Autobiographical
This is transcribed from an interview with Charles Gray in March 2006.
Charles was born on the 8th November 1923 in Southrepps and died 20th September 2008. His father Albert was known as Captain Gray and his mother was Annie Elizabeth Gotts, known as May. He had three sisters, Lillian, Jean and Phyllis. He married Joan Haywood in 1946 in North Walsham, and lived in Boulac Cottage behind the New Inn.
My earliest recollections of any events was when I was six or seven because my mother died when I was seven years old. I remember her lying in a bed downstairs and passing away. I really never knew her as one would know a mother because she died too early. I don’t think anyone’s memory before that age is going to be good.
As a child what were your recollections of the village?
We were living in Southrepps at the time. When she died, we were living at Boulac cottage. Boulac Cottage was a three bedroomed cottage near the recreation ground. It is still there and still occupied. That’s where I grew up through my early years and school days until I started work and then I joined the Navy so I lived there until I was 20 years old.
The village was a totally self-contained village. There was nothing you could not get or get made or fixed. I am talking about everyday things. You had repairers of radios and bicycles. We didn’t have a motor repairer’s as there were only at that time about three cars in the village. There were vans as opposed to motor cars. Our house was more or less in the middle of the High Street. At the most Easterly end there was the bakers shop. At this particular time in 1931 there were tradesmen, a repairer, and all sorts of shops of everything you could want. There was a full-blown bakers shop that did all the baking. There really wasn’t any opposition because nobody came into the village as everything was already here. Then as you left the bakers you came to the butchers shop on Crown Loke. The butchers shop was manned by the butcher himself and two assistants. They killed their own beef and pigs, and slaughter day was Monday. Usually on a holiday people like kids would have to go and see the cattle slaughtered, something you would not see today and probably wouldn’t want to. He sold all the meat especially beef. In those days beef was much fatter because cattle were allowed to put on weight irrespective and usually people would prefer a bit of fat rather than all lean.
Then we had surrounding the butcher two public houses, one was the Vernon Arms and the other was the New Inn. The brewers were Stewart and Patterson, and Morgans, both from Norwich. They had motorised transport, I never saw them with a horse drawn cart as it was a long way from the city. Where the butchers shop was used to be a pub but that closed just after the First World War. (It closed in 1903) It was always a butchers shop. The butchers shop was in another part of the building. Another shop on Church Street was a grocers shop and another grocers shop next to the New Inn Pub and one of the nice things about it was that they closed at 10.00 pm so you were never late for work. As you went down the street the first house was the Post Office kept by a relation of mine. Opposite the Post Office on the High Street was a saddle maker, he was there and besides making horses collars and saddles for riders he made lunch bags for school children out of canvas with a leather strap over the top. Next to him was Eddy Bates, he was the wheelwright and carpenter and undertaker. When he was a bit slack he made one or two boxes. Coffins of course we had to have them in reserve. Next to him was the blacksmith so we had the harness maker, the wheelwright and the blacksmith all one after the other and they all worked together as each department needed the other. When they had finished making the tumbril wheel with its wooden spokes, they wheeled it down to the blacksmiths and he in turn put the metal tyre on. It was heated to a purply bronze colour. The tyre was then lowered onto the wooden wheel and when that fitted nice and snug, they threw pails of water on it. The shrinking effect was all it needed to stay in place without nails or screws.
Then you had the man who sold radios and batteries. The early radios had wet batteries and dry batteries. The man in the shop would charge up the wet batteries and go round the village delivering them. I think his charge was about 4d to charge the battery. I think everyone was very happy with life, there was very little discontent. I think the difference between today and then, there is not a great deal of difference, people seem to think that life is a lot more hurried, well maybe in the middle of a city, the middle of a big town. Here in Southrepps things remain slow, steady and maybe that’s why so many people come here to finish their days here.
Was it an affluent village? Were the people in the 1930s affluent or poor?
They certainly weren’t affluent. People who had some money were countable on one hand. Say the Parson, and the major landowners but of course they weren’t that wealthy because farming was at a very low state. The average person, you can say 49 out of 50 were extremely poor. They lived weekly, we were poor people there is no question about that. When the unemployment was 15s a week and there were big families because really there was nothing much else to do but have big families. I think people were kind to one another. An example of this I always think about, concerns my father. He had a big garden like most people who grow their own vegetables and lots of fruit. On Saturday he would say or I would go round the village as they came into season with lettuce and radish at 1d or 2d to different people. Now one didn’t think about it at the time, but years afterwards I wonder why they wanted to buy it off me when they had it growing in their own garden. Out of pure kindness.
