MY STREET CHALLENGE - CRICKLADE STREET

When we were first married and lived in Burford Avenue, it only took me 10 minutes to walk up the hill into Old Town, to where I worked at number 42 Cricklade Street.  I was a legal secretary at Townsends Solicitors, which was situated in this beautiful red brick house once described by the famous English poet, Sir John Betjeman, as “the finest house in Swindon" and was once the home of the Villett family, who were patrons of Christ Church, the Parish church just down the hill.

It was, and still is, a wonderful old building with large, airy rooms with very high ceilings, wood panelling and ornate stairs and bannisters.  I worked in various parts of the building, but the rooms I knew best were the attics, where most of the secretaries could be found.  There were wonderful views over the top of the church to the other side of Swindon but I guess as young women, we probably didn’t appreciate them at the time.  There was no such thing as digital dictation in my time, so we had to carry all our files and the dictated tape from the rooms downstairs where our bosses were, up to the attics - where I might add, the stairs were not so ornate and were very steep.

Underneath, in the brick vaulted cellars or the catacombs as we called them, the deeds were stored in huge strong rooms and if they were taken out in the morning, they were always put back down there at night - a practice which was rather irksome, but in those days, deeds were very precious - in this digital age, things are not quite the same!  Interestingly, these cellars are thought to be a network of passages once believed to run to other parts of the town and even used for smuggling!  Until I went to take my photograph today of this Grade II Listed property I had never even noticed the grotesque masks in the window keystones.

I remember one of the clerks, Tom Scratchley, used to go down into the catacombs, supposedly to look for some deeds, but secretly to have a quick puff on his pipe and several times he set off the fire alarm.  

Across the road was Bennetts’ Bakery, and we often used to go over there to buy our morning cake to have with our coffee.  A lovely Welsh lady worked in there and I well remember them selling yesterday’s bread for 2d when, if it was sold on the day it was made, would have cost about 9d - old money, that is!  I used to buy cheap loaves and make bread pudding, which is made, after soaking the bread overnight in water and squeezing it out, and then adding sugar, sultanas, currants, eggs and suet.  It was sprinkled with Demerara sugar and baked until it had a crunchy top - delicious but it had to be soggy!

Some years ago and many years after I had left, the Solicitors moved out to a newer building and the property was sold to a developer, following which it was very sensitively restored and turned into apartments but with many of the original features preserved.  I then worked for another firm of Solicitors and called in there one day to try and drum up some business, as I worked in Conveyancing.  It was great to wander round and remember who had been in various rooms - and the lady who took me round was very interested in hearing my reminiscences.  

I remember Mr. Storey, the senior partner, who was almost blind and so had to have all his work done on a manual typewriter with a black cotton ribbon and very large type - you couldn’t rub that out, believe me, so if you made a mistake, you had to start again!  He was very pernickety, but also very kind and he was the one who sent the office junior out to buy a new pair of shoes at Blaylocks because hers had a hole in the bottom and it was raining.  

I remember Mr. Harrington, who when he saw me when he was opening the front door on one occasion, doffed his hat, which is what gentlemen always did back then when they saw a lady, and promptly dropped all his files, so I scrabbled at his feet to pick them up - so embarrassing for us both.

I remember Mr. George who had the most awful writing, but who insisted on writing things out in longhand and leaving the secretaries to sort things out.  I once told him that if he had ever written a love letter to his wife, he need never worry, no-one would ever be able to read it!

I remember Mr. Hobbs, the divorce lawyer I worked for, who never gave money to any leaving collections, but who gave me a beautiful black Wedgwood vase when I left to have my first baby, to the surprise of many, and I still have it 46 years later.

We always addressed them as “Mr” and would never have dreamed of calling them by their first name - but that’s how it was in those days.

I remember that Bruce Edgington, a young articled clerk, but who is probably now a solicitor somewhere, writing on the card when I was pregnant and leaving “Have a good honeymoon” - when I had been married for 3 years.  

I remember Betty Edgington, Bruce’s mother, who put the “fear of God” into everyone with her seemingly abrasive manner, but who was very sweet when you took the trouble to get to know her.

I remember Moira, the lady on the switchboard, who knew everything about everybody, past or present - and what she didn’t know, wasn’t worth knowing!  When I used to go back to visit, taking my first baby, she adored him, being unmarried and having no children of her own.

I remember Bob Skerten who used to sit in his tiny room next to one of attics, checking the files and producing the bills many years before computerised billing came into operation. His writing was almost as bad as that of Julian George! 

There were many others, some of whom went on to become District Judges, Mr. Sproston, Mr. Young, Mr. Spalding, Sir Jonathan Clarke, Mr, Carron and Mr. Nield - we were like one big happy family and I even met someone I used to work with in the late 1970s when I went into the Nationwide Building Society today.  

I only found out in the last few years that Trevor, the man who was the caretaker/handyman, was our next door neighbour’s father.  He was a lovely man and we used to love going down into his little room halfway down the yard - he always had a kettle on the boil, and there was no telephone in there, so it was the ideal place to escape to for a few minutes break.

I could go on and apologise for the length of this journal entry today - I got rather carried away with my lovely memories of times gone by - perhaps I am getting old(er)!

“Strange, what brings these past things 
     so vividly back to us, sometimes!” 
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin