Colin & Rhiannon Abbiss - Memories of Croxley Green
Recorded 7th May 2022
Recorded 7th May 2022
Int: Hello thanks for offering to be recorded for us for the Croxley History Project, Oral History Project. If you’d give us both your names and your dates of birth.
CA: I’m Colin Abbiss. I was born in 1939.
RA: I’m Rhiannon Abbiss. I was born in 1940.
Int: Were you born in Croxley Green?
CA: Yes, I was born in Croxley in Springfield Close.
Int: And yourself?
RA: No, I was born in Redhill, because it was during the war and my parents’ house had been bombed out the day before I was born, so I was in a hospital.
Int: And how did you land up coming to Croxley Green after that?
RA: Because our house was bombed out, so we had nowhere to go to, so my mother’s sister was living in North Watford so she took us in. At that point it was just my mother, my father and me because my three elder siblings had been evacuated to Wales.
Int: And where did you go to school here in Croxley?
CA: I went to everywhere. I did them all. I started off at St Oswald’s. Then I was moved to Old Boys.
Int: Is that Magisters? The one that’s up by Yorke Road School.
CA: Behind Yorke Road School, pulled down now, Old Boys, then they moved me to Harvey Road, the cattle sheds, as they were known in those days. And then when I was about 9, I went to Little Green School, I was moved to Little Green.
Int: Why did you keep moving schools?
CA: I like to think they couldn’t teach me anymore! Probably not, probably not. Probably I was a bit of a nuisance.
Int: And then where did you go on to high school?
CA: High school I went to Durrants.
Int: And yourself?
RA: I started off at Chater’s school in Watford because at that point there wasn’t a school near Links Way where I was living, and then when Little Green School opened I went the first day that was open. I transferred from Chater to Little Green School.
CA: I’m Colin Abbiss. I was born in 1939.
RA: I’m Rhiannon Abbiss. I was born in 1940.
Int: Were you born in Croxley Green?
CA: Yes, I was born in Croxley in Springfield Close.
Int: And yourself?
RA: No, I was born in Redhill, because it was during the war and my parents’ house had been bombed out the day before I was born, so I was in a hospital.
Int: And how did you land up coming to Croxley Green after that?
RA: Because our house was bombed out, so we had nowhere to go to, so my mother’s sister was living in North Watford so she took us in. At that point it was just my mother, my father and me because my three elder siblings had been evacuated to Wales.
Int: And where did you go to school here in Croxley?
CA: I went to everywhere. I did them all. I started off at St Oswald’s. Then I was moved to Old Boys.
Int: Is that Magisters? The one that’s up by Yorke Road School.
CA: Behind Yorke Road School, pulled down now, Old Boys, then they moved me to Harvey Road, the cattle sheds, as they were known in those days. And then when I was about 9, I went to Little Green School, I was moved to Little Green.
Int: Why did you keep moving schools?
CA: I like to think they couldn’t teach me anymore! Probably not, probably not. Probably I was a bit of a nuisance.
Int: And then where did you go on to high school?
CA: High school I went to Durrants.
Int: And yourself?
RA: I started off at Chater’s school in Watford because at that point there wasn’t a school near Links Way where I was living, and then when Little Green School opened I went the first day that was open. I transferred from Chater to Little Green School.
Durrants School 1939-1991
Int: And why did you transfer? Were you still living in Watford or had you come to live in Croxley by then?
RA: Yes, by that time. When I was about 17 months we bought a bungalow in Links Way, so I’ve been in Croxley since I was 17 months. But Chater was one of the nearest schools for me to go to.
Int: And from Little Green did you go on to Durrants as well?
RA: No, I went to Watford Girls Grammar.
Int: And what did you enjoy about living, growing up in Croxley? What did you like?
CA: The open spaces. Yes. The freedom we had all the way round. I was born in Springfield but I was raised in my aunt’s house. I lived in Winton Drive. And then when Grove Crescent was built we moved up into the council houses, when the prefabs were there.
Int: And did your dad work locally?
CA: No, he worked at – I suppose – I don’t know – de Havilland’s, Rolls Royce over at Leavesden most of our – I can remember.
Int: What did you enjoy doing around Croxley – you liked open spaces – did you play in the woods a lot?
CA: Yes. Over Dell Woods behind Durrants and on the Green – well, not so much on the Green – down the Chess, fishing in the Chess.
Int: And yourself? Did you like to play around in the fields?
RA: Yes, it was lovely because our bungalow in Links Way backed onto a field where Rousbarn Lane houses are now so we had a field – we could go out of our back gate and straight into field, straight up into the woods, up to the golf course. We loved it, it was freedom. We’d be up in the woods and my mum would stand at the back gate and call out ‘Food’s ready!’ and we’d have to come down. Yes, it was lovely.
Int: So you didn’t have to be home by a certain time, only when food was called for?
RA: As a child, but when I was a teenager I had a very strict time to be in, which Colin had to adhere to. (Laughs).
CA: I didn’t adhere to anything.
Int: Now how old were you when you were allowed to run off into the woods, can you remember?
RA: Oh …
Int: In the 40s, presumably?
RA: When I was at Little Green School really, with friends, yes. (Int: At primary school?) Yes.
Int: And yourself, always roaming?
CA: Yes. In the summer school holidays we used to go up into the Dell Woods in a big gang of us and build camps. We’d have a good time, you know, go off quite early – well, not early, mid-morning, and spend the day up in the woods.
Int: Come home for supper or lunch and that. Was it come home for meals and that was it?
CA: Well I don’t know, because my mother worked, had to work in those days, so – yes, we spent pretty well the day up in the woods.
Int: Did your mum work anywhere locally?
CA: She worked principally over at Moor Park as a cleaner or chambermaid or whatever you call it, so she used to catch a train from Croxley up to Moor Park for a wealthy family in Moor Park.
Int: And your mum and dad, what did they do, did they work locally?
RA: Well, as I said our house was bombed out and when that was bombed out my father was a master dairyman, had his own business, and that had to go by the board, so he worked over at the airfield at Elstree for a while when we moved to Watford, and then he did work at Dickinson’s paper mills but unfortunately he had an industrial accident there when I was seven and within a couple of days he had died with a brain haemorrhage, so my mother was left with five children, the youngest one being seventeen months, so yes she was left as a widow very young.
Int: And how did your mum manage? Did she work?
RA: No, she didn’t work – looking after us – I still don’t know how she managed between the time of losing my father and remarrying about three years later. I don’t know what the situation was then, how she managed, because you know having tried to buy the bungalow from nothing, I don’t know. So she didn’t go to work, she was very much at home looking after children.
Int: And do you remember any good memories about school?
RA: I loved Little Green school, I – as I say I was there for three years from when it first opened. Miss Broadhurst was my first teacher, then Mrs. Worthy – she was the wife of the headmistress [sic] and then Mr Ford. I loved my time at Little Green school, yes.
Int: And good memories of school – you moved from school to school a little bit – was there anything you enjoyed at school?
CA: Coming home!
Int: And do you remember the air raid shelters at Harvey Road?
CA: No, I don’t remember those. I mean we had one in our back garden in Winton Drive, the old Anderson shelter, that was down at the bottom – I’m not sure if it was in our garden or in the next door’s garden, but there was definitely one at the bottom of one of the two houses. I can remember the toilets at Old Boys, they were outside and I can remember sitting in classes with our overcoats on because no heating. I can remember at this point a particular teacher at St Oswald’s, she hit me across the knuckles with the side of a ruler because I couldn’t read properly. So I don’t know - probably what put me off the schools. I can remember what we was trying to read which was Chickin Lickin with the whatsisname (Int inaudible) which still sticks in my mind and the kids were outside, the rest of the children outside playing and I was – and she hit me across the – side of the ruler. So that was it. And that was in the church!
Int: Put you off for life!
Int: And you were very young during the war, but do you have any memories of Croxley in the war?
CA: I remember the army and I remember the convoys going through and Americans coming through, and ‘got any gum, chum?’ and I remember seeing the bombers going over and hearing the doodlebugs, and my mum chucking us under the table when she heard these things coming, just one of those things we had to get under the table. Yes, whilst you could hear the engines going you were OK, but when they stopped …
Int: So you lived in Winton Drive, so you would have been quite near to the bomb that fell on the end of Frankland Road?
CA: Yes. Not too much bombing. I can remember our aircraft towards the end of the war, when they were bombing quite badly over Germany, formations going over. In 1943, 44.
Int: And you said you remembered convoys of Americans coming through Croxley?
CA: Yes. They were going on to Bovingdon and – I don’t know.
Int: Do you have any memories, being very young?
RA: Not really, no. I just remember one time walking up by the Met Station and seeing the barrage balloon going over, that’s about my only memory. And talking about under the table, I seem to remember my mum saying, you know, to get under the table, but I was quite young.
Int: Some people used to sleep under the stairs, didn’t they?
CA and RA: Yes.
Int: And what was it like – do you remember going shopping with your mums in Croxley?
RA: Yes.
CA: I remember the shops. Most of them have gone now. There’s Darvill’s the butchers in Watford Road. There was Goodson’s the sweet shop, where we used to go and get our comics. There was Wade’s in New Road and the Co-op obviously which is still there, and a shoe shop just down this – a lady in a very smart white collar and black dress, with a white collar she used to wear, very sort of upright. Then there was the chap at the bottom of New Road – I forget his name now, but he had one arm. And then there was a tobacco or a cigarette kiosk the side of the station. Where we used to go and get our cigarettes when we were about ten or eleven.
Int: And they would sell cigarettes to you at ten or eleven?!!
CA: Yes, they used to sell us Metro Juniors and five Weights or they would sell us a couple of cigarettes at a time. And that was in a little – I think it’s still there but – it’s not a kiosk any longer but – it used to be – at the side of Croxley station. Yes, they used to sell us cigarettes if we had the money.
Int: Did you belong to any clubs when you were young?
CA: When I was about ten, yes. I joined a thing at the Baptist church here called the Boys Own Club.
Int: Right. And what did you do there?
CA: Oh, you know, we did quite a few things. We did archery and a chap called Geoff Warren got permission to use Parrott’s house, grounds, to do his archery in. But, you know, we came from the council estate so we weren’t sort of the best behaved. And I can remember this chap’s ornamental pond with his prize carp in there, and we were trying to spear these, and of course we hadn’t realised about his collection, so we was aiming for the fishes over there. We never caught anything, we never killed any. More by luck than judgement because I don’t know what we’d have done – but the poor chap he’d lent us his garden in Parrott’s house on the Green to do this archery and we weren’t very good.
Int: Trying to spear his fish!
CA: Spear his prize carp.
Int: And you?
RA: Yes, well, as far as clubs were concerned, I used to go to the Baptist church as well, the Sunday School, and from there I went into the Girls Brigade and Colin will tell you a bit more about the Boys Brigade, but I did Girls Brigade and I went through the ranks and I actually did qualify as an officer for a short time but then I moved away, so I didn’t actually carry on doing it then.
