In this interview, Juliet remembers her early years of schooling in Coventry, and subsequent career as a teacher. She recounts her flourishing courtship with husband David, and their process of setting up a home together. Juliet recalls her initial reaction to the houses on West Point, and considers why she was not overly taken with them.
Transcript of a meeting with Juliet
Date: 15th July 2014
Topic: A New Way of Living
[Start of recorded material]
Interviewer: It’s the 15th of July 2014. I am with Juliet … Juliet, I wonder if you could tell me where and when you were born.
Juliet: I was born in January 1937 in Hartsfield.
Interviewer And what did your parents do?
Juliet: My father worked for the Halifax Village Society and my mother prior to marriage worked for Patent and Baldwins which was a company producing wool and she was in the office.
Interviewer: And what did your father do for the Halifax Village Society?
Juliet: Well he started off at the bottom at the age of… it would be 14 I think then or maybe 15, because he went to a commercial college. He ended up as personnel director at the head office which was in Halifax. But he started working at the Hartsfield branch.
Interviewer: And did your mother carry on working?
Juliet: No, not at all.
Interviewer: So when she had children…?
Juliet: I think before that. When she got married she stopped work because in those days on the whole that is what people did.
Interviewer: And did you have brothers and sisters?
Juliet: No, I’m only one.
Interviewer: So what kind of school did you go to in Hartsfield?
Juliet: I went to Amonberry Primary School… well no, it would be called junior, infants and junior school which was in the village in which we lived. I want to say village, it was on the outskirts of Hartsfield. Then I passed my 11 plus and went to Greenhat High School for Girls.
Interviewer: And did your parents encourage you very much academically?
Juliet: Yes, well I think there was an expectation that I would keep my head down and do my utmost to be a good pupil.
Interviewer: And given you were the only children and a daughter, and given that your mother and your father presumably had no expectations that your mother would work, what were your father’s expectations of what you would be able to do as a young woman? Did he think that you would be able to work, or was he educating you to not work?
Juliet: Oh no, I was being educated to have a career. They… well particularly my mother was keen I should be a teacher. That was the last thing that I actually wanted to do. I had other ideas.
Interviewer: What were your ideas?
Juliet: Well I fancied being an almoner in a hospital.
Interviewer: Why were they against that?
Juliet: Well because my mother wanted me to teach.
Interviewer: And do you know why she particularly thought that profession was more fitting and honourable for you?
Juliet: Well I think probably she didn’t understand what almoner did. And also…
Interviewer: Could you tell us what an almoner did?
Juliet: No, because my ideas were quickly squashed because I had a strange headmistress who prevented me from taking A levels. That is another story. But a teacher… it was a highly regarded profession for a girl. I don’t think that the work of an almoner was that well known because in a huge hospital there would only be one such person.
Interviewer: When you said that being a teacher was considered to be quite significant, particularly for a woman, do you think it was more a significant profession in this period than a man? Was it a greater achievement?
Juliet: That’s quite a difficult question. There wasn’t the expectation that a lot of boys would go into it. Say if I looked at the equivalent in Hartsfield, the boys’ college, they would be going into engineering and at a reasonably high level. I mean Hartsfield was very much a woollen producing town, worsted fabrics in particular. But engineering was Hopkins, David Browns, there was a lot of opportunity for the boys who went off to university to take up professions in that area. I think when all the people I knew from the boys’ college, they all went off to university. Now the girls, although we were at the top grammar school in the town, a lot of the girls did not. In fact in my close circle I was the only one that left the town. The others got very good jobs as secretaries, usually to the bosses of these large engineering companies. Or into the world of education, because what is now Hartsfield University originally was Hartsfield Technical College.
Interviewer: So despite… this seems to be a story that a few women have told me through this project. That despite having gone to grammar school and done very well getting to grammar school, once at grammar school the expectations of what they would then go on to do seemed to not match the idea of going to grammar school. The secretarial seemed to be what a lot of them were being prepared for, not university.
Juliet: Well I think that possibly was… it was something I knew more of. If the parents of my contemporaries had gone to universities, then their daughters would be likely to go. Now in my particular friendship group, none of the parents had gone into higher education including my family. So I mean in a way I would have liked to have gone to university but the headmistress had plans for what she did, which I think was criminal. She barred me from doing that. Do you want to know what this headmistress did?
Interviewer: Go on.
Juliet: Well she came part way through my secondary school life. She decided that when people were in the fourth year, which would be when you’re about 15, that you then decided which three year levels you wanted to do. You started on the A level course, but you were not allowed to take those three best subjects at O level. I thought that was suicidal because how did you know how well you were going to do? In actual fact my results were in my worst… my highest results came out of my worst subject which was maths. The reason I did so well in maths was my father, being the type of person that he was and his skills, he wouldn’t let me do any other homework until I had done the maths. If I didn’t understand the maths he made sure I did. My mother would say ‘Don’t shout at her.’
Now when I did very well at the O levels, my father who had never ever been to a parents’ evening, wrote to the head and said I would now like to do A levels. She wrote back and said I couldn’t, I should have made the decision two years earlier. The fact I didn’t showed how emotionally immature I was. I have never forgotten that.
Interviewer: Or forgiven her.
Juliet: No, I have never forgiven her. Now we were the guinea pigs, we were the first. There were a lot of us who wanted to stay on it, remain on at school. She did actually put on a very, very interesting course. I mean I had two wonderful years in the sixth form. I wasn’t stretched in any way at all, but I diversified. I went from bottom in English language where I would have to have special coaching to get my O level, and I only just made it, and in this new course that was run I became top. The thing I did was I started to read. I didn’t read books. I don’t know if it was…
Interviewer: Were there books in the house?
Juliet: Not many, no. I can’t think there were any adult books other than technical books on bookkeeping and secretarial stuff.
Interviewer: So would you ever see your father or your mother reading for pleasure?
Juliet: Never. My mother would read a magazine and she would choose probably Woman’s Own or Woman’s Weekly which was sort of in the middle of the range. No, I mean my father worked long hours because he worked in Halifax and he had to go by bus. He left early and came home late. So after a meal we did have TV. We bought a TV in 1952 or ’53.
Interviewer: The coronation.
Juliet: For the coronation, yeah. And then he would go to bed quite early really. My mother was good with her hands. She liked dressmaking and knitting and embroidery. Particularly embroidery she would do in an evening.
Interviewer: And would your parents do anything cultural with or without you?
Juliet: Oh yes. Well they were very, very involved with the church. Very involved. It was Moor Green Congregation Church. It was in the next district but quite a walk and there was no bus so they did walk there and back. I went to Sunday school. My father became the church secretary for many, many years. Although my mother wasn’t a Congregationalists, she was Anglican in her upbringing, she embraced the work and the life of the church. It was a lively one. One of the things they developed was the Gilbert Sullivan Society. My father who had never done anything like singing started to sing and he had a good voice. They would do concerts at the church and he would be the male soloist. Incredible really. He took all the patter song parts from the Gilbert and Sullivan, all the big parts where he had to sing very quickly with great speed and diction.
They also… I mean the church was a great focal point. They did dances. They also did black and white minstrel shows, which were in those days considered to be okay. My father was one of the two. I know one was Mr. Interlocker and I can’t remember the name of the other one, but he was one of the two that did the talking as the continuity. I don’t know if you have ever seen any of them.
Anyway could I just come up to my school because I had a very, very interesting sixth form? It broadened me quite a lot because we did some moral levels of different subjects. We were actually educated towards the general studies paper. So we did science and we did languages as well. The fact they didn’t have A level was a problem when I tried to enter teacher training because you could do it, the standard entry requirement was five O levels and that was what you were expected to get and that was standard. But, more and more people were beginning to take A levels so colleges began to up their requirements.
I realised that this course was getting me nowhere and I found out that if you were 18 before February 2nd you could go to a January college. There weren’t many of those so I applied and I…
Interviewer: A January college was a college that took its intake from January rather than September.
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: So you could get six months ahead, could you?
Juliet: Well yeah, but it was mainly for people who were born after September 1st to the end of the year. There were very few of those. I applied for two. Well I was only interviewed for two. I think there were only three altogether. I mean thank goodness. When I think of it, thank goodness I got turned down. I did subsequently find out why I was turned down. It was because the head had given me a bad reference because she said I was not continuing the course. I was giving in part way through and not completing it. In her view that was a serious crime.
Interviewer: So when you went to teacher training college, you broadened out your interest by staying two years despite not doing A levels.
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: What were your artistic awareness or interests at that time? What were your cultural interests? You talked about being very involved in the church, but were there other stimulations?
Juliet: I was very keen on textiles. For example I made my first dress following a simplicity pattern when I was seven. I made all my clothes, including my wedding dress as well. That was my big interest. So when was looking for courses I was looking on arts and crafts side, also geography. Those were my two main ones. I did actually apply for the top teacher training college in the country, which was at Cambridge. I got an interview and one of my referees was the moderator for the Coronation Church in Yorkshire and he was on the governing board. So I had a very good referee. I think it was quite a difficult interview for the principal because she could see who my referee was and I think in her heart of hearts she knew she couldn’t take me because it wasn’t A levels. She explained as I hadn’t any A levels I would find it very difficult because everybody else would have done them.
With hindsight I know she was right because my next college was already full, it was a small one. It was my last choice. When I saw the prospectus I said to my mother ‘I hope I never go there’ because it looked like an aircraft hangar. The reason I became aware that I would have been at a severe disadvantage at a college that wanted A levels was that my second choice of subjects at college… I did ask for arts and crafts. My second one was a new course called environmental studies, which was history and geography. I really found that hard because I didn’t have the background that a lot of the others had. Interestingly at the end I got three distinctions and a credit, and the credit was in environmental studies. So I would have struggled. That would have been probably a main course. It probably would have been geography if I had been accepted because I don’t think they would take me for arts and crafts in a straight forward teacher training college. I probably would have been more expected to have gone to an arts college. I wasn’t talented on the arts side.
