was born in Gough Road, Enfield in 1940 during the War on a Monday morning at 9am. Her Godmother, who lived next door, was upset when the midwife arrived as she nearly delivered me. They moved to Chase Side when she was three where her father set up his own business [ Delta Electrical]. He set up on his own because her mother was ill and they had no money for the Doctor. He was an auxillary fireman during the War and had to go into London and served all during the Blitz. The smoke and dust ruined his health and he had lung problems all his life. He always supported the Salvation Army as he said they were always there with tea and sandwiches while the bombs were still dropping.
Her first school was Chase Side Infant and Junior School, taking herself to and from school something that would not be allowed today. Peggy passed the 11 plus and went onto Enfield County School until s 16 when she left and went to work in the National Provincial Bank in Bishopsgate. That was when there were still had steam trains; off they went little white gloves that were not so white when they arrived. She worked locally for a few years but when married moved for a while to Norwich where her husband was in the RAF, stationed at Horsham St Faith, which is now Norwich Airport.
Peggy came back to Enfield and had two children living at first with Mother-in-Law then in yheir own house.
After divorcing she became a spiritual healer and Medium and still healing at the Beacon of Light church but is no longer a medium.
Interview of Peggy Walker by Anthony Fisher
Anthony Fisher interviewing Peggy Walker on 27th July, 2023 transcribed by Valerie Fisher
Anthony
Tell me where you were born.
Peggy
No 7 Gough Road in Enfield, next door to Mrs Wright who was my godmother.
Anthony
That’s the other side of the A10 isn’t it?
Peggy
Yes, near Bishop’s Stopford School, back of Goray’s. Well, Goray’s isn’t there now.
Anthony
Do you mind telling me when you were born?
Peggy
I was born on 27th May, 1940, at 9 o’clock on a Monday morning.
Anthony
I know you moved to Chase Side, Enfield, when was that?
Peggy
When I was 3. I can remember bits about the War because I was a War baby. Mum used to say they’d lie in bed and count the ‘planes out from North Weald and then count them back in to see if they all got back safely.
Anthony
Good Lord. And she could tell where they were coming from?
Peggy
Well, yes, North Weald Aerodrome.
Anthony
So where did you go to school?
Peggy
Chase Side Primary School, first of all it was all girls and then when I was in the juniors it became mixed and I can remember my first day at school.
Anthony
As an infant?
Peggy
Yes, and after lunch – they had these like oval mats, like those very hard ones, we used to have to lie on the floor and have a little sleep. And there was a big dolls’ house in one corner and I used to take myself there when I was in the infants. People wouldn’t do that nowadays, would they? Times were very different.
Anthony
Did you have to take the 11+?
Peggy
Yes and I passed and went to Enfield County School.
Anthony
And you stayed until when?
Peggy
The 5th form; I didn’t go into the 6th form.
Anthony
So you took O Levels?
Peggy
Yes and I only got two, English Literature and Art. Now I was in the bottom division always in Maths and I spent my whole working life – well, I started off in a bank – my whole working life in accounts. So it means nothing.
Anthony
So you left the County School at the end of the 5th year when you were 16?
Peggy
Yes, you couldn’t leave a grammar school before you were 16 in those days and I worked in the National Provincial Bank in Bishopsgate when it was the steam trains. Good times I had there.
Anthony
Bishopsgate was the original destination from Enfield Town and then it was Liverpool Street.
Peggy
It stopped at Liverpool Street and then you had to walk down Bishopsgate; only five minutes walk. There were three of us, me and a couple of friends, and we all went to different banks. We all went into banks but different ones and my friend Sheila was in the Westminster Bank and then, of course, it became the National Westminster when it amalgamated with the National Provincial.
Anthony
How did you get the job in the bank?
Peggy
I don’t remember, I must have applied for it. They did come round the school, maybe it was that. I don’t know.
Anthony
How long were you there?
