Interview with Margaret Smieja
Title
Interview with Margaret Smieja
Description
Margaret Smieja grew up in Ingham during the Second World War. One Saturday she was at the cinema in Lincoln when a nearby cinema was flattened by a bomb. She met her husband, a Polish servicemen at a local dance when she was fifteen and they married when she was eighteen. They lived in Tin Town, the Nissen huts on the site of RAF Ingham.
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00:53:38 audio recording
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
ASmiejaM[Date]-01
Transcription
Interviewer: Okay. We’re on record now. Hello, Margaret. You can quite happily just look at me. The camera will just naturally pick everything up and we are fairly close —
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: To where the camera is anyway.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: Right. Could you tell me what your name is and where you were born please?
MS: Well, they me called Margaret Phyllis Barratt. That was before I was married and I was, well I was actually born in the maternity home at Lincoln but I mean I lived in the terrace you might say from being a fortnight old right the way to when I got married when I was eighteen.
Interviewer: And the terrace. What was the name of the terrace?
MS: Jubilee Terrace.
Interviewer: Jubilee Terrace.
MS: Yeah. Jubilee Terrace.
Interviewer: That’s here in Ingham.
MS: And I worked for Dalton’s, the farmers. I worked there from fourteen until I got married. And I met my husband when I was fifteen. I met him at the old village hall which was his YMCA and he was stationed at Cammeringham Camp and then his last year of posting was down at Castle Combe in Wiltshire. And then he came out and he went in the mine for three, three years. He did his training down in Monmouthshire and then he got [pause] he got that he worked around Mansfield, Pleasley, Shirebrook, all around there and then he came from the mines because we couldn’t get a house otherwise he would have stayed in. He enjoyed it although he was, he was buried alive twice. And anyway then he came to Smith-Clayton Forge and he was there thirty-one years. I got married when I was eighteen and we had thirty-nine and a half years together. We had a happy life. We had the three boys and then of course we got down to old Tin Town and we were down there five years then we came here and we’ve been here, my eldest son John was seven years old when we came down here and he’s sixty-five now. So we’ve been down here a few years. I was the first tenant. Yeah. Because you see these houses, Geoff was built on a grass field. Yeah. They were. Yeah.
Interviewer: So you met Jan when you were here at, was it a dance or —
MS: Yeah, it was at the old village hall. The old YMCA which they pulled down.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: I mean they got as the reason they pulled it down because it just wasn’t safe. No. I mean the floor was going.
Interviewer: So —
MS: And —
Interviewer: What attracted you to him? Or was it the other way around? Was he attracted to you?
MS: Well, I don’t know. I mean him and his friends was one side the dance floor. We was the other with my friends and he just asked me for a dance and then that was it.
Interviewer: Love as —
MS: He was the first boyfriend I’d ever had. Yeah. I’ve never had nobody else. No.
Interviewer: And you say you got married at eighteen.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: What did your parents think at the time?
MS: Well, it was just one of them things. No option [laughs]
Interviewer: Well, sometimes mums and dads can be very opinionated on these things that was all.
MS: Yeah. But no, as I say you know we had a lovely life. Yeah. We did. Yeah. And when we used to come to the dances you know at the camp. Yeah. And then sometimes if there was no dances around we used to get a, so many of us used to get a little minibus. We used to go to Welton.
Interviewer: And have a dance there.
MS: Dancing on Friday night. Yeah. And then when I was courting my husband we used to go to the Astoria in Lincoln on a Saturday afternoon dancing and then sometimes we would go to the pictures. Yeah.
Interviewer: So, you met him at fifteen and you were married at eighteen.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: You mentioned the fact that he came out. He came out of the Air Force. Was that after you were married or was, did it —
MS: No. He came out before then.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: No. As I say he was in, he was in the mines. Yeah. Yeah. He would have stayed in there if we’d have got a house. He enjoyed it. Yeah.
Interviewer: Did, did you get married here in the village?
MS: No. I got married at the Registry Office at Lincoln.
Interviewer: Right. Okay.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: And tell me, tell me a little bit if you can from the early years. What were your first kind of impressions and thoughts of Jan? What did you —
MS: I just thought he was good looking [laughs]
Interviewer: I seem to remember in the past that you’ve, yes you’ve shown me photographs of, I think he was in the football team so he was quite a sporty —
MS: Oh yeah. He played. I mean, yeah he did because he used to, they used to fly them from here down to Swindon and back. All around there to play football you know.
Interviewer: And what team did he, did he play for?
MS: He was, he was centre forward in the football team.
Interviewer: And it was a Polish Air Force Football Team then was it or just a local team?
MS: He played for Ingham but they did want him you know to play for Lincoln City.
Interviewer: Oh really?
MS: The reason he wouldn’t play, Geoff was as he said he would only be training for so long and if anything happened he would get no money and as he said we had the children so therefore he wouldn’t take it on. Oh no. He was a big footballer. Yeah. Yeah. He was. And the boys. Not so much maybe Dale. But John the eldest one was a right footballer. He really took after his dad for footballing. Yeah, he did.
Interviewer: So you were married at eighteen. How many, because you obviously just a few moments ago chatted about the fact that you moved around to different, different locations around the UK for Jan to work. What, what age were you then when you had your first son?
MS: I was nearly nineteen.
Interviewer: But that was, that was here. That was at Tin Town.
MS: Yeah. As I say he used to he lived in a hostel when he was sort of, you know in the mines. Sometimes he didn’t get home every weekend because I lived with my mum for the first year and then we moved to Tin Town when my eldest son was a year old and we was down there five six years. Yeah.
Interviewer: Can you tell me a bit about, because we’ve obviously only seen Tin Town in its old rusty state, could you, could you describe a little bit about what Tin Town looked like and what your particular Nissen hut looked like on the outside and the inside? Just, if you, if you almost closed your eyes metaphorically and just if you can just describe to us because we weren’t there so it would be nice to —
MS: Well, I mean, as I say if, [pause] I mean we was all happy up there although as I say we hadn’t a shop. We had to come right down here whether it was rain, snow or blow. But we was happy up there and I think we would have liked to have stayed up there if they’d started to build the houses. We’d have enjoyed it up there. Yeah. The only thing was that when your children went out to play I mean they had a big square further down to play on but you’d have still got that fear if they happened to come and to come up to the main road. That was the only thing because there was no gates or anything. Nothing. It was just open to the main road.
Interviewer: On the bit where it goes, goes on to Stow Lane where you are talking about, the gates there, the original plans show an old like a guard hut just, just in off the road there.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: On the right-hand side.
MS: I think there was. Yeah.
Interviewer: But that was just during the war years used and that —
MS: Well, that’s right because you see, you see the Forces was up there. You see, they were stationed up there. That’s the reason the Nissen huts was there. And then there was so many up Cow Hill. There was a bit of a station and then there was a camp up there. Then there was this one at Saxon Way. You see there were quite a few camps.
Interviewer: So, so that the Tin Town wasn’t built [pause] built for the Polish resettlement site. It was already used as accommodation during the wartime for the, for the Services people.
MS: It was for the Forces.
Interviewer: For the Forces.
MS: They was all built for the Forces.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And then you see, fair enough they got as where people you know they let people live in.
Interviewer: But then —
MS: That’s where Jeannie and Darkie lived first. They lived down Saxon Way in one of the Nissen huts.
Interviewer: But the ones that you lived in in Tin Town have got all internal walls. You know, for your bedrooms and things. Now, I imagine and you might be able to help us. Help us on this. That when the, when the RAF people used it and the Polish Air Force used it during the war years there wouldn’t have been all these internal walls would there? It would have just been like a long tube. A barrack room.
MS: Yes. I think so. I think so. I think it was more or less they did the partitions.
Interviewer: The partitions.
MS: For the bedrooms.
Interviewer: And that came after the war for the —
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: For the families.
MS: Yeah. As I say Geoff, I don’t know a lot about that because as I say I was only really you know young. I mean I was nine when the war broke out and I was fourteen when it finished so —
Interviewer: So how would you, how would you describe your, if you walked into the front door of your old Nissen hut and you opened it inside can you just almost take yourself back to describing what the inside looked like?
MS: I can tell you. I can picture it now. When I walked in there as I say, you might say the bathroom/toilet was on the left. The little pantry on the right. Then you went into the big room and then you had sort of that side the left was your old sink and then each side you had your bedroom and then you had your fireplace in the middle and that was it.
Interviewer: And that’s where you did the cooking. On that as well.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Or your mother did.
MS: Until we got the electric.
Interviewer: Or you did, sorry. Yes.
MS: And then I think we was a year I’m not quite sure, I think we was a year before we actually got electric but we never got any hot water.
Interviewer: No.
MS: I mean you had to sort of, you know boil kettles and pans and everything.
Interviewer: You didn’t, you didn’t have the copper in the corner of your, in the toilet, the bathroom toilet.
MS: That’s where the copper was.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: Yeah. That’s where it was. Just hoping on a Monday morning that it was going to go because if it went out you had no sticks or anything. You was having to come across the fields to the shop.
Interviewer: Right. So —
MS: That was whether it was rain, snow or blow. You was desperate.
Interviewer: So the job, the job late at night was to bank the fire up then in there and in the main room was it or not?
MS: Well, you see we only had one. We only had one little fire. It was only about that and then of course you see once it got going well it used to shine all red on the top and I think I was about the one, the really one who I got the best one. I think the others was a bit more shoddier than mine.
Interviewer: Was this, was this the cooker or the copper? Which one are we talking about? Sorry.
MS: This was the fireplace.
Interviewer: This was the fireplace between the two bedrooms.
MS: We had a little cooker like that.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: And then on the top we used to get, you know once your fire got going it was red hot.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And that’s where you could cook and that’s where your heating came out. Yeah. Oh gosh. Yeah. I mean, let’s face it we had some hard times. When you got in the wintertime it was so frosty you had icicles hanging in the room.
Interviewer: On the inside.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Oh, gosh. Yeah. I mean you could do like that on the corrugated sheeting and it was just ice. Yeah. And when it rained then the men used to go outside and sort of dig little dykes around the hut to let the water out. To let the water out or else it would have come in the hut.
Interviewer: The, the floor was obviously a concrete floor.
MS: Well, mine [pause] mine must have had some sort of a lino on because I could polish mine.
Interviewer: Oh. So people —
MS: Though I didn’t polish it, Geoff for the simple reason it could cause a lot of injury. You know, slippery.
Interviewer: Slippery.
MS: But I mean I could rub it with a cloth and it would come up lovely.
Interviewer: So what, what year do you think [pause] sorry what, go back. What year were you married? Can you remember the year?
MS: 1949.
Interviewer: 1949.
MS: November the 19th.
Interviewer: Right. And you would have been, you would have moved into Tin Town would it have been the next year or the year after that?
MS: ’51.
Interviewer: ’51.
MS: About ’51.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: Yeah. ’51 because my second son he was born up there. A really foggy, frosty night. The 1st of October. He was born up there.
Interviewer: So the midwife had to come out then did she?
MS: Next door.
Interviewer: Oh, the midwife was next door.
MS: Yeah. Yeah. She was next door. Yeah. And she was the same midwife as what I had when Dale was born. Dale was born here and she lived where, as you say that all that boarding of Johnson’s, that’s where she lived.
Interviewer: Oh right.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: That close.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Again.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: So, up at, up at Tin Town then when you lived there was there any like a communal, a social room or a communal room where you could all go to?
MS: No. No.
Interviewer: There was no club or anything like that?
MS: No. I mean, fair enough, I mean if me and my husband wanted to go to say a dance in the village my mum she would babysit for us or my dad and that was the only thing there was. No, there’s nothing up there Geoff. It was just bare huts.
Interviewer: Just bare huts.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Somewhere to live.
MS: And I can’t remember how many there was. Twenty something. There must have been about twenty something because you see they went right the way down to the field.
