Bucks, Beds and Bricks

Bucks, Beds and Bricks Bucks, Beds and Bricks A Phorpres Childhood Jean Blane Flannery ii Bucks, Beds and Bricks Copyright © 2011 Jean Blane Flannery All rights reserved. ISBN-10: 1466329653 ISBN-13: 978-1466329652 iii Bucks, Beds and Bricks For My Family Past, Present and Future With My Love This is first and foremost for my much loved grandchildren: Luke, Ryan, Bryce, Shannon, Loren and Caitlin. Without them and their interested, enquiring minds this book would never have been written. iv Bucks, Beds and Bricks Acknowledgements My grateful thanks to: those who aided my memory, in particular my sister Carole; my parents, without whom there would be no story to tell; my wonderful children Carl, Winn and Kathryn, who have given me so much. Many thanks also to those others of my family and friends who very generously searched out and shared their memories and photographs; to Bedford, Milton Keynes and Sheffield libraries for old photographs and maps; to Phorpres News and The Guardian newspaper for photographs. Last but by no means least, my heartfelt thanks to John for all his continuing love, patience and care. Errors are mine alone. Jean Blane Flannery December 2011 v Bucks, Beds and Bricks Foreword By way of some explanation, the Bucks in this title is Buckinghamshire,With my life the being Beds: moulded Bedfordshire. in the fourThey homesare the of twothis English countiesaccount, inI whichmight Iwell lived be as considereda child. And a thePhorpres Bricks? child. My father workedBorn a fewfor themonths London after Brick D-Day, Company before theLtd end(LBC) of allWWII, his adult lifemy apart earliest from memories serving inare the of Britishthe immediate Army throughout post-war WWII. years. Phorpres (pronounced fourpress) was the trademark of the LBC, I originally wrote this book for my family, mainly for curious the Phorpres Man with his brick hod its logo. The term Phorpres derived grandchildren.from the fact that It the was bricks never were intended pressed fourfor timesa wider to mould them.audience. Though But why as thatothers spelling, have I alsodo not read know. and said they enjoyed it, here it is. Just to add that some of the explanations here, and the 'translations,' are for the benefit of grandchildren growing up in the USA and New Zealand: a world away in distance as well as time from my own childhood. With my life being moulded in the four homes of this account I might well be considered a Phorpres child. Born a few months after D-Day, before the end of WWII, my earliest memories are of the immediate post-war years. I originally wrote this book for my family, mainly for curious grandchildren. It was never intended for a wider audience. But as others have also read and said they enjoyed it, here it is. Just to add that some of the explanations here, and the 'translations,' are for the benefit of grandchildren growing up in the USA and New Zealand: a world away in distance as well as time from my own childhood. Spelling is mainly UK English. Some of the names in this narrative have been changed. vi Bucks, Beds and Bricks vii Bucks, Beds and Bricks CONTENTS Acknowledgments v Foreword vi Family Relationship Table vii Setting the Scene 1 My Beginning 31 Changes Come Apace 55 Christmas Past 75 Back to Bletchley 81 Early Holiday Memories 99 Return to Life in Western Road 109 Round and About 121 The Final House Move 129 Last Junior Years 165 Expanding Horizons 191 Growing Up 225 Childhood's Ending 243 Appendix 257 Addendum 311 General Certificate of Education 1961 Ordinary Level Papers viii Bucks, Beds and Bricks Bucks, Beds and Bricks SETTING THE SCENE Before I properly start the story of my childhood, let me just try to set the scene for you of what life was like in general. It’s strange really, because as a child I couldn’t dream that things would change so much or that anyone would ever not know how things were then. How could any part of my own life ever become the Olden Days? However it has. So although I only learned most of this later myself, here is what some things were like for ordinary people living in post-war England. It was still a time of austerity, with rationing of nearly all goods and food not just continuing but extended. It was 1946 that actually saw the introduction of rationing for the basic foodstuffs such as bread and potatoes. Coal was also rationed, as were petrol (gasoline), clothing and furniture. Clothing and furniture carried the ‘Utility’ trademark, a remnant of the war years. As late as December 1947 a buying