Int: And how old were you going through those years of Girls Brigade? When did you start, when did you finish?
RA: Well I think I started probably when I was about 8, soon after when I started Little Green School I think it was, that’s how it happened. My mother started going to the women’s afternoon fellowship there and that’s how we got involved with the Sunday School and the Girls Brigade was running then so I joined the Girls Brigade, and I would be 18 when I took the officer’s exam.
RA: Yes, by that time. When I was about 17 months we bought a bungalow in Links Way, so I’ve been in Croxley since I was 17 months. But Chater was one of the nearest schools for me to go to.
Int: And from Little Green did you go on to Durrants as well?
RA: No, I went to Watford Girls Grammar.
Int: And what did you enjoy about living, growing up in Croxley? What did you like?
CA: The open spaces. Yes. The freedom we had all the way round. I was born in Springfield but I was raised in my aunt’s house. I lived in Winton Drive. And then when Grove Crescent was built we moved up into the council houses, when the prefabs were there.
Int: And did your dad work locally?
CA: No, he worked at – I suppose – I don’t know – de Havilland’s, Rolls Royce over at Leavesden most of our – I can remember.
Int: What did you enjoy doing around Croxley – you liked open spaces – did you play in the woods a lot?
CA: Yes. Over Dell Woods behind Durrants and on the Green – well, not so much on the Green – down the Chess, fishing in the Chess.
Int: And yourself? Did you like to play around in the fields?
RA: Yes, it was lovely because our bungalow in Links Way backed onto a field where Rousbarn Lane houses are now so we had a field – we could go out of our back gate and straight into field, straight up into the woods, up to the golf course. We loved it, it was freedom. We’d be up in the woods and my mum would stand at the back gate and call out ‘Food’s ready!’ and we’d have to come down. Yes, it was lovely.
Int: So you didn’t have to be home by a certain time, only when food was called for?
RA: As a child, but when I was a teenager I had a very strict time to be in, which Colin had to adhere to. (Laughs).
CA: I didn’t adhere to anything.
Int: Now how old were you when you were allowed to run off into the woods, can you remember?
RA: Oh …
Int: In the 40s, presumably?
RA: When I was at Little Green School really, with friends, yes. (Int: At primary school?) Yes.
Int: And yourself, always roaming?
CA: Yes. In the summer school holidays we used to go up into the Dell Woods in a big gang of us and build camps. We’d have a good time, you know, go off quite early – well, not early, mid-morning, and spend the day up in the woods.
Int: Come home for supper or lunch and that. Was it come home for meals and that was it?
CA: Well I don’t know, because my mother worked, had to work in those days, so – yes, we spent pretty well the day up in the woods.
Int: Did your mum work anywhere locally?
CA: She worked principally over at Moor Park as a cleaner or chambermaid or whatever you call it, so she used to catch a train from Croxley up to Moor Park for a wealthy family in Moor Park.
Int: And your mum and dad, what did they do, did they work locally?
RA: Well, as I said our house was bombed out and when that was bombed out my father was a master dairyman, had his own business, and that had to go by the board, so he worked over at the airfield at Elstree for a while when we moved to Watford, and then he did work at Dickinson’s paper mills but unfortunately he had an industrial accident there when I was seven and within a couple of days he had died with a brain haemorrhage, so my mother was left with five children, the youngest one being seventeen months, so yes she was left as a widow very young.
Int: And how did your mum manage? Did she work?
RA: No, she didn’t work – looking after us – I still don’t know how she managed between the time of losing my father and remarrying about three years later. I don’t know what the situation was then, how she managed, because you know having tried to buy the bungalow from nothing, I don’t know. So she didn’t go to work, she was very much at home looking after children.
Int: And do you remember any good memories about school?
RA: I loved Little Green school, I – as I say I was there for three years from when it first opened. Miss Broadhurst was my first teacher, then Mrs. Worthy – she was the wife of the headmistress [sic] and then Mr Ford. I loved my time at Little Green school, yes.
Int: And good memories of school – you moved from school to school a little bit – was there anything you enjoyed at school?
CA: Coming home!
Int: And do you remember the air raid shelters at Harvey Road?
CA: No, I don’t remember those. I mean we had one in our back garden in Winton Drive, the old Anderson shelter, that was down at the bottom – I’m not sure if it was in our garden or in the next door’s garden, but there was definitely one at the bottom of one of the two houses. I can remember the toilets at Old Boys, they were outside and I can remember sitting in classes with our overcoats on because no heating. I can remember at this point a particular teacher at St Oswald’s, she hit me across the knuckles with the side of a ruler because I couldn’t read properly. So I don’t know - probably what put me off the schools. I can remember what we was trying to read which was Chickin Lickin with the whatsisname (Int inaudible) which still sticks in my mind and the kids were outside, the rest of the children outside playing and I was – and she hit me across the – side of the ruler. So that was it. And that was in the church!
Int: Put you off for life!
Int: And you were very young during the war, but do you have any memories of Croxley in the war?
CA: I remember the army and I remember the convoys going through and Americans coming through, and ‘got any gum, chum?’ and I remember seeing the bombers going over and hearing the doodlebugs, and my mum chucking us under the table when she heard these things coming, just one of those things we had to get under the table. Yes, whilst you could hear the engines going you were OK, but when they stopped …
Int: So you lived in Winton Drive, so you would have been quite near to the bomb that fell on the end of Frankland Road?
CA: Yes. Not too much bombing. I can remember our aircraft towards the end of the war, when they were bombing quite badly over Germany, formations going over. In 1943, 44.
Int: And you said you remembered convoys of Americans coming through Croxley?
CA: Yes. They were going on to Bovingdon and – I don’t know.
Int: Do you have any memories, being very young?
RA: Not really, no. I just remember one time walking up by the Met Station and seeing the barrage balloon going over, that’s about my only memory. And talking about under the table, I seem to remember my mum saying, you know, to get under the table, but I was quite young.
Int: Some people used to sleep under the stairs, didn’t they?
CA and RA: Yes.
Int: And what was it like – do you remember going shopping with your mums in Croxley?
RA: Yes.
CA: I remember the shops. Most of them have gone now. There’s Darvill’s the butchers in Watford Road. There was Goodson’s the sweet shop, where we used to go and get our comics. There was Wade’s in New Road and the Co-op obviously which is still there, and a shoe shop just down this – a lady in a very smart white collar and black dress, with a white collar she used to wear, very sort of upright. Then there was the chap at the bottom of New Road – I forget his name now, but he had one arm. And then there was a tobacco or a cigarette kiosk the side of the station. Where we used to go and get our cigarettes when we were about ten or eleven.
Int: And they would sell cigarettes to you at ten or eleven?!!
CA: Yes, they used to sell us Metro Juniors and five Weights or they would sell us a couple of cigarettes at a time. And that was in a little – I think it’s still there but – it’s not a kiosk any longer but – it used to be – at the side of Croxley station. Yes, they used to sell us cigarettes if we had the money.
Int: Did you belong to any clubs when you were young?
CA: When I was about ten, yes. I joined a thing at the Baptist church here called the Boys Own Club.
Int: Right. And what did you do there?
CA: Oh, you know, we did quite a few things. We did archery and a chap called Geoff Warren got permission to use Parrott’s house, grounds, to do his archery in. But, you know, we came from the council estate so we weren’t sort of the best behaved. And I can remember this chap’s ornamental pond with his prize carp in there, and we were trying to spear these, and of course we hadn’t realised about his collection, so we was aiming for the fishes over there. We never caught anything, we never killed any. More by luck than judgement because I don’t know what we’d have done – but the poor chap he’d lent us his garden in Parrott’s house on the Green to do this archery and we weren’t very good.
Int: Trying to spear his fish!
CA: Spear his prize carp.
Int: And you?
RA: Yes, well, as far as clubs were concerned, I used to go to the Baptist church as well, the Sunday School, and from there I went into the Girls Brigade and Colin will tell you a bit more about the Boys Brigade, but I did Girls Brigade and I went through the ranks and I actually did qualify as an officer for a short time but then I moved away, so I didn’t actually carry on doing it then.
Int: And how old were you going through those years of Girls Brigade? When did you start, when did you finish?
RA: Well I think I started probably when I was about 8, soon after when I started Little Green School I think it was, that’s how it happened. My mother started going to the women’s afternoon fellowship there and that’s how we got involved with the Sunday School and the Girls Brigade was running then so I joined the Girls Brigade, and I would be 18 when I took the officer’s exam.
Int: And were you involved with the church very much here in Croxley, any of the churches?
RA: We’d been involved in the Baptist Church since I was about 8 and we still are.
Int: Have you seen the congregation change, the style of the church change over the years?
RA: Definitely, definitely. We have had the advantage, if you like, of seeing every minister that’s come and gone since Mr Allan, who was the first minister we called, and each time the new one comes they bring something new to the church and the different activities have changed over the years as to how things are required at the time, you know. But some things remain constant, the Girls Brigade and the Boys Brigade are still there, right from the 1950s. We joined the Youth Club, we helped run the Youth Club, didn’t we, and we’ve been involved in the Sunday School and the Bible classes since then.
CA: The Boys Own Club is unusual, it’s just a club you see. Geoff Warren had just come out of the Forces after the war and Wally Wilson who lived down at the bottom of the road here and a couple of others - Chris Loxford – about three or four of them, quite frankly who were pretty badly behaved, and after about eighteen months, two years, we were over the woods there and we had been pretty bad that night and he just closed it down. Then the church got together and tried to decide what they were going to do with us – hooligans, I suppose, today. So out of that came the Boys Brigade and that was in about 1952. The Boys Brigade. The Company here was formed in ’52, but we were a rag tag and bobtail lot. The Boys Brigade originally came out of that sort of people, it was William Smith at the time, and he was running a Sunday School class up in Scotland and he couldn’t control the boys, but having a military background he thought sort of ‘if I did that with them’ he might get some sort of semblance of order. And so that’s how the Boys Brigade started. Similarly here, because you know, we weren’t very well behaved. I mean when we were having the Boys Own Club and it was at the church then, but the church wasn’t there in Baldwins Lane then, it was two huts and they came just after the war, they used to be billets, so the first church – because during the war and quite a long way after, quite a lot of the ground in the Baptist church was allotments. It was a hut more towards the Sherborne Way entrance. I mean a brown hut underneath that. Well, I remember one occasion we had these blooming bows and arrows, and we made a target at the back of the black hut, the church one, and we stood in the double open doors in the brown hut and we had a lot of these arrows and they went [whoosh noise] they went straight the way through and they appeared above the pulpit. They’d gone straight through, because it was only chicken wire with tarmac – or tarred chicken wire, so it went straight the way through that – stuck on the other side, which was hardboard and there was about four or five arrows right above where the minister was.
RA: We’d been involved in the Baptist Church since I was about 8 and we still are.
Int: Have you seen the congregation change, the style of the church change over the years?
