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EARLY DAYS IN LEEDS AND KNARESBOROUGH
A studio portrait of Annie, aged about two
Annie was born in Leeds in 1915 and has a younger sister, born
in 1920, and a younger brother, born in 1923. When she was ten
years old Annie moved with her family to Knaresborough where her
father was to set himself up in business. Prior to that time, though,
the family lived in Wortley, her mother’s family being close
by in Armley. Her mother, Mary, came from a large, outgoing family – she
was one of ten children, while her father, Bateson (always called
Bill) was from a much smaller family from Lancashire:
“..and his parents seemed old people, …I
vaguely remember seeing my grandpa once - and I know the
house where they lived [they must have been real Victorians?]
oh they were, you see, and they were of the Jewish faith, or
they had been, you know, and they seemed to live differently
to us”
Her mother worked as a nanny:
“… at a house which again mother used
to take me because you see all the war years between me and my
sister, you know, I’m five years older than her and my eldest
daughter is six years older than … we each had all the war
years alone, you know, and we used to go and see this lady, she
[mother] helped to bring the children up and they had a newsagents
and tobacconists shop at the – they called it “The
Crown” in Leeds, on Wortley Road and mother used to look
after her children and she had four children, Kitty, Jack, Leonard
and Stanley, and I knew them all you see, I was like a little
baby sister to all these grown up people and eventually Stanley
had, went into a shop”
Annie’s mother also helped her own mother at home:
“When I was at school my mother used to go
and help my grandma wash every Monday and she used to take my little
brother in his push chair and she always took our dinner with her – she
used to have a big white basin and put whatever we [would be eating]
and tie it up with a big white serviette thing and that was fastened
underneath his push chair and she walked to my grandma’s
through the park - we lived in Bullring Hill and it was a big hill,
at the terminus the tram turned round at the bottom of Bullring
Hill back into Leeds and used to walk up to the top of the hill
turn the corner and then up another hill called – which was
an unmade road - called Stony Rock Hill and on the top was a lane
called Blue Hill Lane, but when we used to say it, it all ran into
one “Bluill Lane” and then Weston Flats Park was at
the other side of the road and we used to cut the corner right
off, go through Weston Flats Park and come out somewhere in Armley
to go to my grandma’s. And I used to go to school, my mother
used to go up to my grandma’s and then at lunchtime I used
to dash out of school. On the tram to Dixon Lane, get off at Dixon
Lane and then run like mad half way up to meet my – they
were my aunty and uncle but they were only my age you see because
my mother was the eldest of ten and they were the youngest. So
we, aunty and uncle, were all at school together only different
schools; but it was always ‘our Nance and our Freddie’ … we
had our dinner and then ran like mad back again, back to school, run
and get the tram back to school and then go home. [Lunch was in]
a big basin wrapped in a cloth - it would be cold from Sunday
probably - bubble and squeak and cold meat and I hate it – always
hated it.”
Although Annie does not remember the Great War, her father fought
for his country:
“… my father fought in the First World
War and was wounded. He was in the Leeds Rifles – the old
West Yorkshire Regiment. I used to have his cap badge but it seems
to have disappeared. It was a horse – why a horse for a Leeds
Regiment I don’t know.”
Annie’s father was an electrical engineer; when they lived
in Wortley he worked for a large engineering firm in Batley. An
enterprising man, he decided to set up on his own, and the family
moved to Knaresborough:
“… and so he came to Knaresborough
and opened an electrical business with another electrician and,
between them, they brought practically the whole of Knaresborough
into having electricity, by the time they retired, because up
until then it was all gas in Knaresborough.”
This was around 1925 and Annie remembers the lamplighter in the
town:
“Yes, on a little bicycle, with a light on
the end of a pole [and the next morning] put them out. I
used to know the name of the man as well but – that’s
it ‘little Johnny Flynn’ – he was a tiny little
man.”
In Leeds Annie had attended Lower Wortley School but lost touch
with all of her friends when the family moved:
“Not for years, no. And I’ve never
been able to contact my oldest friend, the one I went to
school with, Gladys Blackburn, and she lived up Granny Lane, and
I can’t even find Granny Lane now.”
On first arriving in Knaresborough the family had difficulty
in finding a home in the town so lived for a time in Lingerfield
where Annie attended the village school:
“My dad got us a cottage in Lingerfield and
I went to the little village school, there, and the Headmistress
there was called Miss Pape and she used to patrol up and down the
lines of desks – she always used to wear a steel thimble
on her middle finger and if you lifted your head up from your book
she used to come and rattle you on your head with this – we
used to call it Thimble Pie. But it did hurt, she didn’t
half rattle you with this steel thimble.”
