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This is a literal typescript of the compact disc “Living Memories”, a compilation of extracts from the first 16 recordings made of Marlborough residents by the Marlborough Oral History Group, a sub-committee of the Marlborough Local History Group, now the Marlborough History Society. The CD was produced for the Marlborough Charter Celebrations in 2004. There are three copies in the general section of Marlborough Library and one in the history section, which can all be borrowed.

The different subjects are on different tracks and are as follows:

* Introduction
* Schools
* The Effects of the World Wars on the Town
* Churches
* Savernake Hospital
* The things Marlburians did for fun
* The Cinema
* Unusual and Lost Buildings
* Marlborough Railways
* High Street Shops
* Other Places of Work
* The Mop Fairs
* Sheep Fair
* Royal Events
* Reflections on life in Marlborough
*Closing Words

The words in italics are spoken by the narrator, Ian Philpott.
There is an indented paragraph for each new speaker.

INTRODUCTION

Oyez, oyez, oyez, welcome to a special compilation of vivid memories produced by Marlborough Oral History Project, to commemorate the 800th anniversary of Marlborough’s Royal Charter in the year 2004.

That was Marlborough’s Beadle and Town Crier Alf Johnson with a rousing welcome to this commemorative CD Living Memories. Over the next 70 or so minutes you will hear over 100 recollections on a wide variety of subjects but each of them paint a picture of life in Marlborough during the early part of the 20th Century. All have been chosen from the recordings made by members of Marlborough Oral History project in the latter part of 2003. These were made with many of the town’s long term residents, including May Baigent, Mike Birley, John Bower, Muriel Coburn, Bill Cox, Ivy Flippance, Sylvia Gray, Ada Habgood, Harry Hallewell. Selina Honey, Alf Johnson, Margaret Kempson, Joyce Neville, Rose Rawlings and Lilian Ross.

SCHOOLS

Some of our earliest memories are, as you might expect, of our schooldays and it is therefore as good a place as any to begin.

I started school at St Mary’s Infants School in Herd Street, that was a mixed infants school. After a year’s spell at infants, the girls still stayed at the same school in another part of it while the boys went elsewhere.

Eventually I went to St Peter’s Boys School in 1937. St Peter’s Boys School was in the High Street where the town library is situated. We had a very strict Headmaster. At the time we thought he was hard, but looking back, the way things have developed, he was probably right on everything he said, and one of the things he taught us, which you probably don’t get now, was manners. That was drummed into you, the cane was in use then, you did not answer teachers back. Mr Charles A Bartram was the Headmaster’s name, when he wasn’t about he was known as Bill Bartam, when he was about he was known as Sir. Mr Bristow was another one, he used to go round the classroom flicking the ruler round your ear and if you weren’t doing right, that would just accidentally come across your knuckles but you learned by this thing.

I went to school when I was three. I loved the old school teacher, the governess when I first went and she lived up Salisbury Road, just above where the old Monastery used to be. She was such a dear and she had a tea service, a wooden tea service, and I can remember now saying in turn for each child to go out and lay as though they were laying the table. Everyone was doing the same thing, putting the cups and the plates together but that was wrong you see, the cups had to stop near the teapot ready to be poured out. I always remember this, I wondered afterwards what ever happened to this lovely wooden tea set.

I always remember St Peter’s Girls school where the library is now. On the right hand side up the steps was the Infants school and on the left hand side was what we called the big school where you went when you were seven.

They never had Play Schools; I was five in the June so I don’t suppose I started perhaps until the September. I can remember in those days, you know, they had like wooden boards what you could lie on, they used to encourage us to have a little rest.

School dinners were just about coming in then, most of the kiddies went home like myself, I never did stay for a school dinner, but we used to have a third of a pint of milk. We were in the days of the blackout so school finished early so you weren’t going home in the dark; nobody had lights or anything like that. Another thing he used to have us doing, which was great fun for the boys obviously, he had you marching up and down the road. We didn’t have a gymnasium we had to share the gymnasium with the Marlborough College. A great stickler Mr Bartram was for marching you round where you were keeping in step, probably we enjoyed it because we all thought, lets face it the games you used to play was playing soldiers in the war time. You swing your arms and you kept in step, great time.

Next door was a little paper shop it was then Maynards, really like a little tuck shop for us kiddies. We could nip in there on the way home. The thing I remember about that, immediately to the right of Maynards and before the next shop, there was a giant thermometer, a huge one probably about three feet tall which to us was giant then. At fourteen you left school at the end of term nearest your birthday, I left in December 1944 when the war was still on.

We really looked forward to College prize days, all the mothers around the college used to get into their black blouses and skirts, and college supplied them with little white aprons and little white bows they used to put on their heads, and they used to go up and do the waiting on the parents, and we used to go up there after they had finished and it was lovely, we used to take our milk cans up and got them filled up with ice cream. Fortes used to do the catering, and Mrs Knapton, her shop was over where Tudor Café is now. She used to make all the ice cream, and she made beautiful ice cream, her brown bread ice cream was out of this world. They would divide the cakes and that which were left to the people that had been helping so we used to get a nice lot of cream cakes. And then in the evening ladies and gentlemen, the boys’ parents, they used to come in their lovely evening dresses and some of them had tiaras and lovely jewellery and silks and satins, it was lovely, we used to look forward to seeing them.

The thing which I think is most interesting in comparing those days to these is that I went to school, I suppose when I was four or five, at Miss Kinder’s which was near where Sempringham now is and I went with a girl called Pamela who lived near us and we walked along Silverless Street and if we were lucky we caught the milk cart which was taking milk down to the London Road, that got us that far and we walked the rest. You couldn’t do this with a child nowadays you would be run in for dangerous practice I suppose.

I came to Marlborough in 1939 when I married Garnet Kempson. I taught the violin during the 60’s and 70’s at the Stedman Secondary Modern School which was in the huts on the common at that time, but I also taught younger pupils in my own home or in their homes which was mainly the piano.

