I spent a happy childhood in Buntingford, commencing school at Layston in 1923 in the building that was demolished to make way for the modern school. The main school hall, headmaster’s office and staff rooms now occupy the space where the old building stood. Walking past one day whilst the building work was in progress I came across a stone block with the date of construction of the original building which, if I can recall correctly, was 1845. I retrieved the stone and handed it to the Head, suggesting that it was incorporated somewhere in the new building. I believe it can now be seen set in the wall just inside the main entrance. It would have been a pity if this little piece of history had disappeared; had I not rescued it I am sure it would have been dumped as rubbish.

The Head of school in my day as an infant pupil was Mrs Baker who at that time lived in a house on Market Hill, now used as a dental surgery. Her assistant was Miss Anthony who taught infants like me during our first days at school. There was no central heating in the school and in winter a slow combustion stove standing against one of the walls provided the only form of heating. I can remember on cold winter days Miss Anthony’s favourite position would be standing with her back close to the stove and lifting her skirt at the back to get extra warmth to that part of her body. One or two of my class mates walked to the school from their homes at Wyddial or beyond and in wet weather their clothes would be soaked by the time they arrived at school. The wet clothes would be hung around the stove to dry and I can clearly recall seeing clouds of steam rising from them. These kids had to bring a packed lunch and during the winter period sat around the stove to eat their sandwiches during the lunch break.

I recall too in 1923 there was no electricity available. The only form of lighting was from oil lamps which invariably had not been trimmed or filled with oil so, in practice, if it got too dark to see property what we was doing, the school closed. Later, electricity was installed which helped lessons to continue without interruption.

There was one wash hand basin situated in the out house at the back of the school but only one cold water tap. No hot water was available. The toilets too were in an outhouse in the school yard, with a corrugated iron roof over the four toilets. There was no wash basin or water provided so we could never wash our hands after using the toilet.

I had not been attending school long before I developed my first infection which was scarlet fever and I was taken off to the local isolation hospital situated on the hillside between Aspenden and Westmill. The ambulance vehicle was a horse drawn carriage driven by Mr Aylott and attended by the nurse, Mrs Bruce. A photograph of this vehicle is published in Philip Plumb’s book. There must have been something of an epidemic at the time as there were several other patients. I was allocated a bed in the corner of the room next to the one occupied by Vera Whiting, who later became Mrs Handy. Vera, like me, spent the whole of her life as a local resident and we have always joked about lying in bed next to one another for six weeks or more. Sadly, Vera passed away several years ago. Our parents were not allowed to enter the ward to visit and could only stand outside and look through the window. My sisters were only permitted to stand by the gate about a hundred yards down the hill. Times Change; nowadays nothing is heard of scarlet fever or diphtheria which was also treated at the hospital and are almost unheard of infections now. Following six weeks of treatment I returned home and resumed my school career.

I cannot recall much about the school lessons during that period except that we learnt the vowels by repeating parrot fashion, At Et It Ot Ut. I don’t know if it helped by I can still remember that sort of chorus more than eighty years later. Following two or three years as a pupil in the junior school, I moved to the lower larger school where there were four classes. The head teacher was Mr Dennis. The first class was that run by Mrs Pateman, an unqualified teacher, who had years of experience after starting off as a pupil teacher. I can’t remember much about what happened in class what what I can remember is that Mrs Pateman was a strict disciplinarian and we were soon rapped over the knuckles with a ruler if we stepped out of line. The next step was a move into the class run by Mrs Corp, another ex-pupil teacher.

After a sort of audition, I was made a member of the school choir. Mr Dennis was an extremely good musician and choirmaster and our choir was entered into singing competitions all over the district of North Hertfordshire. The Buntingford choir always swept the board. The singing festivals were the highlight of my school career - I was never very academic – and I continued as a member of the school choir throughout my school career.

Following the period in the class run by Mrs Corp, my next stage was a move into the class of Miss Davies and, for the final period, the senior class run by Mr Dennis. I suppose I was never considered bright enough to sit the exam which, had I been successful, would have enabled me to go to Hertford Grammar School. I must say I was never pushed or encouraged to do so by my parents so I cannot totally blame the system. The school might not have provided a particularly high standard of literacy but I cannot recall any of my contemporaries leaving school unable to read or write, which I understand it quite common place nowadays.

