Scope and Content
(00 mins)
[Preliminary conversation]
(05 mins)
Born and bred in Reach Green (Heath & Reach) – now live in Thrift Road, Heath and Reach
(10 mins)
Originally Reach, in the north, was a separate village from Heath, in the south. Both had their own village green and pubs – local rivalry amongst the kids. Now one village of Heath and Reach.
(15 mins)
Family house at Reach Green had no running water in the house until Mick was 11 years old. There was one cold-water tap top serve all the houses and everyone had to collect water in buckets. There were also only outside lavatories with buckets which had to be emptied by the users periodically in holes in their gardens. The lavatory contents were tipped into a hole, a bit of earth thrown on it and perhaps some lime, the hole filled in and rhubarb planted on top. Later another hole was dug elsewhere and filled in the same way. [There was no collection of ‘night soil by the local council.]
Piped water and inside toilets were installed in their houses by the time that Mick was 11, which saved him form having to take on responsibility for emptying the lavatory bucket.
(20 mins)
The outside toilets consisted of a plank with a hole in it, to sit on, over a bucket [inside a brick hut]. It was very cold in winter, having to visit the lavatory outside the house. Oil lamps were still used for lighting in the house although there were gas lamps in the street. Communal water taps were placed around the village giving access to mains supply water: one at the bottom of St. Thomas Street, one at Lanes End, and others. Before that, wells had been used, one of them near the top of Bird’s Hill and one in Mick’s neighbour’s garden. Now filled in.
(25 mins)
He lived at No. 5 Heath green. Until several years ago, an official used to come every six months to test the water and the water table level in the unused wells until the water board cut back and stopped doing this.
(30 mins)
The well at Bird’s Hill had a bucket. Heath Green had a village pump above its well [roofed like a church and now a tourist attraction].
Women collected the water from the communal source – a tap surrounded by a circle of concrete called the ring – then used a copper (water container above a coal fire) in their kitchen for warming water for washing clothes and people.
(35 mins)
Mick attended the local primary school on Bird’s Hill, known locally as ‘Heath Academy’ until he was 11. He was not academically inclined – only interested in English and nature. Strict teachers – religious and keen on corporal punishment; headmistress was worst. Hitting children on back of legs with a ruler or rapping them on their knuckles with the thin end of the ruler. She disliked children who came from the poorer end of the village.
(45 mins)
Mick’s family was rough and ready and quite poor. They were looked down on by other, slightly better-off families. Class discrimination and treatment was active. His house was old, with swifts building their nests in the eves.
The village of the 1950s was quiet in terms of road traffic – still some horse and carts being used. People had time to talk to one another. Fights outside the public house were common on Friday and Saturday nights, when men ‘let off steam’. Even some women were known to fight, even assaulting policemen.
Hob-nailed boots could be heard in the morning when men went off to work and walked down the cobbled lanes to the sand pits
(50 mins)
One sand pit at the back of Mick’s house – just climbed over fence and clambered down the bank. Two men worked there and didn’t’ mind the children playing there, provided they didn’t get into mischief.
(55 mins)
Other pits in area: one behind Cock and Horse public house, Reach Lane; one up Fox Corner; Stone Avenue, Double Arches. As children, the pits with lagoons were the most attractive on summer evenings, for paddling or swimming. A pit down Reach Lane, known as The Syndicate, was quite deep and had engines and wagons there, which were tempting to children
(60 mins)
If a wagon had been left at the top of the slope on a Friday evening or after a Saturday morning shift, the children would remove the wedge which stopped it rolling away and ride it down the slope to crash at the bottom, jumping off just before it crashed. The children also used it as a playground to go rabbiting and birds nesting. The presence of all that sand made it like the seaside. Sometimes they were chased off but they would always return later. There might be any number of children – from three to four to a dozen village kids.
(65 mins)
Boys played Cowboys and Indians. Girls had their own activities; Mick was unaware of these. The sand pits were like adventure playgrounds.
One incident he remembers was when one boy dived head first into a lagoon and hit a submerged “navvy bucket”. He broke a few teeth and had a bloody nose. On another occasion a boy nearly drowned when he went in to water which proved to be deeper than he thought.
(70 mins)
They managed to get him out before he drowned but it caused some panic.
