I was born in Teign Village, in the flat above the shop and when I was three months old I came to Butt Park when they were built, around 1930.

Have you got some brothers and sisters?
Oh yes! I've got brothers and sisters, we were a family of seven. Betty was the oldest, Jim was next, then me, then Donald, Mary, Graham and Wendy. But only three of us left now. Betty died when she was 94, Jim died when he was 94. Graham got killed in a crash with a cattle lorry when he was quite young. And Donald died about three or four years ago from leukaemia. I've got a sister living in Crete, I live at Hazel Crest, and my sister lives in Newton Abbot.

So you’re a very long lived family.
Oh yes. And my parents and grandparents lived  in Hennock. My dad lived at Warmhill. My Mum lived at Bovey Tracey.

So you are a family of seven brothers and sisters. And what's your earliest memory?
When I was about 7, no, 5. I remember going to school. Mum walked me to the gate and walked home. That was it! No introductions or anything. In those days you went to school and that was it.

But your brothers and sisters were ahead of you at school?
Yes, they were already there at the school.  I mean the only school I went to was Hennock School. There wasn’t any other place. You went to the same school up to the age of 14. While I was there, I went to school at Teign Village for about 9 months as they were building this new end block on the school. I used to walk to school in the clubroom, what is the club now.

Can you remember any of your teachers at school?
I remember Mrs Atfield, Mr Purbeck, he used to live in the School House.

So he was like the headmaster?
Mr Attwell, Miss Pring…

Often people have one teacher that they really remember…
No, not really, not one who had a big influence on me. I mean, there was Miss Blackmore, she was very nice. We got friendly with Miss Blackmore. My mum and dad would go round to their house, and I got friendly with her brother and we spoke together.

And how did you find school generally?
I hated school!

Why?
I don't know. I learned more when I joined the Navy than I ever did in school.

And how many children were in the school in those days?
I suppose it varied. One day there were, say, 40 there. Then the next day there were sixty there because all the evacuees came down from London during the war. And of course they had to go to school. They all went into the village hall and parents and everybody went up and my mum said I’ll have them two! Funny part was I was speaking to him on Saturday morning, he rang me up on Saturday, one of the evacuees, the one who used to stay with us from London.

What's his name?
Geoffrey Trown.

Right, I've read about him. So you were friendly with him?
Yes, he lived with us for several years, then mum started having children again and he came to live with Sammy Bradford. He lived in the first house down from the pub. The two boys went to live with him now because Mum started having more. I mean at the time she had three. Then ten years later she had four more.

Second brood, that’s great! She must have loved children.
Oh, yes!

So you can you remember the war breaking out?
Oh yes.

What can you say about the war in Hennock?
I remember the bombing of Newton Abbot…Newton Abbot railway station was bombed. And there were bombs dropped at Furzeleigh Wood. And Bovey Tracey, there was a landmine dropped, near Devon House. The Americans used to be in Devon House and they tried to get it. The bomb dropped in the field next to it.
Doesn't sound like they were very accurate! So did you do anything in the war as a young lad?
The only thing was we got two weeks off a year to go out to the farmers, a week for dropping potatoes and a week for picking up potatoes. And they used to pay us 9 pence a day…

That's about four p!  Did they give you lunch?
Most of them did. And you could take potatoes home. Then my mum worked on the farm after the war just the same, picking up potatoes, picking fruit…or down in the mushroom farm…

Oh, where was that?
In Teign Village, before you come to the village. The big house that’s for sale there now. They grew them in the dark, in a big shed, made of metal work and plastic.

And what did your father do?
He was a miner at Great Rock most of his life. He went in underground.

How was that for him?
Interesting! And when I left school, I went to work at Great Rock too. But I was working on the surface. I wasn’t underground. I left school at 14 and went to work at Great Rock for 18 shillings a week.

Ninety pence! What was your job?
All around the surface, helping with the surface work. The first job in the morning was walking down to what they called the drying shed which was about three quarters of a mile down through the woods where there was a square launder all the way down and then on down to the settling tanks. Then they’d stop the water and dig the ore out and dry it, then barrel it up and send it down the railway line.

