Scope and Content
Handwritten transcript of an interview of Honora Grimmer by Ampthill pupil Adrian Lane made in 1986 recording her memories of growing up in Ampthill.
"[Adrian Lane] Miss Honora Grimmer: 86 years old.
I have known this lady since I was four years old and possibly the first thing to strike you would be her eyes. She never looks straight at you when in conversation. Her hair is not all grey yet but her face is quite wrinkled. Everything else about her is average apart from the very strong lenses in her glasses and her height, five foot three or four inches or less.
She now lives in Church Avenue, Ampthill, along with her sister, Lily in a medium sized, detached bungalow within hearing range of the bells in the church tower.
[Honora Grimmer] I was born in 1900 in the half of the Baptist manse which our family owned but the first thing I can really remember is moving to a new house in the town centre. Where Cheesemans, the chemist and the clothes shop, Can-Can, are, we lived in them to the sides of them, behind them and over them.
It was just before moving that I first went to school, a private school, run by a Mrs. Wildeman [sic - actually spelt Wildman]. The 'Albion School' cost 1/- a week to attend and is where the Albion newsagents, on Dunstable Street, now is. The school had two rooms along with several rooms for boarders, most of whose parents were in Africa. Mrs Wildeman was a very religious person and, with her full-time helper, used to teach us mottos such as 'it is a sin, to steal a pin'. Part-time teachers came in occasionally to teach us such things as piano. Writing on paper was of course a treat, no mistakes were tolerated. Most of the time we had to write on slates, rubbing it off as soon as we had finished. I stayed at school in Ampthill until I was fourteen, when I changed to 'Bedford School for Young Ladies' in 1914.
It was just after that change, when my eldest sister was ten, that war broke out. We were still living in Dustable Street at the time, my parents, my four younger sisters and I, and I had just gone to bed. My room was in one of the attics and below my window there was a terrible fuss and commotion. I got up to investigate and looking out of my window, I could see war being declared in the town square.
The trains from Amptill to Bedford, on which I used to travel to school, were disrupted, leaving at irregular times. This carried on during the whole of the war, even when I went to 'Bedford High', when I was seventeen. The army set up a training camp in the park in 1915 and it remained there, crawling with fighting men-to-be, until the end of the war on the eleventh of November 1918.
'Bedford High' was situated next to a church, 'St. Lukes' in Bedford. All through the war it had been decreed no bell was allowed to ring, so when the bells started ringing just before a quarter past eleven that morning, we knew something was up. We were then told that the war had ended about four minutes ago and that the rest of the day was a holiday. Unfortunately, the trains weren't running so we did not get home until that evening anyway.
I stayed at school for another year and when I left in 1919 (aged 19), I had intended to get a job in the offices of my father's company. But something, I don't remember what, stopped me getting the job I wanted. I started to look elsewhere but my bad sight (it had been discovered when I went ot school that I was nearly blind) and spectables meant I had a limited choice.
The job I applied for was as a teacher at the 'National School', run by the Church of England. Meanwhile, my father's bicycle business, which had built the first steamcars in Bedfordshire, was doing quite well for itself. Anyway, I got the post of teacher; it turned out that practically all I needed to be able to do was read, write and talk English. The petrol station on the left as you go to Bedford is where the school used to be. I had taught there for ten or twenty years when, just before World War II, it was amalgamated with the 'Methodist Elementary School' which used to be where the old school house, now a restaurant, was on the Sands.
When war broke out I was still teaching at this 'Ampthill Combined School'. The effect of this war was different. Children were evacutated to Ampthill, so the size of my classes swelled. Also, this time, there was no training camp in the park, in fact the whole area was used in the 'Dig For Britain' campaign, growing crops to feed yourself and others more effectively. A first aid post, manned by the St. John's Ambulance, was set up in the park to treat the people working the land. I was a member of the St. John's so I was involved in the work, mainly twisted ankles, blisters and boils.
The war ended and I was still a teacher. By the time 'Russell School' was built and I moved to teach there, it was the 1950s, I had been teaching some thirty or more years! After my move to Russell, I carried on teaching, being a deputy head when I retired in 1965. I had been in the teaching profession some forty-six years! To give you and idea of that time scale, one of the last children I taught was a grandchild of one of the first! Soon after I retired, Mr Culcheth of Redborne School, phoned me to ask if I would teach backward readers but I declined the offer, I had done enough.
My house in Station Road *(1) was rather big for one person but I stuck with it for another fourteen years until 1979 when I cam to live with my sister here, near to the church, the shops and at the top of the hill leading to Maulden.
So now, my sister and I, the two 'old maids'*(2) of the five sisters, live together. The third sister married and had a son*(3) who has written several books.
Ampthill as I knew it has changed dramatically and in the future I see it becoming more of a dormitory town, a place for people who work in London to live.
[Adrian Lane] I would very much agree with the last statement. As a matter of interest: Miss Grimmer taught at school a teacher who taught me in my second year of middle school.
(1) It was whilst Miss Grimmer lived here that I first met her. She was the teacher at the Sunday School I attend.
(2) Neither Lily nor Honora Grimmer has ever married.
(3) Andrew Underwood, whose book on Ampthill's history may be found in any local library.