North Thoresby Janet Draycott 12th August 2013 Interviewed by Derek O’Connell, Development Officer, Learning & Information Services. Village Voices Project Manager.

DO – So if I can ask you to say your name please. JD – I’m Janet Draycott DO – And todays date is the 12th August 2013. How long have you lived in North Thoresby? JD – Well apart from the first fortnight of my life because I was born in Louth in Crowtree lane Hospital and, apart from 2 years at training college at Lincoln (1957-59), I’ve lived all my life in North Thoresby and I’m 74 years old. DO – Right, It’s a question you don’t ask a lady isn’t it? So if you can tell me a little bit about your family background. JD – My mother was from Louth. Her father had one of the first motor garages in Louth. My father was from Swallow Beck in Lincoln. They married in 1937 when my father had been made headmaster of North Thoresby Primary School. They didn’t live in the school house. They chose instead to buy a property in Station Rd, which is still in the family today. My brother and his wife live there. I came to the village at a fortnight old. My brother and my sister still live in the village and my training was as a secondary school teacher. All my teaching was done at Toll Bar School. I retired from there in 1989 and went back into adult education craft teaching. DO – Was that in the village itself? JD - Craftwork? I did it for Education Authority all over the county. After I stopped doing it for LEA I did it for Education in Barton Upon , and . DO – So as a long standing resident of the village you must have seen a lot of changes . JD – Indeed I have. DO – A lot of people coming and going. JD – And a lot of building going on. DO – What changes in terms of the physical landscape have had the biggest effect in your own mind. JD – The number of houses that have been built. I don’t know that the population has increased tremendously but certainly the number of houses. Families are much smaller than they were in the war time days. Anything up to a dozen in some cases. DO – So is most of the building work occurring in what you might call brown- field sites? JD – No, there aren’t many brown-field sites in Thoresby. Its been infill and then estates. DO – So the building has been encroaching on the agricultural land? JD – Oh yes. Some of the estates in the centre of the village have been in farm yards. Well that you would class as a brown-field site I suppose but it has also encompassed some of the farm fields and the farm frontages. When one of the farmers, who had been a trawler owner as well, died in 1965, a lot of the frontages on the farm’s land were sold for building land to cover the death duties DO – Village characters. Were there any people that stick in your mind over the years. JD – Well yes. The uncle of the man who lived across the road from me was really strong in his dialect. The postman was quite a character. If he couldn’t get his car into forward gear he would drive it in reverse. He sometimes chose to drive it from the passenger seat. I think he had a parrot and when he washed it he would put in it the side oven to dry off. Things like that. One day he didn’t fancy delivering the mail to on his bicycle so he threw it over the hedge and said if they want it they can come and fetch it. When he was to deliver the mail to Wold Newton, which was a long way, he would dismantle his bike and put it into the car and while the bike was being re-assembled he would put his primer stove on to make him a cup of tea. The man who lived in the thatched cottage in the village was quite a character too and took a lot of persuading to leave the cottage when the thatch caught fire for the last time before there was major renovation needed. DO – We’ve talked about the changing landscape and you mentioned dialect. You’ve brought in something for us. JD – Have you not seen ‘Milestones on the Side of the Road’? DO – I have, yes. JD – Right, this is The Milestone taken from Punch, 7th November 1945. 10 and Lowerth 3 That’s what the milestone saeys to me For a thousand year it said the saeme To ivery traveller as caeme I, Lowerth 3 Horncastle 10 To farmers of the Wold and fen I took it bad when it were lifted And yukked into a truck and shifted. The roerd looked lonely, somehow littler And all because on that there ‘itler P’raps the stoene took it best For God knoews it ‘d earned a rest And when ‘e’s back and paiented white So’s you can see ‘im in the night And shan and clean. It one day will saey to me grandsons on the hill When mostly folks ‘ave forgotten me. Horncastle 10 and Lowerth 3. DO – So if I can ask you to count to 20 in deepest Lincolnshire dialect. JD – I don’t know if I can manage right up to 20. Yan, tan tethera, pethera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, covera, dik, yan-a- dik, tan-a-dik, tethera-dik, pethera-dik, bumfit(15), yan-a-bumfit, tan-a-bumfit, tethera-bumfit, pethera-bumfit, and figgot(20). Then you’d either put a notch on your stick if you were counting sheep or thumb down to a notch on your crook. DO – So your background is brought up Methodist? JD – I was brought up Wesleyan Methodist. There was the Primitive Methodist Chapel, which was destroyed when the Lancaster was dropped on it. Then the two communities joined together. I went to Sunday school most Sundays and my brother and sister followed in due course. We were always inveigled to sign the pledge of total abstainance . I don’t remember ever doing it. Because I could play the piano I often played the hymns and choruses for the Sunday school. I remember the Sunday School outings. Sometimes they were to or or even I think. There would be a chapel anniversary. There was special staging, which was stored up above the chapel, which came out for the anniversary Sundays. It was a tiered platform, which went right up over the pulpit. We all sat there and did our bits and pieces and eventually because I played the piano I went on to play the organ once a fortnight up to and slightly after I was married 50 years ago. Occasionally I’m still drawn on to be relief organist when Elizabeth is away on holiday. Do you know what double summer time is? DO – I don’t, no. JD – It was when the clock was put forward not once but twice so we were 2 hours ahead of Greenwich Meantime. I can’t have been 5 or even younger than that. It was light so late at night so way passed my bedtime and I remember hearing my father mowing the lawn when I didn’t think he aught to have been mowing the lawn but it was still daylight. Daylight saving time. And about that time I remember a doodlebug going over which I think came down in Scartho and destroyed a bank somewhere in the centre of Scartho. We didn’t have our own air raid shelter persay. Not one underground, but there was one in the garden next door and when the air raid was sounded the man from the pub came along with a tin bath on his head just in case any shrapnel got him. What we did have at home although I can’t remember the name for it. It was like a big square metal table with a hollow underneath so you could sleep under there when life was dangerous. My memory of that was that the table was so cold against your legs when you were having breakfast. There was an air raid one night and we were under there and my father suddenly got up and went to the cupboard by the side of the fireplace and said he wasn’t going to go without eating that box of Milk Tray chocolates. DO – I suppose they would have been a rare commodity at the time. JD – Indeed. For some time after the war one of the cockpit canopies from a German plane was used as a station allotment by one of the residents as a cold frame. The plane had come down further down the railway line in one of the fields. So he made use of that. I think that was probably the plane that came down that my father went to have a look at the next day and he found the maps for the pilot. Can’t remember if it was or Hull docks that he was supposed to bomb but he got out of the plane with all his equipment and he’d probably seen light on the water of the canal and thought it was the coast so he set off for the canal. He then blew his boat up and paddled across the canal and so disenchanted when he got to the other side he ate his bar of chocolate and gave himself up to the next farmhand that came along. DO – It would have been a much shorter boat journey than he was expecting. JD – Some of the unexploded shells that were found on the railway line my father dismantled and found that they had been sabotaged in the production. Obviously it was forced labour and they didn’t like it and when they could they screwed up a bit of paper instead of the detonators. DO – That’s fascinating! JD – My father risked life and limb. He was around at wartime because teaching was a reserve profession. He would have liked to have gone to war but wasn’t allowed to. He was in the home guard and air warden as well. Thoresby is in still officially on alert because he never rang the all-clear at the end of it all. I do remember that we had a victory bonfire and instead of Guy fawkes on top we had Hitler. Troops were billeted in the village. There was a search light battery on the opposite side of the A16 to the Granby, which is now The Halfway House and feel they must have been breakfasted in the village hall because my mother, as part of the WVS, had to go and help to cook breakfast I suppose, on rota. I don’t remember that detail. I know she didn’t like cooking the duck eggs that were donated at times because the white of the eggs had a blue tinge to it and she didn’t like that. It must have been during the war and after the war some of the welfare foods were given out from our house. They were stored in the garage. The national dried milk, concentrated orange juice and cod liver oil and they were supposed to be one day a week when people could come and collect their rations. It was paid for with a postage stamp. There was one lady in particular and she had a fair sized family and she particularly wanted the cod liver oil so that she could light the fire with it. During the war I remember we didn’t have fridges and deep freezers and runner beans were sliced and salted and put in pansions and we also preserved eggs at home in icing glass which made the eggs rather watery but mum would use those for making the Christmas puddings which didn’t seem to matter.

