CITY LIVES Lord Dainton Interviewed by Paul Thompson C409/028 © British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk IMPORTANT Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB United Kingdom +44 [0]20 7412 7404 [email protected] Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original recording, not replace it. Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators. © British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk The British Library National Life Stories Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no: C409/028 Digitised from cassette originals Collection title: City Lives Interviewee’s surname: Dainton Title: Lord Interviewee’s forename: Frederick Sydney Sex: Male Occupation: Chemist and university Date and place of birth: 11 November 1914 administrator Dates of recording: 25 September, 4 November and 21 December 1989 Location of interview: Interviewee’s home, Oxford Name of interviewer: Paul Thompson Type of recorder: Uher Recording format: F numbers of playback cassettes: Total no. of digitised tracks: 11 Mono or stereo: mono Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: Interviewer’s comments: © British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 1 (part 1) Page 1 Reel 1 Side A (part 1) Could I start by asking you whether you remember any of your grandparents? I only remember one grandparent, and she was a widow and lived in Watford in Northamptonshire, which is exactly the village of Watford Gap Station, on the Ml, and her husband was the lock-keeper at the gates which control the locks for the Grand Junction Canal, which can be seen from the Ml. He died in the last century, I think, at the age of about 56, I'm not sure, falling into the lock on an icy night, I think it was Christmas or New Year. But I remember her simply as a lady almost uniformly in black. If you were, in fact, a widow, in those days, you seemed to wear black from then onwards. But she was, of course, quite old when I knew her, simply because I was the son of her second daughter, and that meant that there was an enormous age difference between ourselves. I was only very small at the time. You used to go and visit her, then? Occasionally, yes. The...I'm afraid holidays were rather a rarity in my family. Partly it was financial restriction. I mean, I can remember going to Scarborough and seeing the sea for the first time at the age of ll, and not visiting it again. The easiest and cheapest method was to go to Watford and have a free week or fortnight with granny, as it were, though I tended to get into mischief, and succeeded in breaking an arm there, and various other things, falling out of trees, and swimming in the canal, and so on. But it was interesting, because it showed my mother, as she always was, as a country girl, because she came, as it were, to life, back in her own village, and knew people. And even now, when I drive up North, which I often do, taking the A5 to Kilsby, as I pass the locks, I point out always to myself, and to whoever is with me, that that's where my grandfather and grandmother on the maternal side were. A little bit further up, that this is where Mrs. Ruffle's farm was, where one had wholly unpasteurised milk, and seemed to thrive on it! Another place where I used to harvest the corn, and so on, or help to do so, which meant largely carrying the beer round! How super! © British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 1 (part 1) Page 2 It was fun, yes. And you have to have roots somewhere. My other roots, of course, seem to be deeply embedded in Sheffield, and that's where all my real makings were. How did your mother come to Sheffield, then? Well, my father was a stonemason, and as you can imagine, in the last century and the early part of this century, most stonemasons were peripatetic, they moved wherever the work was. And quite often it was the architects who would call for a good mason to come on to a new job with them, so that my father was employed, for example, well, on Sunderland Post Office, to give one example, to coming right across into Lancashire, a church in Lancashire, to coming back to Sheffield, Sheffield Town Hall, both the original building of 1897 and the extension of 1923, and Ecclesall church or whatever. So he tended to be migrant. But he had met my mother's older sister, by whom he had five children. And she died, and he was obviously in a difficulty, and asked my...her younger sister, who was then "in service" - that was a phrase, meaning of course that she was working in either private houses or in her last job - was at the Prep School to Rugby School, Overslade School, and she was called in, as it were, to help look after these young children, and then in due course, got married, and, so I think I mentioned in the record, probably, illegally in the Church of England, because the rules of consanguinity forbade the marriage to the deceased wife's sister. I don't know why, but that was it, and there were four children of that, and I was the last. So that makes nine in all, which is a long stretch over 30 years. So when you were young, how many would have been at home then? Four at home initially. Very difficult to accommodate, because it was a terrace house: a front room, a tiny front room, a tiny back room. The front room was referred to as "the parlour", I may say, and very rarely used. The back room, which had an old Yorkshire range in it, on which all the cooking was done, coal-fired, of course, and a scullery at the back, and one cold water tap, and gas lighting on the ground floor only, so that one had to take candles up to the two bedrooms, which were above the two rooms, and an attic. And accommodating with parents in one room, two girls, two © British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 1 (part 1) Page 3 boys, the only way, I slept with my brother for some time in the attic, until he was married and went off, and I had it to myself. And a small back yard which my mother tried to grow things and brighten it up, but there wasn't much room. I mean, the back yard was smaller than this room we're sitting in now. And an outside closet, which I can remember the pleasure that it was converted to water closet from an earth closet, just as I can remember the bringing in of electric light, which to me was a Godsend, because I was able to play about with this, and do quite illegal extensions to it, as I rose in the school and began to understand about electricity! And the remarkable thing is that I never seemed to blow anything up! And I can remember, I mean, no sense of deprivation at all. It was a poor house. My father would be out to work five and a half days a week, and leaving very early in the morning to go to his employers, George Longden's, where he was in charge of what was called "The Yard" which was the Masons' Yard, and he might be going away to jobs where, which they were doing work for some time. But he'd reached that stage of seniority, which enabled him to really be permanently within this firm, which was the same firm that did the building of the Sheffield Town Hall. They obviously hung on to his services for that reason. And people went off and caught the tram to school, as I did, or walked to school when it was the elementary schools. What were most of the, what sort of jobs did the neighbours have? Oh, the...in this terrace, each two houses were divided by a common passageway. Half way up the passageway on either side, there would be a so-called front door. It was the type which led directly up on to staircases, and on the other side of this passageway, which was covered over, because it was a terrace, in fact was our landlady, who was a terrible spinster woman; I've forgotten what the rent was, but she was really a kind of female Uriah Heep. And I can remember keeping out of her way at all costs, and our yards were divided by some simple trelliswork. Her garden was neglected; ours was carefully looked after, limited as it was. I mean, when I speak of a garden, it was the size of that carpet, but it provided a few flowers. But presumably your father would have been regarded as rather a successful working man? © British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 1 (part 1) Page 4 Absolutely.