Interview with Emma Goring (nee Downing) and Margaret Barratt by Sylvia Leech 28 February 1997.
Emma
Emma, affectionately known locally as Auntie Em, was born in 1904 in Pipe Lane, (now School Lane), in one of four cottages known as The Row where there are now bungalows. This was communal living. They shared a wash house between the four families. Each had their own specific day to use it. There was a water pump in the garden. The water was poured into a big copper and heated by a fire underneath. Their bath night was on a Saturday.
She went to the old school, on Ridware Road, next door to where the schoolmaster, Mr Jordan lived. There was no school uniform. There were two playgrounds; one for boys, one for girls. Games she liked to play were rounders, hopscotch, skipping and five stones. In the evenings she had to work, so not much time for leisure. She did enjoy walking across the fields to the river and used to see otters there. She also liked to walk across the meadows to watch the steam trains. She had to go to church twice on Sunday; Sunday School in the afternoon and evening service at night, but wasn’t good enough to sing in the choir. Sometimes they would go to church from school.
In those days children stayed at the village school until they were 13 or 14. Em left at 13 and went to work at the Hall at Wade Lane as a housemaid. Her jobs included sweeping the stairs, mopping floors and polishing the grates and brasses. [this was at the time when Ridware Hall was occupied by Colonel and Mrs Paul R S Churchward].
She also went to Handsacre to learn dressmaking with Miss Salt. Her parents were very strict and girls were not allowed boyfriends.
In her short holiday from work, she sometimes went to stay with her sister, Annie, in Wiltshire.
Em had a brother, Ernie, who worked at Old Hall Farm, Mavesyn Ridware. (He was the father of Nora Downing).
Em’s father was a miner and worked at Brereton Pit all his life. He would walk down the lane, across the meadows and alongside the canal. He often did two shifts. One advantage was getting a coal ration.
In 1932 she married George Goring from Hamstall Ridware. They did not have any children. They lived in a thatched cottage, next to Derry’s Farm. There was also a thatched cottage opposite which caught fire from sparks from the chimney. [This was completely destroyed]. Em took on the job of caretaker/cleaner at the school, following on from her mother. Em also kept a pig, the income from which helped towards their rent. A man used to come and kill and butcher it. It would be salted and hung up in the kitchen to dry. Em would use it to make bacon, pork pies, chitterlings and scratchings as well as meat for stews. She said, “the only thing wasted was the squeal!”. Em would go on the ‘bus to Rugeley once a week for shopping. During the war she often had to walk there and stand in queues during rationing.
Margaret
Margaret was born in 1927 in *Fuzzy Lane but she didn’t know where the name came from. Her family lived in a very basic cottage with no electricity, no running water and a shared outside toilet. Water was drawn from a well with a bucket, which she said was some of the best water in Staffordshire. They heated their home with some coal, but mostly wood, which they could find round and about. Their home was lit with oil or paraffin lamps, The wicks often caught fire. A coal man came with a horse pulling a dray. He also delivered paraffin into gallon tins.
Her father worked all his life at the Old Hall Farm as a labourer. He also did a bit of shooting; pigeons, partridges and rabbits. A favourite delicacy of his was lamb tail pie. They never went short of food as he grew vegetables all year round. He would store the potatoes in clamps covered in earth and straw. Margaret’s mother also brought in some money by doing seasonal work, such as chopping the tops of turnips, potato harvesting or cleaning.
In Mavesyn there used to be kennels in a field behind the church, where a pack of hounds was kept. There were several woods in the area, most no longer exist. Across the fields from her cottage there was one called ??? Trees and another by the river called The Rookery, there always bluebells here in the spring. There was an osier bed by the river Trent where she used to play and see baby otters.
Margaret went to school in Hill Ridware and then Aelfgar in Rugeley. There was no uniform at Hill Ridware school but there was at Aelfgar. She sang in the church choir. She remembered harvest festivals at church which was decorated with sheaves of corn sent by farmers. Her father once grew a huge pumpkin which he gave to the church for the festival. The ladies of the parish decorated the church.