Peggy
I went there when I was 16, I was 19 when I got married so probably two maybe three years and then I got fed up with travelling and wanted to work locally. When I got married we moved to Norwich because Don was in the RAF we lived up there for a while. He had been allowed to delay his two years National Service until he finished his apprenticeship which wasn’t until he was 26 but then he had to do it. Horsham St Faith which is now Norwich Air Port and then, of course, all the Yanks were up there as well and there was Coltishall where the Black Arrows were – they came before the Red Arrows – and the Black Arrows were in Coltishall. There was always fights between the Yanks and the English boys because they had the money, didn’t they, and of course the girls wanted to go out with them.
Anthony
Did you ever go out with an American?
Peggy
I was married! I don’t think that would have gone down very well. Then I came home to Enfield. At that time we lived with my mother-in-law. We converted two rooms upstairs in her house in Kynaston Road; we had a kitchen and a bedsit. Tracy was born there, the only time I ever saw my mother-in-law cry when Tracy was born; then we moved to Layard Road and from Layard Road we went to Inverness Avenue.
Anthony
Layard Road is by the Spiritualist Church isn’t it?
Peggy
Yes, but I never went to the church at that time. Terry was born in Inverness Avenue. I never went near the Church apart from walking past it.
Anthony
So when did you start work again?
Peggy
When Terry was four and a half.
Anthony
So quite a few years.
Peggy
I didn’t work for four, maybe five years. So when I got my pension I could claim off Don’s for those five years because I paid a full stamp.
Anthony
What was your first job after you had the children?
Peggy
It would have been temping. I was with Mrs Murray at the Central Staff Bureau in Palace Gardens. In the end I used to go six months at Reeves, cross the road, six months at Grant’s of St James’s, then I’d go back to Reeves, then Grant’s of St James’s and then finally I landed up at IFF (International Flavours and Fragrances).
Anthony
Grant’s of St James’s were a drinks importer weren’t they?
Peggy
Yes.
Anthony
I didn’t know they were in Enfield.
Peggy
Well they’re not there any more but I was there for years, backwards and forwards.
Anthony
Reeves made artists’ materials, is that right?
Peggy
Yes, that’s why the kids always had those paints and various things. Didn’t get any drink from Grant’s of St James’s though. Then I was at IFF for about five years all told, I think. Then I was made redundant. I was made redundant three times. My brother, Joe, reckoned I was making a career of it.
Anthony
What did you do at Reeves?
Peggy
I was in the office.
Anthony
Did you ever go into the factory?
Peggy
No, I’ve never worked in a factory. I did a couple of times work in a kitchen, washing up, peeling potatoes, mopping the floor, but mainly I did office work.
Anthony
Did the factory staff and the office staff at Reeves mix socially or otherwise?
Peggy
Not a lot. When I got married, when I was at Universal Postage Frankers, I was in the office and Dickie – Dickie Holmes who was married to Shirley – he was in the factory but we didn’t know each other even though we worked in the same firm for ages.
Anthony
So where was the Franking business?
Peggy
Down the Angel Road in Edmonton. I don’t think that site is even there any more. We were by the railway.
Anthony
Did you know the owners or the bosses?
Peggy
No! They didn’t mix with us. I think they’ve rebuilt the Angel Road, haven’t they, years ago.
Anthony
They have.
Peggy
I never, ever, worked in Brimsdown when I was temping. There were so many factories, weren’t there.
Anthony
The problem with Brimsdown was getting there, it was isolated; no roads in and out.
Peggy
Mainly I worked in Enfield, Southbury Road and the A10. I worked at Spears office which was in Bovril House, that’s where I got my Scrabble. I landed up in Bovril House at one time until they discovered asbestos. We were in the building and they had been drilling underneath us or on the floor above and you’d be sitting there (imitates vibrating) with all the asbestos flying in the air. Health and Safety wouldn’t allow that now, would they, but that was when we moved into the offices on the other side of the New River to Bovril House. I was there until I was redundant from there and from there I went to T.I. and I was there, I think, about sixteen years.