So how would they get it to the railway line?
In barrels on a truck…

Not with horses?
No, these barrels were about 7 hundredweight each. They’d roll them onto the lorry and that was it. It was used for painting battleships and so on…

Do you know where it went for processing?
I don’t know where it went to afterwards. It just went off on the train and you never saw it again…

And did your dad have any stories about the mine?
Oh my God yes! There was a man from the village working with him who got killed there in the mines.

Oh gosh! Can you remember who that was?
Yes, it was Bill Coles. He used to live next door to Sam Bradford, just there next to the pub.

And how did he get killed?
He was working with my dad underground and the side of the rocks fell out and pinned him, his stomach, from one side of the wall to the other. My Dad couldn't get him out. It was right down at Beadon Bottom. My Dad had to walk all the way from Beadon Bottom. Of course there were no phones in those days. He rushed back to Great Rock, got people out, ambulance and so on, but Bill Coles was dead.

I'm so sorry. Did he have a wife and children?
Well, he married the boss’s daughter from Great Rock.

So she was widowed? Did she go on living in the village or she moved away?
I don't know what happened after.

So, she was the boss’s daughter but who was the boss?
Mr Tucker. Then Mr Tucker’s son took over and he was the boss. They lived down at Great Rock in a bungalow. The Tuckers were the owners.

So do you remember when the mine closed?
No. I mean after I left and my dad left, I had nothing to do with the mines.

There must have been a few people in the village still working there when it closed.
My dad left there when he was 65 right and he died at 72.

Often miners, they have chest problems…
No, nothing like that. You didn't need to wear a mask. There was water coming through the drill, so there was no dust whatsoever. I've been in the tunnel!

So how far do they go in, those tunnels?
About 400 yards or so.
I remember somebody saying that you could see the miners when they went into the pub at the end of the day and they'd be all shiny.
Yes, yes! Even our house was all shiny! In those days, there were no showers or anything. Just a few washbasins, they used to wash there as much as they could!

Your mum didn't wash him down in a tub in the kitchen?
I don't know what went on!
I remember my brothers and I would have the same bath every Wednesday…
For us it was Saturday.

So how did you heat the water then?
We had a furnace underneath the tub and the water would run from the tub into the bathroom. We used to light a fire and that used to warm the big tub.

That's interesting. Remind me when we’ve finished, I'll show you the copper in there that works on the same system and you can tell me if it's the same as your one. So you left school when you were fourteen?
My dad left when he was 14 as well… he went to the Blakey Moor Higher Elementary School so I guess that's a similar sort of thing. But he got a good education. I mean in those days they really taught you.
Well, they tried to! But I think 90% of kids in school didn't want to go to school.

They all wanted to be…what, farmers?
I mean we all worked on the farm as kids when corn harvest time and so on. And catching rabbits.

So you know how to skin a rabbit?
So in my days it was the mines, the quarries, the concrete works, and farming – they were the main industries around here. The mine, the quarry down the bottom, the concrete works and the farming, that was it.

But there were shops in the village?
Just one shop, where Alden's house is.

But then you had the pub? Can you remember the landlord of the pub?
When I was young, yes, Davey, Bill Davey. His son and I were quite friendly. When we got to 16, we used to go off on his motorbike. Alan Davey that was. He passed away about 18 months ago.

So you’re really a long-lived lot in Hennock. And what about the cider house, was that working then or not, you know just next door to the pub, they called it the cider house?
No, that was gone before. The pub was a cider house during the war as all the farmers used to make the cider at Warmhill and bring it up here to the pub. There was no beer during the war, no beer just cider. I remember when I was young, the farmer brought his little boy up with him, about four years old and they were offloading cider, quite big barrels of cider off the back of a horse and waggon and one rolled away and killed him.

What was the boy called?
He was called Tucket, one of the Tucket boys.

Were there more orchards in the village then?
Loads of orchards. I mean beyond my house there was a big orchard. And a big orchard at Warmhill. And at Riley.
And then opposite here they said there was like a threshing floor for the wheat?
It was a rickyard. We used to build ricks of corn in there and the thresher used to come round and thresh it. Then during the war, we used to have vans come round, grocery vans. Two grocery vans, the International and the Co-op. And there were about 5 or 6 bakers came round with a van.