For the weekday school treats Mr Dell, he had the Mill, he used to clean out his cart, get all the flour out, and the little ones sat in the horse and cart, the Marlborough band used to go up in front and then the rest of us from round Bridewell Street and Holts Row used to all march up behind and it was real fun. Mrs Wiggins, that was our neighbour, she had a lovely rose bush, Seven Sisters, and she used to cut us all a rose, and we thought we were the cat’s whiskers.

THE EFFECTS OF THE WORLD WARS ON THE TOWN

Like everywhere else in Britain, Marlborough was dramatically affected by both world wars. Our first extract relates to the 1914-18 conflict and is followed by recollections of the town during the Second World War.

It was a very sad time, there were so many of the young boys that are gone were killed, their memorials are in St Peter’s church. Mrs Wiggins had one son killed, that was our neighbour, and she had one son who was a prisoner and the other one was burned with liquid gas. It was a very sad time, and I lost my brother, he was there four years to the day, the first royal garrison to go out of the country to a war and he was killed September 27th 1918 and almost to the minute that he set foot in France.

This was a big military area, loads of troops about and some of the big houses were taken over as billets. I well remember in Kingsbury Street, what is now known as Dormy House, was taken over by one of the big military bands; and several places up on the edge of the common where Mr Gordon Richards’ brother Cliff Richards used to live, his house was commandeered for troops.

My war years were really confined to Marlborough and looking after a baby. The City of London School was evacuated to Marlborough and my war contribution was to share my home with a City of London Master and his wife. The catering was difficult because of rationing, but we were very lucky really in Marlborough we didn’t really go short of very much.

Then we had the Americans come here, they were billeted above the Conservative Club, they used to go off for their meals, line up outside the club and go off then to the Scout Hall.

Savernake Forest was out of bounds then because it was a giant ammunition dump, a train blew up there after the war when they were clearing it. And also the common was a giant American air force hospital so there was loads of activity coming and going there, from the Ramsbury Airfield there was always people being brought back up there, that was out of bounds to people. That took up practically all the common, I cannot remember the golf course actually being there, I think it was taken over for the war effort at that time, because where the clump is now on the common was a big water tank high on a tower.

There was a big American hospital on the common, all Nissen huts and all the boys from the D Day operation they used to come up to Marlborough Station and unload them there and take them up there to the Common. My mother and sisters used to go up there voluntarily and work for them, it was quite a big hospital and there was a lot of casualties went up there after D Day.

We had a church fellowship at the RAF and used to come to Marlborough about 40 of us and we used to book a meal at the Merlin which had a big room there, and the proprietor used to find all sorts of things to make the meal with because it was during the war. We used to go for a walk and come back to the Merlin and have our tea. Some of us used to walk back to Yatesbury and some of us went back on the bus.

Static water tanks were visible one either end of the car park in the High Street, these were giant tanks which held as I said static water in case of fire and you had little pill boxes around, in fact part of one is still there in Kingsbury Street about No.45, it now blends in with the house. There was a little pill box there with a little opening where soldiers could look up Kingsbury Street and hopefully catch any of these Germans who were supposed to be coming down. There was a pill box stuck outside the Sun Inn. There was also a big one on the lower part of the Green on the left hand side going up; in fact you can still see the outline of it now because when they took it down they didn’t take away all the foundations. And obviously there were some in other parts of the town.

CHURCHES

With imposing buildings punctuating either end of the High Street, as well as in many other prominent places in the heart of the town, it will come as no surprise that we have a selection of memories relating to church life.

St Peter’s church was beginning to be used by the college on Sunday evenings for an alternative service of some kind and it was not long after that it became redundant in 74 and we realised something had got to be done about it. Jake Seamer was Mayor, luckily, having come back from the Sudan, and taught at the college and he said when the council were beginning to say what are we going to do about St Peters, one alternative I’m told was to knock it down and make a roundabout instead. He said you can’t do that, you can’t destroy St Peter’s, I am not going to allow it, I will form a trust and see that it is saved. So he did, and it took four years before he got his trust formed, got the first few thousand pounds together and it was recognised as a charity and that was in 1978. It wasn’t until I retired in 1980 that he or John O’Regan who was the other real leader in sorting the place out, said would I come and be Treasurer. So I said yes, fine, thinking it would just be collecting five quid off a number of people, and it became rather more when John said he thought he’d had enough of being Secretary so would I do that as well, so for about eight or ten years I was Treasurer, Secretary, floor cleaner, organiser of plays, concerts, whatever.

There were other people, Lillian Ross, another ex mayor, and one of the main things was John O’Regan had organised the Tourist Information Centre in there, which we ran with voluntary help, a lot of us just put in a morning or an afternoon or a day a week until eventually Kennet, having moved it themselves to nearer the middle of the town, which I resisted for some time until I discovered that we had a person who wanted to run what we now have the Art and Craft Centre at the west end of the church, so I said right do shift and they moved. They are now talking about doing away with that TIC which doesn’t seem to me to be very useful. Then Tom Brooks, who started the Art and Craft Centre, started scraping away and discovered the tiles were there, and we realised it wouldn’t be all that difficult to clear that. Tom actually then moved and by the time we got working on it Alan Crane had arrived, who is really the man responsible for the enormous reconstruction, repairs and so on which we’ve done in the last few years. And then Deborah Reynolds said do you think we could set up a base in the North Aisle to sell Christian books and things and to run a restaurant. So I said well lets try and after a bit it was clear that they could manage it so they set it up. So that has been one of our two major things which has gone on in the church ever since.

The Methodist church that was in Oxford Street, which is now the Masonic Hall because the Wesley Hall was not built then, and the new chapel down New Road which is now Christchurch, that was opened in 1911. I gave the collection speech:

Dear Mr Chairman and kind friends
I’m such a tiny mite
That I have to stand upon a chair
Or I’d be out of sight
It’s very trying
Speechifying
And really I’d much rather
Jump down and run like anything
And hide behind the piano.
But mother says little folks
Can sometimes smile and coax
When grown up men can hardly
Get a halfpenny out of folks,
So if you took a penny out
I specs I made you willing
To put it back like this you know
And change it for a shilling.
And mother says if I speak up
And look quite brave and bold
I’m such a fairy I can change
Your silver into gold.
Now wouldn’t that be wonderful,
So please look in your hand
And if its sixpence put it back
And then I’ll wave my wand
And when you look again you’ll start
And cry out oh my bright white silver sixpence
Has turned to golden yellow.
So please do change your coppers quick
For something bright and shiny
For little coins are often best Although like me they’re tiny.