RA: Definitely, definitely. We have had the advantage, if you like, of seeing every minister that’s come and gone since Mr Allan, who was the first minister we called, and each time the new one comes they bring something new to the church and the different activities have changed over the years as to how things are required at the time, you know. But some things remain constant, the Girls Brigade and the Boys Brigade are still there, right from the 1950s. We joined the Youth Club, we helped run the Youth Club, didn’t we, and we’ve been involved in the Sunday School and the Bible classes since then.
CA: The Boys Own Club is unusual, it’s just a club you see. Geoff Warren had just come out of the Forces after the war and Wally Wilson who lived down at the bottom of the road here and a couple of others - Chris Loxford – about three or four of them, quite frankly who were pretty badly behaved, and after about eighteen months, two years, we were over the woods there and we had been pretty bad that night and he just closed it down. Then the church got together and tried to decide what they were going to do with us – hooligans, I suppose, today. So out of that came the Boys Brigade and that was in about 1952. The Boys Brigade. The Company here was formed in ’52, but we were a rag tag and bobtail lot. The Boys Brigade originally came out of that sort of people, it was William Smith at the time, and he was running a Sunday School class up in Scotland and he couldn’t control the boys, but having a military background he thought sort of ‘if I did that with them’ he might get some sort of semblance of order. And so that’s how the Boys Brigade started. Similarly here, because you know, we weren’t very well behaved. I mean when we were having the Boys Own Club and it was at the church then, but the church wasn’t there in Baldwins Lane then, it was two huts and they came just after the war, they used to be billets, so the first church – because during the war and quite a long way after, quite a lot of the ground in the Baptist church was allotments. It was a hut more towards the Sherborne Way entrance. I mean a brown hut underneath that. Well, I remember one occasion we had these blooming bows and arrows, and we made a target at the back of the black hut, the church one, and we stood in the double open doors in the brown hut and we had a lot of these arrows and they went [whoosh noise] they went straight the way through and they appeared above the pulpit. They’d gone straight through, because it was only chicken wire with tarmac – or tarred chicken wire, so it went straight the way through that – stuck on the other side, which was hardboard and there was about four or five arrows right above where the minister was.
1943 The opening day of the temporary church
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The Boys' Brigade assisiting with foundation stone
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1953. The opening of the new church
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Int: And were you involved with the church very much here in Croxley, any of the churches?
RA: We’d been involved in the Baptist Church since I was about 8 and we still are.
Int: Have you seen the congregation change, the style of the church change over the years?
RA: Definitely, definitely. We have had the advantage, if you like, of seeing every minister that’s come and gone since Mr Allan, who was the first minister we called, and each time the new one comes they bring something new to the church and the different activities have changed over the years as to how things are required at the time, you know. But some things remain constant, the Girls Brigade and the Boys Brigade are still there, right from the 1950s. We joined the Youth Club, we helped run the Youth Club, didn’t we, and we’ve been involved in the Sunday School and the Bible classes since then.
CA: The Boys Own Club is unusual, it’s just a club you see. Geoff Warren had just come out of the Forces after the war and Wally Wilson who lived down at the bottom of the road here and a couple of others - Chris Loxford – about three or four of them, quite frankly who were pretty badly behaved, and after about eighteen months, two years, we were over the woods there and we had been pretty bad that night and he just closed it down. Then the church got together and tried to decide what they were going to do with us – hooligans, I suppose, today. So out of that came the Boys Brigade and that was in about 1952. The Boys Brigade. The Company here was formed in ’52, but we were a rag tag and bobtail lot. The Boys Brigade originally came out of that sort of people, it was William Smith at the time, and he was running a Sunday School class up in Scotland and he couldn’t control the boys, but having a military background he thought sort of ‘if I did that with them’ he might get some sort of semblance of order. And so that’s how the Boys Brigade started. Similarly here, because you know, we weren’t very well behaved. I mean when we were having the Boys Own Club and it was at the church then, but the church wasn’t there in Baldwins Lane then, it was two huts and they came just after the war, they used to be billets, so the first church – because during the war and quite a long way after, quite a lot of the ground in the Baptist church was allotments. It was a hut more towards the Sherborne Way entrance. I mean a brown hut underneath that. Well, I remember one occasion we had these blooming bows and arrows, and we made a target at the back of the black hut, the church one, and we stood in the double open doors in the brown hut and we had a lot of these arrows and they went [whoosh noise] they went straight the way through and they appeared above the pulpit. They’d gone straight through, because it was only chicken wire with tarmac – or tarred chicken wire, so it went straight the way through that – stuck on the other side, which was hardboard and there was about four or five arrows right above where the minister was.
Int: He wasn’t there at the time?
CA: No, he wasn’t there at the time. And another one was when we had the church youth club which we helped with, and a man
RA: Brian Grant, I think, wasn’t it, ?
CA: No, it wasn’t Grant. Brian something or other, anyway, so he decided he was going to do this story about the ghosts of Croxley Green. Now this church was here, so we got everybody to go back into the brown hut for refreshments.
RA: This was the Youth Club.
CA: In the meantime I got down in the baptistery, because we’re Baptists and (…) you know what Baptists is, they have a
Int: Font?
CA: Well, no not a font, we got down into the baptistery, we’re total immersion, and it has, you know. So I got down into the baptistery with some chains and then we took a couple of the boards off and put the carpet back on, and Brian whatever his name was started talking this story about the ghosts of Croxley Green and the navvies digging the canal - and one of these – every time about this time of the year – it must have been to do with Halloween, and he came back to get some young maiden, and I started groaning and moaning when the lights were out and he was reading this story, by then all the rest of the kids, the younger ones had come back around the hall, we made sure they missed this carpet, and I came up out of this carpet rattling these chains and you know they had sort of panic, these people trying to get out of the door at the other end, I’m not joking, well, it was chaos. Everybody trying to get out!
Int: And did you get into trouble for that?
CA: I don’t know if the church would allow it – but that was a real – you know, it went so well.
Int: So when did this happen – this Croxley ghost event?
CA: Halloween.
RA: How old would you have been – you’d have been one of the younger leaders.
CA: I would have been in the Forces, so I’d have been about sixteen, fifteen, sixteen. Yes. That was a good occasion! Well, I thought it was a good occasion!
Int: So what other interesting things happened in Croxley in the Fifties? Do you remember the Coronation?
RA: Yes, I remember the Coronation. We bought a nine-inch black and white television and all crowded round it to watch it.
CA: Yes, we’d got a television by then.
Int: Do you remember any street parties or events in Croxley?
RA: I don’t remember a street party for the Coronation (CA: No.) but I have a picture upstairs of me at the street party for the VE Day. I would have been about 4 at the time, and the interesting thing about it was – the street party was right outside our bungalow and on that picture there is my older sister, my two older sisters, my brother, and me – this is before my younger sister would have been born – but also in that picture is a young lady, or girl, called Anne Judge, and my brother was in that picture, and about twenty or thirty years later, they married. So on that picture they’re there. That was a lovely party, that was. And then we had for the twentieth – Silver Wedding Anniversary celebration we had a street party outside this house in Repton Way, so my younger children – well, my children were there, and then when it was the – was it the Golden Jubilee perhaps - one of them - they had one outside my daughter’s house in Bovingdon, so my grandchildren were there.
Int: Oh, a long tradition of going to Jubilees and things.
RA: Yes.
CA: Yes. I can remember the VE Day on the corner of Winton Drive and Girton Way, there was a big street party there. I can’t remember a street party for the Coronation in Grove Crescent.
Int: No. I think there were celebrations on the Green, weren’t there, but it was very wet weather, so I think a lot of
CA (speaking over) : Oh yes, it was wet start to the day, wasn’t it, yes. It cleared up towards later in the afternoon.
Int: And there were fireworks, I think in the evening.
CA: No. You’re right – no, I can’t remember any celebrations in the council [estate].
Int: So once you were at Durrants, you went through Durrants, what kind of social life was going on in Croxley in the later 50s?
RA: I don’t know – we were involved in the church more, weren’t we, and Colin was in the Boys Brigade and most nights you had different classes, didn’t you? (CA: Yes.) So you were very much involved in that. Didn’t really go discoing or anything like that did we?
CA: No. No, the Boys Brigade took up quite a few nights and Christian Endeavour in those days. (RA: Yes.) So really in the village was in the church.
Int: In the church. And did you meet at the Baptist Church?
RA: Yes. Yes. First time I met with Colin I was when I was 14. Having said that, having said that thing, we were both at Little Green school. Colin was only there for one year and then he moved on to Durrants, and he vividly, so he tells me, remembers the first year or when I was in the top year of Little Green probably and he was just started in Durrants, they wanted some people, marshals, for the sports day from uniformed organisations, and Colin came down to Little Green to be one of the marshals, and he says he can remember me doing the races with my pigtails flying behind. (CA: Yes.) So I’d have been about 11. But we didn’t start going out until I was 14.
Int: And through the Baptist Church you met up the Youth Group – I mean you started going out once you were in the Youth Group?
RA: We did, and what we liked then we went out as a good group – there was a big group of young people, you know, after church we’d go for walks up on the golf course, and go for rambles at Easter. As I say, most of our social life was evolved round the church, but it was a good social life because there was a great group of young people, which we still are in touch with.
CA: Yes, we are. Yes. I mean most Bank – Easter and Whitsun and August Bank Holidays we’d go out somewhere – twenty or plus, sometimes didn’t we?
RA: Yes. Yes.
CA: And of course only local. Didn’t catch any buses – we’d leave here –
Int: And the Baptist church started off as two huts that had been billets. When did it get built into the Baptist church that we know today?
CA: ‘52.
RA: Actually it formed in 1940. We’re just coming up to its 80th anniversary, I think it was in the 1940s, but at that point it was meeting in Durrants School and then it moved to the black hut probably towards the end of the 40s, the brown and the black hut, we had that, and then the actual church building now was – the foundation stone is 1952, and then back in the 1960s it extended with a big hall, didn’t it? (CA: Yes.) And then a bit later they extended with a small hall, so there’s been a continual growth of the buildings, but the actual foundation stone of the main church, brick built building, was 1952.
CA: Up until then it would have been used as allotments. Up until – well, say 1951, 52. The back of the Baldwins Lane end was allotments.
Int: And when did you get married?
RA: At the church, Baptist church, yes.
Int: And what year was that?
RA: 1965.
CA: To put it in its right context, I got called up for National Service, because at the time I was a layabout – I don’t know what you like to call it!
RA: Was it the making of you?
CA: Those days I was going nowhere, leather jacket, big motorbike, that sort of thing, so – and Rhi – luckily I’d got to go into the Air Force, so – so when I was in there a man gave me all this spiel about if I signed on as a regular I could get rehabilitation training. So I thought, well I’d save a lot of money whilst I was in there and, you know, come out with a few pounds and go for a trade training, so I didn’t do two years, I did three years, and soon after I was gone Rhi decided to go farming for three years, so our courtship wasn’t from the age of fourteen, it was off on two or three times up until I went in the Forces and then when I went in the Forces, Rhi went down farming down in Cornwall. And then hearing old whatsisname she said ‘I think we ought to call it off’. Much to her mother’s (laughter) joy, I should imagine, so …. We were sort of together, we did exchange letters, I kept Rhi’s letters, but I haven’t seen mine I sent to Rhi, don’t know what happened to them!
