Mrs Hinchcliffe's Memories of Old Arbury, Chesterton and Vicarage Terrace Part 11: St Kilda Avenue, Judy Garland, The Vicarage Terrace Bombing...
More changing times in the eleventh part of our serialisations of Arbury Archive transcripts from the 1980s. Mrs Hinchcliffe (1910-1998) was Andy's grandmother and his interviews with her are some of our favourites here. The family bond led to some very warm and natural reminisces.
As this era includes the beginning of World War II, Andy had assembled various dates at the Cambridgeshire Collection concerning the Cambridge war time events to aid Mrs Hinchcliffe in presenting events in chronological order, something she was very keen to do.
So, from the late 1920s to 1940, ushering in the Second World War...
'Mum and Dad moved from Milton Road to Hertford Street. Beautiful house, with a bathroom, though the toilet was outside - they rented the house, of course. The house had a garage with a flat roof that fronted Magrath Avenue, and I remember something really funny.
'There used to be... well, I suppose you might call it university police - Bulldogs and Proctors - and one night we were at home when we heard this low chanting, sort of warning, "Bull! Bull! BULL!" and heard scampering footsteps. I think the undergrads had a curfew. The next day, Dad fished several caps and gowns off our garage roof where they'd been flung by the students. They'd been caught at the Rendezvous and I don't suppose they were meant to be there!
'They had a big fire at the Rendezvous and it had to be rebuilt. That was before we moved to Hertford Street. Later they renamed it "The Rex". I didn't think that name was half as nice, but there were a lot of Rexes then.
'I worked at the Rendezvous part-time, of course, and often used to chat to undergrads. They'd talk to you just ordinary, they weren't stuck-up. They were born to it, not jumped-ups. One of my aunts said to Mum: "That daughter of yours is no better than an undergraduates' moll!" Well, I laughed, me that married a milkman a couple of years later, but Mum was really cross about it and didn't speak to Auntie for quite a while!
'Then Mum and Dad got a brand new council house in Garden Walk, No 88, just inside the old allotment gates which were still up at first.
'The allotments went of course, though they left a few at the back of Bateson Road and Stretten Avenue. The first thing that happened after the move to Garden Walk was they started building Chesterton School. It was a grim building, Mum said it looked like a "bloomin' old workhouse", and didn't like it all. Poor old Chesterton! I think it should've had a bigger site myself, but the education people crammed it in a bit. After a time, they had to take a bit of our back garden, and I've heard they've taken even more now!
'Of course, once they got going with the South and North Arbury estates in the fifties and sixties there were more ugly buildings. I won't say which ones I think are ugly because people live in them and it's not kind. But Mum said one of them looked like a "bloomin' old prison" - so she didn't change!
'But Arbury as housing didn't really get going until the fifties, so I'm leaping on.
'I think Arbury would've got going a lot quicker if it hadn't been for the war. I remember we were up on the Arbury fields, and they were building St Kilda Avenue, well, the older houses in St Kilda Avenue, not all of it. I said to Dad, something like, "Do you suppose we'll live to see houses all across this land?" and Dad smiled and said, "Well, I think you might, my dear!"
'I thought nothing of it, but that came back to haunt me a couple of years later.
'I wish Dad was still here. He was Arbury born and bred. He could tell you all about North Arbury when it was nearly all Manor Farm, from Arbury Road to the railway tracks, and back round by Arbury Camp Farm and Milton Road to Arbury Road.
'It was a big farm, and all farmed by Mr and Mrs Pepper. They were tenant farmers of course, and Mum worked for them and Grandad Brett worked for them. Well, you know that...
'Dad could've told you a lot more...
'But in my day it was smallholdings, and the Experiment Farm [University Field Labs] and the college sports ground, and there was a lot of building going on, Kendall Way, and Ramsden Square and all that, and the Hurst Park Estate.
'Garden Walk had two rooms, and a scullery. The back room was the kitchen, it had a great big range and we used to eat in there. The dining table was in the middle of the room.
'In the scullery, there was sink, which was also a bath. It had separate taps for bath and sink. If you wanted a bath, you lifted the wooden worktop up and that revealed the bath. You heated the water in the gas copper that was connected by a pipe to the hot tap. It might seem odd, having a bath in the scullery, but that's how it was! The toilet was joined on to the house, outside. Gas light in the house, of course.