Interviewer: So what date was it when you arrived in Coventry? Your third choice, the place you really didn’t want to go to?
Juliet: 1955. The lower precinct wasn’t there, a big hole, and they were just building Woolsworth which is where Boots is now.
Interviewer: And if you compared Coventry then to your experience of Hartsfield, what struck you as being the difference between Coventry and Hartsfield?
Juliet: Well Coventry was very new and in those days the vision that the… what they called the city fun lovers, their vision was absolutely fantastic and politics, interparty politics, just didn’t seem to exist. People were working together to create this city that had been so devastated. I mean David is a Coventarian and I would be very interested to know his view, because Coventry was a beautiful medieval city. The precinct was new. There wasn’t any… I don’t think that… I think it was Plymouth had a precinct. I’m not sure whether it was pre-Coventry or not, but it was very, very early.
Interviewer: Coventry is the first precinct in the world.
Juliet: Is it? Right. And also because the school… the devastation, the schools that were being built were being built as comprehensive. That was revolutionary.
Interviewer: Did that then… coming to Coventry in ’55, did it both feel exciting because of this newness, this new city? Did you feel that?
Juliet: Well I felt it educationally because we had education lectures and the history of education we had. This new idea of having these big schools that were open to everybody. In actual fact at that time they were also taking people who passed the 11 plus because that had not been abolished. We also did our teaching practice. We had the opportunity to be in new schools. Not all the teacher practices were, but you were working in schools that you had never ever seen the likes and you certainly had been a pupil at such places.
Interviewer: The newness of Coventry and the social experiment of Coventry, did it come through your course? Did you feel in a way that although Coventry had been your third choice it now had redeemed itself by being a very exciting educational course?
Juliet: Well it was an exciting educational course, but we did have some speakers come into college. I remember one particularly. He was the minister of Woritwrought Congregational Church. A fantastic personality, Reverend Hugh Jones, a tall Welsh man. He informed us that Coventry was a city without culture. To a certain extent that remained in many ways.
Interviewer: What did he mean by that?
Juliet: Well there was nowhere in the city centre for cultural experiences. There was the Hippodrome and I think maybe occasionally, I can’t remember… on the whole it was variety and pantomime. I couldn’t say that there wasn’t a phase in… I couldn’t be sure.
Interviewer: It certainly wasn’t a city with an opera house like Leeds?
Juliet: No, no, no. There wasn’t an orchestra because the Bell Grade hadn’t been…
Interviewer: And there wasn’t even a library in ’55. There was no public library yet.
Juliet: Wasn’t there? That red building by the centre? By the cathedral? That was a very, very old building.
Interviewer: That’s a chapel now. But I know the Herbert of course and all of that hadn’t been built up.
Juliet: The original library was… if you looked at the front of Holy Trinity it was on the right. The archives were somewhere else. I feel pretty confident that there was a library.
Interviewer: So Reverend Hugh Jones referring to culture in…
Juliet: The broadest sense.
Interviewer: …the broadest sense of art and music?
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: That sort of artistic appreciation he was referring to.
Juliet: I mean what was strong in the city were the churches. In the city centre at that time, well when… and when I left in particular, there was some incredible preachers and they had big congregations. I know the names of them. Lincoln Minchell was at the Central Hall. Hugh Jones was at Worrywort Congregation. Lenard Jackson was at Holy Trinity and Richard Hamper was at the Baptist. All of them great orators, fantastic people with the public congregation and involvement in the city. It’s quite amazing. I mean people used to ask David and I, what we were, what was our faith. We used to say ‘Gypsy’ because when I was at college I went all the way from Canley into the city centre every Sunday on the bus. I went in strict rotation around them all. It was wonderful Sunday evenings.
Interviewer: And were you doing that both because you had been brought up a Congregationalist so that was in a way part of your kind of cultural upbringing? Were you doing that instead of what other young people were doing which was going to dances or the cinema?
Juliet: Well when I was at college at Canley it was so far away from the city centre. I don’t recall anybody going to the cinema. I went to the cinema when I was in Hartsfield, yes, every Saturday night. I went to things at church and dances. There wasn’t… the dance halls in Coventry were too far from college. David would be able to tell you about the dance halls in Coventry definitely. But we had college dances. We had a big hall at college and people were shipped in. There were graduate apprentices from GC, British Thompson Hughes in Rugby, English Electric and a lot of people married as a result of those arrangements. And then we went to their dances and there was a men’s training college in Birmingham at Saltly and they came. So the college had a dance once every term. It was a big event, no doubt about it.
Interviewer: What was the name of the college?
Juliet: At the time it was called the City of Coventry Training College for Women. It was funded by the local authority. Then in 1965 when the government made changes in teacher training, it then became the Coventry College of Education.
Interviewer: And it was out in Canley?
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: So that is a good three miles from the city centre?
Juliet: Oh it was, but it was on Charter Avenue and there was a bus on Charter Avenue. The reason it was there was because during the war when they needed people to work in the factories to make ammunition, people were brought in from other places so they had to be accommodated. So this site at Canley had all these temporary buildings. They were asbestos buildings. The ammunition workers were there till the end of the war.
Then of course at the end of the war it was realised there was going to be a huge population explosion in about five years’ time. Lots of male teachers had been killed in the war. Women had been allowed… married women had been allowed to continue to teach because there was a shortage of teachers whereas previously when you got married you had to leave. Married women proved that they could run a family and a home and do a job. So they were allowed to continue. But there was going to be a huge lack of male teachers. So for two intakes there was an emergency men’s training college on that site.
Then because of the forthcoming population explosion throughout the country they then had to have a relook at establishing teacher training colleges that were going to be taking big numbers. It had been the person who was appointed the principal, Joan Brown, a fabulous person, wonderful person, she hoped it would be mixed but it wasn’t. it was originally for women. On the whole there were single sex colleges. There were some mixed ones but not in this area. So in 1948 it became a women’s college but the women weren’t allowed to live there for the first term because the men were still occupying the residences.
Interviewer: Where did you live when you were at college?
Juliet: Well I lived on site because I didn’t come until 1955, but I was living in those asbestos huts which remained. My block, they were called blocks, my block was demolished in 1957. The walls of the rooms were asbestos panels.
Interviewer: And did you do your catering yourself or were you eating…?
Juliet: Oh no, we had a fantastic chef and we had three meals a day. I put on a stone and a half when I was there. I mean the food was amazing, absolutely amazing. He was held in high regard. I only recently found a picture of him in the Compton Telegraph when he passed away. It was a wonderful picture they got of him from his years when he was at the college. And a huge dining room.
Interviewer: How many girls were there?
Juliet: 180 a year so there were 360 because it was just a two year course. In the evening it was a formal meal and you had to be there for half to six. When the staff walked in you had to stand and they walked to a top table.
Interviewer: So it emulated a sort of Oxford and Cambridge…
Juliet: Well she was Oxford, Summer hill… yeah, Summer hill.. I don’t know which one it is now. But she was from there. The good thing was there was a lady who started the same day as I. She was only 15 and I was 18 and she was taking on as a lady gardener. She spent all her working life there and she ended up as a science technician. She always remembers how wonderful it was that she was treated, although she was only 15, she was a member of staff and she sat with everybody.
Interviewer: Is this a moment where you met girls from a wide range of backgrounds? Did this again expose you to a whole lot of new ideas and interests?
Juliet: That’s a very interesting question because in some ways I wouldn’t say I regressed. I had heard very stimulating school friends. When I got to college the block in which I was placed… it sounds rather snobby, they were not my intellectual equals. I was the only one going to be hoping to teach in a secondary school. For my interview I had been interviewed to be an infants’ teacher, and then I changed my mind and asked if I could be junior. So in the holidays before I started we had to observe others. I went to an infants’ school and a secondary school. I couldn’t believe what teaching in an infant school was going to be. I went to a secondary school in Hartsfield that was brand new with an inspirational head. He was wonderful. So when I actually arrived at college I said I now wanted to do secondary. I had to stay in the juniors for two weeks, but I wasn’t the only person who changed. You could only be in the secondary group if you were doing maths or PE. There was only one secondary group, so they made a junior secondary. I was lucky that I was only ever sent to secondary schools, which was unusual because the idea was you do one of each and then for your third teaching practice you did one of your choice. But, I did all three in secondary.
So I was at a different level in a way. Now down in the other wing there were some secondary, so I became more friendly with the other wing than my own wing. We didn’t… in my wing they were all from the Midlands so they all went home at weekends. So that is one of the reasons why I went to church every Sunday. Even down at the other end where I had more people that I related to better, they were from the Midlands. So it was quite lonely at the weekends. But I always had… I really had a strong work ethic and I hated it at first. I did. I think it was the human side because I couldn’t relate to anybody. I had had these wonderful school friends. I mean I went away with them two weeks ago.
I went home to Hartsfield and my father caught me reading the job section of the Yorkshire Post and he asked why I was doing it. I said I didn’t want to go back at the end of half term, I wanted to stop. I was looking for a secretarial post. He said ‘You are going back.’ My mother burst into tears because she thought I was going to leave the college. I mean it was the thing she loved saying, that her daughter was training to be a teacher.
Interviewer: So you did go back?
Juliet: Well I couldn’t disobey my father. I couldn’t possibly disobey him. So I went back and that was a turning point because I really did enjoy and I really, really enjoyed the work and the tasks, the assignments. I had a great time and I didn’t realize until I read an old college magazine recently some of the societies to which I belonged.
