大象传媒

Some random memories of wartime Bedford Part One 鈥� The Owen鈥檚 School boys settle into Bedford.

Part one of an oral history interview with Mr. Alan Locke conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum.

鈥淔irst of all let me explain the Owen鈥檚 School was originally a 鈥楧ame鈥� school. Dame Alice Owen set up the school in Islington in 1613 鈥榝or 40 poor boys of Islington鈥�. She was considerably wealthy because she got through three husbands somehow and the reason for establishing the school was - she was walking across the fields in Islington and bent down to milk a cow and an arrow went clean through her hat! She realised that had she been standing at full height it would have gone through her throat. So the establishment of the school was to thank God for her being saved and the hat with the arrow in it is on the school Coat of Arms. But when her money ran out the Brewers Company of the City of London moved in. It had an up and down period in the 17th and 18th centuries. By the time of the 19th century it had got eventually in the hands of a stern Headmaster who pulled it into shape, rebuilt the buildings in Islington and it became a very good grammar school. By 1901, when the London County Council was established, the running of the school was split between the LCC and the Brewers Company of the City of London. The only interesting attachment of the Brewers Company when we were there was on Visitation Day, which was prizegiving. The Visitation was by the School Governors who, (remember, it was the Brewers Company) brought with them a bag of cash which was distributed to the boys as 鈥榖eer money鈥�. In the 1800s they would have been given a certain measure of porter depending upon their status in the school. But by the time I was there, this was during the war, boys in the second form got 2 shillings and it went up and up and the sixth form got 7s 6d, the Prefects got half a guinea and the Head Boy got a guinea. That was doled out like a 鈥榩ay parade鈥� just before prizegiving.

One of the things you were asking was how we got on with the locals and the girls - I felt terribly sorry for Bedford School and Bedford Modern School boys because they were the subject of a 鈥榣ock up鈥� during the term. So of course they were indoors by dusk, they couldn鈥檛 go to the cinemas, they couldn鈥檛 go into Woolworths, they had a miserable life, I felt. But there we where at the Riverside Tennis Club which we used as a sort of social club. I must say our staff were very good in allowing us this sort of thing. We opened it with the keys and we locked it up with the keys, nobody else in there. We played table tennis down there, there was no drinking went on, in fact if you come across Owen鈥檚 School boys en masse, they don鈥檛 drink and they don鈥檛 smoke, we were ever so good! But we were of course being in Russell Park and there was no such rule applying to the girls schools, so girls from Bedford High, Bedford Girls Modern and Harpur Central used to come down to the park and we mixed with them. Those friendships still persist because there are three girls from Bedford High and one girl from Bedford Modern that I still keep in touch with whenever we are down here and they still live in the area. Like most people they have moved from Bedford and they live in the outlying villages (which seems to have been something that has happened since the war).

I was 11 when war was declared. I was a new boy at Owen鈥檚 School. I lived in Middlesex. The LCC area stopped at Finsbury Park and Crouch End, beyond that you were in Middlesex. What had happened - there were 40 scholarships, the Foundation Scholarships, meaning 鈥榯he 40 poor boys鈥� - that applied outside the London area and I was very lucky in being at school in Hornsey where regularly each year we seemed to send three boys to Owen鈥檚 Boys School and three girls to Owen鈥檚 Girls School, (there was an Owen鈥檚 Girls School). They finished up in Kettering during the war. There has always been a question mark hanging over why did we get off the train in Bedford and stay here when the Girls School went onto Kettering. Were we supposed to have gone onto Kettering? The only explanation we can find and I wish I could find confirmation of it, and I know one person who would know the answer but we can鈥檛 find him! We had on our staff at Owen鈥檚 School two years before the war started the Reverend Ralph Turner, who had been the Minister at Bunyan Meeting, you鈥檒l find his name on one of those stained glass windows in the church. Ralph Turner left Bedford about 1937 with a son, Russell. Russ Turner was a year older than we are but he was at school and the rumour has it that Ralph Turner was on board the train and when it stopped at Bedford he said, 鈥楲ook, I know lots of people in Bedford, why don鈥檛 we get out here?鈥� I can鈥檛 fault that and anyway we did, we stayed, just as the Girls School stayed at Kettering. There wasn鈥檛 much interchange of the two schools during the war, except that I think in 1944 the Girls School sent the Girls Choir from the school down to entertain us. They did a nice programme of Purcell and Roger Quilter and that sort of thing and at the end of the concert their staff mixed with our staff and the girls were just left on the stage. They drifted off the stage and in moved the fifth and sixth forms and took them out for tea and a quick whizz round Bedford before they went back on the coach to Kettering.

