Crier Profile - Margaret Tattman
Margaret Tattman is one of the last two of the Land Army girls still living in the village. In this, the first instalment of a two-part profile, Margaret tells us about life as the daughter of a Chesterfield miner who looked after pit-ponies, composed music, grew "chrysanths" and whose award winning band played at the Princess Royal's wedding.
WHEN I LEFT HOME I were seventeen. That was it. I came here, New year's Day 1945, there were twelve of us came: thought I'd come to - Oh God, I wished I'd gone to munitions now, at least I'd have gone home! Got there and I remember us tea was a bit of spamand half a tomato and a bit of lettuce and a bit of bread and butter and that was us tea, and we'd been coming all day from Chesterfield and we didn't come direct - we'd had nothing to eat! We was too excited in us uniform. They were hand-made, they were beautiful. (Margaret has a framed photo of herself in uniform) I look at that with many regrets - see, we had some Italian prisoners of war lived down Station Road in a wooden hut, about thirty of Ôem, and they used to make spitfires out of a penny. That spitfire is on the lapel of my jacket. How I regret not looking after it. Fantastic, making a spitfire out of a big old penny.
When I left school at 14, I went into bespoke tailoring - which my mother went and got, and tookme the firstmorning I went to work, much to my disgust: but you did as you were told, evenwhen you were 14. But I didn't like it. A penny farthing an hour! I worked from 8 till 6 at 14...like something out of Dickens...The boss that always seem to be looking over his glasses at you...I became a buttonhole machinist but I kept putting buttonholes in t'wrong place so..I went to Robinson's, big factory in Chesterfield. My friend went in t'weaving shed and I went into the antiseptic department, we did all the pink lint and aquaflavin for the Navy.We used to put little notes in - but we never did get a response! Then last year of t'war I was informed I'd either got to go in munitions or Land Army.. I wanted to fly me wings a bit, never been allowed to flutter your wings a bit, y'know, freedom, so I thought, here's your chance. Never been out of Chesterfield...there'd been six years of war, there were no lights, and you were protected...cause the paratroops were stationed in Hardwick Hall - well, I could see that through my bedroomwindow, but when they kept bringing more dirt out of the pits, it blocked the view...Pit me dad worked at was Hardwick pit.
My dad were a miner from when he were about thirteen. Went down with his dad. Used to look after ponies. People used to think they were treated badly but they weren't. All right, maybe people in this area would think, pulling tubs of coal - but horses used to pull a beer, and a ton of coal I mean...that's how we used to have all our coal delivered! They used to fetch them up on a weekend. We always run home on a Friday night, watch them as they brought them up. Men used to fetch the canaries home too - they'd all be in a row, like Coronation Street, all these canaries in cages, hung on a nail on t'hook.
When I was a kid, I always dreaded seeing t'ambulance outside door when I went home and it was there one day - he'd had his hand smashed with two tubs of coal run away, smashed his hand - no compensation, nothing, in them days.
I would have thought my dad, being what he'd been through in the General Strike, he would have been red hot Labour but he wrote a book, which we found, but he didn't finish it because he went blind - Looking Back - from being a little boy, going to school with a satchel and a slate on his shoulder. And he had no political views whatsoever. He's not here now, so I can't ask him why he hadn't got any political views. I don't know.
Me mam didn't come to see me off Only me dad, come out of pit. Me mam didn't want to know. I wasn't contributing hardly anything to the house, which shouldn't be expected, not when you earn that little. I never remember my mam kissing me, and if you tried to kiss her, she'd turn away. She was the youngest of thirteen, and her mother died when she was twelve...so we've tried to look back and think, did it stem from then? She went in service in Nottingham when she was thirteen, so maybe she was a very bitter lady. She wouldn't sit and talk to you like my daughter, cause my son in law says, oh, not you two again at it - Ann says, if I don't ask when me mam's here, I won't know! Same as my other sister, her young man, they were a family that always stood on market, with fruit and veg. Nothing wrong with that, they were earning a living, but he used to what we'd call hawk - he'd come with a van, and as soon as me mother heard heard him come up jenal - you know what a jenal is? There were so many houses, then a passageway, and they called it a jenal. Soon as me mam heard Stan, she'd go in and shut t'door. It was beneath our mother for Mavis to marry someone that stood on market. She got pregnant and she left home, and I got pregnant, so there was all this fuss Mavis being only nineteen and I was twenty. We didn't want that. And our other sister, Lorna, she lived with me mam and dad for a while. Her husband worked down t'mine, a pit rescuer and electrician. They went to live in another mining village, Doe Lea, about ten minutes away. Well, it had a reputation. It was in a hole and all the houses went up the hill in rows. Well, of course it were dirty - where I lived it were dirty. Couldn't be any other wi't mines, could it? But my mother was disgusted that our Lorna was going to live at Doe Lea.