Eventually a house was found in Knaresborough, first a council
house and then a house with shop premises for her father:
“We lived down in the council houses for
about two years, and then my dad got the shop on his own. There
were two of them to start with and then he branched out on his
own. In Castlegate – the shop’s still there – it’s
a health food shop now but it’s different entirely to what
it was when we lived in it. When we lived in it there was a passage
at the side where my father used to keep all his tubing for his
work and his bicycle, but now that passage seems to have disappeared,
it went right through into the back yard … the midden was
a bit further on, what they called “the big tip”, in
the Castle Yard, in the corner of the Castle Yard. We never noticed
it, no, it never smelt.
We lived behind the shop, the kitchen was behind
the shop, and the sitting room was up above the shop, and then
we had another floor where the bedrooms were, and an attic, four
storeys, and the attics were huge, and you could walk right down
the street through the attics.
My sister and I shared a bedroom, my brother
had a bedroom of his own, but we always shared a bedroom until
we got married. We slept together in a big double bed, the window
was in the Castle Yard so plenty of fresh air.”
The
Christmas Show.
Most of the performers
pictured here were members of the Knaresborough Congregational
Church. Back row, left to right: Kathleen Brown, Thelma Watson,
Annie Lee, Jean Brown, ?. Middle row, left to right: Yvonne Todd,
Mavis Barnes, Audrey McEvoy, Gwen McEvoy, Edna Todd. Front row,
left to right: Kathleen Elliot and Stella Wise.
Christmas was celebrated very much as it is today, but not so
extravagantly:
“You’d get perhaps one big present,
I can’t remember what it was, but mostly your stocking was
the main thing because that used to be at the end of your bed or
somewhere close for when you woke up and rifle through your stocking
and then off into your parent’s bedroom ‘Look what
I’ve got this’ and empty it on their bed and then
back into your own and when my little brother, he got a little
red three-wheeler tamsad bike once and I remember him riding
it all round in and out the bedrooms on the Christmas morning.
For many years they’ve gathered together
I think a few days before Christmas and had a Christmas tree in
the Market Place and the lights were turned on - it’s been
there every year for many, many years. [church on Christmas day?]
yes – but we didn’t go to the parish church, my mum
used to go to the Congregational church.
I think they only used to have Christmas Day
and Boxing Day [holiday] but I seem to remember the building
trade had their annual holidays at Christmas.”
Growing up in the town at this time seems almost idyllic:
“Yes it was – well in Leeds they used
to call us country bumpkins or country gawbers sometimes - it’s
an old Yorkshire saying “country gawber” makes you
sound a bit simple, you know. Oh it was a lovely place, I think
Knaresborough was lovely years ago. It’s not now, I don’t
think, it’s deteriorated has Knaresborough now. Well there’s
so many strangers come into town and I suppose there’s too
many people here now to know everybody … I mean all those
houses on Cragg Top there were none of those built when we were
young, the Market Place itself hasn’t altered all that much – but
there are different shops, and to my way of thinking they always
opened the wrong kind of shops.”
THE MARKET PLACE
Annie remembers the Market Place as not so very different from
today, except in the nature of the shops and the people who owned
and served in them:
“Well the Market Place was just, well not
just as it is today because they’ve covered it, haven’t
they, but it was always cobbles, all the Market Place was cobbled,
but pretty much as it is today, but there weren’t as many,
what I call, “tatty” shops. You know today there’s
a lot of souvenirs and things like that well in those days there
wasn’t, it was a proper market town where there was the butchers,
the bakers and shoe shops, the chemist shop: Mr Willey was the
chemist and was there for about fifty years and the shop’s
still there but of course Mr Willey and Mr Willey’s son are
both dead and old Mr Willey’s grandson they moved somewhere
up the Dales but he was a chemist also – three generations. [the
Oldest Chemist’s shop?] - that was Mr Lawrence and
his daughter yes oh I remember Mr Lawrence well. He used to make
your medicine up when you asked for it, himself, and give you a
bottle of all sorts of concoctions [you would go to your doctor
first?] not always no because every time you went to the doctors
you paid, it was ever so expensive to go to the doctors, and unless
you were really poorly you didn’t go to the doctors, you
went to the chemist and he would make a bottle up for you or a
paste or whatever. If you didn’t get better, well you went
to your doctors. He was very, very good was old Mr Lawrence – yes,
he was as good as any doctor. He was a smallish man, and he was
as bright, just before he died, as he was when he was a young man
and I think they just had that one daughter. [he had a seat in
the shop where you used to sit down?] sit down at the back of the
counter and he had a pestle and [a mortar?] yes – it was
a huge marble thing and a pestle he used to break his things up.
Oh I remember Mr Lawrence very well– always in a grey suit.
[The Chemist’s Shop] was full of bottles, tell him what was
wrong with you and he’d make a note of it and then fetch
this and mix it in that and he’d come back with either a
bottle of medicine or a tin of paste, whatever you needed, he was
very, very knowledgeable, I forget how old he was ninety-odd [when
he died] – he was nearly a hundred I’m sure he was.