Current talk of a long-term plan to link the old quarries with green bridleways, footpaths, cycleway and even a small railway to Double Arches to develop it as a tourist attraction. Mick thinks it would be nice to open the sites up to leisure use.
(75 mins)
Mick went to a new secondary school at Brooklands. When it came to leaving school, the careers officer asked what Mick wanted to do. He said he wanted to be a vet. The careers officer suggested that it might be more realistic, when he heard he lived in Heath and Reach, that he get a job in the sand pits. Mick actually got a job, when he left school, in a men’s outfitters called Gordon’s in North Street, Leighton Buzzard. He stayed for one year and then moved to work for Arnold’s at their sand quarry at Double Arches.
(80 mins)
Some of his school mates had gone on to apprenticeships with firms such as Bosch Trucks. Since Mick wasn’t a scholar and left with no qualifications , he went for labouring work. It was easy to get a job in those days. You just went up to a foreman and asked for a job and if he liked the look of you, you were taken on immediately.
(85 mins)
First job was to walk the industrial railway line with Jack Farmer, looking for worn rails. Carrying the bags of ‘dogs’ and ‘fishes’. Dogs were the spikes that held the rail to the wooden sleepers – so-called because the top bits which gripped the sleeper looked like a dog’s head and the spike was the tail. Fishes were the plates that held the rails together, two bolts on one end and two on the other. Other equipment – a sledge hammer and a cold chisel, held on a long handle.
(90 mins)
Double Arches Quarry, owned by Arnolds. Drying sheds and a sifter and washer at the top. The track went down the two arms to the two quarries about half a mile below. At the weekends, they did ‘slewing’
(95 mins)
‘Slewing’ was moving the railway track over to one side to make room for loading the wagons. A gang of men each with a crow bar used physical force to move the line on Saturday mornings.
(100 mins)
Jack played in Heath Excelsior Band.
(105 mins)
The older men were respected by the young ones. Another was Wally Creamer, a large man who looked like a boxer and smoked Black Beauty, a really strong shag tobacco.
(110 mins)
Each work group had a small hut with a coke stove. Each was given a bag of coke every couple of weeks. They brewed their tea or cooked things on the stove at meal times. Mick used to take clangers (suet dumpling pastries with meat at one end and apple stew or jam at the other) for heating up in the sand drying sheds. Mick’s grandmother made the clangers.
(115 mins)
Clangers were better than sandwiches. Many men took a bottle of cold tea or Tizer [fizzy drinks] bottles to drink, if they couldn’t afford to buy vacuum flasks. Sandwiches were usually of cheese or corned beef. It got very hot in the sand quarries in the summer and workers sought the shade when they had breaks. Starting very early in the morning they had an early first breakfast break called ‘Baver’.
(120 mins / 2 hours)
Started at 7am. About 8.30am – Baver time. Working until 5.35pm. Later, after six months working on the rail track, Mick worked on “the muck”, from 7am until 7pm, five days a week and 7 to 5 on Saturdays and 7 – 12 noon on Sundays. That was removing the overburden, or topping the quarry prior to sand extraction.
(2 hrs 5 mins)
Mid-day meal – ‘dinner time’. One of the men, who drove the lorries, always had a boot full of sweets, chocolate bars and biscuits, which he would sell on to the workmen.
(2 hrs 10 mins)
Almost everyone smoked tobacco in those days. Bill Axton was a chain smoker who smoked Senior Service and his top lip was black with nicotine where he would hold a cigarette in his mouth until it burned away. He never actually smoked them. Mick used to ‘smoke like a chimney’.
(2hrs 15 mins)
Mick smoked ‘Weights’ or ‘Park Drive’ cigarettes or made roll-up cigarettes using St. Bruno tobacco.
(2 hrs 20 mins)
Mick enjoyed working outdoors but his feet and calves ached with walking all day. Workers were like one big happy family. No bullying. Some of the old boys had not only come through the Second World War but had been young men in the First World War.
(2 hrs 30 mins)
Mick wanted to drive one of the small railway engines. He was taught by Frank Hedges. He had to learn to handle the clutch control, gear lever and brake.
