Audio is in two parts
MRS. EVA HARVEY TALKING ABOUT HER CHILDHOOD MEMORIES TO PAT BOWDITCH, ON 29TH NOVEMBER, 2021 IN CORSCOMBE,DORSET
TRANSCRIBED BY SALLY WAKEFIELD, DECEMBER 2021
PB Hello Eva.
EH Hello Pat.
PB We’d like to ask you a little bit about your early life, your early childhood because the Beaminster Museum would like to record some of your memories.
EH OK. Well, I was born in Weymouth, February 1940, and I can remember quite a lot about the war because we were right on the main route which the tanks and the army took to Portland and so I have very vivid memories watching Doodlebugs come across, watching Barrage Balloons being blown up, sitting on the wall at the front of the house as – with my older sister – calling out “Give us some gum, chum” as the army tanks went by and they used to throw us sugar and chewing gum is what I remember. And I can remember seeing in a child’s colouring book a monkey eating a banana and I didn’t know what a banana was. I’d never seen one. I can remember fetching coal in the dolly’s pram, I can remember seeing the bombed houses all around us and injured cats with their eyes missing and, oh, things like that. We had one of those Anderson Shelters in the garden which we really just used to play in. In the house we had one of those, looked like a table, which was a cage that you were supposed to get into, or sleep in at night even I think. But we all slept under the stairs because you used to find staircases and chimneys still standing after houses were bombed and I remember it being lovely sleeping under the stairs, mattresses and pillows and all in together, you know, it was really quite nice. My sister, mother, father when he was there, I don’t really know my father. He was in the army and I’ve got a photograph of my mother when I’m 8 months old, and she’s working on the buses as a ‘Clippie’. So where was I? I was probably with a neighbour being fed cows milk and I actually had TB as a baby apparently and I can even remember being in a cot in hospital looking through the bars waiting for my bedtime sweetie to come round. But yes, I can remember the milkman coming round with a churn on wheels like a sacktruck and then he just doled out the milk like that with his measure into your jug. I think in those early years I had everything going! Pneumonia, diptheria, scarlet fever, German measles, everything and I think my immunity’s been very good ever since. In fact when I was 17 I had to have my appendix out which I’d never had done, I wouldn’t do that now, but when they took my appendix out the doctors and nurses were shocked because they could see the TB in my cells. They came to see mum just because they thought I was, she was, we were living in Yeovil then, and they thought I was getting TB then at that time which was like 1957 but she was able to tell them that no, I’d been suspected of having it as a baby and they said I’d had enough TB to kill 3 people and I’d never get it now. So I hope that’s right. (Laughter)
So, where are we. What other memories of Weymouth? Well, as I say, my father was in the war and mother was a Clippie on the buses. She ended up with a bus driver who became my stepfather. So when I was like 4 1/2, 5, I was going to school then, and my sister and I were going to a Convent School way up the road from where we lived. Gosh, those nuns were so frightening. They were really frightening. Anyway, we used to walk up to the school and back on our own and one day, coming back………………. you see this father I didn’t know, all I heard was bad things about him and my sister was a bit older, I think she remembered him whereas I didn’t know him at all really, and she said ‘Oh there’s George’ (that was his name) and I just knew that was bad and fled across the road, got knocked over with a dustcart. I think I lost a tooth and a nun came along and picked me up and carried me home with blood all over her white bits. I think that’s my memories of Weymouth. I do remember running down the road to the air raid shelters. Mum used to take us outside to watch the Doodlebugs coming over but I remember the air raid siren noises very vividly. And then, when I was about 5, we moved to Long Sutton. My parents were always moving about. I think they were always trying to better themselves but my poor mum – this is going to take all day Pat – had a baby before she was married to this George which as you know was a terrible, frightful thing in those days, so she was like the black sheep of the family but we were never told about it but we did discover, later in life, about this girl and she did…………. when mum married my stepfather Albert……………………. this girl did come to live with us for a while but it didn’t work out somehow. My sister resented it I think. But we did get to know her after mum died which was really nice. It was like finding another mother really. My parents were always moving about. I think I went to about 12 different schools – I don’t know how I ever learnt anything – and when I was taking my Scholarship at 11 we were living in Pendomer Rectory (mother was looking after the Rector and his sister who was disabled)
PB Where is Pendomer, is it Dorset?
