was born in Enfield 1963 and lived at Rendlehsam Nurseries, top of Clay Hill. His first school was George Spicer Southbury Road and then attended senior school at Chace Boys Secondary Modern in Churchbury Lane.
He attained average grades, but did well in Motor Vehicle Studies with Mr Lance, Mr Rees and Mr Gascoine. These teachers were amazing and pointed him in the direction of a Renault dealership on Windmill Hill, the Old Oak Motor Company Limited.
Mr Lance arranged an interview with Fred Payne the Workshop Manager he seemed impressed and to shorten the story, Mark was offered an apprenticeship with them, which started in July 1979.
He was soon to the car sales department to prepare the new and used cars for customers and the next promotion was as a manager of a new site they were building on part of the old power station land at the bottom of Millmarsh Lane, Brimsdown.
Becoming disillusioned with the motor trade, Mark managed to secure a job with an independent apprenticeship training provider, Training Trust based in Gants Hill, Ilford where he trained to be a NVQ assessor. After two years he was promoted to Quality Improvement Manager and have now been the Chief Executive for nine years.
Interview of Mark Durham by Anthony Fisher
Transcript of interview between Anthony Fisher and Mark Durham on 22nd November, 2022 transcribed by Valerie Fisher
Anthony
Where do you live now?
Mark
I live in Chingford now.
Anthony
And your date of birth?
Mark
1st August, 1963.
Anthony
Do you have any siblings?
Mark
I’ve got a sister, she doesn’t live in this area no more, she lives down in Hampshire.
Anthony
What sort of education did you have?
Mark
Only CSE O level at Chace Boys’ in Churchbury Lane, Enfield. It’s still there but it’s a mixed school. It was better off as a boys’ school – one hundred per cent. No distractions.
Anthony
What did your mum and dad do.
Mark
My dad was a guillotine operator for Ruberoid and I think he started working there when he left school and my mum started work in Ferguson’s off Southbury Road. I think – sadly my parents passed away fairly early on – when Cliff Richard became famous she took his job.
Anthony
Good Lord! He was in the warehouse wasn’t he?
Mark
Yes. I never pressed her on it really but that’s one thing she did say. My dad worked at
Ruberoid for the whole duration of his working life. Donkey’s years. I think they were bought out by Tarmac and when they were bought out then I think they changed; they moved to Birmingham and they basically said, “Your job is redundant,” and he got a pay out and, I suppose, really retired early then. So that was quite good for him. My mum worked for Ferguson’s, then she had my sister, did the odd cleaning job and also done some cleaning at the Rolling Mills down Millmarsh Lane. I remember going there as a young lad and she used to take me while she cleaned the offices and I just used to sit – I must have been 6 or 7 – talking to the people and looking at their fish tank.
Anthony
And you’re married?
Mark
I am married; second marriage, yes. My previous wife, her dad used to work in Bullsmoor Lane in the old Esso Station at the bottom and then he was kind of a general builder and set up a company on his own and worked for the Reed Partnership in Cheshunt and also for the nursery by the M25. It’s now a housing estate. Bernard Barr I believe was the guy who owned it. So that was them. My wife now is a kind of East End lady really so she’s not an Enfield person.
Anthony
Yes, anything about industry is of interest to me because I feel manufacturing isn’t valued enough but the project is about Enfield and I’m especially interested in Brimsdown because I’ve been working there since 1964 and, like you, I used to go down there as a child so I’ve probably been going to Brimsdown since 1950. So it’s quite influential on me. I was interested in talking to you about your dad working at Ruberoid’s and your uncle and also your experience – the conversations you had with the people there and the tunnels and the trams etc. It’s really interesting and I hadn’t heard of that.
Mark
When we first moved we moved there – I worked for Old Oak Motor Company which was
the Renault garage at the top of Windmill Hill in Enfield.
Anthony
The owner was a friend of my dad’s. That would have been in the 50s.
Mark
There was Les Dobbs – I didn’t know Les Dobbs but I joined them – I was 15 when I left school because my age was in August so I was a late kind of year – so I went to sign my indenture papers with my dad as apprentice and they went to sign and Tom was the managing director then he said, “Actually, I’ve just realized you’re not 16 yet, we can’t sign them but we’ll still employ you.” I had a week off school literally then started work at 15. Then once I turned 16 they managed to sign the papers so I did my apprenticeship there as a car mechanic so that the start of that in 1979. Then I did hear the name Les Dobbs. The Athena Theatre used to be on the site.
I never saw the theatre, it got burned down I think. Since 1945 the garage was there, history wise and they weren’t a Renault franchise dealer, it was just a garage and then I know the Mortimers took over possibly in 1977 and Frank Mortimer was a Czechoslovakian Jew and on the rising of the Nazi regime he left Czechoslovakia to come over to the England and he was importing Wartburgs.
