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The 'Bombs to Butterflies' Interviews
Interviewee: Jack Bagguley
Interviewees: Margaret Lawson and Ken Smith
Date of Interview: 15/2/02
Well Jack you were bred and born in Ruddington, is that right?
That is right, yes.
When you were a boy and a teenager did you go across the site which is the Country Park now before it was the Depot.
Yes, they were regular walks they were across there, spent a lot of time over there.
And what did you do when you were out there?
We got up to all sorts of things, rabbiting was one thing we used to do, mushrooming, now one of the fields across there which belonged to Beeby's Farm. We could actually stand and see mushrooms growing in the night when it was moonlight nights (could you now) we used to sit under the hedge and wait for it.
What else did you do down there, what about Gibby's Brook?
Ah Gibby's Brook, we used to play along that, regular, regular play, fishing, great robin redbreasts, minnows, all sorts. It wasn't ever such a big brook like but it were never dry, it never dried up though, it did not matter how dry the summer was, hot, that never dried up, always run water.
What about watercress?
No we didn't used to get none out there. We used to get it throughout the Moors, down against the back.... against Richardson's bridge on the fishy brook, what they called the fishy brook, we used to get quite a bit.
What about birds' eggs?
Oh yes, we used find a few birds' eggs, never took any, my Dad wouldn't let that happen, weren't allowed none of that.
Tell me about big fowemer and little fowemer. Remember them?
Yes, remember them well. Spent hours and hours round there. Skating in the winter on the lake when they froze, Sliding and allsorts. A few broken legs on there.
You didn't break your leg though? Now, little fowemer is some
where near where the pond is now, (somewhere about
there) Tell me about this.
Quite a few reeds growing and things growing and quite a few newts but I can't remember (the newts are coming back) but I can't remember any fish in it but I don't think there was, quite a few newts and sometimes the odd waterhen would lay on it. The other big fowemer that was quite clean, no weeds, no bushes round it really quite clean. Just at the side of big foamer there were a few willow trees. What they called the willow oat.
Was it spring fed do you think?
It was spring fed you could see it up the far end, you could see the water lifting up. (That is why it was so clear) Yes, that was why it was so clear. (Then it flowed into Gibby's brook) yes, it come round here.
You left school when you were about 14?
14.
And what then?
I started work up at Cripwells, I left school at 12 o clock and Easter was early that year, and I left school at 12 o'clock on the Thursday before Good Friday and I was driving drilling horses at 1 o clock.
Tell me what drill horses are.
Drilling corn, three horses, drilling with my Dad and Charlie Wing.
Three horses?
Three horses abreast.
And you were drilling corn because it was springtime?
It was drilling wheat
And that is how you learnt, working with your Dad?
Yes
Eventually you learnt how to plough?
Yes
And did you plough on the area around there?
Yes, and my Dad was a professional horseman, showman, ploughman the whole lot.
When you ploughed, in the days before tractors, how many horses to the plough?
Two, mostly two.
Which area of the park was this?
Right at the top. Where the hanger was.
They were arable fields
Yes
What did they grow?
All sorts - barley, wheat, oats, potatoes, sugar beet.
Over the site as a whole there was some grass land.
Oh yes, there was grass, Gibby's land was all grass
Now that would be lower down
Yes
Would they graze animals on it?
Oh yes, beasts and sheep around there.
Now sheep were on the higher land.
Yes, on the top, used to go right across.
Now that was what you thought was Fowemer Hill?
That's right, that had sheep on it. There used to be a lot of sheep, we used to have about 400 to 500 sheep brought down from Scotland, when we had the first Spring Scottish lamb sales. and George Cripwell, the son, used to go up there and buy perhaps four or five hundred, come down on train.
What was the first sign to the people of Ruddington that something was going to happen there.
Nobody seemed to worry all that much they just got on with what there were doing and everything.
There was a camp built down what is now Asher Lane and it was a cart track down to the farm
Yes, that is right
And there was a camp built down there for the workers who built the site.