Interviewer: Such as?
Juliet: Well apparently I had been an official in the Christian Union, and I don’t actually remember being in it. But in the magazine it actually quotes me as having been at some conference somewhere.
Interviewer: And is this how you meet David? Do you meet David your husband through the church or is that another…?
Juliet: I could just come back to that because I think being friendly with both wings was good for me, because in second year you had to let somebody to be the block representative. I was elected and I can only think that was because I was known in both wings. I mean David always says ‘My wife was the block head.’ I mean the building we were in was called M Block.
Now I told you that people went home at the weekends. Now one lived Newark and she didn’t always go, but she was not my sort of person. She smoked. I thought that was horrible. She said one weekend ‘Why didn’t we go across the road to watch a rugby match?’ I said I only knew a rugby league from the north and it was the union and I can’t understand it. She said ‘Oh I can explain it to you.’ So we went across and we were very well received because it was just outside the back gate, just a little bit away. We happened to coincide on our first visit with them planning a social event that was going to be at Astley Castle, which in those days was a hotel. Well it was a licensed premise. I don’t know whether… it did have functions but to get there you had to have a car. They were going to have a coach because not many people had cars.
This man came up to us. He was a director of an engineering company. He came and said to June and I did we think any of our friends might like to go. So we said we would make inquiries. So he sent over this man who wasn’t playing because he was injured and he had to take our names and it was David.
Interviewer: What they were trying to do was get girls into a party.
Juliet: Oh yes, yes, definitely. Now I believe although I never was involved, but I do believe there had been a fair amount of climbing in through the windows by some of the rugby players. Particularly in some of the blocks that were nearer to the road because several of them who I now know tell me that they did this. Of course these blocks were single storey so the window was only about four foot off the ground.
Interviewer: Where were the boys coming from who were playing rugby? What were they?
Juliet: Well Earlsdon wasn’t linked with a school, whereas on the next pitch they were the old Cevance which was the old boys of Henry VIII. Elsewhere there were the Old Wheats which were the old boys of Bablake. Although David had been at Bablake he didn’t play for the Old Wheats because his brother played for the Old Wheats and he was not going to play for the same team as his brother. So I think that on the whole this is something you could ask him. I think on the whole they worked in industry, in engineering in Coventry.
Interviewer: So when you met David and he was the young man who…
Juliet: He took our names, you see.
Interviewer: Was he working then?
Juliet: Oh yes, he was working at the GEC, he was older.
Interviewer: So he was older?
Juliet: Probably five years older. Then I got the names, got five people from my wing. I mean these girls with whom I didn’t really relate, but some were first years. Five of us were named. So this director, Mr. Halford, he wrote a letter to Ms. Brown asking permission for us to have a late pass because you had in at half past ten. The coach was going to come back at 12 specifically for us to get in for 12. It would bring back other families.
So I delivered the letter to the porter’s lodge and she sent for me. She had the letter in front of her and she looked at me and she said ‘Well you can’t go.’ I was absolutely dumbfounded. All I could think of was what on earth am I going to tell the other four. So I said ‘But why? Why can’t we go?’ ‘They are only after one thing. It’s a rugby club.’ I looked at her and I was naïve and I said to her ‘But Ms. Brown, we haven’t got any money. We’re students.’ She looked at me and said ‘You can go.’ Twenty-five years after we were married I told this story at our silver wedding we had and it was then it dawned on me what she meant.
So we went and Mr. Halford said that we had to be looked after. So he sent David to ask the five of us what we wanted to drink. They all looked at me because I was the block head and I had only ever had a glass of sherry at home at Christmas. I said I didn’t sort of fancy that. I had heard of gin and orange but I had never had one. So I said ‘I’d like a gin and orange’ so they all wanted gin and oranges. We quite liked them. So David came again and we all had gin and orange. Then they sent somebody else, another rugby player and he brought us gin and orange. We had five gin and oranges during the course of the evening. So I think David had to pay for four of those rounds. Then when we all had to leave this place with the coach David was by the coach on his motorbike. I remember saying to one of the others ‘Well thank goodness we didn’t come with him.’
Now the interesting thing was that this friendship I had with June, the rugby fiend, she agreed to start coming with me to church. She agreed to go around with me. It was very, very interesting, the reaction. When we went to the congregation church where we had this wonderful Welsh preacher, everything he said you actually thought that it was you. I mean the congregation was large, but it was you. He said something quite controversial and he said ‘And I do mean you’ and she said he pointed at her. Everybody would have said he pointed at them. We went across the road to the centre hall. We went upstairs and June looked around. She said ‘Well I don’t see much talent here. That one over there, that blonde.’ I said ‘Well we’ve seen him before. He is from the rugby club.’ It was David with his brother.
If you went into town on a Sunday night, going back to Poor Meadow, you window-shopped. Now we were getting towards the end of our course and earning some money. I remember window shopping in this shop, I think it was Walter Hammond. It had a centre part with clothes around the side and mainly coats. We were looking at winter coats because that was going to be my first purchase. And just as we turned to carry on going down to Poor Meadow who should walk past but David and his brother and David was holding hands with an attractive blonde female. So June said ‘Well that’s your chance gone.’
We certainly went across to watch the rugby and one of the rugby players did say to June ‘Will you tell your friend with the glasses’ I hardly ever wore them ‘that David Amery is a woman hater because he has just finished going out with somebody after two and a half years.’ Then I went on holiday with my school friends to Torquay. On my… we went for two weeks. On the second Saturday… well we went to Spa Boru at Torquay which was just below our hotel. Ted Heath was the band. I mean what a fantastic opportunity. Six nights a week and we used to take our ticket money and a penny for the toilets and we all had a little pocket we had sown inside of our dresses. We never bought a drink or anything like that. On the second Saturday I was dancing around and somebody waved. There was this crowd of young men and one of them was David. None of them were dancing, they were all sitting in a crowd. I didn’t see David dance all night.
Then on the Sunday we girls decided we would walk from Torquay to Peynton. As we were walking along this main road along the front, very near to the sea, these red little sports cars, two-seaters, started to come past like a cavalcade. At the back was an old Morris Eight Tura with two people in which was a real bone-shaker. The driver was like this and he couldn’t really keep up. All they were doing was cruising out to Peynton and back and then they began to realise that they were recognising these four girls. They started blowing their horns, you see, when they passed us. But the little car didn’t because he couldn’t take his hands off the wheel. We went on the Monday to the Spa Boru and who should be there but this crowd, David. He asked me if I would like a drink so I said yes.
Interviewer: And was that the beginning then of you properly courting?
Juliet: Well he then said would I like to go to Bavacub for the day because he had a car. He was the driver of this rickety Morris Eight. He said I could take one of my friends with me. So Christine and I went with David and his friend to Bavacub for the day. So they were there. Every night this crowd. I used to go and have a coffee, we had a coffee on the way back to the hotel. He told me a joke. Nobody had ever, ever told me a joke. Any jokes I had heard were scripted. He asked me what my father did so I said he worked in the Halifax Building Society. He said ‘Well my father was a cashier at the police station.’ So I said ‘Oh.’ He said ‘Yes, he counted the coppers when they came in.’ I just was entranced by him.
Anyway, the last night on the Friday night we said farewell. Only recently the other passenger of the car who went to Bavacub, about a fortnight ago he rang up and asked… told David he had found some photographs of Toll Key and he wanted us to have them. A similar one we had, a lot we hadn’t. It was absolutely incredible. I said to David I was going to be teaching in Coventry, but that was it. No arrangement was made whatsoever.
So the first Sunday I am now living in Deets in Longford. My landlady couldn’t understand there were two, at least two, very, very good churches very near to where she lived. She was highly regarded at one of them and she thought I should go there. But no, I said I’m going into town. It was a walk to the bus stop, I didn’t know how long it was going to talk so I was really early. I got off the bus by the Hippodrome, by the fire station. I was walking up the street and I came to Pages which was a ladies’ shop. I did my window-watching. I came out onto the pavement and walking up was David and his brother. I was amazed. They said where was I going so I said I was going to church. They said they were and they said where was I going. I said I hadn’t decided. I went the rounds. They said ‘Well we are going to the Central Hall. You can come with us if you want.’ So I did. I continued to go to the Central Hall till about November when David said ‘My brother and I go to the cinema every Thursday. Would you like to come with us?’ So I started meeting them on the Thursday and that went on for some time, some months. I’m trying to think whether I had been… I might have actually started to be invited back after church for supper which his mother prepared for the three of us.
I then became 21 in the January and I invited to my 21st somebody I had met in the first week at Toll Key. He had invited me to his home in Harrow. It is quite interesting, I didn’t feel that comfortable in that environment. I did feel very much the northerner. Anyway, that young man had actually come with me to one of my school friend’s 21st in October. Anyway, he declined to come to mine, thank goodness. My landlady said to the other girl who was from my block, the other end, we were sharing a room at her house. She said to Wendy ‘Why doesn’t she ask the other one?’ So this old lady dared me to ring up David at work. I rang him up and invited him to my 21st and he came.
Interviewer: And what was your 21st party?
Juliet: Well it was in two parts because my mother had her ideas and I had mine. So my first 21st was on the Friday. It took us seven hours to get there in this old car because I didn’t know how to get to Hartsfield by road. I thought you went through every town on the way, which is what we did. Going through Sheffield we got stuck in the tram lines going the wrong way. When we arrived my mother’s only remark was ‘You’re late.’ David has never forgotten that.