Anthony
Yes, I remember. That was a small car. Did it have a two stroke engine?
Mark
That’s correct, a rear engine, rear wheel drive perhaps. How they got involved in Renault I don’t know and it was an independent franchise dealership and they were there for a long time before me and then I joined it as an apprentice in 1979. It’s all changed now, that’s all gone. We were taken over by Renault UK in 2000, I’m jumping around a little bit here, I completed my apprenticeship in 1984. I was promoted to car sales department to work on all the new vehicles. They were doing really well with that dealership with a great reputation as a garage. I was with them for twenty five years and then what happened was they decided to buy a separate site and make it into a vehicle prep. site which was down the bottom of Millmarsh Lane and they wanted me to run it and promoted me and I said, “Ok why not,” so I was down there. We moved there I think in 1985.
Anthony
It’s come back to me now; I worked for a company – you used to de-wax new cars there, didn’t you?
Mark
That’s right.
Anthony
We used to supply the de-waxer.
Mark
Did you really? Oh, My God that was me.
Anthony
I’ve actually been there! I wasn’t there as a salesman, there was some technical problem – I’m an industrial chemist – I remember now.
Mark
So you saw all the vehicles! Because they came in the wax – I could talk about that for ages, but at the end of the day, when they bought the Renault 25s out there was like a chrome strip on the top and a certain de-waxer used to discolour the chrome strip so we were replacing them left, right and centre.
Anthony
(Anthony then gives a technical description of the chemical problem).
Mark
Renault paid for that because we obviously claimed through warranty. There must have been hundreds maybe thousands of pounds worth of claims.
Anthony
In those days it was a real problem and it was the relatively days of English companies learning chemistry. I was lucky I spent twenty years making aircraft cleaners under licence to an American company so I had a head start because I had been trained up in quite sophisticated formulations. But English industry wasn’t like that, it just wasn’t, but the 60s and 70s were a massive leap forward.
Mark
We used to have so many chemical people coming in through the door because we had to
de-wax every single vehicle and eventually they started shrink wrapping the vehicles as well and we had to take the shrink wrapping off so there was plastic everywhere. Because that particular site we was on, that was where the barges used to come in and unload the coal and then the coal used to be delivered on tracks, on trains into the power station.
Anthony
And also there were tracks from the rail line.
Mark
There were loads of sidings, one that disappeared off to the Small Arms Factory and one that used to go round Brimsdown by Ruberoid. There used to be quite a few there, I remember all them tracks and an underpass way because there used to be a flyover.
Anthony
It’s interesting with Ruberoid, it’s a complicated story, my father’s company, Fisher Segal, used to do spray painting and Segal was a German Jew who came over from Germany because of the Nazis, when he drove home he used to say that the amount of waste paper stored in Ruberoid was a measure of how well the economy was doing; the more paper, the better the economy. He was dead right! I used to watch it after that and when the paper was down the economy was bottoming and when it came up it was reviving. It was a very good indicator.
Mark
I think my dad was made redundant before I worked down Brimsdown so I never got the chance to see my dad working and working in the industry – it was a big company, he was colour blind, my dad, but he was involved in the print as well, as well as being a guillotine operator and he always used to laugh and I said, “Hang on, Dad, how could you be involved in the print with all the different colours?” He went, “It’s easy,” I said, “Why?” and he said, “Because the names of the colours are on the pots.” That’s fair enough, I get that. He said, “I got away with it. No-one ever asked me.”
Anthony
My dad went into bomb disposal, even though he was colour blind; and he survived. It’s interesting that about Ruberoid’s because the first person I interviewed in this project – you are the third – she worked in Ruberoid during the War. She’s 101, and she said they used to make soles and heels for military boots and so she was on the line making these.
Mark
I didn’t know that.
Anthony
Neither did I. Like you taught me about the tunnel, I didn’t know that.
