after Frank died. She outlived him by a good many years. She died in Sambourne Hospital [on 20th November 1977, aged 87]. She was buried at the Minster Churchyard too. I went to her funeral. Polly’s name was really Mary Ann. For some reason people with the name Mary Ann are always known as Polly. As I told you just now, I had an aunt who was just the same.”
“My other step-sister Alice Louisa married Harry Barber. He was from Horningsham originally but his family moved to West Street in Warminster. He worked in the bakehouse at the Co-op in the Market Place. He married Alice at the Minster Church and afterwards went over to France, to fight in the trenches in the First World War. He had a rough time out there. When he came back he worked for the animal feed merchants, Marshman’s, in Warminster, but later on he went back to work at the Co-op, delivering bread. Harry and Alice lived at West Parade. They had one daughter, Vera, and she married Roger Ford. Alice and Harry are both dead now. Alice died first [on 5th February 1979] and Harry died several years afterwards [on 4th May 1985].”
“My father had a little moustache. He used to call it his ‘moey’. Father used to like a drop of beer. He sometimes went to the Lamb Inn, on the corner of Vicarage Street and Pound Street, and other times he went to the Cock Inn at West Street. He took a jug with him and he would have some beer drawn off into the jug. There was an old lady who lived next door to us at one time. She used to go to the pub and get some beer in a jug but when she got home she would pour it into the teapot. People used to think she was drinking tea, but she wasn’t. She was drinking beer. She used to call it her medicine.”
“Father used to like to smoke a pipe. If you bought him an ounce of tobacco, well, he would think more of that than of you bought him, say, a cardigan. He certainly like his tobacco. I can’t remember what sort he smoked but it came in little packets. My father was the only one in my family who smoked. My son Graham doesn’t smoke and nor does my grandson Stephen. My mother didn’t smoke. She was disgusted with smoking. She wasn’t against father smoking though. She used to let him. They weren’t bossy with one another. I don’t know which of them was the boss. I think they were equals. They got on well together.”
“My parents, to begin with, lived at Pound Street, in a cottage that is still standing. You know where you turn into Westleigh? The end house, on the left, going up Pound Street, part what is now the turning into Westleigh; that’s wher they lived and that’s where I was born. It used to be number 77a Pound Street. The number has been changed since [now No.42]. My mother and father trented that cottage. A man called Mr. Alexander owned it. He lived at North Row, just past what is now known as Dewey House, you know, the Town Council Offices. Mr. Alexander owned property and let it out. That’s how he made his living. Father and mother had to pay three shillings and nine pence a week rent. That was most of my father’s weekly wage. Still, they managed. My mother was very careful with money.”
“The cottage is still there. When you went in through the front door you walked straight into the sitting room. It wasn’t a big room. It was a fair size to us but it was small compared to your average-sized sitting room today. The sitting room floor was made of wood. There was no such thing as carpets for people like us in those days. That would have burnt a big hole in our pockets to have anything like that. Mother had some rugs down. We made rugs ourselves with pieces of rag. The rags came from anyone’s old clothes. Nothing was wasted in those days. We cut the rags up into little tiny strips. You had a pair of pinchers and you drawed the strips of rags through a piece of canvas. That’s how people made their own rugs. They used to wear quite well.”
“There was no kitchen in the cottage. There were a couple of steps you went up from the sitting room to a wash place out the back. The floor in there was made of some old-fashioned red bricks. My mother cooked on a range out in the little wash place. There was the range and a boiler in there. The chimney from the range went up the same way as that for the boiler. My mother cooked good wholesome food, using mostly vegetables from the garden. Father grew vegetables in the garden at the back of the cottage at Pound Street and he also had an allotment at Princecroft.”
“My mother got her milk from Walt Pearce. He was a little, short man and he lived at South Street. He kept some cows and he did a milk round. He walked round with a yoke on his shoulders. People worked hard in those days. He didn’t wear a white coat. They didn’t bother with that. He wore just his ordinary coat. He would knock on your door to see if you wanted any milk. You could have a pint or half a pint measured out. He had a measure for doing it. One day, not long after Mr. Pearce had delivered my mother some milk, an inspector knocked my mother’s door and asked if he could come in. He wanted to check the milk she had just bought. He wanted to draw it off to test it. Somebody had complained that water had been added to the milk. My mother let the inspector do what he had to do. I don’t know how it worked out. My mother continued to have her milk off Mr. Pearce until a Mr. Pinnell, from Crockerton, started coming round. He had a milk float and my mother was still having her milk delivered by him after she had left Pound Street and moved to West Parade.”
“We sat round the table in the sitting room at Pound Street to have our meals. It was a scrub table. After dinner mother would cover it with a cloth. We used to have an oil lamp on the table. The oil came from an oil merchant who lived at West Street. His name was Edgar Charlton and he only had one arm. He lived in a place opposite where Pound Row joins West Street. There were some cottages there. My aunt lived in one. Mr. Charlton used to deliver oil with a horse and cart but we didn’t have our oil delivered. Because we lived close we used to walk to his place to get what we wanted. We used to take a bottle and get it filled with a pint of oil. Actually it was paraffin. That’s how we bought it. We filled the lamp with paraffin and lit it. I suppose it was a bit dangerous when you come to think about it, but we had nothing else. The wicks for the lamp had to be trimmed. Mother used to do that.”
“My parents never had much furniture. We couldn’t have much anyway because there wasn’t room in the cottage. There was a table and some chairs in the sitting room, and an old armchair which mother liked to sit in. There was a whatnot in the corner. Mother kept a few ornaments on that. There was also a chest of drawers. That’s all there was in the sitting room. By the time we got in there you couldn’t move.”
“A staircase went up from the living room. There was a door and the stairs were behind that and they went up round a curve. Each stair did come to a point on the post. Do you understand what I mean? I don’t think it’s the same today because when my family left there, the people who went in after us, told us they had altered it all and made it quite nice.”
“There were two rooms upstairs. One did sort of come out over the staircase a bit. I used to sleep in the same room as my father and mother. There was just enough space for the beds and somewhere to walk beside the beds to the window. That’s how big it was. My brother had the room at the back. That wasn’t very big. Our clothes were hung up behind the doors. We didn’t have any wardrobes. We couldn’t afford wardrobes and there wasn’t any room for them in any case. Most people didn’t bother with wardrobes. They were for the well-to-do people. We used to carry a candle in a candlestick to bed at night. Candles were the only light we had upstairs. I’ve still got some candles now in case the electric gives out. We had chamber pots under the beds, in case we wanted to go to the toilet at night. Oh my goodness, how we used to live.”
“During the day we had to go up the garden for the toilet. The lavatory was in a shed up the top of the garden. We didn’t have proper toilet paper. We tore newspaper into little squares which we tied on a string and stuck on a nail in the toilet. It wasn’t a flush toilet. We had to pour a bucket of water down it. That was a chore carrying a bucket of water to the toilet. Before that, we only had an ordinary bucket for the toilet, which you emptied out on to the garden. You buried your business. That made the vegetables grow. When you come to consider it, life has improved in lots of ways concerning hygiene. Just think, years ago, the neighbours used to see you wandering up the garden path to the toilet. They knew where you were going and what you were going to do. Still, they had to do the same, and no one took too much notice.”
“Down the road from my parents’ cottage was a rank of very old cottages. They were very old. They were very damp but people lived in them. That was Mrs. Payne, Mrs. Gray, Mrs. Blake and Mrs. Franklin. The reason those cottages were damp was because the earth at the back of the cottages was as high as the first floor. To go out into the back garden you had to go upstairs. Fancy having to go upstairs to go outside. You could walk in from the garden into the bedroom. People took no notice of it. That was how they lived and they were glad to have a cottage to live in. Those cottages were eventually condemned and they were pulled down. Coo, there wasn’t half some rubbish there when they pulled them down. You should have seen it.”
“Beyond there was another little gap and then there were two or three more houses before you come to the big house that is still there today. The cottages at Pound Street had no running water indoors. There was a tap, every so often, outside, which was shared by the people from several cottages. We were lucky because the tap for my parents and their neighbours was right outside my parents’ back door. That was just right for us. See, we were the end house. We could draw water close to our door. The neighbours had further to walk to get their water from the tap. There was an old lady called Mrs. Elloway. She used to say to my mother ‘I want to do some washing. When you’ve got time, Mrs. Rowe, can you bring me a bucket of your water?’ She never used to boil her own. She used to have a bucket of my mother’s water that was already hot. My mother didn’t mind. My mother was very friendly with all her neighbours.”
“My mother did her washing the old-fashioned way in a bucket. There were no washing machines. In the wash place at the back of the cottage there was a stone copper. You filled it up with water from the tap outside the back door. You filled the boiler with water and lit it underneath. You burnt some sticks. We didn’t buy firewood. We used to go up Cannimore Wood to get some sticks to feed the fire. We had an old pushchair which we pushed all the way up to Cannimore Wood. We loaded that old pushchair up and pushed it all the way back home. We didn’t mind doing it. In fact, as a child, I loved doing that. I saw it as fun. We never asked permission to pick up wood. We just helped ourselves. Whether we were allowed to or not we were never stopped. I suppose we were pinching it. It must have belonged to someone – Lord Bath I expect.”
“My parents did buy a bit of coal. I think it was half a crown for a hundredwight. I don’t know what it is now. Do you? The coal came from an old chap who lived down the bottom of Pound Street, on the corner with Vicarage Street, where the Lamb pub was. He lived next door to the pub. He used to go round with a little cart delivering coal. I think his surname was Wyatt but I’m not sure.”
“If we wanted a bath we lit the boiler and got the water hot. The water was then poured into a tin bath. We used to take it in turns to have a bath. I would have my bath first and my brother would follow on behind. We would shut ourselves in the wash place. That was the only privacy you had. That’s how we used to do it.”
