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Wartime memories of Ampthill Part One — evacuees and leaving school and starting work at Elstow Ordnance Factory

Part one of an oral history interview with Mrs. Mary Smith (née Sharpe) conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum

“I can remember the beginning of the War but I can’t remember when they actually announced it. I was 12 when the war began and almost 18 when it finished. I can’t remember listening to it on the wireless. But I can remember how things did start changing and the evacuees coming. More or less yes, and it was rather exciting we used to go and watch them arriving and look at them just as though they’d come from another planet. They weren’t bad kids. If you’d got room you had to have evacuees. We didn’t have any at that time because my brother was at home. We had them when the second lot came, we had two girls. But we didn’t have them at the beginning, I can only think that we were using the space that we were allotted and couldn’t fit anymore in. But towards the end of the war, yes, we had two nice little girls, they were both eleven, Valerie and Yvonne. They were good kids really but they were quite different. I used to take them on walks, they used to love coming out on walks. And Christmas, they’d never had stockings or pillow cases or anything like that and they thought it was marvellous the presents we gave them at Christmas.

I was at work I was 16 or 17. I used to do everything I could to keep them interested in things because they used to want to see their mums quite often. They used to come down as often as they could but they couldn’t come down every week could they? I always remember Valerie’s mum was a stand in on a film set, she worked as a stand in for the starts. She was blonde, quite smart and they used to come down together these two mums. But the girls were quite happy they didn’t make any fuss until the war actually ended and they couldn’t get home quick enough! You thought, well all that, and they’d gone, just like that. They did come down when I got married, they did come to my wedding but I don’t think I’ve seen them since then. Shame really.

I can remember the evacuees and we had to have them in the schools. There were so many of them and it was such a tiny school because it was a school where the Indian Restaurant is on the way to Woburn. We all had to double up on the seats for a start and they were crammed in tight, in with us and we didn’t like that. They brought a lot of teachers with them so they were all teaching all the groups trying to teach at the same time. And absolutely filled with children because there were only, what, two or three classrooms and that’s all. That was from Babies, from fives up to the fourteen. So we had another whole school had come into our school and oh, it was chaos, it really was. We were all in together, all the time. You can imagine what it was like especially because we didn’t always fit in with each other because with them coming from another part, they were quite different to us. They came from (Walthamstow, London) Camden Town to us! The school that was up Bedford Street, they had another school, (had Camden Town) they were all billeted with a school.

Our school was the Methodist School, or the Sands School. We had to fit in but they were much better at sports than we were and it just made you feel so inferior. Because we’d always gone for the teaching of arithmetic and English and that sort of thing and left out the sports bit so we were hopeless and they were pretty good. But they weren’t so good on the lessons, no they weren’t and they used to hate it. I used to hate playing netball. But some of the kids were nice and we got friendly with them. So were very cocky and some used to fight. Laughter! They’d come down - all ages and we just had to get along best we could really. Some of them went back when the bombing slackened off, they went back so there was more room but they came down again when I was older, when the buzz bombs started and we’d got them back down but by then I was at work. I left school at 14.

I remember the teachers. Yes I can remember Miss Lawson was the first one when I went to school. Then there was Miss Robinson, everybody liked Miss Robinson because she used to like poetry and I used to say poetry then. When I went to my brother once, that was before I was at school officially, she made me stand on a chair and recite this poem that I’d been learning to her, ‘Oh, very good’ she said. I can remember that. That was Mr. York, of course, he was the Headmaster and he was very strict. He was quite strict, they wouldn’t play about with him and the boys used to get the cane sometimes, even the girls, one or two girls but he didn’t reckon giving it to the girls but one or two did get it if they were really bad. But yes, he was a good man, he was a good teacher but he expected you all to be clever and I wasn’t a dunce, I was just ordinary.

When the St.Clare’s school came to Ampthill from Clacton (it was a Catholic Convent with Nuns teaching) and they came to do these evening classes and also in the day time of course. They had a daytime school but at night they did the evening classes for shorthand, typing and book keeping. That was the top of Station Road, there was a house there which they’ve knocked down now and it’s more or less where the Council Offices are. It was a big rambling house that had belonged to an old family, I think Miss Osborne lived there. We used to go there at nights when we’d come home from work. I didn’t get home until about six and we’d have to have our dinner and then go out for about seven, about half past seven for two to two and half hours, three times a week. My friend, she used to come from Millbrook and she used to come on a bicycle, used to cycle from Millbrook and it was black. She used to wear trousers to cycle in and she actually got told off by the Nuns when she got in that they weren’t suitable for a Convent so she must not wear them! She wore them for warmth in the winter so she used to have to change by the gate into the garden, and poor girl, we used to have to wait for her while she put her slacks on or took them off. Because in those days a lot of people didn’t use to wear trousers, today everybody wears trousers but not then, we were quite daring really.