But can you remember the bakery in the village working?
No, the only thing I can remember in Bakery Cottage was the fish and chip shop. My wife used to go and get fish and chips. It was in the Old Bakery,

Every night or just Friday night?
Two or three nights a week.

How much did that cost?
About a shilling! Five pence!

Those were the days!
During the war, there was a dance every night of the week, Saturday and Sunday included. The American soldiers used to come up from Bovey Tracey. Loads of them in lorries. The girls in Hennock loved them.

Did any local girls marry one of them?
I think one did. Several girls used to go out with the Americans. My dad was very strict. He wouldn’t let my sister out.

And were there any little babies that came from all that?
I think there were, three or four. There’s still one in the village now.

I suppose you can't tell us. Is he proud of his heritage?
Oh yes. And then they were all looked after well by the Americans. I mean we used to go and stand by the door and then they would give us tins of fruit…

What about stockings, nylon stockings, did they have those?
The girls used to get those!

So do you want to go on to Navy days? What do you think?
We used to walk to all these places for dancing. We walked to Christow, Chudleigh, Chudleigh Knighton, Bovey…

And did you have a girlfriend then?
Did I have a girlfriend? I had one. But I think she went off with an Italian, a prisoner of war or something. Now you know where Andy Novak lives below Butt Park, that was a cadet hut. I was in the army cadets. I was a sergeant major. My brother-in-law and I used to run it for 15 years. We had 15 or 20 cadets sometimes.

So do they still salute you when they see you in the street?
They didn't have to salute me because I wasn’t an officer, just sergeant major. We used to walk to Bovey Tracey to the cinema on Saturday night. It was where the whisky house is now, the town hall.

What films did you see, John?
Cowboys and Indians. And we used to have buses here. On Wednesdays at 9:00 in the morning; 1:00 lunchtime; and 5:00. And Saturdays was 9:00 in the morning; one o'clock, 5:00; and 10:00, so you could get back from the cinema from Newton Abbot. We had a paper man…

What paper did your family take?
We didn’t take one, too expensive. And we had a local play group in the village here in those days. There were lovely plays in the village…but I can’t remember any of the plays. My dad used to be a trapper in his spare time, rabbits. He had about 350 gin traps, and then they were made illegal and they're all down one of the mineshafts…
I can remember the first tractor in the village, at Warmhill. It was when I was a child, I was about 10, so must have been 1940. It was a Fordson. Mr Tucket had Warmhill Farm then.  When he retired he went to live where Jim Kelly was.
There were several fires in the village, house fires. One at Crownleigh Cottage, and one where Tim and Angie live, going down the lane, next door. And Lake Farm, where the garages are, that all burned down.

Do you know what the cause of these fires was?
I don't know. I suppose in those days people had open fires a lot more…

So when did electricity come to your house?
After the War. And my auntie had the first television in the village - Freda Lendon, she lived at Warmhill Cottage. She was my father’s sister. And we had a Flower Show every year in the field at Warmhill and a big marquee and a sports day…
I remember during the war, down at Chudleigh Knighton as you get onto the straight bit where the trees are, there was a searchlight in that area. And there were millions and millions of gallons of petrol ready for D-Day – and it went overnight on D-Day. It was stored and then they sent it off on the lorries for the D-Day landings, down to Slapton Sands. And then an aeroplane crashed in Hennock…

One of ours or one of theirs.
It was some Czechoslovakians, I think, and they pinched this plane to escape from the Germans and ran out this way and ended up in the field at Bottor Farm…

Did they die?
No, no. They went through the field and finished up in the hedge. I can't remember what sort of plane it was but we all went up and had a look. I didn’t take a photograph, though.
I knew everyone in the village. And most in Teign Village. In those days, my parents used to visit houses all through the village, have a cup of tea. Because there wasn’t any television.

Did you play games.
Cards and things like that. Every Saturday night my granny used to play Newmarket.

So that was the war. Do you want to get onto the Navy?
I joined the Navy when I was 17 and a half. There were three of us from the village, John Manley, Phil ---, and me. We all went and joined the navy at Bristol. And then I did my training at Tor Point. The other two had to wait a few months as they were younger than me, so I never met them again.
My first ship was HMS Woolwich at Harwich in Suffolk. Then HMS Gandhi. And that's where I met my wife, at Harwich. Went ashore and met my wife!
She was an Ipswich girl but they used to come down to Harwich because the sailors were down there. We went to dances. We actually met at a dance where she wanted to go to the toilet and you had to pay a penny. She said ‘You couldn't lend me a penny, could you?’

She must have taken a shine to you to ask you. That's very sweet.
Yes, it's nice.

So you were stationed in Harwich but then you sailed away and you left your girl in the port?
I was in Harwich for about 12 months and then we took a ship of what was called the reserve fleet, we took a destroyer of the reserve fleet to Plymouth, put her in for a refit and then we took her to Malta. I was out there for 18 months and then I volunteered for submarines…

My goodness! But before we get to that – were you in Malta at the same time as the Queen and Prince Philip?
Yes, I met them.

That's nice. Did they look young and happy?
Yes! His boat was tied up at the same place as ours.

But then you volunteered for submarines. Why did you do that?
It was more money!

I’m not surprised!
It was six shillings a day more, which was good money…

Did you know that other guy who was a submariner, Trevor? He was the guy who was killed down at the crossroads at the bottom of the hill. He was married to a woman called Marie. They lived up at the reservoirs for a few years.
No, I didn’t know him.

So when you were in Malta you were already married with a family. What was your wife’s name.
Doreen!

So did she go to Malta with you?
Oh, no. She stayed in Ipswich for a while and then she came to stay with my mum for a while. And then when I came off the ships, she was always in Devon. We came back and I was on the submarines in Plymouth. I used to come home every night on the train and then cycle up from Newton Abbot.

So you were in submarines in Plymouth.
We had to do a refit down there. But before that I went on submarine training at Gosport. Then I joined the submarine, HMS Taciturn.

That’s a weird name!
We spent most of our time on lochs in Scotland doing exercises. We did do a trip to Nassau in Bermuda and came back from there underwater all the way with the engines running  but then she started taking air. Then we came back to Scotland to the torpedo range and fired off a torpedo and it didn’t explode.

That would have been a lot of good, wouldn’t it!
Just after that we were due for a refit and we're coming down through the Irish Sea and a cross channel ferry comes across our bows. We dived quickly and all the engines flooded up and all the pistons were smashed to pieces, so we finished up in the dock over 12 months or more.

Was that dangerous though for you? I mean, did the water come into to your area?
We had lots of narrow escapes on that sub. We surfaced underneath the battleship Antrim one day, took away the conning tower.
What was wrong with the captain. Too much rum perhaps!
But I was never scared. Didn’t worry me, that.

What about Doreen? Did she mind?
No, she didn’t worry. She would have had the kids, wouldn’t she? And then when I came down here and left the Navy, we had a couple more kids.

So you have four children?
My oldest son died, of a heart attack. He got married to the lady in the pub. They had two children, two daughters. I saw one yesterday, as a matter of fact, and one on Saturday. My granddaughter in Torquay, she’s got four children. I've got six great grandchildren.

Gosh! Can you remember all their names?
No! I don't really see the ones in Torquay very often. I see the ones in Newton Abbot every week.

Then they come up to your birthday party?
Yes, and I go to their birthday parties as well.

That's a lot of birthday parties! So you left the Navy and you came back?
I went to work on the forestry up at the reservoirs, planting trees. There were about six of us used to work there.

Was that Forestry Commission?
I was working for a firm from Salisbury called Chalkes. I stayed there for about two years I suppose and then I went to the concrete works for about another couple of years…
But to go back, when I left school, I went to work on the farm up at Great Rock, with Harold Joll’s father. Then I left there and went to work for a builders in Bovey Tracey.  Then I went to work at Candy’s Tiles. And after that I joined the navy.
Then I worked at Hawkmoor Hospital. I was a stoker there for about ten years. Then they went onto oil, so I got made redundant. Then I went to the claypits. I worked there for 28 years.