“My mother used to wash my hair. We didn’t go to hairdressers like people do today. Some people go to the hairdressers every week now. We didn’t really have our hair done. We washed it but that was about all really. I used to have a lot of hair but I haven’t got so much now. I’ve got thin on top. Still, I can’t have hair and brains, can I? Ha, ha, ha. I’d rather have brains and I intend working them as long as I can.”
“My parents had a wireless. It ran on batteries. We used to take the batteries, to Monk’s, at the High Street, to get them charged. Before my parents had the wireless they had a gramophone. It was an old timer and you had to turn a handle to make the record go round. I can remember they had another gramophone once and it had a horn. If only I had hung on to those things. They would be worth some money now. But still, you don’t think about it at the time.”
“My mother shopped at the Co-op. They had a nice shop in the Market Place, nearly opposite the Town Hall. They sold groceries on the ground floor and they sold furniture on the first floor. They used to pay you a dividend. Every time you bought your groceries you got a ticket and at the end of each quarter they used to give you your dividend. That was very important, especially for poor people. Some people would leave it in the Co-op bank to accrue, but most people drew it out to buy something else. My mother used to draw hers out. She had to because she needed it. My mother got her bread and groceries from the Co-op. My brother-in-law Harry Barber worked in the Co-op bakehouse. They delivered bread with a horse and cart. Fridays, I think, was a special day of the week. That’s when the Co-op bakehouse made lardy cakes. They were round but they weren’t very big. They were about six inches across. They were beautiful. You could have them hot, straight out of the bakehouse, if you wanted to. They were sixpence and they were lovely. Today they would probably tell you that they are bad for you, because of the fat in them, but eating a lot of lardy cakes hasn’t killed me, has it? I used to love anything that was a bit fatty. We didn’t know anything different years ago.”
“My mother got our clothes from various shops in Warminster. She bought our clothes from wherever they were the cheapest. We usually had secondhand stuff. People who had money could get their clothes specially made for themselves. There was a lady who lived at King Street. I think her name was Curtis. She was a dressmaker and she used to make clothes. She’d buy the material and make what you wanted. She was a very good needlewoman.”
“Our boots and shoes came from Mills’ shop at East Street. There was a Miss Beaven who had a shop at Silver Street but that was more expensive. Our mother was very fussy about our feet. The shoes had to fit properly. Start Rite was the make we used to have. When our shoes got worn we had to have them repaired. We used to take them to Mr. Herbert Christopher. He had a little shed at the bottom of Boot Hill, where he mended shoes.”
“There were a couple of little shops at Pound Street and they used to do well. You’d be surprised at the amount of trade they had in those little shops. One was run by Mrs. Burgess and one was run by Mrs. Cundick.”
“I’ll tell you about Mrs. Burgess first. She had her shop in what was really the sitting room of her cottage. She sold groceries and a lot of people shopped there because Mrs. Burgess would sell you little bits of butter, and small quantities of other things, at a time. That was very good for people, like my family, who didn’t have much money to spend. Another good thing was that Mrs. Burgess ran a Christmas club. You could pay her a penny or whatever you had, at a time, to save up for Christmas. When Christmas arrived you might have a shilling saved up with her and that was good because you could get something special, like several, big round solid bars of chocolate. They used to be nice. I used to get two pence a week pocket money and I would try to put away a penny, or what I could spare, every so often, in the Christmas club. Mrs. Burgess is dead and gone now, but her daughter Gladys lives up Copheap way.”
“Mrs. Cundick, the other shopkeeper, also used her little sitting room as a shop. It wasn’t what you’d call a proper shop. She sold groceries, sugar and anything to do with cooking. Hers wasn’t a big place. I can’t remember whether she had a husband there but I can remember her alright. She was a nice old soul. She was very neighbourly. I often went in her place. I can recall she had an open grate with a brass bar that came out. A chain went round and turned the joint round. I suppose she cooked her food over the open fire because she didn’t have an oven.”
“Next to Mrs. Cundick lived a person by the name of Rideout. Next to Rideout’s, opposite what is now the turning for West Parade, is an empty shop at the moment. Not so long ago it was a shop selling fruit and vegetables. In my younger days it was a fish and chip shop run by Eli Curtis. That was Alwyn Curtis’s father. Alwyn is dead now but he used to be on the Town Council not so long ago. He was a councillor. That was his family that had that fish and chip shop. Their fish and chips were quite nice. When the War was on they had to darken the shop, to comply with the black-out regulations. They had a little place made, like a porch, so that when you went into the shop the light inside didn’t show.”
“On the corner of Pound Street and West Street was Molly Butt’s shop. She sold sugar and flour and all those kind of things. She used to sell sweets too. We used to have some fun when we were kids. Molly’s shop was a bit run down and it used to have mice running about inside. We used to go down to her shop and stand outside the window. There was usually a display of sweets in the window. We would stand or sit there, as quiet as we could be, and we’d wait until a mouse came into view. If we saw a mouse running about inside, on the sweets, we would bang on the window, to let Molly know we had seen it. We got our fun by annoying Molly. I can remember doing that. The shop isn’t there now. It’s been pulled down.”
“There was a woman by the name of Player, who lived at Pound Street. She used to make peppermint toffee. I can ‘see’ her doing it now. She used to throw the warm toffee mixture up over something , like a big hook, and then she would pull the mixture about to make it stretch. Then she used to cut it up into chunks, when it had cooled, and sell it. That toffee was very nice.”
“Mr. Garrett, from Warminster Common, used to come round with a horse and cart, selling icecreams. You could buy a cornet off him for two pence. Sometimes we would take out a cup from home and ask him to put the icecream in the cup. We thought the icecream would last a lot longer in the cup but it didn’t really. My brother and me used to look forward to having some icecream.”
“I had only the one brother, Stan Rowe, and he was three years and four months older than me. His birthday was in November. He’s dead now. He would be in his nineties now if he was alive. Guess what? Stan’s picture is in one of your books too. Stan used to play in the Warminster Town Band. He played the cornet. I think ours was a musical family. On my mother’s side they were all musical. I had an uncle (that’s my mother’s brother) who was a chimney sweep during the day but went out playing in a band in the evenings. I think that’s where Stanley got it from.”
“When Stan first left school he worked at Dale’s, the bicycle people, at Silver Street. While there he progressed from working on bicycles to motorcycles. Stan worked there until he got called up for the Army. He went abroad on military service, but I can’t remember what regiment he was in. He was married at that time. He married a girl from Timsbury. Can you remember when the students used to be at St. Boniface College, down at Church Street? Stan’s wife had worked as a servant girl there. That’s how my brother met her. Her name was Gertrude Edith Holbrook. They got married at Timsbury and they had a son called David. When Stan came back from the War he went to work at the REME in Warminster. Stan and Gertie lived on the corner of Smallbrook Lane. There were two little cottages before you got to the shop at Boreham and they lived in one of those cottages. Later on they moved to Boreham Field.”
“Stan used to be the caretaker at St. John’s Church. He used to keep the churchyard immaculate and he loved it. He used to get up very early and he’d be working at the churchyard before anyone else was up. He liked to get on with the tidying up before people starting coming through the churchyard. The children used to use the path through the churchyard as a short cut on their way to school. He said they all wanted to stop and talk to him and that did take up his time. To avoid the chatter he went up there early. He took a great deal of pride in his work. When he had to finish as the caretaker I thought to myself that he wouldn’t live very long afterwards, and he didn’t. He only lived for a few more months after he had given the job up.”
“In recognition of his work, the people at the Church decided to plant a tree in Stan’s memory. They asked me to go to the planting, so, of course, I went. When I got to St. John’s Churchyard they asked me to plant it. I didn’t know I had to do it until I got there. They gave me a spade. It was a bit heavy for me but luckily the hole was already dug and I only had to put one spadeful of soil in. They did the rest. I’ve still got a newspaper cutting about it. I’ve found it out to show you. Here it is. I’ll read you what it says if my eyes will let me. It says it was a winter flowering cherry – ‘prunus subhirtella autumnalis rosea‘ – ‘planted in loving memory of Stan Rowe.’ He always liked the cherry blossom. I suppose it’s a big tree now.”
“Like I said, Stan was born in November 1906. I was born at Pound Street on the 12th of March 1910. I was christened Freda Lucy. There are a few Fredas about in my generation. Isn’t it funny how names come and go at different times. I suppose I was named Freda after my father Alfred. My mother’s name was Lucy, hence my second name.”
“One of my earliest memories concerns my step-sisters. They worked in the Pound Street Shirt Factory, Friday was pay-day at the factory. So on Fridays I would go and sit down by the gate of the Shirt Factory and wait for my step-sisters to come out. They would always give me a penny and that was really something to be pleased about.”
“In those days men did their shirt collars up with a stud. Me and my childhood friends used to go to the area around the Shirt Factory and pick up lots of studs off the ground. That’s how we used to amuse ourselves.”
“Pound Street is now a busy road with cars going up and down it. When I was a child it was a busy place then but not with cars. Monday was market day in Warminster . The market was held near the Railway Station. Some animals were brought to and from the market by train, but most animals, like cows and sheep, were walked along the roads into town. The drovers used to move the animals along the roads. We used to see them bringing cows along Pound Street.”
“There’s houses built all around Pound Street now but years ago there were lots of fields with cows in. At the back of where Cobbett Place is now, was a field and a Mr. Weston kept some Jersey cows in that field. They were lovely cows. Mr. Weston lived at Vicarage Street, in a house that’s now called Hillside, but at one time, before I was born, that had been a pub called The Star. Mr. Weston had been the landlord of the pub. He had a bit of a smallholding and he had these Jersey cows. When my step-sister had her baby she had to feed her on special milk, and she got the milk from Mr. Weston. He had a certain cow, a prize-winner I think it must have been, and it was that cow that supplied the milk for my step-sister’s little one. I remember the Weston family very well. They were very nice people. Mr. Weston had been the Captain of the Fire Brigade, but that was, again, before I was born.”
