Oral history audio recordings with Bletchley residents who moved to the town for work related reasons.
London Brick company: the Rushton Bucyrus 135 Navvy with a bucket of clay. Illustrative photograph supplied by kind permission of Bletchley Community Heritage Initiative (Accession Ref: BLE/P/765).
This selection of twenty oral history interviews were recorded between 1995 and 1996 with residents who moved to Bletchley prior to or during the period of the town’s expansion. The interviews cover the residents’ reasons for relocating to Bletchley, their impressions on arrival and reminiscences about the development of the town.
Extent
20 audio tape cassettes
Reference number
BBB/003
Records in this Group
John Smithie was offered a job in Bletchley as Surveyor, Water Engineer and Public Health Inspector for Bletchley Urban District Council(UDC) in 1944 and he was eventually persuaded to accept as prospects were much better than in the North for him and his young family. He describes the technical problems of the water supply that ...
John Smithie describes the difficult discussions with the Buckinghamshire County Council over Bletchley’s development, which were eventually resolved. Refers to the strong support for the planned expansion of Bletchley from the Bletchley Gazette and Ron Staniford through the ‘Bigger Brighter Better’ campaign. He describes his role as Bletchley Town Manager and his management of the ...
Frank Bodimeade while on National Service from 1945, was involved in the disposal of the corpses of German war criminals at Hamelin. He gives a gruesome account of hangings by Albert Pierpoint (Chief Executioner) after which he transported the bodies, by lorry for burial at Hamelin. He returned to Harlesden, and took a job driving ...
Arthur Grigg, a railwayman, moved from Essex to Bletchley in 1941 with his wife, having been promoted to fireman on the London Midland and Scottish railway in Bletchley. He and his wife viewed this move as an adventure; but they had to take lodgings initially until they were allocated a house in Woodbine Terrace. He ...
Arthur Grigg was an employee of the London Midland and Scottish railway in Bletchley & Trade Unionist. He recounts incidents involving railwaymen who refused to join the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR), and notes that eventually all railwaymen were legally required to join. He recalls leading the Bletchley NUR march in London, at the time ...
Harold Hudson talks of his education in a village in the West Riding of York. After leaving school aged 15, he entered local government; there were few jobs to choose from at that time. He describes gaining qualifications at night schoool and his progress in his career in various different councils across the country. ...
Harold Hudson remembers that the Bletchley Councillors were impressed by their visit to Sweden to consider the building of high-rise flats. He talks of the subsequent building of Mellish Court in Bletchley and the careful choice of the first tenants.
Recalling local housing development he comments that the Lakes Estate was the result of the ...
Bob Berry lived in Tilbury as a boy. He moved to Bletchley in late 1943 and worked in a brush factory, later he joined the London Midland and Scottish railway ‘on the footplate’ and describes his life as a railway employee: shift patterns, working hours and progression to fireman and finally engine driver. He comments ...
Mrs Perkins came to Bletchley as a small girl; her father worked as valet to Sir Herbert Leon, owner of Bletchley Park (BP). She attended Fenny School because the Leons disapproved of Church Green School. Her mother worked in the Bletchley Park kitchens, so she spent time in the kitchens as a young girl. ...
Betty Watts moved from Blackpool in 1955 to be an instructor at Bletchley Park (BP) in the Post Office Training School. She met and married her husband at Bletchley Park and they moved into a house provided by the Training School in St Johns Road. She recalls the social life and work at Bletchley Park ...
Anne Sanders, her husband and two small children moved into Wye Close in Bletchley in 1969 from Reading. Her husband worked in Watford for British Waterways and they were hoping to find cheaper accomodation in Bletchley. The new house they were buying was smaller than their previous rented one and she remembers moving in, in ...
Mrs Rashdi is a Norwegian who lived with her husband and daughter, in cramped accommodation in Chesham prior to moving to Bletchley in 1968. They were able to buy a house, but had little money for furniture: ‘I pretended I was camping, it was really good fun’. The Bletchley house seemed small and the houses ...
Gisella Perry talks of her early life in Milton Keynes Village with her parents, refugees from Lithuania and Germany who met in Wales. Her father was able to buy a house in Duncombe Street, Bletchley with compensation from a farm accident. later he worked in the Co-op Bakery.
The family lived among the Italian community, ...
Giuseppe Palmiero came to England in 1954, from a village in south Italy where farming was generating little income.
After the war, the London Brick Company came to Italy to recruit foreign labour, and several members of Giuseppe’s family were taken on. He left his fiancée behind in Italy; he recalls the farewell party and ...
Serafina Palmiero recalls her family emigrating from Italy to Bletchley in the 1960s. They were grateful for the opportunities offered in the UK. Serafina and Giuseppe recall their old house in Italy, which is now almost a ruin although her sister still farms the land and now has a good living.
She recalls that the ...
Jim Marshall was born in 1923, and suffered from ‘tubercular bones’, which confined him to hospital in a plaster cast from the ages of five to thirteen. After attending school briefly, he tried tap dancing and singing. After a try-out by bandleader Charlie Holmes he began, aged fourteen, to sing with dance bands five nights ...
Dr.Jarvis remembers the public houses in Bletchley; he had at some time, or other been summoned to all of them professionally attending ‘riots or disputes’. Other local entertainment included Sports Clubs, otherwise there was little social activity.
He recalls a real lack of community meeting places in the early days, which caused ‘social problems’. He was ...
Dr. and Mrs. Jarvis graduated from Liverpool University, where they met. They moved to Bletchley in 1961 to an expanding doctor’s practice, living first in Whaddon Way then in Wordsworth Drive from 1965. Mrs Jarvis assisted her husband from home, without pay for some years, which was the usual practice at the time. Dr Jarvis ...
Frances Lubbock’s childhood was in Portsmouth, Oxfordshire and Brackley, Northants. Raymond Lubbock’s was in Wollaston, Northamptonshire and then Brackley. Her uncle was Harold Price who started the Bletchley Gazette with Ron Staniford. Harold Price asked her husband whose hobby was photography, to start up a photographic department for the Gazette. His first assignment was photographing ...
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