I was fourteen when I left school - it was July 1939, just turned fourteen. I didn’t do much at all until my mother got me the job at the new Ordnance Factory at Elstow and that was quite big and quite overwhelming for me, I was only fourteen. I was still doing the nightclasses. Then when she thought that I was good enough she took me in to see if I could get a job. When I first started I was getting 14/6d, that’s old money and when I left I think I must have been getting between £4 and £5. Now it doesn’t seem much, well we managed alright. Well in the beginning I used to give my mother all of it and she used to give me enough back for my food and bus fares. That’s all I used to have in the beginning, I expect it changed as I got older.

Well I was one of the first one’s because they were just starting getting them in but soon I was joined by two or three other young girls, like me. We were all in the same office and we used to have a box on the wall, numbered and when the person in the office wanted a messenger girl they would press a button and a disc would fall over the hole with their office number above. So you knew that Mr. Lesley wanted a messenger up in number 10 and you used to have to go up there and get the message and deliver it and come back. There was another one, the disc had gone down, you’d go and come back that’s what it was really. That’s all we did was run messages as I recall and of course do the post if we had to, take it round. We didn’t go up through the Danger Gate as I say. If we did we used to have to get a special pass and we’d go on the bicycle. Nobody wanted to do that so it was kind of — who’s going to go? I know of one girl that’s still here that was there - I have seen her but not lately. Another one, I think most of them have died. Then they gradually went off into different offices. They might go into Accounts or Clerical Office, they used to pass through and go on, be moved.

But of course I wasn’t doing any typing at that time I was just a general dogs body really when I first starrted. Then I got onto, in those it used to be duplicating, you to have to hand feed it and it was quite good because you could get quite a speed up and then I was on that for a while. Then they put me in the Typing Pool as a junior typist. That’s where I stayed and there were 12 of us I think and I had to do all the jobs that weren’t all that great. But gradually I got on and in the end the Managers used to ask for me to do their work, that’s the way you progressed really.

I didn’t like shorthand and if I could get out of doing it I didn’t do it. Laughter! Then they cut down on the staff. It was run by Lyons the cake people as a War Effort, and they said that they had too many staff. The Ministry said, ‘You must cut down’, because they had 12 in the Typing Pool and they cut them down to two, so there was only me as a junior and a senior one. Her name was Ethel Blackburn and she married one of the Lyons Managers. She was good! She had been a secretary for years. We used to do the work then and then gradually they took on more but never as many as 12, not in one Department. That’s how it was, it was quite interesting, we had a good time really.

In the beginning I got a lift with one of my father’s friends but that was a bit dicey really, couldn’t rely on the lift. So when the staff were taken on for the factory to get the factory going they had factory buses and that’s what I used to go on mainly. Especially if I had to go in early I used to go on a factory bus because it was about 7 o’clock I think. If I went in late I went on an ordinary bus and then we’d go in where the entrance is now actually, it’s still the same but they’ve knocked all the buildings down where we were, they’ve knocked a lot of buildings down. We all had passes and they didn’t really use to bother a lot. The driver used to have stop and I suppose identify himself but otherwise they didn’t come on to the bus. We did if we were walking - we had to show it when we went through the gate but not on the bus. Sometimes we used to go in at Wilstead end. That was the end where the actual filling was done, nearer that end. That’s where the filling sheds were and we weren’t allowed off the bus because we hadn’t got that pass. We hadn’t got the pass to go into that area so we had to stay on the bus and then it would come through, onto the Bedford Road again.

Quite often we would work on a Saturday morning and then we couldn’t get buses back on the Bedford road because they didn’t seem to run a lot on a Saturday and it was always dicey as to how we got back home. Sometimes we used to get a lift! Laughter! We used to hitch a lift, anything, you wouldn’t do it today, on the big lorries and they used to stop and two or three of us would pile into the cab. When I think, you’d never do that today, but that’s how we used to get home. It was better than standing there, we used to think it was fun. If we could get on the Lyons delivery van, they used to have great big delivery vans to bring stuff in to the Canteen from London, and if we were lucky he would be going back to London when we wanted to go home. So if we were lucky we’d get in the back where all the cake trays where and sit on the cake trays, he’d drop us in Ampthill. Yes we did that rather often”.

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