Everywhere round us was filthy, it was only our mothers that kept it clean, rubbing stone steps, and do all the grates round wi't donkey-stone, off rag and bone man. They all wore apronmade out of a sack when they were doing steps and grates. You could have eaten out of 'em. She'd had a hard life, but we couldn't help that though.
My dad always had a greenhouse with chrysanths, cause miners always grew chrysanths. Didn't bother about growing anything to eat, as long as they'd got the chrysanths. He'd put his arms round me and he'd say, You're best of t'lot, lass. That's what he'd always say to me. Somebody'd put some new windows in and he'd take the glass and made a greehouse, grew tomatoes. He smoked and I smoked, and I put this cigarette out, so I thought, but I hadn't and there was this old sack beneath the bench (he had a coal fire, so we had tomatoes at Christmas!) and the fumes from the sack killed all his tomato plants. Used to call Ôem Swaffham flips, because I used to smoke a bit then put Ôem out. He was a lovely man. To have all that talent, and it be wasted. I used to have a little blue card, and it was a miniature of me dad on't front with trombone. And he won about twenty-eight gold and silver medals but we never ever sawthemedals so I reckon that hemust have sold them. They used to go to Belle Vue, they used to go to London, to band contests and all that. Fantastic man. But he said, he was born too soon. But he did have the pleasure of playing at the Princess Royal's wedding, at the Ôcrooked spire' in Chesterfield, the old Princess Royal. She was a bit staid, like old Queen Mary, the older generation. This book that he wrote, lots of people in the village have read it, the old lady at number six, she couldn't stop reading it, till two in the morning. But he never mentioned us, he never mentioned me mam. But he was blind for about four years. He just went to bed out of way. He was a proud man, a bitter man. He wasn't having people seeing him fumble about, couldn't write his music any more. So he just went to bed. He wrote a score for Burwell Band. In the band that me dad ran there were three brothers called Forbert, and he wrote a piece of music, and he called it The Forbert Brothers. After he died, one of them came to see if me mam had found it, but it was all gone. See, it could have been up in band room. They had a band roomover the pub, the way they used to. And he could do the other writing, copperplate. I mean, he only went to school till he were thirteen. You either got it or you haven't. I couldn't read music at school. Wouldn't go in.
There was three girls and one boy - I was the youngest, there were nine years between. My oldest sister died last year at Doncaster, that's all was left of my maiden name, Roughton.
I didn't go to work till 1962, for Pye's in Cambridge, till 1987, when it were Philips at the end. I loved every year of it until the last two when they went like the Japanese. Flowline, you did something for a minute then passed it - bored you to tears. Much better when you made an article yourself. It wasn't progress, because there were more mistakes than there was if you made the whole set, because they knew who'd done it...all the walkie talkies the police've got - printed circuit boards, no bigger than a stamp...then came the robots, we had a robot cut the components then. I finished when it were me 60th birthday, July the 19th 1987, and then my mam died a fortnight before I retired... then I used to go cleaning, 3 shillings an hour; I used to go to Mr & Mrs Norris, I went to Bowden's the vet down here, I went for Doctor Weeks that lived in the White House. And when it were potato season, that were 19 bob a day. You were home at two o'clock, before the kiddies came home...and I used to bike to Fordham, picking flowers. They don't seem to grow the flowers now, they're all imported.
The breweries, they wouldn't spend the money in those days, on the pubs, after the war. The Rose & Crown, same as the Cock. During t'war you couldn't get in any of the pubs there was so many soldiers and air force. About 500 Belgian Air Force boys at Bottisham - of course, they all used to come because there was sixty girls, and if they wanted to go to toilet sometimes they couldn't get out of door so they used to get out of t'window...and that's when they made their business, these pubs, but after that there were nothing. There's a lot more people in this village thanwhat there were...
Me dad said, don't do what other people do, it's weakness. But the other 59 were going so I went with them!We used to get a gallon of beer, I think, for about half a crown, in a white jug. And that's how we..I mean, I'd never had beer in me life! That was taboo. You might get a drop of raisin wine at Christmas, at home, but me mother thought pubs were dreadful. I always remember she come to Cambridge, and she didn't like heat...she wanted to go to t'botanical gardens so I took her, with a big umbrella held over her; then we come back into town and I said, well what do you want to do? And she said can we go somewhere where it's not hot? And there used to be a reputable pub at the side of Victoria Cinema, and it was underground, you went down stairs at side of cinema. Course,when we got down there, it was a gay pub - well, my mother...! But anyway, she did stop down there and have a shandy because she was glad that she could go somewhere cool. I can't remember the name of it but it was a gay pub and I'm going back 60 year ago! I forgot the name. I bet Sid would know. Not that he used it!