Anyway, the first one was an evening with a meal at church which was their friends and my youth fellowship friends. So there were lots of my friends there because I had been very active in the youth fellowship. Then on the Saturday then I had my school friends. There were four girls and four young men. We went to the George in Hartsfield for a dinner dance. That was the thing to do.
Interviewer: And by this time were you and David sort of formally a couple?
Juliet: Yes, we were going out together.
Interviewer: And your parents, what did they think of him?
Juliet: They never commented at all.
Interviewer: Was there an expectation on their part that this was the man you were going to marry?
Juliet: I don’t honestly know. They never commented. My mother has never forgiven me for not teaching in Hartsfield. The only reason I didn’t do that was I signed up to be interviewed in Hartsfield and the list was outside Ms. Brown’s office. She came out and saw I put Hartsfield. She said ‘Oh what a pity I really do like my better students to stay in the area so that Coventry knows its money is well spent.’ I mean nobody had ever given me a boost like that. I mean the headmistress had kept me down. I mean I was under my father’s thumb and my mother’s to a certain extent. Nobody had ever given me any praise. So I crossed out Hartsfield and put Coventry. Then I had the problem of explaining to them why, in the 50’s, I was going to leave home. I know exactly where I was, coming home from church, when I told them. My mother burst into tears and my father said it could be the making of me. I mean he was right.
Interviewer: So how long was it then? You came back to Coventry after your 21st.
Juliet: I was living in Coventry.
Interviewer: So you came back from Hartsfield really very committed to being in Coventry.
Juliet: Yes, definitely.
Interviewer: And you had your first teaching job where?
Juliet: At Foxford in Longford. I stayed there for 30 years. We courted for six years, we were engaged after five years. In many ways that was reasonably average. I suppose we were one of the longest. Looking at my school friends we were the longest in courtship, but the others had more boyfriends.
Interviewer: What did courtship mean? Was it a time where you knew you were going to get married and you were saving money or you weren’t sure you were going to get married and you were sort of testing out the relationship? What did courtship mean for you?
Juliet: I had planned to do two years teaching and then I was going to go to Germany and teach at the Force’s school. That had been the plan. I announced this plan approaching the two year bit, and David… I mean he never indicated his intentions, but he did not like the idea. So I didn’t do it. I mean I still… we started to go on holiday together. I had no idea there would be a permanent future. We just carried on going out together.
Interviewer: He was working.
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: What job did he have?
Juliet: He was working at the GEC.
Interviewer: So didn’t he have quite a lot more money for you? He was driving cars quite early wasn’t he, as a young man?
Juliet: He would, yes, he would have. I mean as teachers we only just got equal pay and I was younger. I would think probably earning not quite double but fairly. I remember what I started at and I remember David going for an interview after we were married which would have taken him to double what I started at. So it wouldn’t quite be double but it was more. But he had gone to work at GEC straight from school at 16.
Interviewer: And did he still live with his mother?
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: So you were in lodgings, had a degree of independence about where you lived, but he still lived with his mother.
Juliet: Yeah.
Interviewer: Would you go around to his house often and socialise there?
Juliet: I would go around in the evenings after church because his mother always did these wonderful salads for the three of us. We did that every Sunday right up until we were married. Then we did it here because Peter came here after going to church. We didn’t always go to the same church, because David and I were doing this going around. Peter still went to the Central Hall.
Interviewer: What kind of house did David’s parents have?
Juliet: A two up/two down terrace near the city football ground.
Interviewer: 19th or 20th century? Was it an old house or a new house?
Juliet: It was quite old because just a bit further down there were some newer ones attached. It’s still there. When you interview him he will have some interesting stories about growing up in that area, particularly so near the football ground.
Interviewer: And in comparison to your parents’ house, what sort of period was your parents’ house?
Juliet: Oh they went in it brand new, 1935. They had a brand new estate on Tellmark Road. It was just brick stones and I mean I was probably in my teens when it was tarmacked. The people who lived there had to pay for it.
Interviewer: Was that a semi-detached?
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: Was that a kind of Tudor-bethan style? So the pebble ash?
Juliet: It was pebble-dash but it had a stone base. That was three bedrooms.
Interviewer: Did it feel sort of enlarged cottage-y on the inside?
Juliet: Not really, no. There was a kitchen, a pantry and there was a backroom and a front room and two good-sized bedrooms and… you would call it a box room which had the bulk head from the stairs. I mean it’s typical. Oh and the bathroom.
Interviewer: Wood panelling?
Juliet: Oh no, no. Wallpaper. Well no, there was no wood panelling.
Interviewer: So in comparison to the family house you had come from, David’s family house was more modest?
Juliet: Yes, and his mother had been a widow. Sadly we have no knowledge… I had heard that his father died when David was six months from a war wound. Peter, the brother says he never heard that. David hasn’t ever been really interested in ancestry. Our nieces and so am I, but it’s quite difficult to be investigating somebody else’s family. I have a cousin of David’s who lives in Australia. When her brother I went to the funeral and there was a cousin, a younger cousin. I happened to say that we didn’t know about David’s father. This cousin said to me ‘Well of course he committed suicide.’ In those days it was a crime. Although my sister-in-law has gone to the Coventry records, there is no evidence. The cousin in Australia, she doesn’t know. She said she remembers him and he was an intelligent man, she said she thought she remembered him as. She has suggested that I should go to Stratford and I said ‘Do you think the [unintelligible 1:05:05] has anything to do with it and she said possibly. But, I have never gone because it upsets David.
One of our nieces has a friend who is very into ancestry and she has been here and did a PowerPoint presentation. She has traced him and his background and she can trace the wedding, but even she can’t find the death. I would like to know, but it’s obviously very sad. David was absolutely devoted to his mother, he really was. I think he was an incredible son and he was very, very practical whereas Peter wasn’t. Peter would be sent for a bag of sugar and he would drop it on the way back so he was never sent shopping again.
Interviewer: So for six years you courted David and you decided to get married. How did that…?
Juliet: That is very interesting. Because David’s mother worked at the GEC on the track, she had to work because she was a widow, because she wasn’t at home when school finished David and his brother went to an aunt and uncle who lived near the GEC. They went there and so she walked to their house and then they all walked home. Now when David and I got engaged Aunty Lil took me on one side and said she considered that I should marry Peter, not David because Peter had never had a girlfriend and David was quite capable of going out and finding somebody else. Amazing, isn’t it?
Interviewer: And what did you do as a consequence of being told this?
Juliet: I just ignored the advice and carried on. They did come to the wedding, which was big of her wasn’t it?
Interviewer: Where did you get married?
Juliet: In Hartsfield at the church where I had been brought up.
Interviewer: And did David’s relatives come up?
Juliet: Yes. And I was lucky. My mother had sisters. She was one of seven. I think David’s mother was as well. But David’s family, they had had a rift so there wasn’t any many of them to accommodate in Hartsfield. They were able to stay with my mother’s sisters. I stayed at home and David stayed at the home of one of the bridesmaids.
Interviewer: And in the build up to the wedding, presumably you and David began to talk your future together, were you talking about where you would first live and what sort of conversations…?
Juliet: We started to save and we thought we were doing alright. We looked at a few… we didn’t start looking… we got married in June and we didn’t start looking until the January. We began looking in our price range and quite frankly we didn’t like any of it. We found a house that we did like and it was just off Canon West Road… not Canon Park, Canon near the side, going towards Canonwath on the left. It was £4,000 and the owner was a bank manager. That was the only time we really went and had an interview with the people. He actually told us we couldn’t afford us, so that was a blow.
Interviewer: So what date is this when you…
Juliet: Well that was 1963.
Interviewer: When did you get married?
Juliet: ’63. But, when you are here this house was owned by one of David’s colleagues at work. He and his wife had lived across the road in a flat.
Interviewer: Over Birmingham Old Road?
Juliet: Yes, here. It was never called Birmingham Old Road, only Birmingham Road. Jean and Eric lived on the top floor of the lodge across the road and they were both architects. Eric’s eye sight was beginning to fail so he had to give up so he went to work at GEC. Jean was an architect for the city council. Molly Anderson, who lived in that house for over sixty years, knew of this property but it was going to be condemned because they were going to do something with this corner. They were going to straighten it out. The idea had been to demolish the corner. Jean found out about the bypass and that there would be a road eventually and so these buildings were saved. Because she was working for the city council they bought it in its condemned state and they did the basic work. That little room there and the third bedroom upstairs to which you can only get if you go through the second one, they both were in the condemned state when we arrived. Now they bought it and they had two children. We came here with colleagues from the GEC and I just thought it was wonderful. I had never, ever been in anything like it. That was two years, a good two years, more than two years before David made his intentions clear.
Now at the time… I know when it was, it was in the late 50’s because sadly I had a rough time in my teaching career. I started teaching in 1957, so ’58, and I was very successful. I had a whole range of abilities including some…
So I started teaching in 1957 and I had a very, very enjoyable, successful year. I got the job actually as a result of Ms. Brown’s friendship with the head which is another story. I was interviewed and I got it. Because I had had a very successful first year I then was given a lot of classes from the lower streams because Foxford was sets. I really found that extremely difficult. I had a lot of the lower streams. Their behaviour was quite challenging. Now when I look back I must have had a breakdown. I was never off, I never took any absence from it but I really became quite ill. I couldn’t go out in the evenings for long, I would go dizzy, I couldn’t cope with stairs. When I went home at the Easter in my second year, my mother took me to my family doctor and he prescribed tranquilizers I think and a tonic. That did help.
