Scope and Content
(00 min)
The informant lived in 4 different houses in Vandyke Road between 1921 and 1968, 3 of them built by the family firm. In 1968, he moved with his wife and children to Heath Road. He has one brother, Don. His great-grandfather entered the building trade, as did his great-uncle and grandfather, who worked for 2 Leighton Buzzard builders before changing in 1888 to work for a London firm building gasworks. After travelling all over the country, his grandfather, William George Willis, returned to Leighton Buzzard because of a depression in the building trade in 1902 and set up as a local builder. He built houses in Billington Road and Rothschild Road and then a row of 6 in Stanbridge Road, which were bought by one man for £1000 in 1908.
(5 min)
Between 1910 and the outbreak of World War 1 he built a row of 10 houses at the bottom of South Street, each sold for £200 and each named over the front door with the name of a town where he had built a gasworks. Next he built a row of 14 houses in Vandyke Road, which he kept to provide his wife’s pension fund. In 1915, he was asked by the War Office to build a factory for the manufacture of torpedo nets to prevent damage to battleships. This was built in Grovebury Road for £7600 in 6 months, working 12 hours a day and using some local labour from the workhouse opposite. The informant’s father and uncle, after serving in the 1st World War, joined the firm and houses were built in Stanbridge Road and Wing Road. He himself joined on February 3 1935 and was put to work on council houses in Mill Road. On his father’s death in 1951, he and Don took over and he managed the business, while his brother managed the sites. It was initially named R Willis and Sons, but merged with a smaller firm in 1965 to form Willis Dawson Ltd. They bought the workhouse premises for their head office, where he worked until his retirement in 1985.
(10min)
As a child in the 1920s and 1930s, the informant played in the sandpit opposite, which dated from about 1910. It was 50 feet deep and approximately 200 yards square, running down to the Clipstone Brook. Men worked in the daytime, digging sand from the quarry face and throwing it through a sifting screen to separate out the stones, known to the children as “conks”. The clean sand was then shovelled into trucks, moved to a siding and loaded into carts and lorries. Children played there at night when work was over, sliding down the slopes on tin trays or parts of oil drums, tunnelling into the sand to make homes or building huts out of corrugated iron. The pit was owned by Fred Parrott and Herbert Janes. The latter was an engineer who had a works yard in North Street and he installed the engines and tracks, which enabled the sand to be hauled up to the top. Nobody stopped the children playing, but in 1934/5, when the sand was worked out, Leighton Buzzard Council took over the site as a dump for domestic rubbish, which was moved there by horse and cart. A full-time workman covered it over with sand or earth, until by approx 1946, the whole pit was filled up, levelled over and later became a football field, unsuitable for building land.
(15min)
The informant and his brother used local sandstone, mainly for garden walls and other ornamental purposes, such as the buttress taking the fireplace flue on the outside of his brother’s bungalow in Soulbury Road. Only the ironstone from deeper down was suitable for structural use, more so than this soft sandstone. The 2 main companies supplying sand in Leighton Buzzard were Joseph Arnold in Billington Road and George Garside, which had been there since the 1800s. Tiddenfoot Pit in Linslade was possibly owned by Garsides, but it closed when water was struck at approx 50 feet. Opposite Tiddenfoot in Mentmore Road there was a pit dug post-1946 by a firm called Jones. In Grovebury Road, beyond the crossing of the Leighton/Dunstable/Luton railway line there was Firbank’s Pit, named after the owner of the land, bought in 1835. He was the contractor who built Euston Station and all the stations and bridges on the main line, using sand dug from the pit. Eventually, at 50/60 feet they struck water and a large lake was formed. All work finished pre-1939 and after the war the Greater London Authority took over the pit. Truckloads of domestic rubbish were brought by rail from London to the existing siding, the pit was filled up and then levelled off.
(20min)
The family building firm was buying sand in 1935 from one or other of the Grovebury Road pits. 1¼ cubic yards of screened sand at a time would be horse-drawn in a tip-up cart to their Vandyke Road yard or to a building site and that would cost half a crown. The informant remembered, as a youngster, seeing 70 different grades of sand in bottles on the shelf in Arnold’s office, which would have different uses. They used a coarser sand for concrete, a medium sand for brickwork, a soft, loamy sand for plastering and a more gritty sand for screeding the floors. Some sand was absolutely clear of any staining qualities and could be used for children’s playground sand. Much later, when oil was excavated from the North Sea, sand from here was used in the filtration process. BSS quality sand was also shipped to the Woomera Rocket Range in Australia to make their special concrete. The informant also believed it went to Egypt, though he did not know for what purpose, but thought desert sand was unsuitable for building. Manufacturers of Vim, Persil and other household cleaning products bought the very fine sifted sand to use in their products. The white silica sand from Claridge’s Pit in Eastern Way, Heath and Reach was 99.9% pure, the purest in the country and the top standard for the BSS specification. The glass for the steel and glass building, the Crystal Palace (1851) was made from sand from this pit, sent by horse and cart through Old Linslade to the canal and shipped by barges, 30 tons to one barge, to Wolverhampton. A family would take 2 barges on a 5-day journey to the Chance Glass works, where the glass would be made for Joseph Paxton, the architect-designer of the Crystal Palace.