“I can remember when the Malthouse at Pound Street caught fire. I was 14 at the time, so it must have been 1924. It was a very big fire. Funnily enough that fire was on Bonfire Night – 5th of November. Cor, that was a bonfire alright. Bits of burning sacking were flying up through the air. People living near the Malthouse had to get out of their homes. We were alright where we were because we lived a bit further up. It was very frightening though.”
“We used to celebrate Bonfire Night but only with a few sparklers. That’s all we could afford. Some people, the wealthy types, used to go to the extreme and have rockets and things. They were too expensive for us. They were too much for our pockets. We couldn’t afford them. We were content with a few sparklers but even them were dangerous really. You could get your hands burnt.”
“We didn’t have a bonfire, well, not a special one, on Bonfire Night. See, we were always having bonfires in the garden anyway. That’s how we got rid of our household rubbish, by burning it, because there were no dustbin men. You either burnt your rubbish or dug it into the garden.”
“We didn’t have dustbin men but there was a road-sweeper who used to come along Pound Street. He had a brush and a push-cart. Any rubbish he came across in the road he brushed up, put in the trolley, and took away. Today a mechanical brush on a lorry sweeps the gutter but it doesn’t pick the rubbish up half as good. I’ve watched those things. They seem to blow it away on the pavement or under the hedges. They’ll never better a man with a brush. One thing the man didn’t get years ago was any horse manure in the road, because people would rush out with a shovel as soon as they saw it, to get it for their roses or their vegetable gardens.”
“Just about everybody had a garden and an allotment for growing vegetables. There were allotments in Warminster at Imber Road, Bradley Road and Princecroft. There were also some allotments at Pound Street, where the shop and the flats (Audrey House) are now at West Parade. There used to be a thatched cottage on the left, where an old fellow with the name of Burroughs lived. Where I live now, here at No.37 West Parade, were four little cottages but they got pulled down. A Mrs. Foreman lived in one of those cottages. And I used to go to another of they cottages to play with a little girl. I think that was Nora Turner. Who was that fellow who used to have a lot to do with the Minster Church? Fred Byrne. That’s who Nora Turner married. Fred and Nora Byrne lived at Ash Walk at one time but they’re living out Heytesbury now, at St. John’s Hospital.”
“A path used to branch off from Pound Street and I don’t know what it was called but it used to go across the fields and then follow around the Workhouse wall. The Workhouse later became Sambourne Hospital. There were a lot of tramps about, years ago. They used to walk from town to town, stopping at the Workhouse in each town. At the side of Warminster Workhouse was a shed, a lean-to, and there were beds in there that the tramps slept on. They were proper beds. In the morning the tramps got a cooked breakfast before tramping on to the workhouse in the next town. Before they left they had a task to do – either chopping sticks for firewood or cracking up stones for road repairs – that was the cost of their night’s lodgings. After they had done the task they could leave and walk on their way. The tramps weren’t a nuisance. They knew they had to do their tasks and they knew which workhouses they were going to next.”
“After West Parade was built my parents moved from Pound Street to No.37 West Parade. They moved in 1927. I was about 17 years old at the time and I moved with them. I’ve been here ever since. When my parents got this house, the Council had the cheek to ask them if they were sure they could afford the rent because my parents had only been paying three shillings and nine pence a week rent for the cottage at Pound Street. My mother took exception to the Council asking about her finances.”
“When we moved in we had an unhindered view from our front windows. We could see from here across to the wind-pump at Upton Scudamore. You can’t do that now. For one thing the shop across the road has been built, blocking the view, and the wind-pump no longer exists. It’s been demolished.”
“When West Parade was built they planted trees all the way along. It was lovely. One year we had a very sharp winter. There was a severe frost. All the trees were hung with icicles and it really was a picture. I wish I had taken a photo but we never had a camera.”
“There were lots of trees in and around Warminster. Westleigh House was surrounded by trees. There weren’t any trees that I can remember along Pound Street. There were a few gas lamps along there. A man used to come round every evening, with a long pole, and light them. He would come round again in the early hours of the morning and put them out. I think his surname was Lucas and I’ve got a feeling he was connected in some way with the Lucas family who had an engineering place, a little foundry, at West Street. I used to watch him lighting the street lamps in the evenings. We children found anything like that fascinating.”
“I can honestly say I had a happy childhood. We were brought up to go to church. I’ve been going to the Minster Church all my life. To begin with I went to Sunday School at the Minster School. I went there when I was three and a half. We sat at a little table, on little chairs with roundy-backs. The Sunday School teacher was a nun from the Convent at Vicarage Street. There were quite a few nuns there. One was a cook, one was a nurse, and so on. They were all educated people. They used to teach the girls at St. Monica’s School which was opposite the Convent.”
“I liked Sunday School but we always used to have to sing the hymn We Are But Little Children Weak. That got on my nerves. We knew we were little children weak, so why did we have to sing it? We used to learn about Jesus. We had to learn little collects off by heart and recite them. After Sunday School we children walked to the Minster Church for a service. We occupied one part of the church. The font was where you go up to the belfry. Now it’s just inside the front door I think. I don’t mean the west door, I mean the proper front door.”
“Years ago, the farm up under Cannimore Wood, what is now Tascroft Farm, was the Reformatory School. Boys were sent there for trifling offences like stealing apples and things like that. They were sent to the Reformatory School for next to nothing. Once there, they were kept there for years, doing lessons, gardening and farmwork. How different things are now. Today there is no discipline what-so-ever in society. The boys from the Reformatory were marched to the Minster Church, for the service, every Sunday. They would come to church via Pound Street but go back West Street way. Or they would come West Street way and return via Pound Street. You could always hear them when they were on the move, because of the noise of their boots. They wore a uniform which was a sort of bluey colour, and they wore little corner hats. The Reformatory boys used to occupy one stretch of the church.”
“The Reformatory was a well-known place. Another place that people used to talk about was the Fever Hospital at Cannimore. It was near Mr. Pizzey’s farm. People used to get scarlet fever. If they caught that they had to go into isolation. Someone from the Fever Hospital came out with a Bath chair and pushed the person down to Cannimore. The patient had to stay there until the fever had gone. Later on, things got modernised and they built a new place, called the Isolation Hospital, at Bradley Road. That building later became the Ambulance Station. There were lots of ailments doing the rounds years ago, like chicken pox, measles and mumps. And there was a lot of TB years ago. It was known as consumption. Beckford Lodge, up Gipsy Lane, became a TB hospital. If you got consumption you had to go up there. My mother, like most people in those days, believed in a lot of home remedies, and prevention was always better than cure. When I was a child I was given cod liver oil. My mother gave it to my brother and me, every morning, before we set off for school. It didn’t matter whether you liked it or not, you had to have a spoonful. I didn’t mind it really. There was one thing about it, it kept us regular!”
“I was three and a half when I started school. I went to the Minster School. My brother used to take me. He was a torment to me. There was a little iron grid, where they used to put the thing for rubbish. One of the bars was broken. I can picture it now. I wasn’t very big and my brother used to push me in there. I used to cry. He’d say ‘Don’t you tell our mum when we get home or otherwise I shall have it.’ Well, no doubt he would have done. He wouldn’t let me out of the thing until I had promised that I wouldn’t tell mother. He used to tease me. He was a good brother though. I knew he didn’t really mean anything.”
“Miss Frost was the head teacher at the Minster School. She was strict. She certainly didn’t have any nonsense from us children. Nowadays a child cannot be caned. A teacher can’t do nothing to a child. We weren’t hit with a stick or anything like that, though. We used to get a really good telling off if we did anything wrong. If you answered Miss Frost back she would say ‘Go over there and stand in the corner. Put your hands on your head and face the wall. Do not turn around until you are told to.’ We used to have to do that. We had to stand there until she said we could move away. We didn’t like it. I wasn’t frightened of Miss Frost. I was never rude to her because I didn’t want to get punished. I can remember her very well. Miss Frost wasn’t very tall. At one time she lived at West Parade, in a council house, and there was a monkey puzzle tree in her garden. She had to move because they said West Parade was built for poorer people. She went to live in a bungalow near Christ Church.”
“Miss Frost wasn’t the only teacher at the Minster School. There were other teachers there for different classes but I’ve got a job to remember all their names. There was a Miss Wyer. She taught me at one stage. Her family were painters and decorators and they lived at George Street, where the Number Eight shop, the sweet shop and tobacconist’s, is today.”
“I eventually left the Minster School and I moved up to Sambourne School. That had just become a mixed school. Of course we girls didn’t like being mixed in with the boys. The schoolmaster was Mr. Frederick Taylor. He was very strict. When he talked you knew he meant business because he clenched his hands on the lapels of his jacket. When he did that you knew he meant business. There were other teachers at Sambourne but I can’t for the life of me remember their names or anything about them.”
“Some of the children going to the school were very poor and they had holes in their clothes. There was poverty about, especially down at Warminster Common. I used to go down there though.”
“We used to run down the Hollow at Pound Street, to play where the Broadway Roundabout is now. That was all fields and meadows around there. Today there is a newsagent’s, a post office, and a fish and chip shop there. When I was a child there were three or four old cottages on the corner and a pond as well. A man called George Bottle had a shop at Broadway at one time. There was a man living in one of the cottages and he was a window cleaner but what the devil was his name? I can’t recall his name. We used to paddle about in the river down there but they’ve piped it over since. The river ran along the side of Brook Street and continued on along the side of Fore Street.”
“There’s one name that always comes into my mind when I think of Warminster Common, and that’s Factor Daniell. He was a corn merchant and he lived in Hampton House, at the bottom of Boot Hill. The corn trade used to be a very big thing in Warminster. We used to see quite a lot of horses and carts going up Pound Street, taking barley to the Malthouse.”