His daughter … was a very nice lady, she was knowledgeable
but she wasn’t qualified – he was a qualified pharmacist
- he was very, very good and always pleasant always and knew everybody,
you know, you would go in and he would know your name immediately ‘now
what can I do for you’ he was a lovely old gentleman. It
was sold – I’ve never got to know anybody in since
he passed away.
[In the Market Place] there was - you know
Thomas’s the new bakery well that used to be the Tudor Café when
I was little and next to them it was Mr Eddy, they sold shoes and
repaired shoes, that’s where the charity shop is and then
there was the butcher’s Mr and Mrs Thicket – Polly
Thicket they called her – oh I shouldn’t say it - all
we kids used to say, she had – I couldn’t tell you
whether they were false or they were her own but to me they always
looked yellow, her teeth – we always used to say “Polly
Thicket with her yellow teeth” you’re cruel when you’re
children; they were the butchers and then next to the butcher’s
was an off-licence, I can’t tell you what they called it,
you could go with a jug and get [ some ale] yes, or bottles of
wine and things like that, and the girl who used to be in I remember
most was a girl called Gertie Mitchell, she worked there for
years, and then of course Boots was on the end as it still is.
On the other side of the street from Boots it
was the Groves pub which is still there, next to the Groves Pub
was BJ the hairdresser’s, and then it’s the bank, Yorkshire
Penny. Next to the Yorkshire Penny Bank was Freeman, Hardy and
Willis, a shoe shop, and then there was a bit of spare ground there,
I think that’s where they moved the library to, didn’t
used to be the library, the library used to be up the other
side, and then Dinsdales – the grocers, there’s a little
narrow alley, at the side, and then Dinsdale’s was the grocers
shop. It was a wonderful grocers shop, they used to grind their
own coffee [big blocks of cheese] and butter. You went in and you
got a pound of Danish butter and they’d chop it off and pat
it, prick it and wrap it. The Co-op used to be down the High Street,
next to Jockey Lane, but we had another good grocer’s shop
in the Market Place which is the other side of Jockey Lane where
there’s a card shop, the first shop, that used to be Bamborough’s
ironmongers and then next to Bamborough’s was Beale’s
the grocer and they had sort of two rooms – one at either
side of the front door and they were just the same with the block
of butter, sides of bacon, you know. I can remember my mother always
used to have her bacon cut on number seven [that would be the thickness?]
yes and always Danish bacon. I didn’t like farm butter
- farm butter was local farm butter but my mum liked it [Danish
butter] better and so did I.
Next to Beal’s – the shop’s still
there it’s a new wool shop now – but years ago
it used to be a little dress shop. Yes there was a little dress
shop in the corner there and then Harts’ Horns pub is next
and then right on the end is the bakery now but it used to be Hall’s
paper shop when I was little; and then you come back into the market
place from the bus station and that used to be, the first one was
Mr Plummer, well the pub, the Little Elephant, was on the corner,
Little Elephant first, and then, I can’t remember whether
the fish shop was at that side, a man called Mr Newsome had the
chip shop there but I can’t remember whether it was next
to the pub or next but one to the pub; and then the vegetable,
the fruit and vegetables was a lady called Miss Spence and she
owned it right until Prudames bought it and then next to Prudames,
it’s a health food shop now, that was a bicycle shop, and
next to the bicycle shop it was Mr Cockrill the chemist, another
chemist, and then next to the chemist it was Miss Clarkson’s
baker. Before they moved the library from that side Mr Lobley had
a shop, a gent’s outfitters, and then it was the old Royal
Oak pub which is still there and next to that was Mr Eavley who
was the son-in-law of Mr Lobley but they sold ladiesware and household
goods, my sister used to work there, and then next to Eavley’s
was Mrs Fisher’s sweet shop and right on the corner was Reed’s
dairy, you could get milk and ice cream.
[Did they deliver milk?] yes they did with horse
and trap and a big churn with a dipper. So when you heard the
horse’s
hooves you got the jug out and went outside.
It’s the Market Hotel that’s right
on the corner of the Ginnel that’s goes up to the park that’s
still there and next to the Market Hotel was Miss Riley’s – they
called it Miss Riley’s café but it never was a café it
just sold home-made buns and she used to dust her buns on a night
with a feather duster, she did because our shop was right opposite
theirs you see - she had a little feather duster and -
at the shop window was a rod with a little lace curtain on that
divided it from the public [eating area] and she used to slot the
curtain on and come round with this little brush and dust all the
buns on the plates – we always laughed – many times.
And then next to Miss Riley’s was Brown’s fruit and
veg – Robert Brown. Mrs Brown used to make rollmop herrings,
you know, twice a week she used to do those, she had a roaring
trade in those – I hated them.