Interviewer: And were they all occupied by Polish, ex-Polish airmen?
MS: No. No. No. The only Polish family was me and there was another family and they called them [Pietrices?] and they lived right down at the bottom.
Interviewer: Right. Okay.
MS: Yeah. And they had two girls. Yeah. Yeah. But they never sort of associated with anybody. They was to be honest they was a bit snobs. Yeah.
Interviewer: Going back to, going back to Jan, what, what trade did he, what was his job within the Polish Air Force?
MS: He couldn’t get this job in England. Now, he worked for a sort of, you know at home when he was fifteen he was going to train as a locksmith but of course as I say he was taken away from his home, him and his brother. Yeah. I mean, the boys often used to say, ‘Dad, tell us.’ You know, but he’d never. He would never tell them how he escaped and different things. He must have had it very rough. Do you know what I mean?
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: And then he got into Italy and that’s where he was in the Army and then he went into the Polish Air Force when he was in Italy and that was it. And then of course he was posted. They was posted to England. Yeah.
Interviewer: And then to Cammeringham.
MS: Well, he was down in [pause] I’m not sure if his first, when he first came over I’m not sure if he wasn’t near Camberley. I think it was Epping Forest. Somewhere around there and then he did quite a few postings before he came here and I think he came here July 1945. Yeah. But his last posting was Castle Comb in Wiltshire. Yeah.
Interviewer: I just, I was wondering. Obviously you mentioned that he was a locksmith or he was training to be a locksmith when he was in Poland but when he was here in the Polish Air Force what was his trade? What job did he do?
MS: Nothing [laughs]
Interviewer: Did he, did he do any training you know when he joined the Polish Air Force?
MS: Yeah. Football. As far as I know Geoff —
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: That’s all he did.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: He just had a lazy life when he was up here. Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: You’re sure he’d thank you for saying that [laughs]
MS: A lazy life.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Right. Now, I didn’t, I didn’t know if he had done any form of training or —
MS: All he lived for was football.
Interviewer: For his football.
MS: Yeah. But as he said if it hadn’t have been that fear of being say injured and no money coming in he would have gone for Lincoln City. Oh yeah. They wanted him for there. Yeah. They did. Yeah. Oh yeah.
Interviewer: Can you, can you remember and tell me at all about your memories of the camp up on, up on the hill because obviously you said you went there for dances occasionally didn’t you? Was that, or was that the camp in the village here? The RAF camp in the village.
MS: No. It was up there.
Interviewer: When you first met Jan.
MS: We had to go up there.
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: No. I met him in the village hall down here.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: But I mean we used to go up there and I’ll tell you where it was. You know where the entrance of your Heritage there’s some huts up there?
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
MS: And I reckon, I think, I don’t know if there are two or three left.
Interviewer: There’s two. There’s two left.
MS: They’re a bit tatty.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: Yeah. Well, it was the far one. That was the dance hall.
Interviewer: Oh right.
MS: Yeah. That was the dance hall.
Interviewer: Because looking on the old maps there were about ten or eleven buildings up there originally in the war.
MS: Oh, it was a lot. Yeah.
Interviewer: So it was the, it was the —
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: The furthest one. The one nearest to Fillingham, or Fillingham Castle was the one.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: Now, was that a dance hall did you say or a cinema?
MS: There was sometimes it would go as a cinema.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And then they’d have it as a dance hall.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: Yeah. But no, as I say I can remember going to meet my husband. Well, he was my boyfriend then and I waited outside the Guardroom, you know at the end and he never come. Anyway, I thought oh well that’s it. Anyway, one of his friends come and he asked me if I was waiting for him. I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘He’s gone to Gainsborough with his mates.’ They’d biked to Gainsborough. Yeah. And I’d been there waiting for him for an hour and a half. Oh dear. Yeah.
Interviewer: That’s true love for you isn’t it?
MS: That’s true. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had some good times. Oh God, yeah. Yeah. We had some good times. We did.
Interviewer: Inside your, inside your hut at Tin Town what, what kind of furniture did you have? What furnishings in there were there?
MS: I’ll tell you something about that. I mean we was hard up when we, we had, we got a settee and two chairs from a lady. Well, you sat on one side of the settee it was all patches. You sat on a chair and the spring, well there was no springs involved and the other one well if you sat in it the spring used to shoot up. Now, that was our furniture when we first got married. Yeah. Until later on and then fair enough you know.
Interviewer: And what were the, what were the beds because we’re trying to find beds that were suitable. Were they wooden beds or were they metal beds? Can you remember?
MS: What we bought?
Interviewer: Well, I don’t know. Was there nothing left in there —
MS: No.
Interviewer: From the military personnel.
MS: Oh no. Nothing at all. It was just a bare —
Interviewer: Just a bare shell.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: Right. Okay.
MS: Yeah. But I think, Geoff I got one of the best huts there was and I’ll tell you why. Because the daughter of the windmill their daughter she was the first one to go in number 7 and I followed her and of course they’d put a rail around sort of, you know the top of the fireplace. Well I mean I could air my clothes and everything up there. Yeah. They did quite a few things. You know. I think I got the best hut.
Interviewer: It's interesting to see the fact that they had like when you think that it was a very sparse little house but they had a larder there but I think you said to me that there were only several shelves in there.
MS: Three.
Interviewer: And that was about it. Three shelves.
MS: There was only three.
Interviewer: So it was almost like it was a broom cupboard.
MS: It was more or less a walk in and walk out. I mean you couldn’t have got in there and shut the door.
Interviewer: No. Right.
MS: It was so tiny. You know what I mean. Then of course I bought a unit where sort of I could put this was to put in the living room because the pantry wasn’t big enough for your pots and whatever so I mean I used to, I bought a unit so that I could put different things in. Yeah. I did. But as I say, no, we had some good times up there.
Interviewer: Who, to the best of your recollection at the time, who actually owned the site? Was it, was it, did the local council?
MS: Well, yeah. It was. Yeah.
Interviewer: So you had to pay rent. It wasn’t completely free then.
MS: That’s right. Oh no. They used to come around every week. Yeah. Yeah. It was done by the council.
Interviewer: Did, did Jan have at that time when you were at Tin Town did he have a motorbike? I presume he didn’t have a car.
MS: No. He had, he had a pushbike.
Interviewer: A pushbike.
MS: And he used to pushbike rain, snow or blow to Lincoln every day.
Interviewer: To work.
MS: To work.
Interviewer: And where was he working in Lincoln?
MS: Smith-Clayton Forge.
Interviewer: Oh right. Yes.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: He was there thirty-one years.
Interviewer: And what job did he do there?
MS: Well, he started with the [hammer?] driver and went right through the machinery and then in the end he went into the Stores because he started to have a few dizzy do’s and they took him off the machines. But he did right through.
Interviewer: And still cycled back every day or did he have a car or motorbike?
MS: Yeah. When we came down here he bought a little, a little motorbike, yeah and as I say went in the Stores. Well, then you see he, well he got made redundant as such because the Stores shut. They didn’t need him. They’d bought a machine from Germany which did the work of eight men. So of course a lot of them you see was made redundant through that. Yeah. They were.
Interviewer: And was that it then? He just, he just retired at that point did he?
MS: He just, he just finished then.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
MS: Yeah. He did. Yeah. Yeah. He did.
Interviewer: Did, did Jan and yourself ever get the chance to go back to Poland at all or not?
MS: Yeah. We went back. Dale was sixteen and we went back to see although he’d lost his father and he lost his brother. I think he lost his eldest brother I think at birth or something and then his other brother he was in the Polish Army. Well, he was at Monte Casino and he got blown up. He was only twenty-one. Yeah. We went to see his mum and the family. Dale was sixteen. We went in the, I think it was the June or July as Dale went in the Junior League in the September. Yeah. Yeah. We went for two or three weeks but it was martial law then.
Interviewer: It was still, it was still communist [unclear]
MS: You had to be in at a certain time.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: And if you was out later then the police would want to know where you’d been and everything. And it was sort of black marketing and everything. I mean, I went with his sister. We went to a market and all of a sudden she heard about chocolate and I bought them two bars of chocolate, Geoff. And I said to my husband, I said, ‘How much is that in English money?’ Five pound a bar. Yeah. But we never all the time we was there she always did a beautiful table of food. Oh, absolutely lovely. And then when it was before Dale was born she came over, his eldest sister for five weeks and the meals she made out of nothing was unbelievable.
Interviewer: She was allowed to come over then was she?
MS: Pardon?
Interviewer: His, was this his sister or mother did you say?
MS: Oh, she was his sister.
Interviewer: His sister. She was allowed to leave Poland and come over here.
MS: Oh God she came for five weeks.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And I’m not joking she did the cooking. I didn’t do any cooking all the time she was there and she always said English people are very wasteful because they could make a meal out of nothing. She was a beautiful cook.
Interviewer: Did she find it then very strange when you perhaps took her either to a local shop or into Lincoln.
MS: Well, I’d take —
Interviewer: To the market and —
MS: Yeah. I think so.
Interviewer: Places like that where they’d see so much stuff.
MS: I mean, although we couldn’t talk one another’s language but we could always make one another understand. Surprising. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: But she was a lovely cook and I mean the meals was lovely. Lovely. That’s why I like the continental meals.
Interviewer: Did you actually learn to cook any of the Polish dishes from Jan?
MS: No. My husband used to do that.
Interviewer: Oh right.
MS: If we had any Polish dishes on.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: And you know I don’t know if there’s more taste than what it is for us. I think we’d just done the basics.
Interviewer: Yeah. I’ve tasted. I don’t know. I think it’s just the way they cook it and using different herbs and spices and the way they do it.
MS: Beautiful.
Interviewer: Yes. I have. I tried some Polish food and its very nice.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: I know years ago I used to go on a Saturday shopping and down you know where the General Post Office used to be?
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: Well, past there on the corner there used to be a Polish shop.
Interviewer: Oh right.
MS: And I used to go in there on a Saturday. Oh yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: I think with the present migrant Polish kind of community that are now over here and have been over here for the last what five or ten years now a lot of little shops have kind of sprung up down the bottom end of the High Street towards South Park, Portland Street, opposite the old Ritz cinema.
MS: Really?
Interviewer: There’s lots of Polish delicatessens and things there.
MS: That’s to say you see there’s nothing up the town.
Interviewer: No. Indeed.
MS: You see. Yeah.
Interviewer: It’s down the back streets where they’ve set up.
MS: Another one, there was another Polish shop and I’m not sure if that didn’t move from near the General Post Office. You know where the subway is?
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: Well, there’s they used to call, it’s Greggs.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: The bakers.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Well, I think that used to be a little Polish shop. Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: But it’s all big money there now isn’t it?
MS: It is, yeah.
Interviewer: They have little corner shops at the back.
MS: But no, I’ll tell you what Geoff I love any smoked food. Any. I love smoked food. Yeah, I do.
Interviewer: Going back to obviously the time when you met Jan here in the village and things I appreciate that the Polish Air Force had been here for four or five years then, you know.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: The camp up on the hill and down here. Did most of the community here in Ingham, the normal villagers did they all accept the Poles? Was it kind of a nice atmosphere?
MS: Well, it’s like this Geoff. It was one of them things. You just had to. You know what I mean.
Interviewer: But I mean people can sometimes have to do things because they have to or because they actually, you know genuinely like the people that are part of the community. Did Jan fitted in?
MS: Just got on with, you know. As I say. You know —
Interviewer: Well, there was Jan and Darkie Polack wasn’t there and possibly other stuff.
MS: I mean, there was Darkie. I mean he was a cook.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: And I mean when I worked on the farm sort of thing at the Dalton’s I used to get dozens of eggs and I used to give them to my husband sort of thing and they used to take them to Darkie and he used to do all sorts. Yeah.
Interviewer: I remember seeing a few of the photographs that you showed me a few years ago and it showed your, it showed Jan and some of his mates working on the land but they were still in the Air Force.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: At that time.