permit was still needed to buy furniture and then priority was given to those such as servicemen returning and setting up homes, and newlyweds. The total allowance of coupons for furniture was 60 per household. Certain conditions applied before anyone could apply to buy furniture. If furniture was already in the house, or there was built-in furniture, then the allowance was reduced accordingly. The only available choices were from the illustrated copy of the Utility catalogue, used by all manufacturers. To save fuel the firm chosen to supply the furniture had to be based within 15 miles of the delivery address. In some cases it was necessary to obtain a buying permit and priority docket to 1 Bucks, Beds and Bricks purchase curtaining and floor covering. Finally, stocks were so low that immediate delivery was not always possible. The typical cost of a dining room suite (table, chairs and sideboard), two easy chairs and a dressing table was £68 and 38 units of coupons. Little was left from the allowance of 60 coupons for other furniture: wardrobe 12 units, bed 5 units, kitchen cabinet 8 units and so on. Every piece of furniture had a points value. The Board of Trade Utility Furniture Office in Southport controlled all of this. Many goods were only available with coupons - even sweets (candy, lollies), which like butter were rationed to 2 ounces per person per week until 1953. Some rationing extended further, into 1954. Cost was also a deterrent to buying anything not necessary, when one considers that the average wage at this time was in the region of £6 per week. A police constable received a salary of £273 per year: £5/5/- (£5.25) per week. For quite a number of years, running into the mid-late 1950s, purchase tax was imposed, similar to the present day VAT or sales tax but at the stratospheric rate of 33% on common everyday purchases. This rate was doubled to 66% for so-called luxuries such as refrigerators, radios (then known in the UK as wirelesses) and jewellery. Nothing was available to excess as it was either rationed or one could simply not afford it. Beer increased in price and a bottle of whisky now cost £1/11/- (£1.55), a good quarter of an average week’s pay. A ladies cardigan would cost £4/3/- (£4.15) and six coupons. Both knitting and sewing were far more than just hobbies! 2 Bucks, Beds and Bricks This was in the days when a joint was what one roasted for Sunday dinner, a fag was stuck in the mouth and smoked, grass was mowed, coke was kept in the coal shed and used as fuel, making out meant that you managed on your wages each week, to be gay was to be light hearted and happy - and to be queer was to be simply strange or odd. In today’s money, nearly everything was extremely cheap then but not by the wages of the time. As I say, in 1947 the average wage was just £6 per week. Even by 1961, when I had started working, £15/10/- (£15.50) per week was the average weekly wage for men (no thought of equal pay). It puts the relative costs in perspective. Dad, returning to a fairly junior job in the wages section of the London Brick Company personnel department at Newton Longville near Bletchley after 6½ years in the army, earned less than the average wage in 1946. Money was always tight for Mum and Dad but they did not show that to us. By the time Dad left the Newton Longville works in 1954 he was earning £10/10/- per week. He was given a pay rise of 10 shillings, bringing him up to £11, to move to Stewartby as Social and Sports Club Secretary. The rent for our first house in Whiteley Crescent (including rates, now council or house tax) was £1 per week. Our next house three years later, back in Bletchley, was older with just two bedrooms, and about the same rent. Because the house we then moved to in Stewartby was owned and subsidised by the brick company the rent there was still only just over £1 in 1954. So finances were a little bit easier, although of course other prices had gone up. When Hanson took over the London Brick Company in the 1980s, rents had gone up to just £9 per week, still very cheap. The days of subsidised rent then became a thing of the past as the houses were sold off. 3 Bucks, Beds and Bricks Perhaps I had better explain a bit about the pre-decimal currency. It was generally referred to as LSD: nothing to do with the drug that came later! Strangely the L, written £, stood for pounds sterling, the S for shillings and the D for pence. Both the S and D were written in lower case when in actual use.

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