There used to be a bell rang at eleven o’ clock
every Wednesday morning to say the market was open and you could
hear it – we lived in those days down in the council houses
and you could hear the bell down there from - it used to be in
the Town Hall – the old town. Farmers would come with all
the butter and their wares and there used to be – I can’t
remember what they call her but - I can never think of her
as young, I don’t ever remember her when she was young but
she was oldish - a very tall, thin lady with a right ruddy complexion
and she used to stand at the end of Jockey Lane – the market
end – with a basket of rhubarb and she used to shout “cherry
rhubarb ladies, cherry rhubarb ladies” and that’s all
she sold this rhubarb - she was there for donkey years – hail,
snow or blow she’d be there with her rhubarb. There was a
man down Briggate sold lime – I remember going with my dad
with a bucket for a bucketful of lime once in one of those little
cottages near the bottom and there used to be a little grocer’s
shop down there as well, Mr Hemshall. It’s [Briggate] all
up or down or higgledy-piggledy.
[Knaresborough has] all these little yards
because they always took the horses and left them in these little
yards you know when they brought all the stuff in for the
market: Whiteley’s Yard there is, you see, and Green Dragon
Yard and all these little yards.”
The weekly market has always been a thriving part of Knaresborough
life:
“I think the town have always provided the
stalls and a man who lived up Chapel Yard, I can’t think
of his name - he had a big – it wasn’t actually a wheelbarrow – it
was a – I can’t describe it – it was basketwork
I think and he used to have covers for the stalls and he used to
stack them all in this basket and bring them out of his yard on
a Wednesday and take them all round the stalls and then he used
to collect them all out when the market closed and take them into
his yard – I can’t think what they called him – I
can see him but I can’t get his name. And then they’d
park the horses wherever or empty them onto the stalls and then
go and leave the horses in the yards - they’d have their
nosebags, I don’t remember any horse troughs only the one
down Park Row but probably the people who lived in the yard would
probably bring a bucket of water out or something like that but
I don’t remember there being any specific – because
the Harts Horns you see that’s behind the street and there’s
a yard there where they used to stable the horses when they came
in.”
The market stalls sold a wide range of household goods:
“Everything: shovels, brushes and all sorts
of things – always have done and most of the stall holders
used to come from – a lot from Leeds but a lot from Lancashire
used to come. Used to have some smashing remnant stalls - used
to bring loads of remnants, one chappie, because I always used
to do a lot of sewing, used to save me all sorts of lovely remnants,
you know, having two girls 'I’ve saved you this today' and
'I’ve got you this' and 'What about that' so me and the
remnant dealers did a roaring trade.
… sweets were for being good, more boiled
sweets, acid drops used to be the most popular I think and pear
drops, dolly mixtures have been going forever, sherbet, sherbet
dabs [Easter eggs?] yes but not great fancy things like they have
now; there’d probably be a plain chocolate egg with your
name piped on. There were two sweet shops in the town up in the
Market Place and a big one down the High Street - Shipley’s,
they only sold sweets in those days big jars full on the shelves.
I don’t remember them selling sweeties then in the market
although they do now but I don’t remember there being a
sweet stall on the market [the market was mainly] clothing, kitchen
ware and things like that fruit and veg, pots and pans. “
Between the shops and the weekly market there was no need to
go out of the town for anything. OUT TO WORK
Testimonial from Parrs dated Jan 2 1931 when Annie
was made redundant.
“Miss Annie Lee was employed here about Two years and left us because of
reduction in Staff, first on a months holiday, when she would have had the first
opportunity to return for the Xmas Season, had she not been able to secure another
position. In every way she was perfectly honest and willing. Miss Lee has our
best wishes for her future.”
Annie
left school at the age of fourteen and she really enjoyed her
first job:
“My first job was at the newsagents in
town, in those days it was called Parrs and they sold all stationery
goods but they had a toy department upstairs and that was my
department - oh I loved working in the toy department. They had
a huge glass case upstairs which would cover that wall [about
4m wide] and inside it were hundreds of dolls that were all filthy – must
have been there donkeys years and the doors had been left open
and all the dresses were dropping to bits and their hair was
filthy and oh I was in my element because Mr Wilkinson asked
me if I’d like to wash them all. I had a gas boiler down
in a little passage in the shop –there’s a little
passage [next to] the big newsagent on the corner – and
used to heat water up in this gas boiler and cart it upstairs
in a bucket and used to do so many dolls at a time. I’d
to undress them all and wash all the clothes and dry them and
iron them and wash the dolls – because the dolls themselves
were all filthy – the hair in those days wasn’t the
sort it is now, you know, that’s easy to wash and do, it
were – I don’t know what sort of hair it was
but oh it was horrible to wash and to dry was a nightmare you
know and if it was a baby doll that had all these curls– I
used to wash the hair and put them all in rollers and then leave
them about a week to dry. I loved it – it took me months
to do this big case, there must have been hundreds of dolls but
when they were all done and all set up well of course then they
all sold. But there were dolls of all sizes, from big dolls to
little, tiny celluloid dolls and they all had to be washed and
titivated. That was my first job. I worked there two years About
10 shillings I think for the whole week. And we used to work
to 9 o’clock at night on a Friday night and Saturday night
but we had Thursday half day – when you reckon up all those
hours – for 50p!”