“We used to go up what we called Folly. Up there was a farm called Rehobath, and some people called Strong run that. Past there the little winding lane used to come out at Victoria Road. Beyond there at Tascroft, was the Reformatory School. You could go on further if you wanted to, to Park Gates, but that was a long walk. We used to walk miles and miles when we were children but we didn’t think nothing of it. We used to go for walks down round Cannimore and Mr. Pizzey’s farm. There used to be four little cottages before you got to the farm. Sometimes we’d continue past the farm to Nutball and then come back round by the Reformatory School.”
“I can remember when I was tiny I went for a walk with a couple of friends down to Cannimore and beyond there towards Park Gates. The path we were following came out on the Horningsham road. We had picked a lot of bluebells and we were very tired. We said ‘The next car that comes along we will stop it and ask for a lift.’ That’s what happened. A car came along and we stopped it. There was a man and a woman inside. They said ‘What do you want?’ We said ‘Can we have a lift to the Cock Inn?’ They said ‘If you show us where it is we will drop you off there. Get in.’ They gave us a lift. They drove towards Warminster and they stopped by Pound Row, where there’s a roundabout now. We got out and we thanked the couple for their kindness. We gave them a bunch of bluebells for their trouble and the man and woman seemed pleased with the flowers. We were pleased too, because we had saved ourselves quite a step from Park Gates to there. When I got home I told my mother about the lift and she went up the wall. She shouted at me. She said ‘Don’t you ever let me know you’ve asked for a lift again. You could of got carted off.’ You would expect to get carted off today for sure but there wasn’t such a risk back then. We were in the wrong though. Mother gave me such a dressing down. I was in the dog house I can tell you. It taught me a lesson. Children wouldn’t dare hitch a lift today, would they? How things have changed when you come to think about it.”
“Places have changed too. The houses at the Common are very nice today but they weren’t always so. The Common was a very poor place and a very rough place. There always seemed to be trouble down there. The police would regularly walk about in pairs down there. They wore cloaks and carried a stick each. There were two police houses at Pound Street. P.C. O’Shea was one of the coppers and he lived in one of they houses at Pound Street. Some of the policemen were quite nice but we found out it was best not to do anything to upset them. We children were always told not to be frightened of the coppers because they can be a good help to you in times of trouble.”
“We never dreamed of going outside of school during school hours like they do today. There’s no discipline today but we were disciplined with the threat of the cane and humiliation. We had to get on with our lessons. The Vicar from Christ Church used to come into the school. He would sometimes turn up for assemblies and other times he would come into the classroom to hear what the teacher was telling us. He lived in the Vicarage at Weymouth Street, next to the Football Field. There was a stuffed crocodile hanging on chains from the ceiling in one of the classrooms. It had been real in one day’s time. It was a huge great thing. It was hung on two great chains and we used to walk underneath it. People in Warminster were enquiring about it only recently. They wanted to know what become of it. I don’t know what happened to it but I can remember it very well.”
“The playground was a mixture of all sorts. It was part grass and part rubble. The toilets were right up the top of the playground. You had to go all up there if you wanted to go to the toilet. The toilets were nothing modern. They were a bit grim really. There was an ash tree by the playground and we used it as a maypole. Strings were tied to it and we used to dance around it. That was our fun. We also played a lot of hopscotch. We also had skipping ropes and we did jumping and different things.”
“We didn’t have many toys when we were children because there wasn’t much money about. We had a few things and we were quite happy with what we had. There were spinning tops. You had a stick with a piece of string on for whipping the top. We also had yoyos and we had snakes and ladders, and ludo. There was a little toy shop, years ago, up by the Post Office, in East Street, where there is a block of flats now [Chatham Court]. That toy shop was quite big. It was double-fronted. When I was a girl I used to go up there and look in the window and dream. The man who had that shop was called Mr. Faulkner. I don’t really remember him because I wasn’t very old. Later on, Bush & Co. [house furnishers] had that shop and Ernie Stiles ran it for them at one time.”
“We used to get school holidays but we only had a month off in the summer. I think they get six weeks summer holiday now. As well as the summer holiday we got some time off at Christmas.”
“Christmas was a nice time. I used to like it. I believed in Father Christmas when I was little. As time went on I knew different. Before going to bed on Christmas Eve I used to put a cup of homemade lemonade down in the hearth, with a couple of biscuits, for Father Christmas to have when he came down the chimney. The lemonade and the biscuits would be gone when we got up in the morning. Of course it was our mother who used to take them away. I used to hang my stocking up on Christmas Eve. It was only my ordinary stocking. In the morning I’d find an orange and an apple in the toe, a few sweets further up, and then, maybe, if I was lucky, a toy. I remember one year I got a doll. It was double-jointed and you could move the legs about. I must have been very lucky that year because I got some doll’s clothes as well. Most little girls had to make do with a bare doll. Not only that, I had a doll’s perambulator as well. That was an old-fashioned thing. I wish I had kept that. It would be worth a bomb today. It had little wheels at the front and bigger wheels at the back. I had that pram until I left school and then I gave it away to another little girl who didn’t have one. There was a family called Haines, and there was a man called Mr. Haines who worked up town somewhere. His family lived in one of a few cottages at Pound Street. Those cottages aren’t there now. They were pulled down to make way for the Westleigh estate. That’s where the Haines family lived. My doll’s pram went to a daughter of this Mr. Haines or one of his relative’s daughters. She was such a pretty little thing. She was the youngest child of the family and she died when she was about four years old. She was buried at the Minster. They used to have what was called a bier for wheeling coffins to church but when this little girl died the men carried her coffin on their shoulders. Isn’t that sad?”
“We had a chicken for our Christmas dinner. My mother used to always make her own stock. She was a good cook. My family took it in turns to visit each other at Christmas. We went from one relation to the other. I had an aunt who lived at West Street. Her name was Kate. We went to her place one time. I had another aunt called Mrs. Earley and we sometimes went to her place. She lived at the High Street, in a house between the Athenaeum and Ethelbert Phillips’ bakery and cake shop.”
“We used to make Christmas decorations to put up in home. We were given bands of paper in different colours which we glued together with sticky stuff made out of flour and water. We hung the decorations up and we thought they looked so pretty. I would be afraid to put up decorations now in case they caught fire. We didn’t have a Christmas tree when I was a child. The Convent at Vicarage Street always used to have a Christmas tree and we kids were always allowed to go in there to see it. The nuns let us go in as a treat. The tree was decorated with little toys on it, and a fairy on the top. I don’t know what happened to the toys – they might have been taken to the Orphanage at West Street – but the fairy was given out to a different child each year. I was never lucky. I never ever got chosen to receive the fairy.”
“We used to go carol singing door-to-door in the neighbourhood. We sang all the well-known carols like Hark The Herald Angels Sing and Away In A Manger. We knew them off by heart. We didn’t need a book with the words in. We used to go up through what we called ‘The Trees’ to Westleigh House. We always used to go there carol singing. That’s where Mr. and Mrs. Turner lived. Mr. Turner was a partner in Turner & Willoughby, the house furnishers who had a big shop next to the Town Hall. Later on Lady Nepean lived at Westleigh House. When the War broke out it was let as flats but eventually it was pulled down. That’s why the housing estate that’s there now is called Westleigh. You know, the council houses. Westleigh House had a private entrance off West Street, and another way in, for cars, off Pound Street. The Turners used to have a big Alsatian dog. It used to run along the wall which ran all along Pound Street to West Street. We used to be terrified of that dog. It used to pounce at you but I suppose it was only doing its job keeping people at bay.”
“There were four of us girls who went carol singing together. That was me, Hettie Curtis, Daisy Payne and someone else. We used to get two or three pence from each house we went to. At the end of the evening we had to split the money between us. We might have nearly a shilling each after we had been everywhere. That was a lot of money but we had to do a lot of singing to get it. I remember when we went to one house, a woman came to the door. She said ‘You be like a lot of tom cats squealing and squalling.’ She gave us a penny and told us not to come back ever again. On the whole I would say people were very good to us though. Some would ask who we were collecting for. If we said ‘For ourselves,’ they would say ‘Oh well, we’re not going to give you anything then.’ So we soon learned to say we were collecting for a society or a good cause. You had to have your wits about you.”
“We were talking about the school holidays, weren’t we? As well as Christmas we also got a week at Easter and a week or fortnight at Whitsun. We used to go on a day trip to Weymouth. We went in a charabanc. My uncle used to drive the charabanc. He was really a driver for Alfie Jefferies who had the glove factory at Weymouth Street. There are some tall houses at Weymouth Street, just below where the pub, the King’s Arms, was. That’s where the glove factory started off, in those tall houses, before it moved to Station Road.”
“One of my step-sisters used to do some hand-sewing of gloves for Jefferies’, at home, when we lived at Pound Street. I was about 12 years old and she used to let me help her. She let me do the thumbs and the sides. I gradually got better with it and then she let me do the quirks and the fingers. I used to do about a pair of thumbs and sides in a week and my step-sister would give me a shilling. I was as proud as punch to think I could earn a shilling. I started doing gloves at home, on my own, in the finish. I could do a dozen pairs in a week. In those days if you did a dozen pair of gloves you got seven shillings and ninepence. Whatever is it now? Pounds I suppose. The chamois ones were cheaper but I didn’t like doing those because they used to pucker if you weren’t careful.”
“I can remember my 12th birthday. I had some money given to me. I was given a sixpence by somebody. I was very fond of doughnuts. I said to my mother ‘I’m going to buy myself some doughnuts.’ There was a Mr. Butcher who had a bakery at Silver Street, where the antiques shop is now [Collectible Interiors]. You could get seven doughnuts for sixpence at Mr. Butcher’s. You could get 13 for a shilling but that was too many. I went down there and got some. I got seven for sixpence. I went for a walk up over the downs and I ate all seven doughnuts! I shall never forget that as long as I live. I didn’t feel sick. I suppose the walking worked it off. They were very good doughnuts with a nice bit of sugar on the outside and a nice bit of jam on the inside.”