(25min)
Claridge’s Pit was later owned by the Bedfordshire Silica Sand Company. The informant spoke about the building of the railway from Leighton to Dunstable by Thomas Telford in 1848/50, crossing Wing Road, Mentmore Road, Grovebury Road and Billington Road. Arnold’s had a field on the right-hand side (off Billington Road), where sand was dug for the next 50/60 years from a very large pit (400 feet x 150 feet). At 40/50 feet deep they stuck water, but continued to dig, using a dredger to suck sand from under the water. They hit shelves of solid sandstone, but sucked sand away from underneath to a further depth of 40 feet, until they could go no deeper. This work lasted until 1920, even during the war, by which time there was a lake, 300 yards x 50 yards x 40 feet deep. The informant’s father returned from serving in the Flying Corps and, together with Norman Stockwell approached the Arnold family to ask if the pool could be rented as a swimming pool. In 1921, together with another dozen businessmen in Leighton, they created the Leighton Buzzard Swimming Club. The informant’s father built stages for diving off to swim across the width and also a 6-stage diving board, up to 36 feet high, made of scaffold planks and poles. Diving platforms were at 6-foot intervals. The informant dived off the 24 foot one several times, but never off the top one. His father helped run the club for 20 years.
(30min)
The informant spoke about The Crib, a wooden platform, 20 yards by 15 yards, with a 3-foot wooden fence around 3 sides. It was built at the edge of the pool, then pushed into the water and staked down, so that the water was only 3 foot deep and non-swimmers, who were not allowed in the deep pool, could learn to swim there. Once they could swim 3 lengths of this without stopping, they were given a star to put on their swimming costume and they then had the right to go into the big pool. The informant’s father built this, as well as changing huts, one for men, one for boys and, about 150 yards away, 2 for ladies and girls. Every August Monday at 2pm there was a 3hour swimming gala, organised by the informant’s father and other men of the town. Races were 50 yards, 100 yards, 220 yards (1 length), ½ mile (4 lengths) and 1 mile (8 lengths). The pool also often hosted the All England Diving Championships, with the addition of a springboard as well as their high diving boards. The informant remembers seeing over 4000 people watching the August Bank Holiday swimming gala. At 5pm they would go home for a quick tea and be back in town at 6pm for the Leighton Buzzard carnival, where the High Street would be knee deep in confetti. The informant confirmed that there were fatalities in the pool. The concrete shelves extended for up to 6 yards at 5-6 feet depth, then there was a sudden drop and those who did not know this or could not swim could be trapped under the slabs. The informant and another lad once rescued 2 boys, who were yelling for help. It was dangerous, but also wonderful because of the fresh, clean water, constantly regenerated by springs, sometimes very cold (54? F), but after 2 months sun on the great expanse of water it could be 88?F.
(35 min)
The man in charge, Freddie Deadman, who couldn’t swim, sat in a hut at the entrance to the field and looked at tickets or received sixpence for one person to swim. He wrote on a chalkboard the temperature of the water at mid-day, the highest the informant remembered being 88?F. Chocolate, cigarettes and sweets were for sale, a schoolboy’s season ticket (May-September) was 2 shillings or 5 shillings for an adult and 3 pence for a schoolboy’s single swim. The pool was very successful between 1921 and 1939, when functions stopped because of the War, but anyone could still swim there at any time, day or night. The informant remembered, on a hot night, his father would take them swimming at midnight, even a “skinny swim” if one was up there on their own. However, by 1946, the water table had dropped so much that it was no use for swimming. The swimming pool company had issued 600 £1 shares in 1932, had bought the pool from Arnold’s for £600 and run it themselves, but in 1946 they sold it to Pent Brown and the whole area was bulldozed and made level. Four warehouses were built there, which were sold in the early 1960s to Allied Properties of London.