(2 hrs 35 mins)
Les’s job was to work the chute and fill the wagons. Mick pulled the wagons forward, one at a time. Eventually Mick got bored with this and pestered the foreman to let him go down a quarry and work an engine there. He graduated to taking trains down to Billington Road, past Stonehenge.
(2 hrs 40 mins)
There should have been a workman with a flag at road crossings to alert motorists that a train was crossing – by the time Mick was driving locos there was no flag, just slowing down and making sure nothing was crossing.
(2 hrs 45 mins)
Roads not busy in those days. Health and safety rules would not allow this to happen these days. Two journeys a day – dropping off wagons, picking up empties – down and back to Double Arches
(2 hrs 50 mins)
Foreman Billingham. Mick’s ambition- working on “the muck” – taking off the overburden before quarrying. Two gangs of two navvies (digging machines), loading dumper trucks. More money paid for twelve hour shifts, five days a week. Around 1965.
(2 hrs 55 mins)
Mates – Brian Gurney and brother Ray on bulldozer – Mick got job driving a “camel” dumper truck.
(3 hrs 00 mins)
Started at Double Arches, then worked to Selly Hill. Bryan Gurney, Paddy Randall, Charlie Greenwell. First wage – clothes shop: £3 3s 1d a week (£3.16p) –Thursday afternoons off but all day Saturday]
(3 hrs 05 mins)
Pint of ‘mild’ beer – 10d (4½p). Spent about 18 months on “the muck”. You had to be at work, in the dumper, at 7am
(3 hrs 10 mins)
Fresh air benefits – sociable gang of men – a bit of rivalry between the two gangs – who could move the most during the week. Most boring job – hand drilling the soil for Joe Arnolds, to see how far the sand went down. Extremely hot in summer – pestering flies.
(3 hrs 15 mins)
Ken Dick –manager at Double Arches – nice bloke. Peter Arnold, Joe’s son, in charge of things. Billingham – quarry foreman; Jimmy Roe – drying sheds foremen. Most workers cycled to work. Jimmy blew whistle at going home time. Friday afternoon pay day. Foreman Bill came round with pay packets.
(3 hrs 20 mins)
Cash payment – no bank accounts for manual workers. Mick left around 1966. Never imagined that what sixty men were doing then would be done by just six in later years.
(3 hrs 25 mins)
Very labour intensive – sand pit work. Mick went on to work in many jobs: sewerage work, engineering firms – Parr Equipment, Heath and Reach, making self-locking nuts
(3 hrs 30 mins)
Work in brickyards, farm work – still thinks of himself as a JCB driver – plant hire firm – talented at driving excavators. Dustman for ten years. Started attending evening classes in English, then ‘O’ Level Biology – part-time gardening. Woman on course worked for local newspaper and invited Mick to write article for it.
(3 hrs 35 mins)
Mick wrote long essay on Stockgrove Country Park. Newspaper editor liked it and asked for me. Mick then did ‘A’ Level English Literature course – learned to write analytical articles; found he liked Shakespeare. Wrote a pamphlet to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund – memoirs of village life in Heath and Reach.
(3 hrs 40 mins)
Offered part-time job on Leighton Buzzard Observer as a regular columnist – on countryside, nature, humour – known as ‘Kingy Thingy’. First cheque for £25.
(3 hrs 45 mins)
Asked to cover for a full-time journalist who was off work – took leave from being dustman – writing captions for photos and other minor work on the newspaper - £60 a week.
(3 hrs 50 mins)
Offered full-time reporter’s job and left dustbin collection. [1985?] Aged around 40 years old. Enjoyed being a reporter.
(3 hrs 55 mins)
Still looks back to days of manual work – “I dug those foundations for those houses or I put those drains in. I’m not an expert. I don’t like experts, they are too clever for me, but I do know a little about a lot”
(4 hrs 00 mins)
When he retires hopes to be Greensand Trust volunteer. Might also apply to be a magistrate – likes the idea, having sat through many court cases as a newspaper reporter at courts in Hockliffe Road (now closed). Knew many of those standing trial – and their parents and backgrounds.
(4 hrs 05 mins)
Always treated everyone fairly in his reporting of the facts. May sit down one day and write a book which would embarrass a lot of people.
(250 mins).
End of Interview
Summarised by Stuart Antrobus. 24 January 2010