18 Hemingford Road, Pretoria Terrace, Cambridge

History of 18 Hemingford Road

1895 garden

1904 H J Holder

In 1901 the Holder’s were living in Argyle Street. Harrison’s father was one of the first generation of railway men, working for GER as a shunter, yard foreman and then fireman porter. Three of Harrison’s five brothers also joined GER. Harrison worked at the signal box at Mill Road and later at Barnwell Junction. He would walk to work. The shifts were 6.00-14.00 or 14.00-22.00. His daughter Jean recalled: As a child, I used to walk across Coldhams Common, to visit him in the Signal Box – don’t tell British Rail this will you! And he had a billycan of tea, which he warmed upon the fire in the signal box, and we used to make toast. And he used to let me ding the bells.

The couple had a second child Leonard but Thyriza died leaving Harrison with two children to look after.

1911

Harrison J Holder. signalman, 36, b Cambridge

Thyrza, 37, b London

Harold J, 10, b Cambridge

Leonard A, 3, b Cambridge

1913

Harrison John Holder, signalman

1916 Harrison remarried to Ada Thurley née Lanks. The Lanks family lived in Belgrave Road. Ada’s first husband Philip, a carpenter, had died in 1911. Ada and Harrison lived at no.18 for five yeras. Then, three weeks after giving birth to a daughter, Ada died. Harrison now had four children to look after, two from his first marriage, Ada’s step daughter, and their new baby.

The baby was looked after by her mother’s sister, Mrs Sanders, who lived at 48 Hemingford Road.  Harrison employed various housekeepers and then married again in 1924, a Miss Brown, whose father became station master at Woburn Sands.

Jean recalls the house. The front room was only used on a Sunday when friends and relatives came round for tea. It smelled musty; there was a piano and on Sunday nights there was a sing song. However Jean in the 1903s wasn’t impressed: I’d much rather go to tea to the Hibbins family across the road 9No 23). Because they weren’t Churchy. And they had fish paste for tea. And also they were allowed to listen to Radion Luxembourg.

The kitchen was a small room with no table; there was an old gas cooker, a very small sink in the corner with only a cold tap, and a ‘Copper’ in the corner. The ‘copper’ was lit on Mondays for the weekly wash and again on Friday for bath night when the tin bath was brought into the kitchen from the shed. Everyone shared the same water and the youngest went first. “Then came the does of Syrup of Figs. My sister by this time was at work. And she used to bring me a cream walnut as a treat, to eat after the syrup of figs.”

Harrison washed and shaved at the kitchen sink. It was the only sink in the house, and everything happened at the sink in the kitchen. As there was no bathroom, so the kitchen served as the bathroom.

You had to go outside to get to the toilet. “And if you wanted to go in th night – gazunders! As we called them – “goes under the bed.”

Most houses in inter-war Romsey were lit by gas, but because Harrison’s eldest son Harold worked for the Electricity Board, no18 was one of the first to be converted to electricity. No.48 was still using gas in 1945.

Jean recalls in the 1920s: “Oh my step mother wasn’t a very good cook. Suet pudding with lumps in it! Rabbit. Vegetables from my father’s allotment, seasonal vegetables, nothing else. Except on Sundays you might have a tin of fruit. Or a tin of salmon. Great Luxury. Or meat paste if you crossed the road to the Hipkins!” … “My father cooked gorgeous baked onions in their jackets in the fire, and he served them up with a big lump of butter.”

There were fireplaces [upstairs] but they were only lit if you were ill in bed. Cold upstairs in the winter! You used to get out of bed in the morning and hop on the cold lino, and go to the windows and draw pictures on the frost. There was a rug on the bedroom floor, so you hopped onto that as soon as you could.

If the weather was bad the children played in the garden sheds. Otherwise their playground was the street. “In the summer it was marbles, in the gutter, because there were no cars … and Hops Scotch – chalking on the all the pavements. And Hoops in the winter because it was cold, with a stick, round the square – Hemingford Rd, St Phililps Rd, Belgrave Rd, Mill Rd back to Hemingford Rd. … If we had someone we didn’t like very much – if they wouldn’t give you the ball back – we used to Cherry Knock them. You knock on someone’s door and run away quickly and hid, and watch them come to the door and look up and down the road!”

There was one family holiday a year, a week in Gorleston, Norfolk. “Because father was a railwayman he had a pass. And we used to go by train to Gorleston every year. And we stayed with the widow of a fisherman. In those days you took what food you want in, and she cooked it. It wasn’t the other way round. Of course you sat on the beach all day. You could obtain ice-cream cornets for half a penny. And th high-light of the holiday was a visit to “the pops”, the concert party. It never rained.”

Christmas was fantastic because the Holder family gathered mostly at Uncle George’s in Cavendish Rd, and we had fantastic games like Spin the Plate, and if you dropped it you had to do a forfeit.

I went to church every Sunday, Sunday School in the morning, Sunday School in the afternoon. And sometimes Church with parents in the evening. My father used to pass me peppermints to keep me quiet! Sermons were a bit long in those days!

Most shopping was done at the Co-op or from home delieveries. But for small items and children’s treats, ‘Wigy’ Searle ran a ‘Grocer’s and general Dealers’ at 52 on the corner of Hemingford and St Philips Road. He was so called because he had a toupee! He was very adept at making cone bags with blue sugar paper, into which he measured a bit of sugar or whatever – because nothing came in packages. Nothing was packed in those days. So he had big tins of biscuits, and you could often buy a cone of broken biscuits. But he was deemed to be a bit mean. So with our Saturday pennies which I got for my chores, there was a little shop run by Miss Blackwell half way between ‘Wigy’s’ and Vinery Road. And she was a spinster lady with a sweet shop in her front room, with all these lovely jars of sweets, which when they got nearly empty towards the end of the week, she would empty the sweets into half penny bags. They were a delight, because you never knew what you were going to get in your halfpenny bag. The other half penny I perhaps spent on a gob sucker, because gob suckers changed colour an you had to keep on taking them out to see what colour they were.

1937 Jean left school at 16 to work at the Telephone Exchange. When war broke out she joined the Women’s Army ATS and left home for Carlisle. After the war she married Dennis Turner and they moved into 89 Hemingford Road.

1940 Harrison John Holder

1951 Andrew Fletcher

1970

Andrew J Fletcher