Byford's Boy Labourers Wartime Errand Boy Hereford's Pushbike Brigade Babies by Candlelight

Herefordshire Lore PO Box 9, Callow Hereford HR1 9BX Volume 2 07845 907891 [email protected] Summer 2006 www.herefordshirelore.org.uk Byford's boy labourers Wartime errand boy Hereford's pushbike brigade Babies by candlelight Get in touch on 07845 907891 or [email protected] On The Home Front From Kilner jars to killing hens In Our Age has been for them else they out and about talking to won't die!" Herefordshire people Don Glead, Madley about wartime food. G Bread pudding: soak G You'd have to queue bread, add sugar, fruit for everything. and powdered egg Queues'd be miles and a little drop of long at Higgins the milk. Mix it all up and butcher in put it in the baking Widemarsh Street. tray, like a Christmas No good being in a pudding, and boil it. hurry, you'd be ages. That was what my I used to hate kids had for their tea queuing, but if you with some custard wanted it you'd got many a time and the to do it. boys are all six Phyllis Yapp, footers! Hereford Phyllis Yapp, Hereford G When mother went to G Through the winter market she'd have months we always butter and dressed had hot potato cakes chickens in her on Sunday evening. basket. And they were Phyllis Edwards (pictured second from right in the middle row, above) of Redhill recalls Cook the potatoes, dressed in those happy times working as a civilian cook at RAF Credenhill. She remembers one mash them well with days, trussed up with incident which might send Health & Safety inspectors into a spin these days. Lofty some flour, a knob of parsley, sage . by (pictured far left in the back row, above), one of the cooks, was pouring flour into a big butter and then the time you'd got the boiler and out of the bag came a mouse’s nest and baby mice. He scooped the nest lightly fry them both greenery off you got and mice out. Later when the gravy was made Deirdre (furthest right in the front row), sides. They go down enough to stuff the while ladling the gravy out of the boiler into jugs, saw what she thought was a piece of well with some meat and pickle. bird as well! string, hooked it out, and discovered a mouse at the end of this tail. Deirdre won’t say Katie Latham, Don Glead, Madley what she did with the gravy but nobody died! Hereford G We bottled everything. G A funny thing, a lot of the old ladies used G Watercress was gathered from a brook We bottled fruit. And we used to slice to do the killing (of hens). Used to hang where no brook runs today. It's dried up beans and put a layer of beans and then them on the clothesline and cut the vein in because of drainage. But there was a brook salt and so on until the jar was full. You their beak and bleed them. If they didn't and a watercress bed there and people name it we bottled it! We used Kilner jars: flap they didn't get all the blood out of 'em. guarded it with their life too! every one went mad for Kilner jars. A neighbour used to say: "Don't feel sorry Don Glead, Madley Katie Latham, Hereford Herefordshire’s Harvest Camps Gordon Smith recalls the Byford boy labourers Times were hard for the Agricultural Committee ran through our camping field. And we boys at Barford Road Camp at Byford. In would bait hooks with worms – although Secondary School in August 1947 there was a the farmer wasn't pleased when his hens Ladywood, Birmingham three-week camp where ate the worms and choked on the hooks! during the war years, we were allowed to work We had to take more care after that. writes Gordon. There four hours a day for 9d Gordon and friend Brian Palmer have were shortages of an hour. researched their days at Byford and even everything and, living We picked potatoes by traced the relevant documents from close to the factories we hand, picked plums in Birmingham Education authority. One were often interrupted by the orchards and stacked official account reports: “Swimming and air raids. People were sheaves of corn together fishing competitions were most successful killed less than 50 yards to dry, afterwards loading and carried out without over-organisation. from where we sheltered them onto tractors and No single complaint of damage of any sort in our underground air unloading them into the was made against the boys.” raid shelter. So you can barns. imagine our joy at being After each trip to the G Do you remember the Byford boys? Let offered three weeks in barn we all had a glass us know at In Our Age. Herefordshire and the of homemade cider and, chance to get clean fresh being only 14 or 15, it did Front cover photograph: air into our lungs. have quite an effect on A chauffeur-driven car drives through On June 6 1946 the boys us – as did all the went at Whitsun for one unwashed fruit we ate! Lea on the A40, Ross to Gloucester week as an experiment to the War We used to swim and fish in the river which road around 1913. 2 Get in touch – call us on 07845 907891... On Your Bike Delivery boy Harry Carroll reflects on life at Bishops Frome Harry moved to Bishops Frome in the war. two slit windows and big wooden shutters We came from London to my (you can still see the clips on the walls). grandmother's, Aldridge Cottage, Bishops The front room was an air-raid shelter. We Frome and worked on the farm. We lived in moved there in 1941. a little tin bungalow – no running water and Everyone had a good garden. I remember an outside privy. the vegetables, Mum worked on the especially runner land so I took my little beans. Mother kept brother to Bishops chickens and ducks, Frome School. He hatching the eggs in couldn't have been the warming oven. more than three and And rabbits would he'd stand by my desk arrive home – inside while I did my father's overcoat. schoolwork. Before I left We spent the Scudamore School, I summers on the hop worked for Sugarkings fields. We'd gather in Eign Gate as the sticks, make up the errand boy delivering fire. The Gypsies the groceries. People came in their wagons. would come with lists, I played with Henry the food was packed Lee and the Boswells, up and the delivery and Smiths. They boys cycled off. On were nice kids. Saturday I'd go to the We were chucked out bus station, with a of our cottage when tarpaulin in case of Dents at Yarkhill was one. She loved it. father joined the rain, and the other She and the other women would travel by Munitions factory at Rotherwas because he boys would deliver the parcels to me, to be bus or by lorry to pick hops (she had a wouldn't work on the farm at weekends. The collected by people as they got on the bus pillow made out of hops). The women would Munitions had built special workers' houses home. be quiet in the morning but would all be in Hunderton with flat-roofs, thick walls, My mother continued working on farms: singing on the way home. Jock jumps ship RAF My father, ‘Jock', was born in 1897 in Glasgow, says Harry. He was a bit wild and was sent to a training ship, ‘for those that might drift bikes into delinquency', the HMS Mars on the Clyde. There was room for One of Harry's 400 boys on board and he learned many skills there – shoemaking, brothers trained at sewing, cutting hair. But he RAF Madley as a wasn't happy and literally wireless operator jumped ship and swam for and air gunner. shore. He never returned to “When his mates Scotland. had leave, they He lied about his age, cycled to our joined up and served on the house and left the Somme. He met my mother bikes in our after being injured when he garden, picking was in hospital in them up when they Cheltenham. returned and After the Munitions, he cycling back to worked part time at the SAS Madley. They were camp. He used to tell this big Air Force issue story. ‘Jock,' said the bikes: no one got sergeant to my father, ‘have the same bike that you got a spare cap and they came with.” coat at home?' ‘Yes,' said Cycle Hereford, a my father. ‘What do you new group, is want with them?' father launched in asked. ‘Just hang them on National Bike Elizabeth Godsell from Woolhope and that peg over there. Today's Week on June 17. bike outside Redhill, 1943. "The RAF lads Tuesday: don't come back Cycle Hereford, 30 had my bike: they used to steal bicycles to until Friday. If anybody asks Grove Road, get back to camp after the Hostel dances." if you're in, I'll say “he must Hereford HR1 2QP (See That Hereford Hostel, back page.) be because there's his hat (01432 340107) or and coat".' [email protected] ...or email us at [email protected] 3 The Good Life Phyllis Yapp recalls birthing by candlelight Before the war Phyllis was a finisher and The pub was down-to-earth.

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