Was there much change in the village from the early 1930s up to the second world war?
No there was not a lot of change until 1938 when the first scare about war starting. People began to talk about the first war and it all happening again, which of course it did. The war changed peoples attitude to village life. It took some time to change after the war. It was not until the late 1950s and early 1960s that things became significantly different, people were hanging onto old thoughts about the pre-war days. It related mainly I suppose one could buy the whole weeks groceries for 5 or 6 shillings. Relatively speaking the same as today, probably a lot cheaper today.
Tell me what was it like in the village in the war years? Young men leaving and not returning. Your own experience of the Home Guard.
I would have been about 15 years of age when the Home Guard started in the village. The Parson, the Reverend Foster Smith, he led the charge. They had a meeting on the recreation ground under the dear old oak tree. There had been a notice in the shop saying there was to be a meeting, and of course that’s where it all started. They had elected who was going to be the sergeant, who was an old soldier, because of course there was a lot of soldiers from the First World War. Boys like me were all in. We were known as the Local Defence Volunteers LDV. We had no rifles or uniform, nothing only the bodies, so they all banded together very well. It was some months before everybody had a pair of boots. It was generally in those days that the sergeant had to kit out his family before anyone else had a pair of boots.
THERE IS A BREAK HERE WITH A MISSING QUESTION PRESUMABLY ABOUT CHILDHOOD MEMORIES.
When they opened Carrow Road the football ground first match they had. They played West Ham I think, I can’t remember. My father took us on the train of course. He took me and Ted Bird who is four years younger than me. I could take you to the spot where we stood, where the South stand is now. He stood there, I sat on his shoulders for the first half and Ted sat on his shoulders for the second half. There were no seats. I thought afterwards to stay on someone’s back for that length of time———-I don’t think——–the old saying is what you haven’t had you don’t miss it, but by God when you have had it, then you miss it.
I volunteered, went up and had a medical and found out I could not wee to order… it’s something that has troubled me all my life. When they found out, they gave me some water but I told them I could drink forever and it would not make any difference. They said… I was totally disappointed over this that I had to come back the next week with a sample in a medicine bottle. I trundled up and of course this was OK then I expected to get my call up papers the next day. It was so naïve and nothing arrived. After a couple of weeks I wrote and asked. I don’t know if anyone else did that. Within a week I had the calling up papers.
You were 18 at the time Charlie?
Yes, I had to report to a place I had never heard of in my life, Gosport. I had heard of Portsmouth but not Gosport. So out come the map. The thought of going to Norwich, then London then changing trains to Gosport, that was a frightening thought. I had been to London once on a cheap day tip with my brother-in-law. And of course the great day came. Standing on Thorpe Station I saw somebody I guessed was in the same predicament as myself I asked where he was going. He said he had a ticket to Gosport in Hampshire. I thought, thank God for that, it wouldn’t have made any difference, neither of us knew the place. Any road we got there and that was when life changed.
Who paid for that Charlie?
They sent you that. As a volunteer you had to do a trade test. I did the trade test on the old Victory, cracked my skull so many times. It was a simple thing- What really astonished me was that in a class of 28 men……….After they did the trade test, I had to make a one inch nut. They give you an old piece of raw metal with something like the shape of a big nut. Really it was to see if you could use a file and a hacksaw and drill and tap the thing out. Really it was not a true test and we had an oral test- some bloke working a lathe said, do you know the firing order of a six cylinder car you know things you know were not a test of your ability having been on a four year apprenticeship. Well anyway it did in the long term pay off as in the long term it was so valuable what they taught me to do the job they give me.
Lets go back, when you left school at 14, what happened to the average kids when they left school?
Well there was very little option to what one does. There was the eleven plus when one was picked out from the village schools. I would say most of the kids were brainy enough to pass the eleven plus but of course their parents could not afford the uniform and they could not afford to send the child to school. So the headmaster decided who was worthy and who would be able to go. Although it was never said, so it certainly did happen. From the village here, the number of boys that say—-Southrepps school; had something like 150 pupils—you did not have a chance to sit the examination because you were not considered capable of sitting- that’s what happened to me. That happened to my sisters, it happened to a lot of people. My eldest sisters would have clearly passed University Examination let alone the secondary school but if the Headmaster and his name was Hector Percy Jones he lived in Cromer after he give up a very respected man but if he did not think your family was fit enough you could not go. It was very unfair. In this Street we had one boy who went, in fact he was the chap I thought could relate his experience. He lives in North Walsham. He joined the RAF. he went to Canada for training. When he got there, he could not fly because he was sick.