MS: He, he went potato picking to buy me an engagement ring.
Interviewer: Really?
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Was that just up here at Carter’s?
MS: Carter’s.
Interviewer: Or whichever it was.
MS: That’s where he used to work. Yeah. And Elsie. I mean Elsie worked with Jan. Yeah. On the potato field. Oh God. Yeah. Yeah. She did.
Interviewer: And do you, do you remember much about the old Station Headquarters that was here where Saxon and Glebe Close is now because I think we spoke a little bit ago, I mean after the war when it obviously the RAF left who, who kind of —
MS: Well, you see then you see they more or less they took over. [BritPac?] took over the factory and I mean they occupied quite a few of those huts what was left.
Interviewer: And that was, that was almost straight after the war onwards.
MS: That was more or less.
Interviewer: So a good few years.
MS: More or less because I worked down there for ten years. Yeah. I did.
Interviewer: Packing. Packing very dangerous chemicals by what you were saying.
MS: I tell you what. Honestly Geoff, I would not want to live on that site because what’s buried underneath that soil is nobody’s business. I mean we used to get boxes and if there were skeletons on that box you knew very well that it was —
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Horrible stuff. Yeah.
Interviewer: Did they give you any protective clothing to wear? Gloves or masks or anything.
MS: Oh, we used to have all that but I mean cheap old stuff.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah. I mean sometimes I look back and I think I wish I’d never worked there. Do you know what I mean? Because some of them really it’s caused them a lot of chest problems.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: A lot of them. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of them. And I think I mean two of them sort of, sort of died quite a few years ago and I think it was all to do with that because it was all to do with their breathing, their lungs, chest.
Interviewer: Whatever was in the boxes.
MS: Yeah. I mean we used to have a place where every so often everybody used to have to take their turn and they used to call it the Soot House and we was bagging like soot and I’m not joking you was absolutely covered up but the stuff still got to your skin. It was terrible. Yeah. Sometimes what we did it makes you wonder well how did we do it? But we did it because we needed the money. Just one of them things.
Interviewer: I know. I can understand that because I’ve spoken to other people of a similar age to you and in those days there was no such things as Social Security and all the other things. No.
MS: God, no.
Interviewer: If you didn’t work you didn’t, you didn’t eat basically.
MS: That’s right.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: That’s right. But as I say, no if, I don’t think I would have gone down there if I had my time to come over again because I could have found somebody. But then again you see it was, it was more or less on the doorstep and people, well a lot of the girls you know and well I say a lot of people come from Scunthorpe to work there.
Interviewer: Really?
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Oh, crikey. So it’s not just the local villages.
MS: Oh God, yeah. They used to put, they used to put coaches on for them.
Interviewer: Right. Golly.
MS: Oh gosh, yeah.
Interviewer: So, for you to get a job there was, was —
MS: Well, I think as I say if anybody who sort of rung up and said, you know, ‘Is there a vacancy?’ Well, there was always a vacancy there.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
MS: The more the merrier. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean there was odd jobs where we did sort of clean stuff. Sort of assembling brushes and say when it got to to Christmas time you did cards and paper and all that but that was once in a blue moon.
Interviewer: And that was a nice time then was it?
MS: Otherwise, and we were too, we used to do anti-freeze. Oh God, yeah. We had a big machine to do anti-freeze. Yeah.
Interviewer: Right. Yeah.
MS: And you can imagine what that was like when it was, because there was no heating on.
Interviewer: No.
MS: And you can imagine what it was like. I mean the weekends I often used to go on nights. Yeah. I did.
Interviewer: Was it better pay on nights then? A little better or —
MS: Well, maybe a little bit but not much.
Interviewer: Yeah. [unclear] not too.
MS: Jan was at home you see so I mean he could look after the kiddies and I used to go on a Friday night. I used to go on at six, come off at seven the next morning and I used to get all ready to go on the 8 o’clock bus shopping. I never went to bed. No.
Interviewer: You do these things when you’re a bit younger don’t you?
MS: Well, this is it.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: I sometimes think well how did they do it but there you are.
Interviewer: But you had to. Yes.
MS: It was just one of them things.
Interviewer: But obviously back in that particular time through the ‘40s and the ‘50s from what Elsie has already explained to me there were a lot more shops in the village weren’t there? So there was —
MS: I’ll tell you what Geoff believe it or not you see it’s the supermarkets. People have got transport and they work in town. They think right I can get my shopping from the supermarkets. That’s what’s done this village. I mean we had, I mean we’ve still got old Tony Bell out there with his pub. You’ve got the Black Horse, you’ve got the Inn on the Green. We’ve got Ron Wensley which is the garage down Stow Road. We’ve got a, well we haven’t got a hairdresser now. We’ve just got the mobile ladies what come around. We’ve just got the shop.
Interviewer: But what did, what was —
MS: What was there?
Interviewer: In the ‘40s you know. During the war and then just straight afterwards in the early ‘50s. What can you remember was in the village?
MS: What? The shops?
Interviewer: Well, the different shops and whatever other features.
MS: I mean even the boys, maybe not so much Dale but I mean the other boys it was nearly the same when they went in the Forces. We had the same things you know what I mean? I mean we had a butcher’s shop, hairdressing shop, we had one, two, three, we had four shops. We had the little sweet shop. We had a bicycle shop. We’d everything more or less. The old cobblers.
Interviewer: There was a bakery as well.
MS: We had a bakery which was attached to the shop.
Interviewer: And somebody even said a fish and chip shop at some point.
MS: We had a fish and chip shop.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Which was near the shop. You know, down —
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: And it was just up the alleyway and well where Mr Sully lives.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: Well, you know. You know that long house Dale was telling you about?
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: Yeah. Well then there’s the, there’s the drive in and his house is sort of like that. Attached to the shop. Right.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: Well, that used to be the fish shop and then, then they did a bit little bigger where you could have two or three tables. You could go and sit in there and have a meal. It was lovely. Yeah.
Interviewer: And then up on the bit we were talking about last time was on the, up the little service road at the top of the green between the little bit of road that runs between the Black Horse and the Inn on the Green. There was a shop along there wasn’t there?
MS: There was a Post Office there and yeah there was. Yeah.
Interviewer: A couple of houses along.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: There was just a —
MS: Yeah, you know the one with the bay window?
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: Well that was a shop.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And I mean that was a big shop. It was a grocer’s shop. Oh gosh, yeah. And then you see the bottom shop? They split it in half. One was draping. Drapery stuff and the other was groceries.
Interviewer: Oh right.
MS: I mean we had everything. We had everything.
Interviewer: To keep a whole village going.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: And the petrol station that was just down here in the hollow. Was that, was that during the war or was that afterward?
MS: Yeah. Because I used to go down there when I was a kid. I mean we used to have the old wirelesses. Well, you had the high-tension batteries.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: And then you used to have the accumulators and my dad I’m not joking I ought to have been an old boy because my dad used to say, ‘Right. We need a new battery. Here you are. Take the old one back.’ They was heavy. I used to have to go down there, pick another one up. Same as the accumulators. They was full of acid.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: And we used to have to take those down two at a time and the old chap he was lovely. I shall never forget him who owned the garage.
Interviewer: What was his name?
MS: He used to say, he always used to call me Charlie. ‘Now then, Charlie.’ Because my dad was named Charlie and that was my name. ‘Now Charlie, what do you want now, duck?’ Yeah. Yeah. And then my dad used to say, ‘Right. Get off to the cobblers. Take my boots.’
Interviewer: Kept you busy then.
MS: Yeah. And then of course my mum used to say, with being in a Row you see, she used to say, I used to come from school and my mum used to say, ‘Mrs — ’ so and so, ‘Wants you to go to the shop.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to go. I want to go to play.’ She said, ‘No. You go to the shop.’ Well, and then on a Saturday morning right from morning ‘til dinner I was having to go to the shop for people. Of course they used to give me a bit of pocket money.
Interviewer: I was going to say did they give you any pocket money for it.
MS: Yeah. I mean fair enough. The old money was a lot.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: To what it is today. Right. And I’ll always remember when I used to, when they used to give me money for going to the shops or whatever I shall always remember somebody bought me a little red handbag and you know our house same as a lot of, they had the big bacon hooks, right because my dad used to have two, used to kill two pigs a year. Right. And I shall always remember this little handbag I had. My mum used to put it on this bacon hook. Now, do you know Geoff every time I got any money from anybody she used to say, ‘Right. It can go in there. You need some new shoes.’ I was only one. I was the only one. I was brought up strict. I was the only child but believe it or not, you know I used to have to, she would say ‘Yeah, you need some shoes.’ I mean she didn’t work. There was only my dad. Yeah. Yeah. And he worked at Hemswell Camp. Yeah. For the Air Ministry. Yeah. He did.
Interviewer: What kind of job did he do?
MS: I don’t know. I ain’t got a clue.
Interviewer: Oh, he didn’t tell you.
MS: I knew he went to work.
Interviewer: And used to come back. Yeah.
MS: Yeah. And then often on a Friday he’d come back with sweets what he’d been to the NAAFI.
Interviewer: Oh right. Yeah. Yeah.
MS: And my mum used to have a basket up and then she used to put stuff there. Yeah.
Interviewer: So you just used to get them every now and again then. Yeah.
MS: That’s right. Yeah. I did.
Interviewer: So, what was it, I mean obviously when war broke out how old were you? Did you say?
MS: I was nine.
Interviewer: You were nine.
MS: Yeah. Because I shall always remember I went into the hospital to have my tonsils and adenoids out and I shall always remember and I can still feel it and see it now a little black nurse threw herself over me because they bombed the nurse’s home that night.
Interviewer: Really.
MS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: And so you would have obviously been in the Junior School here at the time. Well it was all one school wasn’t it?
MS: Well, that’s right. As I say there wasn’t a secondary school then. It was only high schools.
Interviewer: I’ve spoken to, I think we’ve mentioned before Arthur Hydes?
MS: Oh, Old Arthur.
Interviewer: Yeah. Because obviously he was, I think he was seven I think he said when war broke out.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: So he was probably a year or two —
MS: There you are you see. Yeah. I was nine. So there’s two years between us.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: But you were at the same school because it’s just —
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: One big class.
MS: So he’s eighty-two you see.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah. He is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean the only thing if you passed the scholarship then you went to High School. We used to call them snugs.
Interviewer: So, did you, if you went to, to high school did you not have to have money then at all or not?
MS: Well, as I say I mean your parents had to buy uniform. I mean they didn’t get grants or anything like that.
Interviewer: So, that high school. When you say high school you’re talking about like a grammar school type of thing.
MS: Well, it was that sort of South Park for the girls.
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: And sort of whatever school it was for the boys.
Interviewer: For the boys. And if you didn’t pass your scholarship?
MS: You stopped here.
Interviewer: Oh, did you? Even after Junior School.
MS: We never had no other school. There wasn’t a secondary school. I started here when I was five.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And I left here when I was fourteen.
Interviewer: Oh, right. Okay.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: That’s interesting.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: So, they didn’t, they didn’t push you on to any of the other bigger, bigger schools then.
MS: No. You had to pass your scholarship.
Interviewer: That was it. That was the end.
MS: And I was one of these which didn’t.
Interviewer: So you stayed here. But then again if you’d been elsewhere you might not have met Jan so it’s all —
MS: That sort of thing. You just don’t know do you?
Interviewer: It’s all part of the story isn’t it? Yeah. Of life.
MS: You just don’t know. No. You don’t. No.
Interviewer: When you went up there to, to, sorry I keep going back a little bit but at, at Tin Town was it, was it all fairly kind of clean and tidy and the whole, the whole kind of area of Tin Town? Was it —
MS: Well, I mean a lot of it was sort of a lot of grass and all that sort of thing. I’m not saying they cleared it. They didn’t. It was more or less you took potluck.