Mark
I’ll tell you about them. So, we moved down to bottom of Millmarsh Lane, bottom of Brimsdown, the whole place was derelict apart from the gate keepers – two gate keepers, one was Tom Sawyer – I got on really well with him and another guy – I can’t remember his name – he was a little bit stand-offish, he never wanted to chat. I mean the gate keeper at Brimsdown Power Station so when you went down Millmarsh Lane, where the old 135 buses used to stop, there was a gate house. There was an entrance which was the main gate house to the power station. I don’t know if there were any other entrances – I don’t know of any – but that was the main thing and the gate house was on the left hand side. I’ve got pictures of this but I don’t know where they are, they’re definitely at home somewhere, and I got pictures when we moved there. And our place was a little workshop built on with places to store and – going back a little bit – and where the barges used to pull up to dump the coal, there was a kind of rectangle where obviously the River Lea used to come in. Well, that was all back filled to make a bigger area and we was all gated up and we was all fenced separate but where Tom and this other guy was quite protective of the whole area – they had been there a long time and they knew, they knew all the people; hundreds of people who used to work at the power station because they were there when it was being demolished and prior to that and Tom was chatting to us and he’d kind of go through the stories and he told me once that he got taken to the Old Bailey because there was people taken to court for stealing copper and he got pulled into it because they thought he was part of it. And he says, “Do you know that the road we are standing on is full of copper?” So I went, “No, I didn’t know that.” He said, “I’ve been down there,” he said, “I can’t take you down there because it’s all locked up and I haven’t got the key but basically you can walk the whole length of that road because all the cabling that the electricity was produced from comes up into Millmarsh Lane and gets delivered to the National Grid. He said, “That is all there and you can walk the whole length of that road upright.” There’s a tunnel under there and that cabling is still there, they will not get rid of it, they’re buried. It’s not being used, it’s all derelict.”
Anthony
So that runs from the Power Station along Millmarsh Lane?”
Mark
Yes, back into, I assume, the main road. However it goes, I don’t know where it goes.
Anthony
Interesting. I’ll ask the council whether they’re aware of that, they might have plans or something though I doubt it.
Mark
They didn’t dig the road up, they literally put another skin of concrete over the top of it. When they demolished the gate house and Tom was eventually let go they demolished the whole thing. And also the site kind of adjacent where Builders Iron & Zincwork, BIZ Ltd, are that’s where the turbines were for producing electricity for the trams, for electrification of the trams for London. This is what Tom told me so this is what I’m going on. These pictures exist of the turbines in a sunken area, I’ve seen it on the internet, massive turbines, then actually the whole area was filled with concrete. Them turbines are still there under that concrete which is now under BIZ.
Anthony
I can just remember trams in Enfield, though obviously you wouldn’t. Did he mention trams going down there?
Mark
No, he never mentioned that. Electricity for the system and that’s fact.
Anthony
So the electricity for the National Grid and separate generators for the electrification of the trams?
Mark
Yes, turn of the century, electrification of the trams. I think 1905, maybe 1911. And that was that section that was next to us. That was that whole new section. We saw that being built because initially there was the old offices and recreation area where Tom used to say there was a snooker table and people used to play snooker in there and there was kind of – Tom allowed us in there, it wasn’t a problem, it was all going to be demolished anyway; so we went in there one dinner time or whatever and had a look around with some torches and that and there was old benches in there, there was chairs and fluorescent lights, that kind of stuff and we took the benches and used them in our workshop. And one of the kind of – it’s like an experimental bench, it’s a fairly modern one really you’d probably see in some kind of lab or something like that, I’ve still got that at home. It’s in my garage at home because it’s height adjustable and everything so I got that.
Anthony
I should be very interested if you could take a photograph of that for the exhibition. There aren’t many photographs of things made in Brimsdown.
Mark
I have got photos of the original building that was demolished plus I’ve got the photos, I think, of the gate house. I think I’ve got Tom standing there and kind of waving to us. I was down there for fifteen years, I run that site for fifteen years. I can always scan them and send them to you.
Anthony
I don’t know what form the exhibition is going to take because the Dugdale Centre in Enfield Town shut down two years ago and it’s reopening on 15th and the museum is part of it. I’ve got a meeting with Sarah Kirkham in January to discuss what she wants for the exhibition.
Mark
I used to look after all the feral cats down there as well. At the bottom of Millmarsh Lane on the right hand side there used to be a company called Darby Luminescence. I went down there once just to feed the cats and check the place out and their van thing blew up and took their roof out so I had to ‘phone the Fire Brigade and everything; anyway that was one Sunday. But the lady that used to work there, she looked after all the cats, she used to feed them. They closed the site and I’m thinking, “Who’s going to look after the cats?”, because I am quite a cat lover. So I thought, “Well, I’m going to have to now, aren’t I because there is no-one else,” so our gate was where the entrance to the main site was adjacent to the main site for the power station. It got changed but that was the original site. So slowly but surely I tried to get some food over a period of months and work my way towards the gate so I had fourteen cats I used to look after, fourteen of them! And then one of the ladies from Delta Cables because it was Delta after the Rolling Mills, she come over and said, “I see you’re feeding these cats,” and I said, “Yes and we’ve got our own cats as well but you need to get them neutered because the management of Delta Cables they’re looking to euthanise them.” Because all they are were factory cats keeping the mouse population and the rat population down.
Anthony
Yes, we now have a company with chemicals but before that we had cats!
Mark
So she said, “You need to get them neutered because otherwise they’re going to get Rentokil in and get rid of them.” So I said, “Well, I don’t want that.” So slowly but surely we caught them all and there was a cat kind of protection league and I remember her name – Mrs Limbrick – and she said you need to contact her and they have got this fund that basically paid for it. So we finally caught all these cats and had them all neutered.