I mean David had a very difficult time because we couldn’t go out really in the evenings because I would have to be brought home. When we came here I began to go dizzy again. So the host and hostess said I could go and lie down. It was fantastic in that bedroom and lying there. I thought it was wonderful. I don’t really know how David stuck with me all that time because it was a very, very difficult time. By that time I had also… I was Diggs for a year in Longford. With the same person I was then in Diggs near Wendy’s school for only a term because it wasn’t working. I think that could also have contributed because it was wasn’t working living with her. So I left. My father gave me enough money, £5 to pay my month’s rent and I went back in at Christmas holidays and I left her a note and the money to pay for the next month. I mean she was absolutely furious and tried to blackmail me. But, I did actually go into Diggs where I had a landlady who looked after me.
I went to her doctor and I’m still with the same practice. I went to this doctor with the remains of my tonic and my tablets and I said I needed more of these. So he gave me the prescription and when I went to the chemist it was the smallest bottle you could think of and only a little packet. I’d had a big bottle and a huge packet. So I was back a week later and I said ‘I need more of this.’ He asked me why I was taking it and I told him. He tore this paper off a pad and it said ‘Turn over.’ So I turned it over… oh it said ‘Do you suffer from…’ and there were various things including some of the things I was suffering from. He said turn it over. On the other side it said ‘There is nothing the matter with you.’ He said ‘I’m not giving you anymore medicine or tablets.’ He talked to me and he said ‘What do you like doing? Do you like eating out?’ ‘Well yes but I can’t because I can’t cope with the whole evening.’ He said ‘I suggest that you start saving up in a dimple hague bottle. Your boyfriend will be earning more than you, so he could save a shilling a week and you could save six pence. By the time the bottle is full you will be feeling much better and you will have enough to probably eat at the Saxon Mill’ which is just on the way into Warwick. We did just that. I know what I had, I know what I wore and I managed the whole evening. It was an incredible thing really. It must have been a breakdown I had had, stress perhaps. But stress was totally unheard of in those days.
Anyway, I did pluck up the courage and I went to see the head whose deputy, she thought the world me actually. He always remembered that I was Ms. Brown’s student. They both listened to me and they said why hadn’t I gone earlier. They would never have given me the timetable he gave me. They deliberately gave it me because they had bene told I was good with the children, stability. So after that I got the full range which everybody should have had, the full range. I really did… I can remember the very lowest class, 110. They were wonderful because so many of them were so good at needlework.
Interviewer: So your experience of coming to where you now live, this 17th century…
Juliet: Oh yes, yes.
Interviewer: … in Allesley Village, can you remember why it made such an impression on you when you first came here?
Juliet: Because I had never seen anything like it. I had lived in a semi-detached, David lived in a terrace. I just had never seen anything like it. Jean and Eric… he decided he was going to leave the GEC and he knew David and I liked it. But we had only been courting for three years probably. David had this idea that he would buy it and he would put me in as a tenant. So he then went… he had it valued and went and had financial advice. He realised he would have to sell the car. He got £2 ten for the car and when he went about a mortgage he didn’t have enough for the deposit so we couldn’t have it. But another of David’s colleagues was older, was getting married that year, knew David had had it valued, came and looked at it and said he would have it. He didn’t need to have it valued because David had had it done. So they were here for two years. They put up a shelf. I came and visited, it wasn’t the same place at all. Uncle Sid, the very outspoken uncle, he did come and look at it when David was thinking of buying it. He didn’t like it, it was too plain because it didn’t have a porch. He didn’t think it was a good purchase anyway. So, we didn’t have it.
David and I then started looking at flats after we realized we couldn’t afford this house at £4,000. We decided a flat was going to be the best. We looked at some nice flats, because there were nice ones being built including Park Court up the road. More for gardens, a bit further down Holly Hedge Road and we settled on Munford Gardens. It was a very nice flat.
Interviewer: And what date would this have been?
Juliet: Oh this was 1963, quite near to when we were getting married. Probably as late as April. It was owned by a widow who had the most awful taste in curtains, cooker and carpets which she aimed to sell with the house and I wouldn’t have it. I did not want any of those, I wanted to start from scratch. I had even chosen my cooker which is not the one I had got. The estate agent was a school colleague of David’s and told me the idea that it would be a good idea if the buyers, the seller and he met in the flat. I thought it was a very good idea, because I thought he was going to persuade her to climb down. How wrong I was. I wouldn’t climb down. David made her an offer for it, the curtains, cooker and carpet and she accepted.
Interviewer: This is before you were married.
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: Before you have actually got married you are already looked at properties and thinking about what kind of home you would like to construct?
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: But this is before you were married. There was never any expectation you would go and live with David’s mother while you saved?
Juliet: No, not at all. So where had I got to with this?
Interviewer: You are looking at the flat.
Juliet: We are looking at the flat, yes. Then we settle on Munford Gardens and we are just about to sign. David was at the Lanhester Polytechnic on a course. Wednesday morning. He was going to sign on the lunch break but Bernard had told him at work that week that he was going to leave. He told him on the Monday. David was going to sign on Wednesday for the flat. And he said to David ‘Do you want it?’
Interviewer: This is the cottage?
Juliet: The cottage. He said… he told David what he wanted for it. He did not want any more than what he had paid. So David said we would have it. So David has a job of going to the estate agent to back off. He is telling somebody else on the course from the GEC what his dilemma was. The man was a bachelor. He was living in The Grange which was on the site of the GEC where the graduate apprentices lived. The GEC decided they wanted it for offices so Vernon Lewis was going to be homeless. He said to David ‘Well I’ll have a flat. I won’t need it valued. I don’t need any… I just know it will be alright. I’ll have it. I’ll come with you.’ Vernon was very small, David was very tall. So apparently they go into this estate agent where he is quite small and David starts his preamble about how he is not going to have the flat. The estate agent’s face dropped. So Vernon who had been standing behind David then moves aside and apparently says ‘But I’m having it.’ That was it. But Bernard and Betty were not going to move from here till September and we were getting married in August. So that question about did we ever think about living with David’s mother is very relevant because the offer was not made. Well, we couldn’t. There were only two bedrooms. Although I had stayed there for three days when I had been in hospital, I had a camp bed in the front room which I had to pull to pieces every day. It went on for three days and no way could I do that.
Where we ended up living was very, very interesting because by this stage I had viewed 61 properties that were for myself. This lovely doctor I had had actually asked me… I asked him… I decided I was going to leave the spinster. She had found out I was looking at flats. She only found out because one estate agent sent me some details and on the front was his rubber stamp and it was a friend of hers so she gave me notice. I was due to go into hospital that week so I had ring up and say ‘I can’t come into hospital because I have got nowhere to live.’ So she didn’t know that I had done that, and when I had begun to pack she said where was I going. I said I’m obviously leaving. She said I can stay because obviously you have got nowhere to live. So she had decided because I was going into hospital she would climb down. Anyway, I found some very, very unsuitable accommodation. Really unsuitable. It was with a family, but it did mean that I had to go to the GP and say would he still come out to Green Lane. I said it’s not suitable at all but if I’m ill. He said ‘Why are you there? What’s it like?’ He listened to me and he said ‘One of my patients is the hostess at these brand new flats on Corporation Street for the YWCA. He said ‘I have been and looked at them. Why don’t you go there?’ I said ‘You can’t go there until you are 26’ and I think I was 24. He said ‘Yes, you have got to be considered a professional earning a professional salary.’ Well because I was a teacher I qualified on salary, but not on age. He said ‘Why don’t you go down and have a look.’ This was a Saturday morning so I met David for coffee and we went down to these flats. Wow, I mean they were superb. They were over the Coventry Telegraph and we met Mrs. Davidson and it said ‘Flat to let.’ She wouldn’t let me move in that week. I had to get myself a kettle. It was furnished, but you didn’t have kettles and bed linen. But, you had a bed cover because it was a bed settee. So I went to live there.
Interviewer: That was just a fill in between…?
Juliet: No, because I was there. David still hadn’t proposed. I was there for two years. Then I was still there you see when we were going to get married. So we then had to look for somewhere. I went downstairs to the office. I must have been going to make an appointment at an estate agent to look for a flat and I told Mrs. Davidson, the hostess, what my dilemma was. She said ‘We are having serious problems here.’ She said ‘We are having men coming in after closing time.’ She had her brother-in-law stay occasionally which we subsequently discovered it was her husband but they only lived together from time to time. I know he used to walk around to make sure that a man could be seen. She said ‘Do you think David…’ because she knew him because we had the engagement party there ‘… do you think David would agree to be visible on the first floor?’ The steps went up to first floor, there was nobody at ground floor. It was from half past ten to 11 o’clock in the evenings. So I put it to him and he said he would. So she said ‘You can stay here.’ I had one of the bigger flats and it was a dual flat, two bed settees and a shared kitchen and bathroom. So I had to get the agreement of the other girl. She came to the wedding. I mean she was already coming to the wedding before we knew this arrangement. So David slept on the camp bed on the floor in my flat for three months.
I had to keep my maiden name because it wasn’t an official arrangement. But, he did actually do as asked. It did stop the intruders. He did sometimes have to help people. I don’t know if they had lost their key. Somehow or other he managed to get into their flat. There was like a [unintelligible 1:31:27] and I think if you pushed hard enough the lock would give. So he was able to be of use.
Interviewer: So when you and David are preparing to get married, can you remember conversations you had with David about what kind of home you were looking for? What ‘home’ would have meant to you and him? Did you plan in the sort of abstract as well as the concrete?
Juliet: No, I didn’t.
Interviewer: Didn’t draw a list up of the things you really wanted?
Juliet: No I think we were lucky that when we were looking if we liked something we both liked it. Bear in mind we only started in the January looking. We didn’t see that many places and the places that we did seriously consider were newly built flats. A parked court would have been perhaps our first choice if it hadn’t been a quagmire. I just couldn’t envision by June it being anything other than a quagmire. Whereas Munford Gardens was already open and when we looked on at Mount Nodd that was already open.