Interviewer: Did you, did you grow your own vegetables outside? Did you have like a vegetable garden.
MS: We had a little back garden. Well, you made your own.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Where we, yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: So you could grow your own vegetables and things, yeah.
MS: And then the front we had lawns and we had a border with all the, with all the flowers. Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: And like a little fence or something around the edge or whatever it was.
MS: Well, there was a little hedge.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: A little hedge.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Because obviously when we, when we create the Nissen hut up at the thing we’re looking at what we’re going to do outside as well as inside but we want it to be correct.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: On how it was.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Straight after the war for those years.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: So talking about all talking to you about what you had you know part of it was a vegetable garden, part of it was the little lawn.
MS: Well, that’s right. Yeah.
Interviewer: Just to get the right, the right feeling for it so it looks —
MS: Yeah. I mean my husband and the midwife I mean they used to send to Holland for all their bulbs. All our bulbs what we had in the garden came from Holland.
Interviewer: Came from Holland.
MS: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. He loved his garden. Yeah. He did.
Interviewer: And so what year was it that you moved into here from Tin Town? Can you remember that?
MS: Nineteen [pause] it would be the end of the 1950s.
Interviewer: And these were newly built then were they or —
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: So you were the first person —
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: To live in this house.
MS: I was the first one.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah. Yeah. You see what they did Geoff you see they allocated people from Tin Town eventually into these. Yeah. They did.
Interviewer: Just let everybody have a proper bricks and mortar house.
MS: Well, that’s right.
Interviewer: Rather than just the tin.
MS: But I mean as I said for a year when we came in here you wasn’t allowed to put anything on the walls. Not for a year. I suppose that’s more or less to dry everything out. I don’t know.
Interviewer: Possibly so, yes and you had, you obviously had your fire.
MS: We had a fire.
Interviewer: Did you have, I presume in those times you didn’t have central heating. Was there just —
MS: Oh, gosh. No.
Interviewer: Was that the only heating in the house?
MS: When I first got the central heating it was sixteen years ago, Geoff because I was still on a stick after having my first hip operation. That’s when we had it. I mean all we was just a coal fire.
Interviewer: Because the coal fire was the only heating in the house.
MS: That was all we had.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah. And I still think it’s a lot healthier than what the central heating because it’s dry air.
Interviewer: Dries it all out. Yes.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: So at night time you’d bank the fire up would you and then leave the doors open to let the heat go around the house or —
MS: Well, no because we used to let the fire go out.
Interviewer: Oh, you let it go out.
MS: Oh yeah. We didn’t used to keep it built up. No. No.
Interviewer: I suppose it’s a lot easier to relight it in the morning.
MS: Well, then again there was as I say, you know I mean the more coal you used you know —
Interviewer: The more expensive.
MS: Yeah. You never knew when our coal man was going to come. He was supposed to come around every fortnight. Sometimes it would be a month. Yeah. So you had to be very very careful how you —
Interviewer: Used your coal.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: You didn’t get into the local, you didn’t get Jan into the local woods then to, to —
MS: Well, the old hands used to go sticking and —
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: All that sort of thing and used to make the best of it. Yeah.
Interviewer: Have you got any —
MS: I mean I was brought up like that. I was brought up. I mean there was, there was no heating when I lived with my parents so from me being a child right away to when they put central heating here I was used to it.
Interviewer: One of the ladies that used to live in [pause] in Jubilee Terrace was also telling me that there used to be the village pond.
MS: Oh there.
Interviewer: Just —
MS: Near the church.
Interviewer: Just near the church.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: In front of the church.
MS: Yeah. They always say that there was a horse and cart in there you know. They never got it out.
Interviewer: Really?
MS: They always said that. Now, how true this is I don’t know.
Interviewer: So, that was, that was the —
MS: I heard my parents talk about that.
Interviewer: That was the piece of, the piece of ground just, just in front of the —
MS: That’s where they put the car park.
Interviewer: Where the car park —
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Well, there’s about, you could get about three cars in there. Yes.
MS: That’s all.
Interviewer: And that was the village pond then was it?
MS: That was the village pond.
Interviewer: Right. Because she was telling me that there was a story that during the war years a couple of airmen had obviously been at the pub that night, got drunk, walked into the middle of it drunk and couldn’t get out and they were shouting. And apparently she lived in Jubilee Terrace and two or three other people from Jubilee Terrace had to come out and guide these because obviously the two chaps were intending to go up Church Lane and walk back to the camp and they got stuck in it and it must have been a bit like quicksand. They couldn’t move and they were shouting they were. But you don’t remember that. You don’t remember that particular night.
MS: No, I can’t remember that.
Interviewer: She said —
MS: No.
Interviewer: She said it got most of the people up in Jubilee Terrace. Maybe it was just your parents you know and they kind of, they kind of —
MS: Because you see before the Polish lads come up there the Canadians was up there.
Interviewer: Were they really?
MS: Yeah. We had the Canadians up there.
Interviewer: Oh, that’s interesting. I know there were. I know there were a few Canadians and Australians in with 199 Squadron in February to June of 1943 but I’ve not found any other records of Canadians other than that. It was an English, a British squadron but they had Canadians and Australians in them.
MS: I understood that there was Canadians up here.
Interviewer: Could well have been then because we’ve recorded I think about four or five. Four or five were lost on operations. Canadians.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: But there may well have been an awful lot more Canadians actually attached to the squadrons.
MS: I don’t know how many were up there.
Interviewer: That was 1943.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: So you probably would have been.
MS: Yeah, all I know about those Canadians up there.
Interviewer: Yeah. You would have been eleven or twelve. Probably twelve at that age.
MS: Well, I mean I wasn’t very old then.
Interviewer: No. No. Indeed. And a few Australians.
MS: I think the Polish, I think the Polish boys I think they sort of followed the Canadians.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: I think they did. Yeah.
Interviewer: That’s interesting. I can, I’ll have to do a little bit more research into that but the only Canadians I’ve found were with —
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: In 1943 because 300 Squadron, the Poles came in May ’42.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: They were there for the whole of ’42.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: They left in Jan ’43 and that was when 199 came for that, from like the winter through the summer and then 300 came back from Hemswell again and 305, the other Polish squadron came back.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: In the summer of ’43. Have you got any other particular memories of those war years in particular because obviously living in a village there must have been an awful lot of servicemen.
MS: Oh, no. Not really, Geoff because as I say you know although I mean I’ve been here all my life, well no —
Interviewer: No because you were obviously a young teenager from, from about ten to fifteen.
MS: Well this is it.
Interviewer: And obviously in the evenings or at weekends —
MS: Yeah. I mean as I say we used to go to town on a Saturday.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah. When me and my friend, that was before I met my husband, we used to go to Lincoln on on a Saturday. Go to the pictures. We used to go in Sixpenny Woollies. I mean we used to get [laughs] we used to go in and get the Evening in Paris perfume.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: Oh my, you could wash your clothes and it would still smell nice. You didn’t used to use a lot. Then we used to get these joysticks. They were cigarettes. Five in a packet.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: We used to take them into the pictures.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: We used to have a puff each and put it out. Yeah. Oh God. We didn’t used to have much money but we had some good times.
Interviewer: Did you, did you enjoy Saturdays in Lincoln then during the war years?
MS: Well yes because as I say we used to go to the Sixpenny Woollies and then off we used to go to the pictures.
Interviewer: I can only presume that through the war years in the middle of Lincoln even on a Saturday there must have been as many people in uniform as there were in civvies.
MS: There were more in uniform —
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: Then there was in civvies.
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: And I shall always remember I was only [pause] I was only a kid, my neighbour, my mum’s neighbour sort of thing her niece and boyfriend he was in the RAF he wasn’t stationed here and they came over for a weekend and they took me with them to Lincoln, to the pictures. And you know where Primark is?
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: Well, that used to be the Ritz Picture House.
Interviewer: Oh right. Okay.
MS: And I shall always remember going there and it was a rainy foggy day and all of a sudden the picture house went like that and I thought oh dear. And I’d say it was water and down now then that’s Guildhall Street, isn’t it? Where the General Post Office.
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
MS: What’s the other one? [pause] Towards Broadgate.
Interviewer: Yes. Do you know I don’t honestly know.
MS: Well I don’t. Well, down there.
Interviewer: It’s not Free Lane is it?
MS: Right at the very end.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: As you went nearest to Broadgate as you could.
Interviewer: Yeah. Past the church.
MS: There was an old picture house there and I think [pause] I can’t remember whether they called it the Plaza. I’m not sure. But it was, it was, it looked a right old desolate place and they bombed that that afternoon.
Interviewer: Really?
MS: Yeah. And when we looked it was flat to the ground. Yeah. They bombed it while we was at the picture house.
Interviewer: And there must have been people in there at the time were there?
MS: Well, I suppose so.
Interviewer: Oh dear.
MS: I mean, I don’t know. I know that they bombed it.
Interviewer: But you went back where, where was the, was there like a, in those days was there a bus station or was there or were there just buses. You picked them up anywhere in town? To get you, to get you a lift home.
MS: To be honest, I can’t remember [pause] I reckon there was a bus station. I don’t know whether it was where Debenhams, they used to have the bus station where Debenhams and all that was —
Interviewer: Yes, because the bus garage used to be opposite didn’t it?
MS: I think that’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: Do you think that was the bus, the bus station was there too.
MS: I think that was it, yeah. I think so. But you know where the subway is.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: There used to be another picture house there.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And I’m not sure if they didn’t call that [pause] The one right the way down near Portland Street. That was the Ritz.
Interviewer: That’s the Ritz.
MS: That was the posh one.
Interviewer: I can remember going there even when I was in my early twenties and it was still it had a stage there and you’d go and see some of the acts there and things.
MS: We used to go there. And I’ll tell you another one. There was a Savoy because we used to go and see all the stars what used to come.
Interviewer: Right. Yeah.
MS: And, and then there was another picture house you know where Jackson, oh BBC Radio Lincoln.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
MS: There used to be a picture house there.
Interviewer: Oh right.
MS: I mean there was quite a few picture houses and then there was one sort of going up to the Strait. There was one right at the very end. That was only a tiny picture house. I just can’t remember. Oh, I think that was called the Odeon.
Interviewer: But then again there wasn’t television in those days.
MS: So many picture houses to link from.
Interviewer: But as you said that was your main thing of a Saturday morning.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Or Saturday afternoon? That you would go and watch. You’d go to the pictures because there wasn’t the television so that was your natural entertainment wasn’t it?
MS: That’s to say, that’s to say when you was indoors at night.
Interviewer: There was nothing there. You just read a book or listened to the wireless.
MS: You sewed or whatever.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Well, thank you very very much. That’s been lovely. If we, if you think about —
MS: As I say I mean like my childhood days well I daren’t tell you about them.
Interviewer: Maybe for another time. We’d love to come back and —
MS: I used to have the cane every day.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: I did at school. I used to have the cane every day.
Interviewer: You were the naughty girl in the class were you then?
MS: Terrible. I used to say to my mum, ‘I’ve had the cane.’ She said, ‘Serves you right. What did you do?
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: She’d no pity for me.
Interviewer: No.
MS: But that was the days.
Interviewer: That was the days, yeah. When your parents would have, well it was almost if, if a policeman brought you back —
MS: My father lived, my father lived from the military.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Right the way to more or less he died.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: But it was always there. It was always the way. I mean if you —
MS: And then he’d only got to do that to me —
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: And that was enough.
Interviewer: Yeah. You knew. You knew your place.
MS: Yeah. Oh, gosh yeah. I mean I weren’t allowed to pick a newspaper up on a Sunday.
Interviewer: No.
MS: No. Oh, God. No. And I mean that’s right I mean the days people would sew and knit and everything on a Sunday. Oh no.
Interviewer: You don’t do anything on a Sunday.
MS: Gosh no. No.