Anthony
So although the cat population went, there weren’t any euthanised.
Mark
Exactly. Funnily enough, Tom Sawyer saw a tiny little grey one and he used to know a lady who wanted a cat and she came down and said, “Oh, I like that one,” and took it away so it was her pet in the end but we used to feed them, feed them in a portacabin, we had a portacabin and office and a kind of tea area. We got broken into about three times, police come and they didn’t do anything but anyway there was lots of things happening down here.
Anthony
Did you ever feel isolated? Because in those days there was no road in and out.
Mark
It was nice, it was nice. It was a good position to be in. Tom and the other guy were there 24/7 so when we was there that was ok because they was looking after the people – there was still people coming in and out the site, you know; not our site but the power station site and then they were let go or made redundant or sacked or whatever and then that place got demolished and then they started building up that estate but there was a time when there was nothing happening down there and Foley’s Land Rovers were – if you look towards the station and we was on the right hand side, Foley’s Land Rovers had the left hand side – and that’s where they was and they used to use our steam cleaner and steam the vehicles because they had their own workshop doing their land rover conversions and everything and we were good friends with them. However, they kept themselves to themselves and we kept ourselves to ourselves really. It was fairly isolated in answer to your question and certainly when it’s quite dismal and dull and overcast our ramp was outside so we were working in all weathers, sometimes our diesel froze for the heater so we had no heating and the salesmen didn’t come and visit us – no-one wanted to come out of their office to visit us so, therefore, we just done the work and we done everything well so we had a good reputation. A lot of the new cars and used cars reputation was down to us. So that’s why we did really well. There was only a few of us working there but we did do well on that. We certainly saw a ghost one time and did wonder whether that was someone who had died at the power station or something, you know.
Anthony
How did that happen?
Mark
It was really weird, really weird. Our gate was moved from the entrance to the old power station to further down towards Darby Luminescence and we used to have people like yourself constantly coming through the door wanting to sell us chemicals or different things so we used to shut the gate and there was me and another guy who was my kind of right hand man, Lee, and we were so inundated with people, we had gravel around so you could hear someone walking. So I looked out the window and saw this guy walking up through the gate crunching the pebbles and I looked up and said, “Lee, I’m getting fed up with all these people keep coming asking the same thing trying to see stuff. We’re too busy, go and tell him we don’t want to know, please.” So he went out the back door and he came back in and I said, “What happened?” and he said, “There’s no-one there.” And I went, “But you saw him,” and he said, “Yes, I saw him walking up the fifty yards of stretch before he got to the workshop.” And there’s only one way out – one way in, one way out. I said, “I tell you what, he must have gone round the other side of the building. If you go to the right and I’ll follow from where I think he’s gone and we’ll catch him in the middle.” So Lee went round one side of the workshop, I went round the other side of the workshop, we faced each other and there was no-one there. No-one there. That’s as true as I’m sitting here. He was wearing a kind of fawny coloured boiler suit, like a brown but it wasn’t dark brown it was a kind of light brown boiler suit. I can picture him in my mind now.
Anthony
So he was a workman, he wasn’t a visitor?
Mark
He wasn’t a visitor, he was a workman. That’s what it felt to me.
Anthony
What kind of clothes did Tom Sawyer wear? Did he wear a boiler suit?
Mark
No, he wasn’t in a boiler suit, he was always dressed fairly smart. He was always dressed with trousers because he was a security guard and, you know, an old kind of respectful kind of security guard guy like, “This is what I wear and I’m quite happy to wear this and will continue wearing it”. He always wore shoes, always wore smart clothes. He might have worn a big coat at some point when it’s cold but he was not in boiler suits. No way.
Anthony
So the stories he used to tell you, were these pre-War or after the War?
Mark
Oh, I think after the War. I know, I remember seeing them and I wish I took it only for the sake of the memorabilia really, but because it was CEGB – Central Electricity Generating Board – and I did have a spoon with CEGB stamped on it and I think that’s gone now, that’s disappeared but I had that from him; I think he give it to me but when they were demolishing he was still there in part of the offices. They demolished half of the building but he was still there but the part they’d demolished there was a book kind of hanging on a hook, a little kind of signing-in book and I said, “What’s that, Tom?” and he went, “Oh, that’s the old signing-in book.” So I was flicking through it because he had lovely writing Tom, he had lovely writing, and I said to him – pages of this stuff – and it had deceased against the names; deceased, deceased, deceased, hundreds of names and I said, “They’re all dead!” and he went, “Oh yeah, when I found that someone had died and I stuck deceased on it. Honestly hundreds of pages like an A3 kind of page in a ring binder and where he used to sign people in and out and in his nice writing exactly the same as if he had printed it and I had never thought no more of it and I wish I had said, “Can I have it?” because I probably could have had it which would have had all their names of all the people who attended, worked there. It would have been amazing wouldn’t it, you could have traced that, you could have used that. That was probably about 1986/87 I would have thought.
