Z1205/188

Male. Life in Cople village in 20th. century b. 11.11.1924 SIDE A (00 mins)Born in Bury St. Edmunds. Father was a gardener to an Indian prince on a Norfolk estate. He then moved to become Head Gardener at Cople House, Beds. Interviewee was 3, then, so was brought up in the village and still lives there now. (05 mins)Mother born in Brighton and met her husband in London. Big house in Cople belonged to the Barnard family. He remembers a prim and proper Victorian lady, being pushed around the village in a wicker wheelchair. Boys had to raise their hats to her and girls to curtsy. His father was her Head Gardener. One acre walled kitchen garden. The house had lawns, a sunken bowling green, and a croquet pitch. Four other gardeners. Chauffeur. The family owned private Barnards Bank near the Swan Hotel in Bedford. (10 mins)Cople village owned by Barnards family and Shuttleworth Trust. Estate cottages for employees. Estate sold in June 1943, split up and sold. In 1943 the War Agricultural Committee decided it needed Cople House as a hostel for the Women's Land Army. Miss Barnard objected but it was requisitioned. She moved to her estate in Dorset. 60-70 Land Girls moved in. Three storeys and an attic. First young women from Leeds and Rotherham area. Second group were Grimsby fish girls who swore at lot. Some Leeds girls married local men and still live in the village. (15 mins)After the war, the Cople House was sold to a local farmer then on to a milk merchant who stripped it of its lead roof. It was then bought by a Catholic order of nursing nuns who used it for a retreat. Father grew vegetables for the Land Girls hostel during the war. Eventually, after the house was briefly a hotel and mysterious fire, it was bought by building developers, demolished and 34 houses built. (20 mins)The kitchen garden remains. Memories of the village when he was a child: 60-70 families. Village school, built 1879, still used. 50+ pupils. Ages 11 - 14 used to go to Elstow School (elementary). School bus driven by a rare black, West Indian driver, Joe. Corporal punishment. Schoolboy pranks. (25 mins)Mother was paralysed by a stroke but coped with 7 children. Died of cancer in 1954. He now lives with his sister in their parent's house. Limited introduction of electricity into the village. (30 mins)Church attendance three times, as a boy, on Sundays: 11am and 6 pm services and 2.30pm Sunday School. Sunday-best clothes and no playing of games all Sunday. No chapels in the village. Brown and Minnie families formed a large part of the village community, through inter-marriage. (32 mins) End of Side A SIDE B. (00mins)Father left school at 10 and became a gardener. He went through the First World War 1916-1919 keeping a diary. There were evacuees arriving from London, mothers and children from Walthamstow. People from the Coach and Horses pub in Islington came down and moved into one of the houses. Cople house had evacuees. He was in the village fire team and delivered messages for the police. (05mins)He joined the Cople Home Guard, which had fifty men. Sergeants were from the 1914-1918 war. He was called up into the army at eighteen. There was bombing in Cople. The bomb disposal squad dug up a 1500lb bomb that had gone down 23 feet. The family dug an air raid shelter, but it wasn't used as it filled with water. He was working at Goldington on a farm when they bombed Bedford. Ashburnham Road Hotel and the County Theatre in Midland Road were hit. (10mins)There were food shortages throughout the war. American lorries used to come and pick up land girls from the convent to take them to dances. There were Americans at Twinwoods, Thurleigh and Little Staughton. He joined the army on the 6th June 1943. He reported to Hadrians Camp in Carlisle. Next day he was on a train to Ireland for six weeks training. Training with pack horses up in Scotland ready for the invasion of Norway. Then sent on a boat to Italy, landed in Naples then on to the front line between Florence and Bologna. After the war had six months in Florence clearing up the bomb damage. (15mins)Travelled to Pisa, Genoa, Milan, Venice and Bologna and came out of the army in 1946. Became a reserve for the Royal Army Service Corps. Joined the Ambulance Service in 1959. Demobbed in Oldham. Came out with two shirts, underwear, pullover, hat and suit. Waited three months for a suit to get married in. Met wife on a bus in Bedford. (20mins)Received a B release from the army because he worked on the land. He left at Christmas in 1946 and went to a nursery at Willington. He drove a lorry to take vegetables to Aylesbury. (25mins)The winter of 1947 was very harsh with deep snow. There was no water in 1962 for six weeks because of frozen pipes. A water tank stood on the road for people to collect the water. He became a locomotive fireman then was twenty years as an Ambulance driver at Biggleswade, and one year at Luton. He left the Ambulance Service through ill health and went to work at the hospital for ten years. (30mins)His sister contracted scarlet fever and was sent to an isolation hospital in Clapham. He got married in Coronation year and lived at Biddenham, and worked the train from Bedford to London on an excursion for the Coronation. (32mins)End of Side B. END OF INTERVIEW Original Interview 60 mins

13 January 2003

From: 1920 To: 2003

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Indians, gardener, Swan Hotel, games, Old Warden Shuttleworth College, Land Army, lodging houses, Catholicism, FIRE, punishment, Elstow School, West Indians, Sunday Schools, World War One, evacuees, Home Guard, air raids over UK, GOLDINGTON, air raid shelters, American Army, dancing, Royal Army Service Corps, ambulances, clothing, MARRIAGE, frost, water supply, other Bedfordshire hospitals, coronations, COPLE, Bury St Edmunds, Norfolk, Leeds, Grimsby, Dorset, Bedford Midland Road, Bedford Ashburnham Road, Clapham Twinwood Road, THURLEIGH, Little Staughton, Carlisle, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Italy, Naples, Firenze (Province), Bologna, Pisa, Genoa, Milan (Province), Venice, WILLINGTON, BIGGLESWADE, LUTON, BIDDENHAM, CLAPHAM