Interviewer: Alright. Well, thank you very very much.
MS: That’s alright Geoff.
Interviewer: I’ll turn this off now and if we think, if you think of other things we can always —
MS: Yeah.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: To where the camera is anyway.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: Right. Could you tell me what your name is and where you were born please?
MS: Well, they me called Margaret Phyllis Barratt. That was before I was married and I was, well I was actually born in the maternity home at Lincoln but I mean I lived in the terrace you might say from being a fortnight old right the way to when I got married when I was eighteen.
Interviewer: And the terrace. What was the name of the terrace?
MS: Jubilee Terrace.
Interviewer: Jubilee Terrace.
MS: Yeah. Jubilee Terrace.
Interviewer: That’s here in Ingham.
MS: And I worked for Dalton’s, the farmers. I worked there from fourteen until I got married. And I met my husband when I was fifteen. I met him at the old village hall which was his YMCA and he was stationed at Cammeringham Camp and then his last year of posting was down at Castle Combe in Wiltshire. And then he came out and he went in the mine for three, three years. He did his training down in Monmouthshire and then he got [pause] he got that he worked around Mansfield, Pleasley, Shirebrook, all around there and then he came from the mines because we couldn’t get a house otherwise he would have stayed in. He enjoyed it although he was, he was buried alive twice. And anyway then he came to Smith-Clayton Forge and he was there thirty-one years. I got married when I was eighteen and we had thirty-nine and a half years together. We had a happy life. We had the three boys and then of course we got down to old Tin Town and we were down there five years then we came here and we’ve been here, my eldest son John was seven years old when we came down here and he’s sixty-five now. So we’ve been down here a few years. I was the first tenant. Yeah. Because you see these houses, Geoff was built on a grass field. Yeah. They were. Yeah.
Interviewer: So you met Jan when you were here at, was it a dance or —
MS: Yeah, it was at the old village hall. The old YMCA which they pulled down.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: I mean they got as the reason they pulled it down because it just wasn’t safe. No. I mean the floor was going.
Interviewer: So —
MS: And —
Interviewer: What attracted you to him? Or was it the other way around? Was he attracted to you?
MS: Well, I don’t know. I mean him and his friends was one side the dance floor. We was the other with my friends and he just asked me for a dance and then that was it.
Interviewer: Love as —
MS: He was the first boyfriend I’d ever had. Yeah. I’ve never had nobody else. No.
Interviewer: And you say you got married at eighteen.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: What did your parents think at the time?
MS: Well, it was just one of them things. No option [laughs]
Interviewer: Well, sometimes mums and dads can be very opinionated on these things that was all.
MS: Yeah. But no, as I say you know we had a lovely life. Yeah. We did. Yeah. And when we used to come to the dances you know at the camp. Yeah. And then sometimes if there was no dances around we used to get a, so many of us used to get a little minibus. We used to go to Welton.
Interviewer: And have a dance there.
MS: Dancing on Friday night. Yeah. And then when I was courting my husband we used to go to the Astoria in Lincoln on a Saturday afternoon dancing and then sometimes we would go to the pictures. Yeah.
Interviewer: So, you met him at fifteen and you were married at eighteen.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: You mentioned the fact that he came out. He came out of the Air Force. Was that after you were married or was, did it —
MS: No. He came out before then.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: No. As I say he was in, he was in the mines. Yeah. Yeah. He would have stayed in there if we’d have got a house. He enjoyed it. Yeah.
Interviewer: Did, did you get married here in the village?
MS: No. I got married at the Registry Office at Lincoln.
Interviewer: Right. Okay.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: And tell me, tell me a little bit if you can from the early years. What were your first kind of impressions and thoughts of Jan? What did you —
MS: I just thought he was good looking [laughs]
Interviewer: I seem to remember in the past that you’ve, yes you’ve shown me photographs of, I think he was in the football team so he was quite a sporty —
MS: Oh yeah. He played. I mean, yeah he did because he used to, they used to fly them from here down to Swindon and back. All around there to play football you know.
Interviewer: And what team did he, did he play for?
MS: He was, he was centre forward in the football team.
Interviewer: And it was a Polish Air Force Football Team then was it or just a local team?
MS: He played for Ingham but they did want him you know to play for Lincoln City.
Interviewer: Oh really?
MS: The reason he wouldn’t play, Geoff was as he said he would only be training for so long and if anything happened he would get no money and as he said we had the children so therefore he wouldn’t take it on. Oh no. He was a big footballer. Yeah. Yeah. He was. And the boys. Not so much maybe Dale. But John the eldest one was a right footballer. He really took after his dad for footballing. Yeah, he did.
Interviewer: So you were married at eighteen. How many, because you obviously just a few moments ago chatted about the fact that you moved around to different, different locations around the UK for Jan to work. What, what age were you then when you had your first son?
MS: I was nearly nineteen.
Interviewer: But that was, that was here. That was at Tin Town.
MS: Yeah. As I say he used to he lived in a hostel when he was sort of, you know in the mines. Sometimes he didn’t get home every weekend because I lived with my mum for the first year and then we moved to Tin Town when my eldest son was a year old and we was down there five six years. Yeah.
Interviewer: Can you tell me a bit about, because we’ve obviously only seen Tin Town in its old rusty state, could you, could you describe a little bit about what Tin Town looked like and what your particular Nissen hut looked like on the outside and the inside? Just, if you, if you almost closed your eyes metaphorically and just if you can just describe to us because we weren’t there so it would be nice to —
MS: Well, I mean, as I say if, [pause] I mean we was all happy up there although as I say we hadn’t a shop. We had to come right down here whether it was rain, snow or blow. But we was happy up there and I think we would have liked to have stayed up there if they’d started to build the houses. We’d have enjoyed it up there. Yeah. The only thing was that when your children went out to play I mean they had a big square further down to play on but you’d have still got that fear if they happened to come and to come up to the main road. That was the only thing because there was no gates or anything. Nothing. It was just open to the main road.
Interviewer: On the bit where it goes, goes on to Stow Lane where you are talking about, the gates there, the original plans show an old like a guard hut just, just in off the road there.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: On the right-hand side.
MS: I think there was. Yeah.
Interviewer: But that was just during the war years used and that —
MS: Well, that’s right because you see, you see the Forces was up there. You see, they were stationed up there. That’s the reason the Nissen huts was there. And then there was so many up Cow Hill. There was a bit of a station and then there was a camp up there. Then there was this one at Saxon Way. You see there were quite a few camps.
Interviewer: So, so that the Tin Town wasn’t built [pause] built for the Polish resettlement site. It was already used as accommodation during the wartime for the, for the Services people.
MS: It was for the Forces.
Interviewer: For the Forces.
MS: They was all built for the Forces.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And then you see, fair enough they got as where people you know they let people live in.
Interviewer: But then —
MS: That’s where Jeannie and Darkie lived first. They lived down Saxon Way in one of the Nissen huts.
Interviewer: But the ones that you lived in in Tin Town have got all internal walls. You know, for your bedrooms and things. Now, I imagine and you might be able to help us. Help us on this. That when the, when the RAF people used it and the Polish Air Force used it during the war years there wouldn’t have been all these internal walls would there? It would have just been like a long tube. A barrack room.
MS: Yes. I think so. I think so. I think it was more or less they did the partitions.
Interviewer: The partitions.
MS: For the bedrooms.
Interviewer: And that came after the war for the —
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: For the families.
MS: Yeah. As I say Geoff, I don’t know a lot about that because as I say I was only really you know young. I mean I was nine when the war broke out and I was fourteen when it finished so —
Interviewer: So how would you, how would you describe your, if you walked into the front door of your old Nissen hut and you opened it inside can you just almost take yourself back to describing what the inside looked like?
MS: I can tell you. I can picture it now. When I walked in there as I say, you might say the bathroom/toilet was on the left. The little pantry on the right. Then you went into the big room and then you had sort of that side the left was your old sink and then each side you had your bedroom and then you had your fireplace in the middle and that was it.
Interviewer: And that’s where you did the cooking. On that as well.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Or your mother did.
MS: Until we got the electric.
Interviewer: Or you did, sorry. Yes.
MS: And then I think we was a year I’m not quite sure, I think we was a year before we actually got electric but we never got any hot water.
Interviewer: No.
MS: I mean you had to sort of, you know boil kettles and pans and everything.
Interviewer: You didn’t, you didn’t have the copper in the corner of your, in the toilet, the bathroom toilet.
MS: That’s where the copper was.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: Yeah. That’s where it was. Just hoping on a Monday morning that it was going to go because if it went out you had no sticks or anything. You was having to come across the fields to the shop.
Interviewer: Right. So —
MS: That was whether it was rain, snow or blow. You was desperate.
Interviewer: So the job, the job late at night was to bank the fire up then in there and in the main room was it or not?
MS: Well, you see we only had one. We only had one little fire. It was only about that and then of course you see once it got going well it used to shine all red on the top and I think I was about the one, the really one who I got the best one. I think the others was a bit more shoddier than mine.
Interviewer: Was this, was this the cooker or the copper? Which one are we talking about? Sorry.
MS: This was the fireplace.
Interviewer: This was the fireplace between the two bedrooms.
MS: We had a little cooker like that.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: And then on the top we used to get, you know once your fire got going it was red hot.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And that’s where you could cook and that’s where your heating came out. Yeah. Oh gosh. Yeah. I mean, let’s face it we had some hard times. When you got in the wintertime it was so frosty you had icicles hanging in the room.
Interviewer: On the inside.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Oh, gosh. Yeah. I mean you could do like that on the corrugated sheeting and it was just ice. Yeah. And when it rained then the men used to go outside and sort of dig little dykes around the hut to let the water out. To let the water out or else it would have come in the hut.
Interviewer: The, the floor was obviously a concrete floor.
MS: Well, mine [pause] mine must have had some sort of a lino on because I could polish mine.
Interviewer: Oh. So people —
MS: Though I didn’t polish it, Geoff for the simple reason it could cause a lot of injury. You know, slippery.
Interviewer: Slippery.
MS: But I mean I could rub it with a cloth and it would come up lovely.
Interviewer: So what, what year do you think [pause] sorry what, go back. What year were you married? Can you remember the year?
MS: 1949.
Interviewer: 1949.
MS: November the 19th.
Interviewer: Right. And you would have been, you would have moved into Tin Town would it have been the next year or the year after that?
MS: ’51.
Interviewer: ’51.
MS: About ’51.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: Yeah. ’51 because my second son he was born up there. A really foggy, frosty night. The 1st of October. He was born up there.
Interviewer: So the midwife had to come out then did she?
MS: Next door.
Interviewer: Oh, the midwife was next door.
MS: Yeah. Yeah. She was next door. Yeah. And she was the same midwife as what I had when Dale was born. Dale was born here and she lived where, as you say that all that boarding of Johnson’s, that’s where she lived.
Interviewer: Oh right.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: That close.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Again.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: So, up at, up at Tin Town then when you lived there was there any like a communal, a social room or a communal room where you could all go to?
MS: No. No.
Interviewer: There was no club or anything like that?
MS: No. I mean, fair enough, I mean if me and my husband wanted to go to say a dance in the village my mum she would babysit for us or my dad and that was the only thing there was. No, there’s nothing up there Geoff. It was just bare huts.
Interviewer: Just bare huts.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Somewhere to live.
MS: And I can’t remember how many there was. Twenty something. There must have been about twenty something because you see they went right the way down to the field.
Interviewer: And were they all occupied by Polish, ex-Polish airmen?
MS: No. No. No. The only Polish family was me and there was another family and they called them [Pietrices?] and they lived right down at the bottom.
Interviewer: Right. Okay.
MS: Yeah. And they had two girls. Yeah. Yeah. But they never sort of associated with anybody. They was to be honest they was a bit snobs. Yeah.
Interviewer: Going back to, going back to Jan, what, what trade did he, what was his job within the Polish Air Force?