RA: We were courting on and off for eleven years before we got married, put it that way. From 14 till I was 25.
CA: But that’s the thing, I’ve never – I don’t know what happened to the letters – where are they. I’ve still got hers in a case upstairs in the loft.
RA: We’d been involved in the Baptist Church since I was about 8 and we still are.
Int: Have you seen the congregation change, the style of the church change over the years?
RA: Definitely, definitely. We have had the advantage, if you like, of seeing every minister that’s come and gone since Mr Allan, who was the first minister we called, and each time the new one comes they bring something new to the church and the different activities have changed over the years as to how things are required at the time, you know. But some things remain constant, the Girls Brigade and the Boys Brigade are still there, right from the 1950s. We joined the Youth Club, we helped run the Youth Club, didn’t we, and we’ve been involved in the Sunday School and the Bible classes since then.
CA: The Boys Own Club is unusual, it’s just a club you see. Geoff Warren had just come out of the Forces after the war and Wally Wilson who lived down at the bottom of the road here and a couple of others - Chris Loxford – about three or four of them, quite frankly who were pretty badly behaved, and after about eighteen months, two years, we were over the woods there and we had been pretty bad that night and he just closed it down. Then the church got together and tried to decide what they were going to do with us – hooligans, I suppose, today. So out of that came the Boys Brigade and that was in about 1952. The Boys Brigade. The Company here was formed in ’52, but we were a rag tag and bobtail lot. The Boys Brigade originally came out of that sort of people, it was William Smith at the time, and he was running a Sunday School class up in Scotland and he couldn’t control the boys, but having a military background he thought sort of ‘if I did that with them’ he might get some sort of semblance of order. And so that’s how the Boys Brigade started. Similarly here, because you know, we weren’t very well behaved. I mean when we were having the Boys Own Club and it was at the church then, but the church wasn’t there in Baldwins Lane then, it was two huts and they came just after the war, they used to be billets, so the first church – because during the war and quite a long way after, quite a lot of the ground in the Baptist church was allotments. It was a hut more towards the Sherborne Way entrance. I mean a brown hut underneath that. Well, I remember one occasion we had these blooming bows and arrows, and we made a target at the back of the black hut, the church one, and we stood in the double open doors in the brown hut and we had a lot of these arrows and they went [whoosh noise] they went straight the way through and they appeared above the pulpit. They’d gone straight through, because it was only chicken wire with tarmac – or tarred chicken wire, so it went straight the way through that – stuck on the other side, which was hardboard and there was about four or five arrows right above where the minister was.
Int: He wasn’t there at the time?
CA: No, he wasn’t there at the time. And another one was when we had the church youth club which we helped with, and a man
RA: Brian Grant, I think, wasn’t it, ?
CA: No, it wasn’t Grant. Brian something or other, anyway, so he decided he was going to do this story about the ghosts of Croxley Green. Now this church was here, so we got everybody to go back into the brown hut for refreshments.
RA: This was the Youth Club.
CA: In the meantime I got down in the baptistery, because we’re Baptists and (…) you know what Baptists is, they have a
Int: Font?
CA: Well, no not a font, we got down into the baptistery, we’re total immersion, and it has, you know. So I got down into the baptistery with some chains and then we took a couple of the boards off and put the carpet back on, and Brian whatever his name was started talking this story about the ghosts of Croxley Green and the navvies digging the canal - and one of these – every time about this time of the year – it must have been to do with Halloween, and he came back to get some young maiden, and I started groaning and moaning when the lights were out and he was reading this story, by then all the rest of the kids, the younger ones had come back around the hall, we made sure they missed this carpet, and I came up out of this carpet rattling these chains and you know they had sort of panic, these people trying to get out of the door at the other end, I’m not joking, well, it was chaos. Everybody trying to get out!
Int: And did you get into trouble for that?
CA: I don’t know if the church would allow it – but that was a real – you know, it went so well.
Int: So when did this happen – this Croxley ghost event?
CA: Halloween.
RA: How old would you have been – you’d have been one of the younger leaders.
CA: I would have been in the Forces, so I’d have been about sixteen, fifteen, sixteen. Yes. That was a good occasion! Well, I thought it was a good occasion!
Int: So what other interesting things happened in Croxley in the Fifties? Do you remember the Coronation?
RA: Yes, I remember the Coronation. We bought a nine-inch black and white television and all crowded round it to watch it.
CA: Yes, we’d got a television by then.
Int: Do you remember any street parties or events in Croxley?
RA: I don’t remember a street party for the Coronation (CA: No.) but I have a picture upstairs of me at the street party for the VE Day. I would have been about 4 at the time, and the interesting thing about it was – the street party was right outside our bungalow and on that picture there is my older sister, my two older sisters, my brother, and me – this is before my younger sister would have been born – but also in that picture is a young lady, or girl, called Anne Judge, and my brother was in that picture, and about twenty or thirty years later, they married. So on that picture they’re there. That was a lovely party, that was. And then we had for the twentieth – Silver Wedding Anniversary celebration we had a street party outside this house in Repton Way, so my younger children – well, my children were there, and then when it was the – was it the Golden Jubilee perhaps - one of them - they had one outside my daughter’s house in Bovingdon, so my grandchildren were there.
Int: Oh, a long tradition of going to Jubilees and things.
RA: Yes.
CA: Yes. I can remember the VE Day on the corner of Winton Drive and Girton Way, there was a big street party there. I can’t remember a street party for the Coronation in Grove Crescent.
Int: No. I think there were celebrations on the Green, weren’t there, but it was very wet weather, so I think a lot of
CA (speaking over) : Oh yes, it was wet start to the day, wasn’t it, yes. It cleared up towards later in the afternoon.
Int: And there were fireworks, I think in the evening.
CA: No. You’re right – no, I can’t remember any celebrations in the council [estate].
Int: So once you were at Durrants, you went through Durrants, what kind of social life was going on in Croxley in the later 50s?
RA: I don’t know – we were involved in the church more, weren’t we, and Colin was in the Boys Brigade and most nights you had different classes, didn’t you? (CA: Yes.) So you were very much involved in that. Didn’t really go discoing or anything like that did we?
CA: No. No, the Boys Brigade took up quite a few nights and Christian Endeavour in those days. (RA: Yes.) So really in the village was in the church.
Int: In the church. And did you meet at the Baptist Church?
RA: Yes. Yes. First time I met with Colin I was when I was 14. Having said that, having said that thing, we were both at Little Green school. Colin was only there for one year and then he moved on to Durrants, and he vividly, so he tells me, remembers the first year or when I was in the top year of Little Green probably and he was just started in Durrants, they wanted some people, marshals, for the sports day from uniformed organisations, and Colin came down to Little Green to be one of the marshals, and he says he can remember me doing the races with my pigtails flying behind. (CA: Yes.) So I’d have been about 11. But we didn’t start going out until I was 14.
Int: And through the Baptist Church you met up the Youth Group – I mean you started going out once you were in the Youth Group?
RA: We did, and what we liked then we went out as a good group – there was a big group of young people, you know, after church we’d go for walks up on the golf course, and go for rambles at Easter. As I say, most of our social life was evolved round the church, but it was a good social life because there was a great group of young people, which we still are in touch with.
CA: Yes, we are. Yes. I mean most Bank – Easter and Whitsun and August Bank Holidays we’d go out somewhere – twenty or plus, sometimes didn’t we?
RA: Yes. Yes.
CA: And of course only local. Didn’t catch any buses – we’d leave here –
Int: And the Baptist church started off as two huts that had been billets. When did it get built into the Baptist church that we know today?
CA: ‘52.
RA: Actually it formed in 1940. We’re just coming up to its 80th anniversary, I think it was in the 1940s, but at that point it was meeting in Durrants School and then it moved to the black hut probably towards the end of the 40s, the brown and the black hut, we had that, and then the actual church building now was – the foundation stone is 1952, and then back in the 1960s it extended with a big hall, didn’t it? (CA: Yes.) And then a bit later they extended with a small hall, so there’s been a continual growth of the buildings, but the actual foundation stone of the main church, brick built building, was 1952.
CA: Up until then it would have been used as allotments. Up until – well, say 1951, 52. The back of the Baldwins Lane end was allotments.
Int: And when did you get married?
RA: At the church, Baptist church, yes.
Int: And what year was that?
RA: 1965.
CA: To put it in its right context, I got called up for National Service, because at the time I was a layabout – I don’t know what you like to call it!
RA: Was it the making of you?
CA: Those days I was going nowhere, leather jacket, big motorbike, that sort of thing, so – and Rhi – luckily I’d got to go into the Air Force, so – so when I was in there a man gave me all this spiel about if I signed on as a regular I could get rehabilitation training. So I thought, well I’d save a lot of money whilst I was in there and, you know, come out with a few pounds and go for a trade training, so I didn’t do two years, I did three years, and soon after I was gone Rhi decided to go farming for three years, so our courtship wasn’t from the age of fourteen, it was off on two or three times up until I went in the Forces and then when I went in the Forces, Rhi went down farming down in Cornwall. And then hearing old whatsisname she said ‘I think we ought to call it off’. Much to her mother’s (laughter) joy, I should imagine, so …. We were sort of together, we did exchange letters, I kept Rhi’s letters, but I haven’t seen mine I sent to Rhi, don’t know what happened to them!
RA: We were courting on and off for eleven years before we got married, put it that way. From 14 till I was 25.
CA: But that’s the thing, I’ve never – I don’t know what happened to the letters – where are they. I’ve still got hers in a case upstairs in the loft.
Int: So when you got married did you ever consider leaving Croxley or - ?
CA: No. Why we didn’t was just before we got married, the captain of the Boys Brigade then, Geoff Warren, he moved up to
RA: Staffordshire.
CA: Staffordshire, so they were looking for someone else to take on the Boys Brigade company here – none of the other officers came forward to take over the job, so – this was in the May, wasn’t it?
RA: 1965.
CA: So in the end I said I would do it, and they was dubious – which was quite right, quite frankly, fair does. You know, people didn’t think I’d last more than six months.
Int: However you showed them!
CA: And here we are now at fifty odd years later and I’m still the captain of the local Boys Brigade.
Int: You’re still the captain?
CA: After forty -
RA: 56 years come -
Int: And you still do the meetings, deal with all these little naughty boys coming through?
RA: Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
CA: We meet on a Tuesday up at Anchor boys, five to eight years old, and then we meet from – Wednesday night, boys from eight till eleven.
RA: And do you have some younger – young officers coming through to help you chase them?
CA: Yes. Very good
RA: Very good leaders. Very good support.
CA: Yes, very good support, leaders, yes, very good. Prior to that we had an older section, going from senior school, you know.
RA: Eleven to eighteens.
CA: Aged to eighteen. And the boys in there they took part in national competitions. We got to the Finals of the Five-A-Side football competition on at least two occasions, and we sent the boys to Northern Ireland on one occasion, and we went to Badminton Finals up in Scotland. Just a small village company here, that’s what the boys achieved.