I think they got quite a good collection.

As you go up the tower, which my wife and I take people up on Saturdays, we tend to do it about once a fortnight, there is a bellringer’s chamber, you can go up to the priest’s room which is just a small room in which the priest lived in the 15th Century and we can only assume he was probably glad to have it. It hasn’t got a loo, it hasn’t got a bath and I was taking a couple of ladies up there once and I said I don’t know what he did for a loo or a bath and they said well there’s a window isn’t there and they had buckets in those days. One of them called Thomas we think, put his name and the date just outside the door of it. One Friday a month there is a communion service and once a year we have our annual service which used to be an official sort of town event just to celebrate that we are there and that we think that it’s a good place for people to come and see.

I joined St Peter’s Church choir when I was about seven and I stayed in it till the War, or till the Home Guard formed. You had prayers on Sunday in the Home Guard and I put my age on a bit and joined the Home Guard with my father, but I was in the choir there for the best part of ten years. I was solo boy there too for a while, I was head boy there for a while and bless her heart Dapper Salisbury used to keep us all under control. We used to call her Dapper because she wore very heavy shoes and thick stockings and she always wore black right down to her ankles and we were never allowed into church until Dapper arrived. Then we sat in the two back pews in the church and we weren’t allowed to talk to one another until the last bell was rung and when the last bell was rung we were up and into the vestry and were allowed to put our robes on.

There was a choir of approximately 30 people in those days, there was also St Mary’s at the time and we were quite a rival to one another. We always went to Weymouth once a year on a bus, Mr Walton’s bus, that was quite a do out that was, and Knaptons, who used to own the shop in the middle of the High Street, used to supply all the sandwiches and the buns and cakes and I can vividly remember seeing Miss Salisbury going for a swim there and she came out of one of those wooden hut things they used to tow on with wheels and I can see her now with her black bathing costume on and her black hat on and she had a swim and it all seemed to float up on top of the water, amazing how I can remember the things like that. Of course we had a big sing song coming back. Oh it was a lovely time.

SAVERNAKE HOSPITAL

Marlborough has long had a great affection for its hospital at Savernake. Here is Lillian Ross with memories of the Mayor’s annual Christmas visit.

As well as Savernake there was the Children’s Hospital up on the common and the Mayor went up to the hospital (Savernake) on Christmas morning. There was usually a little service and then you would go round all the wards and greet all the patients because Savernake was a fully working little cottage hospital in those days. Then the doctors were all there and they all used to dress up and I have seen Dr Nick in a wig, dressed up as a fairy I think, so there was great fun and games and happiness in the hospital. And then the Doctors carved the turkey and served all the patients, and after that I went up to the Children’s Hospital and went all round the wards up there and then at one time later when Coombe End was opened as a residential home we would visit there as well. So anybody in hospital was greeted by the Mayor on Christmas day. I don’t think it happens now.

THE THINGS MARLBURIANS DID FOR FUN

Now we come to our biggest subject, recounting some of the things that Marlburians did for fun.

We played a lot on the High Street, we used to play with our hoops from St Peter’s church up to the town hall and then another part of the year it was tops. There were two kinds, one they called road racers and the other they called window breakers, there were no cars or anything in those days.

One of my great interests when I was young was the Marlborough Town Band. This I joined as a trainee in 1946 and a year later I was admitted to full membership of the band for which I paid the grand sum of five shillings entrance fee, I have still got the receipt for that and the set of rules they gave you. It used to play with about 25 members and in those days we played at little fêtes and parades. Remembrance Sunday was another good thing there and the Marlborough carnivals. In them days the carnival started from Elcot Lane playing fields came all along London Road, the bottom side of the High Street, along to the top side, Kingsbury Street, Silverless Street through into St Martins, up Blowhorn across the top of the common and down Herd Street and that was a long, long walk and you were playing all the time. When I first joined the band the conductor of the day was Eric Free, our six times Mayor of Marlborough, a very knowledgeable musician, a violinist really although he didn’t obviously play that in the band, and then when he was not available or when he was out on council engagements the band was taken over by Fred Pike. He was a GWR worker, used to work up in the sidings up at the station, a good cornet player. When he retired a person who took over then was Bob Ashley a former Royal Marine Bandsman, another good musician, trained originally with the Kennet Band at Lockeridge. The band at one time had green uniforms and this was always reckoned by some to be an unlucky colour for them, it seemed that when they had the green uniforms their fortunes gradually faded away and in the end nothing was left of them and when it finished in the late fifties one day the band room fell down into Barn Street and that was it full stop, amen.

I used to love to go along at the old Police Station because on the bank just inside on the right hand side was this lovely big dolls house affair and the bees did go in and out underneath the front door, I was fascinated with these bees going in and out, it was a sight. Dad kept his own bees when we were down Herd Street, there was no Pipers Piece or any of those houses, he kept them in the meadow belonging to Phillips.

In those days we made our own pleasures and I found most of mine in Savernake Forest, a place called Puntwick, a lot of people probably haven’t heard of it, well it’s over where the entrance to the tunnel used to be, there were a lot of fields there and we used to get good fun over there.

Something in my life that I think has given me most pleasure was running the town choral society but I was very dependent on people like Peter Godfrey and Elma Friend, but I did it for about ten years, I took it over from Jean Burrows. I eventually had to give it up because it was getting too physically exhausting for an old lady. We did all sorts of big works and I nearly always had some kind of instrumental item. It’s changed a couple of times but it is still continuing and many people go and sing and enjoy it too.

I had a pet pony called Sherry and I could talk to him, and he knew what it was all about, everything I said he understood. SHERRY and that’s what my bungalow is called on the common, Brown Sherry and behind there was the stables, eight ponies, I kept buying them. I had some marvellous riders, the kids were good.

