Bedfordshire Archives Service Catalogue
  • Reference
    Z1205/240
  • Title
    Male. Brickworker. Royal Navy experience. b. 09.09.1947 SIDE A (00 mins)Raised in Marston Moretaine. Father worked at brickworks. Father was a prisoner of war under the Japanese, building the Siamese-Burma railway. (05 mins)After 3 ½ years (1941-44) he weighed only 5 stone. Horrific experiences witnessed by his Father. He only talked about them when he had had a lot of alcohol to drink. (10 mins)Married in 1946 after he returned from the war in 1945. Wife 10 years younger. Interviewee was their first child. Mother was from Lancashire, of Irish Catholic descent. (15 mins)2 sister & 1 brother. After schooling in Marston and Woburn Sands, he left school at 15 and joined the Royal navy. Physical and intelligence test. (20 mins)Family home, Woodlands, in Ridgmont, occupied by them for 300 years. (25 mins)Grandparents. (32 mins)End of Side A Side B (00 mins)Grandfather worked for Marston Valley Company brickworks from when it was set up. He also had a threshing machine which he took around local farms. During the General Strike he took an active part against the unions in the 1920s. His vehicle carried the slogan "Common sense not Communism". He was only 50 when he was killed at work by a runaway truck in Lidlington clay pit while attempting to fix a pump. (05 mins)As a child he used to earn pocket money working at Segenhoe Manor Farm, belonging to the Duke of Bedford. He drove a tractor and ploughed the land. (10 mins)Used to look after 50 bulls. At one time there were 3 public houses in Ridgmont. Grandmother was a pianist. He attended both the Church of England church and the Baptist Chapel. He also attended the Band of Hope (total abstinence organisation). Sunday school trips to the seaside - Clacton. He hated the restrictions of chapel and Baptists. (15 mins)He was on active service at 16 in the Far east with the Royal Navy, yet was not allowed to vote or drink alcohol in Britain. He served on HMS Bewick. Reflects on his school days at Marston Village School, 1952 - 1956. Moved to Ridgmont in 1959, when the motorway was being built. Father bought his Father's house, after his death. Grandmother moved to Flitwick. (20 mins)3 women ran Ridgmont school: Misses Boswell, Bolton and Bushby. Some local boys had German prisoner of war fathers. His Father was anti-education. (25 mins)Marston village school built in 1854. No flush toilets, just buckets in a building outside the school and a trough for boys. (30 mins)Liked drawing and painting at school. (32 mins)End of Side B SIDE A,Continued from CS240C (00 mins)Moved to secondary modern school (Fulbrook Secondary Modern) in Woburn Sands, aged 11. Bus picked up children at Ridgmont and Brogborough. Children from large rural area in its catchment. Science laboratory enabled science to be taught for the first time. Gardening and carpentry was also learned in addition to religion, art, arithmetic, mathematics and English. (05 mins)Dolomite - a white, chalky powder - was tried at Bletchley brickworks to try to reduce the smell from the chimneys, but it made it worse. Bletchley yard shut down about 1990. Left school aged 15. Entered Royal Navy, on the recommendation of the Headmaster. (10 mins)Making home-made wine from dandelions. Recipe. Ready to drink after year. Tasted sweet, like honey. Used the cellar in their old house in Ridgmont to store wine bottles. Father and uncle used to drink it all. Caught by the Headmaster drinking it from a sauce bottle. (15 mins)Didn't realise it was going to be so tough in the navy. Sent to HMS Ganges, a cadet training establishment near Harwich. Like a prison with very strict discipline. Had to fight with the other boys to survive. 164 mast to climb up. (20 mins)He trained as a seaman gunner. He became a leading boy, with a stripe, shouting orders. Not allowed to drink alcohol until 18. (25 mins)Stuck it for 8 or 9 years. On a ship aged 16, after ten months' training. Joined a signal school in Hampshire, called Mercury, for 3 months, to become a radio operat0r, 3rd class. Then more courses to improve status. Flew to Singapore to join a ship in March 1964. No air conditioning on ship. Drank Tiger beer every night and went out with women. (30 mins)Saw Suez Canal when it was shut down in 1967, then Cape Town. Hated boredom at sea (32 mins)End of Side A SIDE B (00 mins)Experiences of sex, drinking, smoking in the navy. Heard about the opium dens the Chinese frequented and about marijuana in Africa. When he left the Royal Navy, he was required to stay in the Reserve (to be called up in case of need). Morse code at 35 words a minute was taken over by new technology. (05 mins)Comparison between older sailor and younger one in terms of behaviour. Rum drinking in the navy. (10 mins)Cheap housing in late 1950s - Father bought one in Ridgmont for £200 but it had no indoor toilet, no electricity. Water from pump outside, then stand pipe from the mains, but still 50 metres outside. Mother had to carry 18 buckets of water in. Running water in house in early 1960s. Still no mains sewerage, just a cesspit.. Mains drainage in 1967. Would have liked to work on a farm but few could afford to employ labour any more. (15 mins)Got a job in the brickworks in 1971, loading bricks on lorries by hand. 3000 bricks an hour for 3 shillings and 4pence 3 farthings (17 1/2p) an hour. Home-made gloves out of lorry inner tubs, to try to protect hands from the bricks. 