My family home during my school years was situated near the causeway in Paddock Road, commonly known then as New Town and we would either play on the causeway itself or in the road outside the houses. Like the seasons of the year, there were seasons for games too; I cannot recall the actual months when each game was in season. There were seasons for skipping, spinning tops, hopscotch, hoops, jinks or five stones, and possibly more that I cannot remember. Indoors there was no electricity so all the houses were lit by oil lamps and of course only one room in the house was heated, so all the indoor activities took place in the one room. We kids – I grew up with three sisters – always hated Mondays which was washing day and if the family laundry could not be dried out of doors it was hung all over the living room to dry. There was no radio at first; later small sets with earphones began to be used. I can remember it was quite something to hear Big Ben chiming and being told one could hear it more clearly over the radio as the noise of the London traffic made it impossible to hear the chimes if one was standing nearby the building housing “Big Ben”. I was never able to check it out.

My school friend Reg Winters, who became my lifelong friend, lived nearby, also in Paddock Road. He was more fortunate than me as his mum, a war widow of the first world war, was a very easy going lady and Reg was able to do more or less as he liked. During out of school hours Reg and I spent most of our free time together, playing in the fields and hedgerows around Layston Church. We used to build camps in the copses east of Layston towards the Fir Wood and Beauchamps. There were several other families with children all about the same age living in the same street then and we all used to spend our spare time in the woods and hedgerows around Layston. We made bows and arrows and played red Indians or Robin Hood.

During my school days the River Rib was always a favourite play area. An eighteen inch diameter pipe crossed the river adjacent to River Green and one was not considered a real Buntingford person until one had crossed the river walking along the top of the pipe. There was always lots of water flowing at that time and the usual level meant that water lapped half way up the huge pipe. One could walk over fairly easily with dry feet but anyone who was unfortunate enough to let a foot slide enough to get wet, then they slid with an almighty splash into two or three feet of icy cold water. Most of the kids of my age had experienced such a soaking. Another activity, always a favourite, which took place at that point was to sit in the row of bushes which grew on the west bank and fish for tiddlers using a bent pin or piece of wire on the end of a length of cotton or thread which was tied to the end of a long stick or cane. If successful the catch would be taken home in a jam jar but I am afraid the poor fish did not survive for very long. One never sees today’s youngsters involved in these activities; not exciting enough or perhaps not enough water.

My friend Reg was still allowed to do more or less as he pleased and he was allowed to join the Scouts, which was banned for me. I was able to join the scouting movement in my early teens and enjoyed a good deal of pleasure and benefit from it.

Apart from Scouts and Girl Guides there were no regular organised activities for children in the late nineteen twenties. Having mentioned that, I do recall Mrs Williams of Aspenden starting up a club for school kids called “Young Britons”. We met on Saturdays in the Foresters Hall in Baldock Road. A Hairdressers shop now stands on the site. I can remember the slogan we were encouraged to sing: “Buntingford better because of ‘Young Britons’ ” - I cannot say whether or not the town improved benefitted from our activities. We all proudly wore a small circular blue coloured badge which had a lion emblazoned on the front and the words Young Briton etched round the edge. I can’t even remember what we actually did, neither can I recall how long a life this activity enjoyed success. Not long I suspect, probably only as long as Mrs Williams was able to run it. She was quite an elderly lady when the Young Britons began.

At the bottom of Church Street there was a butchers shop run by Arthur Jackson. The meat he sold came from local farms and carcases of pigs, lambs and beef used to hang on chrome rails around the shop in summer as well as winter. Not many butchers shops boasted refrigerators in the 1920s and partly cut up carcases were kept in cupboards which had zinc covered sides to keep off the flies and allow cold air to circulate around the meat. In summer time one of the delivery lad’s jobs was always to be on hand armed with a riding stock which had a leather pad attached to one end. His job was to swat the flies if they landed on the meat, which he did with great gusto, then pick off the fly corpses and drop them on the floor, which was always covered in a thick layer of sawdust. Sometimes a piece of meat would fall from the block where it was being cut up, dropping into the sawdust. It would be hastily retrieved, the surplus sawdust shaken off and the more stubborn pieces wiped off with a damp cloth, an action which would make today’s environmental health people cringe. Nobody seemed to worry about that at the time.