After two years at Parrs Annie was made redundant:
“I went to an Irish company had come from
Londonderry – lock, stock and barrel – all the machinery
and Irish girls to use them – they called the manager Mr
O’Mahenny and the factory itself was called the Rosaline
shirt factory. I worked there until I was 21 and then I moved
to a new factory that had opened at the top of Whincup Avenue
that made High School clothing and I fancied that. So I left
the Rosaline shirt factory and got a job in Gymwear, it was called,
and we made pinafore dresses [I was] always sewing – if
I wasn’t sewing I was knitting or crocheting but I loved
sewing from being about 10, I could make my own dresses and things– my
mother didn’t sew - it was my father who was the
instigator of sewing machine. [father bought the sewing machine?]
oh yes, and it was a commercial machine, it was a huge thing,
in the kitchen, and I could use this machine from being about
nine or ten, and did do.
I just loved, loved my work. Sewing to me was
therapy.”
Employment for the young men of the town was very often in
a family firm or apprenticeship:
“A lot of them went on the farms but a
lot were tradesmen, there were two or three building firms in
the town who all had sons, you know; in those days most people
had big families and I can remember the Fountains, they had about
five sons and they were all in the building trade; and the O’Briens – they
had sons and they were builders and the Peddles. And then there’d
be a family who all did plastering. In those days, if you had
a trade you were made up because there was always work for tradesmen
and if you could get apprenticed to be a tradesman well, it was
yours for life, not like it is today – there was a joiner’s
shop on Church Lane and they, of course, had apprentice joiners,
and things like that.”
In the same way, a daughter learned her domestic skills from
her mother, although not all of them in Annie’s case:
“I learned to cook [sewing?] no that was
my father’s side of the family - two sisters were dressmakers – well
one, Auntie Ginnie, was a tailoress and she married a tailor
and they opened a tailor’s shop in Armley Town Street in
Leeds and then they emigrated to Melbourne in Australia and had
a tailor’s shop out there and the other sister went to
Canada and married her boyfriend who had a farm in Saskatchewan.
When I was in my teens my job, I always made Sunday lunch, my
dad used to say I was the best Yorkshire Pudding maker in the
Northern Union, that’s what he used to say, I’ve
made them for many years from say about 12 or 13 onward, that
was my job.”
FAMILY LIFE
Until she married at 23 Annie lived with her parents:
“That’s what we used to do in our day – nobody
left home and lived on their own, you know, you stayed at home till you
got married and then you moved out but you didn’t move out and live
on your own or with your boyfriend – my father would have had
an epileptic fit.”
Annie’s father may have been strict but he was a good , hard-working
man who took a fierce pride in his work:
“My father was a stickler for, everything had to
be done by the book and all the equipment he used had to be of the best.
I can remember the name ‘Crabtree switches’ he wouldn’t
use anybody else’s switches but Crabtree. Jack [Annie’s brother]
use to say ‘oh, you can get so-and-so half the price’ ‘I
know that’ he’d still get the Crabtree switches.
The representative used to come – I can see him
now – called him Mr Wilson – used to come every month and
get orders for all the stuff he wanted you know, wiring and whatever switches,
ceiling roses, everything that he needed for his work. And then there
was a carrier, Mr Fitzpatrick – I think he came from Ripon, I’m
not sure, but he used to deliver all this electrical gear.”
And with a thriving business he took on a string of apprentices:
“My mum always used to take care of all the apprentices
you know, mother them, and spoil them my dad used to say, because she
used to try and make coffee for them - if she knew they were coming in
for anything she’d have the coffee ready. Oh, he had a lot over
the years, I couldn’t possibly say how many but eventually they
all finished up at the electricity board. Alec Mcondrie was apprenticed
to my dad for seven years– in fact Alec said not long before he
died he’d been doing something at one of the houses on Stockdale
Walk and the council said that they needed re-wiring so this whoever it
was – I can’t remember now – got Alec to come in and
see what he thought, you see, and Alec said the wiring in Stockdale
Walk was still better than the new houses that were being wired now.”
And he was well-known in the town:
“Everybody knew my father. Lady Evelyn Collins used
to, if she was passing she’d stop and shout ‘Bill’ -
well in with all the notabilities.”
Motor cars became more common in the town but Annie’s father refused
to have one – he preferred his bike:
“We never had a car, my dad wouldn’t have
a car even when they got really popular he wouldn’t have one. He
had a really heavy bike made. Gilbert Mann, up Gracious Street, he made
my father this specially heavy steel bike so that could take his - electricity
in those days used to be enclosed in tube – they called it tubing – it
was sort of black cylindric stuff – it came in great long lengths
and all these lived up in the passage, all this tubing. There was different
sorts, some was oval, some was round, but all the wires went up this tubing.
