Interviwer
And this is you as a child?
Sheila Knowles
Yes, this is my doll’s pram in my back garden. It’s all we used to play with, dolls’ prams. Whips and tops, hopscotch on the road.
Skipping ropes on the road, you could quite safely do things like that;
and we used to make things indoors in the winter.
We would have a cotton reel, have you seen them, where you put the little nails in, and do they wool all around, and make the tassle, we used to do that…
I think the play shed was the focus of our play because we just played all our games there, and it had been the warehouse for the original co-op, and it had the old counters in which we could turn into anything, a stage, a school, a hospital…
Oh you’d have valentine presents…
Interviwer
Who gave you those?
Sheila Knowles
Mum. She’d wrap them up, and dad would say ‘well I’m just going round to the coal shed’, and then he’d put something on the door and then we’d open the door and nobody would be there, it was fun.
Colin Hodds.
We had a teacher called Mr. Bliss and he was a bit airy-fairy if you know what I mean,
he had a three-wheeler car, sometimes when that wouldn’t start he’d have to open the front of the bonnet up and kickstart the engine, because it had a motorbike engine and kickstart to get the engine going.
Well we used to get potatoes and ram it up the exhaust pipe, so that it wouldn’t start, and we used to stand round the car when he’d try to kickstart the car, which was very amusing to us.
S. Fields
So much to play, so much to do, there was so much freedom, really.
But I felt I was related to half the village, because my father had forty-two first cousins in the village and around.
And so everybody knew everybody, and so if you were getting into mischief your parents would hear about it very quickly.
Anon Lady 2
Went to school in the mornings, and we all had to have assembly, and then we’d all have classes and threetimes a week we ladies were allowed to dance on the school playground.
If it rained we had to have it indoors, that was the first thing, and we had English, and arithmetic. In the afternoons we had needlework, and on Thursdays we girls again used to go to Winterton, to the cookery classes. And we used to go there with Bensely’s coach, we used to make cakes.
Harry Knowles.
And then soon as we came out of school, I used to take me ball on the village green,
some more boys come, until my mother call me in for tea, whip that down me, and I used to go out again, and by then the green used to be nearly filled up, boys, men, grown-up men, everything. And we used to kick a team up and we used to play all along the green.
Colin Hodds.
On a Sunday afternoon, after Sunday school,
we used to go down the river, to the marshes, and walk across the marshes in a straight line, and we used to carry long poles.
And as we came to a dyke, we’d run up to it and pole-vault over, get to the other side and there we go. It was fine.
But one day one of the boys had just been to Sunday School, and as he was running up to the dyke, he ran up to the dyke, put the pole in, but instead of going over the pole fell straight into the mud, and of course he was standing upright so he slid straight into the mud. I suppose at the time we’d have been about 13 or 14, and I can still hear that boy saying ‘oh my mum is going to kill me!’. And he was crying because he had all his best Sunday gear on.
S. Fields
This was one of my exercise books, this was 1943, when I was seven.
Yesterday’s storm. On Wednesday April 7th a strong gale of wind came.
When I was going up Repp’s Road I had to hold on the railings, because if I didn’t I would be blown over. It did a lot of damage nearly everywhere.
It blew 20 slates off Mrs. Bradfield’s house, it also blew two chimneys off my granny’s house and Mrs. Watson’s. As my mother came home, Mr. Drake’s haystack came to meet her, it got all up her legs and her bike-wheels. When I was walking across the green with my mother’s bike, the wind blew my bike over, and I was underneath it; it nearly blew Michael’s pram over. It can’t be very nice for the horses.
Colin Hodds.
We used to have a really big rubbish tip in Martham;
the place used to be alive with rats; and so in the evening we used to go down there and fire our catapults at them.
Molly Alexander
Those were very good days;
I could remember playing in the playground more than I can sitting in the class.
And my grandfather used to come up at playtime, and of course we had railings round, and he’d bring sweets and biscuits and push through the railings for us, which he wasn’t supposed to do but that’s the sort of thing you did do!
I suppose we played hopscotch and those sort of things.
And we didn’t do any sports particularly but we did do dancing in the back to a gramophone, with music, proper dancing, you know.
Interviwer
Do you remember any of your schoolfriends?
Molly Alexander
Yes, I’ve still got some around now. Two or three of them still live in Martham, we keep in touch,
one or two of them go to the Methodist chapel with me,
one lives in Hemsby and we phone each other every so often.
Paul Randall
When we were at school we had a headmaster there Mr. Wakeman,
and on the Meadow they used to play rounders. And they used to have these stakes and they were red, white and black, and you used to have to run round them. And when we were finished we had to put everything in the shed, on the meadow.
And I come running down there, and got one of these like a javelin and threw it and it stuck in the side of the shed. And old Wakeman was looking out of the office window, he see me do it. And we went back into class, and he came in, and he got hold of my brother, got him by the scruff of the neck, took him outside and gave him the cane. He got the wrong one! My brother didn’t know what was happening, he didn’t know nothing about it, but he got the cane anyhow.
Interviwer
So you were twins?
Paul Randall
Yes, we were twins.
Colin Hodds.
Another thing they had at the school, towards the end of the time I was there, they formed a sailing and canoeing club.
And we built our own canoes, which were canvas-covered, and we built a coypu sailing dinghy, which was very easy to sail, we weren’t allowed to use them around but, boys being boys…they were locked up in a boatshed down by the river, but you could get through if you climbed on the roof around the water side doors, and on a Saturday we would go down, go through the water side doors, launch the canoes and go out…
so I spent a lot of my time around Hayham Sands, Hickling Broad, canoeing around the back of all the little dykes and things, and I must say I learned a lot, and I loved the whole thing.
Paul Randall
When we were at school we used to have a cross-country race. We used to go from Martham to Summertown, through where the windmills now are, and back down Hemmersby Road. Me and Cameron Humophry, we decided we weren’t going to go all that way, hid up in the hedge, and when the first two came past we come down the road, and of course we ain’t ran anywhere and so we came back up wide street, finished first of the school, thinking we’d done well but two or three weeks later me and Cameron had to go to North Walsahm to represent the school in the county cross-country final. I think we came about 80th I think.
Colin Hodds.
Another thing about the ferry, the ferry was a swing ferry, a swing bridge, and that would swing across so you could get from one side of the river to the other, what we used to call the island, and the hire-boats would come along, we would close the ferry up so they couldn’t come through.
And as they came up we would shout ‘do you want to come through?’ and they would shout ‘yes, yes!’ and so you used to have to pull the chain to swing the ferry open, and as they went through they would throw you a tip, half a crown or two shilling or something like that, which was fine. Now, after they’d gone through, we used to close it up again. Of course they would want to go to Somerton, and of course they’d want to come back and we’d go, oh did you want to come through? And they’d go yes please, and we’d open it again and they used to throw us some more money.
Now that was all really really good, but if you couldn’t catch the money it would fall onto the ferry, and there were gaps in the wood and it would drop down between the wood. It was so heartbreaking. Some of the people used to put the money in envelopes, and would throw it on the dock in an envelope so we wouldn’t lose it, which was very kind of them.
