GROWING UP IN GOSMORE
I remember a happy wartime childhood. This might sound a contradiction in terms, but I was too young to understand what was happening elsewhere. I was just happy in my own secure world of my parents, my grandparents who lived next door and our many pets.
I was often told by my mother when she brought me home from Benslow Nursing Home some days after my birth in May 1940 the road home was blocked at Gosmore by a barrier of miscellaneous farm machinery and implements in an attempt to block a suspected imminent invasion by the enemy. Dad told me I was born on the day the Germans invaded Belgium and so the threat was very real.
I remember that although my Dad and Grandad Sid and Will Linfield, worked in Munts shop at 21 High Street, Hitchin, it was actually very difficult to obtain new toys and there was great excitement when I was given a sad-looking handmade dog of pink and blue stockinette, who for some unexplained and unfortunate reason I called “Wonk”!
When I caught Scarlet Fever, which in those days was a dangerous illness, I was lucky enough to be able to stay at home and not sent away to the local isolation hospital at Letchworth as my friends were. Those two words still give me an uneasy feeling even today.
To cheer me up, on one of her visits our family doctor, Winifred Simmonds, who was I believe the first lady doctor in Hitchin (and who caused a stir with her open top car and two cocker spaniels!) brough me a lovely set of doll clothes which I kept for many years, Dr. Simmonds specialised in treating children and her consulting room contained a wall adorned with photographs of her young patients and on her desk was a tin of sweets for the children!
Dad managed to find a little second-hand clockwork trainset for me that Christmas which mysteriously disappeared soon after. I was told later that a customer’s child needed it!
In those days after an infectious illness all toys and books had to be put in the oven to be fumigated, and I still remember the singed smell that hung about them afterwards!
Of course, wartime meant the dreaded “coupons” and even in 1951 when I left for boarding school my ration book went too.
Petrol coupons were so hard to come by that cars were “laid up” for the durations of the war and if we went anywhere, it was either by foot, bus or, more likely, pony and trap. Dad drove to work in the town in his trap and the pony was stabled in Perks and Llewellyn’s yard opposite the shop. Perks and Llewellyn’s was run by Miss Vi Lewis, and I remember the large jars in the windows of her chemists shop. I still have a much-prized tablet of soap made from the lavender grown in the local lavender fields.
Dad was in the local Home Guard at Preston as a despatch rider but early in the war he took messages on horseback. Only later did he graduate to a motorbike. Actually, I understand a great deal of time was taken up by the playing of cards whilst waiting for action which we luckily saw little of it in our corner of North Hertfordshire.
My contact with the army was with the soldiers stationed at Tatmore Place nearby and soldiers wives and families often stayed with us and became and continue to be family friends over 70 years later.
I remember how coupons played such a major part in our everyday lives. Before walking to the village shop in Gosmore there was much poring over the books by my Mother to see how many “points” for the week remained and wondering what would be available in the shop. Believe me, those amusing episodes in “Dads Army” when “Jonesy” works magic with Mrs Fox’s ration book were very close to the truth! The shop was run by Alf and Elsie Tooley.
Alf being an Arthur Askey lookalike appearing later on “What’s My Line?” Lady Isobel Barnet and Gilbert Harding were on the panel. Gilbert Harding having once been a teacher at Welbury School in Offley.
Of course, sweets were rationed, and a lot of thought and time was taken in the selection for they had to last! Even now a Mars Bar (unavailable then) seems a treat but, is it my imagination, or have they grown smaller over the years?
I remember, having been told so much about them, how lucky I felt because Dad had managed in 1945 to get a banana for me. Secretly I was hugely disappointed to be presented with a brown, stickly object but proudly took it to school – St Luke’s in Walsworth Road for my mid-morning break. The sickly-sweet smell from the nearby tan yard at the back of the school permeated the gardens where we played.
Coupons had to be saved up for the purchase of new clothes. Someone gave Mum some parachute silk which needed no coupons and could be made into undies if you were good at sewing – sadly we were not! Nowadays, the only coupons I have in my bag are those to be redeemed at Tesco’s!
Jane More (Linfield)
Married to Bryan More at St Ippolyts on 4th May 1968.
