Burnbanks Project News and Events Oral history Equipment list Examples: Photos Testimony

Burnbanks project

Interview with Betty Jewell and Joyce Aran

21st January 2005

Additions in italics from Joyce Aran, October 2005.

CW:	Would you like to say your name please.
BJ:	Betty Jewell.
CW:	And when and where were you born?
BJ:	I was born in 1932 in Bolton. I'd always lived in Bolton all my life. I met Eric and he was born in Sheffield but when he was a year old his father had no work and they came up with the Corporation water works to find work up here and they lived in Burnbanks.
CW:	Did his father have a job before he came - he just came on the off chance?
BJ:	No no, he just came on the off chance, and Eric was a year old and they came to Burnbanks and his dad worked on the water works and Alan was born here three years later.
CW:	At Burnbanks?
BJ:	At Burnbanks, yes.
CW:	So that would have been which year?
BJ:	1930, December '30. But I don't think that there was any work there - I'm not quite sure. They had a very thin time of it, but I used to hear from Eric when we did meet later and he talked about his life in the Lakes, it was a very happy young life. I mean I was in Bolton in the war and there was bombing in Manchester, but Eric used to talk about the lovely times they had up here, and they used to chop wood from the trees and go up the mountainside and wander for ages out on the moors and nobody bothered and there was no fear of bombing. That was my first memory, and he loved the Lakes and we often came back together. And Joyce at this stage when I first met Eric, he used to talk about Joyce because she'd come into Booth Hall to do nursing and he used to say, "She's really thin, Joyce, she's lovely but she's really thin and she always shows us her muscles".
CW:	Where's Booth Hall?
BJ:	Booth Hall is children's hospital in Manchester. Really really clever girl - good good nurse.
JA:	Of course I'd gone to Manchester to work and they were living in Bolton, Eric and his brother. We made up the connection again which we'd had as children and we met up.
CW:	OK Joyce, would you like to say when and where you were born?
JA:	Right, I was born?my parents lived in Bampton, my dad [Ernest Martin] was born in Bampton and lived at Crossgate with his parents and then he was a farm labourer and he went onto a farm near Penruddock and met my mother [Barbara Carrick] who he married and they went back to live in a room at Bampton. And then they had me and then a year later after struggling in a room because his dad had got this position round the farms like Mr Hindmarch my dad got a job up there and we got a house up there. [My Dad worked with a small crew who I think maintained the surrounding farms. My paternal grandfather, Benjamin Martin, was in charge of these workmen.] That was about 1931 or '32 I should think - because I don't remember it but I remember going. So that was how we came to be there. Seems with everybody it was shortage of work, wasn't it. People were coming from all over the place. But as Betty said, great childhood, great place. I remember the war there, I remember the incendiary bombs that they dropped and everybody said, "Oh, they're trying to hit the dam", but they hadn't got the bouncing bomb had they, to hit it with. And we all sat quite happily in these little houses - I mean, if anything had hit it we'd soon have been washed down the valley, wouldn't we.
CW:	There were some bombs dropped?
JA:	Quite a few - not just the incendiaries. They dropped a lot of incendiaries which absolutely lit up the whole of the fells round the lake, then they dropped I don't know how many - maybe half a dozen bombs. Of course we loved going to get the shrapnel out of the craters when they dropped them. But they never really got anywhere near the - I mean, the dam from the air must have looked about that wide and it was never hit.
CW:	Where did they land?
JA:	They landed on the fells particularly where the hotel is now, along there, that caught them. About five or six were dropped but -
BJ:	Was there an aeroplane came down there? Was there a plane came down near Haweswater? It doesn't matter, I just thought?
JA:	I don't know, I think there might have been. I can't remember.
BJ:	I think there was.
JA:	Go on then, give us your next question. That's all we know about that. All we know about the war. I know as well, we never had any shortage of food because my dad working round these farms, every time they killed a pig or a cow or anything he used to come home with the butter and the milk and some meat and whatever they'd made out of the pigs - some sausage and black pudding so we never -
BJ:	Plenty of eggs from the hens.
JA:	Yes. We had our own hens down the back garden. We certainly didn't go short of food during the war, not like a lot.
CW:	Can you remember which house you were in first?
JA:	I think it was 35 or 36.
BJ:	39 was it?
JA:	It was the one with the doctor's surgery on the end. I can only remember that because we thought it was great because we could play in there, jumping on that bed that the doctor had there.
CW:	Were you ain in?
JA:	Yes, because my mam had to clean it and we used to get in.
BJ:	While she cleaned it you got in.
CW:	What was in there? They had a bed and anything else?
JA:	There was just a bed. There wasn't drugs or anything like - not that I remember. Well there wouldn't be because they wouldn't leave them would they. No, it was just a desk and chairs and then there was this bed but it was on wheels which gave us great thrills, pushed it about?
BJ:	Those are lovely childhood memories aren't they.
JA:	And like Betty said, you know, going up on that fellside we'd go up for the whole day nearly and nobody bothered where we were, nobody thought we were going to get - and I mean there must've been a lot of funny men up there mustn't there in those huts, you know, there were single men or men on their own that lived in these big huts and they wouldn't all be perfect would they and yet nobody bothered in those days. Nowadays everybody's watching the children within two minutes but nobody seemed to bother. There was never any trouble.
BJ:	Didn't you go to school along that road? Did you go by bus to school?
JA:	Well we didn't - until that ambulance came, we walked. And then somehow we got this old ambulance then we got a lift. But that Bobby Ostle that lived - I don't know whether it was number 60 or wherever, I mean he was the village policeman, I was just saying yesterday, we were frightened to death of him. If we were on the fellside and Bobby Ostle - we'd say "Oh, it's Bobby Ostle!". We were frightened to death?
CW:	How old was he?
JA:	I should have thought he could have been in his 50s. Would he be a retired policeman? They wouldn't give a real policeman that little job would they?
BJ:	Yes, I think they would. Anyone who wanted to be in the police with a heart they would just be there.
JA:	When you're young if somebody's thirty you think they're old, don't you.
BJ:	Well that's right, so he probably was only -
JA:	He was big fat man and we were frightened of him.
CW:	So he'd been a policeman had he?
JA:	Well whether he was a policeman or had been I don't know. Like I say he could have been thirty and I as a little girl might have thought he was quite old. It was difficult to tell their ages in those days - they didn't look quite as young as they do now.
CW:	But he had that air of authority.
JA:	Ooh, he did. If he said go home - he once came to our house because there was some allotments and I sat on the wall and there were - I don't know whether they were gooseberries or what they were and I was pinching them over the wall and he came, he came to our house - I was petrified. My mother was appalled and my dad said, "There's no need for her to steal food. We've got a garden full of it".
BJ:	Forbidden fruit - you always liked sour apples and sour gooseberries.
CW:	They always taste better don't they.
BJ:	They do taste better
JA:	He saw me doing it but I mean I haven't forgotten it to this day and that's about 70 years ago.
CW:	Whereabouts were the allotments?
JA:	They weren't so far from where they are now. There was a playing field - if you go up past where Sylvia lives now and where we used to live on that road then the allotments and the playing fields were on the left side.
CW:	Over the cattle grid and on the left.