When they put electricity in the houses and my dad use to cart it about
on his cross-bar, you know, maybe half a dozen of these. He made
him a heavy bike, he was a sort of an engineer, he made all sorts. He
had a workshop up Gracious. No – he didn’t want one [a car],
he wasn’t going to have one.”
He seems to have lived for his work for Annie cannot remember any hobbies
or pastimes that he indulged in:
“He was a very, very quiet man, was my dad, he liked
to sit and contemplate, [did he read a lot?] he read, yes, he read, and
occasionally he’d go onto the British Legion and have a pint, but
he wasn’t a drinker as such. But when they moved into Finkle Street,
after my dad retired, I think he went more then, to the British Legion,
which was on the end of the street, I think it was more for company than
drink, he wasn’t a big drinker, wasn’t my dad. Work was his
life, he loved it, yes. Oh he would work endless hours - if there was
a job and my father had said it would be ready for such and such a day
he would work like stink and it had to be ready, completed, for this day,
oh he loved his work, yes. You see he wasn’t just an ordinary
run of the mill electrician, he could take an electric motor to pieces
and rewind it and everything.”
Annie’s mother, on the other hand, was as energetic in her leisure
time as she was at her work, looking after the shop and home:
“We lived behind the shop. My father owned an electrical
engineering business and we lived in the back kitchen, we had our meals
in the back kitchen behind the shop and our sitting room was over the
shop and then the bedrooms were up another flight of steps, there were
four floors - it’s still there. She [Annie’s mother] saw to
all the children, cooked, baked – she was a wonderful baker. Monday
was wash day and Tuesday was ironing – in fact mother started with
the washing really on a Sunday night because she always put the whites
to soak in the bath – our bathroom was upstairs – so all the
sheets and the white things, tablecloths and things like that she used
to take upstairs and put them all in cold water in the bath. I can’t
think that she ever put anything in to soak them; then she wrang them
out – we had a tin bath that was so big and it had handles at either
side and she used to wring them out by hand and put them all in this tin
bath then carry then downstairs into the kitchen to go in the – whatever
she was going to do with them – boil them or scrub them [there was
no machine to help with the washing at all?] oh no and we had no running
hot water either so she’d all the water to boil in a gas boiler.
She had a cooker – well there was a fire but it wasn’t – you
could only boil a kettle on it, you couldn’t do anything with it.
She had a tub and a posser and they used to put them all in – all
the whites went in first and they got all possed and mangled; carbolic
soap or Sunlight soap– oh there was no soap powders like we have
now. You had dolly blue for your whites where you just swished
this blue thing in a little canvas bag - that went in last, it was supposed
to make them look whiter. She had a mangle in the yard. And we always
had good dinners at night, you know all home-cooked food, no frozen
meals or anything like that, no no. Oh hard work, yes, all day long,
the whole house always smelt of washing on a Monday, I hated it.”
And the following day ironing with a flat iron:
“She heated it on the fire [did she have two on
the go?] yes she did, and she had a piece of flannel that was
about six layers thick and she had an iron holder that she used to pick
the iron up and she used to rub this iron, because it was in the fire,
heating, and then she had another little piece of flannel with a piece
of beeswax stuck on that and she used to rub her iron on that
and then you start. But in those days you didn’t have a clean
shirt on every day like they do today – my son-in-law – I
ironed 11 or 12 shirts for him for a week!. You didn’t do that – you
couldn’t
possibly have done it. [Then] it’s all round the clothes horse
airing you know, nothing was put away till it was aired, now they just
iron it and it goes straight back in the drawer, but not in those days,
it always had to air - I still do it. We had no steam irons you had
a cloth that you wrang out in water to do anything that was really badly
creased, you know, and you put this cloth on and ironed on top of it – but
that was the beginning of the steam irons, of course, but we didn’t
have any steam irons – not when I was young.”
And no appliances to help with the housework:
“Well that was Friday’s job – no, there
weren’t any – Hoovers hadn’t been invented in those
days, no. All the mats were carried outside and put on a clothes line
and beaten, and then you swept all the kitchen up, it was stone with lino
on top. Sweep it all then get down on your hands and knees and wash it
or scrub it; and there were two stone steps up to the back yard and two
that started the steps up to the bedrooms, and they had to be scrubbed;
and the front, you see, was the shop door which mother used to scrub to
the pavement, you know, in a square from the front, oh, everybody looked
after the front – and when you went into other people’s houses
that had steps down into the street, they were all donkey-stoned … like
a flat piece of stone and you could get it in different shades and you
scrubbed your steps and rinsed them and dried them and then you did all
the corners with this donkey stone it was sort of beige coloured or cream,
everybody did the steps – proud of the front steps.”