Anthony
Where were you living when you were working there?
Mark
I was born in Chase Farm Hospital but Mum and Dad lived Rendlesham Nurseries in a kind of a mobile home area and then we moved to Heath’s Close just off Churchbury Lane and then from there around about 1968 we moved to Dowland House in Forty Hill, Goat Lane and then I lived in Goat Lane the whole of my remembering kind of life and then from there for my first marriage I did move to Wormley and then I was travelling backwards and forwards to work from Wormley then we moved to Cheshunt and I was still travelling backwards and forwards. Enfield, majority of times; I think I moved about 1989 something like that to Wormley to Rochester Close in Wormley and then 1992 I do believe round the corner of Cliff Richard’s sister’s place, Bullwell Crescent, because she lived at the other end apparently and we lived at number 5. But I was travelling in and out to Brimsdown at that point.
Anthony
You said Foley’s Land Rovers kept their distance but they came and borrowed things from you, do you think companies knew each other better then?
Mark
Yes, more friendly, everyone would help each other. We actually stored their land rovers, there was a massive order that was not cancelled but it was postponed and they’d built something in the region of thirty Defender Safari things, all blue, and I remember the company name – Biwater Shellabear – that was the name on the side of the vehicles and they said “Can we store them all in your yard because we’ve no room in our area?” I said, “Yes, no problem,” so they did until they got them shipped out because they were going to South Africa, I believe. There was six wheeled land rovers, range rovers, and they’re still going today. Foley’s land rovers are still going today. I know Paul, Paul Foley was the son and he was only young and Peter Foley. Peter Foley was the main man and is apparently still alive and he lived in High Beach and his son took over the business and now Paul’s son has taken over the business and they’re still massive in land rovers. They built, believe it or not, they coach built the hearse for the Duke of Edinburgh. That hearse, they built for him. They did move to South Africa and they still had a kind of subsidiary over here but I think they now work direct from Horstead, I do believe, in Hertfordshire. They used to ship in, there used to be transporters backwards and forwards, their own guys transporting vehicles in different states of repair and they pulled them in, refurbed, fitted them for customized and off they go and they’re still doing that today. Left hand drive to right hand drive.
Anthony
A complex operation then.
Mark
Yes, totally. BIZ when they were next door to us, down in Millmarsh Lane, the architects and also the builders keen on knowing what was there because we’d seen it demolished and also when they built the new site there was a guy, George Riley his name was, and he had a land rover, funnily enough, and he was quite a hippie kind of guy but he was their caretaker so he was there 24/7 so if we was working or working weekends he come over all the time and we chatted and I actually went to different land rover events with him to off-roading and everything – we got really friendly and if we wanted to work because I actually had two light weight land rovers which I refurbed in Brimsdown and I wanted some welding done and some plates made and they done them for me. We used to do their cars as well, check them over for MOT, do the odd repair and for next to nothing because we had the ramp and the facilities and the expertise so we kind of helped each other do that. So in them days we knew everyone that worked there and we had real nice interaction with each other. It was friendly, in a sense it was like an extension of your own company and no-one needed to know anything because we was helping each other, so it was a nice atmosphere.
Anthony
Yes, I remember people coming over from Coca Cola who were just opposite us and the big British Telecomm factory opposite, there always seemed to be someone popping over to have a chat and if they could help then they would.
Mark
We were talking earlier about the kind of people who used to come in and out, BIZ wasn’t there at that point, it was a derelict area but when they came they were busier and the estate slowly but surely built up, then they built the new power station at the end, the gas fired turbine whatever it is – I remember them building that – that was constant dig, dig, dig, dig breaking up concrete; months and months and months of dust and that was an issue for us because we were preparing new vehicles – and used vehicles – but majority of new and you get them cleaned and then they’re covered in dust and my manager used to go pear shaped. There was dust in the air constantly so there wasn’t much we could do until it was actually built and they moved on. We never saw the cooling towers, that was all demolished I think about 1975. I remember someone saying to me, “Let’s go down and watch them on a bike,” and I said, “No, I can’t be bothered,” now I wish I had done. I wish I had gone to see that but I never saw them go, it’s a shame really.
Anthony
I used to love seeing them – steam coming out of them.