JA:	Yes, yes.
CW:	So people were able to grow all sorts of things.
JA:	Oh yes, and I mean people had decent sized gardens anyway.
BJ:	Mm, plenty of land.
JA:	They weren't that small all the little gardens but then there was loads and loads of allotments. I suppose everybody tried to grow their own things you see because it wasn't just convenient for popping out to get something.
CW:	It would save you money wouldn't it?
JA:	It would.
BJ:	And there wasn't much money anyway so you had to do it, didn't you. There was no means of going to a shop and you wouldn't think about it because you'd grow it.
JA:	No and you know in those days men weren't sitting with computers or television screens were they, I mean they went to work and then at weekends they did their allotments or the gardens - the gardens used to be beautifully kept up at Burnbanks, you know, lovely. I remember having a new dress made for a thing at the church - Mary's mother used to make me dresses - and I went and sat on these swings and I got this organza dress messy. I mean what a daft thing to do. I was absolutely?.
CW:	So you moved into the first house. Was that a small one, one bedroom?
JA:	Two bedrooms and then this bit of an extension where the doctor came. I can't really remember much of the layout of that place at all. I can remember moving into the Oaks, number one, that was bigger and that had a big garden where it's going to be a car park now for Sylvia, there'll be parking for two cars, that was quite a big garden down there, then it went quite a long way down into the wood at the back. We had some chickens with a chicken pen.
CW:	Why did you move from the first house to that one?
JA:	You know I have no idea.
CW:	Did your family get bigger? Did you have brothers and sisters?
JA:	No.
BJ:	Just Joyce.
CW:	Can you remember when it was you moved down there. How old you were?
JA:	It must have been during the war because we got an evacuee, a girl who came from somewhere to stay.
BJ:	From the Channel Islands or somewhere?
JA:	No she only lived up the road. She lived with us for quite a while.
BJ:	Was she your age?
JA:	Yes she was. We only had two bedrooms there I think but because I was a girl we could take another girl. Oh and she had no end of head lice and all my head got head lice. That was at the Oaks as well when she came. There was quite a lot of evacuees came but they didn't stay very long up there.
CW:	Can you remember what the Oaks was like inside? You thought it had two bedrooms?
JA:	It had two bedrooms.
CW:	And a living room and a kitchen?
JA:	A living room and a kitchen - it had like a passage way I think along the back that went into a kitchen where the old boiler was in the corner, and then it had a bathroom that went off it and a bedroom that went off it and into the lounge that way and then the other side of the lounge went into the other bedroom, I think. It had a toilet near the back door - there wasn't a toilet in the bathroom - as you were going to go out the back door to the back garden there was a little toilet.
CW:	Yes, that's like Sylvia's isn't it. She's got a separate toilet.
JA & BJ:	Has she?
JA:	It was a similar place to Sylvia's then. We didn't go anywhere did we yesterday.
BJ:	No just sat in the?
JA:	They were wonderful houses really. I was there till I was I think about 15.
CW:	You were there till you were 15?
JA:	1945. I only know that really and truly because Sylvia said yesterday that she knew when her parents moved in to the house and it was when we moved out. And she'd still got their rent book from when they took over to live in and I think she said '45.
BJ:	So '45/'46 you went to Manchester to do your nursing. No no, you went to Penrith grammar. How long? Till you were 18?
JA:	I left there when I was 17 so I went to Manchester in the September.
CW:	But when you were 15 or so you left Burnbanks, for Penruddock.
JA:	That was the end of that. Yes, my granny - well it was funny really because Mary's mother [Barbara's sister, Mary Carrick] used to live with my granny and Mary's mother's husband had moved with the railway down south and so we went because grandma had a post office and a shop so we left Burnbanks and went to live at Penruddock and looked after her, so that was about '45 I think. But I mean we've always gone back up to Burnbanks.
BJ:	But you said you weren't going to come back again. You said once they've demolished those cottages, those houses, and Eric's not here I'm not going back again, but he loved it but -
JA:	I think yesterday we were talking to Sylvia and she said come when the weather's nice and we'll go and look at the waterfall again and we'll go and look where the eel trap was there. We couldn't even see the dam yesterday could we. You know when you go over the cattle grid - Betty didn't want to walk over the cattle grid and it was really raining by this time so we didn't want to walk far enough to see it so we didn't see it yesterday.
BJ:	But you would in the spring. If you came - I mean it was dark at 4 o'clock yesterday, so if we came in the spring then it's different and if Sylvia's in her new house and we can go and see her new house and there are other people there it will eradicate this funny feeling that you have of Sylvia there on her own.
JA:	Ooh, I didn't like that. I felt like we were abandoning her when we went, all this slush and mud. She's fine - she wouldn't bother.
BJ:	She's so optimistic and happy about it and I mean she's only lost her husband in the past three years and yet she didn't wail on about that.
JA:	I remember her husband.
BJ:	Yes I do. I saw him the last time we were there. I've seen him recently - I've got photographs of him.
CW:	Shall we talk about Eric and what you know of Eric's earliest memories when he was wee - where he was born and how he came to be at Burnbanks.
BJ:	Well he lived in Sheffield, was born in Sheffield, and I'm not quite sure why they came to Burnbanks.
CW:	Which year was it? - sorry, you might have said.
BJ:	It was '29, '29 he was born, and '30 he went up to the Lakes, and his dad wasn't working but there was water works work in Sheffield so I'm sure that some - you know, it was said he came on a bike but he couldn't have biked all that way.
CW:	That would be a week.
JA:	He maybe came - there may have been a lift so far don't you think. I mean there wouldn't be any buses going up to Burnbanks in 1930 but it might have been that he could get to Penrith or he could get to Shap, you know, there'd be trains or there'd be buses and then he had his bike.
BJ:	He'd nowhere to live so where he lived - but then he must have got work with the water works, work on the dam, because of course they were doing similar work in Derbyshire, weren't they.
CW:	That's right, there were dams being built in the Peak District.
BJ:	And some of his brothers were there - it was a family of twelve - and some of the Jewells were over there and he came here and of course Eric and his mum.
CW:	So his father came first to find the work.
BJ:	His father came first, yes, they followed.
CW:	And they came once he'd got the work and the house went with the work.
BJ:	That's right, number 65 Burnbanks, which is near Sylvia's there. And then Alan was born the following year.
CW:	That would be '31.
BJ:	Yes that's right. And they stayed until - was it '42? But then I think he heard there was work in Bolton which was the - I think it finished, the work on the dam.
JA:	The work that Mr Jewell was doing would be finishing but they did try to find them other work and that was why they moved.
CW:	Do you know what his original job was?
BJ:	Just a labourer.
CW:	Doing whatever.
BJ:	Yes anything he could find. And mum was working cleaning the hotel.
JA:	It was to do with the water control, wasn't it, something to do with water control.
BJ:	It was at Lostock at Bolton.
JA:	It would be at the dam and whether that work was done when it got so high, I don't know.
CW:	Was he involved in actually building the dam?
BJ:	He was.
JA:	He was involved in building the dam?
BJ:	Well I think so.
