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The 'Bombs to Butterflies' Interviews
Interviewee: Helena Gibblen
Interviewees: Margaret Lawson
Date of Interview: 11/4/02
Helena, you grew up in Ruddington. Where did you live?
I lived down Vicarage Lane. It was No. 9 Vicarage Lane, but it used to be the old Red Lion Pub. Oh Yes. It used to be on Red Lion Street of course, Vicarage Lane, and No. 9 is right next to what was the old Vicarage where Mr. Potts was the vicar at the time that I was born.
And where did you used to play as a child?
Well, when we lived at No.9, I was there until I was 9, we had lots of outbuildings. So, if the weather was indifferent we could always play inside and the children who used to come to play down Vicarage Lane used to join us and we’d have dressing up boxes and we’d play all sorts of dramatic things and er, children who had nowhere else to play used to love to come and join us. But when the weather was fine, those days were all spent down Vicarage Lane either looking at the gravestones in the cemetery, not up to any harm, but just looking round the gravestones at people we could remember and other times, of course, would be spent playing down the fields, down Western Fields and playing off and on 50 steps bridge waiting for the train to come by; being smothered in the white smoke and if it happened to be a train with black smoke we’d swiftly move down the bottom of the steps until it had gone by.
Did you count the trucks?
Oh, always, yes! Especially if it was a long train. And um , other times we’d get on the edge of the bridge and slide down, um, mucking our pants. Sometimes we would then go off to the brook – we’d stalk through the long grass, sometimes stalking through things that were not very nice, where the animals had been there, and so often our pants would be taken off and washed in the brook before we returned home.
That’s Gibbies brook?
That’s right.
One that still flows through a culvert under the country park?
That’s the one, that’s the one. In the, in the, just beyond the first field over the 50 steps bridge, and er, at the right time of the year, in the spring, we’d go down there with our jam jars and get the frog spawn and bring it back and as Dad had lots of water barrels, they would finish up in there and we’d have little frogs running all round the garden (laughter).
Yes. Anything else? What else did you play? Did you carry on your imaginative play? Did you make little dens?
Yes, we, we did all those sort of things and if the boys were with us and they had, perhaps might have had a knife with them, we used to dig up those little pig nuts – I, I don’t know – they would have been the root of something and I can’t remember what it would be. We used to eat these little pig nuts.
You could actually eat pig nuts?
Yes.
Must find out what those are!
And we’d, in the spring again, we’d eat the’ bread and chees’e ( young hawthorn leaves) of the hedgerow as we went down.
Was there blackberries in the er………..?
Oh, plenty of blackberries, and always we’d look for wild flowers. I mean, these days you’re not allowed to pick a good many wild flowers but, er we always used to look for violets and bluebells – anything that was going.
And you found some violets down there recently?
Oh, a huge patch of white violets. The violets that grew down there were mainly white and we, as children, used to like blue ones, of course. But it was lovely to see these huge patch of white ones down there the other day.
Honeysuckle, grew down there so I believe , on the hedge?
Much further down the fields um , the fields that go beyond Pasture Lane and towards the other brook that borders the parish boundary between Clifton and Ruddington. It used to grow in that area.
And you said the boys being with you. Was it a mixed group on the whole?
Oh, invariably it was a mixed group . Grandpa Wheatcroft (?) as I called him, who was the plumber who lived in Vicarage Lane, had a grandson, John, and John and I were inseparable. He often used to come to his grandparents and during the war he evacuated himself here from Birmingham and we, er, played like brother and sister and others would join us too. The Aitkin children would come to their aunt’s and granny’s down Vicarage Lane, and they would play with us as well and then the other children who would just happen to be around would join in the gang.
But you went out for family outings did you?
These , in view of Dad’s job , his days off work were very, very limited .
He was at the Co-op ?