What did you do at the claypits?
I was a doctor, a clay doctor! I used to know all the clays there were and I used to tell the people what clay they were digging. Really I was a clay [solicitor ???]. The clay was in different levels and you had sand and dark clay and light clay. I worked there and after 25 years I got a gold watch. In fact, I retired from there.

But you didn’t really retire?
No I worked for the race course for 25 years.

Oh, as a bookie?
No! They used to take my money! No, I was on the jumps and when I came off the jumps, I was in in the paddock. I used to ring the bell for the jockeys to mount. I did that for ten to twelve years. Quite a lot at Newton Abbot, and Taunton, and at Exeter.

Gosh, so you know your horses.
I watch the racing every day.

And are you a betting man?
No, not really. I do like a little flutter sometimes, you know. I’ve been to Cheltenham a few times, and Ascot a few times.

Do you ever win?
I did win one day, £37. There was a horse called Waterloo. I said to my friend I fancy a horse called Waterloo. He said ‘That won’t win!’ But it did and I got £37.

You must have got some good odds on that one!
I put a fiver on, must have been 7 to 1.

So… you must have seen a lot of changes in Hennock during your life.
Yes. I can remember Road Park being built.

Is that where you're living now?
No, I’m at Hazelcrest. No, it was on the left hand side, where Mike and Erica live.

When was Hazel Crest built?
1964. I was the first in there after they were built.

So how did you get it?
You had to be on the council list.
Oh yes. And after a while I bought the place.

Right, when Maggie Thatcher sold them off.
Yes. 12 grand!

Gosh! And what’s it worth now, quarter of a million?
Yes, £240,000 now.

So what’s that multiplication? That's 20 times! And what year did you buy it?
I bought it when I was 55 and I finished paying for it when I was 70.

I was going to ask you about what you would do in your married life. What did you use to do for entertainment?
Oh, we used to go dancing quite a lot. We didn’t go to the pictures much after we got married. Although we did see Blue Hawaii…at the Gaumont in Exeter. I hadn’t been there for fifty odd years.

That cinema in Newton is still struggling on…
Yes, the Alexandra. When we used to go there were three cinemas - there was the Odeon, the Alec and the Imperial.

And then when did you get the television.
I think just after I quit the Navy.

And did that change your life?
No, we didn’t watch that much. I mean, we rented it to start with..

I remember that. Seven and six a week from Radio Rentals. Did you see the coronation on the television. At your auntie’s?
No, I was in the navy in ’53.

I'm sure you had some celebration there!
I think we had a tot of rum. Splice the main brace!

Raise your glass to her Majesty! So do you have a naval dress uniform. Because I remember Alan Wiles used to come to church on Remembrance Sunday in his army uniform and Trevor, the submariner used to come in his Navy uniform… I guess that's a long time ago. What rank were you when you left the Navy?
Leading stoker. And my friend did very well, he was Chief Stoker which is not a bad rank really….. Just think, I used to travel down from Scotland, from the Isle of Bute to Devon for the weekend. We would leave there at 10 in the morning on Friday and get down to Newton Abbot Saturday morning at 10. And then go back Sunday and get back Monday morning.

So how many years did you do that?
Several years when I was up in Scotland, for about four to five years four years at least.
And your wife never moved up to join you?
No.

How did she like Hennock? She was a Suffolk girl.
Oh, She loved Hennock. Doreen was very popular. And the kids used to come up to our house every day after school and we used to make them little buns. Reggie’s boys, Ben and Ross used to come up.

Hennock must have been a wonderful place.
Oh yes, a very very wonderful place. I wouldn’t like to live anywhere else, not in towns, not the way they are going now.

When you were a child did you ever go into Exeter?
No, never. The last time I went to Exeter, I had a parking ticket and I never went back again. It's been 45, 50 years ago.