(39 min)
The informant spoke about Tiddenfoot Pit, owned by Garsides, who also owned Double Arches and he believed that they were both running at the same time from the late 1880s nearly up to the 2nd World War. At Tiddenfoot Pit similarly, once they reached 50+ feet deep they struck water. He had spoken to an 80-year old man living in Linslade who said he used to go fishing in that pool, but it was never used as a swimming pool. Later on in the 1950s and 1960s a family called Jones dug another pit on the other side of Mentmore Road. Double Arches pit is at the top of Vandyke Road, though that end of the road is called Miletree Road. This used to be name of the whole road because the first farm up there was 1 mile from the centre of town. Vandyke Road was so-named in 1880, when houses began to be built along it and a “proper name“ was wanted. Double Arches was named because at the main entrance, in the ditch, there is a culvert with 2 arches. This pit is still in use; sand is screened, dried, washed and shipped out every day. The informant remembered an incident in 1970 when men were un-topping, that is taking off the topsoil with scrapers and diggers. The digger driver came to his house one evening, knowing of his interest in old things of Leighton Buzzard. While un-topping, he had found a ring of stones in Double Arches pit, about 100 yards from the A5. The informant and his brother went to look, thought it could be a well and told him to dig down the side the next day. About 20 feet of soil was dug away to reveal a stone shaft and, 2 days later when this was opened up, they found 2 Roman vessels, pitchers with narrow necks about 15” high lying in soft clay. One was completely whole, the other was broken, but the pieces were collected and it was later assembled and stuck together by an archaeologist in Leighton Buzzard. These pitchers, last touched by Roman soldiers marching up the A5 and wanting a drink are now in Wardown Museum. The informant thought that the soldiers would have tied rope to the handle, dropped it down the well and pulled up water to drink, but these 2 pots were never got out. It gave him a funny feeling to have touched something not touched for 1800 years. The 20 feet deep well was lined with stone, possibly sandstone and the pots were from the 2nd century.
(45 min)
The informant explained that sand was carted from 4 pits in Vandyke Road, Starve Gut (so-called by its workmen, who were so poorly paid), Munday’s Field, King’s Farm and Double Arches (the only one still in use). All day long lines of horses and carts carried sand along Vandyke Road, Hockliffe Street, Hartwell Grove, Dudley Street, Lake Street and Billington Road, to be loaded into railway trucks at the Billington Road siding. The iron wheels of the carts damaged the stone roads so much that this way of moving sand was forbidden by the Council and then the narrow gauge light railway was instigated. In July 1919, at a meeting held in the ballroom of the Swan Hotel, Market Square, the Light Railway Company was formed. They issued 20 000 £1 shares of which the informant’s mother’s 2 brothers each bought 1 000. The railway was built and ran alongside Vandyke Road, crossing over where Meadway now is, across Appenine Way, through to cross Hockliffe Road, then across Stanbridge Road and along to what is now called Page’s Park. Once there, at Billington Road, the sand was graded and washed and then sent all over the country by rail. Ordinary building sand was also carried by barge to other towns. The initial set-up cost £15 000. Tip-up trucks, each holding about a yard and a half of sand would tip the sand into the railway trucks. Diesel bogey engines would pull 20 or 30 trucks at a time down the line. Boys playing there would jump on the back and have a ride. This very good service ran until the Second World War when it went into decline, partly because of the war, but also because tip-up lorries began to be used. These could handle the sand much faster and so the light railway stopped carrying sand. From about 1960 it came into use again by the company that now runs it as a light railway.
(50 min)
The informant confirmed that sand from Heath and Reach pits was not taken through Leighton Buzzard but was carried by cart to Arnold’s Wharf at Old Linslade to be transported by canal, until the pits died out. Until the First World War, sand was carried by barge from the Black Bridge siding to the Paddington Basin in London, the journey taking 4 days. It would be used in building in the West End. Sand was also shipped north to Birmingham, Derby and Leicestershire. Barges carrying sand would be loaded for the return journey from London with grain for the Leighton Buzzard or Aylesbury mills, which had come into the London docks from abroad. Barges went also to Greenford near Slough carrying sand and returning with grain or timber. Coal was first brought to Leighton Buzzard by barge from Birmingham in the 1820s and then a gasworks could be built. The first was a dozen retorts, built in 1835 on the site of the present Falcon Inn in Stanbridge Road and it was doubled in size in 1846. The town expanded rapidly and in 1860, when there was no more room to extend at that site, 6¼ acres of land off Grovebury Road was bought and a new gasworks was built. This produced gas until 1960, after which gas came to Leighton Buzzard from the Reading Gas Works until the change to North Sea gas in 1968. The informant reckoned that coal was brought by canal until 1948, but after that by train into the Billington Road sidings, brought back from northern towns in the trucks which had carried sand up north. Lorries eventually replaced transport by train.
