A tape-recorded interview Danny Howell made with Ted Owen, at Ted’s home, Corner Ground, Warminster, on Wednesday 16th April 1986. First published in Warminster And District Archive magazine, issue No.4, May 1990:
Ted Owen said:
“I was born on 30th October 1913, at 47 Portway, Warminster. That was a little cottage, two-up, two-down. My bedroom was up in what I suppose you would call the attic. I had to go up a ladder when I wanted to go to bed. I was one of a large family. There were about eight of us. My father was James Owen. Years ago he was a gamekeeper up Mancombe Woods. In his later years he was what you would call a general labourer.”
“When we lived at our cottage at Portway, there were four cottages together. At the end of our cottage was a passageway with four toilets for the rank. I can always remember one firework time getting a Catherine wheel and sticking it on someone’s toilet door. It burnt all the paint off. There was some trouble over that.”
“I started school, when I was about five, at the Minster School in Vicarage Street. It was fairly pleasant. The only teacher I can really remember was Mrs. Wyer. When I was about 10 I left the Minster and went to Sambourne School. Jimmy Bartlett was the headmaster and he was alright. He kept bees and he was a great one for nature; birds’ eggs and things like that. One day he brought in a dead bird. He held it up and asked us children if any of us knew what it was. I was a bit worried but I took a chance and said it was a greenfinch. Luckily, I was right. As a reward for guessing right he allowed me to go out into the other room and suck the cloth that he used to strain the honey with. That’s true. I can always remember that.”
“At times Sambourne School was pleasant and other times it was not so good. My school pals at Sambourne included a lad called Vallis, whose father kept the fish shop at the end of George Street; Charlie Taylor, who was a little bit older than me; my brother Frederick; and one of my sisters, Edna.”
“I left Sambourne when I was 14 years old. I wanted to be an electrician. The old Electric Light Company, at Carson’s Yard, had vacancies for apprentices. The only snag was you didn’t get any wages in they days, you had to pay them. You had to buy your apprenticeship. Of course that was out of the question, my father and mother couldn’t afford it.”
“Eventually I finished up at the glove factory, up the top of the Regency Arcade, in East Street. That was Holman & Byfield’s. I started at five shillings a week for a twelve-month. The next year was ten shillings a week. Out of that I had to buy my own shears and side stakes, things like that. I suppose a pair of shears was seven and six, a week’s wages.”
“I began by being an apprentice under a glove cutter. I learnt the trade of glove cutting from him. He was Walter Jones and he used to live at West Parade. He was fairly strict but that was to my own good. There were four apprentices when I started. One was George Pearce. I don’t know if he’s alive now. He used to live at West Parade but they moved away. Another was Norman White; the old blacksmith’s son. Laurie Ball was the other one and he used to live up off Imber Road. And myself, that made up the four.”
“I suppose there were about 25 people working at the factory. We were kept fairly busy. Of course there were slack periods occasionally but we were kept going fairly well. Holman & Byfield changed hands. After the Second World War a Mrs. Bruce, the wife of the Right Honourable Victor Bruce, bought the business. She was a great racing driver and I think she went to Australia once. She died not long ago. It was on the television the other day how they had sold three of her old racing cars, still in immaculate condition, for about £74,000. She used to race on the track at Brooklands.”
“Eventually she sold the business to a Mr. Young. He had a little factory, I think, doing the same thing at Bath. That’s when the factory at East Street started to go down hill. It went on for a few years until he decided he wanted to transfer things to the other factory at Bath. He asked me if I would go to Bath and I said ‘No.’ I didn’t want to travel to and from Bath. I decided to take redundancy but he didn’t want to pay me off. I had to go to a bit of a court case, a tribunal, at Bristol to sort the situation out. I won the day. Well, he didn’t have a leg to stand on. He tried to get out of it. I ended up with the large amount of just over £500.”
“I had been at Holman & Byfield’s for 44 years, except for my military service during the Second World War. When the Second World War broke out I was in the local ARP. I was in the First Aid detachment based at Sambourne Hospital. If the siren went we had to dive for it. You had to get your bike out and pedal up to Sambourne. Dr. Hodges was in charge of it. It was alright. Nothing really happened, you just had to be there in case of emergencies. We never had any air raids in Warminster. We’d get up there playing cards. There was a Roman Catholic priest on with us, I can’t remember what his name was, but he was the biggest gambler out of the lot of us.”
“Then I went on active service. I went out through the desert. I didn’t go to Italy but I went to Sicily. When that was cleared up we came back to England to get ready for the second front. I finished up in Berlin.”
“After I left Holman & Byfield’s I took another job with Hudson & Martin, the builders’ merchants, at Fairfield Road, Warminster. I worked in the yard office. I was a bit incapacitated. I couldn’t do any lifting or heavy work. I did the booking of goods in and out, and I took orders over the phone. Officially I was an order-clerk. I got on alright and that’s where I worked until I retired.”