JA:	Oh no I didn't think so. Well I don't know. I think it was to do with this water control -
BJ:	- control of machines and -
JA:	He worked in a different place altogether than the workers on the dam. It was a different part of what they did and it was to do with the water and that was why he got the job at Bolton because he'd already done it. But not like a labourer that was digging out for the dam and building it.
BJ:	He was only little wasn't he. He was only about five foot two. I often think that Eric was ten when they left here and he didn't sit for the eleven plus and he came to Bolton, was nearly eleven and missed the scholarship and he just went to an ordinary school and left at fourteen without the advantage of a grammar school education, which he was up to doing, he could have got. But Alan was luckier because he was nine and he came to Bolton, had two years in Bolton and got a place at Bolton school, which is a very good school, and he had a much superior education.
CW:	It was just bad luck for Eric.
BJ:	It was, yes. Because he was quite clever and bright. But he went into engineering.
JA:	He did well in the end.
BJ:	His dad wanted him to go into engineering. He thought that would - either a train driver or an engineer, so he went into engineering. He did very well - he worked for British Aerospace.
CW:	So they were in 65 to start with at Burnbanks and did they stay there?
BJ:	They stayed there.
CW:	The whole time?
BJ:	Yes. So it was a shorter time than you Joyce, wasn't it, because it was ten years that they were there.
JA:	Mrs Jewell used to give piano playing lessons and I used to go for the lessons but I only went for the lessons because she had these two gorgeous lads and we used to play hide and seek -
BJ:	She fancied the pair of them you see!
JA:	- and she used to bake this lovely lovely ginger cake. I could smell that now coming out of that old black stove in that room, lovely smell of big squashy ginger cake. And I can remember hiding in the - in those days we never could afford a wardrobe so they'd all got those corner things with a curtain round and we used to hide behind the sink and behind the cupboard.
CW:	I was going to go on to ask about the houses, what they were like inside, and you talked about cooking but they had a range that would have been in the living room.
JA:	A black range, it was in the living room.
BJ:	With the ovens at each side.
CW:	So two ovens, one at each side?
JA:	Yes.
CW:	With the fire in the middle.
JA:	Yes.
CW:	And with a hot plate on top?
JA:	Yes, and then a horrible black chimney that went up through the roof.
CW:	So there would have been a hole in the roof for a flue to go up.
JA:	A pipe, yes I mean that was the only heating there would be. I never remember - you said earlier you thought they were cold - I don't remember feeling cold, but I think we dressed a bit more sensibly in those days. If it was cold you put plenty of clothes on.
BJ:	Eric's mum knitted all the time - she knitted those awful Fairisle pullovers that the lads wore, you know, and baby coats.
JA:	Yes, everything was done on that stove. I think we had a primus stove in the kitchen which was quite posh.
BJ:	You pumped it up.
JA:	A bit quicker. Just in case you haven't got your fire up to the right temperature.
CW:	So the meals and whatever would be cooked on the range, mostly, in the living room and then where would people eat? In the kitchen?
BJ:	You'd sit at the table, wouldn't you, for your meals.
CW:	Was there room for that in the kitchen?
BJ:	Yes.
CW:	I think Sylvia said they had a folding table that got folded away after the meals.
JA:	I think we ate in the living room. I think we had a table in the living room but you were bound to have something in the kitchen because they never wanted things to get dirty in those days. There were best things like best crockery that you never used and best clothes that you never wore till you'd grown out of them so we must have had somewhere in the kitchen. Maybe it was on top of that boiler thing because that took up quite a bit of room, your washing boiler. Perhaps people had a bit on top of that I would think.
CW:	That was used for washing then? When you first went there that was the thing for washing the clothes?
JA:	Oh it was. Lit it early on a Monday morning we just then boiled up and then half the time it boiled over. You had to take this wooden lid off and if you didn't get it on - a bit like a pan of taters, if you didn't get it off in time it went all over the floor.
CW:	And you had to stoke up the fire underneath?
JA:	Off the kitchen there was - where's your coal hole, place for coal.
BJ:	Not outside was it?
JA:	No, inside. Opposite the back door there was a door and it had a place there. My mum didn't use that for coal and I can remember them buying some sort of a little cooker that she put on a shelf in there that we could use when we didn't use that big fire. What sort would it be because it couldn't be electric or gas, I wouldn't have thought. It might have been have been electric mightn't it.
CW:	Did anyone use gas cylinders in those days?
BJ:	I don't think so.
JA:	I never saw any. But I can remember just like them little cookers like young people have, the students today, just a little one, you'd get it plugged in somewhere - a little electric one.
CW:	I suppose in the early days it would have been paraffin wouldn't it.
JA:	Ay, it might have been paraffin.
CW:	What were these ranges like to cook in? You've described that people made cakes in them and all sorts of things.
BJ:	Oh yes, lovely cakes. Bit like an Aga cooker is now where the heat is always there but of course they came later didn't they.
CW:	What about bread? Did people make bread?
BJ:	She made bread, yes.
JA:	Oh yes, they did make bread. You see, they'd have to make as much as they could because they wouldn't get anything otherwise would they.
CW:	Every house must have had a larder that had lots of supplies in it - if there was no shop and you had to wait for mobile shops. Do you remember that?
JA:	Must have had.
CW:	Or a big cupboard somewhere?
BJ:	With like a net over the front, those cupboards.
JA:	I can remember the larder in - not in the Oaks - in the first house, where that surgery was, because it had got like a concrete slab, you know, like they used to have.
CW:	For keeping things cold.
JA:	Yes, that was where you used to put your milk and everything.
BJ:	Marble slab, yes.
JA:	So they did have a larder and I presume the Oaks had as well, I can't remember where it was.
CW:	Were you involved in doing any cooking or washing? Too young?
JA:	No too lazy. You see our mums didn't go out to work.
BJ:	They didn't encourage you to help with it.
JA:	By the time I'd walked back from Bampton that took me long enough. But I mean mother was still washing from morning.
CW:	What about getting the clothes dry - would there have been a mangle?
JA:	They were in front of that old thing and it was not only cold it was damp with your clothes all around.
BJ:	They had a rack and the heat from the fire rose up and dried it - very effective really.
JA:	Do you know, they're putting them in modern houses.
BJ:	Do you know what I mean by a rack?
CW:	Yes, the ones you can pull up. Yes we've got one.
BJ:	Have you? Yes they're good.
JA:	Oh well, that's where they dried them. But then they could put them outside as well wouldn't they.
BJ:	Yes. They would freeze - the weather climatic conditions were different then. We had colder winters and warmer summers, without doubt. Now I think the weather's the same right through the year, isn't it. It is the same - you get -
JA:	It's cold up Shap this morning. What's the next bit?
CW:	I'm just looking?What did you do for entertainment at home? In those days there would have been no televisions. Did you have a radio?
JA:	No.
BJ:	A piano. Nanny Jewell had the piano and she sang.
JA:	And my mum used to play the piano and sing.
CW:	So there was a piano in both the houses.
JA & BJ:	Yes, yes.
CW:	That's interesting. So there would always be someone who could play and other people would join in.
JA:	You used to have quite a lot of get-togethers. I remember playing charades and we played so much more simple things.
BJ:	Cards - did you play cards?
JA:	Yes.
BJ:	We did. We played whist and solo - we played every night at home.
