Four years in Welwyn Garden City

Welwyn Garden City was the second garden city built by Ebenezer Howard in the early 20th century. It was a planned town, set in greenbelt countryside in Hertfordshire, and just a 20-minute drive from London’'s West End. The campus where Mike was to teach for three years was a pleasant building in the centre of the town, while the apartment we had been offered was about a mile away. The education authority paid for the removal of our furniture from Barton Road. We decided to let, rather than sell, the house there.

Everywhere in our new surroundings was clean and green, but it lacked the continuity and soul of older places like Westcliff. Nearby was the Grammar School and beside it was an open-air swimming pool. Our next-door neighbours were a young couple, Joan and her husband, John, who was a PE teacher in the Grammar School. I became a close friend of Joan’'s. She was supervisor of school meals in that part of the county. In summer she and I would go for a swim in the baths every day at 4 o'’clock. I had a job in a school in St Alban’s for January but I was hardly a week there when I handed in my notice to leave at Easter. It was a rough school for such a good area. I applied to Attimore Hall which was a secondary modern school next door to the High School in Welwyn Garden City: both would later amalgamate to become comprehensive. Our head was a strict disciplinarian, having taught in army schools in Europe. I got on fine with him.

Mike and I used to travel to London at least twice a week. The Green Line coaches stopped on the road opposite the apartments. I became a member of the Dublin University Women Graduates Association and soon I was voted on to the Committee and ended up as vice-chair and finally Chair. We held our meetings in the Irish Club in Eaton Square, a really upper-class road! Sometimes we travelled by train from the town centre and the last train back was at midnight. Once we missed it and had to wait till 2am for a train to Hatfield; another couple alighted at Hatfield for WGC and we shared a taxi.

My father at that time was spending three months in succession with Aunt Fanny, then Muriel, then me and lastly, Ted in Lincoln. Early in 1966 we decided it was time for us to learn to drive and we bought a second-hand Standard car and agreed that whichever of us passed the driving test first would have a new car. Mike failed his test five times but I passed first time. We approached the bank for a loan of £800 to buy a new Morris 1100 from Greys of Hatfield. I remember Joan feeling put out because the banks had made getting a loan difficult and she and John had been refused one while we, recently arrived from Ireland, were given one without hesitation!

A month after passing my test, I drove alone up to Guy’s Hospital to visit my sister Muriel and at 5pm I was on my way home in torrents of rain when I approached traffic lights at a marked black spot in Brookmans Park. As I approached on a downhill stretch leading out of the roundabout, the lights ahead turned amber so I braked and halted. Next moment there was an almighty crash into me from behind and my car was sent forward across the lights into the crossing traffic and I sat there as bits shot around the car. We called the police but they merely told us to exchange details with the other driver and let our insurance companies sort it out. I was in shock but I drove that car on in to Hatfield and left it with Greys. It was a complete write-off and I shouldn'’t have driven it but I was truly in a state of shock. Great wedges of metal were stuck into the tyres and how the car moved I don'’t know.

I asked for a new car and the insurance company began to turn awkward. At that time a bill was going through Parliament brought by David Marquand MP so that insurance companies didn'’t discriminate against people on racial grounds. My company was trying to declare my policy void because, they claimed, I hadn'’t told them that my husband was Irish! I wrote to David Marquand and asked him to add '‘or national'’ to '‘racial'’, and this he did and the company was summoned to Parliament to answer questions and were threatened with closure if they didn'’t honour the policy. As a result, they not only paid for a new car but paid me extra for the stress I'’d suffered and paid my legal expenses and invited me to renew my policy with a generous no-claims bonus.

I had already approached another company who offered me very favourable terms so I refused to renew with the first company and the wording of David Marquand'’s bill was altered accordingly. It was a traumatic beginning to my driving experience. However, we began making good use of the car and we were able to drive my father to lots of interesting places during the final six months of his life. He was still rude and belligerent towards Mike, however. Uncle Fred had a stroke and spent the rest of his life in Hillingdon Hospital. Mike and I drove to Aunt Fanny'’s and took her and Uncle Willie and my father to see him. He was lighting a cigarette and trying to drink from a glass but his right arm was badly affected and he was weeping in frustration. It was so sad seeing the uncle who had always been such fun so helpless.

One of the interesting places we took my father to was Waltham Abbey where King Harold is supposed to be buried and he was really interested in that. We drove to Cambridge another day and took him to tea in the Copper Kettle where they had delicious homemade cakes. We drove him to London and to the Irish Club when Michael MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards were appearing. We drove him to Lincoln and on the way pulled in to a little café for tea.

One day in April 1966 he decided to go to London on the Green Line coach and promised he’'d be back on the 7pm coach. That morning after he had gone and while Mike was at work a telegram was delivered and I opened it and read '‘Dad is dead'’. The paper fell from my hand as I was in sudden shock. I was angry as I hadn'’t wanted him to go alone to London. Then I realised that I had read the word '‘Dublin'’ at the top of the paper and I was really furious as I wondered why he had gone to Dublin. I lifted the paper and read it in full. It was Mike'’s father who had died of a sudden stroke while cycling to work.