We used to go up in the college fields to play but we had to be down when the curfew went at 8 o’clock, the bell used to ring in St Peter’s church for the curfew.

We used to get a ride on Dapper’s car up the High Street then that was something, she had a tiny Morris car with a dickey seat at the back and we all used to rush out to get a ride up the High Street. And old Doctor Maurice used to take us out for rides in his car too, you waited there on a Saturday morning when you weren’t at school and he used to go round and see his patients and we used to get in the back and go round with him, he was nice Dr Walter, and he had a punt at the bottom of his garden and he used to let us boys punt up and down the river.

I remember when the raspberries were about on the downs, year after year we took our cups and mother took her milk can. We did pick the raspberries and when we had a few in the cup, tip then in mother’s can and go on again. Mother always made enough jam to last all the year round, put a bit of rhubarb with it, that helped it to set you see, lovely.

My mum used to do a lot of wine making and she was using the copper to boil up the dandelions, she made dandelion wine, ‘cos if its made properly its like whisky and I thought she was washing you see, I’d seen her washing there. She gave me some soapy water to play with and she turned her back and I was left on my own for a minute or two and I tipped the soapy suds all in the dandelions.

The field above Isbury Road, the bowling green was there and of course they had a barbed wire fence, and I think we had enough rope to do three sides of the ring, so one side of the ring was a barbed wire fence. I can remember Freddie Chessel and I were having a scrap, it was all in good fun there was no animosity amongst us, just good fun, and he knocked me and I caught my eye against the barbed wire and I and I’ve still got the scar now.

Marlborough Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society MADOS, I first got involved with MADOS soon after I came out of the army in 1951. Wonderful sort of atmosphere, big cast, full orchestra of about 18, immense amount of pleasure I had there.

I was a member of MADOS, but by the time I joined it, which must have been 1959-60, it was just a dramatic society, the opera side of it was no longer functioning. We put on plays in the town hall, we did it once a year, we took the town hall for a whole week, the first two or three nights of the week being used for preparation and dress rehearsals and then we did three nights of performance. Quite an active society, had great fun, unfortunately gradually with the loss of producers and directors and people moving on, we gradually found we could no longer put on a full time production.

In the yard between what was then Hurds Shoe shop and Midland Bank there is a little yard there called Ironmonger Lane, half way up that yard there were some rooms. MADOS owned those rooms and you could erect a stage up there or erect scenery up there which was exactly the same size as the town hall. It’s now called Nafferton Hall but I don’t see that used very often.

My father started cleaning the white horse and he did that for 28 years and Mr Bambridge was the organist at Marlborough College and he gave my father five pound a year to keep it clean and every year he took off the top layer and re-chalked it from the top of Granham Hill. There’s a chalk pit up the top so he did it from there and he used to go up every Sunday and cut the grass round the edge so that it didn’t grow over and spoil the horse.

I couldn’t wait to be eleven so that I could join the guides. I particularly remember our great hike, this was a very special occasion, we walked to Avebury and cooked our lunch on the way. I have done that since with my own guides many years later, but on the occasion when I was a guide we not merely walked to Avebury we walked back again along the main road. We also did something which you couldn’t do now, we had tea on the top of Silbury Hill. And I think I actually took on as Guide Captain, as she was called in those days, in 1960. By that time we were meeting in the scout hut, there had been a short time when we’d been meeting on the green in what I think is now an adult education room, it was called Toc H in those days. The scout hut was much better because not only did we have all the scout-hut grounds round us anyway for quite a lot of games and things, but we could also go along Treacle Bolly and play all sorts of games and treasure hunts and light fires and cook our supper, that was fun.

We had a church club on a Friday night which was at the rear of the Ivy House hotel and I’ve got an idea now that where we used to hold this club is where they’ve got their dining area, they were known as the Parish rooms but I don’t know if the church owned them or rented them. It was a good night because we used to have the usual pastimes, table tennis, darts, sitting on a game of cards, a game of pontoon and when the vicar used to come round we used to hide the money and start playing snap.

THE CINEMA

In the days before television, Marlborough’s principle source of entertainment was to be found at its cinema. Opening in 1915 this single auditorium served townsfolk for 55 years before finally closing its doors in 1970.

I used to cycle into Marlborough to the pictures when they started the first talkie, I sat in the front seat for sixpence and I saw Rookery Nook with Ralph Lynn and Tom Walls. The cinema was where Waitrose supermarket is now.

It was what we used to call a flea pit and my earliest memories was you went in and you went down steps, paid your twopence or threepence, in those days I am talking about 1929-30 I was about seven or eight years old and I had never seen silent films. A chap called Lewis used to play the piano and you’d sit there and you’d suddenly feel something going over your feet and it would be a rat or mouse from the stables at the back where Frees the coal merchants kept their horses. Then of course later on they had it refurbished and then it was a posh affair, you just went straight in then and you didn’t go down any steps or anything and then you had a balcony that went upstairs off the box office.

They had two projectors and of course when one reel was coming to an end the next one was switched on, the chap that was on there was Wally Bray. I can always remember Wally when I used to be up in the projection room he used to say to me “I‘m just going to slip along to the Jolly Butcher for a pint”. He left me to it, I was green and I didn’t know much about what was going on, all of a sudden it would break down wouldn’t it and then of course there would be boo boo from down below, then I had to make a mad dash along to the Jolly Butcher and say Wally for gods sake come along its all broken down.

Also it had been what was known as the riding school and I think that was the Military Riding school and then it became a cinema.

That Cinema was a good thing during the war too because as you know we had a lot of troops stationed around Marlborough in the forest and billeted in the town and that used to be absolutely chock a block on a Sunday evening.

When the cinema was around my elder sister was the pianist, that was before the talkies, she played the piano to what was on the screen.

UNUSUAL AND LOST BUILDINGS

The appearance of the town has changed dramatically over the years with houses now occupying large areas where fields or former businesses once stood. Our next group of memories illustrates this but it begins with Ivy Flippance’s recollections as to how St Michael’s cottages in George Lane came to be built and which still remain to this very day.