My father was the manager of what was then the Ruddington Industrial Cooperative Society- and his shop used to close on a Wednesday, and that was Dad’s saleroom day in Nottingham, so he never actually, well he had a half day at times on Saturday. So days out were very precious. But always on the Bank Holiday Mondays we would go, as a family, down Asher Lane and across Barleylands – that was of course before the Ordnance Depot was built . I would only have been 9 when the war started . I can’t remember too much about that, only the fields of barley, I can see them and growing corn – that would be later in the year of course.
Were there poppies?
Oh there were poppies, yes. There had to be. And, sometimes the walk would end at Bunny and we would go into the pub there for a meal, but my recollections are longer walks when we went as far as Costock and we would stay at the Red Lion and everybody else had ham and eggs but I wasn’t a savoury person in those days, so I was always peaches and cream and I can remember that very vividly. We took Peter, our terrier dog with us and we’d return on the red bus back to the village.
You were only 9 when the war began?
Yes.
But, do you remember war being declared?
I remember that very vividly. I remember it was a Sunday and we’d gone to Sunday school and when we got back, I should think that either Mum or Dad would say war had been declared and when I heard it given out over the radio when we were eating our Sunday lunch, I can remember feeling positively sick. I don’t know why but –I don’t know that I knew what war was really about at that stage. All I can remember was after that, my father had four daughters and he always wanted a boy, but when war was declared, he was very pleased that he had got a family of daughters.
Tell me about your elder sister, who I believe was 10 years older- she’d be 19?
That’s right.
What happened to her?
Well, of course, she had to either join up in the forces or get into some occupation that allowed (help the war effort) that’s right. She couldn’t do the job she’d been doing before and she was one of the many who went to the Ordnance Depot and she was on the bomb filling and I remember she was one of the one’s whose skin went yellow, hair went yellow – always had to wear a turban around her hair and er, it was a long way to go to the Ordnance Depot.
She walked?
She walked and , um, it was shift work and when she had to go on a night I remember very well her being very, very scared because, er, she fell over a drunk in the village as she went to work . That must have been most unnerving for her but being so young I didn’t realise the impact of that at the time.
Was she the one married?
She married during the war, yes. During the war, one of the
big houses in the Manor Park was turned into a billets for soldiers and it
was good for the village to have all these nice young men and they would share
themselves around the churches and the chapels in the village and I remember,
just before Christmas on this particular year, the soldiers that we’d
come to know
were moved out and a new lot were moved in and we were all very sad. Mum and
Dad would always invite soldiers back Sunday night to have some supper with
us and er, I can remember we invited this party and one of them said “Oh
, a friend of mine has gone to the Methodist chapel tonight. Can he come next
week?” and that’s how my sister came to meet her husband (laughter).
Yes. This impact of war on the village. …………We have to remember that you were only 9. But you did grow up…….and you had older sisters. There were an influx of Irish who came to build the Depot and Danny Gallagher, of course, remained here and married a local girl. Afterwards, were there any people who worked in the Depot billeted around ? I know evacuees came ?
I was going to, um, I can’t remember (Depot workers), no. Can’t remember that.
And there was a camp down Asher Lane apparently somewhere as well, but they didn’t seem to impact on the village. Like you said, the servicemen came to the churches.
Yes.
A lot of them probably went to the pubs (laughter). I haven’t found anything about them.
I can remember the evacuees coming, very clearly and of course it had the effect of doubling the numbers to go to the village school and as a consequence, mornings would be spent at the village school one week and the afternoons would be spent down at the old Starlight Rooms, the old chapel, down Chapel Street. So the teaching , of course, was very limited and play was very limited just at the top end of the street. But again, I suppose, being a child you just take everything in your stride . We got new playmates and we just got on with it.
Tell me. I believe you had a great adventure one Sunday afternoon going back down towards 50 steps bridge again?