Mark
My Granddad, he used to go down to the River Lea and swim in the Lea where the water used to be pumped out because it used to be hot water, they used the water out of Lea to cool the whole system, the actual pipes are still there, not being used obviously it’s all gone but my Granddad used to go down and swim in the Lea when it was warm. The hot water being pumped out into the Lea. He was an Enfield lad from Lancaster Road, Walton Street just off Lancaster Road. Going back to trace my family tree, trying to find out who comes from where, and the Durham side comes from Rattlesden in Suffolk and the other side, Anderson side, came from Mileham in Norfolk, and that was the female, so she came down to work in service in Bush Hill Park, the Durham side came down to work on the railways to Chafford Hundred, Dagenham way, and he was the older brother, the younger brother came down to work with him, the railways extended through to Enfield, she’s living in Enfield, the younger brother ended up meeting her and they might have gone into the Athenaeum theatre to see a show or something, that’s what I quite like to think- especially when I used to work on the site as well. Anyway, they joined up, got married, produced my dad’s dad who produced my dad. So the Enfield line comes from Seven Kings. I can imagine them working on the trains and being more accessible to move to different areas because they are working on the trains so I can imagine that and the link-up to Windmill Hill area, the different lines. Maybe just my imagination but it is possible because he got to Enfield somehow so maybe it was that. They lived in Ebenezer Terrace which doesn’t exist any more, I think it was around the back of the one-way system in Enfield Town. Then eventually they moved to Sketty Road.
Anthony
I lived near there and went to George Spicer School when I was 4.
Mark
I went to George Spicer’s! That’s the first school I ever went to as a nursery/primary, I was very young when I went there too so you remember then as you go into the gates, the main gates at the back are not on Southbury Road end, on the left hand side you had the classrooms, I remember them well.
Anthony
I was in there, they had big pot bellied stoves.
Mark
I don’t remember the stoves but we had tons and tons of telephones, tons and tons of old fashioned bakerlite telephones we used to play with. That’s when we lived in Heath’s Close so we used to walk from Health’s Close, Mum dropped me off at school, I cried all day at George Spicer’s and she picked me up when I went home. I remember that really well, I must have been probably 4. You can generally remember from 3 years up and I remember going across from the main building and doing musical movement in the hall. I don’t remember any teachers’ names.
Anthony
Miss Tuck had probably retired before you joined possibly, she was the head mistress. Quite a formidable woman.
Mark
I can’t even picture any teachers. I remember a teacher trying to stop me from crying and drawing pictures and painting and that. and I remember sitting in the classroom on the left hand side, sitting cross legged with all the other children listening to a story before it was time to go home. I remember that because that used to be the end of the day, didn’t it. I remember a lot of snow at some point in time and then I’m sure round about 1968 we moved to Downham House and I remember leaving Heath’s Close and then – it must have been quite weird – because I don’t ever remember going to school from Downham House to George Spicer’s because I was just literally across the road to Worcester’s and I went to Worcester’s Primary. So I remember going there but I could have entered that further up the year perhaps but I don’t know. I remember going through primary there or however many years I was there and I remember going into the Juniors and I spent the whole of Juniors in Worcester’s and then I remember leaving on the last day and my first day at Chace Boys’. And meeting up with Ian Parker who I knew from Worcester’s and I remember my mum taking me virtually to the gate and I said, “I think I can go on my own now,” so I saw Ian and she said, “Go and say hello to him and go in with him,” which I did. That first week it poured with rain, absolutely torrential, so depressing, in a brand new school but anyway I loved it. I remember the teachers at Chace Boys’, one of the teachers in the Juniors was Mrs Park and Mrs Park actually taught my Mum because my Mum went to Worcester’s, my Mum was quite young when she had me and Mrs Park remembered my Mum. I remember going in to an open day and I was standing there listening to what she had to say, Mrs Park, and come out and my mum said, “Mrs Park used to teach me.” I didn’t know that! My mum lived Forty Hill, round by the “Goat”, because my Grandad, my Mum’s Dad, was in the Navy, so he was away a lot during the War, he was on the ships and my Nan was looking after my Aunt and my Mum and my Nan was Enfield born and bred, with about seven sisters, my other Nan was Enfield born and bred and my Granddad, on my Dad’s side of the family, was killed in 1941, and there’s a plaque in the post office in Enfield Town with his name on it; just as you come in in the corridor on the left hand side. Leslie William George Durham, the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and he was killed bordering Egypt and Libya in 1941, when my Dad was a year old. So my Dad never knew him but my Nan remarried, who I knew as my Granddad – Tom, Tom Colquit, he was from Cumberland and he was in the Middlesex Regiment and he wasn’t at D-Day but I think he was evacuated from Dunkirk and then he went back in and he was wounded at Anzio and I think carted off. He survived the War but carted off and I think – the trouble is these people are gone now and you can’t ask questions. You were too young when you hear all this kind of stuff really and one of is best mates got killed so he picked up a Bren gun and machined a machine gun post and then got shot, wounded, hit in the eye but basically it was a glancing blow which knocked him out and he survived but that was that side of it but my Dad’s dad didn’t survive and I did often wonder who got him, whether it was the Italians or the Germans because that was the time when the Italians were surrendering but the Panzers with Rommel were pushing further in and I think that push is when he was killed. He is buried out in Haldia Salon Cemetery. I’ve got a picture of the grave but I’ve never been there. It’s something I would like to do but you have to get an armed guard and everything, it’s not so easy. So he’s there but he was an Enfield lad because his Dad had gone over from Rattlesden, farm workers, labourers really.