Margaret was 14 when she left school. First, she went to work on a poultry farm at Longdon followed by a move to Derbyshire, where she worked on a farm and finally in a factory.
Her first ride in a car was from Mavesyn Ridware House with Mrs Sutton, to the Regal Cinema, where they saw Little Lord Fauntleroy. Her husband was blind and he used to play the organ in church.
*In an article, Rambles Around Rugeley by Astra, in the Lichfield Mercury in 1934 was an explanation of the name Fuzzy Lane:-
The lane leading to the main Uttoxeter Lichfield Road [from Mavesyn Ridware] is locally known as “Fuzzy Lane”. As a “Fosse” was a rudely constructed fortified ditch filled with water, one of which no doubt existed in the early days quite close to the lane, we may safely assume that our “Fuzzy” is a corruption of the Saxon “Fosse”.
Another possibility could be Furzy Lane as in lots of furze (alternative name of gorse) growing along it.
Memories they had in common despite the age difference.
They said there were no guides or Brownies in Hill Ridware but Rev. Pimblett’s wife ran a Girls Friendly Society.
A special event they recalled was for the Coronation of George VI when a meal was put on for the villagers, in the barn at Froggatt’s farm in Wade Lane.
World War Two didn’t have a lot of effect locally, since most men were in reserved occupations, either in the pits or on the land. Being agricultural, food was plentiful and people were largely self-sufficient. Some bombs fell near the railway line, leaving a large crater by the Tollgate House and one at the back of Mavesyn Hall. The windows in Margaret’s house cracked. Troops stayed at (Hill) Ridware Hall. POWs came to work on farms and made very good workers.
Christmas was a much more religious affair than now. Holly was used as a decoration and branches could have decorations hung on them. The most important thing was to go to church. They didn’t have many presents. Margaret said her mother used to take her and her sister to the shop at Armitage to choose their present, one each. They would hang up their stocking and would have an apple, an orange and some sweets. Neither Em nor Margaret could really remember white Christmases, but in the winters there was more snow than now. They both remembered winters when there was so much snow that roads were blocked by six foot drifts, so much so, that people could walk on hedges. When Ernie [Emma’s brother) was married they came out of the church and a big piece of snow fell on them like confetti.
There was a blacksmith’s shop owned by Mr West in Hill Ridware on the main Ridware road. He wore a big leather apron and everyone used to watch him work. There was a little lean-to shop run by Mrs West where sweets could be bought. There was an alley from opposite where the Royal Oak was, by the school playing field, onto Pipe Lane [School Lane], where there were three cottages and Mr and Mrs West lived in one of them.
In Mavesyn Ridware there used to be a mill which they both remembered, but not working. Margaret said a lot of water came through there and eel traps were set there. Every year the river would flood when the fields were completely submerged, and although the Mavesyn got flooded, coming right up to Margaret’s door, they couldn’t recall any getting in the church. Some years the river rose so much it used to go over the top of Middle Bridge, which was halfway across the meadows behind the houses at Mavesyn. It used to cross the stream that drained the meadows. It’s still in situ on the footpath to Armitage but the bed of the old stream has been filled in. The flood water from the Trent would also reach so far as Hamstall Turn [Common Corner] off the Uttoxeter Road. This was much improved when the river was dredged.
Talking about some of the locals, Mr Bob Dawson of Goldhay Fields farm was mentioned. He would go to Rugeley cattle market every Tuesday and having got very, very drunk would come home on the ‘bus. The unfortunate man had a “hare-shorn” lip [cleft palette] and a stutter. When he tried to give children sweets, they were frightened of him and ran away. Percy Brown used to go to Abbots Bromley in his pony and trap. He too, would have one too many, but once on the trap he could have a sleep and the pony just knew it’s way home.
They both agreed that the parish of Mavesyn had changed dramatically; smaller fields have been made larger by taking out hedgerows and woods and lots of new houses. Now they wouldn’t go out without locking their doors like they used to do.