Mr Jackson employed a couple of lads who delivered meat to customer’s houses on their bikes. I can recall one occasion when a lady we will call Mrs Brown came into the shop complaining that her meat had not been delivered. A nonplussed Mr Jackson tried to calm the lady saying: “ I know it was delivered, I cut it off myself and handed it to the boy to deliver”. Fred the boy was called and asked if he had delivered Mrs Brown’s meat. Fred, who was not one of the brightest, blushed and looked a bit sheepish: “There was no one at home”, he said “so I left it”. Mr Jackson , by this time becoming somewhat irate, demands “Well, where did you leave it?” “I couldn’t see anywhere else to put it” says Fred “so I left it in the dog kennel by the back door”. Mr Jackson nearly exploded and poor old Fred received a sharp ding round the ears. The next time I saw him he was working at the Blacksmiths in what is now Anvil Court, working the huge bellows which kept the fire burning brightly. Jacksons continued in business until the war and Arthur Jackson retired. The Christmas displays of meat at that time were most impressive; a photograph of such a display in the 1920s is published in Philip Plumb’s book of photographs (and one of the photos appeared on the Christmas 2005 edition of the Journal ).

A lady who made what we kids thought was super coconut ice lived in a neighbouring street. My sisters and I received strict instructions not to buy Win’s sweets and mum used to say “You never know where they have kept it”. The sweets however were first claas and whenever we could we would buy pieces of it, at one penny a slice. One day we asked her younger brother where she kept her coconut ice after making it. “Under the bed”, came the reply. I don’t think we let that news put us off and we were careful not to let mum know its history.

Market Day, Monday, was a special day for kids as the cattle market was always a favourite place to be. A couple of dozen bullocks would be tied to rails outside the chemist’s shop. It sometimes happened that an animal would escape and it was great fun to help round up the escapees. Pigs and sheep were penned up under the trees where the market stalls are situated today. After school in the afternoons it was fun to help drive cattle from the market to the station from where they were transported by train, usually to butchers’ abattoirs in North London. The animals would be penned in a meadow in Aspenden Road next to the house which is still there today, whilst waiting to be taken off in cattle wagons attached to a goods train.

Another Monday job during the school lunch break was to go to Mrs Nevett’s to pay clothing club monies. Most families belonged to this club and paid a weekly contribution which was repaid each year in the late autumn, and the saved monies were spent on clothing and household linen, etc. Mrs Nevett lived in the large house on the corner of Bowling Green Lane and Bowlers Mead. Her husband Tom was a local builder and philanthropist – the elderly folks Home nearby, “Nevetts” is so named in memory of him and his work for the community. I can clearly remember Mrs Nevett sitting at the window to receive the club money. To me she looked just like Queen Victoria, with a little lace cap on the top of her head, and her personal maid was always standing behind her. Must have been a sort of security guard, I expect, in case we urchins tried to grab some of the money she was collecting.

There was quite a large Salvation Army congregation during the period between the world wars. The two full time officers in charge of the unit lived in a house on River Green. Each Sunday before the service in the Citadel in Baldock Road the band would lead a parade around the Town and short services would be held at strategic points along the route, the last of which would be on the Market Hill outside the Chemist’s. The established churches appeared to have disapproving views of the Army at this time. The Vicar of the day, Rev. Alfred Howard, was particularly concerned, so much so that as he walked past the Market Hill on his way to St Peters, if the Army service was in progress he would remove his oval shaped felt Vicorian Vicar’s hat that he always wore and hold it firmly over the right side of his face in order to obscure from view “those Army interlopers”. Thank goodness those bigoted views would not be acceptable today. Saturday evening was very busy for Army members. Walter Reed and his wife and Mary Parker for years made a round of the local pubs selling copies of the War Cry, the Army magazine. I have no idea if this publication is still around today.

The Salvation Army unit gradually ran down after the war and finally closed down altogether, which is very sad as The Army still does great work in many communities in the district. The timber constructed Citadel building used for its services has only recently been demolished and replaced by modern domestic dwellings.

It was during my period as a member of St Peter’s Church choir in 1926 that a new section of Layston Churchyard was opened for use and a ceremony of consecration took place. I was present as the choir took part in a “beating the bounds” ceremony, parading around the perimeter of the new burial ground, before a declaration of consecration was made by the Bishop of St Albans. The provision of a burial ground is quite topical at the moment, when the area I have referred to is just about to become completely filled and there is some doubt whether or not there will be a burial ground in Buntingford in the future.

