Bernard Brown has
submitted a number of items to Pupil Memories. This one is a
little different. It was written by his mum a couple of years ago.
It provides an account of her early life in a Northampton very different
from today.
The Very Beginning
I was born in Northampton, England in 1917, in a very small terraced
house in what is known as the Semilong area. I was delivered by an old
lady named Grandma Brookes, who was a next door neighbour. This was the
way of life in those days. Lucky for me and my mother, all went well.
My dad was still in the army in the First World War, which ended in
1918. When my dad came out of the army, he went to work as a flour
miller. Time went by. I started school and my brother Les was born.
Unfortunately my mother did not enjoy good health, although, looking
back, I think she suffered from agoraphobia. However, by this time dad
was finding it difficult to cope and my Auntie Elsie and Uncle Bill came
to live with us.
Auntie Elsie was a lovely lady. She took me for bus rides to a place
called Hanslope where she visited a very old lady who was her friend.
Auntie’s friend used to sit in the porch of her cottage and make the
most wonderful pillow lace. I used to be quite fascinated watching here
deft fingers throwing the bobbins around. Auntie Elsie also used to make
me some lovely dresses all from my other Auntie’s cut offs! I was lucky.
I always had nice clothes and my dad made sure we were all shod. We had
good strong shoes, not like some of our friends, whose toes became
deformed from wearing too tight hand me downs. My dad used to mend our
shoes. I used to have to go and fetch a piece of leather from a shop in
the area. When dad nailed the soles on, he used to knock what we called
‘blackies’ in the toes and heels, and as we came home from school we
used to kick our heels on the pavement to make sparks.
However, times began to change. My sister Bettie was born and there
became no room for Auntie Elsie and Uncle Bill and at eight years old I
was considered old enough to take over. One of the first jobs, I
remember, was my dad taking me to town on Saturday evening when the
butchers used to auction their left over meat. I was taught to bid for a
piece of rib of beef for two shillings and sixpence – and this then
became one of my regular jobs.
At this time I became very conscious of music and wished there was some
way I could learn to play the piano. I asked a lady who lived in the
neighbourhood. She said she would teach me if I bought my own music. My
mother and father had a twenty pound insurance policy which they
surrendered and bought me a piano. This must have been a great sacrifice
for them. I went to work on Saturdays. A well-off lady who lived on the
main road in a big house, gave me a job dusting from top to bottom and
fetching her meat from the butchers nearby. This lady was very kind to
me. I had one shilling and my dinner, and she used to take me to collect
small plants and taught me how to make miniature gardens in pretty
bowls. For a long time all my Aunties had them for presents.
We carried on like this until I was thirteen and my sister Joyce was
born. Sadly, things had to change as my mother’s condition worsened.
Unfortunately for me, all the jobs piled up: washing, ironing, cooking,
minding little ones and going to school. It became too much for me. All
my hair fell out so we all had to go and live with my poor Gran.
However, the piano went with us to Grandma’s, then to Cranford Road, but
I found it difficult with all the chores and didn’t start my lessons
again until many years later.
Time went by. I was fourteen and started work in Barratt’s shoe factory,
7:30 am to 5:30 pm, peddling furiously home, up and down Kingsthorpe
Hill, for a quick lunch in the 12:15 to 1:30 break. For this I earned
thirteen shillings, twelve of which my mother had, which left one
shilling for me to buy stockings. We worked Saturday morning too, 7:30
to 11:30. There were over 300 girls and ladies in the room I worked in.
The older ladies taught us how to use the machines and stitch the shoes,
which were famous all over the world.
At the age of fifteen, I became conscious of boys and my first boyfriend
was a butcher’s boy. Joe used to work for a butcher’s along Barrack Road
and took orders out on a bike with a big basket on the front. We were
friends for a few years. He lived in the oldest part of the town,
Compton Street. The area was called ‘The Boroughs’. Actually my mother
was born there too. At this time, I had a great gran who lived in St.
James. I remember when I was very small, she used to come on Mondays to
do mother’s washing. We called her ‘Washing Grandma”, and I remember her
coming up Stanley Street wearing a long dress which they called a
‘coarse apron’, tucked in her waistband, and a cap! She was a lovely old
lady.
Going back to my first boyfriend Joe, sadly at the age of about sixteen,
he contracted consumption, TB, and was in Welford Road Hospital
(Sanatorium, for about two years. I used to visit him every Sunday
afternoon. I am happy to say he recovered, but by this time I had met
Bern and knew “he was the one’. Joe and I remained friends. He married
and was very happy, had a good life and as far as I know is still alive.
I had now reached 19 and, as my sisters and brothers were now older and
able to help with the chores, we moved from Grandma’s and lived in our
own home again. Mother was still poorly and we all had to help. By the
time I was twenty one, my brother John was born and I had met Bern.