29th May, Royal Oak Day, if you don’t give us a holiday we will all run away. Now I would bike 3 or 4 hundred yards before I went to school on Royal Oak Day to the top of the hill, which we called Black Hill and there was an Oak Tree there and I would take a sprig of oak with me so that the boys didn’t sting me with nettles. DO – We’ve heard about that before. Somebody else told us. It’s the oddest tradition. No-one seems to know what the provenance is. JD – So 29th May Royal Oak Day, if you don’t give us a holiday we will all run away. Where will you run to? Down church lane to see all the teachers running with the cane. And they did cane you in those days. I remember fairs coming annually to the village to a field opposite the fish shop. That was quite something. I do also remember a circus much nearer to us at a farm called Westbrook and the tent was so small we were allowed to sit on the front row and as the horses went round the ring they swished your face with their tails. We also had a Russian Cossack living across from us. DO – Living across from you? JD – Yes. His son is a month or 2 younger than I am. His father was a white Russian. He would do his horse riding shows and put on a display to raise money for various charities. Some went down to a royal collection and there was a letter that came that they were very proud of. He had a proper Cossack uniform with places to put all the bullets for his gun and did the most tremendous displays. Cossacks could ride along the side of their horses so they couldn’t be seen by the enemy. They thought it was a riderless horse. He would come down from his saddle and pick up a handkerchief in his teeth. Fantastic. DO – In his teeth? JD – Yes and he and his wife, she was a niece of the chap who owned the trawler. They trained horses. They put them through their dressage paces but they also did a very clever thing. There was a wooden structure on wheels, which the horse put its front legs onto and then it was enticed to lean forward to ring a bell. For a horse to walk with its two front legs stationery and the back ones going was quite an achievement. They also used to have a tiny, tiny pony that Mrs Poppov would bring across.