Two or three times a year during my school years, choir or school outings would be arranged to Clacton on Sea. There was always great excitement as the outing day approached. My dad always provided a copious amount of delicious looking sausage rolls which in itself was something of a treat. The earliest years that I recall going on these outings was before the introduction of pneumatic tyres, and the open tourer type bus was fitted with solid tyres. This did not actually add to the comfort of the ride but did not detract from the excitement of going on the outings. I have seen photographs in Philip Plumb’s book of photographs of Buntingford of the old open tourer bus used in earlier years. We would all excitedly board the coach in the High Street about eight o’clock and once everybody was aboard and amid much excited cheering and waving to those not joining the trip, the journey to the coast began. It was never long before the coach had to be halted to allow an over excited travel sick child off to restore personal comfort problems, neither was it unusual for passenger to have to stop down from the bus and walk along side it up a steep hill; the bus meantime would be belching steam from the engine. After a couple of hours travel, a comfort stop was made, usually at a café at or near Marks Tey, where everyone enjoyed a cup of tea.

The coach park in Clacton was the final destination at about 12 o’clock and frustrated mums, having collected their families’ bags, coats, buckets and spades etc., made their way to the nearest suitable area of beach. In later years I have thought what an awful experience it must have been for mums. A very sandy picnic meal was eaten on the beach, followed by a visit to the fun fair on the pier. I can recall on one such trip to the pier my mum was challenged to step on to a weighing machine, the soken voice type. My mum without thinking was still clutching all the family clobber and bags. When the voice on the machine called out “thirteen stone” my mum nearly had a fit, calling out: “That old man tells lies”. Calm was restored when she realised the weight quoted included all the family’s luggage.

During the afternoon a tea was usually arranged at Cordy’s restaurant, which always included shrimp or prawn sandwiches - something quite unique for kids from Buntingford – followed by a speech by the Vicar. The homeward journey began about 5 o’clock and at about 8/8.30 p.m. a tired but very happy crowd of kids arrived home in Buntingford.

These trips were the highlight of the year for must of us and the only escape to the great outside world. My parents never took a family holiday; work and lack of finance were probably the main reasons. He only other holiday my sisters and I enjoyed was a visit to Tottenham to stay with our Aunt Jess, my father’s sister, and her husband Uncle Bill, who was my mother’s brother. My Aunt used to take us on trips into central London to visit all the tourist spots, museums etc. It all seemed a world away from Buntingford and we kids thought we had been to the other end of the earth. When I got older and used to drive to London I discovered that Tottenham was little more than half an hour’s drive away from Buntingford.

Ernest Dennis, the Headmaster at the school, spent all his spare time in running the Buntingford Dramatic Society and also the Operatic Society, which boasted its own orchestra, also organised and conducted by Ernest Dennis. During each winter season a pantomime was produced which I remember played to full houses. In the 1920s, repertory companies paid regular visits to Buntingford and put on shows at the Benson Hall.

It was not at all unusual to see the river flood during the winter. There never seemed to be extensive flooding, as occurred in 1968, but the houses in close proximity to the river were affected. The house on the corner at the foot of the Causeway and the six dwellings situated at the bottom of Garden Road close to the river, called “the steps” (since demolished) were often subject to flooding. There was a weir constructed across the river at this point to divert a stream of water to the Tannery. This was removed in 1937/8 when the Braughing and Hitchin Rural District Councils undertook a scheme to provide piped water all around their joint district areas. This scheme involved drilling another well at Chipping which has resulted in a minimal amount of water flowing into the Rib and the reason we now have a river with little or no water and the river bed a rubbish dump.

St Bartholomews Church at Layston has always had a soft place in my heart, a regular play area for my chums and I from the time we were ten or eleven. St Barts was used regularly for services during the summer months, at which most of my friends and myself sang in the choir. There was a peal of five bells then and a group of ringers used to ring before each service. The Nave boasted a good water-proof roof, too. Sadly, during the war years the church was left unattended and for long periods there were no services. Vandals broke in and parts of the Tower parapet were pushed off, falling through the roof of the Nave. Natural weather conditions accelerated the damage. After the war a large sum of money was required to repair the considerable damage and it was cheaper to remove the Nave roof. This occurred in 1954 and the Church has been a semi ruin ever since.

In 1961 thieves broke in and stole the two smallest of the five bells which had hung there undisturbed since the major renovation work carried out by the rev. Alexander Strange in 1631. It is thought the thieves were travellers who were looking for scrap metal. I expect the bells were worth only a pittance as scrap which is a tragedy as they will never get replaced. I will write more about St Barts under another heading.

I finally left school at the age of fourteen without any educational qualification in 1932 and began work in the bakery full time with a salary of fifteen shillings a week.