This was a great time. Bern had an AJS motorbike, which I used to ride
pillion. The roads weren’t congested in those days and it was wonderful
to ride around the countryside. Bern was a bricklayer and apprenticed to
Hawkins, a very respected building firm in Northampton at that time.
When he came out of his apprenticeship, we decided to get married.
Before we married, Bern used to have a chalet down Cogenhoe Mill. He
used to go shooting rabbits and fishing and have friends visiting. We
would hire a punt from Mrs. Spokes, the cycle dealer who owned Mill
House and let the chalet. Of course, we had lots of visitors and became
very fond of Cogenhoe.
In July 1939, we married in Kingsthorpe Church and lived in a bungalow
at White Hills. This wasn’t to last long. On Sunday September the 3rd I
was hanging out some washing and Bern had gone to Moulton to see his
parents when I heard Mr Churchill give out the news that war had been
declared. Conscription loomed for Bern. All fit ladies had to go to work
and with the blackout it was difficult to get home. So we moved to 30
Monarch Road.
My brother Les volunteered for the RAF and trained as a wireless
operator. Bern also volunteered for the 51st Highland Division and I
joined The Royal Corps of Signals. It was not long before Bern was on
his way from Scotland to Aldershot, ready to sail to Egypt, with the
Eighth Army. Sadly while he was there I was sitting at work when one of
the office girls came to tell me there has been an accident and I had to
go to my mothers. Poor dear had just received a telegram saying Les’
plane had crashed into a mountain at Stranrear and all the crew was
killed. He was 21. As the accident was in England, we were able to
attend his funeral at Kingsthorpe. Bern was still in England, and, as
his work was top secret, I went by train, scared out of my wits to find
out where he was stationed. I was lucky. He was allowed home for the
funeral, returned to the base and then sailed off.
We didn’t see each other again for over three years. I decided to work
on Munitions. I went to Sterling Armaments who made Sten Guns. I learned
how to use a lathe and drill, and also how to engrave the magazine cases
with ‘Lancaster’. Actually it was quite interesting and the time passed
fairly quickly working 6 am until 2 pm, or 2 pm to 10 pm shifts. After
having been allowed home one night and just managing to get in and lock
my door before the black out, I then went to stay at mother’s at
Cranford Road most of the time. By this time, the Eighth Army were
engaged in the Battle of Alamein and then onto Tobruk. We were so proud
of our men. However, the second front was coming up and then the
fighting forces were returning to England to prepare for this and D-Day,
which was imminent. I went back to Monarch Road in anticipation of
Bern’s return and was overjoyed to hear him kicking the snow off his
boots after midnight. It was wonderful to be together again. This was
only to last a few days, as the Fifty-first Highlanders were in the
advance troops for invasion. Incidentally, Bern was the dispatch rider
in the Royal Corps of Signals.
We said goodbye again. I resumed work and listened avidly to the news
and soon realized Bern was in the thick of it. I found I was pregnant
and started to make plans. Sadly, I miscarried. I was so sad and felt
awful for weeks, both mentally and physically. However, life goes on and
lots of other people had major worries.
Bern had leave at Christmas 1944 and Bernard was born in September ’45.
After Ben’s leave, the next few weeks were a nightmare. I had a very
hectic pregnancy with toxaemia poisoning and high BP with blindness. The
last few weeks, Dr. Watson and the Barrett Nursing Home pulled me
through and Bernard was OK. Thank goodness. I had been staying at
Cranford Road for some time, with mum and dad, but returned to Monarch
Road with Bernard. The last letter from Bern showed how much he was
looking forward to Bernard junior arriving and being together. Bern came
home when Bernard was a few months old. At that time I was not doing any
work. Lucky for us Bern, being a builder, was able to be demobbed pretty
quickly. We resumed our married life, but the work situation was not
very good in the building trade. During the winter men were laid off
because of the frosty weather. So it became necessary for ‘me’ to do a
bit of work. I had what was known as a post machine at home, and used to
take Bernard with me to the factory at Kingsthorpe. We used to come home
with a suitcase full of zips and parts of boots to stitch together. We
didn’t put our little ones in nurseries in those days. We were so happy
to be together. Bern and I managed to buy an old motorbike and sidecar
from Spokes, the dealer in Talbot Road. We thought we were so lucky
chugging around the countryside and over to Moulton to visit the
grandparents Brown. We also by now had Bingo, a lovely little dog.
This was when we decided, now that we had a little one, that we would
have another place down at Cogenhoe. My dad used to go with Bern at
weekends and made our own chalet. It was great. There were quite a few
fellow campers down there, and during the summer months I used to be
quite busy dispensing tea and cakes. We thought it quite good as we had
a Calor Gas cooker, so that I would make proper Sunday lunch. There was
nothing I enjoyed more than sitting on the front steps of our chalet,
looking over the fields and scraping new potatoes. By this time, I was
twenty eight years old, (twenty two when we married). We had a lot of
time to make up as for five years we hardly saw each other at all.