Int: And you don’t have that older group any more, you just have the younger ones? Is it because there just doesn’t seem to be – that’s not what happens socially in the village any more?
CA: Well, it wasn’t because of the boys, the church decided they wanted to mix the two together, the girls and the boys, and they came up with this thing called Quench, so we had the boys now from 5 till 11and then at 11 they go to this mixed thing in the church called Quench. But you know this only stopped about ten years ago, I suppose, but up until then it was very -
RA: I mean the company section was very strong, and they used to have a monthly church parade with a band and people now still talk about the parade and the band going through Croxley. They used to look forward – and people used to come out to their front gates to listen to it going by. The band used to lead the Revels, and also the annual memorial – Remembrance Parade. When we had the band.
Int: So when did you have the band and when did that stop?
RA: Well, when the company stopped – we hadn’t got the band at that point, I don’t think, had we, Colin?
CA: Yes.
RA: Oh we did, right then, yes we did. So from about ten years ago. But we didn’t parade then, did we, the last few years?
CA: No, not – probably for the last couple of years.
RA: Yes. But it was a very strong band.
CA: It was started with – what’s his name was ?
RA: Reg Burgess.
CA: Reg Burgess was there. It carried on. No, it was a very strong band. Doug Flint really got it – a load of – new banners and – it went from bugles to valveless trumpets, what you call trumpets, and
RA: Bell lyres and drums.
CA: Yes Bell lyres and drums, yes, and we used to meet in various places in Croxley to march to the church.
Int: And where did you practice?
RA: In the church building.
Int: In the church building?
CA: Yes. Much to the annoyance sometimes.
Int: And was it on a specific Sunday in the month that you used …?
RA: Used to be the first Sunday of the month, we used to have the Church Parade, yes.
CA: Yes.
Int: And were you involved with Girls Brigade in the way Colin’s been involved with the Boys?
RA: Not really. I didn’t go back into Girls Brigade because I went farming as I said in the 1960s for three years down in Cornwall, and I came back, and that’s when we picked up together and eventually got married etcetera. So really I’ve just been in the background supporting Colin and the Boys Brigade since then. Although now I do go down as well on Tuesday and Wednesday at the moment.
Int: Where did you have your wedding reception? Was it at the Guildhouse?
RA: No, we had it at the Old Merchant Taylor’s. Lovely house there, that was, yes.
Int: I was thinking, because that would be the year of the fire, 1965.
RA: The Guildhouse? (Int: Yes.) Yes, that burnt down but we went to your aunt’s reception there, didn’t we, the Guildhouse?
CA: Yes, and the Boys Brigade did two or three displays in there, in the Guildhouse. We used to have a yearly display at the end of – portraying some of the badge work we’d done, like First Aid and PT and all that, and then we had to move from there to Durrants. But we had two or three displays at the Guildhouse in the early days, yes.
Int: So where was your first house in Croxley – this one right here?
RA: We moved here when we got married and we’ve been here ever since.
Int: And did you used to shop in the village then or did you have to go to Rickmansworth or Watford?
RA: I can’t remember where I did shop then. I think we did do some in the village and some in Watford, I think. I’ve never really gone to Rickmansworth, even though I lived in Croxley. Being down in Links Way, we tended to go to Watford, yes.
CA: But in the early days we used to – my mum used to shop in the New Road, opposite the Co-op, and they used to deliver your groceries from there, and Darvill’s the butchers, and there used to be a fresh fish man just on the corner where the library is now, because where the library is now, that used to be an orchard, and it used to be a hairdresser’s on the side of there. Dimmocks - do you remember Dimmocks?
Int: Well, I don’t remember it, but I know on the website, if you look at The Stroll Down New Road, which
CA: Yes, Dimmocks, virtually opposite the Co-op.
Int: These shops are all mentioned, there were lots of shops on New Road.
CA: And just up from there there was another shop where where you got your accumulators charged up for the radios. That’s about where the alleyway goes through. And there used to be one on the corner of Yorke Road, a small general store there.
Int: A grocer’s, yes.
CA: Because well, before supermarkets, in Watford or – all shopping in those days was done locally.
Int: You didn’t have an allotment or anything, did you?
RA: We did, we did. After we got married, have an allotment, yes. And - for a few years, but then my mum’s garden needed help with, Colin’s mum’s garden needed help with, my neighbour’s garden needed help with, my aunt’s garden needed help with, so we decided we couldn’t cope with an allotment as well.
CA: Not an allotment, no.
RA: So that’s how that went. Talking about shops, I can remember when I was probably about 11, 12, each Saturday having to cycle up from Links Way to what was then Pike’s Store, which is on the corner of Winton Approach and Watford Road, and buy five sliced loaves every Saturday. That was one of my jobs. And then I also used to have a paper round, an evening paper round, to earn a few extra pennies.
Int: How many houses did you have to deliver to?
RA: It wasn’t too bad, actually, because it was down Hazelwood Road and Oakleigh Drive and that sort of area in an evening, yes.
Int: Did you do any jobs growing up?
CA: No.
Int: Too busy in the Dell.
CA: Yes, off and played. You see, Rhi went on to senior school until she was 18, almost 18, remember we left school when we was 15. So it was a difference. I was only just 15 as well, because my birthday is in July, so we left, you know – there wasn’t much time between serious school and – there used to be a smith’s shop, a blacksmith’s shop up in New Road, where the
Int: Where the petrol station is.
CA: Where the petrol station is, yes. And my granddad had a shed behind there where he used to chop wood up, behind the part there, apparently. I never went up to it, but he had a shed or something up there where he used to chop wood, but this blacksmith’s shop was there for quite a number of years, actually. In New Road.
Int: So you were born in the village – how many generations have lived in Croxley, in your family do you know?
CA: Oh – I thought it was quite a few, but it’s not so many because as far as I can ascertain by what [?Anne] was saying, my Gran was in Chesham, so they moved from Chesham – later she lived in Gonville Avenue, and one of my aunts lived in Dickinson Square, so he must have had a job down in Dickinson’s – that’s where they used to have a bandstand in that piece of grass area in the middle of Dickinson Square, which the Dickinson’s band used to practice in on a Sunday – I don’t know what happened to the bandstand – is it still there?
Int: No it’s not. I don’t think anyone knows what happened to it. (general agreement)
CA: Yes, it used to be in that green area.
Int: You remember it?
CA: Yes.
Int: So you have an interesting connection to Croxley through your family tree. Can you tell us about this house and where it’s come from and ..
RA: Well, I’ve got this family tree which my aunt showed me up in Derbyshire. It’s very interesting. It’s one that another relation, distant relation, had done. She was a headmistress and this family tree came to my relations in Derbyshire. And one day we were looking at it and she said ‘oh look there’s a Woolrych of Croxley here, is it anything to do with you?’ So I said ‘well, I don’t know’. But when she said that I looked into it, and if you go back to the family tree to about the fifteen hundreds, the Woolrych family splits down two ways – well, lots of ways, but these particular ways – the Woolrych of Croxley says on the left hand side and on the other side comes down to a Woolrych, a Mary Woolrych, who married a Joseph Sutton, who had a son called Henry Sutton who was my mother’s father. So this Mary Woolrych would have been my great-great-grandmother and so I say that perhaps we should have a bit of a share of Croxley Green, because most of Croxley Green was owned by the Woolryches of Croxley, living up at the Croxley House, but I don’t think it would hold much water, actually, but it’s a nice story to tell people!
Int: And this whole estate of houses is built on land that would have originally belonged to the Woolryches?
RA: That’s correct, there’s a Woolrych family owned a big estate and I think part of it was the Parrots estate, and then all this top end of Croxley from Copthorne Road down to probably Lancing Way was on that estate and that’s now been built on, some before the war, some after the war.
Int: And when were these – the houses down Repton Way built? When was your house built?
RA: Our house was built in 1947 and the first lot were built in the 1930s, before the war. And another interesting thing – Stone’s Orchard was part of the Woolrych estate, so we tend to think of Stone’s Orchard as our orchard. (laughter)
CA: I did do a bit of work – I worked in Stone’s Orchard with a rattle, keeping the pigeons off the cherries. In the early days we used to go up there and do an hour or so, doing a rattle to keep the birds out of the trees, pinching the cherries up there. But there were big cherry trees in those days, you’ve probably seen pictures of it, with the great big ladders going up to pick the cherries, so it was a big orchard – well, apparently one of the – Stones, they rented the orchard from Woolrych. So that’s why we say, you know, Stones Orchard is
RA: We had tried on one or two occasions to get permission to plant a tree in the orchard, because I feel, you know, it’s our orchard, (CA: No.) but through the Parish Council, they refer you to the Three Rivers Council, and they refer you up to County Council – and anyway, we were in there the other day and we were talking to the Warden then, and said about this, we’d like to plant one, and he said they’re not allowed to plant trees unless it’s replacing an existing one that’s died. And there’s one that’s died there now so I feel I might make a bit of an effort to try and see if we can plant one where that one’s died now. I feel it would be nice, you know, just to say we’ve got a tree in the orchard.
Int: Good idea, yes. And so do you know when – do you know when this house was built?
CA: 1947.
Int: And any interesting stories – because you mentioned something before we started recording about how it was built and
CA: Oh yes. Apparently. because a chap I know, he helped build these houses, a lot of the stuff just after the war it was hard to get hold of, so it was bought on what used to be called the black market, then, just to get the places finished, so – I don’t know whether they’re going to pull them down now, because there’s illegal timber in this house. But that’s what he told me, he said you know – and they’re really good beams, they really are. They’re not just two by twos, they’re really good, you know, four by twos. Really solid in the loft – beams up in the loft there, they’re really good solid beams.
Int: So you’ve seen loads of changes in Croxley? (CA: Yes) What do you think have been the major changes that you’ve witnessed over the decades that you’ve been here?
RA: I suppose the biggest is it wasn’t a village – I still think of it as a village but it’s really expanded so much now. As I say, when I was in Links Way I’d go out of my back gate into a field, into the woods, you know. It’s just expanded all the way round and it’s still expanding, unfortunately. But it’s such a desirable place to live you can’t blame people wanting to live here.
CA: It’s not so much expanded as filled in, because when we were teenagers or youngsters, from the top of – where Merchant Taylor’s house is – all the way down there was open ground, wasn’t it?
RA: Yes. And those – from Little Green school home, Links Way, I’d just walk through fields, if you like, because I remember picking raspberries on the way, wild raspberries, but you know that’s all grown since .
CA: They’ve built all the way down there, because that’s where there used to be a little pond there, didn’t there?
RA: A pond with newts in, weren’t there?
CA: Yes. And then just further up, where Little Green is, there used to be an orchard.
RA: That’s right.
CA: Opposite there, where you know – it’s just been taken over by fields and that.
RA: It’s just fields now, the orchard – they got rid of the orchard, yes. Opposite the Old Merchant Taylors house, on the other side of the lane, that was an orchard.