MS: He couldn’t get this job in England. Now, he worked for a sort of, you know at home when he was fifteen he was going to train as a locksmith but of course as I say he was taken away from his home, him and his brother. Yeah. I mean, the boys often used to say, ‘Dad, tell us.’ You know, but he’d never. He would never tell them how he escaped and different things. He must have had it very rough. Do you know what I mean?
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: And then he got into Italy and that’s where he was in the Army and then he went into the Polish Air Force when he was in Italy and that was it. And then of course he was posted. They was posted to England. Yeah.
Interviewer: And then to Cammeringham.
MS: Well, he was down in [pause] I’m not sure if his first, when he first came over I’m not sure if he wasn’t near Camberley. I think it was Epping Forest. Somewhere around there and then he did quite a few postings before he came here and I think he came here July 1945. Yeah. But his last posting was Castle Comb in Wiltshire. Yeah.
Interviewer: I just, I was wondering. Obviously you mentioned that he was a locksmith or he was training to be a locksmith when he was in Poland but when he was here in the Polish Air Force what was his trade? What job did he do?
MS: Nothing [laughs]
Interviewer: Did he, did he do any training you know when he joined the Polish Air Force?
MS: Yeah. Football. As far as I know Geoff —
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: That’s all he did.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: He just had a lazy life when he was up here. Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: You’re sure he’d thank you for saying that [laughs]
MS: A lazy life.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Right. Now, I didn’t, I didn’t know if he had done any form of training or —
MS: All he lived for was football.
Interviewer: For his football.
MS: Yeah. But as he said if it hadn’t have been that fear of being say injured and no money coming in he would have gone for Lincoln City. Oh yeah. They wanted him for there. Yeah. They did. Yeah. Oh yeah.
Interviewer: Can you, can you remember and tell me at all about your memories of the camp up on, up on the hill because obviously you said you went there for dances occasionally didn’t you? Was that, or was that the camp in the village here? The RAF camp in the village.
MS: No. It was up there.
Interviewer: When you first met Jan.
MS: We had to go up there.
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: No. I met him in the village hall down here.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: But I mean we used to go up there and I’ll tell you where it was. You know where the entrance of your Heritage there’s some huts up there?
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
MS: And I reckon, I think, I don’t know if there are two or three left.
Interviewer: There’s two. There’s two left.
MS: They’re a bit tatty.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: Yeah. Well, it was the far one. That was the dance hall.
Interviewer: Oh right.
MS: Yeah. That was the dance hall.
Interviewer: Because looking on the old maps there were about ten or eleven buildings up there originally in the war.
MS: Oh, it was a lot. Yeah.
Interviewer: So it was the, it was the —
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: The furthest one. The one nearest to Fillingham, or Fillingham Castle was the one.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: Now, was that a dance hall did you say or a cinema?
MS: There was sometimes it would go as a cinema.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And then they’d have it as a dance hall.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: Yeah. But no, as I say I can remember going to meet my husband. Well, he was my boyfriend then and I waited outside the Guardroom, you know at the end and he never come. Anyway, I thought oh well that’s it. Anyway, one of his friends come and he asked me if I was waiting for him. I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘He’s gone to Gainsborough with his mates.’ They’d biked to Gainsborough. Yeah. And I’d been there waiting for him for an hour and a half. Oh dear. Yeah.
Interviewer: That’s true love for you isn’t it?
MS: That’s true. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had some good times. Oh God, yeah. Yeah. We had some good times. We did.
Interviewer: Inside your, inside your hut at Tin Town what, what kind of furniture did you have? What furnishings in there were there?
MS: I’ll tell you something about that. I mean we was hard up when we, we had, we got a settee and two chairs from a lady. Well, you sat on one side of the settee it was all patches. You sat on a chair and the spring, well there was no springs involved and the other one well if you sat in it the spring used to shoot up. Now, that was our furniture when we first got married. Yeah. Until later on and then fair enough you know.
Interviewer: And what were the, what were the beds because we’re trying to find beds that were suitable. Were they wooden beds or were they metal beds? Can you remember?
MS: What we bought?
Interviewer: Well, I don’t know. Was there nothing left in there —
MS: No.
Interviewer: From the military personnel.
MS: Oh no. Nothing at all. It was just a bare —
Interviewer: Just a bare shell.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: Right. Okay.
MS: Yeah. But I think, Geoff I got one of the best huts there was and I’ll tell you why. Because the daughter of the windmill their daughter she was the first one to go in number 7 and I followed her and of course they’d put a rail around sort of, you know the top of the fireplace. Well I mean I could air my clothes and everything up there. Yeah. They did quite a few things. You know. I think I got the best hut.
Interviewer: It's interesting to see the fact that they had like when you think that it was a very sparse little house but they had a larder there but I think you said to me that there were only several shelves in there.
MS: Three.
Interviewer: And that was about it. Three shelves.
MS: There was only three.
Interviewer: So it was almost like it was a broom cupboard.
MS: It was more or less a walk in and walk out. I mean you couldn’t have got in there and shut the door.
Interviewer: No. Right.
MS: It was so tiny. You know what I mean. Then of course I bought a unit where sort of I could put this was to put in the living room because the pantry wasn’t big enough for your pots and whatever so I mean I used to, I bought a unit so that I could put different things in. Yeah. I did. But as I say, no, we had some good times up there.
Interviewer: Who, to the best of your recollection at the time, who actually owned the site? Was it, was it, did the local council?
MS: Well, yeah. It was. Yeah.
Interviewer: So you had to pay rent. It wasn’t completely free then.
MS: That’s right. Oh no. They used to come around every week. Yeah. Yeah. It was done by the council.
Interviewer: Did, did Jan have at that time when you were at Tin Town did he have a motorbike? I presume he didn’t have a car.
MS: No. He had, he had a pushbike.
Interviewer: A pushbike.
MS: And he used to pushbike rain, snow or blow to Lincoln every day.
Interviewer: To work.
MS: To work.
Interviewer: And where was he working in Lincoln?
MS: Smith-Clayton Forge.
Interviewer: Oh right. Yes.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: He was there thirty-one years.
Interviewer: And what job did he do there?
MS: Well, he started with the [hammer?] driver and went right through the machinery and then in the end he went into the Stores because he started to have a few dizzy do’s and they took him off the machines. But he did right through.
Interviewer: And still cycled back every day or did he have a car or motorbike?
MS: Yeah. When we came down here he bought a little, a little motorbike, yeah and as I say went in the Stores. Well, then you see he, well he got made redundant as such because the Stores shut. They didn’t need him. They’d bought a machine from Germany which did the work of eight men. So of course a lot of them you see was made redundant through that. Yeah. They were.
Interviewer: And was that it then? He just, he just retired at that point did he?
MS: He just, he just finished then.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
MS: Yeah. He did. Yeah. Yeah. He did.
Interviewer: Did, did Jan and yourself ever get the chance to go back to Poland at all or not?
MS: Yeah. We went back. Dale was sixteen and we went back to see although he’d lost his father and he lost his brother. I think he lost his eldest brother I think at birth or something and then his other brother he was in the Polish Army. Well, he was at Monte Casino and he got blown up. He was only twenty-one. Yeah. We went to see his mum and the family. Dale was sixteen. We went in the, I think it was the June or July as Dale went in the Junior League in the September. Yeah. Yeah. We went for two or three weeks but it was martial law then.
Interviewer: It was still, it was still communist [unclear]
MS: You had to be in at a certain time.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: And if you was out later then the police would want to know where you’d been and everything. And it was sort of black marketing and everything. I mean, I went with his sister. We went to a market and all of a sudden she heard about chocolate and I bought them two bars of chocolate, Geoff. And I said to my husband, I said, ‘How much is that in English money?’ Five pound a bar. Yeah. But we never all the time we was there she always did a beautiful table of food. Oh, absolutely lovely. And then when it was before Dale was born she came over, his eldest sister for five weeks and the meals she made out of nothing was unbelievable.
Interviewer: She was allowed to come over then was she?
MS: Pardon?
Interviewer: His, was this his sister or mother did you say?
MS: Oh, she was his sister.
Interviewer: His sister. She was allowed to leave Poland and come over here.
MS: Oh God she came for five weeks.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And I’m not joking she did the cooking. I didn’t do any cooking all the time she was there and she always said English people are very wasteful because they could make a meal out of nothing. She was a beautiful cook.
Interviewer: Did she find it then very strange when you perhaps took her either to a local shop or into Lincoln.
MS: Well, I’d take —
Interviewer: To the market and —
MS: Yeah. I think so.
Interviewer: Places like that where they’d see so much stuff.
MS: I mean, although we couldn’t talk one another’s language but we could always make one another understand. Surprising. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: But she was a lovely cook and I mean the meals was lovely. Lovely. That’s why I like the continental meals.
Interviewer: Did you actually learn to cook any of the Polish dishes from Jan?
MS: No. My husband used to do that.
Interviewer: Oh right.
MS: If we had any Polish dishes on.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: And you know I don’t know if there’s more taste than what it is for us. I think we’d just done the basics.
Interviewer: Yeah. I’ve tasted. I don’t know. I think it’s just the way they cook it and using different herbs and spices and the way they do it.
MS: Beautiful.
Interviewer: Yes. I have. I tried some Polish food and its very nice.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: I know years ago I used to go on a Saturday shopping and down you know where the General Post Office used to be?
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: Well, past there on the corner there used to be a Polish shop.
Interviewer: Oh right.
MS: And I used to go in there on a Saturday. Oh yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: I think with the present migrant Polish kind of community that are now over here and have been over here for the last what five or ten years now a lot of little shops have kind of sprung up down the bottom end of the High Street towards South Park, Portland Street, opposite the old Ritz cinema.
MS: Really?
Interviewer: There’s lots of Polish delicatessens and things there.
MS: That’s to say you see there’s nothing up the town.
Interviewer: No. Indeed.
MS: You see. Yeah.
Interviewer: It’s down the back streets where they’ve set up.
MS: Another one, there was another Polish shop and I’m not sure if that didn’t move from near the General Post Office. You know where the subway is?
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: Well, there’s they used to call, it’s Greggs.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: The bakers.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Well, I think that used to be a little Polish shop. Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: But it’s all big money there now isn’t it?
MS: It is, yeah.
Interviewer: They have little corner shops at the back.
MS: But no, I’ll tell you what Geoff I love any smoked food. Any. I love smoked food. Yeah, I do.
Interviewer: Going back to obviously the time when you met Jan here in the village and things I appreciate that the Polish Air Force had been here for four or five years then, you know.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: The camp up on the hill and down here. Did most of the community here in Ingham, the normal villagers did they all accept the Poles? Was it kind of a nice atmosphere?
MS: Well, it’s like this Geoff. It was one of them things. You just had to. You know what I mean.
Interviewer: But I mean people can sometimes have to do things because they have to or because they actually, you know genuinely like the people that are part of the community. Did Jan fitted in?
MS: Just got on with, you know. As I say. You know —
Interviewer: Well, there was Jan and Darkie Polack wasn’t there and possibly other stuff.
MS: I mean, there was Darkie. I mean he was a cook.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: And I mean when I worked on the farm sort of thing at the Dalton’s I used to get dozens of eggs and I used to give them to my husband sort of thing and they used to take them to Darkie and he used to do all sorts. Yeah.
Interviewer: I remember seeing a few of the photographs that you showed me a few years ago and it showed your, it showed Jan and some of his mates working on the land but they were still in the Air Force.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: At that time.
MS: He, he went potato picking to buy me an engagement ring.
Interviewer: Really?
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Was that just up here at Carter’s?
MS: Carter’s.
Interviewer: Or whichever it was.
MS: That’s where he used to work. Yeah. And Elsie. I mean Elsie worked with Jan. Yeah. On the potato field. Oh God. Yeah. Yeah. She did.
