Z1205/182

Female. Public house landlady in Cople. b. 18.06.1941 SIDE A (00 mins)Born in Sunderland, Co. Durham. Mother died aged 52. Father died aged 48. Auntie took over as mother figure, now aged 80. 8 children in family. Eldest sisters looked after the younger ones. Just a brother and a younger sister left when interviewee was a child. Paternal grandfather was killed as a seaman in the First World War. Paternal family lived in the port. Maternal grandfather was a railway engine driver. (05 mins)Paternal grandmother was very Victorian. Family lived in big four-bedroomed house (two large double bedrooms) on the edge of town, close to the countryside. Father was a county man so snared rabbits, tickled trouts (poached using his hand) and kept chickens. They swapped hens and eggs for other food. Mother was a dressmaker and made clothes for others. She made fur muffs and hats from rabbit skins. Large garden and greenhouse for growing their vegetables. (10 mins)Mother made bread with flour, swapped for vegetables. Father made and repaired shoes for the children. A trolley (go-cart) was made using the bogie from the redundant pram for the children to play with and sledges for sliding in the snow down the hill where they lived. Childhood games using rope from the shipyard. Could afford to go to the cinema. Made their own entertainment. Dominoes. Darts. Had fun with each other as children but parental and school discipline was severe in those days. (15 mins)Once received 6 strokes of the cane at school even thought she wasn't responsible for the offence but wouldn't say who was. Strict Catholic convent secondary school. Teachers were feared. Honesty and decency were regarded as paramount virtues. War experience on the Home Front encouraged neighbourly support. (20 mins)Reflects that as people got richer, post-war, these neighbourly values have diminished. Separate schooling for boys and girls. Priest came in and took prayers every morning at assembly. Girls were taught how to be a good wife and mother. Lots of domestic science. Highest aspirations were to be a secretary or shop girl before marrying and producing a family but father was keen on them reading and watching the first educational programmes on BBC TV. (25 mins)Mother taught her practical home skills - knitting, sewing, crocheting, cooking, how to clean the house thoroughly. Boys did outside things. Girls did domestic things. Only mother was Catholic so father didn't go to church with them. When she was 14 she started going with a friend to a Gospel Church but father found out and told her never to tell mother she was attending "the monkey's mission" (racial slur on predominantly Negro church members). She was in the Catholic church choir, singing in Latin. (30 mins)Religious tuition in school every afternoon for 15 minutes and the whole afternoon on Friday for Benediction and confession, prior to Communion on Sunday. SIDE B (00 mins)Parrot-fashion learning and the discouragement of questions. Began questioning, aged 15, and by 19 felt unable to continue to believe in the Catholic faith. She prefers the present-day religious education which emphasises religion as a personal choice and enables children to learn about other religions. Left school at 15 in 1956. Choices seem to have been becoming a nanny in someone else's home or working in a shop or factory in Sunderland. (05 mins)She worked in an Italian grocer's shop for £3.50 per week for a year or so. Then went to work as a nanny looking after four children for two years. Then worked in a Pyrex pottery decorating ovenware. Got married at 19. Moved to Bedfordshire in 1978. Husband ran the "Five Bells" at Cople and spent 23 years behind the bar. (10 mins)Found Bedfordshire countryside very flat and missed the sea. Climate is milder than in the North-East. Her new working environment was very much an old village country pub for men who worked on the land or at the brickworks locally. Public bar had wooden floor, Darts and dominoes were played and teams competed with other pubs and cricket clubs. Now, like many pubs, it is no longer a community pub but a family restaurant for incomers. When she started pubs here were mainly male-orientated, where 15 - 20 men drank, played skittles. Lunch-time food for local factory workers. (15 mins)Slow change with younger people using the pub more and more couples visiting. Retired people visit more frequently and far more women. Drinking has changed from draught beer for men and the odd gin and lime for a lady or an occasional sherry to fashionable alcopops and bottled beers. More long fizzy drinks instead of spirits. Wine is more popular, since the advent of cheap foreign holidays to Spain and France. When few people had cars, then a walk down to the local pub was their entertainment. Now there is more competition form video, pizza take-aways and home entertainment. Cheap supermarket wines also competes. (20 mins)Local crickets and footballers built themselves a village hall and got a drinks licence, enabling them to offer cheaper club beer, through low overheads and subsidy from a competing brewery chain. Retired folk moved to there for their evening drink. Younger people changed the atmosphere of the public bar with a juke box. In the wartime it had been frequented by soldiers and land girls from Cople House hostel (Bedfordshire Women's Land Army), with dances on Friday and Saturday. (25 mins)Being a sitting tenent in a licensed premise is like working in a prison. Always on duty, even when you have an evening off. 16-18 hour day regularly, from 8am when the dray would sometime turn up to deliver alcohol, to 2 in the morning, after clearing up and cashing up from the till. (30 mins)Interesting job, meeting a wide range of people. Original Interview 60 mins.

11 December 2002

From: 1935 To: 2002

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Public House, World War One, rabbits, poaching, dressmaker, vegetables, games, punishment, Catholicism, World War Two home front, Roman catholic priests, domestic subjects, race issues, choir, confirmation, religious practices, religious education, Italians, grocer, CHILDREN, pottery, Cople Five Bells, games, wine, beerseller, soldiers, Women's Land Army, Cople House, lodging houses, dancing, COPLE, Sunderland