JA:	Not so many cards - we played dominoes. We played charades. Went to my granny's a lot because my granny and Mary's mum [Mary Carrick] lived at Penruddock which we could bike to so -
BJ:	You biked to Penruddock from Burnbanks?
JA:	Yes, I first biked there when I was seven. We only got about to Bampton when I said 'I'll have to have a rest now' so we all got off.
BJ:	We did that this morning - we'd hardly got half down the road, she said 'We'll go back now - it's cold'.
CW:	As children where did you play at Burnbanks? In the woods?
JA:	In the woods behind us. There were lovely woods. The last time I came up we had some pictures taken in that wood where we used to play. We used to play on the fellside, build houses, just play. I don't remember going over the dam side an awful lot, it was just that fell behind us.
CW:	I don't suppose you were allowed, were you? Weren't you supposed to keep away from the dam?
BJ:	No you didn't. There were no restrictions.
JA:	No, I mean you could get permission to go through it easily and walk across it without any bother, in the early days, yes you could. Can't now. And we used to go back up when my husband was alive and you could get permission to go trout fishing in Haweswater, you know, it wasn't a no-go area at all, but now I think it is. They're frightened of it being blown up now.
CW:	Or people drowning.
JA:	?Sylvia floating down the valley, bless her.
CW:	Can you remember what the woods were like because now there's a lot of conifers that I assume were planted round about the time the dam was built, so in the very beginning there would have been what - oak woods? There wouldn't have been a lot of the big conifer trees.
JA:	No there weren't. It was a pretty wood really. There were pretty little walks through where we went through to that other road that goes up to the - but we played hours and hours in there.
CW:	That's the one you can still walk through. Opposite Sylvia's house you can walk through to the main road. So that wood's really unchanged - just bigger trees maybe.
JA:	The number of trees up there now is enormous isn't it. It's difficult for me now looking at it to remember which bits were which because it's just a mass of trees all been planted.
CW:	And there would have been just pasture round about, fields for grazing.
JA:	Yes.
CW:	And then going onto the rough fell. Did you go up onto the tops at all?
JA:	Many times.
CW:	You would have walked on to High Street. That's a reasonable walk.
JA:	I've done that more recently than I did then. But we used to go on quite long walks because my dad worked on those farms and they were very good to us with food and milk and so we used to walk to the farms a lot because my dad knew all the people.
BJ:	Your dad actually worked on the farms did he?
JA:	He did. And that was where they got my name from because they were going to call me Rosie because Princess Margaret Rose was born the same month. My dad came home from work one day and said at one of the farms they've got a lovely little girl called Joyce and that's what we'll call her. So my name actually came from a farm. But I was glad they didn't call me Rosie because my married name was Aran - it would have been 'Rosie Raran'. So God knows what we did all day.
BJ:	Well you and Eric went off on your bikes and poor Alan you used to send him - say 'You take the dog back' and somebody had a dog and you sent him back with the dog, poor little Alan.
JA:	We did, yes. We were lucky - we were sort of a bit privileged when we had bikes. There weren't many children with bikes up there. We thought we were quite posh because we'd got bikes.
CW:	Did you know any of the local kids, the kids who were there before Burnbanks from the farms or from Bampton? Did you get friendly?
JA:	My mother would have done but I don't. My mum wrote to a lot of them for most of her -
BJ:	Mm, she was a wonderful letter writer, beautiful writing.
JA:	Yes she did but she died so we haven't got her. She and my dad knew the farmers but I didn't know them.
CW:	Because you would have seen a lot of the Bampton kids at school, and Eric.
JA:	I would.
BJ:	Oh the Crabtrees and all that lot.
JA:	I can remember the ones from the village - I remember Crabtrees and I remember Twiggs and I remember -
BJ:	What about Sylvia's family?
JA:	Well you see Sylvia's husband was my age, I knew him. I wouldn't know their family, I didn't know hers.
CW:	So Eric and yourself and George [Hindmarch] used to go to Bampton to school. This was when you said about going in a converted ambulance.
JA:	I did.
CW:	Had they put extra seats in?
JA:	Yes they did, they squashed us in. In those days they didn't bother how many they got in. I mean nowadays they'd have to have seat belts and a seat each and then you just were glad to get in.
CW:	And before that you said you walked.
JA:	We did, we walked. I must have been a very little girl and it was quite a long walk and my mum one day started out to - she thought I was taking an awful long time to come home. I was paddling - she caught me paddling away in a little brook that went along the side of the road.
BJ:	It was flooded. There's the school, Bampton School [shows photograph], and we went - it was a few years ago and Eric had us - he said 'Line up there as if we're going into school' you see, there was happy memories.
CW:	Lovely. So any idea how old you were when you started at school and how old Eric would have been?
JA:	I was four when I went.
BJ:	And he would be three perhaps.
JA:	I think they took us at four, I certainly was four.
CW:	So aged four you were walking to Bampton.
JA:	Yes and no mums taking us. We just went.
BJ:	No cars, they walked on their own.
CW:	There would have been what - horses and carts about I suppose.
JA:	Well I never saw any. We just walked.
BJ:	Did your mum not take you down to school?
JA:	Nobody took us. My mam always told the story about how the school dentist came and he pulled five of my teeth out then I had to walk home. Never even told her they were going to do it. I mean what would parents do now.
CW:	There'd be a few law suits wouldn't there.
JA:	When I got home I was about jiggered with pulling these teeth out and having to walk home.
MM:	You had your teeth taken out in school?
JA:	Yes, they'd taken them out. They'd not even bothered to get permission.
BJ:	They must have given you gas - they wouldn't just yank them out would they.
JA:	No they'd give you an injection.
BJ:	Used to give you gas in those days and put you out with a mask on your face.
JA:	After that they'd nearly frightened me to death and my dad used to take me into Penrith if I needed any doing and I had gas and I would not go near a dentist because they'd really hurt me and frightened me.
CW:	Can you remember the school buildings then, because the wooden building was put up to accommodate the Burnbanks kids - is that right?
JA:	No I can't. I can remember parties and things at school. You know you remember the bits of glamour don't you, the balloons and the pretty bits. I can remember Christmas there but I can't remember much about it really.
BJ:	What were the teachers like?
JA:	I can remember old Dougie Thornton
BJ:	Eric used to say he threw chalk at you and threw the blackboard cleaner at you.
JA:	He was quite a strange man.
BJ:	He said if you just stepped out of line this thing whizzed over your head and he hit you with it.
JA:	He lived in the school house next door and I can remember he had a son who went to boarding school and he died, this boy, at school. He'd had a very lovely big portrait done of this boy - he'd be a boy of about fourteen I'd think and he had all the pupils and we all lined up and we all had to walk past this photograph of his son. I was quite impressed with this that we were allowed in this headmaster's house which we thought was impossible.
CW:	So he was the headmaster and there must have been other staff.
JA:	Must have been but I don't remember any others. He was a little man and he had plus fours on all the time. He was quite dapper. John they called the boy that died.
BJ:	He had a big motor bike.
JA:	No he didn't, he got an illness.
BJ:	No, Dougie Thornton had a motor bike. But the boy was ill was he?