“They would probably tell you today that eating a lot of doughnuts is bad for you. They take the fat out of everything now. They tell you that you mustn’t have it. My husband used to like beef. He didn’t mind a bit of pork sometimes but he really liked beef. We used to get our meat from Chinn’s. I would buy rib. I used to buy it on the bone. Les Whitmarsh, who worked for Chinn’s, used to say how if you cooked it on the bone you got the goodness from the bone into the beef. He was perfectly right. When I cooked the beef I did it in a little bit of fat. You had the goodness there. Now they tell you it’s bad for you. It never killed people years ago. Now there’s all this trouble with BSE. I don’t know what to make of it all. I feel sorry for the farmers at the moment.”
“There used to be a little cake shop and restaurant in the Market Place, a couple of doors away from the Old Bell, on the East Street side. That was Talbott’s. Between that and the Old Bell was a cycle shop run by Mr. Sheppard. That cycle shop is a travel agent’s now [Bath Travel]. There’s two floors above there. When I was going to school at Sambourne we girls used to go to that first floor, to do cooking lessons and to learn how to do laundry work and things to do with the home. There were some ovens in there. A lady gave us instruction but I can’t remember her name. On the floor above, the top floor, boys were taught carpentry.”
“Of course school was very different in my day to what it is today. We didn’t have computers and things. They were unheard of. We just did the ordinary lessons, like reading, writing and arithmetic. I liked history and I hated geography. I used to read and I knew a lot about history. They gave me a prize for knowing so much about history. The prize was a history book and I’ve still got it. Yes, like I say, I loved history and I hated geography. I could never remember the things they told us about the various counties. That’s why I didn’t like geography. I left Sambourne School when I was 14. I didn’t like school when I started at Sambourne but near the end I was getting to like it. I was glad to leave school though. I’d had enough of it.”
“The first job I had, when I left school, was working for the Waddington family at Chancery Lane. I can’t remember how I got the job. Someone must have put in a good word for me. Mr. Waddington was an auctioneer and he and his wife had a son called David. He got meningitis and in those days they couldn’t do things about it and he died. It wasn’t long after little David died that Mrs. Waddington found out she was expecting again and she had another boy who they called Peter. He was a nice little fellow. The Waddingtons were very nice people. I had to help out in the home and I had to do the cleaning. Mr. Waddington’s parents, the old Waddingtons, lived along Boreham Road, at a house called Domus. I was allowed to push baby Peter, in a pram, from Chancery Lane, along the Boreham Road as far as Domus. I wasn’t allowed to go any further. I had to turn round there and return to Chancery Lane. I earned three shillings and a few odd pennies a week. That was a lot of money in those days. My mother let me keep all of it. She didn’t take money off me until later on, when I had changed jobs, and was earning a bit more. I worked for the Waddingtons for four years.”
“When I finished at Waddington’s I went to work at Jefferies glove factory at Station Road. I stayed there for a while but I didn’t like it. Percy Vincent was the boss. Percy was alright to work for. He had a sister called Dorothy, and she and I were great friends. The Vincent family lived at Chapel Street. Dorothy’s mother, Kate Vincent, lived until she was 90 or over 90. When she died, Dorothy was left on her own, so I used to go down to see her. She had some brothers but she had been the only girl and had been spoilt. The Vincents were a very friendly family.”
“There was a woman in charge of us girls at the glove factory. Her name was Miss Lil Prince. She was the forewoman. I got on alright with Miss Prince but you had to do what she said. There were quite a few girls working at the factory. We worked on machines but they weren’t electric. They were operated by pedal power. I started at eight o’clock, or was it half past seven in the morning? We finished at five o’clock in the afternoon. We worked Monday to Friday and we had to do Saturday mornings as well. Gosh, I can remember it like it was only yesterday but it’s really a long time ago. Talking to you is bringing it all back to me.”
“You didn’t get much in wages. About six shillings. I gave my mother five shillings a week. I had to save up out of what was left to buy my clothes. The first thing I bought was a coat. It cost 18 shillings and 11 pence. That was a lot of money. It took me ages and ages to save that up. I thought the world of that coat. I only used to wear it on Sundays. After I had worn it I would brush it and put it away in a tin box, ready for the next Sunday. I bought that coat at Mrs. Barnett’s shop at Silver Street. Mrs. Barnett used to sell ladies’ clothes. Her husband, Jack Barnett, was a tailor and he had something wrong with his legs. I wish often times I had taken a photo of Mrs. Barnett’s shop.”
“I didn’t like factory work. I didn’t like being closed in. So I decided to get another job. I went into what was called ‘service’. The Stiles family had a big ironmongery business in the Market Place, where the Dorothy Perkins store is now. I went to work for the Stiles family, not in the shop, but in the house above. It was known as Lanning House. The Stiles family had purchased the ironmongery business off a Mr. Lanning. The business was situated, when Mr. Lanning had it, further down the Market Place, where the Midland Bank was later built. Mr. Stiles moved the business to Bush & Co.’s old premises, which had long before my time been a pub [The Lamb & Flag].”
“I worked there, for Mr. and Mrs. Stiles, for 32 years. I was there ten years before I got married and 22 years afterwards. The job was alright because the Stiles family were alright. Old Mr. Stiles was alright to work for. He was a quiet sort of a man. I always knew him as Old Mr. Stiles but his name was really Harold Stiles. I didn’t see much of him. The only time I really saw Old Mr. Stiles was when he came up from the shop to the house for his lunch. When he wasn’t seeing to the shop and the business he was out in the garden. He loved gardening and he kept chickens. He was very keen on poultry and he was also interested in bee keeping.”
“I was the only one working for Mr. and Mrs. Stiles in the house but they had quite a few people employed in the ironmongery business. Mr. Oliffe, who lived at the top of Pound Street, worked in the shop with two others. There was a Mr. Hans. I suppose he was German. And there was a man from Boreham way. I think his name was Bundy. at the back of the shop, down the yard, were some workshops which, before the Stiles family had them, had been used by Bush & Co. for repairing furniture. Bill Harrington used to work for Bush & Co. He was a cabinet maker and he used to make and repair quite a lot of furniture for Longleat House.”
“The Stiles’ were well off. They had a car. There weren’t many motor cars about when I was a girl. You were rich if you had a car. The Stiles family were from a farming background I think. They had a son, Mr. Stephen Stiles, who later ran the shop, and the last I heard of him he was living at Westbury Road.”
“I was working for Harold Stiles when he died [on 1st March 1949]. He died quite sudden. It wasn’t expected. One minute he was as right as rain and the next we knew he was dead. His funeral service was held at the house, followed by his burial at St. John’s Churchyard, at Boreham Road.”
“Old Mrs. Stiles was very nice and very pleasant. Her name was Norah Gladys Stiles. She was medium sized, she dressed smart and she wore glasses for reading. Old Mrs. Stiles was a lovely old lady. The brother had a big farm at Shrewton. He and his family used to come to Warminster every Sunday. They were members of the Plymouth Brethren, and the Brethren used to meet in a room above the Fire Station in The Close. The Stiles family would go to the service there and then they would come back to the house in the Market Place to have their dinner, before going home to Shrewton. I had to cook the dinner. They usually had roast lamb. They liked lamb but sometimes they had beef for a change. I had to go over to Chinn’s shop to get the meat and I had to go to Wilson & Kennard’s shop to get the groceries. That’s where they had accounts and they lived quite well. Mrs. Stiles would write on a board what she wanted for meals each day. She would also write on the board what work I had to do each day. That’s how I knew what different jobs I had to do. I did a lot of hours there. The work had to be done and I got on and did it. I took it all in my stride. I never minded working. I was still working there when old Mrs. Stiles died [on 11th February 1960]. When she died I was out of the job. That was the finish of it for me.”
“The house the Stiles had above the shop was on two floors. They had quite a bit of antique furniture. They used to have an open fire and they also had another fire which I had to shut up at night and open in the morning. That particular heater made the place nice and warm. The house was very busy because Mrs. Stiles used to entertain the troops during the War. She used to have the soldiers, the ones who were stationed in Warminster but lived a long way away, in for meals. She did a fair amount of that. Her friends did the same. And for quite a while she had a couple of evacuees staying at the house.”
“I lived in to begin with but after I got married I went in daily. When I lived in I had a room of my own. When the fair used to be held in the street outside, every April and October, I could get up in the window and watch all the people at the fair. I used to like that. The fair used to be all along the Market Place. They used to have the switchbacks set up outside the shop. And there were also the dodgems and lots of side shows. It was quite a sight. I used to watch what was going on until midnight when the fair closed down. You don’t get nothing like that in the Market Place now.”
“I got two afternoons off each week, from two o’clock, after dinner, but I had to be back in by ten o’clock at night and no later. You dared not arrive back late. Ten o’clock was an acceptable time in those days. My father was just the same about it. He always said no-one should be out after ten o’clock at night. I used to tell him he had ten o’clock on the brain. Those two afternoons and evenings I had off work, were the one afternoon and evening during the week, and the other time was on a Sunday.”
“I don’t know if people were more God-fearing years ago than they are today but Sundays were always the same for us when we were children – Sunday School followed by Church. I don’t suppose there was anything else for us to do. You either went to church or chapel. Sunday was the Sabbath and, apart from worship, a day of rest. It’s very different today.”
“Like everyone else, my family used to go to church every Sunday evening. After church we used to go up through town for a walk. That’s how I met my husband-to-be. There used to be three boys who would walk in from Crockerton. That was Fred Carter, someone called Elkins, and Charlie Barnes. They used to talk among themselves and they’d whistle at we girls. I used to have my hair in a long plait all the way down my back. On the end of it I had a piece of black ribbon tied in a bow. For some unknown reason Charlie Barnes pulled my ribbon off. I said to him ‘That’s the only piece of ribbon I’ve got.’ He said ‘If you come over here you can have it back.’ That’s how I met him. Isn’t it strange? It’s all coming back to me now I’m talking to you.”