School holidays? We came home in the Christmas 1939 and we went back. We came home at Easter 1940, we went back and then we came home at summer and of course that was when the 鈥楤attle of Britain鈥� started and the night bombing, after which we were not allowed to go home without special permission. At the same time the means of transport from London to Bedford had been Birches Coaches which ran from Kettering or Rushden through to King鈥檚 Cross Coach Station, through Bedford, Cardington, Shefford, Henlow, Welwyn, Hatfield, Potter鈥檚 Bar, that way into London. I remember that was 3/3d return, half fare. But that stopped, they only ran as far as Hatfield after the blitz which must have killed their sales so we had to use the train and that was 4/4d return, half fare. That鈥檚 the way we travelled to and from home. I mean after the London Blitz things got a bit quieter until as David said 1944 when the flying bombs and then the V2s started. It was funny to see 鈥� like the tide 鈥� during the period of the 鈥楶honey War鈥� an awful lot of people went back to London. My sister who had been at a junior school in Hornsey was evacuated to Fenstanton and there they had a much rougher time than we did because somehow being a junior school, although the staff went with them, they were scattered among the small villages around Huntingdon. And the staff being seconded to the village schools, they merged in with the village schools, they lost their identity completely. When they came back to London in 1940 they of course had to start up on the school premises again, having found that half the premises were probably being used for ARP lectures and things like that.

So my sister鈥檚 education was really upset by the war. The thing that upset my education was VE Day because I was just about due to take Higher School Cert(ificate) that June and July and I was in the middle of swotting and it wasn鈥檛 really conducive to heavy swotting, that sort of thing.

I got my Higher School Cert(ificate) but I鈥檇 already got entrance to the Slade School of Art. During the February of 1945 my art teacher at Owen鈥檚 School had sent me, Johnny Webber a contemporary of mine to the Slade, which was then at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford and we were interviewed there and we showed our work and were told we鈥檇 got entrance. But were told, 鈥榃e are due to go back to London when the war is over and that won鈥檛 be very long (because this was February) so it will be there.鈥� 鈥楻ight!鈥� we said and so it was. The term didn鈥檛 start until the 6th of October in 1945 at University College, which is where the Slade is, so I went back to the school and helped sort of move desks and things like that and generally get the school running in London. Although, oddly enough, 鈥楶op鈥� Dixon, the Deputy Head came to London, for the last year of the war, to start up a second form and make certain that all the heating was working and everything else. So when we got back to London there was already a second form there. We did draw from schools evacuated to Bedford from London which had been dumped on primary and junior schools around Bedford. But a lot of them had been formed into a school in the Meeting Rooms at the back of the Bunyan Meeting and there was quite a flourishing junior school in the Bunyan Meeting. We took most of our intake from there or children who had been evacuated to outlying villages around Bedford. But we were all Londoners. We went back with more boys than we came away with! I think it鈥檚 a tribute to the tenacity of the Headmaster and the staff in hanging on to the school. I mean odd things happened 鈥� like our school outfitters in Islington were blitzed so there was no school uniform other than caps and the school insisted on the caps. Whereas in Bedford of course you had Braggins 鈥� who supplied all the Bedford schools school uniform.

We got to do some Bedfordian things while we were here. Almost to a man we arrived with bikes with dropped handlebars and saddlebags and within a year to two we had got baskets on the front and no saddlebags on the back and upright handlebars. We finished up with bikes that looked like bikes from Oxford or Cambridge, a basket on the front, well why not, you could see all your books. We took our books to and from, from the basket straight into your satchel and that sort of thing. We got to school and there were all the bicycle racks empty and we put our bikes in there. I mean you were a bit of a pariah if you hadn鈥檛 got a bike and some hadn鈥檛 to begin with. One of our lot, I remember Ron Heather didn鈥檛 have a bike until about 1944. He鈥檚 the fastest walker I know because he lived at Foster Hill Road. He walked everywhere, very fit. The one thing we didn鈥檛 do with bikes was to ride them the Bedford way! We had the balls of our feet on the pedals, almost invariably in Bedford they had the pedals under the inside 鈥� like stirrups. That was how you tell us from them. The other thing we did was to shrink our caps.