EH It’s just between Hardington and Halstock. It’s a little cul-de-sac of a village and I was going to East Coker School and when I passed my Scholarship (we used to cycle from Pendomer to East Coker my sister and I) I couldn’t get into Yeovil to go to Yeovil High School so I went to boarding school at Taunton. Bishop Fox’s which was really good for me actually, it really brought me up to the present having my own toothbrush and things like that. I don’t think we did in those days, have our own toothbrush. So I was there for 2 years and then mother moved again to Yeovil so then I had to go to Yeovil High School which again was quite good for me, the change of school. I think in some lessons I’d given up on at Taunton, at Bishop Fox’s, like Latin – I’d really given up on that – but when I went to Yeovil High School it was a new ……….. I’d got to concentrate because it was all new…………… and the new Latin teacher was so good she went over everything that had been done the year before which was really good for me and it ended up I got As in Latin in GCEs so the change did me good. I also did well in Maths, got As in Maths and I got 8 subjects altogether and in those days you took them all in one go. I expect in your day too? But laterly they just do like one a year, go on for ever and ever. Well anyone can do one a year can’t they? So, anyway I had to leave school after I’d taken GCEs because I had 3 younger brothers and mum and dad, not only could they not afford to keep me at school, I had to go out and earn money to clothe myself and bring some money home to them. Which I did, I think I gave them £10 a week or something like that. It was while I was………….. when i was living in Yeovil the only bright light in my life was St. John’s Communicants Guild where it was like a Youth Club and we had such fun learning square dancing, ballroom dancing, table tennis. Went on trips, walking trips and it was just lovely.
[00:12:03]
MRS. EVA HARVEY TALKING ABOUT HER CHILDHOOD MEMORIES TO PAT BOWDITCH ON 29TH NOVEMBER, 2021 IN CORSCOMBE.
PART TWO OF INTERVIEW
TRANSCRIBED BY SALLY WAKEFIELD 1ST JANUARY 2022
EH So, I was living on the east side of Yeovil, Yeovil High School was the west side, so it must have been a mile and a half each way I walked with this great heavy satchel because we used to take all our books home with us for homework and we used to have three subjects a night. We were supposed to spend 20 minutes on a subject, but inevitably you took longer. And all weathers. I remember being freezing cold most of the time and when I got home I couldn’t even start my homework. Mother was a seamstress, she’d be sewing, three younger brothers which I had to kind of look after, pick up all the bits of mother’s sewing, give them tea, ocupy them and I couldn’t even look at my homework until probably 9 o’clock at night. But anyway, it didn’t seem to matter. I seemed to get through and after I’d taken my GCEs I had to find a job and, as I say, at this Communicants’ Guild there was a chap there who said ‘Oh you ought to come to our office Eva, there’s a job in the Drawing Office’. That was the Borough Surveyor’s. So I went along, got the job – I mean that’s how easy it was in those days – so then I was in the Drawing Office and learnt to draw plans which is funny because I’ve ended up lettering in stone. Of course I was lettering on plans by hand. It was all done by hand so I had a good sort of knowledge of lettering so when we got into the stone buisiness which is another story, you know when I saw chaps doing lettering and I’d say ‘That spacing’s not very good’ and things like that so it set me up in good stead to do lettering in stone which I didn’t start until about 1984. Anyway, back to the Drawing Office, I was in the Borough Surveyor’s for 5 years and I used to go out surveying with the building surveyors, taking levels. Again, it was so cold. You couldn’t wear trousers to the office in those days, it was nylons. How ridiculous was that!
And then, suddenly, the 60s revolution! Wow! Mary Quant and all that and you could wear thick tights. I leapt into these thick tights it was so good, so much better than the nylons. She was wonderful, that Mary Quant. Do you remember her? And then again, one of the borough surveyor’s lot had moved to the Planning Office which used to be in the park in Yeovil and then he was in my office one day and he said ‘Oh Eva, there’s a job in our office, at the Planning Office, you ought to apply for that’. So I did, got the job, more money of course and I was – it was during this time while I was in the Borough Surveyor’s, that me and my mates, we girls, we used to go to the Kadena lunchtimes and after work because all the Wesland’s apprentices used to go, especially on a Friday you know. End of the week, all these Westland’s apprentices used to be there, so it would be such fun. And that’s how I met my husband, Ray Harvey, he was a Westland’s apprentice and then, low and behold, just as I was settled in my Borough Surveyor’s office mother moved again from Yeovil. (She was always moving) And so how was I going to keep my job and keep seeing my boyfriend, Ray Harvey? He said ‘You’ll have to come and live with my mum and dad, which was in Chard, and (I didn’t know I was going to be telling you all this) so I was trapped then wasn’t I. I had to ……………. I couldn’t escape then. Anyway, for several years we travelled from Chard to Yeovil, him to Westland’s, me to the Borough Surveyor’s office, and that was when …………………..
[00:05:11]
PB By car?
EH I’m trying to remember when my mother moved to Corscombe. Yes, my mother moved again to Corscombe, lived in Pitts Farm up in the village which had been a pub and you could still see where the dartboard had been because there were all the dart holes all around it. It was while she was living there with my 3 brothers, and stepfather of course, and she told Ray and I (we weren’t married then) and she said ‘There’s a cottage in our village for sale, you ought to go and have a look at that’. Which we did, which was down here and it was a little 4-room shack, I’ll show you in a minute, this has been built on. That was the kitchen, that little bit over there. But it was a little 4-room shack. One passageway which went front to back, no toilet or anything, and the old guy who lived here, Harold Studley, he lived all in one room and I mean it looked horrible. There were 3 rooms filled with junk. He just lived in this one room and he was a very funny, comical man. He called himself Lord Rampisham. Harold Studley and he was full of funny……… you’d come in there’d be dead rabbits hanging up. His dog, Niner. He was one of the first people in the village to have a television, it was about that big, and it was in this one room he lived in and then there were rows and rows of chairs, in all sorts of dilapidated states, Niner his dog, there was Niner’s chair – couldn’t sit in that one – and the village children used to come in to watch this one television.