“I saw him again on an occasional basis and then we started going out together, and after a while we got married. I got on alright with my husband’s parents. There was no awkwardness like you sometimes get in families. There were two Barnes’ families at Crockerton – my husband’s family and another one. There was a Mercy Barnes but she wasn’t related to Charlie’s family.”
“My husband’s father’s name was Albert Barnes and my husband’s mother was Emma Barnes. They lived at Potters Hill. They were a nice couple. Mrs. Barnes was a Crockerton person. She died [aged 73, on 19th September 1936] before I married Charles. I went to her funeral at Crockerton Church. Mrs. Barnes was a dear old soul. She was a lovely old lady, she were. My father-in-law died in 1942 [on 15th December] at Potters Hill. He had been a very conscientious worker. He had worked hard during his lifetime. Albert Barnes must have been worn out in the finish but he lived until he was 80. When he was ill he was still doing things on the farm in his mind like putting sacks on his shoulders. He was a nice old chap. He’s buried at Crockerton. All his family are buried there. They were a big family. I think there were seven of them. Two died when they were young. One sister married a Maddock, who used to live at Longbridge Deverill. Another lived at Bradford On Avon and another lived at Bath. The last one, Elizabeth, never married. She was an old maid. She wanted to be buried at Crockerton and we saw that her wish was carried out. We asked the Vicar and he made it alright. We were given permission and things went as planned. My husband also had an aunt living at the Furlong. Her name was Curtis and she used to work in the Co-op in Warminster.”
“My husband Charlie was a carter. He worked for the Strattons, at Manor Farm, Longbridge Deverill. The Stratton family had a lot of ground, going right up over Lord’s Hill. They rented the farm from the Longleat Estate. Strattons grew a lot of corn and they had a dairy and a lot of sheep. There was a shepherd who tended to the sheep. My husband didn’t have anything to do with that side of things. He was on the land, ploughing and harrowing and doing things like that. There was lots to do. There was a big staff on the farm. I think one of the chaps was called Nash, and there was a man called Baggs, and a man named Taylor. Charlie’s father, Albert Barnes, worked on the same farm too. Charlie used to ride a bicycle to work but his father used to walk to work. He would spend all day walking about the farm with the horses and then walk home to Crockerton at night. Charlie loved the outdoor life. It suited him. He had started work on the farm as soon as he left school. Like I say he was a carter and he loved the horses. His day would start with feeding the horses. They weren’t shires but they were big. They were what were called punches. There were several on the farm and they all had names.”
“I used to go out to the farm to see Charlie. I would call in at his mother’s, at Crockerton, on the way. She would get some tea ready and I would take it out to the fields up Lord’s Hill. I used to enjoy going out there. Later on, when my son Graham was little I used to sit him on a little seat on the back of my bike and take him out to the farm to see his father and the horses. In the summertime the sheaves of corn were stacked up in hiles in the fields. It was threshed by machine. A horse had to walk round and round in a circle to power an elevator that took the sheaves up to the top of a rick. It was very interesting to watch. The men would stop work for a break. My husband would have his tea and we’d have a little chat. He’d make a fuss of Graham and then I would cycle back home on my old bike. It was quite a way to go but I didn’t mind.”
“I met my husband’s boss, Roland Stratton, many times. He had been a captain in the army during the First World War. His wife, Jessie, was a Stratton [Jessie Winifred Stratton] before she married him [in 1925]. [Roland and Jessie were cousins]. Roland Stratton, like most farmers, used to like hunting. He used to play hockey too. I think I’m right in saying he played hockey for Wales [he was from South Wales]. He went totally deaf in the finish and he died quite suddenly during the 1950s [on 7th July 1954].”
The Stratton family were good people. They used to come to our place at West Parade every Christmas. They would come and wish us a happy Christmas. They always brought a joint of beef or something else as a gift for Christmas. That was their way of saying thank you to my husband for all he had done for them during the year. The wages on the farm weren’t much but you had your perks.”
“My husband worked for the Strattons for 46 years. That’s a long time, isn’t it? Farmer Stratton had two sons. One was called Keith and the other one was called Roger. One of them went Bristol way and bought a farm there. I’m sure I read in one of the papers that Keith Stratton has died. I always kept in touch with one of the fellows who used to work on the farm with my husband. He came to see me the other day. We got talking and I said to him about what I had seen in the paper. He said ‘Yes, that was Keith Stratton who died.’ I think Keith Stratton had two children – a son and a daughter. The son became a captain in the army. He had worked his way up through the ranks. I think the daughter’s name was Sophie but I don’t know what become of her.”
“Charlie and me had got married on 8th February 1939, at the Minster Church. I was christened there and confirmed there, and hopefully I shall be buried there when the time comes. My father gave me away at my wedding. I didn’t get married in white. I got married in a blue dress, with a hat. We went to Bristol to get my outfit. I didn’t have any bridesmaids. You didn’t go in for all those things, not then. We didn’t have all the flair-up show like they have today. The best man was Leslie Shorto, the brother of Ken Shorto. Les was a little bit older than me because his birthday was in November and mine was in the March. We used to tease each other about our ages. Les died a few years ago. Mr. Till took our wedding photo. His studio, at that time, was on top of Town Hall Hill. I had my wedding reception, here, at West Parade. It was just the family. We had a table across the room, laid out. The Co-op made the wedding cake. We got our wedding rings, from Chambers, the jeweller’s, in Warminster.”
“I can remember Mr. Chambers quite well, from when I was a child. My mother used to take in washing, to earn a bit of money. One of the people she used to wash for was Mrs. Chambers. On Monday mornings, before I went to school, I had to take a pram to Mrs. Chambers’, in the Market Place, to collect the washing. I used to collect a pram-full, to get my mother started, and then I would take the empty pram on to school. When I came out of school, after lessons, I would take the pram back to Mrs. Chambers and collect the rest of her washing to take home to mother.”
“Mother also did some washing for a schoolteacher who lived at North Row. I can’t remember his name now. There were two or three people I collected washing from. I had to do my share. I’ve worked hard in my time.”
“I was coming home one day with that old pram loaded up with washing. I had a basketful on it and a basketful on top of that. I wasn’t very tall and I had a job to see where I was going. I had to look round the sides. The Vicar, Canon Jacob, came along. He said ‘Freda, you look as if you’re loaded.’ He said ‘You’ve got a job to get along.’ He took the pram out of my hands and pushed it for me, until he got to the Vicarage, what is now the Old Vicarage, where he lived. He said ‘Now, do you think you can manage?’ I said ‘I think I can.’ I had to push it on from Vicarage Street, up Pound Street.’
“There were no airs and graces about Canon Jacob. We’ve had some very nice clergymen at the Minster in my time. I can remember Canon Jacob, the Reverend Bellars, Canon Colson, the Reverend Freeman and Canon Johnson. the one that’s there now, Canon Sharpe, is the sixth vicar I’ve known there. The Reverend Bellars was supposed to marry us but he was called away to London. I had an apology from him, to say I could get the vicar from Longbridge Deverill to do it. That was the Reverend Wake. Reverend Bellars said ‘You’ll have to remind him because he do forget.’ So I sent someone to Longbridge Deverill with a message and the Reverend Wake did my wedding. It was a very happy day. It was a good many years ago but I shall always remember it.”
“It was not long after that the Second World War broke out. My husband wasn’t called up for service. He was exempted because he was on the farm. The agricultural workers didn’t have to go to war. He joined the Home Guard though and he had to do little bits and pieces towards that, at night, after working all day in the fields.”
“We didn’t know what to think when the War broke out. That was 3rd September 1939. Of course there was all the talk about ‘Peace in our time.’ Some people thought the Germans would bomb everything here. We used to see the German planes flying over. They were on their way to bomb the aircraft factory at Bristol. You could tell the German planes from the British ones. There was an air-raid siren on the shirt factory behind our house. The first wailing was to warn you of a possible air-raid and the second was the all-clear. That siren didn’t half hammer it out. In home we had a big iron thing. It was a big piece of iron on top of a cage. We had to get under it if there was a possibility of the house being bombed. The idea was it would save you being crushed by falling masonry. We used to use the steel top as a table. Luckily we didn’t get bombed in Warminster. A bomb fell at Crockerton, not far from where my husband’s people lived, on one occasion. I can remember that. It shook their house and broke the windows. Fortunately the bomb fell in a sandy hollow, which was a good thing. If it had fallen on a hard road or a building the outcome might have been very different. There was another bomb which fell at Corsley, but that’s the only two incidents we had around here, I think. So, we never really used the cage for what it was intended for. I did put our Graham in there once or twice, when the siren went, just in case.”
“Graham was born in 1942, when I was 32. That would seem rather late in life for a woman having her first child today, wouldn’t it? When I was a young girl I had no idea where babies came from. I didn’t know about things like that until much later on when my mother told me about the birds and the bees. I only had the one child, Graham. I didn’t have an easy pregnancy. I was poorly. I used to go to the clinic for check-ups, and the health visitor used to come round to see me. If I hadn’t been pregnant I would have had to have gone in the army – remember the War was on – but when I told the authorities I was expecting they said I didn’t look like I was pregnant. They said I ‘wasn’t visible.’ That was the words they used. They said they could only exempt me from military service if they had notification from a nurse or a doctor. They didn’t believe me. So a nurse had to come and see me. That was Nurse Giles. She was good. She was the old-fashioned type and she dealt with the situation for me. Otherwise I would have been put to work in a munitions factory somewhere.”
“I coped with motherhood alright though. Of course my mother was here to help me and she put me in the picture about things. She helped me with the baby. She loved helping. It was jolly hard work bringing up a baby in those days. We had a lot of nappies to wash. We didn’t have the disposable ones like they’ve got today. Everything had to be boiled up in water to sterilise it. We seemed to be forever boiling water. We fed the baby on milk from a cow and we used to put what they called Virol in with it. It wasn’t cod liver oil but it was like it. It wasn’t so strong though. Baby Graham was good though. He wasn’t too bad. You can’t expect a baby to be perfect about not crying and things, can you? He used to have his moments. My husband thought the world of the baby. Charlie had a jacket and he used to put Graham in there and cover him up. Graham used to love it. He was definitely daddy’s boy.”
