Interview with female. "Dinner Lady", Ridgmont. Widow of former brick worker

  • Women's Voices and Life Writing
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Title
Interview with female. "Dinner Lady", Ridgmont. Widow of former brick worker
Notes on Audio Quality
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Interviewer
Semeraro, Carmela
Document Type
  • Oral history Recording
Date
1 Oct 2003
Interview Date
1 Oct 2003
Biography
The interviewee was born 19 March 1941, in Woburn. Her mother's family was Woburn, and her father's family from Eversholt. After serving in the Army during the Second World War, her father worked for the Duke of Bedford's estate as a gardener at Woburn Abbey. She has memories of everyone growing their own vegetables. She recalls her father would stoke the fire to heat the greenhouses on Sundays and oranges, lemons, grapefruit, peaches and banana were all grown for the big house. She had two sisters and a brother. They lived in an estate cottage with an outside bucket toilet. Her grandfather used to work at the timber yard on the estate, running the steam engine. She recalls her childhood activities, spending all day out playing, when not at school, Sunday church and family afternoon walk on Sundays. She remembers snowball fights in the winter. She attended Woburn village school from five to eleven. She then to Woburn Sands school, she remembers that when Christmas came, they used to make paper lanterns and "chains" for decorations. After school, she started a job at Gossards, the women's underwear manufacturer, in Leighton Buzzard. She left there when she had a daughter in 1969. She met her husband to be in the Magpie public house in Woburn. He worked in the brickworks, and she married him after only three months. They were married for almost twenty-five years. She recalls he loved working in the brick yards. He had an accident with a brick falling on him from the back of a lorry. He had a heart attack and then a stroke. Ended up on the dole unemployment pay. She went to work nights at Plysu plastics firm. She remembers the busy days at Brogborough brickworks and still rents an estate house there. She now works as a "dinner lady", supervising children at lunchtimes, at Ridgemont village school (at the time of recording).
Length (minutes)
60
Copyright and Source Archive
Material sourced from Bedfordshire Archives and Records Service