Anthony
I am particularly interested in I.F.F. They did perfumes and flavours, didn’t they?
Peggy
That was down Crown Road, we did the perfumes. The flavours were at Haverhill.
Anthony
So when did you move to I.F.F.?
Peggy
It must have been when I finished at Reeves and Grant’s, about 1974/75 I suppose. I mean, we went where Mrs Murray sent us. I was there for about five years. I went as a temp and then I joined permanently. Once I got divorced then I didn’t temp any more because I had to put the bread on the table. And several of the men, I heard afterwards, got cancer of the stomach which could have been because of the chemicals and then they ate their lunch I suppose.
Anthony
Yes, a lot of chemicals are quite dangerous, In fact, you can’t use them any more for perfumes.
Peggy
We did a lot for Dior; I usually did Sales ledger but I might have been Bought ledger there and
I never ever did wages. I did a lot of Sales ledger or Bought ledger but never wages.
Anthony
Did the office staff and factory staff mix at all?
Peggy
Not to any great extent. There was s social club which always surprised me because they could go there at lunchtime and have a drink and then they’d be working on machines in the afternoons. But to a certain extent you did mix – you knew who they were and if your job was going into the factory you would know the fellows you were working with but we didn’t really mix.
Anthony
I’m interested because the company I was with then would have been buying perfumes from I.F.F.
Peggy
Being an American firm they wanted their pound of flesh but we did have two bonuses a year, one in the summer and one at Christmas and I remember the year Don went, so I was then a single parent, they gave me a turkey and some fruit thing that came from Haverhill where the flavours were. I think it’s still there. And then I was redundant from there because they went to Drogheda in Ireland on some tax thing they got if they took the factory there and we were all redundant. But they were long hours though and I see it with my son-in-law – he works for an American firm – and they really want work so by the time they are 40 they are burnt out. They paid well and you got good bonuses but they wanted a lot in return. That’s one thing about Mrs Murray, notorious as she was, but she kept you in work. I don’t even know if you can temp nowadays.
Anthony
We use a lot of temps but mainly in the factory but also occasionally in the office. Bovril, where you worked, was an administrative office, no manufacturing in Enfield.
Peggy
No. I did hear that Unilever seemed to own Bovril now. I became notorious there I was in Stock Control and I was there by myself, doing all these things, and this bloke said he wanted all these figures and he wanted them by midday and I said, “I can’t do it.” and it went round head office that I’d refused. Well you can’t, I was only one person, so that didn’t go down very well. I wasn’t that happy at Bovril but you can’t like them all, can you?
Anthony
You were made redundant from there?
Peggy
We all were, they closed the Enfield site.
Anthony
And you then moved to Powerflex?
Peggy
No it was T.I. then, down South Street on the site of the place where they made black dye before.
Anthony
So the site T.I. were in was the site of an old dye manufacturer?
Peggy
Yes. We had a Bean tree there – there’s a block of flats there now – but they were not allowed to cut the Bean tree down because it was protected. We were T.I. for quite a while but then we became Powerflex.
Anthony
When did you go to T.I.?
Peggy
About 1985, and I was there until 2000. It was funny, they made me redundant but because of the laws of the time and the fact that our personnel man – when I was in South Street they moved to Waltham Cross – but they had very very good redundancy packages and we were told that if we went to the Cross we would have the same package. And then when we went to the Cross and we were going to be made redundant this man – I won’t give his name – that’s the only time in my life I’ve been in a union and nearly came out on strike – they tried to back down on the agreement that they’d given us but they couldn’t because Robin had tied it up so tight and this particular man – they just made a line of managers redundant – and the men in the factory were jubilant because he’d gone before they did. But there you are, that’s what you get when you try to stab people in the back.