Yes, they had living in quarters and almost where we are now, where these houses are, this was all living quarters, where people who worked on the site during its production based then it was knocked down and also there was some over that side right at the top, (yes, where the bungalows were) yes, there is a house at the back of there where somebody, engineer bloke lives there. (yes, George....) that's right.
What did you first notice when they started building the Depot, what happened first, was the culvert built first?
The first thing they did when they started they put pipes in, twin pipes from that road there under the road into the gardens and they took it right across, two 48" pipes, twin pipes went right across, that was one of the first things they did. When they got so far across they sort of branched up that way so they picked all the tap water up,that what were in the building land.
And then they filled it in over the top?
Yes that's-right
And this is where all the lorries came?
Yes, lorries came from allover the place with, you know, the
red pit... you know, all that. They cleared up them two big heaps up at Kimberley,
where it all came from, they cleared all that.
Old slag heaps?
Yes, old slag heaps up at Manor Farm back of Ilkeston, all around there there was tons and tons of it.
And that was used for the surface, it was to prevent flooding
Yes, that was what they made the road of.
And that all came from Kimberley, that is very interesting. What came next having done that, then the buildings were built?
Yes, there were no 40 hour week, everybody worked 7 days a week.
Did they?
Yes, terrific.
And all those bunkers were built?
Them bunkers were built then at that time, they took 666 acres altogether and there was corn standing this high you know, it didn't make any difference they went straight in.
They started building as soon as the war began?
Yes, soon afterwards
And the corn was still standing?
Yes. They went straight in, there was no arguing who was going to do this or that.
So the plans must have been made before.
They had some idea something was going to happen, there didn't seem to be a great deal of bother or worry about getting on with it, they just got on with it and finished it. (well there was a war on) They brought the railway in from the fifty steps Bridge, where the train runs now, right round there. See those bunkers round the back there, there were ten of them we used to get round them with a truck, railway truck. There were lines into them. What's his name, the architect, They ask him when they was going to do this park, they ask him to go and see if there was anything that could be used. Now the underground bunkers were as big as an international swimming pool top on, but they never took any notice they just knocked those old hangers down, all the lot, and then just after the war that top corner there became the Ministry of Supply, thats where they stored all the old er er
Jack, did they not build that bit until after the war was over, or were those huge hangers there during the war.
Oh! during the war.
And the Nissen huts.
Oh, they were all built during the war, (they were there during the war and that's the Ministry of Supply.) Yes and there was some houses there, there are still some of them up now up Bobbers Mill Road (prefabs) that was where they stored them up there
They were taken by rail all over the country?
Yes.
When did the fence go in, at the end or the beginning?
It went in straight away, more or less. This concrete road
from here, bottom to top, was finished in 1941, then they carried on with
it right round. (yes, that's right, but it is impossible to imagine isn't
it?) this concrete road here had just been finished in March 1941 and I had
been out one Saturday night and I called in the White Horse met my Mother
and Dad. and Mr and Mrs Page and it was the most beautiful night you had ever
seen, you could stand and read a paper out there,and we had got to go up to
the farm and feed all the beasts, we had got about 600 beasts up there and
my Dad opened the back door and 5ft of snow fell in the kitchen.
There was 14ins of snow up that road,and yet when we went in at 10 o clock
when the pubs shut, it was as clear as a bell. Absolutely. we couldn't believe
it.
It was only a little house at the back there, two little cottages, you should
have seen it when the snow came in, even the dog would not go out.
That would be March 1941.
Yes, March 11th.
So it took about 18 months to build the whole site?
Yes
And then it opened?
Yes, after the production for bombing and shell filling it became the disposal of vehicles, 1947 the first sale there.
But before that you used to go onto the site.
Yes, when it was in production and everything, the canteen, I used to go in there, there were two pieces there, and I used to go in there and plough them and they used to grow potatoes and cabbages and all sorts on it, for the canteen. My Dad worked on there then and my Dad and my Uncle George they used to look after that side of it.