JA:	I don't know what he got but it was fatal whatever it was. I know we were all very impressed about it. We thought he was quite posh, this boy, because he'd gone to boarding school. He'd only gone to Tebay or somewhere, no distance.
CW:	Did you have uniform for school?
JA:	No.
CW:	Just went in - tried to look a bit smart?
BJ:	Went in knitted jumpers, knitted grey pullovers.
JA:	There wouldn't be uniform.
CW:	What did Eric say about school? Did he have school stories?
BJ:	Just Dougie Thornton, that's all I remember him saying and throwing the blackboard rubber at you and you just dodged.
CW:	What about lunch - did you have to take a packed lunch?
JA:	You took your own. There wasn't any school dinners or anything like that. Quite a lot of us must have been nearly starving by the time we'd walked all that way.
BJ:	Ready for nanny Jewell's ginger cake when you got home.
CW:	What about the relationship with people from Bampton, children at school and so on, was there any animosity or just friendliness? Did anyone see the people who'd come to Burnbanks, from away, as being -
JA:	No, I don't remember any animosity of any sort or any bullying or any problems of any sort. Sometimes we used to live up at Crossgate - this was where my dad's parents lived. Dad's mother died quite young and the old man, granddad, lived up at Crossgate on his own and so sometimes we used to go and stay with him up there. Mum used to go and clean through and so I used to go to school from there and then walk back there just the same as I did to Burnbanks. I don't remember there being any difference between the people in Bampton village and the people at Burnbanks. I don't remember people being nasty to each other.
BJ:	But isn't that childhood memories?
JA:	Do you think you only remember the good bits?
BJ:	Yes, I mean nanny Jewell used to talk about falling out with the neighbours and how Mrs Suchabody said this. I think as children you have such a different outlook on life. Today's children are the same aren't they.
JA:	But nowadays they're all saying everyone's bullying them and stabbing them and -
BJ:	Well I blame that a lot on television and the newspapers.
JA:	Yes maybe. Still at Bampton school we didn't bother.
MM:	I bet the lads were having a fight every day. My dad used to get the strap every day.
JA:	Well we got the strap at school so you didn't dare do too much out of step.
MM:	I think dad got the cane every day.
JA:	I just used to be frightened to death they'd tell my mother. This is where it's different now. I used to think 'Oh God if they tell my mum, what will she say'. I mean my mother would have gone mad if I'd got into trouble. Like eating - pinching gooseberries.
CW:	Do you remember school trips?
BJ:	I remember Eric talking about going to Morecambe and his mum had bought two pairs of trousers for he and Alan and they were 4/11 from Woolworths and he slid down a concrete bit on the prom somewhere.
JA:	Was this a school trip?
BJ:	Yes, and he slid down, he and Alan, and they both made a hole in their pants and the difference in the character of the two boys: Eric walked home all day with his hands over the hole and Alan didn't bother. He didn't care - he'd got a hole in his pants and so what.
JA:	I bet his mother wasn't so pleased.
BJ:	She wasn't. They didn't dare tell her.
JA:	She'd put a patch on them.
BJ:	She would.
JA:	We've got some pictures, haven't we, of the trips from Burnbanks. Was that the Women's Institute ones? I remember going on those trips but I don't remember going on school trips.
BJ:	I think there was only one trip - because you know the war was on. I mean I was in Bolton. We didn't have any trips, you know, and after the war they went, from the convent school where I went, they went all over the world. But I never went anywhere, didn't do anything.
JA:	I didn't.
BJ:	We were none the worse for it, were we - or were we?
CW:	You just do it later in life. So you described some of the bombing in the war. What else changed? You said your dad was in the Home Guard.
JA:	Yes, my dad was in the Home Guard. I don't know how many would be in it - there was quite a few - and as I say, two at a time went up onto that fellside. I think there must have been a hut built but I do know it only had one bunk so that sometimes if they went with men that were nice they could share the bunk, they could both sleep through without watching for the bombers coming over, but not if it was ?
BJ:	If they were a bit dirty.
CW:	This was on the fellside above Burnbanks, was it?
JA:	It was on the opposite one, facing Sylvia's house. That one, over where the Haweswater Hotel is, that side.
CW:	The idea was to look out for the dam, was it?
JA:	That was absolutely right. They were supposed to go to this hut which was very near the top and you were supposed to be watching out.
BJ:	What would they do if it were bombed? What could they do? Like 'Dad's Army'.
JA:	It was so cold up there so they took this coal with them so they could light a fire to sit by. I mean, what a waste of time.
BJ:	Typical 'Dad's Army'.
CW:	If they spotted anything did they have a radio or a telephone or any way to communicate?
JA:	I wouldn't have thought so. We hadn't got anything like that, had we? There must have been some -
CW:	Some way to do a signal.
BJ:	Morse code.
JA:	I don't remember, apart from that, there was much in the war.
CW:	So life in Burnbanks didn't change. Do you remember rationing, that kind of thing?
JA:	Well, only that we were never bothered with rationing because - I mean, all right, I can remember us getting our little bit of cheese on a Saturday tea time and we ate it for Saturday tea. But like I say, bacon, eggs, milk, cheese - not cheese - everything else we got from the farms. And we had hens in the garden. We ate them as well. We didn't go short of anything.
CW:	Was there a lot of swapping that went on? You know, paying in kind. Someone gives you some milk and you give them some eggs back.
JA:	Yes, there was. If you were friendly like my dad was with the farmers because they were working on the farms they got to know the farm people. Perhaps if they did a little bit of extra walling for them because they were there to do repairs and things and then they would pay them with - 'We've killed a pig today' and a few sausages or whatever they've made. Then we used to catch naughtily-caught salmon that came up there. We weren't allowed -
CW:	A bit of poaching.
JA:	Me mam used to be frightened to death because she had to put the bones in the dustbin and she was frightened to death that somebody was going to know. She used to grapple them, you know, just catch them, and they weren't allowed to be caught. But my mum never really enjoyed them.
BJ:	She didn't, no. She was very correct wasn't she.
JA:	Whether it was that Bobby Ostle she thought would come round and look in the dustbin, I don't know. She was always a bit frightened. And of course you got trout out of Haweswater.
BJ:	I mean, chicken and salmon and trout were a sheer luxury during the war - like bananas. We never had bananas.
JA:	Well we never had got bananas at all.
BJ:	No we never saw a banana.
JA:	But trout and salmon we got frequently during the war. Sweeties we couldn't get, except that Mary's mum kept a shop, a sweet shop, so I used to go and stay with her a lot so I got sweets as well.
MM:	My dad used to make toffee.
JA:	You used to make toffee.
BJ:	Eric's dad made it - lovely treacle toffee.
MM:	Used to make it out of the butter and sugar and stuff you could get because that's how I know how to make the toffee.
JA:	We did an awful lot more for ourselves in days gone by.
CW:	What about the eel trap? You mentioned that earlier. Whereabouts was that?
JA:	Near that little waterfall, there's a waterfall near it. And at the top of the waterfall we used to swim - there's this area. We're going to go with Sylvia.
CW:	Are you talking about Measand, where Measand Beck comes down?
JA:	It's not far through the wood we've been talking about.
BJ:	Where you went over the cattle grid, do you mean?