“There was no family allowance. There was nothing. I managed to get a secondhand pram. My aunt knew someone who had one they wanted to get rid of. That’s how I got a pram. It was secondhand but it served the purpose alright and I managed. Today when a woman has a baby she wants everything and it has to be new. I had to go without a lot of things. If we wanted to buy anything we had to use dockets because the War was putting a grip on things.”
“There were a lot of soldiers in and around Warminster during the Second World War. The Americans came and they were very popular with the young ladies. You know what I mean. A lot of local girls married American soldiers and some went to live in America.”
“During the War we had rationing but we managed. My husband, because he was an agricultural worker, was able to get some extra cheese, but butter was in short supply. We couldn’t get so much of that. I think we used to get about two ounces of butter a week. What we used to do was swap some of our cheese for a bit of someone else’s butter. You know, we used to help one another out. That’s how folks used to get around the rationing.”
“From the time we got married, my husband and I lived with my mother and father in this house at West Parade. We got ourselves a bit of furniture from Bush & Co. I’ve still got the sideboard. We altered one or two things in the house but not much because I didn’t want to upset mother. To help with the rationing my husband planted all the garden with vegetables. It was never down to grass. At the side of the house he grew runner beans up sticks and he used to grow things like cabbages in between. Round the back he used to grow onions. When he harvested the onions he used to hang them up to dry, ready for the winter. He used to tie every little shoot on to a piece of string, so that he could then tie them on to a sort of rope.”
“What I am going to say now will tell you how these houses at West Parade have been altered. My mother used to do her washing the old-fashioned way. Out there, by the fireplace, there used to be the kitchen range. You don’t hear so much about them these days. Next to that was the boiler. You had to feed it. You had to fill it up and get it hot. Mother would have one tub and I used to have the other. We washed the clothes out there. We had to boil the washing. Then we’d empty all the water away and fill up with rinse water and then blue water. Then we put the clothes through an old-fashioned mangle that stood outside by the wall. We had a clothes line in the garden. It went all the way round the garden. Every inch of that line was used for drying the clothes.”
“My father died before my mother. He died in 1941 [on the 20th of August]. He was 74. He had some sort of paralysis. He was buried at the Minster Churchyard. The Reverend Bellars did the funeral. My mother died in 1950 [on the 23rd of June]. She was 76. She had heart trouble and she died in her sleep. We wrote to the Council and asked if we could take over the house. The Council said yes because my husband was an agricultural worker. Of course we were very grateful. And that’s how I’ve come to stay here all these years. That door is the same as when the house was built. So is the back door. We had a pane of glass broken in the front door once. That was a child with a ball who did it. There was a man lived on the corner. I think his name was Curtis. We told him about his child breaking the window and he paid for it. In all the years we’ve been here there’s only even been one pane of glass broken.”
“Some of the houses at West Parade were altered in 1968. The workmen were here for six weeks. They did different things like altering the electrics. The floor was done. This is board in here but out there it’s cement and it was badly cracked, so it had to be pulled up and done again. I was living in the mess, walking on earth. They brought in an old sink for mixing the water for the cement. The work went on for quite a while. Things were alright after they put the new floor down.”
“I didn’t see much of my husband when he was working. He worked long hours. He cycled from here to be out Longbridge Deverill, to start work at seven o’clock in the morning. At harvest time he didn’t get home until gone ten o’clock at night. As long as it was daylight they would carry on working. I only saw him when it was time to go to bed at night and time to get up in the morning. That’s all. I used to get up in the morning to get him ready for work. He used to have to take his meals with him. He took his dinner and if they were harvesting on the farm he had to take his tea as well. The farmer was good though. He used to say to him ‘If you want anything to drink, Charlie, just let me know.”
“They didn’t have modern combine harvesters in they days. The corn was cut with a binder and they used to stand the sheaves of corn up in stooks. When they were cutting the corn in the fields, the rabbits used to get making their way inwards to the centre of the field, until the binder got to the last. That’s when the rabbits would get knocked down. I remember when my husband came home one night with eight dead rabbits. I said ‘What on earth are we going to do with they?’ He said ‘We will have to give some away.’ So, that’s what we did. He paunched the rabbits out in the garden and we gave the ones we didn’t want to the neighbours and anyone who liked eating rabbit. I thought rabbit off the chalk was lovely. It was better than what you get now in the shops. There were lots of rabbits about in they days.”
“My husband didn’t earn very much. He went without a lot of things. He never owned a car, not ever. I think he got about 38 shillings a week when we got married. It was a small wage for a lot of hours. He gave me the housekeeping money and I had to make that do. Still, milk was only about three-halfpence for a pint. The milkman used to bring it to our door. And half a hundredweight of coal was only a half-a-crown. It costs a small fortune now.”
“My husband has been dead 16 years. He was 74 when he died [on the 14th of November] in 1982. He died just before his birthday. He had been ill. He had been to Bath Hospital. He came home from there and he said he didn’t want to go there again. I said ‘You shan’t go no more then,’ and he didn’t. He hadn’t been healthy all his life. He used to have his moments but working outside on the land, in all weathers, had made him a bit tough. He died here at West Parade and he was buried on top of my mother and father in the new churchyard at the Minster.”
“I think that new burying ground at the Minster was added in 1922. My granny and grandfather were the second couple to be buried in it. They’re all buried there. I wanted my husband buried there, even though he is a Crockerton man. Mr. Shuttlewood, the undertaker, said ‘We’ll make sure you can do that. We’ll move your parents’ coffins to one side to make room.’ I hope there will be room for me to be buried in that grave.”
“I believe in God. I don’t know what Heaven is like. We shall have to find out when we get there. I do believe in the hereafter and the Maker. I do say a prayer in times of trouble and I say my prayers every night for my family and friends.”
“My husband, when he finished on the farm, got another job not very long after. My brother Stan worked at the REME. Through him my husband heard about a vacancy for an outside worker, on what they used to call the Yard Gang. My husband liked the outdoor life. He put in for the job and he got it. He did sweeping up and all those sort of capers. He tidied up around the works. The people there were supposed to retire at 65 but my husband went on until he was 68. Same as your grandmother, Mrs. Ball, who worked at the REME. I think she would have worked there until she was about 70 and I dare say she would have gone on longer if she was allowed. I suppose somebody kicked up a charm and they all had to retire.”
“My husband fiddled about in the garden and about the house in retirement. He did different things. If I wanted any decorating done he would do it. He always liked a room empty when he was decorating, so we always moved he furniture out of one room into another. We used to have to go out the back to get to the toilet. After my husband died, my legs were bad, and the Council knocked a hole in the wall so I could go through instead of going all out round the house.”
“I never thought I would live so long after my husband died. I miss him. He used to love watching football. After his working days on the farm were over he used to go to the Town Ground every Saturday. Warminster had a good football team. My husband liked cricket as well but I couldn’t understand that game. We used to go on coach trips organised by Mr. Tom Gunning. He lived at Imber Road. Tom Gunning, being a Welshman, loved Wales and very often the trips used to go there.”
“I went over to Wales once, which reminds me how, years ago, I had to send a card to somebody in Wales and I asked whether I had to put ‘England’ on the bottom of the address. I never knew. I asked and it tickled them pink that I didn’t know. They said ‘Wales isn’t England.’ They must have thought I was stupid. I always think about that. I’ve never been abroad. Have you? I’ve heard people say you can’t beat England and I think they’re right.”
“What were we talking about? Oh yes, coach trips with Mr. Gunning. Sometimes we went for a weekend. We went to Tenby once. Another time we went to Blackpool once but although we went on the coach we didn’t stay with the coach party. We stayed with some people we knew. I remember once someone got up a coach trip to Scotland. I think it was about £50 or something similar. That was for a long weekend. I asked my husband about it. He said ‘You please yourself. If you want to go we will go.’ I said ‘It seems a lot of money. That would keep us for a fortnight or three weeks.’ I was concerned about the money. It wasn’t just the cost of the trip, you also needed some spending money in your pocket. We didn’t go and I’ve always regretted it. I wish we had gone. See, if you don’t take these trips when you’ve got the chance you miss them.”
“Another time we went to Blackpool again. There was the chance of a ride on from Blackpool to Gretna Green and we went. We had a false wedding there and we had our photos taken. That’s about as far as I’ve ever been apart from Carlisle.”
“Charlie was a good chap. He was an excellent husband. I couldn’t have had a better one. I never thought about getting married again. I try to stay independent. I want to stay here as long as ever I can but you never know when you might have to go into a sheltered place. I’m not lonely. There’s lots going on outside my window. There are people coming and going to the shop across the road, and there are things being delivered there. It’s always been a busy place. Mrs. Barnett had that shop built, so that her daughter Grace Voysey could start a business. Grace’s husband, Dick Voysey, was away during the Second World War, working as an assistant for Churchill. Mrs. Voysey had evacuees staying in the rooms above the shop. Living here, opposite the shop, I could see all that was going on there.”
I shall be 89 on Friday. My health isn’t too bad, except for my legs. My legs have just about given up. I can get about in home with my frame. I used to do a lot of knitting but I can’t do it now with my poor old hands. I’ve got a bit of arthritis. I lost my teeth when I was forty. I used to go and have them seen to but they got bad. The dentist said ‘You might as well have them out.’ I had them out four at a time. I had to have false teeth. To start with it was like chomping on I don’t know what. My mother said ‘You’ll soon get used to them.’ I was eating an apple one day and the top plate broke in two. They wouldn’t just mend or replace the top plate. I had to have a full set made again. Years ago we always used to go to Mr, Campbell, the dentist, up near the Post Office. At school we had a school dentist who used to come in from time to time. I always remember when my son Graham was at the Minster School and the school dentist came there. The next thing I knew our Graham walked in home. I said ‘What’s up with you?’ He said ‘I’ve had my teeth done and I thought it was time I came home.’ He had walked home from school as soon as he had his teeth done. He hadn’t gone back to the lessons afterwards.”