Anthony
So T.I. manufactured in South Street as well as being an admin office?
Peggy
Oh yes, yes. And we also made catalytic converters.
Anthony
I didn’t know that. Did you buy the catalysts from Johnson Mathey, do you know?
Peggy
I really wouldn’t know because that was a different part of the firm. But then we all went to Waltham Cross and they carried on manufacturing there, where Tesco’s is now as you come into the Cross.
Anthony
Did they make catalytic converters as well there?
Peggy
Yes.
Anthony
I suspect you bought the converters from Johnson Mathey because there are in Enfield and it’s something they specialise in manufacturing.
Peggy
And they also made that tube stuff that used to be put up chimneys.
Anthony
Chimney liners?
Peggy
Yes, it has a special name that I cannot remember now, it’s like a special metal tube.
Anthony
A corrugated, flexible tube, wasn’t it.
Peggy
Do you remember that little man I gave you that’s all made of tube? They were going to throw him out and I thought, “That’s history”. When you were temping you could be there two days or you could be there for a year. If the work was good, the people were not always nice but if the people were really nice then the work could be really boring. The only job I refused to go back to was at Belling’s because there was Belling and Belling& Lee but this was Belling’s on the corner of the A10. Well, it was interesting because you met a lot of people and especially at Reeves and I remained friends with people that I’d met.
Anthony
Why did you leave Powerflex?
Peggy
I was redundant.
Anthony
Was that because they shut down? As you say, there’s Tesco’s there now.
Peggy
It was funny because I was Nigel’s – he was the managing director – secretary and I knew I was on the list because when he came in he wouldn’t look at me. Mind you, it did me a favour because they’d changed the laws that you had to have the pension from 60 whereas it went up after that but I just came in that I could get my pension and also redundancy which was very handy because it gave me a little nest egg. I was quite happy there, especially down South Street, I worked with such a brilliant lot of people there.
Anthony
So you liked it because of the people there?
Peggy
Yes. I was doing export there which is quite interesting. And because you know they were an international company so there were divisions everywhere, the only one we had trouble with was France. It’s funny because I had no intentions of going to this interview and Nigel – my boss – was in this office and it had a big window and evidently all the people that had been interviewed were turned down but when I was interviewed I got the thumbs up so I got the job.
Anthony
You lived in west Enfield and T.I. and Powerflex were in east Enfield, were you perceived differently by your colleagues because of that?
Peggy
West Enfield? No, why should I be?
Anthony
Someone else I was interviewing said that because she lived in Chase Side and worked for Ford’s her colleagues thought she was posh because she came from west Enfield.
Peggy
No. Was there a Ford’s in Enfield?
Anthony
Autolite right at the end of South Street.
Peggy
I know we were told that Alma Road was the most dangerous road in London but it’s all built up now, isn’t it.
Anthony
There are still some businesses at the end. So when you were redundant from Powerflex because they moved out of Enfield, what did you do then?
Peggy
I retired and then I came and worked at Fisher Research for about nine years. That’s the only time I worked in Brimsdown because I always refused to work in Brimsdown.
Anthony
And I know that there you mixed with the people in the factory as well as the office.
Peggy
Oh definitely, yes.
Anthony
It’s a small company, did that seem different from working for a big company?
Peggy
Yes, because mainly I had worked for big international companies, not all of them. I remember one place I worked, I can’t remember the name, and we were next to Chubby Chickens and on a Friday we were allowed to go and buy these chubby chickens, cheap. And when I was at Bovril we used to have tins and tins of rice pudding and sago and semolina. You could get Bovril but you couldn’t get Marmite, very difficult to get Marmite.
Anthony
The Chubby Chickens, what sort of company was that?
Peggy
It was the company next door but for some reason, we were in the same building, and we were allowed to buy the chickens.
Anthony
Fresh chickens?
Peggy
No.
Anthony
What, cooked?