And they used to produce their own vegetables there?
Yes, they used to grow everything on it.
Did they use their own compost as well?
Ah yes.
And you ploughed that with a tractor?
Yes
Because by that time tractors had come in.
Yes
What else can you tell me about this that you remember particularly?
Well I mean there is such a lot really when you think, you have to sit and think a bit about something.
Well lets put it off and we will have a rethink.
It was great actually.
You enjoyed working on there did you?
Oh yes, I enjoyed working on the farm, yes, you see from the last two years of the war up to the 1950s I was an Agricultural Contractor I used to travel all around the farms ploughing and all sorts of things. I used to do Wollaton Park
Did you?
Did a lot of Wollaton Park on the ploughing.
Then after the war what did you do then?
I stopped on there until about 1950 and then I went to work at Somerfields; stopped there a few years, that was an old family firm and gradually the old families died off and they closed and I went to North Midland Construction and worked for them for a long while putting in telephone ducting. Quite a spell with them.
You remember when the auctions were there?
Oh yes
Did you ever go to one?
Oh yes I went to several.
Tell me about the auctions
Well on that side where the big sheds were over there, they used to have miscellaneous, all sorts of stuff, army boots, shirts, socks, and I bought 100 pairs of army boots for 30/-.
What did you do with the boots then Jack?
Oh I so1d them. 10/- a pair
And you paid 30 bob?
Yes I paid 30/- for them.
You made a profit there, 25 quid.
I bought some shirts once, a stack of R.A.F.shirts. I think I only paid a pound for a big box and then there was I Pownall who used to stand on Sneinton Market
Oh yes, Jackie Pownall
When he bought all the silk stockings, he stood on there and sold hundreds of pairs them, there were hundreds of pairs of boxes. Silk stockings
As worn by ATS?
Yes
Stockings as opposed to tights?
Yes.
When the disposal of cars was started the first one was in April 1947 and
there used to be four viewing days the week before the sale and they pulled
the car out, that was just beside the lake that was the first sale, eight
seater French staff car, took it back in at night and brought it out for the
four days and everybody came to look at it. There was a chap come down from
Cornwall a big ex Army bloke, and a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce and he offered
them 3000 pounds for it and it went through the Sale and he got it for 1500
pounds. They towed it out onto the road and me and Ron Cooke, I think, the
Garage down Loughborough Road, when it was Phil Olivers, we towed it down
there and we put a battery on it, checked the water and the oil and it started
and the chauffeur drove it back. There was some stuff sold on there wasn't
there. When the chap from Sheffield who bought the four wheeled box trailer
and when he got it back to Sheffield it was full of motorbikes. He rang them
back here and they said, well you bought the trailer and what were in it we
don't know, yes, B.S.A. motor bikes they was.
I was called down for a job here, where they sold the filing cabinet and it
was full of secret documents.
That's happened time and time again that has but when they was building the
site there was a chap from Nottingham, horseman, horses and carts, all sorts
and that, Stanley Walker, he had, ten or a dozen horses and carts on here
working and used to have them in a stable up Easthorpe Street at Bob Suttons
and a chap named Mr Parks was Head Horseman, and to save him coming on a Saturday
night and Sunday night I used to go and feed them for him and he used to give
me five bob. 5/- was a lot of money in those days.
So the horses were used in the construction work.
Yes, carting stuff from one side to the other
But they must have had cranes?
Oh ah, they had big massive cranes behind a big crawler tractor Mowlems did, could lift anything. Tons and tons of cement buried up there, a load of cement would come and they didn't want it so they would bury it. When they did this job on the park I thought they would find it but they never came across any or they never said anything. Where these mounds are now that is where they broke all the roads concrete and roofs up and buried them and covered them over, which I thought was a a very good idea.
A very good idea.
Ar, good idea. Thats how we got all these mounds. Oh it is a brilliant park, I think it is great.
Interviews > Interview with Jack Bagguley