6am to 1.30pm., if load completed. (20 mins)Piece work, paid by amount done. After two year, left to work on a dustcart in Ampthill. Liked fresh air. Then worked on a landfill bulldozer for a year pushing rubbish in a pit. Then back to London Brick brickworks to do "blocking" from 1973 to 1981, at Ridgmont. Strapping, later came in (binding blocks of bricks together for easier forklift truck handling). (25 mins)Stewartby called them stillages; Ridgmont called them bays; Bletchley called them walls. Wild-cat strikes. Disputes (32 mins)End of Side B Continued from CS240C2 Side A (00 mins)To take away bad bricks a worker was sent occasionally. He was not paid piecework. The bad bricks were used as a filler to build roads. Workers on piecework never stopped, not even for a drink, until 12.30 pm. Some would go to do another job, some would spent the rest of the day in the pub. Then getting home at 5 pm, pretending to have been working all day. When the Marston Club opened at 6 pm they would go there until midnight. Then back to work in the morning. At the week-end, jobs around the house were done like fixing the car, including lifting engines out. The informant recognizes that it was a good life for the men, but not for the women. There were high rate of divorce. A lot of women worked at the brick works and children were latch street kids. He considers himself lucky his mother never worked, she was always there for them. (05 mins)Drinking, smoking and gambling was also part of women working life. The influx from a lot of diverse nationality, (Irish, Scots, Italian, Poles, Ukrainians, Germans, Lithuanians) combined with the presence of women at work and men's night shifts, a number of sexual liaisons went on. There were some fight on Friday night at Marston Club, and when the informant was a boy two people were killed in such circumstance. (10 mins)Near the Club there was the hostel which housed all the different nationality. In 1981 when Ridgmont works closed, workers were made redundant. The informant was kept on, part of the demolition gang, doing all sort of jobs. It was a great shock to all the workers when it closed, they were all given 90 days notice. It was on the 5.40 TV news, that Lord Hanson had flown in to Stewartby and told them of the closure. The reason was the drop in demand of bricks. Informant was offered work in Bletchley brick yard, for 10 years. At first he went by bicycle then he bought a car. When Bletchley closed he was offered to go to Calvert brick work, but refused. (15 mins)If the wind was behind him he would take 35 minutes from Brogborough to Bletchley to go to work in the morning and 2 hours to come back in the evening. Some times he got a lift from lorry drivers. He was also part of the demolition gang in Bletchley and was last person to leave the yard when it was all cleared. (20 mins)His feeling about the closure of Bletchley were not the same as Ridgmont works closure. There he knew every body, at Bletchley only knew two people. He had hoped to work all his life at Ridgmont and then retire. He does not like the building that have replaced the brick work. When the chimney were there he could still see the country side around, now with the modern Marston Gate warehouses he cannot see any thing. He used to live in Brogborough and walk to work in Ridgmont yard. People could go shopping on the train. Tradesmen called to the village on weekly basis. There was a strong sense of community and old fashion village life. A lot of people moved away when the brick yard closed, some to retire, some to get other jobs. (25 mins)The Marston club so full of life then, is not the same any more. The absence of workers and the drinking and driving laws have contributed to the decline of the social life of the club. The biggest change in his life time has been the changing role of the women. The village way of life has disappeared for ever. End of side A End of Interview.Original Interview 150 mins
  • Date free text
    14 August 2003
  • Production date
    From: 1945 To: 2003
  • Reference
  • Level of description
    item
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