JD – In the days before mains water which didn’t come to North Thoresby until the 1950s you had to pump your own from down below with an electric pump or a primer pump which you pumped at your back door. There was one in the school yard and I remember people coming to fill their buckets with fresh water from the pump in the school yard. You can still see where it was but its not there any more. I remember the row of 4 cottages just down the road from us called Mill Row Cottages. There was a duplicate set of cottages on the high street. The name of them just escapes me. Now the lady who lives there had a full range. She could heat water on one side of her fire and there was an oven on the other side. She also heated her hot iron in front of the fire. You could tell if it was hot enough to straighten the laundry by holding it to the cheek or by spitting on it. She also had a little primer stove for making a cup of tea but all the water had to be brought into the house in a bucket. You had to go right down the garden to the set of 4 toilets which served the 4 cottages. Watering facilities for cattle that were being transported on the railway were on the station road. The cattle wagon would pull into the sidings and the cattle were taken off, watered and fed before they went on with the rest of their journey.

I remember my first day at the primary in North Thoresby. The girls and boys toilets were separate across the yard and they were non-flushing ones. It meant that if it froze up in winter you could still go out to the toilet. Memories from home of hard winters and the outside toilet at home, they usually lit a little Kelly lamp, a little paraffin lamp, so that the heat from that would rise up and stop the cistern from freezing up and indeed one was put in the bathroom at home as well because some of the winters were really cold. Mains drainage didn’t come until at my end of the village until the mid 70s. We had a water butt outside the house and the water from that was used for washday. Put into a copper and heated up. Mum used to take water from that to wash our hair because it was so soft and nice.

JD – North Thoresby school was the primary school and it was on the opposite side of the road to a farm which kept livestock as well as arable farming and when they were separating the calves from the cows I remember hearing the calves distress for several days. Yes…………….

An extract from the records of the WI Committee April 26th 1949. The secretary was asked to acknowledge the parcel of tinned food that had been sent from Australia. Then the monthly minutes of May 3rd 1949 read, a gift parcel of tinned food sent from the Country Women’s Association, Australia, was distributed among the members by means of a draw.

The village carpenter, Mr Drury, as well as being the carpenter was a painter and decorator, an undertaker and a wheel right. He had in the yard of the property the means of putting the metal hoop on a cartwheel and I did see him doing that once. The wheel went down, the iron rim was heated up so it expanded and it was quickly put into place and water poured on it to shrink it into position. There were one or two wheel wrights in the village in those days. We had a blacksmith as well so he probably made the wheel rim.

In the late 1940s the B1201 as it is now was sufficiently quiet for my friend next door and I to go out on roller skates down the road on a lovely level surface. On a windy day we would stretch a sheet between us and be blown along without any fear of harm to life and limb from passing traffic. You wouldn’t do that now.

DO – That is fantastic. You have given me so much good material. Thankyou