His sink was in this room and the toilet was right down there by the stream, a little galvanised shed, and you had to kind of………………. the door opened out on to the river. We had to use this when we first came here before we’d done the bathroom so you had to sort of swing out round the door post to get into it and it was lovely actually. You sat there, trickling stream, you could smell the lilac and it was really rather nice. The door had one of those sort of moons cut in it and, anyway, apparently he was going to sell this house several times and he changed his mind at the last minute. All the ceilings were falling in. This house had been 3 cottages at one time. It’s on 3 different levels and I’ve only recently found a photograph of it which I was so interested in. There’s the one front door and it had been a shop, and that shop blind was still there when we came here and then you can see there’s a picket gate there. That doorway’s behind there and then there’s the third picket gate there to that house. And it was all known as The Court. In the 30s there had been a fire and somebody had made it into one house and it was quite a big house too but when we bought it it was just this 4-roomed shack and anyway, yes we were going to buy it. It was £900 and we had to pay 10% deposit, £90, which was every penny we had between us. We had to get a loan from the bank. Ray’s mother worked for a fairly wealthy family in Chard doing their cleaning. She said ‘Oh I expect Mr ‘so-and-so’ (I can’t remember his name) would be your Guarantor’. You had to have a Guarantor so I think the Guarantor and the Bank Manager came out to look at the shack and agreed to lend us the money. That’s how easy it was, and then we just had to pay the bank back.
[00:10:22]
But that £90 was every penny we had between us so we worked on the place – well first of all old Harold Studley didn’t want to go. We had to……….. when it became ours……………. we had to come down and empty out all the rubbish and he moved into a house up in the village which had been empty for 3 years and he just moved in. Poor man, honestly. Anyway, we started doing it up and each week, I mean we were still working in Yeovil of course, both of us, and each week we’d buy a bag of cement or a ladder – you know, whatever we needed to make the place habitable. Ray did all he plumbing himself with the help of a mate and, once we’d put in the bathroom……………..
Well, we bought it in August and we were married in………. on Boxing Day. But there was only like one room, one little tweeny room which was habitable, and the bathroom really. And the kitchen consisted of a little Belling Cooker with one top. Oh, it was so cold and ………………. So, we’d come home from work, Ray from Westland’s, me from the Borough Surveyor’s or the Planning whichever I was in at that time, and we’d work until about 10 o’clock on the house and the pub, the Fox Inn (pubs were open until 10.30 in those days) so we’d go down at 10 o’clock just for a little comfort, a little bit of warmth and it’s funny because that pub, it’s been like our own private pub all our lives. We’ve been through all the landlords and it’s actually my pub now.
Well, before my husband died it was going to be sold as a house and we thought that was so wicked and although we already had a business, we’ve got a quarry at Ham Hill, and we didn’t really need another business, but to save it for the village we went to the auction and bought it. My son, Ray and I. So we bought it between us. It was in a really terrible state. The person before that had had it for about 8 years, Clive Webb, 2003 to 2011. He hadn’t done a thing to it. It was in a terrible state. Anyway, that was our only bit of comfort when we first came to live here was our half an hour at the pub and when we first came it was owned by a brewery. There was just a lady down the road, Primrose Crabb, who was behind the bar and it was just a real ‘spit and sawdust’ place. And then, as we came to live here really, it was bought by a couple Mr. & Mrs. Jack Perkins and they came along and brightened it up no end. They painted on some…………. and put up shutters and it was really jolly. They were there for about three years and it was such fun.
All the locals loved it and we played card games in there and there were so many wonderful locals in those days. Speaking quite strong Dorset accents that you had to say ‘pardon?’ and ‘what?’ to quite a few times but wonderful characters in the village there were. I don’t see them now. I suppose there must be young characters coming on but you don’t really see them, you just mourn the loss of all the old characters. That’s what happens when we get old isn’t it I think?
There was Alf Childs and Les Childs, they worked for the Council. They went round cutting all the verges – oh so beautifully – with a scythe. They’d leave the ferns, any pretty flowers and they had one of those 3-wheeled trucks that were Council trucks. In fact we’ve still got the remains of one up there in our field. I think they were always on call for anything in the local villages. They would go as far as Halstock and all around to keep the verges clear.
PB Can I stop you there Eva. It’s been so lovely and so interesting. I would like to go on all day with you but I don’t think the machine will take any more.
[00:15:51]
Recording finishes without a proper ending.