CA: And Malvern Way school – when I was living in Winton Drive, that was a spinney, with a big bank going up from the other side. And on the other side of the road, there was a – I think it must have been a storage workshop.
RA: I don’t know.
CA: There was a big open space there during the war, and then where is Winton Crescent, the inside piece, that was the British Legion – no, not British Legion
RA: Red Cross, was it?
CA: No, it wasn’t Red Cross, it was a canteen-type place. You could go and get a meal there in this – so where they are now there used to be a
Int: Was it called a British Restaurant or something?
CA: Yes, that’s what it was. British Restaurant.
Int: Started in the war and then – maybe continued a bit. Yes.
CA: Yes. No houses there either – but what they have done, they’ve filled in lots of these areas. And Harvey Road, when I went there, it was called the cattle sheds. There was about two cattle sheds or – so you know, but in the meantime - and the Old Boys School, we had no green spaces because it’s right in the middle of – we just had a concrete play square. Rhi said you probably went onto the Green for – but I can’t remember going onto the Green for
RA: What for?
CA: To play - when I was a boy -
RA: Oh I see, that’s what I said - you might have played up there, yes. If you had no playing fields in the -
CA: I can’t remember that. But where the library is now, I say that was a – an orchard for a number of years, and then there was – there used to be a hairdresser’s just on the corner there, and a wet fish man, just up from there, so – yes. There used to be a great big roller on the Green, at the top of the Green, and that got moved, I don’t know how they moved it or when it got moved, but it got moved to Durrants School. It used to sit – I suppose it must have – I wonder if you’ve got anything in your record whether they ever played cricket on the Green.
Int: Yes, I think it does say that. I think they did used to, from the Boys school.
CA: Because it is – well, to me at the time, a great big steel roller with a couple of big hooks on each side of it, and that stood at the top of the Baldwins Lane there for a number of years. But I can’t remember any cricket being played on the Green. But they moved it then to Durrants, and they used to have that as an initiation, they used to sit you on top of it and push you backwards. (laughter) Exactly!
Int: Have you ever worked locally in Croxley?
RA: Yes. I worked up at Petit Roque, the fireplace people –
Int: Oh yes, I remember that.
RA: - until, when did I pack then? Oh, when we went to Africa, we went to Africa for – we did six months overseas voluntary work, so I packed up then, yes. And before – when I left school I worked at Wemco’s, the Watford electrical company up Whippendell Road, which has now been changed into flats, and then I went to Cornwall for three years, then I came back and I did work in Cooper McDougall, the vet’s place in Potten End, and then I worked at Aaronson Brothers in Rickmansworth, and then when we had the children I did a bit of home typing for a solicitor, and when I went back to work I did a bit of part time work over at Bourne End, didn’t I? And then I worked for Blazer Mills in Rickmansworth.
Int: They’re a legal company. They’re lawyers, aren’t they, Blazer Mills?
RA: They were – well, they are, but they’ve closed the one in Rickmansworth now.
Int: And you, Colin, have you –
CA: The nearest I worked to here was Jones and Sons in Rickmansworth, TV – they got changed a couple of times. It changed names two or three times and it went down so there was only a couple of us there before I went into the Forces, so that’s why I was something like a layabout. So it went down and so for about 18 months prior to going into the Forces people were so worried about me not working they tried to get me a job and they got me a job at [Shaw and Kilburn’s] washing cars, so – so I suppose I was there about a year, I don’t know, prior to going into the Air Force.
Int: You stayed in the Air Force after National Service, did you?
CA: I did three years. To make me a regular, so when I came out I was eligible for rehabilitation training, and I went to Welwyn which the Government paid for, still paid me for ten months. I came out of there, I took my City and Guilds, Intermediate City and Guilds and passed that, and then I went on and did my Final City and Guilds at Welwyn Garden Ci – College.
RA: And what were you doing there? What were you being trained as?
CA: TV. TV engineer. Which I worked at – came back and worked with the people who took changes over at Chorleywood, Chorleywood Electrics. Then I moved from there to Abbots Langley where I stayed for thirty odd years, didn’t I? Then as Rhi said - I left there when we went on voluntary service in Africa – we went over there to work with the street kids and wound up working with them in an orphanage, with the kids over there, for just over six months.
Int: Which country?
RA: South Africa. Durban.
Int: In Durban.
CA: Yes, a bit – very, very frightening actually. It was just after apartheid and when the coloured people had the same rights as the whites and it was a bit of a …
Int: Interesting times.
CA: It was interesting times – in the end we really enjoyed it but the first two or three weeks or months, it was – people were saying ‘be aware, you know, keep safe’ – then we just went round in a pair of shorts, pair of socks –
Int: And your children, they’ve grown up in Croxley? Have they remained in Croxley?
RA: No. We’ve got two children. Matthew he’s – he travels quite a bit because he’s in the yacht charter broker business, so he’s there and everywhere. They’ve got a place in Shoeburyness in Southend. Sian our daughter, she grew up in Croxley – well, they both grew up in Croxley – and she trained to be a nurse, and she went to Yorke Mead school – they both went to Yorke Mead school, Matthew went to the Grammar School, Sian went to Rickmansworth School. Then she trained to be a nurse and she’s married now with three girls, living in Bovingdon.
Int: What’s kept you – or what have you loved about living in Croxley? What has made you stay here all this time?
RA: Well, it’s just a lovely area, it’s got right on the edge of the countryside. We’ve got good friends, we’re very settled at the church. Good neighbours – we’ve always had good neighbours (CA: Yes, yes.) ever since we’ve been here. We just love the area and it just shows, when anybody comes to Croxley they just stay, they don’t come for a short time, they want to come to Croxley. It’s a lovely area.
CA: The people are very friendly, aren’t they? Always been very friendly.
RA: The convenience of being near London, if you want to go – not that we do – but you’ve got the countryside on your doorstep.
CA: No. I find people very friendly, very open, and with all the open spaces, I mean you can leave here and within five minutes you’d be out in the countryside. And the education in the area is – I know we do hear just recently of more burglaries – the crime in this area is pretty low really. You don’t feel anxious to walk in the streets or – no, in lots of ways quite a safe area. And as I say a very friendly area. And if you want to go to London, if you want to go - we probably don’t go more than once a year. We went to the Queen’s – I had the privilege of going to the – one of the Queen’s garden parties.
Int: Can we hear about that? Why did you go to one of the garden parties?
CA: Somebody must have nominated me for my work within the Boys Brigade, and out of the blue this invitation came.
Int: When was that?
CA: A few years ago, yes.
RA: The last one that Prince Philip was at, wasn’t it? So it was maybe three, four years ago, maybe?
CA: Yes. A wonderful experience. Rhi – when we went to get our tea, Rhi went ‘oh, have you got any cucumber sandwiches?’ So we had the cucumber sandwiches and –
Int: And did the Queen and Prince Philip ...? Did you get to -
CA: We were about from here to where Rhi is.
RA: Yes, just as they walked by, yes, only certain people were introduced. No we were about that distance away.
Int: So you rubbed shoulders with royalty?
RA: Well, sort of!
CA: It was a wonderful experience.
RA: It was a beautiful day.
CA: It was a very hot day and we was going up by train and we had to be dressed up a bit, and a bloke said to me ‘and where are you off to?’ So we said off to Buckingham Palace. So it was a great feeling to walk across the forecourt – more when we came out, wasn’t it? You know – you walk – and there’s all these people at the railings ‘ who’s that?’ (laughter) And there’s two bands in there and the grounds in there are wonderful.
RA: Massive grounds, yes.
CA: Yes. You think of it, but there’s a great big lake in there, and lovely rose gardens and you could walk, just wander around where you liked, and have a free tea!
Int: […] 56 years in the Boys Brigade.
CA: Yes, that’s it, yes.
Int: And what a wonderful recognition after all the time and service you’d given the Boys Brigade.
CA: I think it was – but I was just saying it was a wonderful, wonderful experience of being privileged to go to Buckingham Palace – one of my – probably highlights of my 80s – I’ll be 83 in July. Yes. It’s been a quite interesting life.
Int: Well, thank you very much – thank you so much. Unless there’s anything else that you’d like to mention.
RA: Not really, I don’t think.
Int: We’ve covered a lot.
RA: We’ll probably think of things when you’ve gone. (brief chatter) One thing that’s great about Croxley Green is the community spirit and every year the Revels – unfortunately for the last two years we’ve not been able to hold them. But it’s been a real tradition of Croxley and it’s just lovely every year going up there and you may see the same people, just once a year, but you know, it’s rebuilding friendships and I did have the privilege of being one of the Queen’s attendants in the early 1950s. It was lovely.
CA: And the Boys Club with those bows and arrows, we did a display on the Green, you know, with our bows and arrows at the Revels. And a number of years the Boys Brigade did a crockery smash. Because we had the whatsisname’s thing of having one of our leaders, Doug Flint, he worked at –
RA: I tell you what he wants to say – he worked at a place where you could get seconds of crockery or chipped crockery, so we had quite a good supply, and then the other church members used to bring in crockery and so we had a good crockery smash, didn’t we?
CA: Oh yes we did, we had a really good crockery smash up there, year on year, really, really good. But as I said I really liked that. And the other thing I like is the Remembrance Parade. I really think that the people of Croxley do come together. Every year when you see the amount of people gather round that memorial, you know, it is really, really heart warming to see people still – you know – it’s a small parade but for a place like Croxley, they do continue to honour and get together on these occasions. And when you see the numbers flung around about the Revels, it’s quite a big gathering. I’d hate to see it go. Yes, they are really good community events.
Int: So you’re looking forward to the Revels this year?
RA: Yes and no, partly because I gather there’s not going to be a parade, and also unfortunately it clashes with a big Boys Brigade event which we will probably feel more obliged to go to that. So it’s rather a shame that we may not be up at the Revels this year. Yes.
Int: What’s the event that the Boys Brigade – Croxley Green group – is going to?
CA: No it’s over at Felden.
RA: No, it’s at the headquarters of the Boys Brigade, it’s over in Felden in Hemel Hempstead. It’s big – oh, it’s a big fun day – and we’ve put the letter out to the boys to ask them if they want to go, but we appreciate that they probably – clashing with things that their schools are putting on, so we’re disappointed, but I’m sure it’ll be a fantastic day again.
CA: Yes, as usual. Absolutely.
Int: Thank you again
CA: No. Why we didn’t was just before we got married, the captain of the Boys Brigade then, Geoff Warren, he moved up to
RA: Staffordshire.
CA: Staffordshire, so they were looking for someone else to take on the Boys Brigade company here – none of the other officers came forward to take over the job, so – this was in the May, wasn’t it?
RA: 1965.
CA: So in the end I said I would do it, and they was dubious – which was quite right, quite frankly, fair does. You know, people didn’t think I’d last more than six months.
Int: However you showed them!
CA: And here we are now at fifty odd years later and I’m still the captain of the local Boys Brigade.
Int: You’re still the captain?