JA:	No. You know the wood where we've been talking about that you go through, it wasn't far from there. I think I've got some pictures at home of that pool as well. We used to swim in there and there was the eel box and we used to sit on there and have a picnic, but it was to catch eels really. Then there was a waterfall.
CW:	So who looked after the eel trap?
JA:	I don't know, but it was to do with the same people - must have been to do with the water people, mustn't it. They're the people that are there now, because I mean the water's still being released from the dam to come down that river, isn't it.
BJ:	Is it recording?
CW:	Oh yes, it's fine. Just checking.
BJ:	Oh good.
JA:	It's had enough, it's had enough now.
CW:	There's just a few more things. You mentioned shopping and you thought that the shop at Burnbanks didn't have a lot of groceries, maybe sweets and so on.
JA:	I don't think it had groceries.
CW:	Where abouts was it?
JA:	Right at the top, right at the top. It'll be way where those trees are now. It was where the bus turned - you went right to the top of the village and then it was just there. I do know they did sweeties because you used to try and get up there when I was going into Penrith to school so to get some sweets before the bus stopped at the top of the village. And they did newspapers, sweets, things like that. I think somebody said it was burnt down at the end, wasn't it. Somebody set fire to it, then it was not used any more.
BJ:	What kind of sweets Joyce? That Kaylie, fizzy stuff with Spanish and a stick?
JA:	I liked them round gobstoppers.
BJ:	And that awful, um, what was it called? It was like a piece of wood and you chewed it?
JA:	Oh aye.
BJ:	That were dreadful. Do you know what I mean?
JA:	No she wouldn't.
CW:	I don't think I do.
BJ:	Liquorice was it?
CW:	Was it liquorice? Like a piece of wood?
BJ:	Yes, and you chew it and it goes all feathery on top. Oh dreadful stuff.
JA:	What did they call that?
BJ:	Liquorice.
JA:	It wasn't liquorice.
BJ:	No, Spanish, no.
JA:	Was it a type of liquorice?
BJ:	It is a type of liquorice.
CW:	Because I think liquorice actually comes from a bark, doesn't it, so it might have been something directly from the plant whereas the stuff you get now is all processed.
BJ:	Yes that's right. Well it was like a stick, a piece of wood, and you chewed it and all the juice came out of it. And it was all feathery at the top.
JA:	It was before it was refined so much.
BJ:	There's a health shop in Bolton you can still buy it, that stuff, dreadful. I hate it. And Kaylie and Spanish.
CW:	What's Kaylie?
JA:	You get it in a bag - it's like a powder and you dip something in.
BJ:	It fizzes.
CW:	Sherbet.
BJ:	That's right. Kaylie it was called.
CW:	Was that the brand name?
BJ:	Yes, Kaylie.
JA:	Yes.
CW:	So if you wanted other shopping you had mobile shops.
JA:	I can remember mobile shops coming round.
CW:	And there would be everything would there - butchers, bakers, greengrocers?
JA:	I think so, yes. I'm pretty certain there was because if there hadn't been somebody somewhere would have started up a shop, wouldn't they - it stands to reason so there must have been.
BJ:	Yes, they would come round.
JA:	I don't remember the post office selling anything else but post office stuff.
BJ:	And now post offices don't exist hardly. They're the ones that are being phased out, aren't they. You know there are no post offices - they're going to close them all, because you buy stamps everywhere. It's a shame isn't it, and people say 'You shouldn't close a post office', and you say 'Do you use it?' and they say 'Well no, my pension goes into the bank and stamps I buy?'. So they're phased out.
JA:	They keep telling me off at our - I've got a little post office near where I live and they keep saying to me 'Pay your bills through us'. Well I can't be bothered - any that I pay by cheque you tend to just make the cheque out and post it to where it's going rather than take it - which you should - to the post office.
BJ:	But then you have another stamp, you know.
CW:	Do you remember going shopping elsewhere? You mentioned Eric's mother buying his trousers from Woolworth's. Was that in Penrith?
BJ:	Yes. That was in Penrith.
CW:	Shap would have had a lot of shops in those days.
JA:	We rarely went to Shap
BJ:	It was always Penrith.
JA:	We had some friends lived at Shap actually and I was just saying we walked, mum and I, to see these friends because I don't think there was any transport from Burnbanks to Shap, whereas we did have a bus to Penrith. So you would tend to go on a Saturday. You'd get your bit of shopping then we used to go to pictures sometimes in Penrith, and then get the bus back. But to get to Shap you either had to bike - I bet we biked with mam.
BJ:	Yes, would she cycle as well?
JA:	Yes. And we used to come quite a bit to Shap. We'd quite a few friends here but they're not here now. So what extra shopping we did would be done in Penrith.
CW:	Can you remember any of the other things at Burnbanks - the dance hall or??
JA:	I can remember the dance hall. I was just telling Betty and Mary yesterday, there was a great event when you got to this dance hall. I loved these black patent shoes, ankle strap shoes.
BJ:	Kiltie shoes they were.
JA:	We were going to this dance you see. You were all dressed up in your Sunday best. Well I had to put these best shoes on but they'd got a hole in the bottom so me mum said 'Put some cardboard in. Cut a bit of cardboard out, then stick it in your shoe.' So I go to this dance and I'm kneeling on a chair watching the band on the front, and me mam came and she said 'Sit round, you can see the hole in your shoe.'
BJ:	Well we said shoes never have holes in now. Shoes are never mended, are they.
JA:	I mean obviously we couldn't afford another pair of Sunday shoes.
BJ:	Nor to have them repaired.
CW:	What sort of dances were they?
JA:	Well I don't know but I can remember quite a lot of dances - hokey cokey and things like that, those sort of dances where everybody joins in.
BJ:	Progressive barn dance.
CW:	Did the bands come from Penrith?
JA:	I wonder. Must have done. I don't know where they came from - they weren't local people. It wasn't very often but when it was absolutely everybody went, all the kids, everybody, it didn't matter who you were. The hokey cokey I remember doing - put your left arm in and your left arm out and shake it all about. I remember going to those, but the little chapel I can't remember at all.
CW:	The mission, yes?what else is there? Canteen, there would have been a canteen, wouldn't there, in the beginning.
JA:	Yes there was a canteen. I don't think I ever went - I don't know if children were allowed to go in. My parents were?well, my mother signed the pledge or something I think. She didn't drink at all. I was one of these babies -
BJ:	You don't drink, do you?
JA:	I do. I was a blue ribbon baby and if you're a blue ribbon baby you didn't touch alcohol. It didn't quite work with me but it did my mother. As far as I remember about the canteen I think it would be mostly the single men or maybe men, full stop, because in those days the men went out and the women didn't, more or less. So I imagine it was just like a working men's club really. I can remember looking in and it had a bar so I imagine it was just a drinking place.
CW:	This was the mission hall? I thought it was just for church services.
BJ:	I thought that too, the mission hall.
CW:	Because there was the mission, there was a recreation hall, a canteen, a dance hall - so there were quite a few buildings used for?
JA:	Oh maybe I'm talking about the recreation?maybe it wasn't that one then. It would be the recreation.
CW:	Maybe they would go in there for a drink.
JA:	Yes it would be that.
CW:	They wouldn't really mix that with chapel.