Mike was to travel across on the night boat so I had all those arrangements to make and he had gone off to London on his own by the time I was expecting my father back. My father wasn'’t on the 7pm coach. He wasn'’t on the 8pm coach but arrived at 9pm and he was breathless and very ill and I shouted at him because I had been so worried and was beginning to think he, too, was dead. It was all my anxiety and worry coming out and later he confided in me that my brother had been late meeting him and that he had stood in a sharp wind waiting and that his lungs had been badly affected. At the time, as we were to discover after his death, he had only a tiny piece of each lung left. I was sad then to think I had been so angry with him that day. He wrote to Mike’'s mother to offer his sympathy and Mike'’s brother, Arthur, replied to thank him.

Mike and I travelled up to the West End frequently in those days, to wine and cheese parties, dress dances, dinners, talks, theatre and on Sundays we would go to Speakers.’ Corner in Hyde Park to listen to all the extremists who took advantage of the freedom of speech available to them there. I remember one eccentric lady who always sat with her companions in a circle and sang as she banged a saucepan! Then there was the sandwich man telling us the end was nigh and urging us to repent. We loved London.

In 1967 Mike went to Bradford University for a year to study and I stayed on in WGC but I had switched schools. I had been invited by the parish priest to accept a post in the Convent School as Mistress of Discipline but I wasn'’t long there when I realised it was the staff I needed to discipline, not the girls! In the staffroom, teachers were divided into three groups, the two main groups sat with their backs to one another with a small neutral group in the middle through whom the others passed messages to one another. It was a nasty atmosphere and the girls suffered. I was second-in-charge in the English department. The girls were mainly those who had failed their 11 plus exams but still wanted to take O and A levels.

My Head of Department was a man and he, too, was in the group that took the girls'’ part. We arranged a trip to London to see the film '‘Doctor Faustus'’, starring Elizabeth Taylor, and one to Stratford-on-Avon to a performance of Romeo and Juliet. After the play we went with the girls to the pub where the actors gathered for a drink and they were thrilled to be meeting the actors, one of whom was from Cork; he asked them to introduce him to me, their teacher, who, they told him, was from Ireland! Some of the girls had a glass of cider before we set out for home. Next day they were telling the others about the fun they had and one of the rival teachers overheard them and reported it to the head nun and there was hell to pay! What was an innocent evening of meeting the actors was looked upon as a most corrupt occurrence and the girls and we two teachers were shouted at!

Another day I was ascending the stairs when I saw a teacher from the opposite camp stopping each girl and measuring the length of her skirt from the floor. The girls'’ reaction was to walk into their classrooms with their skirts hitched up high. Some Sixth-Formers came in to my classroom with the skirts hitched up and I said, '‘Girls, even if you remove those skirts and sit there naked, I won'’t notice. All I'’m interested in right now is discussing with you Othello'’s anger with Desdemona'.’ The skirts were lowered and we all relaxed!

Towards the end of Mike'’s year in Bradford he went for several interviews. One place he was called to was Armitage Shanks in Hull. Wives were invited too. It was for a managerial position with the firm. While the men were being interviewed, the women were driven by the Managing Directo'r’s chauffeur to meet the MD'’s wife in their lovely mansion in Beverley. There we enjoyed coffee and conversation while being aware that we were under scrutiny! We joined the men in a hotel for lunch. I think Mike knew then that he would rather stay in education.

While he had been away, I had a lodger, Jessica Hall-Patch, who was a research worker with Roche Products. Her parents were vets in the south of England. She was good company and we went on outings together. Once, we were heading for Cambridge in her car and had just joined the motorway when she ran out of petrol! We pushed the car on to the hard shoulder and walked back to search for a petrol station. On another occasion she and her boyfriend attended a Trinity dinner in the Irish Club with me. Below is a photo that was taken that evening.

Most Saturdays, while Mike was in the College of Further Education, we went to Cambridge and saw international films in a cinema there. We got to know Professor Paul Higgins from Christ College and once I hosted a wine and cheese party of his till his wife arrived to take over. He invited us to dinner in his home outside the city and in turn he and his family visited us in WGC.

In the summer of 1968 Ian and Melissa, Hazel’'s older two children, came to stay with us. We met them by car at Heathrow. They were then 10 and 9 respectively. They were really excited one day as we drove into London when they looked out at the traffic to our right and recognised Danny Kaye,thefamous comedy actor, being driven alongside in a Rolls Royce! He smiled at them! Another day we were standing outside Buckingham Palace and saw Prince Edward at an upper window. Suddenly he had a smack and was pulled away from the window! We were wondering what he was thinking as he looked out at the common people.

Joan had become very ill in 1967 and I persuaded her to go and see her doctor. It was bad news. She was diagnosed with cancer of the bowel and a surgeon from London arrived at the local hospital to operate on her. I found her very despondent and certain she was going to die when I went in to see her after the operation. She didn’'t come out of hospital and was very heavily sedated with morphine for her final weeks. We were taking the car to Ireland that August and I went in to say ‘good-bye’ to her and she was hallucinating badly and telling me she’'d like to go with me to supervise my driving. She died while we were away. Her parents came down from Lancashire and her death devastated them, for she was their only child. Mike had had a wisdom tooth removed in that hospital some time earlier.

Our next move was to be to Penkridge in Staffordshire when Mike was about to take up a lectureship in Wolverhampton Polytechnic in September, 1968. We had, meanwhile, sold the Barton Road house.

Photo:
Men – L to R: Jessica’s friend, Mike McCormack, Harry McCord, Peter Knowles
Women – L to R: Jessica Hall-Patch, Pat McCormack, Margaret (Peter’'s friend)