But her mother didn’t believe in polish:
“ She used elbow … she used to call it elbow
grease and a wash leather, wrung out in vinegar and water. Because all
of our furniture had belonged to my grandparents and it was really heavy,
and it was nearly all rosewood, you know, that red wood, and mother always – no
she didn’t like polish it left smears on; she used to just use
a wash leather as I say, wrung out in vinegar.”
Baking day was a favourite:
“Oh baking day, and mother used to make new cakes … they’re
a flat circle out of the bread dough she baked … do you remember
how they used to bake bread – [folding in and then kneading?]
yes and covered it up in front of the fire while it rose and then she
used to say ‘come on, have a smell of this’ and she used to
have a big carving knife and slice the dough and the smell from the yeast
used to come out – it was supposed to be good for you – whether
it was or not I’ve no idea. And then divide it all up into loaves
and finally the pieces that were left she used to roll with her rolling
pin into a circle with a hole in the middle – used to go like
this and it used to spin round [finger through imaginary hole in flat dough,
spinning] and they went in the oven first and there’d be about
four big new cakes and she used to stand them up against the back door
to cool and when we came home from school we were into that, you know,
while it was still warm, lovely – butter and treacle on this new
cake – absolutely delicious.
I can’t remember what day baking day was but
there was a baking day when she did all her bread and cakes, fruit
cakes, mostly sponges, a lot of sponges.”
And without fridges or freezers other methods had to be found to keep
foodstuffs for long periods – a terracotta cylindrical jar up-ended
over a milk bottle to keep it fresh, and Isenglass for eggs:
“I remember she used to put eggs in Isenglass for
the winter in a big, well it was like, I don’t know, a bread bin,
it was; this again was terracotta and it sort of had a lip on the top,
and she used to put all these eggs down for the winter. Fresh eggs and
you stored them in Isenglass for when you couldn’t get fresh
eggs in the winter; that was always under the sink in a recess and then
you just used them – you could boil them or cook with them or anything – they
were just kept and when you took them out they were like a
fresh egg.”
Annie’s mother also looked after the shop as her husband would
be out working all day. But in her time off she played just as hard:
“Thursdays was her half day when she played bowls– she
was the captain of the club for several years in the Castle Yard – then
they built a new one, down at the back of – when the old Elephant
and Castle Hotel was on the High Street behind it they built a new bowling
green which is still in use. But mainly, in those days, it was mainly
on the castle top, in the Castle Yard. And then when they built this new
green then they moved back – it’s right at the back of the
High Street. That was her hobby – playing bowls with the other ladies – and
they used to play other clubs, you know, they had a little
mini-bus thing.
My mother loved dancing but my father couldn’t and
he didn’t want to know how either.”
Annie’s mother loved to visit her extended family in Leeds:
“Mother was always going somewhere. Mother was one
of ten – they had a big family and they were a close family all
in Leeds, all in Armley, all lived in Armley, all my mother’s sisters
and brothers lived in Armley and so consequently mother used to go, well
I say go home, frequently, especially at first when we moved to Knaresborough,
she’d go home, nearly every weekend we’d go through to Leeds.
They were such a close family, yes they were – used to go for the
weekend to one and another, always - on Sunday you always went to
a different auntie for tea, Sunday tea, you know. But we didn’t
stay with mother’s relatives - we stayed with our next door
neighbours – who used to be our next door neighbours when we were
little, you know, when we lived in Wortley they lived next door and they
had no children so we became their children and that was Uncle Tom and
Auntie Amy - you always used to call them aunties and uncles whether
they were or not, you know, when you were little, always round
about Armley somewhere in Armley: Thornley Road, Low Street and all;
well you could walk [from Wortley to Armley], if you were able, but
we used to get the tram.”
Adept as Annie is at sewing, it isn’t a talent that came from
her mother, although even she, like most women at the time, could make
clothes to a certain degree:
“She used to make us plain little dresses, you know,
and she crocheted a lot, she didn’t knit, she crocheted.”
And in doing her work she would always wear a pinafore, a pinny – a
habit Annie has inherited:
“… always had one of those crossover pinafores – a
long one that you put on and fastened at the back, always a cross-over
pinny - she’d dozens of those. You see I’m a bit like that
myself, when I come in I put my – my daughter goes mad , I’ll
put my pinny on, I’m not doing anything but it’s habit and
she says ‘What have you got your pinny on now for, what are you
doing?’ and I’ll say ‘Well, nothing’ ‘Well
what do you want your pinny on for?’ I say ‘Well it keeps
my stomach warm’. It’s habit – see now they don’t
do it – all my children had their own pinafores and before they
came to the table to eat they’d put their pinafores on – which
is what we had to do – habit. And really, it’s far easier
to wash a pinafore than it is a shirt or a dress.”