Interviewer: And do you, do you remember much about the old Station Headquarters that was here where Saxon and Glebe Close is now because I think we spoke a little bit ago, I mean after the war when it obviously the RAF left who, who kind of —
MS: Well, you see then you see they more or less they took over. [BritPac?] took over the factory and I mean they occupied quite a few of those huts what was left.
Interviewer: And that was, that was almost straight after the war onwards.
MS: That was more or less.
Interviewer: So a good few years.
MS: More or less because I worked down there for ten years. Yeah. I did.
Interviewer: Packing. Packing very dangerous chemicals by what you were saying.
MS: I tell you what. Honestly Geoff, I would not want to live on that site because what’s buried underneath that soil is nobody’s business. I mean we used to get boxes and if there were skeletons on that box you knew very well that it was —
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Horrible stuff. Yeah.
Interviewer: Did they give you any protective clothing to wear? Gloves or masks or anything.
MS: Oh, we used to have all that but I mean cheap old stuff.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah. I mean sometimes I look back and I think I wish I’d never worked there. Do you know what I mean? Because some of them really it’s caused them a lot of chest problems.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: A lot of them. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of them. And I think I mean two of them sort of, sort of died quite a few years ago and I think it was all to do with that because it was all to do with their breathing, their lungs, chest.
Interviewer: Whatever was in the boxes.
MS: Yeah. I mean we used to have a place where every so often everybody used to have to take their turn and they used to call it the Soot House and we was bagging like soot and I’m not joking you was absolutely covered up but the stuff still got to your skin. It was terrible. Yeah. Sometimes what we did it makes you wonder well how did we do it? But we did it because we needed the money. Just one of them things.
Interviewer: I know. I can understand that because I’ve spoken to other people of a similar age to you and in those days there was no such things as Social Security and all the other things. No.
MS: God, no.
Interviewer: If you didn’t work you didn’t, you didn’t eat basically.
MS: That’s right.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: That’s right. But as I say, no if, I don’t think I would have gone down there if I had my time to come over again because I could have found somebody. But then again you see it was, it was more or less on the doorstep and people, well a lot of the girls you know and well I say a lot of people come from Scunthorpe to work there.
Interviewer: Really?
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Oh, crikey. So it’s not just the local villages.
MS: Oh God, yeah. They used to put, they used to put coaches on for them.
Interviewer: Right. Golly.
MS: Oh gosh, yeah.
Interviewer: So, for you to get a job there was, was —
MS: Well, I think as I say if anybody who sort of rung up and said, you know, ‘Is there a vacancy?’ Well, there was always a vacancy there.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
MS: The more the merrier. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean there was odd jobs where we did sort of clean stuff. Sort of assembling brushes and say when it got to to Christmas time you did cards and paper and all that but that was once in a blue moon.
Interviewer: And that was a nice time then was it?
MS: Otherwise, and we were too, we used to do anti-freeze. Oh God, yeah. We had a big machine to do anti-freeze. Yeah.
Interviewer: Right. Yeah.
MS: And you can imagine what that was like when it was, because there was no heating on.
Interviewer: No.
MS: And you can imagine what it was like. I mean the weekends I often used to go on nights. Yeah. I did.
Interviewer: Was it better pay on nights then? A little better or —
MS: Well, maybe a little bit but not much.
Interviewer: Yeah. [unclear] not too.
MS: Jan was at home you see so I mean he could look after the kiddies and I used to go on a Friday night. I used to go on at six, come off at seven the next morning and I used to get all ready to go on the 8 o’clock bus shopping. I never went to bed. No.
Interviewer: You do these things when you’re a bit younger don’t you?
MS: Well, this is it.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: I sometimes think well how did they do it but there you are.
Interviewer: But you had to. Yes.
MS: It was just one of them things.
Interviewer: But obviously back in that particular time through the ‘40s and the ‘50s from what Elsie has already explained to me there were a lot more shops in the village weren’t there? So there was —
MS: I’ll tell you what Geoff believe it or not you see it’s the supermarkets. People have got transport and they work in town. They think right I can get my shopping from the supermarkets. That’s what’s done this village. I mean we had, I mean we’ve still got old Tony Bell out there with his pub. You’ve got the Black Horse, you’ve got the Inn on the Green. We’ve got Ron Wensley which is the garage down Stow Road. We’ve got a, well we haven’t got a hairdresser now. We’ve just got the mobile ladies what come around. We’ve just got the shop.
Interviewer: But what did, what was —
MS: What was there?
Interviewer: In the ‘40s you know. During the war and then just straight afterwards in the early ‘50s. What can you remember was in the village?
MS: What? The shops?
Interviewer: Well, the different shops and whatever other features.
MS: I mean even the boys, maybe not so much Dale but I mean the other boys it was nearly the same when they went in the Forces. We had the same things you know what I mean? I mean we had a butcher’s shop, hairdressing shop, we had one, two, three, we had four shops. We had the little sweet shop. We had a bicycle shop. We’d everything more or less. The old cobblers.
Interviewer: There was a bakery as well.
MS: We had a bakery which was attached to the shop.
Interviewer: And somebody even said a fish and chip shop at some point.
MS: We had a fish and chip shop.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Which was near the shop. You know, down —
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: And it was just up the alleyway and well where Mr Sully lives.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: Well, you know. You know that long house Dale was telling you about?
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: Yeah. Well then there’s the, there’s the drive in and his house is sort of like that. Attached to the shop. Right.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: Well, that used to be the fish shop and then, then they did a bit little bigger where you could have two or three tables. You could go and sit in there and have a meal. It was lovely. Yeah.
Interviewer: And then up on the bit we were talking about last time was on the, up the little service road at the top of the green between the little bit of road that runs between the Black Horse and the Inn on the Green. There was a shop along there wasn’t there?
MS: There was a Post Office there and yeah there was. Yeah.
Interviewer: A couple of houses along.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: There was just a —
MS: Yeah, you know the one with the bay window?
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: Well that was a shop.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And I mean that was a big shop. It was a grocer’s shop. Oh gosh, yeah. And then you see the bottom shop? They split it in half. One was draping. Drapery stuff and the other was groceries.
Interviewer: Oh right.
MS: I mean we had everything. We had everything.
Interviewer: To keep a whole village going.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: And the petrol station that was just down here in the hollow. Was that, was that during the war or was that afterward?
MS: Yeah. Because I used to go down there when I was a kid. I mean we used to have the old wirelesses. Well, you had the high-tension batteries.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: And then you used to have the accumulators and my dad I’m not joking I ought to have been an old boy because my dad used to say, ‘Right. We need a new battery. Here you are. Take the old one back.’ They was heavy. I used to have to go down there, pick another one up. Same as the accumulators. They was full of acid.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: And we used to have to take those down two at a time and the old chap he was lovely. I shall never forget him who owned the garage.
Interviewer: What was his name?
MS: He used to say, he always used to call me Charlie. ‘Now then, Charlie.’ Because my dad was named Charlie and that was my name. ‘Now Charlie, what do you want now, duck?’ Yeah. Yeah. And then my dad used to say, ‘Right. Get off to the cobblers. Take my boots.’
Interviewer: Kept you busy then.
MS: Yeah. And then of course my mum used to say, with being in a Row you see, she used to say, I used to come from school and my mum used to say, ‘Mrs — ’ so and so, ‘Wants you to go to the shop.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to go. I want to go to play.’ She said, ‘No. You go to the shop.’ Well, and then on a Saturday morning right from morning ‘til dinner I was having to go to the shop for people. Of course they used to give me a bit of pocket money.
Interviewer: I was going to say did they give you any pocket money for it.
MS: Yeah. I mean fair enough. The old money was a lot.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: To what it is today. Right. And I’ll always remember when I used to, when they used to give me money for going to the shops or whatever I shall always remember somebody bought me a little red handbag and you know our house same as a lot of, they had the big bacon hooks, right because my dad used to have two, used to kill two pigs a year. Right. And I shall always remember this little handbag I had. My mum used to put it on this bacon hook. Now, do you know Geoff every time I got any money from anybody she used to say, ‘Right. It can go in there. You need some new shoes.’ I was only one. I was the only one. I was brought up strict. I was the only child but believe it or not, you know I used to have to, she would say ‘Yeah, you need some shoes.’ I mean she didn’t work. There was only my dad. Yeah. Yeah. And he worked at Hemswell Camp. Yeah. For the Air Ministry. Yeah. He did.
Interviewer: What kind of job did he do?
MS: I don’t know. I ain’t got a clue.
Interviewer: Oh, he didn’t tell you.
MS: I knew he went to work.
Interviewer: And used to come back. Yeah.
MS: Yeah. And then often on a Friday he’d come back with sweets what he’d been to the NAAFI.
Interviewer: Oh right. Yeah. Yeah.
MS: And my mum used to have a basket up and then she used to put stuff there. Yeah.
Interviewer: So you just used to get them every now and again then. Yeah.
MS: That’s right. Yeah. I did.
Interviewer: So, what was it, I mean obviously when war broke out how old were you? Did you say?
MS: I was nine.
Interviewer: You were nine.
MS: Yeah. Because I shall always remember I went into the hospital to have my tonsils and adenoids out and I shall always remember and I can still feel it and see it now a little black nurse threw herself over me because they bombed the nurse’s home that night.
Interviewer: Really.
MS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: And so you would have obviously been in the Junior School here at the time. Well it was all one school wasn’t it?
MS: Well, that’s right. As I say there wasn’t a secondary school then. It was only high schools.
Interviewer: I’ve spoken to, I think we’ve mentioned before Arthur Hydes?
MS: Oh, Old Arthur.
Interviewer: Yeah. Because obviously he was, I think he was seven I think he said when war broke out.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: So he was probably a year or two —
MS: There you are you see. Yeah. I was nine. So there’s two years between us.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: But you were at the same school because it’s just —
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: One big class.
MS: So he’s eighty-two you see.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah. He is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean the only thing if you passed the scholarship then you went to High School. We used to call them snugs.
Interviewer: So, did you, if you went to, to high school did you not have to have money then at all or not?
MS: Well, as I say I mean your parents had to buy uniform. I mean they didn’t get grants or anything like that.
Interviewer: So, that high school. When you say high school you’re talking about like a grammar school type of thing.
MS: Well, it was that sort of South Park for the girls.
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: And sort of whatever school it was for the boys.
Interviewer: For the boys. And if you didn’t pass your scholarship?
MS: You stopped here.
Interviewer: Oh, did you? Even after Junior School.
MS: We never had no other school. There wasn’t a secondary school. I started here when I was five.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And I left here when I was fourteen.
Interviewer: Oh, right. Okay.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: That’s interesting.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: So, they didn’t, they didn’t push you on to any of the other bigger, bigger schools then.
MS: No. You had to pass your scholarship.
Interviewer: That was it. That was the end.
MS: And I was one of these which didn’t.
Interviewer: So you stayed here. But then again if you’d been elsewhere you might not have met Jan so it’s all —
MS: That sort of thing. You just don’t know do you?
Interviewer: It’s all part of the story isn’t it? Yeah. Of life.
MS: You just don’t know. No. You don’t. No.
Interviewer: When you went up there to, to, sorry I keep going back a little bit but at, at Tin Town was it, was it all fairly kind of clean and tidy and the whole, the whole kind of area of Tin Town? Was it —
MS: Well, I mean a lot of it was sort of a lot of grass and all that sort of thing. I’m not saying they cleared it. They didn’t. It was more or less you took potluck.
Interviewer: Did you, did you grow your own vegetables outside? Did you have like a vegetable garden.
MS: We had a little back garden. Well, you made your own.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Where we, yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: So you could grow your own vegetables and things, yeah.
MS: And then the front we had lawns and we had a border with all the, with all the flowers. Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: And like a little fence or something around the edge or whatever it was.