Peggy
No, no, no, raw like you’d get in the supermarket. They were a wholesaler on the A10 near Thorns would have been. That’s where Terry did his apprenticeship in Thorn’s on the A10. I also worked for Matchbox Toys which was where the tower block is now in Roman Way on the A10. They made little cars. You name it, I’ve worked there. Actually, it wasn’t Matchbox it was Lesney’s.
Anthony
It was someone who worked for Matchbox who set up another company.
Peggy
We weren’t allowed to buy the toys. I think mainly I’ve spent my life in – before I went to I.F.F. – in Grant’s of St James’s and Reeves. I have worked for smaller companies, as well as large ones, although Powerflex was an international company the actual building wasn’t that big.
Anthony
Where did they make the tubing then?
Peggy
In the factory.
Anthony
In the building next door?
Peggy
No, where Tesco’s is they were downstairs and we were upstairs.
Anthony
It must have been noisy.
Peggy
I remember we had this – it was the same bloke who tried to sell us down stream – allowed men to have these totally obscene calendars, the women didn’t like it, so I remember I got one and took it in the kitchen and threw it in a bin where the tea bags were and he complained and told me to go and get it. I said, “You want it, you can go and get it yourself,” by which time it was all covered in teabag. That was not on, was it? The women all complained but he said well, the men like it. Well, perhaps they do but –
Anthony
That certainly doesn’t happen today.
Peggy
No and it shouldn’t have happened then but you meet some nice people and some not very nice people. It was such a long time ago. Terry’s 58 now and he was four and a half when I first started. I think that was down Queensway. I worked at the college for a while, the Enfield Technical College.
Anthony
That’s where I studied chemistry.
Peggy
I worked in the office there for a while. I used to finish about 3 p.m. because Terry was only little. I worked full hours after Don went and Terry was 12 then. A lot of us only worked in school hours, we didn’t work in the holidays. Things are different now, there’s not the factories. Margaret Thatcher got rid of them, didn’t she. There were factories from the Halfway House right the way down the A10 past Lincoln Road where Thorn’s was. There were factories down the bottom half of Southbury Road. Ruberoid was another one wasn’t it.
Anthony
It was; they went up to Manchester.
Peggy
I think Reeves went somewhere up north. They were taken over by, I think, Newton’s. Reeves was actually a good place to work for, I enjoyed it at Reeves. Grants of St James’s was a laugh.
Anthony
I’d forgotten they were there. They imported wines and spirits and distributed it to off licences and to restaurants, I suppose.
Peggy
In that firm I was in Sales but sometimes I used to go and have to help in these things where, like, you put this thing in the machine and stamped it down and it would print out the name of a drink so you were always taking them out and putting them in and it used to make my shoulder hurt. That was printed off an order list. It was quite good because we used to have – what was the name of that club that used to be down where the school is now? There was a nightclub there wasn’t there, where the cinema is now on the crossroads? It was the Starlight Rooms.
Anthony
Yes, I remember now, I’ve been there once or twice.
Peggy
Yes, our Christmas party was at the Starlight Rooms where you had a dinner and a dance
and I remember one year – well, luckily I didn’t have whatever it was – they were all in the loo with food poisoning. All the people who had that particular starter. I don’t think we went there after. We went there a couple of times in the evening because they used to have stars there, didn’t they. I know they had Peters and Lee, they were there.
Anthony
I went there for a party once.
Peggy
It was a nice place.
Anthony
They knocked it down when they developed the Leisure Centre and put the cinema there.
Peggy
It’s brought back a lot of memories. Well, some weren’t very nice but , on the whole, they were good crowds.
Anthony
And you kept bread on the table.
Peggy
Mrs Murray of Central Staff Bureau did keep you in work, it’s a shame that all these factories aren’t there now.
Anthony
It is a shame. They’ve been replaced by film studios and warehouses. Enfield has changed, they’ll still be a lot of jobs but they won’t be the same now.
Thank you very much indeed.