Jean Carey: In a way the move was very exciting. You had everybody in the road moving in about the same week. There was this wonderful community spirit, that we've lost now. In those days we all had young children. There were no shops and it was a case of everybody helping everybody else. That's when friendships were cemented. I've got friends who were my first neighbours. We don't see one another very often, but when we do we've got so much to talk about.
Alma Dolling: When we lived near Barton Hill we had a lovely cottage. You did come out of your front door to go into your kitchen. Your kitchen was on the side. We had to give that house up. And it was quite a nice house. My mother had to get out of that house for the simple reason that it only had one exit. When I came here the house never had a back door. I was paying 24/4d. That house is now £8.50 a week.
In our bedroom before we came out here I had one cot, one single bed and a double bed in one bedroom. We just used to push it all together. I had no bathroom. No flush toilet.
I thought I never was going to get there. It really seemed I was coming miles and miles away. I shall never forget when I first came here. It was only about three days after, my little girl grabbed a knife and she cut her finger. And I had lots of nice neighbours. I said, 'What am I going to do? It's times like this,' I said 'I wish I never lived so far away.'
There was no clinic. You couldn't go to the General. You was turned away from the General because they didn't have a casualty. We had to go up to the BRI. It was times like than when I thought, 'God, what am I doing out here.'
Just after we moved in there was that very bad winter. Me and my friend used to wait on the end of Moxham Drive. Everybody's garden was just the same. You didn't realise the mud was underneath.
Sheila Morton: I came to Hartcliffe because I had nowhere else to go. We were in two rooms. The council came and checked on us to make sure we had only two rooms. They went upstairs to measure the bedroom. It was so small that when we had our full sized bed in the room, we had about 9 inches each side. And I couldn't get a sweeping brush under the bed.
Some months later the council started to rehouse people in the St. Philips area. (Slum clearance). An uncle of my husband was one of them. This caused a problem for my mother-in-law, as for years she'd looked after him. Now if he moved out of the area she would not be able to see to him. The council then agreed to let us have the flat he would have had, as we were already on their waiting list. So he went to live with them and we came to Hartcliffe.
We had a flat with a garden and views of green fields from our windows instead of brick walls and factories. Been here ever since. I don't mind it but it's not like it used to be.
Fred Nethercott: I used to live in Eastville. I got bombed out. I was due to go into the army. A couple of us finished up in the infirmary with bad injuries from the bombing. When they bombed Eastville gasworks, we were in the middle of that. Then we moved into Heber Street. Oh, that was terrible.
Our house was condemned. They sent us all over the place. Each one we went to was bad. In the end we came up here. It was the daughter actually. She was working down in town. She came home one day and said her friend had moved up to Hartcliffe. We said we didn't want to go up there. That's a second Knowle West.
Jean Carey: This was the trouble in the beginning. Everybody sort of said Hartcliffe and turned their noses up. 'We're not going up there to live.' The insurance man said, 'You're never going up there!'
Sheila Horton: I know mother's doctor, when he came to see her when she was taken ill, he thought it was the back of beyond. Always used to say to her when she went to visit him, 'Daughter still living out on the prairie?'
Alma Dolling: My mother and father said, 'We'll give you six months out there.'
Jean Carey: It was the greatest mistake the corporation ever done when they just built the houses, with no roads and no facilities at all. There was no church, no shops. In those days it was so difficult to get a place. If you got a house you just took it.
Sheila Horton: We had a nice piece of mud. No street lamps, no gateposts. There were two holes where the gateposts were goint to be. You had to make sure when you came home at night, if you didn't have a torch, that you got dead centre, otherwise you went down the hole. Whichever way you went out of our road, after it rained, you had a large puddle and you had to wade through it.