CA: After forty -
RA: 56 years come -
Int: And you still do the meetings, deal with all these little naughty boys coming through?
RA: Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
CA: We meet on a Tuesday up at Anchor boys, five to eight years old, and then we meet from – Wednesday night, boys from eight till eleven.
RA: And do you have some younger – young officers coming through to help you chase them?
CA: Yes. Very good
RA: Very good leaders. Very good support.
CA: Yes, very good support, leaders, yes, very good. Prior to that we had an older section, going from senior school, you know.
RA: Eleven to eighteens.
CA: Aged to eighteen. And the boys in there they took part in national competitions. We got to the Finals of the Five-A-Side football competition on at least two occasions, and we sent the boys to Northern Ireland on one occasion, and we went to Badminton Finals up in Scotland. Just a small village company here, that’s what the boys achieved.
Int: And you don’t have that older group any more, you just have the younger ones? Is it because there just doesn’t seem to be – that’s not what happens socially in the village any more?
CA: Well, it wasn’t because of the boys, the church decided they wanted to mix the two together, the girls and the boys, and they came up with this thing called Quench, so we had the boys now from 5 till 11and then at 11 they go to this mixed thing in the church called Quench. But you know this only stopped about ten years ago, I suppose, but up until then it was very -
RA: I mean the company section was very strong, and they used to have a monthly church parade with a band and people now still talk about the parade and the band going through Croxley. They used to look forward – and people used to come out to their front gates to listen to it going by. The band used to lead the Revels, and also the annual memorial – Remembrance Parade. When we had the band.
Int: So when did you have the band and when did that stop?
RA: Well, when the company stopped – we hadn’t got the band at that point, I don’t think, had we, Colin?
CA: Yes.
RA: Oh we did, right then, yes we did. So from about ten years ago. But we didn’t parade then, did we, the last few years?
CA: No, not – probably for the last couple of years.
RA: Yes. But it was a very strong band.
CA: It was started with – what’s his name was ?
RA: Reg Burgess.
CA: Reg Burgess was there. It carried on. No, it was a very strong band. Doug Flint really got it – a load of – new banners and – it went from bugles to valveless trumpets, what you call trumpets, and
RA: Bell lyres and drums.
CA: Yes Bell lyres and drums, yes, and we used to meet in various places in Croxley to march to the church.
Int: And where did you practice?
RA: In the church building.
Int: In the church building?
CA: Yes. Much to the annoyance sometimes.
Int: And was it on a specific Sunday in the month that you used …?
RA: Used to be the first Sunday of the month, we used to have the Church Parade, yes.
CA: Yes.
Int: And were you involved with Girls Brigade in the way Colin’s been involved with the Boys?
RA: Not really. I didn’t go back into Girls Brigade because I went farming as I said in the 1960s for three years down in Cornwall, and I came back, and that’s when we picked up together and eventually got married etcetera. So really I’ve just been in the background supporting Colin and the Boys Brigade since then. Although now I do go down as well on Tuesday and Wednesday at the moment.
Int: Where did you have your wedding reception? Was it at the Guildhouse?
RA: No, we had it at the Old Merchant Taylor’s. Lovely house there, that was, yes.
Int: I was thinking, because that would be the year of the fire, 1965.
RA: The Guildhouse? (Int: Yes.) Yes, that burnt down but we went to your aunt’s reception there, didn’t we, the Guildhouse?
CA: Yes, and the Boys Brigade did two or three displays in there, in the Guildhouse. We used to have a yearly display at the end of – portraying some of the badge work we’d done, like First Aid and PT and all that, and then we had to move from there to Durrants. But we had two or three displays at the Guildhouse in the early days, yes.
Int: So where was your first house in Croxley – this one right here?
RA: We moved here when we got married and we’ve been here ever since.
Int: And did you used to shop in the village then or did you have to go to Rickmansworth or Watford?
RA: I can’t remember where I did shop then. I think we did do some in the village and some in Watford, I think. I’ve never really gone to Rickmansworth, even though I lived in Croxley. Being down in Links Way, we tended to go to Watford, yes.
CA: But in the early days we used to – my mum used to shop in the New Road, opposite the Co-op, and they used to deliver your groceries from there, and Darvill’s the butchers, and there used to be a fresh fish man just on the corner where the library is now, because where the library is now, that used to be an orchard, and it used to be a hairdresser’s on the side of there. Dimmocks - do you remember Dimmocks?
Int: Well, I don’t remember it, but I know on the website, if you look at The Stroll Down New Road, which
CA: Yes, Dimmocks, virtually opposite the Co-op.
Int: These shops are all mentioned, there were lots of shops on New Road.
CA: And just up from there there was another shop where where you got your accumulators charged up for the radios. That’s about where the alleyway goes through. And there used to be one on the corner of Yorke Road, a small general store there.
Int: A grocer’s, yes.
CA: Because well, before supermarkets, in Watford or – all shopping in those days was done locally.
Int: You didn’t have an allotment or anything, did you?
RA: We did, we did. After we got married, have an allotment, yes. And - for a few years, but then my mum’s garden needed help with, Colin’s mum’s garden needed help with, my neighbour’s garden needed help with, my aunt’s garden needed help with, so we decided we couldn’t cope with an allotment as well.
CA: Not an allotment, no.
RA: So that’s how that went. Talking about shops, I can remember when I was probably about 11, 12, each Saturday having to cycle up from Links Way to what was then Pike’s Store, which is on the corner of Winton Approach and Watford Road, and buy five sliced loaves every Saturday. That was one of my jobs. And then I also used to have a paper round, an evening paper round, to earn a few extra pennies.
Int: How many houses did you have to deliver to?
RA: It wasn’t too bad, actually, because it was down Hazelwood Road and Oakleigh Drive and that sort of area in an evening, yes.
Int: Did you do any jobs growing up?
CA: No.
Int: Too busy in the Dell.
CA: Yes, off and played. You see, Rhi went on to senior school until she was 18, almost 18, remember we left school when we was 15. So it was a difference. I was only just 15 as well, because my birthday is in July, so we left, you know – there wasn’t much time between serious school and – there used to be a smith’s shop, a blacksmith’s shop up in New Road, where the
Int: Where the petrol station is.
CA: Where the petrol station is, yes. And my granddad had a shed behind there where he used to chop wood up, behind the part there, apparently. I never went up to it, but he had a shed or something up there where he used to chop wood, but this blacksmith’s shop was there for quite a number of years, actually. In New Road.
Int: So you were born in the village – how many generations have lived in Croxley, in your family do you know?
CA: Oh – I thought it was quite a few, but it’s not so many because as far as I can ascertain by what [?Anne] was saying, my Gran was in Chesham, so they moved from Chesham – later she lived in Gonville Avenue, and one of my aunts lived in Dickinson Square, so he must have had a job down in Dickinson’s – that’s where they used to have a bandstand in that piece of grass area in the middle of Dickinson Square, which the Dickinson’s band used to practice in on a Sunday – I don’t know what happened to the bandstand – is it still there?
Int: No it’s not. I don’t think anyone knows what happened to it. (general agreement)
CA: Yes, it used to be in that green area.
Int: You remember it?
CA: Yes.
Int: So you have an interesting connection to Croxley through your family tree. Can you tell us about this house and where it’s come from and ..
RA: Well, I’ve got this family tree which my aunt showed me up in Derbyshire. It’s very interesting. It’s one that another relation, distant relation, had done. She was a headmistress and this family tree came to my relations in Derbyshire. And one day we were looking at it and she said ‘oh look there’s a Woolrych of Croxley here, is it anything to do with you?’ So I said ‘well, I don’t know’. But when she said that I looked into it, and if you go back to the family tree to about the fifteen hundreds, the Woolrych family splits down two ways – well, lots of ways, but these particular ways – the Woolrych of Croxley says on the left hand side and on the other side comes down to a Woolrych, a Mary Woolrych, who married a Joseph Sutton, who had a son called Henry Sutton who was my mother’s father. So this Mary Woolrych would have been my great-great-grandmother and so I say that perhaps we should have a bit of a share of Croxley Green, because most of Croxley Green was owned by the Woolryches of Croxley, living up at the Croxley House, but I don’t think it would hold much water, actually, but it’s a nice story to tell people!
Int: And this whole estate of houses is built on land that would have originally belonged to the Woolryches?
RA: That’s correct, there’s a Woolrych family owned a big estate and I think part of it was the Parrots estate, and then all this top end of Croxley from Copthorne Road down to probably Lancing Way was on that estate and that’s now been built on, some before the war, some after the war.
Int: And when were these – the houses down Repton Way built? When was your house built?
RA: Our house was built in 1947 and the first lot were built in the 1930s, before the war. And another interesting thing – Stone’s Orchard was part of the Woolrych estate, so we tend to think of Stone’s Orchard as our orchard. (laughter)
CA: I did do a bit of work – I worked in Stone’s Orchard with a rattle, keeping the pigeons off the cherries. In the early days we used to go up there and do an hour or so, doing a rattle to keep the birds out of the trees, pinching the cherries up there. But there were big cherry trees in those days, you’ve probably seen pictures of it, with the great big ladders going up to pick the cherries, so it was a big orchard – well, apparently one of the – Stones, they rented the orchard from Woolrych. So that’s why we say, you know, Stones Orchard is
RA: We had tried on one or two occasions to get permission to plant a tree in the orchard, because I feel, you know, it’s our orchard, (CA: No.) but through the Parish Council, they refer you to the Three Rivers Council, and they refer you up to County Council – and anyway, we were in there the other day and we were talking to the Warden then, and said about this, we’d like to plant one, and he said they’re not allowed to plant trees unless it’s replacing an existing one that’s died. And there’s one that’s died there now so I feel I might make a bit of an effort to try and see if we can plant one where that one’s died now. I feel it would be nice, you know, just to say we’ve got a tree in the orchard.
Int: Good idea, yes. And so do you know when – do you know when this house was built?
CA: 1947.
Int: And any interesting stories – because you mentioned something before we started recording about how it was built and
CA: Oh yes. Apparently. because a chap I know, he helped build these houses, a lot of the stuff just after the war it was hard to get hold of, so it was bought on what used to be called the black market, then, just to get the places finished, so – I don’t know whether they’re going to pull them down now, because there’s illegal timber in this house. But that’s what he told me, he said you know – and they’re really good beams, they really are. They’re not just two by twos, they’re really good, you know, four by twos. Really solid in the loft – beams up in the loft there, they’re really good solid beams.
Int: So you’ve seen loads of changes in Croxley? (CA: Yes) What do you think have been the major changes that you’ve witnessed over the decades that you’ve been here?
RA: I suppose the biggest is it wasn’t a village – I still think of it as a village but it’s really expanded so much now. As I say, when I was in Links Way I’d go out of my back gate into a field, into the woods, you know. It’s just expanded all the way round and it’s still expanding, unfortunately. But it’s such a desirable place to live you can’t blame people wanting to live here.
CA: It’s not so much expanded as filled in, because when we were teenagers or youngsters, from the top of – where Merchant Taylor’s house is – all the way down there was open ground, wasn’t it?