They were built by a Housemaster at Summerfield called Mr Emery, he bought the meadow which was called Artery Meadow and he had Randalls of Devizes to build the houses. When he advertised them in the Marlborough Times he stipulated it had to be ex-service men that had served in the First World War that had families. When he died he left in his will that the existing tenants were not to be disturbed as long as they paid the rent and kept the gardens tidy. He left them to the college on trust to form a pension scheme for college servants.

Where I live now at Savernake Court that was originally a Coal yard. If you went further on it took you right through to Five Stiles and that was just fields right the way through.

Jimmy Duck and my father were cousins. He had a shop, a dairy, down the end of the town by St Peters Church and he also had a riding school. Ducks Meadow was his and there was a stable at the bottom of Granham Hill where he used to keep some of the horses and then let them out in the meadow.

I can remember cuckoo pen, there used to be a row of cottages in there down Coldharbour, they were demolished in the 1920s. You know why it is called cuckoo pen people used to put the cuckoo in there to stop him from flying away every year, they built a wall round him you see but they didn’t put a lid on the top and of course he flew away.

I was born at a place called High Walls and they were demolished in 1932, it was a row of cottages in the front of St Mary’s church and the reason was to widen the road. There was three floors and I think about four bedrooms and a sitting room, and a kitchen and a parlour, quite an old house, five of us boys slept in one bedroom and three of us slept in one bed and two in another bed. There were no bathrooms and of course in those days they used to use the old wash-hand basins and if they wanted hot water they had to use the kettle.

I can remember my uncle coming home from work and he worked on the railway, and he walked straight through the house and outside was a huge sink and he used to turn the tap on and used to strip to the waist and wash in cold water. I can remember that quite vividly.

MARLBOROUGH’S RAILWAYS

When Dr Beeching’s infamous axe fell on Marlborough in 1961 it marked the closure of the last of the town’s two railway stations. Between them they enabled local people to easily get to many of the surrounding towns and villages as well as to the rest of the country. Here are a few recollections of Marlborough’s great age of steam which began almost a century before in 1864.

There were two stations in Marlborough there was what they called the High Level which was up top of Cherry Orchard and the low level which would have been just off the Salisbury Road where Kennet Council have got their yard now, and the high level station was used mostly for goods, things that needed to be delivered in the town, and they had two vans that used to take the goods round the town and around the different villages. And also the low level station, they used to load the horses from the stables. I can remember them walking in the horses from Martin Downs when I was a kid coming down Barn Street and from Ogbourne, and they’d load them up on the station to take them to the races.

The Marlborough Donkey they used to call it when that used to go from Marlborough to Swindon, it used to bring people into work before buses. All the little villages people could get on their little halts and come into Marlborough. You could get to London, change at Savernake, biggest junction there, long, long since gone, transfer there and get to London Paddington from Marlborough in two hours, you can’t get there much quicker now by car.

Of course there was accommodation for the signalman and the stationmaster which was just off the Salisbury Road on a high bank, quite a big semi-detached house, and you could walk from the low level station up to the high level station, there was a pathway going up through.

Marlborough Zone, there was a special train for Marlborough people and we used to go to the sea for the day and it was lovely.

Some of the bigger circuses came and the animals would come by railroad rather than road, and I can well remember the parade they used to have from the station to the circus site, they would have a band to lead them to the big top ground where there would be the menagerie set up and I have got a picture I can remember taking of Robert brothers’ elephants coming down Salisbury road years and years ago and going to a site in Elcot Lane somewhere and all these elephants nose to tail.

There was a signal box that was just off the main platform, I think they had two signalmen that they had there, they used to do shifts. There was a chap whose name was Noah Trotman and he was a ganger. The booking hall for the high level station, they turned it into accommodation and he lived there for some years, and they called it Noah’s Ark.

HIGH STREET SHOPS

Many hundreds of shops and business have graced Marlborough’s exceptionally wide and curving High Street over the years. We now hear of some of those that have served the town during the last century beginning with a quick account from Rose Rawlins who tells us of the origins of the ornately carved door opening onto what used to be Frees Furniture shop.

My husband designed the windows and the door and my son David did the carving and their names are on the bottom of the door now.

No. 99 High Street, this was Popes, it was an ironmongers and it was known as the Chantry works in its day as once upon a time there was a religious chantry or like a chapel there. When Motoraids closed, they had taken over from Popes over the years, and when it was being developed into Caffe Uno as it is today, they discovered the old chantry windows within a wall and the company made it into one of the features of the building, in fact you can go into the little chantry and have a meal where you have got these church-shaped windows there. Now this was a very, very ancient building and it survived the great fire of 1653.

My dad was born at Ogbourne his name was Arthur Shorey, he went to work for Mundy’s shoe shop when he was eleven years old and he stopped there until he retired. He made shoes not just repaired them and he made a pair for our mother. I used to go up to the shop and see him up there actually at work.

R Mundy and son, they had three shops in the town, one at No.5, one down at the college for college boys use and one at 143. The one at No.5 was what used to be called at one time The Ready Money Shop. They had no accounts there, it was just the cheapest shoes and you could buy everything for repairing shoes, you could buy the tacks, you could buy leather, you could buy rubber and anything you really needed because in those days everybody repaired their own shoes or there were shoe repairers in different streets.

There used to be a weighbridge in Marlborough High Street, opposite National West Bank and the coal carts used to come up from what we called Frees Yard, I think it’s Riding School Yard now, and they used to weigh them on this plate and make sure the coal was the right weight for their customers. Right next to the weighbridge was a water trough.

Where we’ve now got a bookmakers was the Manton Milk Bar, for many, many years run by Mr Pocock, a lovely little milk bar, had a juke box in there which was all the rage in them days, we are going back to the 50’s and 60’s, when we were at Mundy's shoe shop we could nip over there when we went home and play a couple of records on the juke box and have a cup of tea or a milk shake.

