Village Voices

Creativity in the village environment, gardens and buildings

This section of the Heritage Open Day display showcased information collected by the History Society via the ‘Village Voices’ oral history project.  The project began in 2018 with the initiation of a series of interviews with village people to capture memories and recollections which might otherwise be lost.  The full interviews are available via the voices page on this website.

The project had to pause during the pandemic but is planned to restart from autumn 2023.

The following quotes from the interviews reflect creativity in its broadest sense, from gardening and building to sewing and mending.

Gardening

Gardening was a major part of life for some interviewees and their parents.  Both allotment sites, the ‘Garden Field’ off Newton Lane and the site on Carlton Road, were important and well used by villagers as demonstrated by the following quotes.

Colin Cotton 

Interviewer

Your father was obviously very skilled at working the land and producing lots of vegetables and flowers for your mum.  So could you explain about the allotments on the opposite side of Newton Lane?

Colin Cotton  

Well there was quite a lot of allotments up there really.  I think they used to use it for the ‘Dig for Victory’ in the Second World, you know, but it was before my time. Me father had a lot of them, he had this garden, he quite a lot up the garden field as well, allotments.  He had ‘em, more than one, oh my father he spent most of his time digging. You know, he liked to mostly, you know, cultivating the land and all this sort of thing.

Nancy Waters

Dad had his two plots in the allotments.  Once a year there was a flower show as well as vegetables and dad used to win lots of prizes because he had vegetables and grew flowers.  He picked the best runner beans put them in a damp cloth overnight to keep them fresh, and cauliflower and cabbages.

We had a carrot pit along the garden path and a potato pit.  When they were picked then they were stored in soil with straw on the top.

Phil Burley

But sort of like from up to four years of age all I can remember is being carted up to the allotments every morning with mum and just going to collect these damned eggs.

That’s how they first got this deep litter house.  Fred and his brother Len [Phil’s father and uncle] he was a builder, hen house, yeah, and literally it was, it was done with like plasterboard and bits and pieces and pitch roof.  Len built all these perches for them, feed troughs, it was a work of art.

Richard Jackson

Mrs Allan asked me if I’d like to become a gardener with her.  She offered me a job there so that’s where I first sort of started work really.  Round the Abbey.

I used to keep the greenhouses going, you know, stoke the fires up and all that sort of thing and the potting shed, I used to work with a bloke called Alf Sugars. You had like the walled garden, all vegetables and different things there and the two greenhouses, used to grow tomatoes and cucumbers and flowers, used to have lots of different flowers, geraniums and other things you’d pot on.  We used to go over the field with a sack and a shovel digging up the cowpats, and we used to put the sack in the barrel of water to make a feed for the tomatoes, that was the best feed you could have.

Nigel Hartwell

Interviewer

What did he do for a job your dad?

Nigel Hartwell

He was a gardener at Picts Hill

Interviewer

Has Picts Hill always been the big house, with him given the cottage to live in as a gardener?

Nigel Hartwell

Yes, what they called a tied house.  My dad being a gardener as well so, he had a bit of an allotment as well up Newton Lane. 

Building, bricklaying and carpentry

There were several building firms in Turvey and some interviewees had worked on the same projects, creating new houses which, in some cases, they then lived in.

Dave Hilson

Our workshops were at the start of Norfolk Road, there some little bungalows there now ain’t there, as you go round, well that was a big workshop there, carpenters workshop.  Mr Warren, two Mr Warrens lived up Norfolk Road.

Interviewer

You worked on all the houses in Tandy’s [Close] did you?

Dave Hilson 

Yes, all of the houses in Tandy’s yes.  I finished up actually, on my own, finished up, because they had two sections, they had a section that went down to number 12, I think it was, number 11 number 12, then they had a break and we put houses up in Odell and places like that, then we came back and built 2, 2, 2, and a block of 4 at the bottom.  Most of them had come back from the war, most of them were ex soldiers, sailors, etc.  Couple of farm workers got houses there, but most of them were ex soldiers.”

Harold Sergeant

I finished school on the Friday night and I started work on the Monday.  I was going building for Warrens, and I started off there as a bricklayer.  Yeah, Warrens in Turvey, yeah, there, I think, we built their offices and workshop on the corner of Bamfords Yard, up the top corner.  As you turn round the corner to go up to the houses, there’s a, it’s gone now, it’s a bungalow there now, but that was a workshop.

We started building these houses [Tandy’s Close] and I actually laid most of the bricks on this house. Charlie and I built the rest of them, the block of four down the bottom I built that pair, there, and that block of four, on me own.

Malcolm Church

I decided I wanted to be a brick layer instead of a labourer and I went on a course.

I built Nick’s opposite the gas works, I did all the renovation work on that, on the corner of the Fyshes car park.  I built all that end and all the sheds and the brickwork in the garden.

I did an extension in Abbey Square, built a fireplace and a chimney that goes right up through the house and out.

Len Savage, as told by his daughter Pauline Cameron

The firm of builders was LM Savage but that was for my grandfather, that was Leonard Montague.

Interviewer 

And what was your dad’s name?

Pauline Cameron

Leonard Henry Arthur, and they had their workshop at the bottom of Newton Lane, which was the old forge which was knocked down to build the houses which are there now. I do remember a great big handcart with great big wheels, that they used to put everything on and wheel it round the village to do all their jobs

He did a lot of work on the Abbey and things, before it became, before the Benedictine nuns came in.

Sewing,  making do and mending

Money was tight which made sewing and repairing a vital skill.  Some villagers were especially good at this.

Nancy Waters

My mum was a brilliant lady.  She would go to jumble sales and buy an overcoat or something, take it apart, wash the material and make us playing clothes.  She had a treadle sewing machine and she would always use old sheets to make pillow cases.  She used everything she possibly could.  Never wasted a thing.

Music  

Not all the memories were about working life or making ends meet, both for entertainment and pleasure, music was very important in village life as Dewi Waters recalled.

Dewi Waters

I was in the choir for some years, but other than that…I never played an instrument but some of the young people in the village did and they formed what they called skiffle groups in those days.  I used to go and support them and different things.  They used to play in the village hall.

More information on the Skiffle Band can be found here.