Gosh! And have you ever been to London?
A couple of times… Just when I was in the Navy, there were the evacuees and my mum and dad were up staying with them and I went up to London for the day. We went to a Chelsea football match… I’ve been through London loads of times but never wanted to stop.
We drove through London on my motorbike. Doreen said ‘Shall we go to Ipswich.’ My Mum was looking after the kids, so we left Friday night at 6 and got to Ipswich at 6 the next morning. We got lost in London.
There was no M25 in those days.
We got picked up by the police in London. They wanted to know what we were doing. I said I’m trying to find my way to Ipswich. We were trying to drive down Oxford St in the middle of the night. They told us where to go. They must have gone a different way round as I passed them on the road and they waved to me.
Yes, travelling was difficult in those days. You had to write down the route step by step from the AA book before you started off. And going to the West Country was the worst. When we came from London down to Devon it was always the Exeter bypass. It was absolutely infamous. You could reckon on spending about four hours going around Exeter in the summer. So when did you get your first car?
It was when my wife had an accident. She used to work out at Stover, you know where the Polish camp is. Beyond there, there is a place called Young's Seafoods and she cut her thumb off down there one day and she got a nine hundred pounds compensation. And she said when we get the money, we’ll go and buy a car. So that must have been when she was 35, so that was 1965.
Right. You could get a good car for that then. We got a Vauxhall Victor in ‘65 for £650.
I bought this car in Newton Abbot for £87…

So you had some change!
It was a Ford Popular…

Oh, one of those sit up and beg ones. Black, I suppose.
Yes, cars were black in those days.

And no streamline?
No, no heater, nothing like that. The windscreen wiper used to work off the compression, by vacuum, off the carburettor, something like that. It was horrendous.

And after that what was the next car you got?
I think the next one was Japanese, a Honda. After that I bought three brand new Fords. The latest one I’ve got is a Ford Fiesta. That's a good car. It suits me fine. I had a Ford Fiesta before and so does my granddaughter. Because the garage was only going to give me so much and I said ‘Well, you can have it cheaper.’

And is it still going?
Yes, pretty good. She works three days a week in Exeter and drives in. She’s in computers. She’s on one of those all day long…

Like everybody else!
She works for a solicitor’s office right but she works two days in Exeter, three days from home…

So what else? When you were a child what sort of games did you play with your friends?
We used to play in the woods at Hazelwood.

What sort of games did you play?
I played with the Sanders twins who lived in Wistaria Cottage. Alan and Donald Sanders. In the woods we played all sorts of games, hide and seek, climbing the trees..

And who was in Hazelwood, then?
The Kitsons. They left about twenty years ago. I used to know the husband, Major Kitson. I did part time work for him in the garden.

And they didn't mind you being in the woods.
No no no no, nobody minded. You couldn't get up there now, too many brambles. In that field behind the War Memorial, they used to cut all the ferns and take them down and cover their mangles in order to stop them freezing.

I've never been in up in the woods at Hazelwood.
Well, there's a lovely snowdrop area there. Mind you, I've not been up there for years. During the war there was a lookout place up there that the Home Guard used to use. And I can remember my dad going out there with his shotgun in case the Germans came…

The Home Guard! Dad’s Army! So was he there when the Czech guys landed the plane up there.
Oh no, that's just in the woods up here, up at the [rocky fields??].  I would think nothing of walking into Bovey Tracey three or four times a week in those days. You used to walk in to get a pair of shoes or something.

From Bovey Tracey?
Oh yes, there was a shoe shop. Mr Ellis. My mum used to have an account with him and he used to come round every Saturday and collect the money because in those days you couldn't afford a lot…
Like a shilling a week or something?
Yes, he’d come round every Saturday night and collect one and six or two shillings. If you wanted a new pair of trousers or a new suit, you would go to see Mr Ellis.

So you could get them on the never never.
My Grandfather used to do that. He used to go and wait outside the factory gates for when the guys got their money and take a shilling off each of them. So that's all very interesting, John. Can you think of anything else you'd like to talk about or should we leave it at that for now?

I think we've been through most things.
Have you got any saucy stories?
No, no, nothing like that!

Well, I think that's great for now. Thank you so much! I think that gives us a lot to go on So what I'll do now is I'll get all this cleaned up and then I'll give it to you and then you can say what you don't like. If you want to add more things, you know, we can have another session. I'm sure you’ve got a lot more stories but this was pretty good…

I won't tell you the other stories!
But those are the ones we want to hear!

Maybe another time!