Anthony
Going back to your Dad; did he have any stories from Ruberoid he used to tell you?
Mark
Not really, he was a bit of a rebel, my Dad; he was respectful but management was management and workers were workers in the old fashioned kind of feeling. So if there was a strike going on he would happily strike and have a go at management really. Where he used to kind of – I was a manager quite early on and he had that kind of thing saying to me, “Oh yeah, you’re all typical manager kind of talk,” you know? and I said, “No, you’ve got to respect that,” and he said, “No you bloody haven’t. You’ve got your own agenda,” and all that kind of stuff. He wasn’t as belligerent as I’m making him sound but he was a bit of a rebel. He was a 1960’s motorcyclist “rebel without a cause”; guy with the teddy boys and everything so he comes from that kind of feeling. Youngsters rebelling against society really although he wasn’t that bad. Other stories of Ruberoid? No, I don’t know really other than that. He used to cut the paper to size before they packed it and sent it away because you were saying about the waste paper.
Anthony
There was a big pit opposite Brimsdown station, sunk below the road and the waste paper used to pile up and that’s what they used to make the roofing felt.
Mark
He was trained, because he was quite a good handyman, he trained himself. He used to fix motorbike engines when he was a kid and fix televisions and washing machines, anything. I remember him taking the old valve televisions in our house, in the old days before colour television, he had a bag full of valves and in Mum and Dad’s bedroom he had old televisions that were part of the furniture, all made out of wood. The bottom telly was a stand, he had a telly on top of that, that used to have a picture so he’d get a telly out of that. He used to play about with a screwdriver and electrics, he did wonders in the home but he could have bloody killed himself. But going back to the Ruberoid part, he trained to torch on the roofing felt so they had exhibitions at the Ruberoid and he used to go to certain places and exhibit and show how easy it was to apply with a blow torch and whatever. He used to go and do that, he was quite happy to do that, he’d prefer that, he’d prefer the kind of hands-on type of approach than anything else. He wasn’t silly by no means but he would prefer rather that than an academic role. I think maybe that’s probably why he was not happy with management really because they could probably talk you round; he wasn’t really a talker; if someone tried to give him a little bit of flannel he’d walk away from it, he wouldn’t take it and I think that’s where he never had time for management because they would go round the houses before they actually get to the point and that wasn’t really him. He was a straight talking kind of guy.
The other one, my uncle, my Mum’s – after my Granddad left the Royal Navy he was at home in Goat Lane, how it happened I don’t know but he left and went with somebody else and my Nan was left on her own, she ended up going with Harry Hursey, and Harry worked in the boiler room at Ruberoid’s and he worked shifts and he was an ex-REMY guy and I didn’t know this until later on, but he was quite a straight kind of talker, probably like they all were really, he didn’t talk much but he kept himself to himself and my Mum obviously married, moved on, my Aunt got married, moved on, and Harry and Joan were living together and they ended up moving to a tied cottage in Theobald’s Estate and Bull’s Cross Ride which is a private estate and there used to be a dairy farm up there and Mrs Hamilton-Hill was living with her husband and she wasn’t British, she was German, but he was I think, he was English but maybe he wasn’t, maybe he was German I don’t know, but he was in the legal profession and they owned a lot of the estate, there was a lot of money involved. They even had Harrod’s delivering food to the farmhouse and they owned the dairy farm and my Nan lived in a little tied cottage on the right had side as you go up, opposite the stud, opposite the Glasgow Stud so she knew the person Ham, I think his name was and the house opposite was where she lived, in that cottage. I remember going up to the farm to get a little pail of milk, all free, the cows used to go backwards and forwards for milking and it was a wonderful life. My Nan used to clean for Mrs Hamilton-Hill and, she wasn’t there at one point and I remember going in there, in the barn, and under the barn there was this car covered up. So me and me Dad was in there looking, opened it up and it was a hand built Bristol. A hand built Bristol! Just sitting there. In those days you didn’t have a problem with drinking and driving and she used to like a tipple and she used to go out in this and, where she got a drink I don’t know, but she’d come back pie-eyed driving, sort of almost going down the ditches.
My Uncle Harry, I called him Uncle Harry, he still worked at Brimsdown, at the Ruberoid, because I’m talking of early to mid seventies really and he also kind of a caretaker at the site so he used to do all the wood chopping and logging up and maintaining fences so he did that as well as working at the Ruberoid. I think that’s how they managed to stay in the tied cottage because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to; I think you’ve got to work on the estate to be able to live in the estate. I assume like going back hundreds of years. So my Nan cleaned for her and he did all the maintenance and the repairs. He had a shot gun and used to go and keep the vermin down and all that kind of stuff. In a sense that wasn’t too long ago but it was quite old fashioned and it was early seventies to I think they moved about 1977, to Wormley which is quite weird because I ended living up that way as well. He retired from the Ruberoid and passed away and then my Nan passed away. He passed around about 1998 and I think her in 1999, so that’s what happened. I never had stories from him but I know it was hard work and he used to go up on his little pop-pop he called it, little 50 cc moped, backwards and forwards all the way from Bull’s Cross all the way down to Brimsdown and the North-South route wasn’t there then in them days so I assume he went down the Hertford Road, down Brimsdown Avenue, over the level crossing and that way or maybe down Ordnance Road, I don’t know.
Anthony
It’s interesting, you say it’s old fashioned; I hadn’t looked at it like that but it wasn’t so long ago but it was coming out of the feudal, old fashioned time wasn’t it? There’s been a massive change since then.
Mark
I’ve just thought of a story – my Granddad – this about the Rolling Mills – going back to my Granddad who was in the Royal Navy, I’ll just quickly say about the Royal Navy, I used to say to my Granddad, “What was the War like, Granddad?” and he said, “I had the time of my life,” he said, “it was really good”. I said, “What do you mean? People died and that,” and he said, “Yes, you see that kind of stuff but I was so lucky,” He said, “We did jungle warfare training and everything. We had the life of Riley. The ship went either just after action had happened or it left just before it was going to happen, so we was missing it all over the place.” I don’t ever remember what kind of ship he was on; it was a Royal Navy frigate or something, a destroyer maybe, but I don’t remember and sadly he’s no longer with us but he was a typical Navy man. His dad, Fred Williams, I remember Fred – I don’t know if he served in the First World War but he was as deaf as a post, big, big, bald-headed guy, my Great Granddad and he lived at Brigadier Hill because that’s where my Mum’s side of the family were. They’ve got a big plot in Lavender Hill Cemetery. Anyway, he used to work on the steam cranes down at the Rolling Mills and he met his wife down Flash Lane, I’m splitting about here because if I don’t say it I’m going to forget it, so he met his wife down Flash Lane, my Granddad’s Mum. They were picking blackberries and that’s how they met and got together and ended up getting married. They were quite feisty, I suppose in them days they were, you know just the end of the Victorian Age I suppose and in Enfield if you wasn’t aristocracy, you was working class so you just put the effort in and you didn’t have a lot. So therefore he worked in the Rolling Mills on steam cranes, shifting stuff backwards and forwards and in them days they used to cycle to work, no cars, and from Brigadier Hill he used to cycle down Southbury Road all the way to the “Greyhound” which is at the bottom where the Royal Small Arms people used to drink as well, it’s only up the road really from the Rolling Mills, so he cycled to there, got pie eyed, cycled all the way, got to Southbury Road, got caught in the tram lines and fell over and broke his bike, So – what was her name? I’ll say Nelly but it wasn’t Nelly, anyway I might remember it in a minute, she’s waiting and waiting and waiting for him to get home, no ‘phones in them days, he got home quite late, completely covered in rubbish and she really tore into him but he was pie eyed and he got caught in a tramline and fell over. My Granddad told me that story.
Another story was same couple, the Holly Bush on the corner of Lancaster Road, Sunday dinner was ready and the wife come walking down the hill with Fred’s Sunday dinner to the pub because she was really annoyed that he’d not come home for his dinner, got into the pub and he turned round to her and said, “Woman! They’ll be two hits! Me hitting you and you hitting the floor! Take that dinner back home!” I can’t remember no more but I remember that.
It’s all Enfield based with the Renault side of it, we were bought out back in 2000 by Renault UK, my position was made redundant, they sold the site to Old Oak Motor Company, they did actually own that site, bought it off the power station whoever that was and I ended up doing other things but good times down there. Good times. Brimsdown was a very vibrant area.
Anthony
There were a lot of social clubs and dance clubs and sports clubs.
Mark
Yes, I never really had anything to do with any of the areas down there. There was a snooker club as well. The old Pumping Station ended up as the Palladium Nightclub, didn’t it, I remember that actually becoming the Palladium Nightclub. It’s now the Navigation Inn, it was a kind of Beefeater.
Anthony
Well, I think we need to stop now. Thank you very much. It’s been very interesting.