“When I was young you had to pay to see the doctor. When I was living at Pound Street there was some bad influenza doing the rounds. My people got it and I must have caught it. We had to have the doctor out. That was Dr. Kindersley. Not long afterwards we had a bill come in. My mother said ‘I’ve paid it.’ They said ‘Have you got the receipt?’ She said ‘No.’ She had lost it or accidentally thrown it out, so she couldn’t prove she had paid it. She had to pay the bill again. It was a lot of money to pull out. That taught me a lesson. To this day I always keep receipts.”
“I enjoy reading the newspaper. My parents always had the Warminster Journal. I like the Western Daily Press because you get some local news and some world news in it. I want to keep in touch with the world. I like to know how things are going on and I try not to miss the weather forecast. They said it’s going to be cloudy today but it’s turned out very nice. They’re not always right you know. The weather was different years ago. There was more of a variation to it depending on the season, like you knew the winter was going to be cold and you knew you’d get some sunshine during the summer.”
“I don’t watch much television. I only watch programmes I like. I don’t watch Eastenders or things like that. I used to watch Coronation Street but I got fed up with it, so I don’t watch that any more. I do like to see the quizzes on television because I try to keep my mind active.”
“I don’t answer the door at night. I keep my door locked and the chain on. My son said I had to do that. It’s good advice. You hear about people getting into houses and stealing things. I go to bed early, at about half past seven in the evening. And I get up early. I’ve always been an early riser. I get up just after six. It isn’t very often later, not when I oversleep and that’s a rare thing. It takes me a long time to do anything now, so if I get up early I can take my time. By the time I’ve made my bed, washed myself, got dressed, tidied up and done a few things, the time has gone.”
“I don’t go far these days, only when I’m taken out by my son Graham. He comes to see me regular. He’s a very good lad. I’m calling him a lad but he’s 57 years old now. After going to the Minster School he went to Sambourne School. He wanted to work on the railway. He had a friend who worked on the railway and they talked it over. Railway workers had to be a certain height in them days. It turned out that Graham wasn’t tall enough. He passed everything, like the tests for colour blindness and things like that, but they told him he’d have to wait and see if he grew some more. He couldn’t wait. My husband and I went off for a day trip one day and when we got home Graham said ‘I’ve got myself a job.’ I said ‘Where?’ He had got a job at Johnny Hall’s Paintworks at Weymouth Street. He worked there for quite a while and then he got a job at Stiles Brothers, the ironmongers. He was more or less an errand boy for them, taking the parcels out. From there he went to work at Warminster Post Office and he’s been there ever since. He’s still a postman now and he delivers out of town, in the country. He’s been a postman I suppose for 30 years or so.”
“Graham is good to me. I’m very proud of my son and I get on well with my daughter-in-law. She’s a gem. She was a girl from Codford. Her name was Maureen Plowman, My son always calls her Mo. I think Maureen’s father worked for Frank Whitmarsh, in Whitmarsh’s pork butcher’s shop down the bottom of the High Street, near Portway Corner. Graham and Maureen have two children – a girl and a boy. That’s Susan and Stephen. They’re both married. Susan is married to Duncan Allardice and they live at St. George’s Close, opposite the Roman Catholic School. They are buying their house. Stephen is married to Julia and they live at Melrose Avenue.”
“Julia is Dorothy Bigwood’s eldest daughter. Dorothy lives at Bishopstrow. Dorothy Bigwood’s father, Jack Davis, used to play the banjo in Les Whitmarsh’s Band. Jack Davis used to live just along here. I expect you’ve heard of Les Whitmarsh’s Band. They used to play at the dances at the Town Hall. When I was young I used to go to the dances. They were held on the top floor of the Town Hall. It was pretty good in there. I can’t remember how much it cost to get in. Not much I suppose. We couldn’t afford expensive things. We used to have a dance and a jig round. That’s how we used to enjoy ourselves. Going to a dance or going to the pictures was about the only choices we had. We could only just afford to go to the pictures. That was about nine old pence. That was a lot of money to us. To begin with we went to the Palace Cinema, where the Athenaeum is now. It was alright in there. I can always remember the first picture we saw. It was called The Four Horsemen. Rudolph Valentino was in it. I can remember when the Regal Cinema, at Weymouth Street, was built. We used to go there was well. If you wanted a better seat you had to go up in the balcony. That cost more and we couldn’t always afford to do that. We had to be content with sitting downstairs. Bert Kerr was the manager of the Regal Cinema. He was an Australian. He had come to Warminster, as a soldier, during the First World War. He lived at the bottom of Ash Walk. He must have got fed up with life because he committed suicide inside the Regal.”
“Julia brought me some flowers today. She’s a nice girl. See, she’s good to me too. Stephen and Julia’s daughter Emma is a dear little soul. She’s seven years old. She was seven in February (last month). Susan and Duncan have a little boy called Cameron. He will be four in September. He goes to the Rainbow Playschool, at The Close, and he loves it. He goes there three times a week. He woke up one morning at half past six. He said ‘Mummy, is it time to go to playschool?’ She said ‘No, not at half past six, now you go back to sleep.’ He’s ever so keen. He can count up to 20 and he can do no end of things. I think that child is going to go a very long way. I’m very proud of both my great-grandchildren. I’m sure my grandchildren will bring my great-grandchildren to see me on Friday because it’s my birthday. I shall be 89.”
“I’m glad to say I had a happy childhood. I had good parents and that was something to be thankful for. We had to work hard for what we had but we appreciated things because of that. People were more content. A lot of couples don’t marry now, they just live together. They seem to want everything and more, and when they can’t have just what they want they flare up and get a divorce. There’s a lot more divorces now than there were years ago. I suppose it’s easy for people to get divorced now, but, well, how things have changed? When people get married now they want all the gadgets like washing machines and hoovers. Years ago we never had none of that. We had to get on our hands and knees to scrub the floors and brush the carpets. It was no use complaining or moaning about it.”
“Everything is modernised now. It’s not like it used to be. Everything has changed but not really for the better. I don’t think much of the world today. It isn’t very nice now. Everything is to do with money now. The Government had the Budget yesterday. There’s all about it in the newspaper today and I’ve been trying to fathom it out. Old age pensioners get a better deal now. That is true. They only used to get ten shillings a week. That’s all my mother and father ever got. I really don’t know what they would say if they could come back now. I know once when father went to draw his pension, the ten shillings, one day, he lost it on the way home. He must have pushed it in his pocket and when he took his handkerchief out he must have pulled the money out and he lost it. Oh, he didn’t know what to do when he got home. Mother was short of ten shillings and they had to go without. Ten shillings was a lot of money then but it is nothing today. What could you do with ten shillings now? Nothing. Still, people seem awash with money now and they’ve got so much they don’t know how to spend it. It’s gone crazy.”
“Everything has changed so. Warminster has changed since I was a girl. All the fields around Warminster have been built on. I can remember when we were surrounded by nothing but fields. There used to be green fields and hedges and trees all around the town but they’ve built houses everywhere now. Now it’s all occupied. Even down the back of West Street, the other side of where there’s a roundabout now, has been built on. They’ve built no end of houses down there. That’s where we children used to go to play when it was all fields. There was a little river down there. I suppose it’s still there. We’d get a piece of brick and scrub it with another brick, in the water, to clean it. We used to spend hours down there, playing like that. A child wouldn’t consider that fun now. Young children today have far too much.”
“Every little nook and corner, wherever you go, has houses on it. I don’t know where the people come from. They must come from away. I don’t even know who my neighbours are now. I couldn’t even tell you who the woman is in the end house on the corner. She got a transfer from somewhere else to here. I don’t know who she is, but not that I want to. At one time I knew all my neighbours. Different people have come and gone. Their children have grown up here, got married and gone away, and later the parents died. My neighbours when I first moved here were a Mrs. Wheeler and a Mrs. Prince. There was also a man living near me but he moved after his parents died. He wasn’t married. He bought a little cottage at Pound Street, near where the little chapel was. I can remember one neighbour, a woman, who was a bit of a misery. If some children got out in the road playing with a ball, and the ball went in her garden she used to keep it. She used to tell the children she would keep it as a punishment. She would eventually give the ball back but not until she had made them suffer. I could never be like that.”
“I suppose I’ve lived so long because of hard work. I worked hard in my younger days but it hasn’t killed me yet. I know we had to work hard in our younger days but we never knew no different. That’s the way it was. Young girls wouldn’t do it now. We never had such things as vacuum cleaners. They’ve got everything today, like washing machines and driers and all those kind of things.”
“We worked hard and it kept us going. If I could have my life over again I don’t know what I would change. A person’s health is the most important thing. All my organs are wearing out now. I suppose it’s my age. People are like cars, they don’t go on forever. I can’t hear very well now but I haven’t always been deaf. It’s nothing to worry about though. I can’t walk very well. I can’t go nowhere without my sticks. I would be lost without them. I’ve got to take my time. I wouldn’t want to fall down. I only hope I’m not a burden to anyone. I think I’m still alive because I try to keep as joyful as I can. I try not to be miserable.”
“I hope what I have told you will be of some use to you. I was a bit nervous about being interviewed. See, I had never met you before but it’s turned out fine. My granddaughter Julia said to me: ‘You don’t want to worry, you’ll be alright.; Julia was right wasn’t she?’ I have been alright. Julia has given me one of your books every Christmas. I’ve got all of them. They’re very good. You’re obviously very clever. I’ve enjoyed talking to you. I only hope I haven’t made no blunders!”