No.7 was the Swindon & District Co-op, it was one of the many grocers we had in town in those days and every street had a grocers shop of size but Swindon & District Co-op was one of the bigger ones and that was the first supermarket to appear in town, it changed over to be a supermarket probably late 60’s or early 70’s

There were two large families in Marlborough in the 30’s and 40’s, the Maurice’s who were the Doctors and the Frees who were Undertakers and coal merchants and there were eleven boys in each family I think and Eric Free was Mayor of Marlborough. He also ran a music shop and somebody who is now at the Priory, Pat Bird, worked there and Eric sold a very wide variety of music for quite a number of years.

144 the last one in the street was a watchmakers called Colliers, a real dear old boy who looked the part in a proper suit with a waistcoat and his pocket watch there and he nearly always wore a top hat. He had a clock, a big clock affixed to the penthouse in front of his shop there. You had no vandals in them days and he used to wind it up with a great big key once a week, it was a great treat to see him there, a real gent Mr Collier.

Where the Merchant House is now, I forget who was trading there at the time, but myself and Mr Oram, that was the chap that was taking me for my apprenticeship, we were doing some decorating there and it was right at the top of the building and we had to clean the walls off and we came across one wall that was done with the old hurdles and wattle and daub, which just showed you the age of the building.

110 and 110a was Hurd and Leders. Hurd and Leders had a garage with one pump out in the front like every garage did then no 2 star 4 star or anything like that, no diesel, just the one pump. And they did a little bit of selling of cars and lots of repairing.

Stratton Sons & Mead, which was where I did my apprenticeship, we used to smoke our own bacon, roast our own coffee, blend our own teas it was quite different to what it is today, everything was hand packed, most of it was done by people going out and getting orders and they were delivered that was the main, the bulk of the trade. They were also wholesalers as well and before I got there, that was all drawn out by horses and they used to have a tracer to get the horses up the hills and then bring it back. Yes, lovely isn’t it really when you think about it. We moved over to where they are now called Somerfield.

Stratton Sons & Mead Ltd., that was another old grocers, not only did they do retail stuff at the front where they cut the butters, they cut the cheeses, nothing packed in them days, they did a wholesale thing where they delivered to little shops that were in every street in the town. They made their own mineral waters there and above that in the war was the Ministry of Food place where food was rationed, and at the time my Aunt was running a shop in Kingsbury Street, so anybody who bought anything there had to have coupons, and all these coupons every month had to be delivered to this Ministry of Food shop above Strattons.

Milburn and Phillips, oh they were the one that invented the cowl that goes on the top of the chimneys, so that when it rained this cowl would stop the rain coming down the chimney, they called it a cowl; he was the one that invented that.

Now Gantlers was rather an interesting place, ye olde chemist, make up any prescription they could and my mother used to have this special thing she had for hand cream, whenever she ran out of this, you didn’t buy all this stuff then, she had this little recipe and you could go down there and they’d get a bit of powder out of one bottle and a bit of powder out of another and mix it all up and you had this lovely hand cream. There was a Mr Cook there, giant of a fellow he was, obviously with that size he had the biggest feet, you always had the impression he was going to kick something over he was such a giant of a fellow but ever such a nice bloke, could mix up anything you wanted in the days before health service of course when prescriptions came, but one of the old fashioned chemists, he had some of the old decorative bottles, probably now valuable, some he kept real things in and some were just for show.

OTHER PLACES OF WORK

Marlborough also employed a great many of its towns folk away from the High Street, in industries that have subsequently disappeared from the town.

Between Says and the Co-op there was Webbers, Coopers, Pattinsons and Polinsons, and they all had slaughter houses and of course when you came home from school we used to often run there on a Monday to see what was going on. All the animals were killed down there on a Monday.

Coming home from school I was often delayed going down Angel Yard, that was where they had the slaughter houses in those days, I think you will find it in one of the Marlborough books, they’ve got a picture of it where they were burning the bristles off the pigs and actually I have got an uncle standing there Arthur Douglas. They were Coopers, Ansell & Bird Webber used to do his slaughtering in New Road. That was when one day I can remember it was either a bullock or a heifer or something got loose and run out into a yard, it was enclosed but nobody could get near it so they got a marksman from one of the camps out on the plain and I can remember seeing him standing up on high walls with a rifle, bang, shot it.

Pelham’s Puppets. This was founded by Bob Pelham when he came out of the army probably mid 1940’s he started making a little puppet in his own home. He lived at Ogbourne St Andrew just opposite where my mother in law lived. He gradually started up a little tiny factory, he had a little place in Victoria House in Kingsbury Street for a while till it grew too big and then he had this place along London Road which was a former laundry but then it gradually became so big his office staff was probably five or six people in there any one time working on the accounts, and we’re talking of the days before computers, everything was done manually. Eventually he had some buildings on the opposite side of the river as well so it was well spread out, a huge concern really and above and behind the Oxfam shop, they had a little place there in between the time when it was Irvings and that closed and this was a vacant place and they worked from there.

I was very lucky I was able to start working for Bob Pelham and Pelham Puppets. He was fairly well established, well he had only been going for about three years, I must have joined him in 1959 and I became Secretary to his partner Bob Harrison, but after Bob Harrison retired, I then worked for Bob Pelham and starting as a part-time secretary. I gradually over the years built the job up till I was really running the office while Bob Pelham was the creator and he liked to be in the factory creating these wonderful puppets which became internationally renowned. They were toys but they were perfectly balanced, hand made, fully working marionettes and he himself went up and demonstrated them in Hamley's toy shop in Regent Street and so gradually we got them established and entered in all the big London stores, Harrods and Selfridges and gradually we built up a very big export trade till finally we were employing about over a hundred in the factory and about over a hundred part-time workers working in their own homes. We became one of the biggest employers in Marlborough and of great help to young mothers with children because they could do the machining and head painting and the stringing and the assembly, they could take the parts home and work in their own homes if they weren’t able or didn’t want to work in the factory. I think Pelham Puppets played a very important part in the life of the town and it was a great shame Bob Pelham died very suddenly in 1980 and after that of course with the creator gone it was very difficult for the firm to survive, so sadly it was put into liquidation.

