I was 14 in 1932 and was allowed to leave school at the end of term in July. When I saw the postman he said “Well Frank, I expect you are glad to leave school”. I replied that I was. He soon said that it wouldn’t be long before I would wish that I was still there. How right he was.
Father had one thing he loved doing and when he did it he did it well. He loved to cut grass with his scythe, a tool I could not use no matter how hard I tried. When father used his scythe the grass was evenly cut, like a lawn, about two inches long. In the summer, after tea, he would be there cutting someone’s grass and I used to help clear the cut grass away. Father learnt to use a scythe in his younger days working on a farm where the only way to cut hay or corn was with a scythe.
Our garden had a hedge which adjoined the doctor’s garden. One day he asked me if I had managed to get a job (with so many unemployed there was little hope for me). When I told him that I was looking for work he offered me a job at seven shillings (35p) a week. The doctor had a gardener who at surgery times dispensed medicine. My job entailed a variety of tasks. I started at 8 a.m. when I polished the shoes, filled coal boxes and lit the boiler fire for hot water in the bathroom and kitchen. Then there were sticks to cut to light the fires, paths to be swept, in general anything that needed doing. I washed returned medicine bottles in a bucket of water. It would not be allowed nowadays. I weeded the garden and gathered the vegetables which were needed by the cook. There was a good sized garden and also a tennis court. This doesn’t sound much of a job but I enjoyed it. The doctor had two daughters about the same ages as my brother and me, they were away at school.
Mr and Mrs Johnson were the cook and parlour maid. Mr Johnson had an artificial leg; he was a victim of the war. I liked him and he taught me a lot. The work in the house was always the same. Monday the dining room was cleaned, Tuesday the sitting room, Wednesday the bedrooms, Thursday the hall and study, Friday the bathrooms and Saturday was brass and silver cleaning day. I used to go into the house on Monday to help polish the floor and furniture as Mr Johnson couldn’t do a lot. He had chest trouble and sometimes he was confined to bed. When I reached 16 the Doctor told me he couldn’t employ me any longer, the fact that he had to pay employment insurance had a lot to do with it.
Despite buying the East Anglian Daily Times to look for a job I had no luck. I met the Doctor one day and he asked me if I had any work. Two days later he told me that a gentleman in Easton, near Wickham Market, needed someone to work for him. I cycled to Easton and found out where a Mr Rose lived and met him. He already had a young man working for him who was a little older than me. He did the cooking and I was to do the cleaning. I took the job and started the next week. There was a good walled garden and some of the walls were crinkle-crankle style. In the afternoons we used to work in the garden. I got on alright with the other lad but saw very little of my employer, then without any warning we were told that we were no longer needed as Mr Rose was going away. So there I was, back to square one again.
A week after I finished working at Easton, the Doctor came to see me and told me that he had had a good report about my work there and asked me if I would like to work for him again. Apparently there had been some trouble in the house and the house parlour maid had been instantly dismissed. Silly girl had taken and eaten a banana and put the skin in the fire grate in her bedroom, these grates were never used for their real purpose. I started work on a month’s trial. Dr Marriott showed me how to open the front door when anyone called, this might be obvious, but he wanted it wide open. Another thing I had to get used to was answering the telephone, which at that time not many people had. To make a call you had to go through the exchange. I had to write down all calls plus the time and anything relevant to the calls.
I was not there very long when I was taken to the shop next door owned by Mr Bendick. There I was measured for two pairs of trousers, one plain very dark, the other black with a very faint pinstripe. A few days later I was taken to Great Yarmouth to be measured for a jacket which was buttoned up to the neck, I had three white and two in the same style but made from blue and white striped butcher type cloth. The blue ones were for morning wear, the white ones for afternoon and evening wear. Later Dr Marriott taught me how to press trousers, especially the dark ones. I learnt how to lay the table for lunch and dinner. About once a month there was a dinner party with six guests and held at 8.00pm. There was a retired butler living in the village who had worked for Mr Lomax, he came in and took over and I learnt a lot from him. Dorothy was cook and had been there some time.
Another thing I had to do twice a day was to pump the water for the house. It was stored in tanks above the main bedroom.
Houses near the main road had gas for lighting, heating and cooking until the electricity came in about 1936. The White House was an old rambling kind of house yet it had something about it which was likeable. Part of it had been a school and a wall in the garden had a great number of names scratched into the bricks. Another part had been two small cottages. There were six bedrooms and a bathroom. On the ground floor there were three rooms, two kitchens, a smaller store-room and a cellar. Besides having the electricity put in, alterations were made for a toilet and cloakroom on the ground floor. While all this was going on the Doctor and his wife went in a B and B across the road and I had to go there to serve their evening meal. The rest of the time, I just did anything I could find to do inside or out. At one time we had trouble with rats in the roof space. They also got into the hall and tried to drag apples through a hole in the skirting board. A rat catcher came and got rid of them. When the electricians were upstairs taking up floor boards to put the wiring in they found many mummified rats. In most of the rooms, the furniture had been moved into the middle of the room in the hope that the electricians could work easily. Most of the rooms were fitted with wall lights because of the lack of height. Once the electricity was connected I was glad to know that the job of pumping up water was going to end. I was there one day when the electrician was fixing the pump and I was intrigued as a pump to me had a long handle to move up and down. I asked him how this pumped water. “Centrifugal action”, he said. When I asked what that was he explained it to me. “I wonder what will happen when it pumps up sand” I said. It will ruin this was his reply. After surgery was over the Doctor came, as usual, to see how the work was progressing and the electrician told him what I had said about the sand and that they would have to look in the well. Nobody knew where the well was but we thought it would be easy to find as it was sure to be near to the pump. We dug some of the brick floor in the kitchen up and found the pipe but the well wasn’t there or in the large walk-in cupboard in the sitting room. In the hall the pipe disappeared under the stairs and there was the well, it was only nine feet deep. Another well was sunk in the garden near to the new pump and this one went down 14 feet. I had never seen this done before and I found it very interesting. Further away from the house a new septic tank was dug, a more modern one than was there at the time. It was to be a good many years before mains sewers were laid in Yoxford. In a remarkably short time things were back to normal and we also had a vacuum cleaner for the carpets instead of the carpet broom, dustpan and brush.
In the summer there were tennis parties, in the winter months dinner parties, with bridge parties for the ladies in the afternoons. The work was interesting and varied. One big party I remember was held in Reydon, it finished at 2 am. There was a dance band and all the refreshments were catered for. Altogether I was happy and at least I had a job.
It was about this time that father was offered a new job, still on the railway (LNER) to be a crossing-gate keeper on the Middleton Road, about half a mile from where we lived. We left Brook Street and moved into the crossing cottage (Gate House). One draw back to this move was that there was no water there so it had to be fetched from the cottage down the hill, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. A handcart was supplied to fetch it. Father’s duties were from 5 pm to 9 am and 6 pm to 9 am on Sundays. In those days the gates were closed to road traffic.
There were changes at the White House. The troubles in Europe and German invasions into other countries meant that people were moving into safer places A young couple, friends of the Marriots, came to stay and they had with them a mother and daughter who were members of their staff. This meant that we were overstaffed for a time and so I worked more outside. The mother was a superb cook and the daughter helped Dorothy with the other work. It wasn’t long before they all moved into a house they had found to rent. The news every day seemed to get worse. We watched the buses going past full of evacuees from London. There was a bit of a hiccough as regards the children who came to Yoxford as they were Catholics and should have gone to Aldeburgh as the Catholic Church was there. After a few days the children were moved again, they must have wondered, what next?