Bedford School and Bedford Modern School had these strange little caps. I鈥檓 sure they were all of one size and they fitted on the back of the head. So we started wearing ours on the back of the head and to get them back there we did tend to shrink them a bit. We wore them on the back of the head rather than pulled right down, as they should be. The other odd thing was our caps were provided by the school. I don鈥檛 know where they got them from! But they were virtually on hire, they cost you 2 shillings and when your cap got old and tatty or the peak started coming through the felt at the front you took it back to the school Secretary and swopped it for another one. Nobody ever did, they just threw them away and you could buy another one for 2/-.

In the summer when the Bedford Schools wore boaters a white stripe on the hat band. The emergence of boaters in the summer of 1940 shook us a bit because our school Secretary discovered back in the school in London a box full of Owen鈥檚 School straw hat bands but they hadn鈥檛 been used since about 1926. And Luton being the straw hat centre of the world, some of us went back to wearing straw hats

There was Kings Warren from Plumstead, the girls school. There was, early on from about 1940 to 1943 there was a girls school, Woodford Girls鈥� High School from somewhere near Wanstead who wore a dark blue uniform with a funny pork pie hat because one of them lived next door to me in Denmark Street but they went back. There was Rye Grammar School from Sussex, that was co-ed and they wore a brown uniform with a ship rather like the Blue Peter on their blazers and on their caps. They joined with us in our ATC Squadron, the boys did. I鈥檝e no idea where Rye Grammar actually did their lessons, none at all. We must have been a self-centred lot. It makes us sound as if we didn鈥檛 mix with anybody. Well, we couldn鈥檛 mix with the Bedford schoolboys because they weren鈥檛 there and Rye Grammar seemed to keep itself to itself.

I wrote to my parents in London on a fairly regular basis. My parents came up once or twice to Bedford, not all the time but I mean the adult fares were a bit of a financial drain. With my sister and I evacuated, my mother just threw herself into full-time work in the offices of a general merchant in the West End. My father was in the wholesale woollen business. I won鈥檛 say there was much going on during the war, but there was enough to keep him and two other elderly gentlemen occupied to keep the business floating until the 鈥榖oys鈥� got back from the war. I went up to my father鈥檚 office on several occasions during the holidays and sort of walked around the West End. I remember I was up there one day after a particularly nasty 鈥� yes it must have been in 1940 鈥� after a particularly nasty bombing incident where there were fire engines at the Middlesex hospital and all kinds of things going on. The nearest I ever got to being near a bomb - apart from being in the Anderson shelter during the 1940s - was in 1944 when we were home for the holidays. I was standing in the kitchen of my home in Hornsey with my sister when the front door slammed and the back door flew open and all the windows fell out. At the same time we heard this almighty bang. The blast had done that. We rushed to the front door to see a huge column of dust and smoke going up about a quarter of a mile away and that was one of the first V2 rockets which had landed in a nearby road. That was the one that 鈥榙id for鈥� Johnny Webber鈥檚 house and that was the reason why 鈥� he was a friend who was going to the Slade with me 鈥� and the reason why - his mother moved to Nottingham. He didn鈥檛 come down to London he went straight back to Nottingham after the war.

A lot of the boys at Owen鈥檚 School, parents lived in rented accommodation, not very many of them owned their own home, so they were fairly mobile. One of the girlfriends I still keep in touch with, who went to Harpur Central, had a father who was in the Fire Service, but he was killed. She lived with her two brothers and elder sister in Bedford with their mother who had left the father 鈥渢o it鈥� in London. They had moved out and lived in Bedford where it was safer - they never went back to London. They went to Hastings instead. Their mother said, 鈥楾he war is over kids, where would you like to live?鈥� They said, 鈥楲et鈥檚 go to the seaside!鈥� So they moved to Hastings, things were as fluid as that.鈥�

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