I was going down to the chemist shop, because the only chemist we had than was down Fulford Road. So I thought, 'Right, I'll borrow my husband's bike. So I got on and pedalled like mad, and I thought, 'Right when I get to the water, I'll take my feet off the pedals, and go through and not get wet.' Someone put a brick in there and I hit the brick. Came off in the middle - sat in it. They were building the Methodist Church at the time and all the men building the church laughed. And I couldn't move for laughing. I just sat there.
The builders used to get fed up with me because the front door where I used to live was never shut. You just had a string through it. I used to automatically come out and shut my front door — because we had a great big dalmation there you see. And the times I've gone out and left the key. And I know one day I had to borrow thruppence off one of the builders, to get a bar of chocolate, feed the dog chocolate through the letterbox, while he (the builder) went up and got through the bedroom window, sneaked across and got the key off the table and came back out. The dog would have bit him see, and I couldn't go up a ladder to save me life.
Alma Dolling: The milk float did meet you down at the bottom of the road, and ask you where you were going to live. Of course you didn't know where it was about because there was no special roads, no signs. He'd say, 'I'll take you there,' and say, 'Are you going to take my trade?' And the electricity used to come and ask you where you were going to live, and then they'd push forward for you to buy a cooker. You used to get a lot of people knocking on the doors. All the time. But if you look back and say would you come again, I personally would.
'I NEVER LAUGHED SO MUCH . . .'
Sheila Horton: There is a little green in Wroughton Drive. There used to be
a little hut on there and every Saturday they used to get the Hartcliffe football team — when they were playing. They used to change in this little hut like. My neighbour said, well, she didn't think it was good enough. So she used to have them in her house every Saturday. One team upstairs bathing and one in the kitchen in a tin bath. That was a nearly new house. They didn't take their boots off after running around in the mud. Just went straight in. It used to be murder. Her husband didn't say a word.
Do you remember when the airport used to be here? After I'd been up here about a fortnight, I was cleaning my windows one day and somebody went by in a little single engine plane. And he waved as he went by. I thought, 'Come round again and you can come in through the front door!'
Alma Dolling: When we were first here we went to an airshow over there. It was about ten bob then. That was car and occupants. We thought, 'Isn't that dear!'
Sheila Horton: I'll tell you what. One night we were over there in the field by the Whitchurch airport, in the summer. Took the dog over for a run. And I suppose it was a business man or something in an aeroplane. Elderly man. Bald head like. He must have misjudged his distance. And he nearly came down in the field we were in. We were frightened. You didn't know what to do — you didn't know which way to run. But he just managed to hop over two hedges and get onto the runway. It's been closed a good few years now though.
Alma Dolling: That was another thing. When you came up here first it was nothing to see all the cows in your garden. And the horses. There was this play on the telly one night. And it was about if you could hear the horses clomping you were going to die. And I woke up in the night and you could hear this horse going down the road. I said, 'Jack, one of us is going to die.'
'If I don't get some sleep . ..' he said. But that's beside the point. The next night we heard it again. We looked out and it was all the horses from the top. We were just putting a base down on the garage, and the cows came up the drive and got on the base and it was all over the place.
Another tale was — as you know, when we came here first we only had one bus. You had to go down the bottom to catch the bus. They didn't have no Bishport bus. Well we had this old banger and it was an old banger. Of course you could buy an old banger then and get away with it. You didn't have no M.O.T. It was my dad's car actually, but he used to lend it to us.
Jack went out — no spare tyre. He had a flat. He said, 'Don't worry. When I came down the other night I seen this garage up on Headley Park .' Which was Clares then. I don't know what it is now.
He said, 'I'll go up there.' So he goes all the way down Moxham Drive to catch the bus by Community House. So he gets on the bus and it was foggy and it was dark. And he was going along and he said, 'Well I'm sure it wasn't as far as this.' Not being here very long he didn't really know where it was. So he gets out and he's got his great big rubber boots on — like he wears on the Corporation.
He has a look round and when he looks there's the bus going on. The ruddy wheel's still on the bus. So he's trying to run and catch the bus up. He couldn't catch it up. So he thought, 'I'll wait for the bus to come back.' Walks all the way back up to Hartcliffe with his rubber boots on. Stands till the bus comes. He says, 'Did you find a wheel?'