Oh yes. The Sunday afternoons , always after Sunday school, a whole gang of us including Sunday school teachers would go off. We’d either went up Flawforth Lane and Nine Stiles for a walk or down Station Road over the bridge, turn left along Pasture Lane and back through the fields over the 50 steps. One Sunday, when we’d done this latter walk we’d arrived at the 50 steps bridge and had to wait because a train was going on the sideline into the depot. W e were getting impatient and then we saw the train coming , and as it pulled along we realised that this was no ordinary train. There were carnations on the tailboards as they went by. Then all of a sudden we realised we were getting a victory wave and it was Winston Churchill himself, obviously on a private mission to the Depot, and when the train had gone by you couldn’t see our heels for the dust as we ran back to tell Mum and Dad what we’d seen, and it wasn’t a figment of the imagination because other people were there and saw him as well. We were so thrilled. We thought he was absolutely wonderful.
Eventually Helena, the war came to an end. Did you have celebrations to celebrate the end of the war in Ruddington or was it a service you had of thanksgiving? Do you remember anything about that?
I can remember during the war we used to go into the church for warship weeks and all these sort of things, for big services. Um, but I can’t remember very much about services in the churches. There would have been thanksgiving services, but not as far as I can remember. There were street parties in the village, but when you think of Vicarage Lane, the Huggins Family had lost- one of the daughters had lost a husband. Another of the sons-in-law was absolutely, er, burned. He was still alive but his face was terribly disfigured um , and there were quite a lot of elderly people, with Grandpa Wheatcroft and Mr. Squires who had, who used to have the bus company . The Aitkin’s granny and aunties – all older people . So there was no street party and further down the lane you see, it was Dr. Wallace and his wife and the older people at the farm, the older people in the cottage, the Henson’s in the old cottage there. So there was no street party at that time, no.
Well, is there anything else that you would like to tell me ? You seem to have had a very happy childhood Helena. What about school ? Did you enjoy school?
Oh, I adored the village school. It got a little harder when
I went away to grammar school, but the village school was absolute bliss.
My Mum had been a teacher at the school . She came to the village in 1910
from the village of Hickling near to Melton Mowbray and she taught there for
six years. When Dad had to go to the war, she took his job in the grocery
department in the Coop. With Mum being at the village school and Dad being
the boss of the Coop it’s not difficult to see how they really got together.
Dad had obviously got his eye on Mum because she was a very attractive young
lady and when Mum wasn’t teaching or when she went to the back of the
school and the children were busy with their heads down, she would wave to
Dad through the window and he would wave back, and that’s how the romance
grew. Er, I suppose with Mum being a teacher she encouraged all of us to work
hard and play hard.
One of the things I remember about the village school – when I look
at it now I can’t believe that all of the girls in the village spent
their whole schooling in that village school . Boys went off the to the boys
school on the Green when they were 7- and the limited facilities there. When
I think of doing PE, we would take our lino mats out into that little bit
of playground and put them onto the floor and lay down on them and they were
so thin you could feel all of the grit coming through. But we still enjoyed
it.
We had all sorts of highlights when we were at the school. Sir Harold Bowden
was then living at South Manor . I think he must have been a governor because
he had an interest in the school and I think that must have been his role.
And so, as a consequence, we could go down there and perform things like Midsummer
Night’s Dream on the lawn and hide behind the big trees and appear as
fairies and elves and all sorts of things and these are some of the highlights
that I remember .
Another thing, not connected with the school, but connected with my early
days. With being attached to the Coop so closely, the bakers always used to
make such a fuss of us and in holiday times they would make us bread cats
using two pieces of dough stuck together, the whiskers out of the dusting
brush, and currants for eyes and my sister Betty with John and myself would
enjoy hot bread cats straight from the oven . We also used to raid Dad’s
rhubarb and have the inevitable saucers of sugar and at other times, with
being brought up a Baptist, it must have been when we’d been to a baptismal
service at the chapel, the next day or two, we’d get our dolls out on
the lawn with a bath of water and would be immersing these dolls and singing
“I surrender all “ and Frank Potts whose study was overlooking
our garden, must have had many an interesting afternoon and food for thought
for his Anglican sermons. I think that’s about all I should reminisce
on, else there won’t be any more tape for anybody else!
Thank you Helena. That was absolutely fascinating.
Interviews > Interview with Helena Giblenn