The Tannery was another big employer of the town. There was loads of activity, when you went by there you could smell the tanning being done, could see the stacks of skins out there seasoning. That eventually moved away from the town and I think it became Wingrove & Edge and they had another place down Street way that’s where leathers were needed where shoes are made.

There were roadsters in the old workhouse, the poor old things, they had to earn their keep by having a hammer and smashing big old stones, you know, to make them smaller for the roads.

Chandlers at that time was one of the foremost saddlers for horse racing in the country. Jess Chandler the boss was president of The Master Saddlers and where we did lots of work for many, many racing stables throughout the country and indeed the World. There was about six of us working there doing saddles, horse clothing; we had people making the racing colours you see when the horses are patrolling before the race. We had some people in the sewing shops making the clothes, the hats, so all that was made in Chandlers. It was a real true family firm, it wasn’t a case of employers and employees, you were all in it together. Christmas time you were always invited down to the house for drinks and that and you got taken out for little trips out somewhere and there was always a staff dinner, a great place to work.

Where Waitrose is, that was an old skating rink and the fire station. When there was a fire there was the fire bell and the Police used to ring that and the Police used to stop there to tell them when it was out in the country the villages and that, where to go and then before they had the first fire engine, they of course they had to go and catch the horses.

There was a siren on top of the town hall. It was the local air raid siren during the war, if a fire was called out I’ve got an idea some form of a bell was used to call, they couldn’t use this siren then because everyone thought it was an air raid. And then they went over to radios, but before that happened one night the siren itself caught fire so I don’t know how they really called the fire engine out.

I can remember when I was decorating down in the Parade, Fred Harroway had a shop there and I was knelt down painting the sill of the front window and next door was Hilliers they had a fruiters shop and all of a sudden there was a bit of a commotion and I looked round and saw this bullock or whatever it was coming across the Parade straight in through the shop door and the next thing I saw was Pffeww it was flying through the window, so talk about a bull in a china shop, it was a bull in a fruit shop.

THE MOP FAIRS

The mops have long been a highlight in the town’s calendar of events and in this anniversary year we celebrate 800 years of their royal charter which they share with the town’s markets.

My earliest memories of the fair is when I was about six years old in 1927. I was sitting in my grandma’s house on New Road and I was watching them coming up, in those days there was quite a lot of stuff came in with horses, horse-drawn, and I can remember that particularly year it snowed when they were bringing the fair stuff in and I can remember seeing sacking on the horses’ hooves and I probably asked my grandma why and she said well, stop the horses from slipping.

Sat in the classroom on a Friday waiting for twelve o’clock to come because you knew at 12 o’clock everything used to come into the High Street. It was shut down until the following Sunday morning and of course as soon as we came out of school everybody was away up the High Street to see what had arrived, because it was different at different times and it all came in with great big steam engines then, a wonderful sight. And the music used to be wonderful. Chipperfields circus started there outside of the Post Office, they used to bring lions in a cage into the High Street.

The Edwardses, I can remember them before they came into the High Street on the Friday they used to come into Marlborough say about the Wednesday or the Thursday and they used to park up their amusements behind the Roebuck pub on the London Road, that was in between London Road and Elcot Lane, there were fields there then, no houses. Billy Edwards and Jack Edwards used to come down to St Peters School for about two weeks I think it was when they sort of hung about Marlborough.

I can remember when the fairs come in before the war when I was a child, they were waiting for twelve o’clock to strike and they’d be all queued up in Kingsbury Street, the traction engines and they used to have horses then you see pulling along the stuff.

I’m always fascinated by the way they put the fair up, you know with the blocks of wood that go underneath the beer crates, the ammunition boxes, and then they just sort of level it up with another bit of ply wood or something because they got that slope on the High Street to contend with.

The fairs were first mentioned in the Charter of King John, 1204, when they were held in and around the churchyard. In those days of course they would be trading fairs. These eventually moved from the churchyard and gradually over the centuries came into the High Street where they became hiring fairs. Marlborough’s in a predominantly farming area and farm labourers used to change hands and farmers used to change employees at Harvest time, so the fairs are situated either side of October 11th on the Saturday before and after. Farmers used to come to the first one and could pick out their staff for the following year and vice versa the employees would look for a new employer. They’d go off then and if they weren’t satisfied they could come back to Marlborough again for a second go. Mop fairs now are truly pleasure fairs and one interesting thing, I said they come on the Saturday before and after 11th October, if the 11th comes on a Saturday, you got a fortnight between them.

The Mop Fairs were the old hiring fairs, the men used to go and get their fresh jobs at harvest time, Michaelmas time. They put in their caps an emblem, if they were a shepherd they’d put some wool in the cap, if they wanted to be a farm labourer they’d have a bit of horse’s hair, and the girls used to go and get their fresh jobs for the new year and they’d wear mop caps.

Henry James, wonderful Wales they used to call him, he used to open on a Friday night and all the takings were given to Savernake Hospital, the reason being his wife became ill and she was treated in Savernake Hospital and he makes this contribution in appreciation of what they did for his wife.

The first mop was always the most important one, and we were entertained by the Showman’s Guild, they always had a reception before the fair in those days. When I was Mayor, it was held in the Ailesbury Arms Hotel and we paraded, the Mayor was robed and had the mace bearers, then we’d have a formal opening of the fair, and after I had opened the fair, I mean this was the same every year every Mayor did it every year, we were then taken all round the fair and given rides, it was a great celebration.

They had a special train up from Swindon to come to Marlborough fair, ‘cos that helped to make more crowds than ever and it was almost impossible to even walk down there without bumping into somebody. That was a big occasion.

In those days they had the caravans parked on the side and it was most interesting to see inside one of the caravans. You’d see all the glassware and the brass and the copper kettles, those people were absolutely spotlessly clean, those fair people.

At the fair we had the confetti battle when the boys and girls used to run after each other putting confetti down your neck, anywhere they could get it, and it was real fun.