'Yes me old son. If you wants him you've got to go down the lost property.' Anyway we gets down the lost property. I goes first. He says, 'What have you come for?' I said, 'The wheel.'
He said, 'Ere, it was her who lost the wheel on the bus.' They couldn't believe it.
Sheila Horton: One old lady who lived next to me was a home help. Home helps weren't kept in the district like they are today. She went to see somebody down Ashton. On the way up she used to call into The Plough to get the old chappy's cider. And her sister I think it was lived a couple of doors from there. One day she got on the bus with a fireguard. Another day she got on with a carpet. She had to stand on the platform.
Alma Dolling: That was nothing to see that. One night when the cold winter come and there was a paraffin shortage we never had no oil. We used to keep a burner, because if you didn't keep a burner the house and all the windows used to freeze up. So I said to Jack, 'Keep the burner going all night then.' So I walked down the garage, way down Medley Park somewhere. I gets waiting for the bus.
'You can't get on with that.'
I said, 'What do you mean.'
'No, nobody's allowed on the bus with paraffin.'
I said, 'How am I going to get home? It's miles.' It did seem miles. Well it still is miles. I had to walk all the way back with two gallons of paraffin.
Jean Carey: People used to get on a bus with so much because there were no shops. I remember once we stopped down in Bedminster and a woman got on with a chair. The bus was absolutely packed with people with pieces of carpet. And the conductor said, 'I don't know what we'll get on next.' And we stopped in West Street, Bedminster and this woman was there with a chair. He said, 'I've seen it all.' I never laughed so much. You used to laugh you see.
Sheila Horton: Mum used to take her washing to the laundry. She wouldn't have one of those baskets on wheels. She wanted a pram. So my cousin said, 'I've got an old pram you can have.' It folded, but it wouldn't fold down small enough to get on the bus. Anyway, I got fed up with waiting for my uncle to come up with the van and take it down. So my neighbour and I decided to walk down one night.
We walked down through Highbury Road and through St. Johns Lane and down under St. Lukes Road where they were building that new roundabout by Temple Meads. We went into I think it was Weare Street and this man was stood out on the doorstep and we thought we couldn't get through because we could see a bank of earth. We went to turn round
.
'I'll help you over,' he said. And he picked up this pram so gentle. Didn't dare let him know it was an empty pram. 'Thank you very much.' He thought there was a baby in there.
Jean Carey: What always sticks in my mind, if you were stood anywhere on the corner of any road people would stop and ask where such and such a road was. I used to feel like a traffic warden.
Alma Dolling: There was another time when I had our Wendy. She was a little baby. She was only young. It was years ago because our Wendy's 21. I had one of these great big silver cross prams. I plonks her in the pram and I goes down the Co-op. Goes inside the Co-op, goes home, cooks me dinner, sat there, and I thought, 'Where's our Wendy. She's still down by the Co-op.'
I said to Jean, 'You'll never guess what I've done.' And we goes running down. And she's still waiting outside the Co-op fast asleep.
'DAMP, SMOKE AND NO FACILITIES'
Sheila Morton: When you moved in, did you have anything in your place? Because I didn't. We had no plugs for the sinks for a fortnight. We had no electrical plugs, no boiler.
Alma Dolling: We were waiting for the electric to come on when we hadn't put a shilling in the meter.
Sheila Horton: The doors didn't fit. We had no wireless or television for a while and you'd sit there and get, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap where the doors wasn't fitting. The front door had a space. We had to take it off and put a piece of wood on to make it bigger.
Alma Dolling: And the water running down the drain. Some nights you could hear it going 'bleep, bleep, bleep'. You could actually hear the houses settling in the night. You could hear them going 'drop'. Dropping down. And my friend — she painted all her stairs and she heard it cracking and she kept saying, 'What's that, what's that?' Looked around, got up, and heard nothing. When she came down the next morning all the stairs had dropped in the night. And all the paint had opened up.