Interviewer: And Mount Nodd were council houses at that time?
Juliet: Lovely flats on Southern… I think it was Southern and Avenue, with like a balcony. I think it’s between the two sides. They were nice but you could hear the A45 so we went off that idea. So didn’t in actual fact look at that many places because we quickly realized that the houses we were seeing were not what we wanted. Interviewer: Did you sit down with David… if you didn’t draw up a list of the kinds of things you both wanted in a house, did you ever think modern or old? Did you make a distinction just in those clear terms? ‘We want something that is modern new built.’
Juliet: No, it was really what you could afford.
Interviewer: And what did you set yourself as your budget? Can you remember?
Juliet: Well we could afford here. I think it was £2,250 or £2,500. I can’t actually remember.
Interviewer: So that is about your budget for your first home.
Juliet: Yes. It would have been around £2,000 probably because I did contemplate myself and I should have done it. I contemplated buying a brand new maisonette by the school and that was £1,700. I could have afforded it but I didn’t do it because it was very near the school and I didn’t think it was a good idea to be in the catchment area.
Interviewer: And that would have been a maisonette just for you prior to marrying David.
Juliet: Yes. I should have done it because it would have got me on the property ladder earlier and it certainly would have solved our predicament at the beginning.
Interviewer: So given that you had come from a relatively new built house, you had been brought up in a house built in the 1930’s and you were the first occupants, you didn’t have a particular leaning towards newness or did you feel that you more preferred the idea of living in a brand new house, built for you?
Juliet: I don’t think we thought about it a great deal. I think possibly when we were looking at some of the houses, it may have been the way people had decorated and furnished their houses that I found so off putting. As we only possessed that chair, the idea of something with a clean sheet certainly appealed to me because lacking textiles I liked the idea of fabrics taking the lead in whatever place I was going to be living in.
Interviewer: What is interesting, however, is you had such a strong reaction to a few years earlier being in the 17th century cottage. When you describe it, you talk about having such a strong reaction of being really in love with it.
Juliet: Well I couldn’t ever get it out my mind, really. Whatever we were looking at was a compromise. We were just so unbelievably lucky to get it.
Interviewer: Can you say something… it’s difficult to find words perhaps where this love came from for this house, but was it in the materials? Was it in the smallness of the space? Was it the quality of light? What do you think was it about this cottage that you loved?
Juliet: Well every room, including when it was empty, had character. You didn’t need to put a great deal in it.
Interviewer: So it was the character of the house.
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: And something that was new built would give you this clean sheet you could then augment through your love of textiles. That would not be there in a new house, a new flat, there would have been no character.
Juliet: Well I wouldn’t have said there would be no character because some of the flats we looked at we did not like. I think the ones that we… the three that I have listed, there was something a bit different. For example, Park Court was very modern indeed and with the extra lighting into… have you been in them? There was some extra lighting in the main room you can see when you are up there. The first floor rooms were very unusual in that they had this additional lighting. They were very small, but the main room was reasonably sized. Munford Gardens had a balcony and it had nice trees. So did Park Court. Then the one at Mount Nodd, they were visually quite attractive. I think we dismissed it fairly quickly because of the noise, but that would have had wooden panelling. I can remember the panelling from that one.
Interviewer: So at what point did you and David view the Austin Smith Lord competition bungalow? Was it part of this round of looking genuinely?
Juliet: Yes. There had obviously been something in the paper about it. I am surprised, you see, when I have seen some of your literature, that it was 1959. I was astounded that it was that early. I would have said it was much nearer… I am amazed. Were they actually opened in ’69 or were they being built?
Interviewer: They were designed in 1958 in November. The competition entry was submitted in January 1959. They were being built in November 1959 and they opened by Basil Spence to the public and were able then to be purchased from 1960, March 1960.
Juliet: So I don’t think… in that day David hadn’t even proposed. So I think we were just looking out of interest, as were lots of other people. It was busy when we went there. I think I told you that in the book, comments book, somebody put ‘Not bad a petrol station or a filling station.’
Interviewer: So you visited the show house. I mean you had to visit it sometime sort of March, April, May, June 1960. Can you remember what month it might have been?
Juliet: Well I didn’t think it was the summer. It was not very good weather. I mean we couldn’t afford it. It was definitely out of our price range. Was it in the £3,000s?
Interviewer: It actually sold for £3,500.
Juliet: Yes, yeah, I thought it might have been originally £3,900 but maybe not.
Interviewer: The deeds say £3,500.
Juliet: It would have been out of our price range. But it didn’t appeal, it didn’t appeal to me to live in it because there was far too much glass. I couldn’t see how privacy could have been achieved really short of putting up a whole lot of curtains, in particular net curtains.
Interviewer: When you said at the beginning that you and David went to look at it clearly with no intention of buying because you weren’t even yet on the kind of run up to getting married. David hadn’t proposed yet, so you went out of a sense of curiosity.
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: Can you remember seeing advertising or reading any editorial in the newspapers that would announce the opening of those flats?
Juliet: Well I can’t remember, but we must have seen something because we didn’t get it by word of mouth. There must have been some publicity because I do not know.
Interviewer: And you weren’t coming into the village in such a way that you would have seen them being built. You weren’t here socially, were you?
Juliet: No, and if we were we wouldn’t have been that high up because that was fields. I mean the only time we came to visit was to visit the previous two occupants. So we wouldn’t have gone any higher.
Interviewer: Now you said the two people who owned this cottage and the people who had invited you in the evening that you were so impressed and had to go and retire to bed, were architects. Do you think they might have been aware of them and told you about them?
Juliet: Possibly, but I have no idea. No idea I’m afraid whatsoever.
Interviewer: But you go there somehow.
Juliet: Oh we would have gotten there by car.
Interviewer: Oh you would have driven there, fine. And when you arrived you said there were more people there. Can you remember roughly how many people?
Juliet: No, I can’t remember at all. Most of the rooms seemed to be full of people. You didn’t really get much idea what it would be like to live in it rather than you were aware of the glass and the furnishings were very 50’s. I don’t think anything appealed to me in either the curtains, the carpet or the furniture.
Interviewer: Can you remember… you described the feeling where would the privacy come from with so much glass, but can you describe a feeling that you might have had when you walked through the front door?
Juliet: Well it didn’t feel like a home at all. Living there and doing things, I just couldn’t conceive it as a natural place in which to live.
Interviewer: And can you say why it didn’t feel like a home?
Juliet: Well some people thought it was like a filling station. It certainly didn’t feel like a home. So what’s in-between? Well an office. A small office block. That would be my next feeling.
Interviewer: Did it remember you in any way of the modern schools that you knew?
Juliet: When Foxford was built in 1954 there were a lot of schools in Coventry built with Bristol aluminium. That was aluminium with lots of windows, lots of glass. If I think of the original building at Foxford, in many ways that was a slightly… the main building, that was a slightly bigger version of these houses because it was angular and glass.
Interviewer: And so do you think that when you walked in, in terms of the model of what you held in your held and sentimentally about what is a home, it didn’t meet that in terms of its appearance. But could it have met your expectations of what the place that you worked looked like? Did it actually… when you walked in you thought ‘This is a school, not a home’?
Juliet: Well no, I thought it more of an office.
Interviewer: More of an office?
Juliet: Yes, because I suppose it was the scale of things.
Interviewer: Can you say a little bit about the scale? What struck you as being particularly…
Juliet: Well the house compared to the school, one was very small and one was very big. I could have imagined a private accountant or architect working there and having clients come.
Interviewer: So it felt in a way more like a commercial space.
Juliet: Yes, definitely.
Interviewer: And the furniture that you saw there, had you ever seen anything like that furniture before?
Juliet: A bit but not much. I can’t think really of anywhere in Coventry that was actually selling it. I had probably seen it a bit because I liked going to London in the holidays and I liked going to Heels. I can’t remember Habitat had started then or not. I have a feeling maybe not because I can remember going to the first Habitat.
Interviewer: In London?
Juliet: In London, yes. And I think I was already married then. I would go in Liberty’s, but Liberty’s wasn’t selling anything really modern. I used to wander around Heel’s but I didn’t actually buy much. I would go to John Lewis and I would wander in the goods there, in the beds and the fabrics and linens, that sort of thing.
Interviewer: So you were really submerging yourself in the latest design outlets in London. Where was your taste coming from? Can you say? Where was it inclining to?
Juliet: I was going to say I used to take House & Garden. I did, but I can’t remember if that’s when we were married. I don’t think I… no, I didn’t buy them regularly before we were married. I don’t know where it was coming from. The pictures I can remember of the house and its furnishings was coming towards the end of the 50’s era but before the Scandinavian.
Interviewer: Now the house actually was furnished by Geoffrey Salmon, the architect, who was also the interior designer, unusually. Unusual for a man as well to be an interior designer. He had an obligation because of the way the competition had been set up that he had to furnish it with furnishings from the Council of Industrial Design in London. That meant that the furniture in the house tended towards the more industrially manufactured than hand manufactured. It was the actual opposite of the artisan now. So no arts and crafts in any spirit at all. It tended towards the metal and the minimalist, but very bright colours.
Juliet: The Design Centre was one of my influences. I did used to go there because we went there from college. Because I did textiles at college and we printed off our own fabric. There was a designer called David Whitehead and he specialized in cutting a fruit or an apple or vegetable and that is what I based my designs on. It was illustrative rather than realistic.
Interviewer: What sort of textile designers were you particularly fond of at that time?
