Hilary interviews Eric and Phyllis Green |
|
 I
remember as a child playing on a pottery spoil heap at Matts Yard and I hoped Eric and
Phyllis could provide some information about a pottery which used to exist behind the old
Stanhope Arms (now the Stanhope Grill) in Main Street, Newhall. They could not, and
despite long searching I have found no documentary evidence of one.If anyone can help
please e-mail me |
| Hilary . | What particular memories do you have of your childhood? |
| Phyllis | When I was little my highlight of the week was when coal cart come down the Oversetts. Mr Knight he had delivered all his coal, and was taking his horse back. 'Course all the kids used to run. He used to stop, we all jumped on the cart, used to take us down to Nadin's (the local pit). We had to walk back but that didn't matter. It was our highlight of the week. We thought it were lovely. |
| Hilary | Do you remember the rag and bone man coming? |
| Phyllis | I do, yes. Fish and chickens. I had one. It were nearly all cocks. Didn't get that many hens. It used to absolutely follow me about. It must have grown up, but I never knew what happened to it. I reckon it ended up in the pot. |
| Hilary | Can you remember a man coming every year in brown overalls with a huge basket, selling peppermint cordial? Cloth cap and brown overalls, I think he was a Romany. |
| Phyllis | I can't honestly say that I do, but it doesn't seem a strange thing. I thought for at
first you were going to mention Lenny Blankley coming round with fish, 'cos he always had
a brown overall on. Dirty old trilby. He used to come round with this open cart of fish. I
mean they'd have died today, wouldn't they? Just all open boxes. Cause he used to call at
the Crown. I think he called at every pub he passed. Then by the time he'd finished his
round, the horse knew where to go back, and it went back on its own. They used to come out
and say, "How much is that then, Lenny?" "Well, give me a bob", you
know. And they used to say, "A bob! I can't afford a bob, Lenny." And he used to
say, "Oh, go on! Give me threepence, then. You'll break me." (Laughter)
� |
| Hilary | You remember the Oki man? (slang for ice-cream man) |
| Phyllis | Yes, Rodney. I remember Rodney. You had to pay full price for your ice cream off him though. |
| But I tell you there was many a one'd have gone hungry years ago if it hadn't been for Lenny Blankley. The kids used to wait for him to go up to the house, you know, they used to sneak up you know and pinch a bit of fish, or sometimes he'd have a few bananas with his fish. They'd grab a couple of them. But he had a big knife, you know. You could imagine, you know, chopping his fish, and sometimes when he caught them, he'd fling that knife at them. He didn't hesitate. He flung it. I never heard of anybody getting hurt, but he certainly used to fling it. I mean, they'd have gone mad today. We used to aggravate him that much, the kids did. He used to be drunk by the time he'd finished. Wouldn't allow it today. I don't know how he lived. | |
| Hilary | Can you remember the bomb dropping during the war? In Don Brearly's field. |
| Phyllis | Oh yes, across here. Wasn't it on that bit of ground? |
| Eric | Yes, there's still a field there by the passageway in between the council houses, isn't they? |
| Phyllis | Yes, I remember that one, |
| Eric | There was several, actually. |
| Hilary | I thought there was only one. |
| Eric | Oh, was they? I thought they was one or two. They never went off, though, did they. |
| Phyllis | There was some dropped over Swad. |
| Eric | Oh, I know that 'cos it blew my tool box up. That was when they dropped a land mine, Hastings Road. I worked at Millers at the time. I was apprenticed in the engineering shop. I'd got a wooden box on top of the bench, you know, with tools in it. And it was smashed, just like that. |
| Hilary | Wasn't there one in Don Brearly's field? The only casualty was a cow? |
| Eric | Hastings Road, some got killed. |
| History's never bothered me really. If I talk about it, it all comes back. | |
| Hilary | That's the whole point. This type of history will be lost if we don't record it. |
(Phyllis then read out the column 'How Christmas has changed' from the Burton Mail)
| Phyllis | It sounds right foreign, don't it? If a Burtonian come into Newhall, they could never decipher what you was about. |
| Hilary . | I noticed you had problems reading it. |
| Phyllis | I did, and yet we used to speak like that when we were children. |
| Hilary | That's right. And this is another example of how the village life has changed. |
| Phyllis | When we went to went to work in Burton, I mean me dad was a miner, and we used to put a big lump of coal on the fire so that next morning all you had to do was knock it, and you'd got a fire. Only we didn't call it a lump of coal, it was a 'raker'. Used to put a raker on. |
| And if you was a bit late for work, you'd say you got buzzed. They didn't understand what you meant, you see. They didn't realise you meant you was late. And then with working in Burton, you gradually got as you began to drop it off, because they didn't understand you. So you couldn't beat them, you got join them. And that's that. | |
| 'Course we listen to the wireless a lot, and there was a program about this. And they kept teckin' you back to that sort of thing, and he was saying, the commentator was saying it's a shame that you';re going to lose that dialect. As broad as it was it had got something. | |
| Hilary | This is why I want to keep it. |
| Phyllis | Yes, will you make a book about it? |
| Hilary | I would like to. But my intention actually is to put it on the Internet. |