Fred Nethercott: The Tayfant houses were built by a Weston Super Mare firm. The Corporation insisted that them houses should be built as they should be built. They made one mistake. When the bricklayers are building a house they put ties in. And a good bricklayer won't allow any stuff to go down between the cavity. And it was the only mistake they made up there and the result was it was full of damp. Underneath the sink for instance. You know you've got your cupboard and you've got to keep dusters and one thing and another there.
There was a pair of old gloves that we used to use for cleaning the gas stove. That was slung back inside. It had been there for months I should imagine. And one day I got to pull them out. And it was thick with mildew. I bundled it up and I took it straight to the top of Tayfant Road where we were living then, where there was the workmen's hut. I took it straight up there and laid it on the table in front of them. That's what started the ball rolling. Immediately I opened it up they had meetings up the school.
Alma Dolling: In our Cornish unit house, if you took a glass of water to bed with you in the real cold weather, when you woke up in the morning there was ice on that. That's honest truth. There's no insulation see. As you went up you get just tiles.
Sheila Horton: We had dressing gowns on top of our clothes. On a Xmas time we had our mother with us. And I said to her, 'I've had enough of these draughts.' The floor was about inch away from the skirting. So we went round stuffing newspapers in between. I got this draught strip and I draught stripped all the windows - all the doors. The consequence was we never had enough air to make the fire burn.
And it was snowing outside. And Mum was sat one side of the fireplace and I was the other and I couldn't see her for smoke. We were kippered practically. And we had the big windows opened wide. We had to put a vent thing in by the time we were finished.
Alma Dolling: Loads of people had that smoke trouble. When I first moved in my house, it was all right in the front, but when you did go out into the breakfast room, that was full of smoke. And it turned out that you had a seam missing.
Jean Carey: You used to come up on the bus on Hartcliffe Way and you thought you were really coming out into the country. You come up over that brow and there was Hartcliffe spread out. Whether it was built right — the first people say it was planned wrong — it looked nice. But you come up now and there's that horrible eyesore, and there's no other word for it. And that smell. If the wind's in the right direction, oh it makes you feel sick. Wills — it was the worst thing that ever happened to Hartcliffe.
The look of the thing. The traffic. I don't know why ever they were given permission to build it. It's been the cry of the local people. I don't think anyone else would have got permission except Wills. Wills owns Bristol.
Alma Dolling: The people who work there don't like it much. It's the interior lighting. Neighbour working there went to see the personnel officer, and she can't cope with all the stress through the actual structure and the inside of the building.
Wills showed you all the lovely lay-out. How it was going to be. Daffodils, bridges, all the lovely ducks. I thought it was going to be really beautiful. But this is the part you can't see from the road.
Jean Carey: It's quite pleasant from the back. But it's nothing like I thought it was going to be. They closed down factories in Whitchurch Lane so they wouldn't have too many factories and yet they turn round and build that ugly building what we've got down there ...
I think tower blocks must be the most depressing places that anyone can ever live in. People on estates like this - we let people push us around too much. If you live on a private estate people seem to stick up for themselves. With council estates we suffer a bit from an inferiority complex. I don't personally but I'm sure this is a basic problem.
Alma Dolling: We've been waiting 17 years for a hospital.
Jean Carey: How many petitions have been got up for the hospital I wouldn't like to say. We were asking for more or less an accident department so that you didn't have to go right from here to the BRI.
Alma Dolling: The children went to Avon House over all the cuts. On an estate like Hartcliffe those who go out to work can't afford to have cuts in school dinners and things like that ...
Jean Carey: There's plenty for old people. I don't mean those who are house-bound, those that can't get about. But I don't think there's enough for the kiddies. There are definietly not enough youth groups.
Alma Dolling: The people who take the decisions don't live up here. They don't know anything about it ...