RA: Yes. And those – from Little Green school home, Links Way, I’d just walk through fields, if you like, because I remember picking raspberries on the way, wild raspberries, but you know that’s all grown since .
CA: They’ve built all the way down there, because that’s where there used to be a little pond there, didn’t there?
RA: A pond with newts in, weren’t there?
CA: Yes. And then just further up, where Little Green is, there used to be an orchard.
RA: That’s right.
CA: Opposite there, where you know – it’s just been taken over by fields and that.
RA: It’s just fields now, the orchard – they got rid of the orchard, yes. Opposite the Old Merchant Taylors house, on the other side of the lane, that was an orchard.
CA: And Malvern Way school – when I was living in Winton Drive, that was a spinney, with a big bank going up from the other side. And on the other side of the road, there was a – I think it must have been a storage workshop.
RA: I don’t know.
CA: There was a big open space there during the war, and then where is Winton Crescent, the inside piece, that was the British Legion – no, not British Legion
RA: Red Cross, was it?
CA: No, it wasn’t Red Cross, it was a canteen-type place. You could go and get a meal there in this – so where they are now there used to be a
Int: Was it called a British Restaurant or something?
CA: Yes, that’s what it was. British Restaurant.
Int: Started in the war and then – maybe continued a bit. Yes.
CA: Yes. No houses there either – but what they have done, they’ve filled in lots of these areas. And Harvey Road, when I went there, it was called the cattle sheds. There was about two cattle sheds or – so you know, but in the meantime - and the Old Boys School, we had no green spaces because it’s right in the middle of – we just had a concrete play square. Rhi said you probably went onto the Green for – but I can’t remember going onto the Green for
RA: What for?
CA: To play - when I was a boy -
RA: Oh I see, that’s what I said - you might have played up there, yes. If you had no playing fields in the -
CA: I can’t remember that. But where the library is now, I say that was a – an orchard for a number of years, and then there was – there used to be a hairdresser’s just on the corner there, and a wet fish man, just up from there, so – yes. There used to be a great big roller on the Green, at the top of the Green, and that got moved, I don’t know how they moved it or when it got moved, but it got moved to Durrants School. It used to sit – I suppose it must have – I wonder if you’ve got anything in your record whether they ever played cricket on the Green.
Int: Yes, I think it does say that. I think they did used to, from the Boys school.
CA: Because it is – well, to me at the time, a great big steel roller with a couple of big hooks on each side of it, and that stood at the top of the Baldwins Lane there for a number of years. But I can’t remember any cricket being played on the Green. But they moved it then to Durrants, and they used to have that as an initiation, they used to sit you on top of it and push you backwards. (laughter) Exactly!
Int: Have you ever worked locally in Croxley?
RA: Yes. I worked up at Petit Roque, the fireplace people –
Int: Oh yes, I remember that.
RA: - until, when did I pack then? Oh, when we went to Africa, we went to Africa for – we did six months overseas voluntary work, so I packed up then, yes. And before – when I left school I worked at Wemco’s, the Watford electrical company up Whippendell Road, which has now been changed into flats, and then I went to Cornwall for three years, then I came back and I did work in Cooper McDougall, the vet’s place in Potten End, and then I worked at Aaronson Brothers in Rickmansworth, and then when we had the children I did a bit of home typing for a solicitor, and when I went back to work I did a bit of part time work over at Bourne End, didn’t I? And then I worked for Blazer Mills in Rickmansworth.
Int: They’re a legal company. They’re lawyers, aren’t they, Blazer Mills?
RA: They were – well, they are, but they’ve closed the one in Rickmansworth now.
Int: And you, Colin, have you –
CA: The nearest I worked to here was Jones and Sons in Rickmansworth, TV – they got changed a couple of times. It changed names two or three times and it went down so there was only a couple of us there before I went into the Forces, so that’s why I was something like a layabout. So it went down and so for about 18 months prior to going into the Forces people were so worried about me not working they tried to get me a job and they got me a job at [Shaw and Kilburn’s] washing cars, so – so I suppose I was there about a year, I don’t know, prior to going into the Air Force.
Int: You stayed in the Air Force after National Service, did you?
CA: I did three years. To make me a regular, so when I came out I was eligible for rehabilitation training, and I went to Welwyn which the Government paid for, still paid me for ten months. I came out of there, I took my City and Guilds, Intermediate City and Guilds and passed that, and then I went on and did my Final City and Guilds at Welwyn Garden Ci – College.
RA: And what were you doing there? What were you being trained as?
CA: TV. TV engineer. Which I worked at – came back and worked with the people who took changes over at Chorleywood, Chorleywood Electrics. Then I moved from there to Abbots Langley where I stayed for thirty odd years, didn’t I? Then as Rhi said - I left there when we went on voluntary service in Africa – we went over there to work with the street kids and wound up working with them in an orphanage, with the kids over there, for just over six months.
Int: Which country?
RA: South Africa. Durban.
Int: In Durban.
CA: Yes, a bit – very, very frightening actually. It was just after apartheid and when the coloured people had the same rights as the whites and it was a bit of a …
Int: Interesting times.
CA: It was interesting times – in the end we really enjoyed it but the first two or three weeks or months, it was – people were saying ‘be aware, you know, keep safe’ – then we just went round in a pair of shorts, pair of socks –
Int: And your children, they’ve grown up in Croxley? Have they remained in Croxley?
RA: No. We’ve got two children. Matthew he’s – he travels quite a bit because he’s in the yacht charter broker business, so he’s there and everywhere. They’ve got a place in Shoeburyness in Southend. Sian our daughter, she grew up in Croxley – well, they both grew up in Croxley – and she trained to be a nurse, and she went to Yorke Mead school – they both went to Yorke Mead school, Matthew went to the Grammar School, Sian went to Rickmansworth School. Then she trained to be a nurse and she’s married now with three girls, living in Bovingdon.
Int: What’s kept you – or what have you loved about living in Croxley? What has made you stay here all this time?
RA: Well, it’s just a lovely area, it’s got right on the edge of the countryside. We’ve got good friends, we’re very settled at the church. Good neighbours – we’ve always had good neighbours (CA: Yes, yes.) ever since we’ve been here. We just love the area and it just shows, when anybody comes to Croxley they just stay, they don’t come for a short time, they want to come to Croxley. It’s a lovely area.
CA: The people are very friendly, aren’t they? Always been very friendly.
RA: The convenience of being near London, if you want to go – not that we do – but you’ve got the countryside on your doorstep.
CA: No. I find people very friendly, very open, and with all the open spaces, I mean you can leave here and within five minutes you’d be out in the countryside. And the education in the area is – I know we do hear just recently of more burglaries – the crime in this area is pretty low really. You don’t feel anxious to walk in the streets or – no, in lots of ways quite a safe area. And as I say a very friendly area. And if you want to go to London, if you want to go - we probably don’t go more than once a year. We went to the Queen’s – I had the privilege of going to the – one of the Queen’s garden parties.
Int: Can we hear about that? Why did you go to one of the garden parties?
CA: Somebody must have nominated me for my work within the Boys Brigade, and out of the blue this invitation came.
Int: When was that?
CA: A few years ago, yes.
RA: The last one that Prince Philip was at, wasn’t it? So it was maybe three, four years ago, maybe?
CA: Yes. A wonderful experience. Rhi – when we went to get our tea, Rhi went ‘oh, have you got any cucumber sandwiches?’ So we had the cucumber sandwiches and –
Int: And did the Queen and Prince Philip ...? Did you get to -
CA: We were about from here to where Rhi is.
RA: Yes, just as they walked by, yes, only certain people were introduced. No we were about that distance away.
Int: So you rubbed shoulders with royalty?
RA: Well, sort of!
CA: It was a wonderful experience.
RA: It was a beautiful day.
CA: It was a very hot day and we was going up by train and we had to be dressed up a bit, and a bloke said to me ‘and where are you off to?’ So we said off to Buckingham Palace. So it was a great feeling to walk across the forecourt – more when we came out, wasn’t it? You know – you walk – and there’s all these people at the railings ‘ who’s that?’ (laughter) And there’s two bands in there and the grounds in there are wonderful.
RA: Massive grounds, yes.
CA: Yes. You think of it, but there’s a great big lake in there, and lovely rose gardens and you could walk, just wander around where you liked, and have a free tea!
Int: […] 56 years in the Boys Brigade.
CA: Yes, that’s it, yes.
Int: And what a wonderful recognition after all the time and service you’d given the Boys Brigade.
CA: I think it was – but I was just saying it was a wonderful, wonderful experience of being privileged to go to Buckingham Palace – one of my – probably highlights of my 80s – I’ll be 83 in July. Yes. It’s been a quite interesting life.
Int: Well, thank you very much – thank you so much. Unless there’s anything else that you’d like to mention.
RA: Not really, I don’t think.
Int: We’ve covered a lot.
RA: We’ll probably think of things when you’ve gone. (brief chatter) One thing that’s great about Croxley Green is the community spirit and every year the Revels – unfortunately for the last two years we’ve not been able to hold them. But it’s been a real tradition of Croxley and it’s just lovely every year going up there and you may see the same people, just once a year, but you know, it’s rebuilding friendships and I did have the privilege of being one of the Queen’s attendants in the early 1950s. It was lovely.
CA: And the Boys Club with those bows and arrows, we did a display on the Green, you know, with our bows and arrows at the Revels. And a number of years the Boys Brigade did a crockery smash. Because we had the whatsisname’s thing of having one of our leaders, Doug Flint, he worked at –
RA: I tell you what he wants to say – he worked at a place where you could get seconds of crockery or chipped crockery, so we had quite a good supply, and then the other church members used to bring in crockery and so we had a good crockery smash, didn’t we?
CA: Oh yes we did, we had a really good crockery smash up there, year on year, really, really good. But as I said I really liked that. And the other thing I like is the Remembrance Parade. I really think that the people of Croxley do come together. Every year when you see the amount of people gather round that memorial, you know, it is really, really heart warming to see people still – you know – it’s a small parade but for a place like Croxley, they do continue to honour and get together on these occasions. And when you see the numbers flung around about the Revels, it’s quite a big gathering. I’d hate to see it go. Yes, they are really good community events.
Int: So you’re looking forward to the Revels this year?
RA: Yes and no, partly because I gather there’s not going to be a parade, and also unfortunately it clashes with a big Boys Brigade event which we will probably feel more obliged to go to that. So it’s rather a shame that we may not be up at the Revels this year. Yes.
Int: What’s the event that the Boys Brigade – Croxley Green group – is going to?
CA: No it’s over at Felden.
RA: No, it’s at the headquarters of the Boys Brigade, it’s over in Felden in Hemel Hempstead. It’s big – oh, it’s a big fun day – and we’ve put the letter out to the boys to ask them if they want to go, but we appreciate that they probably – clashing with things that their schools are putting on, so we’re disappointed, but I’m sure it’ll be a fantastic day again.
CA: Yes, as usual. Absolutely.
Int: Thank you again