In later years my greatest disappointment was not getting to grammar school. Most of my friends did and I feel I lost out a good deal. Without school certificate and matriculation qualifications, everything to improve one’s status was a struggle, particularly when one joined the armed forces. Towards the end of the war there were some opportunities to improve one’s educational standards. I tried to make the most of the Educational and Vocational Training “EVT” schemes set up by the government and to some extent I did enjoy some success. It did not however make up for missing out on grammar school. During the late forties and early fifties I served as a Scouter and, in dealing with boys, one could always tell the lads who were attending Grammar School; their whole demeanour was different. This always made me realise what I had missed out on in my schooldays. Sad, but in one’s eighties there is not much one can do about it. If only one could have the opportunity to have one’s youth over again.

Childhood Memories

Memories of a Baker’s Boy

My dad was a Baker all his life. As soon as I was old enough I used to help out the roundsmen on Saturdays and school holidays. For working on Saturdays I used to be paid two shillings. This involved riding round the villages with the roundsman in a van or, in the early days, by horse and cart delivering to our customers bread and cakes and small bags of corn for chicken feed. The price of a two pounds loaf of bread at that time was threepence farthing and cakes were usually one penny each, or seven for sixpence, in pre-decimal currency of course.

Lots of cottagers used to keep hens in their backyard and bought seven or fourteen pounds of corn at a time to feed the hens which provided the family with fresh eggs, and the occasions meat dish when a hen failed to lay its quota of eggs. I used to like going to the large houses, where the two of us – the roundsman and the lad – were invited into the servant’s hall and provided with tea and cakes by the cook, who was the person in charge. One of my favourite calls was at Hamels Mansion. Lady Furness lived there in those days and was connected to the family owning the Furness shipping line. There was always a large plate of cream cakes in readiness in the servant’s hall. I guess that was the reason for it being my favourite call. I never ever saw the Lady but I can remember looking in awe at the great joints of meat we sometimes saw being prepared – barons of beef, all of which had a wide ribbon of fat around the edges. Following cooking these huge joints there would be dishes of dripping, which cook gave to my colleague who sold it to his customers as he travelled around as a sort of side line. There were always rows of game birds hanging from hooks waiting to be prepared. The staff used to say they yearly fell off the hook before they were eaten. There really were two worlds then – the rich had too much and the working folk not enough.

People seemed to eat more bread in those days; each house bought several loaves of bread. It was often exciting in winter. There seemed to be colder winters in those days and it was not unusual for some of the villages to be cut off by snow drifts which blocked the roads, which then had to be cleared by men using picks and shovels. Bread was an important part of folks’ diet so everyone was roped in to carry sacks of bread across the fields to the villages cut off by snow. To young folk like me it was an exciting experience to participate in activities like that.

As I grew older, I got called on to help my father make dough in the evenings for the next day’s bread. This operation started at seven in the evening and three or four 140 pound sacks of flour had already been tipped into a large trough in readiness. My job was first to fill several buckets of water from the tap in the yard. I can’t remember just how many, probably four or five, were tipped into the trough with the flour and large blocks of salt had to be broken up and dissolved in the water. If one had a sore place on one’s hand it was quite painful. The mixture then had to be mixed into dough. It was quite heavy work which took over an hour and my arms up to and beyond the elbow were covered in dough and it took quite some time to clean my arms when the dough was finally made.

On one occasion I recall I was wearing an elastoplast bandage round one of my fingers when I started the operation and finally, after cleaning my arms at the end when the dough was made, I found my bandage had disappeared. I daren’t tell my dad for some time afterwards. A few days later I called on a lady in one of the villages who came to the door with an odd coloured mass in her hand. “Baker”, she said, “look what I found in my loaf, looks like a piece of potato peel. * You take this back to your dad and tell him I don’t want his old potato peeling in my bread”. When I got home I showed it to my dad, saying “Look, dad, I’ve got my bandage back.” I am sure it would have been a different story today, the environmental health people would have been notified. Sixty odd years ago nothing more was heard about it and we still continued delivering bread to Mrs Pinner for years afterwards.

* In the nineteenth century before the development of bleaching agents potatoes were often mixed with the flour to improve the whiteness of the bread.

I can remember another incident which could not have happened in today’s world. We used to deliver bread to a lady in a nearby village whose adult brother named Alfie used to live with her. The practice was that if there was no one at home four or five loaves would be left on the seat in the outside toilet situated in the backyard, which had a platform type seat with a hole cut in it. I must add that in those days there was no mains drainage and the cottagers had to use a toilet with a bucket placed under the seat. On this occasion there was no one at home so I opened the toilet door to leave the bread as usual and, to my horror, I noticed a lump of beef – pudding or braising steak – completely unwrapped, lying on the seat. I quickly found a place beside the meat to place my bread, closed the door and left. On my way back to Buntingford I met the lady concerned, so I called out: “I left your bread Mrs ------ ” and added there was already some unwrapped meat left on the toilet seat. “Oh”, she said, “it must have been that dirty b----- Afie who has been in there and used the paper.” Memories of life in the raw world of rural Hertfordshire in the early thirties!