Juliet: Well David Whitehead, I have got some upstairs. I think it was Whitehead. He was one of the influences but I don’t know… oh, Dansk I think was one of them. I have an idea that my blue and purple is Dansk. I can’t recall any names particularly apart from this one who did the cutting of the vegetables. I think I went more for what I liked, but I was veering towards the Scandinavian. I mean our first furniture in the dining room was teak. But we have always gone in here for…
Interviewer: In this sort of entrance/parlour?
Juliet: We have always gone in here for very old furniture. This sort of thing but it’s probably a bit smaller, our first chairs. All odd chairs.
Interviewer: So when you walked into the show house, the Austin Smith Lord House, did you see a house? Or you felt it was more like an office? Did you see a house that had no character?
Juliet: I didn’t think… I didn’t really think it was habitable. It just wasn’t a home. It was a house, not a home. That sounds a bit damning, but it was very avant garde for the time. I don’t know how they were before they actually sold them. That would be quite interesting.
Interviewer: Straight away.
Juliet: Did they?
Interviewer: Certainly from the deeds. Can you remember the kitchen?
Juliet: No. I can only really remember the carport and all the glass and going in I actually cannot remember the kitchen at all. I think it was living space. I think I saw the room back on the left and then I think there was one, maybe slightly bigger, going across the back.
Interviewer: What was it about the carport that struck you?
Juliet: Oh because they were unusual, the carports. I thought if you are having a new house you should have a garage. They were the in thing.
Interviewer: Why should you have a garage?
Juliet: To protect your car and for security. I mean a carport protected it but it certainly didn’t make it secure. When you think of insurance nowadays for example… I don’t know whether they did then because we didn’t have a garage, but nowadays one of the questions they ask is ‘Is your car in a garage?’ We didn’t have a garage then and we were not renting one. It was on open ground.
Interviewer: Can you remember when you went to the house, what the rest of the West Point area looked like?
Juliet: Well I don’t know whether they had actually started to build. I don’t think so. So therefore it wasn’t quite… around there wasn’t the quagmire around Park Court was. The problem with Park Court was they didn’t stop people driving their cars in to view. So you get these cars mud splattered or stuck and we had to push them out. So there must have been the road, it must have been built. Birmingham road at that top end.
Interviewer: What became Bexfield.
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: When you viewed it, it still didn’t have the name Bexfield Close. In fact, it was just called Road #1.
Juliet: Was it?
Interviewer: Certainly by 1960 when you viewed the bungalow, the houses opposite which were also MacLean’s had been built. Five of them had because one of them was also open as a show house. Can you remember whether you ever went to see one of the other houses?
Juliet: No, no we didn’t.
Interviewer: Because one of them was also furnished.
Juliet: I don’t really think we envisioned living on an estate. All the places we had gone to were… they were slightly different. Even the flats that we had looked at… Park Court wasn’t an estate, it had been an old property. I don’t know what had been done at Munford Gardens. I imagine nothing. Mount Nodd was being built [unintelligible 1:55:12] peas in a pod that it was so congested. But those flats over there seemed to be more airy because they did have some open space nearby.
Interviewer: Can you say a little bit more about not envisioning living on an estate? Was that your impression, that that was an estate?
Juliet: Well it was going to be. I don’t think I envisioned… I think I always fancied something a little bit different whereas on an estate there would be much of muchness.
Interviewer: Did you see… where you lived as a child in your parents’ in the 1930’s, was that an estate?
Juliet: Well it was, but it was right at the bottom end. It was the second house up and it faced another… there was a road with two crescent types. Our house was the second house up. It faced the bottom of the crescent so you faced an open space. We were not far from the main road. I never ever felt I was on an estate. There were shops at the bottom and there were our two houses. There was a bus stop by the shops and I hardly went into the estate at all.
Interviewer: But this felt… West Point felt to you…
Juliet: That it would be, yes.
Interviewer: It would be a big estate?
Juliet: And it also was going to… I mean they were very close together, the properties.
Interviewer: Was that the properties of the bungalows or generally the rest of the housing you thought was going to be close together?
Juliet: Well there seemed to be every sign that things were going to be quite close together. I don’t remember much of it because, as I say, we didn’t actually view any properties that were there.
Interviewer: When you went up to West Point, can you remember there being billboards or anything that announced…?
Juliet: No, I can’t remember anything like that I’m afraid, no.
Interviewer: And when you went into the show house you mentioned there was a visitor’s book and people were being asked to give comments. Can you remember any other comments?
Juliet: No, I can’t.
Interviewer: The damning one about it being like a petrol station.
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: And did you talk to anybody else other than David when you were in them?
Juliet: Not that I can recall.
Interviewer: Do you remember any other comments around you?
Juliet: Well I think there were… I got the feeling that people were not particularly keen on it. They thought it was a bit wild. I can’t remember people saying ‘Oh isn’t this lovely. I would love to live here.’
Interviewer: Did you have a sense at that time of Allesley Village? The wider village and what reputation it had as a place to live? What kind of people might live there?
Juliet: No, I didn’t think of that at all. It was just rather a nice area and it is much more rural than it is now. But, I didn’t think about that.
Interviewer: And the bungalows themselves, can you remember… although you weren’t seriously looking for a house to buy then, can you remember having a sense of who you thought might live on an estate like that? What kind of people might live on an estate like that? What professions, or not, would they represent?
Juliet: No, I think because it was an estate I think I thought that there would be lots of newly married people going to live there. On the whole that’s what tends to happen. For example right close up here, when we came that was the garden of a big house. That was at the top. I think more or less the whole of Rectory Close, they all moved in around about the same time. They were all of a similar age because when the first person passed away in Rectory Close that was a big shock because younger people had begun to have a look. Whereas the people in Rectory Close had grown up together. They had all got their way of life, their routine and that was quite a difference for them. But that was only a small development.
Interviewer: And you mentioned that one of the things that you were interested in and you went to see when you went down to London was Scandinavian design. You liked sort of…
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: When you saw the Austin Smith Lord bungalow, did a particular country come to mind when you saw it?
Juliet: No, I mean it was almost verging on utility. It was very, very plain. There was a certain amount of colour, but it wasn’t like anything I had ever seen.
Interviewer: And nothing that you had ever read about in books. You didn’t think ‘Oh its Scandinavian’ or ‘This looks quite American.’
Juliet: No, and I don’t think there was much in the way of teak, which was really coming in.
Interviewer: It was teak. It was teak built but painted white.
Juliet: Was it? Oh gosh.
Interviewer: So you came away actually not being terribly impressed with it at all. Do you think that having viewed that house it cemented even more your desire to live in an old cottage like the one that eventually you did live in and you had been impressed by earlier?
Juliet: I don’t think I gave it a great deal of thought. I mean thinking about the cottage ambiance and environment, we never ever viewed a cottage, which is quite interesting when you think about it. When you think how bowled over I was by this. We never, ever viewed one. Whether or not there were many that came on the market, I don’t know.
Interviewer: So it wasn’t actually… it wasn’t a case… it sounds like you were interested in oldness per say so much as you had fallen in love with that particular house.
Juliet: Yes. And any flat that we had was going to be a compromise and was going to be short term.
Interviewer: Having seen the show house, the Austin Smith Lord bungalow, do you remember talking to anybody else about it that you knew? Good or bad?
Juliet: No.
Interviewer: And can you remember any conversations in the village when you eventually moved into the village? What date did you move in?
Juliet: ’63, September ’63.
Interviewer: And can you remember anybody having a conversation or passing any comments on West Point?
Juliet: They were always referred to as the odd houses, the unusual houses.
Interviewer: The odd houses or the unusual houses?
Juliet: Yes, the very modern houses.
Interviewer: And the very modern houses of Bexfield Close distinguished themselves from the other MacLean’s houses on West Point? Were they singled out do you think?
Juliet: Did you say the MacLean’s were the ones facing the…
Interviewer: Well the whole of the estate is built by MacLean’s.
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: But the rest of the estate is designed by MacLean’s own architects. So the Austin Smith Lord bungalows were the first four and the rest of West Point is built by MacLean but to the designs of their own company architect.
Juliet: Yeah, because those that face the homes, they are a bit different, that face them because there are various styles throughout. Then when you get to Fairways I think it was about the last part to be developed, and in my view, was cramming in too many into a smaller space which actually gives a very bad impression on entry to the village. I think that is most unfortunate.
Interviewer: Did you and David ever walk through West Point at any point? Just out of curiosity?
Juliet: I don’t think we walked through out of curiosity. We only went when we knew people who lived there.
Interviewer: And so when you moved into the village here in 1960…
Juliet: Three.
Interviewer: Three, did you have friends who lived on West Point?
Juliet: No, no. The only friends that we had in the village was one of my colleagues. She lived in Park Court. We knew the people from… the Andersons in the big house through the connection that they had with the people who bought here and we remained in touch with when they moved away because David and Eric had worked together. Then we were both out at work, so apart from Mrs. Hardwick who lived next door and the Andersons and the butcher at the bottom of Butcher’s Lane, the paper shop in the village, that was the whole extent of my knowledge.
Interviewer: So you never went up to the top end of the village?
Juliet: No. I mean if I say to you when I had major surgery when I was in 1985, I had never been away from… I had never had a day’s absence since I got married from school. Then I was off for several months and one of the things I enjoyed was meeting the neighbours. I enjoyed walking up to the shops. I’ve got no idea. I’ve got no idea there was another world out there. I was very blinkered because with the type of job I had, it was so demanding on your time. David was working away a lot of that time. I had parents in Hartsfield for 13 years in hospital. So I was up there every weekend. So I didn’t have any time to socialise. I didn’t belong to anything until I took retirement from my main job.