Sundays were always a special day:
“Everybody had their Sunday clothes which you put
on to go to church, went to Sunday school and church as you got older,
you know. My mother was a Congregationalist when we lived in Leeds so
we found the Congregational churches when we came to Knaresborough and
we went to their Sunday school and church all the time – to this
day I have never been confirmed because they don’t do that in non-conformist
churches, you know. And you know there was great rivalry between church
and chapel - the Congregational – although it was called
the Congregational Church – it was always as a chapel, it wasn’t
Church of England, and there was sort of rivalry between Church
of England and chapelgoers and the chapelgoers were always on a lower
level than the Church of England, so to say, oh yes there was great
rivalry between church and chapel.
Oh yes, Sunday best and Sunday shoes, [at other
times] you wore either your school clothes or your play things, always
bare legs – oh yes – my son never lets me forget that
he was the only one in King James Grammar in short trousers.”
Annie so loved Sunday School that she became a teacher at the age of
16 and taught until she married.
A Concert Party
As a youngster Annie enjoyed singing. Annie also made costumes for the
concerts and her father helped with the lighting:
“My main occupation as a teenager was amateur – didn’t
used to call it amateur operatics in our day – we had a lady belonging
to our church and we had a concert party, Mrs Whitehouse’s concert
party, and there’d be, oh, 40 or 50 of us, and we used to give
a show every year – I don’t think it was any special
time – when we were ready I expect; and we used to rehearse in
the Sunday School room, and at Mrs Whitehouse’s home. But that
was our main occupation, rehearsing for this show that we used to give.
We used to do all sorts of things, we used to do Variety Shows and we
used to do operettas. I remember ‘Cupid and the Ogre’ they
called one – I still have programmes somewhere. My father always
used to do the [electrical work] – he made spotlights for the stage
and he used to be at the back with a big light – working a spotlight,
you know, in the Congregational Church Hall – for twenty years
or more we did it.”
A Concert Party Programme
WILHELMINA, the Duchess’s Cook … Miss A.Lee. ELECTRIC LIGHTING … … Mr
B. Lee
Knaresborough was a place where, with a much smaller population, everyone
knew each other:
“Everybody knew everybody else and the townspeople
did more together. The Chamber of Trade was the great thing in those
days, father was in the Chamber of Trade - he was the president one year,
and they had dinner dances and get togethers and the townspeople seemed
to participate more with one another than they do now – well we
have no town hall now you see, when the town hall closed Knaresborough
started to go downhill. [Coach trips] used to come down from the north
to the races further south and all pile into these coaches in the Market
Place and have breakfast at Spencers café, [In winter it was]
dinner dances [the licensed victuallers], Chamber of Trade, [farmers
ball], the masons [a dance at least once a week ] it was smashing.
Everybody joined in.
Younger people, incomers, have different ideas to
those who’ve lived here all their lives – they don’t
think along the same lines.”
COURTING COUPLE
Bernard on the river.
Annie met her future husband, Bernard, when he became an apprentice to
her father on leaving school:
“[He was with my father] for seven years and [then]
business was slowing down and my father persuaded him to join the Harrogate
Electricity Board because they had a pension scheme – or something
like that – and my father couldn’t afford to do it so seeing
as we were courting he was looking out for his daughter, I
expect, to make sure that I was going to be alright.
I knew him since being 14 but we didn’t start going
out together until we were 18. He lived at Ribston, what is it - three
and a half miles to Ribston, and he used to bike it every morning hail,
snow or anything – bike – it was the only way you could get
about, you biked through the country roads.”
Courting was subject to strict rules:
“You couldn’t go out every night [and I had
to be in by] ten o’ clock – I still had to be in at 10 the
night before I got married – I used to get an awful lecture
from my father if I was late in. We used to go in the Castle Yard and
on the Waterside, on Crag Top for a walk and a canoodle as we used to
call it– we used to go to the pictures now and then, the Roxy cinema
it was called and affectionately called the ‘bug hutch’ just
off the High Street opposite the bus station – I don’t know,
it’s flats now I think.”
Annie and Bernard married in 1939, just a few months before the outbreak
of war:
“I was 23 … we were married in the April
and war started in September - ruined all our plans, because we were
talking about buying a house but we couldn’t find – in those
days there weren’t many new houses, although building went on
and you only had a certain - you didn’t have money like they have
today – you
only had your wages to save and although we could have paid
the mortgage we couldn’t get enough together to put the deposit,
because in those days you had to put I don’t know how many thousands
down, you know, and we never could manage it. And of course when
the war came well that was six years on soldier’s pay and what
I earned myself so that did away with all thoughts of buying a house
because we never could get the deposit together.
We went to Blackpool on a dancing honeymoon, we danced
every day either at the Tower Ballroom or the Winter Gardens, it was smashing.
Blackpool’s lovely – out of season.
… I didn’t know I was pregnant when he joined
the army - I didn’t know I was, when he went to France, I
didn’t know…”
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