They had what they called the boxing booth, a bit of a stage on the front and they’d have two or three of their boxers and they used to shout, “any of you think you can go three rounds with one of my boys?” - used to draw a big crowd and I got an idea the prize was £5 and that was a lot of money. I can remember there were two boys that worked in the stables at Ogbourne, Danny Godfrey and Billy Croxton and they were good boxers and I can remember for three or four fairs that they always got up and had a go, they always won. It was a crowd drawer because you know, local lads boxing.

Chipperfields used to have a circus and they had lions. A man who was called Mr Gillet, he had a special medal given to him because he went into the lion’s den with the trainer and shaved the trainer, and they both got out alive.

We used to have what they called the Wall of Death. They used to ride motorbikes round and round this wall and of course the speed kept them up and then they’d ask for volunteers, if they wanted to sit on the back of a motorbike.

There was Taylors and Dooners, they had the magic lantern in them days, see, to show the pictures. And they had the girl outside dancing on the platform to entertain you, lovely.

I can remember seeing a lady on one of the stalls making the humbugs. She had prepared the actual sugar and get it just so as it was pliable and they had a big metal hook at the side of the stall and she’d stretch it and chuck it over this hook, I think she went through the motions of spitting on her hand and then she’d throw it up and stretch it and keep doing that until it was I should think about four or five foot long and then she’d lay it on the counter, either chop it off or she had big scissors and cut it off but before she cut it she used to twist it and that was the humbugs.

It can only be held over the High Street by Act of Parliament, I did know this but I came across it in the Marlborough Times, back in the 1880’s there were a lot of complaints about these fairs so the council said right we’ll get rid of them but they found that because it was granted by Royal Charter it can only go out by an Act of Parliament and the bother with that would have been much more than leaving the fairs alone and the fairs stayed.

All through the war, to make sure that we didn’t lose our right to the market or the fairs, a stall was put in the High Street every Wednesday and Saturday to make sure that the market was there and the same thing with the fairs so that we never lost the right to hold the mop fairs.

Years ago it was most certainly a meeting place for relations and friends, probably didn’t see each other since the last mop twelve month ago. Every year they would meet up, “See you next Marlborough fair”, that’s an old cry you know but I think even so in these days there are people still that meet, I think that is what makes Marlborough Mop what it is.

We meet people in the Marlborough Fair, you know, that you haven’t seen all year, wonderful Marlborough Fairs I wouldn’t have them out of the High Street for all the tea in China.

SHEEP FAIRS

As well as the Mop Fairs, Marlborough was equally renowned for its annual sheep fair which took place every August. After transferring from the High Street to the Common in 1893, the annual livestock sales continued until 1970 before finally taking place in 1987 after a brief revival.

My grandfather used to put the hurdles up on the common and I used to go up there and help him, and then we used to take the sheep up to the station. A lot of them were driven up the road from the Common to the station and of course they used to get mixed up on the way up. As boys we used to either go in front or at the back and then when you got them up to the station they had to be all loaded into the different wagons. And they used to have marks on their back, different colours in different places so that you knew which ones belonged to which and then they used to sort them out. One or two of them used to get away and run down the alleyways and we used to go and have to catch them.

During the war years of course when the big American Hospital was up there, they were held in a field down near Ogbourne. A lot of them used to come by road, but I can remember when we were living in The Green, a lot of them coming down Herd Street, out through the Green and through Barn Street and up to the station all on the hoof. They had a big hurdle shed up on the common, that’s gone of course, and there was a pond up there, that went after the end of the war. Shame its all dying out.

Oh we loved it, we used to get our sticks ready three or four days beforehand so that when the sheep came from the station to go up on the common, the shepherds were very pleased because when they got as far as the Green, we kids would make sure the sheep went on the common alright. Our mother always was pleased because she heard the one shepherd say when she was a girl, stop them little maid they be strange sheep and they don’t know where to go to.

ROYAL EVENTS

With great enthusiasm the town has celebrated many royal events in its history; here are recollections of just two of them.

One of the most memorable was when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth came to the town. This was down at the college down by the armoury; they went there and inspected the college cadets, the sea cadets, the army cadets and the boy scouts. The boy scouts they were doing a bit of cooking and I understand it was quite a good day in Marlborough because they went to the town hall, signed the visitor’s book, had a look at the mace. Fred Dobie was one of the mace bearers then and Jimmy Duck, as we called him, he was the Mayor at that time.

I was elected to the council in 1976 and in 1977, which was the Silver Jubilee Year, I was asked if I would be the Mayor, quite unknown I think for anybody to be asked so soon, but they said they thought it would be rather nice to have a woman as a Mayor during the Queen’s Silver Jubilee so with the great help from my deputy Mayor Ted Beacham, I had a very interesting and very worthwhile year. The main thing was the enormous tea party we had for all the children in the High Street, there were tables right down the middle of the High Street, I don’t know how many hundred children we entertained, but after they had their tea every schoolchild in the town had a celebration mug which we distributed. It was quite a fascinating time because at that time it was a carnival week, so there were all sorts of excitements and celebrations going on until it came to the end of the week when we had the procession, which started from the common as it still does, right down into the town and paraded through the town.

REFLECTIONS OF LIFE IN MARLBOROUGH

We conclude our special compilation with a few brief recollections on life in Marlborough.

Oh I’ve loved Marlborough, and I’ve travelled quite a bit but there is no place like Marlborough.

The biggest changes in the town, well I suppose losing a lot of the shops and businesses because Marlborough was more or less self contained, I mean if you wanted anything in Marlborough you’d get it but nowadays if you want certain things you’ve got to go to the super stores in Swindon or Bristol, places like that, unfortunately.

I think it’s a lovely place, I just love it, you have got the forest, the downland, and it’s a very good community, in the old days it really was a community, but it still is today. Unbeliev able, I couldn’t leave it.

CLOSING WORDS

Those heartfelt word bring this recording to a close, however the Marlborough Oral History project continues with many more interviews planned. If you have enjoyed what you have heard* and would like to listen to any of our full unedited recordings you may visit our archives at the Merchant’s House from the end of 2004.

On behalf of Marlborough Oral History Project may I thank you.