Interviewer: Did you ever go shopping on the three little shops on Gardenia Close? It would be the start for you of the West Point Estate from where you live?
Juliet: Yes, the grocer because he had a shop on the lane right at the end of [unintelligible 2:06:43] Tony Baker. There was an off-license next door and the ladies who ran that… the people who worked there, I don’t know if they owned it, were there for a very, very long time. I think the first one was also a hair dressers.
Interviewer: And apparently sold clothes at one point.
Juliet: Really?
Interviewer: Sold dresses.
Juliet: Gosh, I don’t remember that at all.
Interviewer: … living down one end of the village, close to the sort of entrance to the village, the Georgian part, that would be as far into the West Point Estate you would ever go. It would be those three shops. So your impression of the estate would really only be informed from the view taken by standing by those shops.
Just sort of finally really, as you have now lived here for the best part of…
Juliet: Well 51 years.
Interviewer: …, has your impression of the village changed from what you can remember coming here in ’63. Do you view the village differently now?
Juliet: Well although there is still a fair amount of traffic, there is nowhere near the amount of traffic there was. I mean when I came home from school I couldn’t go to the shop across the road because from four o’clock to six o’clock you couldn’t cross the road because the traffic was coming down non-stop. There must have been a lot of traffic in the early hours, but I wasn’t leaving here… Jerry would be starting at half past seven and I wasn’t leaving here quite that early to get to Foxford. So there were these two busy times in the day. It’s the traffic that I remember most. Then the fact that we’ve got the Pickford Way down there and now the Camden Wedge, they take a lot of the traffic away from both angles. I like the idea that the access to the countryside is so quick. Of course Allesley Park, the park itself, has always been there in our time. So in many ways there hasn’t been… West Point would be the biggest change because at Barnfield there is some newish build, but not of the vastness that West Point was.
Interviewer: And in terms of living in a cottage in a village from the 17th century, when you moved in, did you feel that you were now living in the historical home and felt an obligation to furnish it historically? Or did you feel you were living in a house in the 1960’s and you could furnish it as you wanted to?
Juliet: Well when we first started to furnish, I think in a way we were verging towards the Scandinavian. I can’t recall what it was that began to make us change because we no longer have the teak table. I think David’s desk was the first expensive piece of furniture that we bought because David made the table and the chairs came from Seaton Cliff’s.
Interviewer: And Seaton Cliff’s was the short-lived shop…
Juliet: Well it wasn’t that short-lived, it was there for a few years.
Interviewer: That specialised in…
Juliet: Oh yes, in Danish.
Interviewer: And that was whereabouts in Coventry?
Juliet: City Arcade. But we gradually began to move away because in the bedroom there was hardly any room for any furniture. So it is slightly Scandinavian because it does have a teak shelf. It has Danish furniture. The alcoves are our wardrobes and the only old thing is the floor and the chest of drawers. I don’t know its age but I ought to because I think it’s rather lovely.
Interviewer: So for you at this period of sort of mid-sixties by the time you moved into the cottage, are you then trying to blend what felt to you like the Scandinavian with period?
Juliet: Yeah, because here what we did and is visible upstairs but not in the room you saw, but we did buy old furniture and do it up. We bought a lovely wooden chest of drawers. Beautiful, absolutely magnificent. Leather… not leather… I mean the quality, obviously magnificent. White frame and dark blue drawers. We’ve still got it. It was a fabulous piece of furniture. We did that from time to time. We did actually buy wooden furniture that we renovated so we didn’t… which we didn’t paint. Because David was always very good with his hands, he managed to incorporate some of these. For example we have got a vanity unit upstairs which is a modern thing, and the drawers are from a very, very old chest of drawers. So David had that skill. But the important thing in most of our rooms, apart from the study, is the curtain material. That’s where I started every time, with the curtains.
Interviewer: And did the curtains always have to be what you thought of as modern?
Juliet: Well not necessarily. I mean in here I had bright red to start off with. Then William Morris Fabrics became… well I just thought they were absolutely wonderful. We have got William Morris, we have got William Morris next door. We’ve got pseudo William Morris upstairs.
Interviewer: When does the William Morris come into your home? In the seventies? Would that be?
Juliet: I don’t actually know but I think it would be because I didn’t have the red curtains for that long. I can’t… it must have been the influence of, I think, House & Gardens and Liberties that drew me towards the William Morris.
Interviewer: So does your taste begin to change from the Scandinavian more towards a sort of arts and craft revival in the seventies?
Juliet: Yes, oh yes. I mean we have almost gone a bit overboard with a lot of it. I mean it’s sort of Victorian/Edwardian type of thing. For example when I sold things from my parents’ house which was walnut, there wasn’t anything that I would have wanted to have. When I sold my aunt’s house, which she had moved from Hartsfield to Burlington, there was one. But there was also beautiful teak which you could hardly get any money for at all. It was wonderful, but even then I didn’t want to bring it back because I liked what I got.
Interviewer: And you mentioned a few times actually in the interview wood, the quality of teak. Was that something along with textiles? Are these two materials, textile and wood, that you are particularly drawn to in terms of the way you would furnish a house? With wood and soft furnishings as opposed to metal, which is what you would have found in the Austin Smith show house, furniture made of metal?
Juliet: Well I am textiles, David is wood. I am also interested in wood but he worked in wood as well. He is a very good craftsman. So that possibly shows in the pieces, the few pieces that we have got.
Interviewer: And as your taste evolves, does it move more and more towards that sort of artisanal crafted pieces, particularly with wood which would lead you towards the arts and crafts and then in a sense back to the type of furniture that you wouldn’t have had from your parents? Brown.
Juliet: Oh yeah, definitely brown, yes. I think we went for the elegant side. I liked that we went for the elegant side. I mean for example we did an oak carved chest, very, very dark. Now I wouldn’t go for that now. We did sell that. We were lucky in that we found a shop in Warwick, Quinnies, and we related well to what he sold and we related well to him and his wife. He is the man who pulled the chest of drawers to pieces. So we were lucky. I mean I did… when David was working away once I actually did buy a dining table which I liked in the shop. Fortunately I asked them to finish polishing it. When I got it I absolutely hated it. It was awful. We had begun to buy from Mr. Reed at Quinnies. We told him and he said ‘Well shall I come and have a look at it?’ He said ‘I’ll buy it if you want.’ So thank good ness. He took that table which looked wonderful once it was French polished, he took that and the carved oak chest and we didn’t exchange any money, and we go the dining table that we liked.
Interviewer: So where… in the 1960’s, 63, 64 and 65 when you were furnishing the cottage here, where were you buying furniture from?
Juliet: Second hand junk shops. We were not buying… the first piece of antique was David’s desk and that settee. It’s not genuine old but it was the biggest purchase we had ever made for a piece of furniture. David saw that when he was working in London. So we haven’t actually paid a lot for our furniture because we have scoured the second hand shops.
Interviewer: And was that unusual in terms of the circle of friends you had professionally from school and the circle of friends that David drew from his work?
Juliet: Yeah, we were a bit different.
Interviewer: You were different for liking old?
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: Were most people in modern houses, newly built?
Juliet: Well thinking about… it’s difficult to answer that really because we didn’t have a lot… a wide circle of friends. It was in later years when we became to entertain and visit friends. Only one other house I can think of, ours would reflect what they had. I knew what I liked. When we saw something we could envisage renovating it. We liked renovating and restoring.
Interviewer: So that is, in a way, your own ability, you and David, to express your own artistic and craft skills in your home. It’s come through what you have done with the furniture, what you have done with the furnishings. In a sense you have part made them, you have restored them and given them new life.
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: But the friends you were bringing back socially to entertain in your supper clubs and your wine bottling clubs, were they living in very different houses? Can you remember?
Juliet: Some were living in brand new houses. They would have a more clinical style in a way. Teak, a lot of them would still have some of their teak.
Interviewer: Would this be G plan do you think?
Juliet: I can’t think of anybody who had G plan. I know someone who had Ercole, but they no longer have it. It would be very valuable now had they kept it. I knew one house in particular. It was a modern house but it went very, very regency inside. You wouldn’t… if you were inside you would not believe you were on West Point at all. That is quite a distinct style, but it was all… not renovation, restoration… reproduction it would be. That was quite popular, was reproduction.
Interviewer: And so actually in the mid-sixties in terms of your social circle, nobody is particularly following a trend that you can remember that would be extremely contemporary?
Juliet: No, no.
Interviewer: Although you would all be professional people.
Juliet: Yes.
Interviewer: So financially could probably have afford to do but culturally chose not to.
Juliet: Yes. I think that would be correct. Some would take an oldish house, say on Burt Lane, and do it slightly contemporary rather than old. There didn’t seem to be… they were all different, all the different styles. But the properties that I lived perhaps the most among our friends are people who had say barn conversions and older houses.
Interviewer: Can you just say in a few words why that attracts you?
Juliet: Well because I feel like I could go and live in them. I would feel comfortable in them. I can take ideas from them.
Interviewer: And is that to do with you liked the space? You liked the character of the old?
Juliet: It’s the character. I like rooms that have got character without anything in them, because you build around the character. I mean a room like this with how many doors has it got? You don’t really need much in it.
Interviewer: Can you just say very briefly finally where does character come from for you?
Juliet: I have no idea where it comes from because the sort of things I like now I did not grow up with. They are acquired tastes and I have no idea from where they have come, I’m afraid. I can’t give you any intellectual answer there. It’s just that I do like places with character.
Interviewer: Thank you very much.
Juliet: Thank you.
Interviewer: That was absolutely superb, absolutely, really…
[End of recorded material]
West Point 55 