JA:	No, no, no not at the mission, no. No they wouldn't in those days. Then that was what they did there.
CW:	What about fire service and police and that kind of thing? Would they come from Shap if need be?
JA:	Well there was Bobby Ostle - we didn't need anybody else.
BJ:	Yes but if there was a fire what -
JA:	I don't know about fire.
BJ:	You had a fire?you had a fire extinguisher in the hall.
JA:	No, I would think it would come from Shap, would it, I would imagine. Maybe - had Bampton got one?
CW:	It hasn't now but I don't know about then, maybe then.
BJ:	What about the ambulance? Where did that come from?
JA:	They perhaps used that one they took us to school in.
CW:	Can you remember the doctor coming and surgeries and clinics and that kind of thing?
JA:	I can only remember them - I wonder if they stopped coming you know. That was maybe why we moved out of that house, because I never remember there being a doctor's clinic. I remember when I lived there the doctor coming - only came about one morning a week or a couple of mornings. Well I wonder if when we moved if it had stopped. People had to go to Bampton or Shap.
CW:	So maybe they wanted to dismantle your house.
JA:	Yes, because I couldn't think of a reason why we moved from there and that might have been why. Probably it was stopped being used, I don't know, maybe made into another house or something.
BJ:	Well people didn't go to the doctor's then, as we do. It's an almost weekly event for a lot of people now. I mean I never went to doctors. The doctor did come to our house to give me an injection for diphtheria and he said - a funny story my mother used to tell - he said to my grandma 'Just hold her' and my grandma was a bit deaf and she said 'What did you say? Pardon?'. And he said 'Just hold her' and she said 'I beg your pardon doctor?'. And he said 'She's a bit numb isn't she' and my grandma said 'Yes, I am numb doctor, I am'.
JA:	She could hear what she wanted. I suppose when you think about it, apart from people having babies up at Burnbanks, they were all young people. It's not like our community now where you're getting a lot of old people - these are the ones that are clogging up the doctors' surgeries now.
BJ:	Living to be ninety odd, yes.
JA:	I mean they've all got blood pressure, clogged arteries or something. But I mean in those days apart from people being pregnant - and they wouldn't bother too much about that, they either lived or died. I mean they weren't terribly fussed about it. And I don't know where they went to have their babies. Where did they go? Did they have them at home?
BJ:	They had them at home. Were you born at home? I was.
JA:	I bet a doctor didn't come. Midwife would do - or some woman in the street quite often did it, didn't they, you know somebody that was good at that sort of thing.
BJ:	Yes, you'd have been all right wouldn't you.
JA:	I'd have got a job.
BJ:	You would Joyce, yes.
MM:	Used to lay them out too.
BJ:	Yes, laid them out when they died.
JA:	I'd say a woman - delivering the babies and laid them out.
CW:	The people who died would die at home and be there in the front room.
BJ:	Yes, that's right.
JA:	They didn't make so much fuss as they make now.
CW:	One thing you mentioned before we started was about the rent and how much your dad got paid.
JA:	Yes, I'm pretty certain my dad - it was either £2 14s or £2 11s. I think it might have been eleven shillings and the eleven shillings was the rent, so you'd got two pounds.
CW:	Per week?
JA:	Per week. For everything. And you would have your bills wouldn't you, but they wouldn't be much because it would be coal.
CW:	There used to be a coal man who came.
BJ:	There was. A coal wagon and it would be two shillings a bag. Ever so cheap in those days.
JA:	Yes I know but you needed quite a bit. That would be I think why my mam tried to get these other little cookers so she didn't have to light the big fire.
CW:	In summer when you don't need it for warmth. Do you remember your dad coming in from work and the kind of thing he wore to go to work?
JA:	When I was looking through my photographs before I was coming up here there's one of my dad outside with Mr Hindmarch - he's on it as well.
CW:	Sylvia's husband?
JA:	Yes. My grandfather, grandfather Ben, was the boss and he was always quite smart and he always had a flower in his lapel did granddad. I mean really, truly, they lived in a right crap house - I don't know why he should have thought he was smart, but he always had his hat on at a jaunty angle. And then he'd got about five or six workmen round him - Mr Hindmarch, my dad, Sid Weir, one or two I already knew, and me dad had got this jacket on and on the picture he's got it like this and he said 'I had to do that because it's got a big hole in the front'.
CW:	Not so smart then.
JA:	Not so smart as he'd like.
BJ:	Thought you were going to say to show off his gold chain. Nothing has holes in now. Clothes never are worn enough to have holes, shoes aren't worn.
JA:	Because we buy a hell of a lot.
BJ:	Well that's right - they're thrown away, discarded.
JA:	Too much money.
CW:	Other things have changed, like with fleeces - it's quite hard to mend and it gets very thin.
MM:	They used to turn the sheets round didn't they?
BJ:	Sides to middles.
JA:	When they got thin in the middle you cut them in half and stitched them up then you'd get a right ridge across your bum, wouldn't you.
CW:	There was a special seam that you could do that would lie flat. I've still got some sheets that my gran used to do that to.
BJ:	What did they call that seam?
MM:	Flat stitch.
JA:	Flat stitch. You went along and then it turned over again and you machined it again, didn't you.
CW:	By hand, though. It would have been done by hand in those days.
JA:	It would have been done by hand. Hours and hours and hours of work done by hand.
MM:	And feather bolsters. They used to make them.
JA:	I remember them in bed - you had to turn them over every morning. At my grandma's it was terrible.
MM:	And those horrible spring beds - you put them together didn't you, screw them up. Iron beds and it was like a ratchet thing you used to put them together.
JA:	I remember the feather beds. We had to keep turning it over everyday. Things are a bit easier now. Better to come here and get your bed turned.
CW:	Anything else you want to add? I think we've touched on quite a lot haven't we.
JA:	I can't think of anything else because I can't remember.
CW:	Can you remember how you felt when you left? You obviously described living in Burnbanks and it sounds like as a child you had a good time. Were you sad to leave?
JA:	No, I can't remember being sad at all. I'd already gone to school in Penrith. I'd already spent a lot of time at Penruddock because my grandma and my auntie lived there - they spoiled me rotten and I spent all school holidays. By this time I was about fifteen and I'd got friendly with a lad that lived at Penruddock who was at the grammar school with me so I was quite happy to move.
CW:	Up to that point you were travelling to Penrith for school.
JA:	I was, yes.
CW:	Was that on a bus?
JA:	It was on the bus. Then of course during the war the school was shared with Newcastle grammar school so we only went mornings, so we went early - I think it was eight till two we did - so we went on an earlier bus and then we came home at two and then Newcastle grammar school had it from two till six, because they were evacuated there.
CW:	So they were all living in the town.
JA:	They were all living in Penrith. They were evacuated to Penrith you see and so they had the school. Although we'd got an early finish by the time you'd traipsed all the way round by Lowther and God knows where with everybody on the bus it was nearly tea time by the time we got home.
CW:	Were there a lot of you in Burnbanks at that stage, a lot of children, teenagers? Or had some people moved away by then?
JA:	There was quite a few went to grammar school: Katie Sandham, June Holiday that you've already talked to, Cynthia. Quite a lot of people I knew. A lot of the boys went to the boys' school because - could you stay at Bampton school till you left school?