This brings to mind another occasion that I consider an amusing experience which occurred some years earlier than the last story. I was with a roundsman delivering bread in one of the nearby villages, this time with a horse and cart, which was of the covered four wheeled wagon type. We were about to make our way back to Buntingford when the local Vicar’s wife walked up and asked if she could have a lift into Buntingford. This would be an unlikely event today but not even Vicars’ wives drove cars then. Of course my companion agreed and the lady climbed up and sat between the driver and myself. I noticed that the old horse, a mare called Kit, looked round and appeared to be un-amused at the thought of pulling an extra person up the long steep hill that had to be climbed on the way back to Buntingford. I might add that the horses like Kit which pulled these delivery carts had been doing the job for years and they got very knowledgeable and crafty with experience and often got their own back if the felt annoyed about something. On this occasion, all went well until we started to climb the steep hill when suddenly very audible noises of escaping wind began to be emitted from the rear end of the horse and continued with every step the horse took as we climbed the hill. My driver friend was so embarrassed, straightening his cap and clearing his throat. I am sure I saw old Kit look round at me and wink an eye. Eventually we arrived back in Buntingford and the Vicar’s wife climbed down, smiled sweetly and exclaimed: “Thank you for a most interesting journey, Baker”. I am sure I could still detect the old horse, Kit, smiling to herself and muttering “I’ll teach ‘em to make extra work for me”.

The old bakery we worked in did not boast air conditioning and the condition of the dough varied according to weather conditions. On warmer mornings the dough would rise much faster than on days when the temperature was lower. The ovens, too, were the old fashioned coal fired type and in the corner of the bakery by the oven’s fire box a large heap of coal was kept for re-fuelling the furnace. One of my job’s each day was to replenish the heap of coal by the oven. I remember one late Easter weekend when it was particularly warm. Dad left to have his breakfast, leaving me to continue working on the huge piles of dough, cutting and weighing it into lumps to make two pound size loaves. The dough kept rising faster than I could deal with it and I was continually cutting it back from the edge of the work top. At one point I was working away when I heard a whoosh and, to my horror, found that about a hundred weight of doubh had slid from the work top on to the pile of coal in the corner. I rushed to gather up as much as I could, placing it on a spare work top, and began picking out the lumps of coal which looked like giant currants stuck into it. I was not the most favoured person of the month when my dad arrived back from breakfast and I was told off for not staying alert. I cannot remember receiving any complaints from customers.

In the nineteen twenties quite a lot of homes did not boast an efficient cooking range and people used to bring their weekend joints to the bakery for my dad to cook for them. I cannot remember the exact charge but I think about sixpence. Every Saturday morning there would be a constant stream of locals bringing and collecting their joints of meat. I suppose they were just reheated on Sunday mornings. The busiest time for this type of service was Christmas morning. The large ovens – of which there were two, one each end of the bakery – would be filled with trays of various turkeys or gees or large joints of meat. My dad never had a chance to help with our family Christmas morning activities. It was a tricky business, I remember, trying to sort out individual dinners when owners came to collect them. No matter how carefully dad planned and timed each item for easy removal from the oven, people never kept to the arranged collection times dad had given them. Consequently people collecting their particular joint or bird had to wait while their dinner was located and extracted from the rear of the oven.

I should add that the ovens were probably eight feet deep, and as wide. To place in and remove items from the ovens a special took called a peel was used. This was a wide tapered timber blade fitted on to a long pole or handle on to which the item to be cooked was placed, then pushed into the position required in the oven. In the reverse operation the peel was slid under the tray or loaf to be removed and pulled to the oven door. It was quite a skilful operation which dad had had years of experience at. The bakery was quite a dangerous place whilst this opration was under way; the person using the peel would be concentrating on the oven and could not see anyone behind. It was not uncommon for someone to receive a nasty poke in the ribs by the peel handle while it was in use. This happened to my dad once when he was a schoolboy in his home village in Cambridgeshire. I do not know if it was his father who was using the peel but dad received a nasty knock in his right ear, which caused him problems and deafness for the rest of his life.

