Oral history audio recordings with original residents born in Bletchley (1913-1951).
Aerial photograph of Fenny Stratford, 1938. Illustrative photograph supplied by kind permission of Bletchley Community Heritage Initiative (Accession Ref: BLE/P/099). Original donated by Roland Doggett.
This first selection of twelve oral history interviews were recorded between 1995 and 1996 with original residents who were born in Bletchley. The interviews in most part cover the interviewee’s reminiscences prior to the town’s expansion and their thoughts on the subsequent changes.
Creator
Living Archive
Extent
12 audio tape cassettes
Reference number
BBB/001
Records in this Group
Ron Staniford discusses the origin of the name of the town of Bletchley. He describes how in 1933 with Harold Price he started the Bletchley Gazette, a weekly newspaper whose motto was, ‘A Bigger, Brighter, Better Bletchley’. Later the Abercrombie Report in 1943 recommended Bletchley as a new town. This never came to fruition, but ...
Bruce Hardwick was born in Bletchley in 1927. He recalls family life and his father Horace, who was a leading horticulturalist. When his father died he took over as secretary of the Bletchley Community Centre Show. Educated at Wolverton Grammar School from 1939 he remembers the effect of the war on his education, mentions memorable ...
Winifred Ottery talks of her early life; brought up in poverty, she was one of twelve children. The family lived in a small brickyard cottage, then a new three-bedroom house. She says of her family life, ‘I enjoyed it …we all mucked in and helped’. Describing her childhood, she recalls traditional children’s games of the ...
Rosemary Evans was born in Bletchley and her father worked as a clerical officer for the Diplomatic Wireless Service at Hanslope Park. She started school in Church Green Road, but due to ill health missed out on some of her early education. ‘A teacher came in to see me and brought me ‘Noddy’ books’. ...
Meg Bates was born in 1936 at her aunt’s house in Eaton Avenue, Fenny Stratford; her mother was born in Nottinghamshire, her father in Fenny Stratford. He had been disabled by polio and worked at Roots brush makers in Tavistock Street; they were producers of handmade brushes, he worked in a section where the workers ...
Dickey Arnold describes Bletchley cattle market’s history from the 1920s when Aylesbury Street in Fenny Stratford, was first penned off to enclose livestock. This was why the old pub in Fenny was called the Bull & Butcher. He went into partnership with W. S. Johnson the estate agent who owned the cattle market and eventually ...
Roy Maycock’s mother’s family originally came from the Fens and his father’s family from Long Buckby. His grandfather had worked on the railway but his father worked for the Co-op as a bakery manager.
He remembers his childhood during the war, the evacuees arriving in Cattle Market field with ‘little brown bags and luggage labels and ...
Eileen Corden was born in 1923 and lived in Woodbine Terrace, Bletchley. Her father was wounded in WW I and then worked as a postman. Her father-in-law was the local chemist. She started working in a grocery shop when she left school at fourteen, to ‘…learn cashier’s job’ but was a ‘…jack of all trades’. ...
Roland Doggett was born in Eaton Avenue Bletchley in 1934. His father worked in Bletchley brickworks, from 1933 ‘drawing bricks’, after having been in the Regular Army for twelve years. His parents, who met in India, moved to Bletchley as it was the only place his father could get a job at the time. His ...
Barrie Field was born in Bletchley in 1938 in Newton Road. His father was in the all England Tug of War championship team in 1937/8 and claims that the ‘biggest cheats were the Metropolitan Police’. He describes his grandfather’s rural life as a cattle farmer.
Started school at Church Green School and during the war ...
Barrie Field recalls the three years that he taught at Denbigh School. He left teaching in 1967 to run Bletchley Youth Centre in Derwent Drive, a New County initiative. It had a ‘membership of nearly five hundred without a building and I used to hire the Labour Club which is now the Salvation Army place ...
John Christie lived in Shenley after the war and recalls Bletchley being very small. There were few amenities, including ‘under the old bridge two or three little tin shops’. He used to go to the Studio cinema in Bletchley where ‘there was always queues’ and occasionally to the County cinema in Fenny Stratford. Socially, dances ...
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