'Next door was Pollard's Sweet Factory. The girls that worked there used to throw sweets to your Mum and Auntie Clare and Uncle Roger [three of Mrs Hinchcliffe's children] from the window when the they were playing in the back garden.
'But I'm leaping on again, because that was after the war...
'I'd married in 1933 and was now a mother, we lived in Green End Road. I was still daft. A big new film star as we went into the war years was Judy Garland, and I thought I looked like her - although she was a lot younger than me. I got quite carried away with the idea, spent ages looking in the mirror. I'm surprised it didn't crack!
'One day, Aunt Beat came over and we had a picnic on Dad's land at Manor Farm with Mum. I said to Auntie, who liked going to the pictures, "Who do you think I look like, Auntie?" I was willing her to say, "Well, Judy Garland, of course!" But she looked at me and said, straight out, "While you're alive your Grandma Brett will never be dead!"
'That offended me, although I'd loved Grandma Brett very much. I mean, I didn't want to look like Grandma Brett, because she'd been homely and not at all glamorous - and she was old - well, she was to me!
'Aunt Beat was lovely, she really was, but she was straight talking and wouldn't have any nonsense so I hid my upset, though I gave her a filthy look when she was looking away. Dear me... would you credit it?
'I know I didn't look like Judy Garland now. My conk [nose] was far too big - it was a lot bigger than Grandma Brett's too!
'Nowadays I do look a bit like Grandma Brett, but more like Fatty Arbuckle out of work!
'The war got going, blacking out your windows with thick material and if you had any gaps showing the Warden shouting "Put that light out!" and banging on your door, and people getting knocked over in the Black Outs, and ration books and it was horrible.
'Grandma Prevett died in 1940. Grandad had died years before [1928] and Grandma had gone a bit quiet, a bit like Grandad Brett when Grandma Brett died, but she was all right. I used to go and have tea with her, and she'd sit in her big wooden armchair and we'd have a nice chat. My Aunt Gert and Uncle George lived with her at No 21, Vicarage Terrace.
'When Grandma died it was very sad because we all loved her, and she was my last grandparent. That made me think. The last of that generation in my life. I missed her an awful lot.
'Aunt Gert and Uncle George went on living in the house with their daughter, June, and before I knew where I was I was having a fit because a local workman said to me one morning in Garden Walk, "I see Vicarage Terrace's been hit!" I panicked.'
Vicarage Terrace had been hit by two high explosive bombs in the early hours of 19 June, 1940 - in fact, the date had only just changed as the bombs were dropped around 12.30am.
'I dashed over there, and it was cordoned off and several of the houses were destroyed... I remember I couldn't take it in. I was in a right old state. I was so used to Vicarage Terrace... just being Vicarage Terrace, if you see what I mean. It was like it had been there forever and would always be there.
'Aunt Mabel's husband, Uncle George Caddick, he was a captain in the Irish Guards... He was on leave and helping to dig through the rubble.
'Aunt Beat and Uncle Alf appeared and said that Aunt Gert and them were all right, but others weren't. I just couldn't take it all in. Aunt Beat and Uncle Alf took me over to their house in Norfolk Street for some strong tea.
'I can't recall anything else about that day. Not a thing. People had died... The things we heard afterwards... it doesn't bear thinking about...
'Several houses had been destroyed and others damaged, but Grandma's old house was all right. Aunt Gert and Uncle George went on living there... it was pulled down... in the sixties, I think.
'Of course, after the war, we didn't have adventure playgrounds like in Arbury nowadays or anything, and the children used to play on the bomb sites, including Vicarage Terrace.... We moved to St Matthew's Street a few years later, and I always tried to stop your Mum and them from playing on bomb sites, I thought they might get hurt, but they wouldn't listen. In the end, your mum fell off the nut cracker at New Street Rec, so it proves kiddies can get into trouble anywhere!
'We got compensation from the council for that. That nut cracker was a dangerous old thing!
'Here I am again, jumping ahead... That would have been in the fifties. Your mum wasn't born till 1945, of course.
'So, going back, I remember speaking to Dad after Vicarage Terrace. I said: "Has the world gone off its rocker?" He said: "Not the world, just a few people in it. The trouble is, they get followers..."'
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