Oral history interview with a retired electrical engineer raised in Ramsey Heights, now living in Whittlesey. 2012.

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Location: Whittlesey

Project Title: Oral Histories

Project Description: Recollections of living and working on the land gathered through interviews

Collector: Dr. Richard Irvine

Collection Date: 2012

Collection Details: These oral histories were collected during the Pathways project in order to gain a sense of how people saw their environment changing over the course of their lives. They include details about people's memories of living and working on the land, and how they interacted with the landscape. They are provided here to give a sense of the region as it has transformed over time and to highlight key themes in how people interpret the region's environmental history.

As a lad I worked at Ponders Bridge, tractor driving, harrowing, rolling, as was the norm for lads who lived in the fens. That was in the 50s. I also worked as a beater for shoots, again that was the kind of work a lad would get asked to do. I also remember going with the dog to chase rabbits in the overgrown brickyards, the places where the brickyards had been. And one of the times I fell into the claypit, a disused claypit that had filled with water because I’d ben messing about with an overhanging branch.

Working on the land you’d see these bog oaks, actually they were considered a bit of a menace because they could do your machinery some serious damage. But they were also quite valuable, so they’d be split with wedges and cut for firewood. I remember this one house, they cut the bog oak into 2 to 3 metre stretches, then it would be pushed up, sort of hoisted up into the chimney and dropped back down to burn it for fuel.

My father worked for a time as a steel erector. He was married in 1940 and then he took a job with land drainage. Because of the job and needing to be alerted in case of flooding, we had a phone, which was quite a thing. In fact, we had a phone but no running water. We had a water butt and we got our water from that. We used charcoal to filter it. The house had an earth floor, but it was covered with loose bricks, and you’d leave space between the bricks and that would let the water run through if there was flooding, if there was water coming up into the house. And sometimes we’d have the beds and other furniture up on blocks for that same reason.

I have very clear memories of the floods in March 1947. The Raveley drain had burst its bank. Now I was staying with my grandmother at the time and I had to be carried out of the house and out to safety by my father. One thing I remember very clearly was that the army came in, and they brought us these grey army blankets to keep us warm. And first they tried to stem the breach with sandbags and then they tried to stem it with amphibious vehicles that they sunk in place.

My family were chapel people, they went to the chapel at Ramsey Heights, the one on Chapel Road. Now that’s a private house now. You’d have funerals and things in the church at St Mary’s was where you’d go of a Sunday, and anniversaries, they were very popular. The chapel anniversary was probably the highlight of the year for a lot of people.

My father was a skater, he had this pair of Norwegiean speed-skates. Funny thing, he never really encouraged me to take it up, but he was quite the skater and he’d skate in races. There was an area of water, next to the Dog and Doublet pub, that they’d deliberately flood of a winter and then let it freeze so they could race there.