Everyone as far as I can recall successfully collected their dishes, but it often meant that dad was missing from our own Christmas dinner table. In this type of food trade, one was always working when other people were enjoying themselves. At Easter for instance, we had to work such long hours making Hot Cross Buns and additional bread for the long Easter weekend that by the time we had the opportunity to relax we were too tired to enjoy it.

Each week customers would bring cakes to be baked. A lady living in the High Street used to send the young lady who worked for her with a large tray of cakes to be baked. This young lady’s nickname was ‘Podge’. I recall she used to walk into the bakery with her tray of cakes which she would place on one of the worktops and, as she walked out, would pick up a doughnut from a tray of cooked doughnuts which would always be lying on a work top near the door as they were removed from the large container of boiling fat. This used to annoy my dad as Podge never sought permission to take a cake. Dad said, “I’ll teach her a lesson.” Podge always brought cakes in on a Thursday so in readiness for her next visit Dad took a doughnut, filled it with ground ginger and placed it in a suitable spot on the worktop. Podge duly arrived a little later, put her tray of cakes down and, as she walked out, picked up a doughnut as usual – this time the doctored one – and walked off down the yard. A few minutes later there was an outburst of coughing and choking; poor Podge had taken a large bit of the cake. My dad’s method of dealing with the problem had the desired result and Podge never touched another doughnut without first being invited to do so.

Bakers habitually start work very early in the morning and as soon as I left school I started work at 5 o’clock each morning, Mondays to Thursdays. On Friday it was 4 o’clock and Saturdays 2’clock. One advantage on winders mornings was that the bake house was a very comfortable place to be. The local bobby used to think so too and often during the cold winter months about dawn the door would open and in walked one of the local police constables. Dad would always make the visitor a cup of tea but used to get a bit fed up if the constable stayed too long. The bakery was not large and a visitor was always in the way. On these occasions my dad used to whisper to me “grab that flour sack and give it a good shake”. Invariably the policeman’s black uniform would be damp and a cloud of flour dust would soon be an immediate give away to where he had been, so a dusty atmosphere would mean a hasty exit by the policeman.

My chums used to tease me if they had been eating one of dad’s buns and found fewer currants in it than they felt ought to be. “I reckon your dad must have been standing by Chipping Bridge when he threw the currants into this bun” was the usual taunt. I don’t suppose anyone today knows the location of Chipping Bridge.

Another amusing story was told to me by a lady who worked with my dad at the bakery at one point during the war. There was a range of buildings on the opposite side of the bakery yard which have since been demolished for a road widening scheme, which during the war were occupied by soldiers. During the summer if it was a dry morning dad would place newly baked trays of cakes on tables in the yard to cool off quickly in order that they could be packed more easily. This lady told me that the soldiers were attracted by the smell of hot cakes and found a long cane to which they fixed a pin or thin nail and then, leaning out of the windows on the opposite side of the yard, speared dad’s cakes. Later he would say, “Some of my cakes are missing, I reckon an old crow must be pinching them.” My informant said “I never ever told him what was really happening.

My experiences as a baker ended when I was conscripted into the Air Force.

Scouting Days

I was unable to join the local scouts when I was eleven years old but by the time I left school I was an enthusiastic member of the local grou. One of my scouting adventures occurred in the late summer of 1939. In Mid August we went with Bill Barber, the group scoutmaster in charge, to Snettisham on the Wash coastline not far from Hunstanton for the annual summer camp. The international situation was serious when we left home but all went well for the first weekend. On the Tuesday evening a local police constable called at the camp and insisted we extinguished our camp fire, which was the only means of cooking. A phone call was made to Ben Haddock (proprietor of Haddocks drapery store which later became Trudgetts) who was chairman of the local association, the local parents group, and he advised that we should close the camp and return home. We were unable to find a lorry to carry out camp gear and luggage and in the end a local farmer came along with a four wheeled horse drawn wagon on to which all our gear was loaded. The scouts walked behind it to the station, a couple of miles distant. The journey home was a real nightmare I recall. Forces reservists were being recalled to their units and the stations were crowded, with families making emotional farewells to their loved ones going off to an unknown future. The trains were crowded too and all the scouts had to stand all the way to Stratford, where all the gear had to be manhandled over to the local train. I cannot remember how long the journey took but eventually we arrived safely back at Buntingford. The scouts were busily engaged during he next few days assembling civilian gas masks at Bridgefoot House, which had become the civil defence headquarters. The long years of black out began on the Thursday evening and, as all older folk remember, the second world war was declared in mid-morning on the Sunday.