BJ:	Fourteen probably. Stayed till you were fourteen.
JA:	I think there was a boys' school near the grammar school. Quite a lot of children went on the school bus, then of course it picked up children all the way into Penrith. So once I was at the grammar school then I could buy food and take it home, you know. We could then get a loaf of bread or we could get - mum used to give me fourpence ha'penny to get a large loaf on my way home. So you started that you were able to do a bit of shopping that way so you were getting stuff home. It was a long trek.
BJ:	The Jewells had gone you see by then. They went in 1942.
JA:	They'd go before I went to school.
CW:	Has Eric said how he felt when he had to leave?
BJ:	Yes, he hated it. He didn't like it.
CW:	He would have gone from a rural place to -
BJ:	A busy town, yes. He didn't like it.
JA:	I think when they got there they just rented a flat, or something.
BJ:	They went in that little cottage at Lostock, three shillings a week they paid for it. And they'd no furniture, nothing. You know, it was hard wasn't it.
JA:	Why didn't they have any furniture? What happened to the furniture?
BJ:	Well, I don't know.
CW:	So they had to start again down there.
JA:	You think they sold it?
BJ:	Would the furniture be with the house?
JA:	No.
BJ:	They would have their own.
CW:	Sylvia's described taking all her furniture in.
JA:	Think he was out of work for a bit?
BJ:	He was, he was out of work.
JA:	There was an awful lot of people who were selling, because I remember my mam buying off Mrs Twigg quite frequently. She had a lot of little children and up till mum died recently she'd got a little tea set with a black edge which had been a wedding present to Mrs Twigg which she sold on to my mam - I bet it was hardly for anything you know.
CW:	But you just had to have that bit of money.
JA:	She just needed that bit of money. So it is possible that Mr and Mrs Jewell sold their stuff. There was no dole or very little you know. Once his job was finished there he would get absolutely nothing and she wasn't working really so I would think they may well have sold everything and you see other people were moving up there so people were willing to buy what you'd left. I don't think we took very much furniture when we went to Penruddock.
CW:	And you'd have to transport it yourself if you kept it and that would probably cost you something.
JA:	Well would there be any way of transporting it?
BJ:	They went into that farm cottage, didn't they, Seddon's - do you remember? In Chaucergate Lane?
JA:	Yes.
BJ:	Well there would be furniture in that, wouldn't there. It was only a tiny little cottage and they would get furniture there with it. There'd be beds and stuff in there.
JA:	Don't know. Can't remember. Too long ago.
CW:	What do you think about Burnbanks as it is now - or as it's becoming? Because it's in the middle of a big change.
JA:	It is a beautiful place. It is a beautiful setting and if you've got £200,000 to throw down the river then buy a house there. Beautiful. Love a holiday house but?
BJ:	There aren't going to be holiday houses though, are there, there.
CW:	No I don't think so.
MM:	I don't think there ought to be. What about the rest of the community with all these silly holiday cottages.
CW:	I think there is a clause - there's supposed to be some that are local occupancy and the others for sale.
JA:	I'll tell you something. I bet you 50p when I come again in five years time there'll nearly all be holiday cottages.
BJ:	I don't know. I don't think so.
JA:	I've heard this before about this making them -
MM:	If it's local occupancy they won't be.
JA:	Well, they can already sell those that are already there. They can sell them to anybody.
CW:	I don't know how long these clauses last.
JA:	No, you can bet your bottom dollar - they won't sell them as local occupancy.
CW:	But you wouldn't like to live there again now.
BJ:	No.
JA:	Too old.
BJ:	If you were younger, Joyce, you wouldn't want to come back would you.
JA:	No, I don't think so. I think I prefer it?Funnily enough when my husband died - [Brief unintelligible section]
BJ:	Molly, you don't want to come back up here now. You have felt maybe I could come back to live up in the Lakes when I retire but you don't want to now, do you.
MM:	Well I think you need to be a little nearer shops - accessibility really.
JA:	I tried Greystoke. I came back after my husband died for three months and rented a cottage in Greystoke in the winter. Had a lovely three months but I wanted to go back to Northampton, I think. I always dreamt that I'd like to come back here.
MM:	I feel I want to come back.
JA:	But I think once I'd tried it although I found the people lovely, I thought Greystoke was lovely, lovely place -
CW:	But not permanently.
JA:	I wanted to go home again.
CW:	Right. And you said that after he left Eric was always keen to come back.
BJ:	Yes he was. I don't know if he wanted to live back here but he loved to come back. He would be really really quiet and as soon as we started to approach Burnbanks he got really excited and said 'And we went there and that was where we did that and that was where we climbed the trees'.
MM:	It's because of the memories.
BJ:	That's right, it's children's memories.
JA:	And children's memories are nice ones, aren't they.
BJ:	Yes they are. Hopefully.
CW:	Did he keep in touch with people, like Sylvia, over the years.
BJ:	Yes he did.
CW:	Anyone else?
BJ:	Who else was there? Ada Preston at the mill up there.
CW:	She had the shop in Bampton.
BJ:	She did, and then she had the mill at Bampton.
CW:	So he kept in touch with her.
BJ:	Yes very much, wrote. And Margaret here, Margaret at Shap. But he just loved to come back - and Sylvia, he'd come and see Sylvia. But he came back - he just wanted to live back here and I'd always lived in Bolton and I said 'We can't go and live back there'. My memories aren't here. My memories are there in Bolton.
JA:	I think it's like anywhere else - it would be lovely to come back for three months in the summer but I wouldn't want to be stuck up there in the winter.
BJ:	Is it a housing association?
CW:	No I don't think so.
BJ:	Is it not. Because Margaret works for a housing association, my daughter, and she thought it was a housing association who'd taken over this.
CW:	I don't think it is. I think it's a private developer who's bought it and is developing it but because it's in the national park they'll be keen to put as many restrictions on anything intrusive or - they'll be dead against holiday homes so hopefully it will be an addition to the community rather than a blot on the landscape.
JA:	Do you think it will attract any young people?
CW:	I've heard of the possibility of a family moving in and a lot of people round the area have shown interest. There are quite a lot of people who would like to live there.
JA:	There's a few cars looking about I thought.
CW:	A lot of people have been going to have a look. Pinching some of the wood, because there's been a lot of the old wood that came out of the roof - a lot of it was really sound. There's been a lot of it. They've burnt a lot of the rubbish but people have been going and taking planks away - maybe for firewood but some of it I think is good stuff.
JA:	People are looking for old wood, aren't they, when they're renovating places.
CW:	That's right. Because it's a different quality, you know, it's treated in a different way.
BJ:	That's right.
CW:	Is there anything else you'd like to add?
JA:	No, that's it now.
BJ:	No. Are you happy with what we've done?
CW:	Yes, yes. We've been talking for seventy seven minutes now.
BJ:	Have we?
CW:	Well thanks very much both of you.
JA:	Oh, thank you.
CW:	I'm going to put it off now.
BJ:	Thank you.
JA:	Where can we go now? Where's that old people's home in Penrith?

Interviewer: Caz Walker
Also present: Mary Meredith (daughter of Mary Carrick who lived at Penruddock)