(55 min)
The informant spoke about Arnold’s offices in Billington Road (where the present Light Railway Group has its office). Orders were placed there and bills issued. There was a shelf with bottles containing 70 different types of sand for different uses, such as for plastering, bricklaying, concreting and screeding in the building trade. Other uses included for filtering oil, for playgrounds, for cleaning powders and for spreading on pub floors, along with sawdust, because men spat on the floor. He repeated that the pure white silica sand was the highest standard in the BSS specification, by which all other sands in the world were graded.
He spoke about the White House, built in 1865 on open land in Hockliffe Street, beyond where the other houses reached. Mr F J Manning from London had the house built and he and his wife lived there until 1885 when it was sold to Mr Jo Tindall, a member of the Leighton Parish Council. He had a haberdasher’s shop in the High Street and he and his family lived there until 1895, when he moved to 2 Church Square. The White House was sold to Arthur Collier, which is a local name, but the informant knew nothing about him. In 1903 the house was sold to George Garside, the building contractor and sand merchant. He had previously, in 1875, built numbers 28 and 30 Lake Street, had lived in number 28 and sold number 30 to the auctioneer Sam Hopkins. When he bought the White House, he did 12-18 months work on it, constructing the tower and some offices, as well as turning stables into offices. He and his wife and three daughters moved there in 1905 and he lived there until his death in 1926. He had married twice and his adopted son, Hugh Delafield and his wife moved into the house and he took over the Garside business as well. Hugh Delafield had two sons and a daughter and the sons were also in the business.
(61 min)
Hugh Delafield lived at the White House until his death in 1962, by which time his children had left home and were married. His wife sold the White House to the Leighton Council for £15 000 and it became the new Council offices. She bought a house in Heath Road and called it the White House. Since 1891, the Leighton Urban District Council had been in the Institute in North Street, but this was demolished when they moved to the White House and the site became the North Street car park. They owned the White House until 1974, when South Beds took the building over. Later, South Beds decided they didn’t need this building, so they sold it to a businessman in Grovebury Road, Ted Abraham. Within 2 years, they decided they did need it, but he would only rent it to them, not sell it. To this day, Mr Abraham, who also owns warehouses and factories in Grovebury Road, owns it and he rents it to the South Beds District Council.
(63 min)End of Track 1
Track 2
The informant said that in the 1920s and 1930s there was a factory in Billington Road, near the railway crossing, manufacturing sand/lime bricks. Lime from the Dunstable (Totternhoe) works was mixed with ordinary Leighton Buzzard sand and then steamed, not baked like a clay brick. It was steam-dried in autoclaves and was a pure white sand/lime brick, used for screen walls, for reflection, for ordinary building and for sewerage works and manholes. It was very resistant to frost. In 1936 a brick manufacturer named Blackman came from Folkestone and built another brickworks with these autoclaves on the left-hand side going up Miletree Road. The autoclaves were large – 50 feet long and 12 feet in diameter. Thousands of bricks could be wheeled on trolleys and steam-cleaned. He used local sand from the Double Arches pit in Vandyke Road and lime from Totternhoe, ground together to make sand/lime bricks. This went on until 1960. The factory manager was Lewis Emmett, who lived in Heath Road and the yard foreman was Norman Bastow, who lived in Ashburnham Crescent. They worked all their time there and retired from those factories. In 1960, Redland Tiles came in, stopped making sand/lime bricks and went over to making, with sand again, sand colouring and ordinary cement. They made roofing tiles in the Redland Roofing Tile Company in Vandyke Road up until today – the most modern, automated tile factory in the country.
There have been 5 roofing-tile works in Leighton. In 1928, Marley Tiles came from Sevenoaks and started up in Stanbridge Road. In 1930, the Leighton Buzzard Tile Works was created (by Owen Aisher) in Grovebury Road. In 1931, a private company, the Speight Tile Company opened, near the railway crossing in Grovebury Road. After the Second World War, Commander Watkins and a person called Woolley were the 2 directors of the Anchor Tile Works at the top of Broomhills Road. These, with Redland Tiles, made up the 5 roofing tile works. They all used the local sand and colouring and the cement from Dunstable. The informant felt that Leighton Buzzard was in a fortunate position for building trades, for roofing tiles and for brick manufacture, because sand, lime and the clay for making bricks were in this district. (5 mins)
End of interview
Summarized by Beryl Hales