MS: Well, there was a little hedge.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: A little hedge.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Because obviously when we, when we create the Nissen hut up at the thing we’re looking at what we’re going to do outside as well as inside but we want it to be correct.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: On how it was.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Straight after the war for those years.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: So talking about all talking to you about what you had you know part of it was a vegetable garden, part of it was the little lawn.
MS: Well, that’s right. Yeah.
Interviewer: Just to get the right, the right feeling for it so it looks —
MS: Yeah. I mean my husband and the midwife I mean they used to send to Holland for all their bulbs. All our bulbs what we had in the garden came from Holland.
Interviewer: Came from Holland.
MS: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. He loved his garden. Yeah. He did.
Interviewer: And so what year was it that you moved into here from Tin Town? Can you remember that?
MS: Nineteen [pause] it would be the end of the 1950s.
Interviewer: And these were newly built then were they or —
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: So you were the first person —
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: To live in this house.
MS: I was the first one.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah. Yeah. You see what they did Geoff you see they allocated people from Tin Town eventually into these. Yeah. They did.
Interviewer: Just let everybody have a proper bricks and mortar house.
MS: Well, that’s right.
Interviewer: Rather than just the tin.
MS: But I mean as I said for a year when we came in here you wasn’t allowed to put anything on the walls. Not for a year. I suppose that’s more or less to dry everything out. I don’t know.
Interviewer: Possibly so, yes and you had, you obviously had your fire.
MS: We had a fire.
Interviewer: Did you have, I presume in those times you didn’t have central heating. Was there just —
MS: Oh, gosh. No.
Interviewer: Was that the only heating in the house?
MS: When I first got the central heating it was sixteen years ago, Geoff because I was still on a stick after having my first hip operation. That’s when we had it. I mean all we was just a coal fire.
Interviewer: Because the coal fire was the only heating in the house.
MS: That was all we had.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah. And I still think it’s a lot healthier than what the central heating because it’s dry air.
Interviewer: Dries it all out. Yes.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: So at night time you’d bank the fire up would you and then leave the doors open to let the heat go around the house or —
MS: Well, no because we used to let the fire go out.
Interviewer: Oh, you let it go out.
MS: Oh yeah. We didn’t used to keep it built up. No. No.
Interviewer: I suppose it’s a lot easier to relight it in the morning.
MS: Well, then again there was as I say, you know I mean the more coal you used you know —
Interviewer: The more expensive.
MS: Yeah. You never knew when our coal man was going to come. He was supposed to come around every fortnight. Sometimes it would be a month. Yeah. So you had to be very very careful how you —
Interviewer: Used your coal.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: You didn’t get into the local, you didn’t get Jan into the local woods then to, to —
MS: Well, the old hands used to go sticking and —
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: All that sort of thing and used to make the best of it. Yeah.
Interviewer: Have you got any —
MS: I mean I was brought up like that. I was brought up. I mean there was, there was no heating when I lived with my parents so from me being a child right away to when they put central heating here I was used to it.
Interviewer: One of the ladies that used to live in [pause] in Jubilee Terrace was also telling me that there used to be the village pond.
MS: Oh there.
Interviewer: Just —
MS: Near the church.
Interviewer: Just near the church.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: In front of the church.
MS: Yeah. They always say that there was a horse and cart in there you know. They never got it out.
Interviewer: Really?
MS: They always said that. Now, how true this is I don’t know.
Interviewer: So, that was, that was the —
MS: I heard my parents talk about that.
Interviewer: That was the piece of, the piece of ground just, just in front of the —
MS: That’s where they put the car park.
Interviewer: Where the car park —
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Well, there’s about, you could get about three cars in there. Yes.
MS: That’s all.
Interviewer: And that was the village pond then was it?
MS: That was the village pond.
Interviewer: Right. Because she was telling me that there was a story that during the war years a couple of airmen had obviously been at the pub that night, got drunk, walked into the middle of it drunk and couldn’t get out and they were shouting. And apparently she lived in Jubilee Terrace and two or three other people from Jubilee Terrace had to come out and guide these because obviously the two chaps were intending to go up Church Lane and walk back to the camp and they got stuck in it and it must have been a bit like quicksand. They couldn’t move and they were shouting they were. But you don’t remember that. You don’t remember that particular night.
MS: No, I can’t remember that.
Interviewer: She said —
MS: No.
Interviewer: She said it got most of the people up in Jubilee Terrace. Maybe it was just your parents you know and they kind of, they kind of —
MS: Because you see before the Polish lads come up there the Canadians was up there.
Interviewer: Were they really?
MS: Yeah. We had the Canadians up there.
Interviewer: Oh, that’s interesting. I know there were. I know there were a few Canadians and Australians in with 199 Squadron in February to June of 1943 but I’ve not found any other records of Canadians other than that. It was an English, a British squadron but they had Canadians and Australians in them.
MS: I understood that there was Canadians up here.
Interviewer: Could well have been then because we’ve recorded I think about four or five. Four or five were lost on operations. Canadians.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: But there may well have been an awful lot more Canadians actually attached to the squadrons.
MS: I don’t know how many were up there.
Interviewer: That was 1943.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: So you probably would have been.
MS: Yeah, all I know about those Canadians up there.
Interviewer: Yeah. You would have been eleven or twelve. Probably twelve at that age.
MS: Well, I mean I wasn’t very old then.
Interviewer: No. No. Indeed. And a few Australians.
MS: I think the Polish, I think the Polish boys I think they sort of followed the Canadians.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: I think they did. Yeah.
Interviewer: That’s interesting. I can, I’ll have to do a little bit more research into that but the only Canadians I’ve found were with —
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: In 1943 because 300 Squadron, the Poles came in May ’42.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: They were there for the whole of ’42.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: They left in Jan ’43 and that was when 199 came for that, from like the winter through the summer and then 300 came back from Hemswell again and 305, the other Polish squadron came back.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: In the summer of ’43. Have you got any other particular memories of those war years in particular because obviously living in a village there must have been an awful lot of servicemen.
MS: Oh, no. Not really, Geoff because as I say you know although I mean I’ve been here all my life, well no —
Interviewer: No because you were obviously a young teenager from, from about ten to fifteen.
MS: Well this is it.
Interviewer: And obviously in the evenings or at weekends —
MS: Yeah. I mean as I say we used to go to town on a Saturday.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah. When me and my friend, that was before I met my husband, we used to go to Lincoln on on a Saturday. Go to the pictures. We used to go in Sixpenny Woollies. I mean we used to get [laughs] we used to go in and get the Evening in Paris perfume.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: Oh my, you could wash your clothes and it would still smell nice. You didn’t used to use a lot. Then we used to get these joysticks. They were cigarettes. Five in a packet.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: We used to take them into the pictures.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: We used to have a puff each and put it out. Yeah. Oh God. We didn’t used to have much money but we had some good times.
Interviewer: Did you, did you enjoy Saturdays in Lincoln then during the war years?
MS: Well yes because as I say we used to go to the Sixpenny Woollies and then off we used to go to the pictures.
Interviewer: I can only presume that through the war years in the middle of Lincoln even on a Saturday there must have been as many people in uniform as there were in civvies.
MS: There were more in uniform —
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: Then there was in civvies.
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah.
MS: And I shall always remember I was only [pause] I was only a kid, my neighbour, my mum’s neighbour sort of thing her niece and boyfriend he was in the RAF he wasn’t stationed here and they came over for a weekend and they took me with them to Lincoln, to the pictures. And you know where Primark is?
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: Well, that used to be the Ritz Picture House.
Interviewer: Oh right. Okay.
MS: And I shall always remember going there and it was a rainy foggy day and all of a sudden the picture house went like that and I thought oh dear. And I’d say it was water and down now then that’s Guildhall Street, isn’t it? Where the General Post Office.
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
MS: What’s the other one? [pause] Towards Broadgate.
Interviewer: Yes. Do you know I don’t honestly know.
MS: Well I don’t. Well, down there.
Interviewer: It’s not Free Lane is it?
MS: Right at the very end.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: As you went nearest to Broadgate as you could.
Interviewer: Yeah. Past the church.
MS: There was an old picture house there and I think [pause] I can’t remember whether they called it the Plaza. I’m not sure. But it was, it was, it looked a right old desolate place and they bombed that that afternoon.
Interviewer: Really?
MS: Yeah. And when we looked it was flat to the ground. Yeah. They bombed it while we was at the picture house.
Interviewer: And there must have been people in there at the time were there?
MS: Well, I suppose so.
Interviewer: Oh dear.
MS: I mean, I don’t know. I know that they bombed it.
Interviewer: But you went back where, where was the, was there like a, in those days was there a bus station or was there or were there just buses. You picked them up anywhere in town? To get you, to get you a lift home.
MS: To be honest, I can’t remember [pause] I reckon there was a bus station. I don’t know whether it was where Debenhams, they used to have the bus station where Debenhams and all that was —
Interviewer: Yes, because the bus garage used to be opposite didn’t it?
MS: I think that’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: Do you think that was the bus, the bus station was there too.
MS: I think that was it, yeah. I think so. But you know where the subway is.
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: There used to be another picture house there.
Interviewer: Right.
MS: And I’m not sure if they didn’t call that [pause] The one right the way down near Portland Street. That was the Ritz.
Interviewer: That’s the Ritz.
MS: That was the posh one.
Interviewer: I can remember going there even when I was in my early twenties and it was still it had a stage there and you’d go and see some of the acts there and things.
MS: We used to go there. And I’ll tell you another one. There was a Savoy because we used to go and see all the stars what used to come.
Interviewer: Right. Yeah.
MS: And, and then there was another picture house you know where Jackson, oh BBC Radio Lincoln.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
MS: There used to be a picture house there.
Interviewer: Oh right.
MS: I mean there was quite a few picture houses and then there was one sort of going up to the Strait. There was one right at the very end. That was only a tiny picture house. I just can’t remember. Oh, I think that was called the Odeon.
Interviewer: But then again there wasn’t television in those days.
MS: So many picture houses to link from.
Interviewer: But as you said that was your main thing of a Saturday morning.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Or Saturday afternoon? That you would go and watch. You’d go to the pictures because there wasn’t the television so that was your natural entertainment wasn’t it?
MS: That’s to say, that’s to say when you was indoors at night.
Interviewer: There was nothing there. You just read a book or listened to the wireless.
MS: You sewed or whatever.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Well, thank you very very much. That’s been lovely. If we, if you think about —
MS: As I say I mean like my childhood days well I daren’t tell you about them.
Interviewer: Maybe for another time. We’d love to come back and —
MS: I used to have the cane every day.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: I did at school. I used to have the cane every day.
Interviewer: You were the naughty girl in the class were you then?
MS: Terrible. I used to say to my mum, ‘I’ve had the cane.’ She said, ‘Serves you right. What did you do?
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: She’d no pity for me.
Interviewer: No.
MS: But that was the days.
Interviewer: That was the days, yeah. When your parents would have, well it was almost if, if a policeman brought you back —
MS: My father lived, my father lived from the military.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Right the way to more or less he died.
Interviewer: Yeah.
MS: Yeah.
Interviewer: But it was always there. It was always the way. I mean if you —
MS: And then he’d only got to do that to me —
Interviewer: Yes.
MS: And that was enough.
Interviewer: Yeah. You knew. You knew your place.
MS: Yeah. Oh, gosh yeah. I mean I weren’t allowed to pick a newspaper up on a Sunday.
Interviewer: No.
MS: No. Oh, God. No. And I mean that’s right I mean the days people would sew and knit and everything on a Sunday. Oh no.
Interviewer: You don’t do anything on a Sunday.
MS: Gosh no. No.
Interviewer: Alright. Well, thank you very very much.
MS: That’s alright Geoff.
Interviewer: I’ll turn this off now and if we think, if you think of other things we can always —
MS: Yeah.
Collection
Citation
Geoff Burton, “Interview with Margaret Smieja,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed March 17, 2026, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/54683.