On my return to Buntingford after being demobilised, I became involved in the Scouting movement again, this time as a Scouter, and later became leader of the group. I enjoyed arranging summer camping holidays. Mostly these took place at venues along the Suffolk or Norfolk coastal resorts for sometimes as many as sixt boys, lots of whom came from neighbouring scout groups which did not arrange camping holidays. One of my fellow scouters, an older chap we used to call “Chiefy”, had been employed at the County Air Raid Precautions H.Q. in Hertford during the war and used to obtain surplus ARP bits and pieces. One item I remember was a very large tin of “pea soup powder”. When we were at camp we used to prepare pea soup for the boys at supper. On one occasion I was showing a lad how to mix up the powder into paste before cooking it and as I stirred the mixture it became a bit lumpy. “Coo, look,” the boy called out excitedly. “Coo, look, the peas are forming”. He seemed to think that the more one stirred one finished up with a saucepan full of real green peas!

The most ambitious camp I organised at the time was to Guernsey in 1951 and fifty seven boys joined the party. I contacted a farmer who I had met during my service days in Guernsey in early 1940 who agreed to let us use one of his meadows. One of my cousins ran a granite quarrying company on the island and agreed to collect all the camping gear frm the docks at St Peter Port and ferry it out to the farm where it was sotred until our arrival. All our equipment had to be packed into secure boxes and crates and carted down to the station for its journey to Guernsey, which had to be done several weeks earlier. Of course I don’t know if the railway and shipping people worked better together fifty years ago but every piece of equipment arrived at the camp site in good order. Our party of fifty seven boys and four adults left home about lunchtime. A railway vehicle from Portsmouth met us at Liverpool Street and transported us across London. We sailed from Portsmouth overnight and arrived at our camp site during the morning next day. It turned out to be a wonderful and adventurous holiday. Every day farmers would turn up with boxes of tomatoes – the pea soup powder had long gone by then of course – so tomato soup was a regular on the menu.

During our holiday I arranged a visit to the nearby island of Herm which boasts a famous shell beach and a local boatman agreed to take the party over to the island in his quite large open motor boat. We were three parts of the way to Herm when one of the crew shouted in alarm that the rudder of the boat had become detached. The boat began to turn beam on to the sea and was likely to be swamped. One of the other scouters, Don Warner, and I found a couple of oars and were endeavouring to keep the boat headed onto the waves. The boatmen quickly hoisted a distress signal and were fortunately able to alert people on shore. The St Peter Port lifeboat quickly came to our assistance and towed us into Herm – not the sort of experience one looks forward to when one is leader of a party of youngsters.

One of the lads with us had very elderly parents and, living in that sort of home environment, he did not have much in common with his contemporaries and usually spent more time with the adults. We walked to the shell beach on Herm and the lads rushed on to the beach shouting “Blimey, look at all the shells” whereas Dennis, walking along with us adults, commented: “My goodness what an amazing number of minute marine organisms” – not the usual expression of an eleven year old. I used to feel sorry for Dennis. He had to take a lot of ribbing from his peers and one could not always be around to protect him.

A day or two before the end of the holiday the boys were allowed a short time out unsupervised to buy presents to take home; at all other times they were supervised in all they did. On these occasions there were strict instructions not to get into boats in particular. My three colleagues and myself completed our shpping and arrived back at camp to be met by the patrol leader we had left in charge who said: “Don’t go near that tent, there is a drowning boy in there.” In a panic we rushed to find out what was wrong but fortunately nothing serious. It seems two boys, contrary to continued warnings, had gone to the harbour, hired a small rowing boat and collided with one of the ferry boats. They had to be pulled out of the water, fortunately unharmed, but it gave me a real fright at the time. The lad concerned is now a pensioner and he still laughs about it, but the thought of what might have happened still makes me shudder.

At the end of a great holiday we were travelling home on the daytime boat, which meant dismantling the camp the day before and repacking all the equipment for the boat journey. I arranged for us all to spend the night at a nearby Church Hall and breakfast at a café at the docks. The owner of the café had quoted one and sizpence a head for cereal, boiled egg and “as much bread and butter as they like” he said good naturedly. We thought afterwards he did not make much profit on that meal when one boy was saying he had eaten seventeen slices of bread and butter and I am sure many others were not far behind.

Sadly, in 1952 I had to give up scouting activities because of business and council acivities. I still have some very pleasant memories of my scouting days. I was elected to the local council in May 1949 and I am now the sole surviving member of that first Council. My involvement in local government continued for the rest of my life and, although I have retired from active services, I support my wife who now serves as a Councillor.

Chris Woods