Ted & Glennies Newell
For many generations the Newell family had been blacksmiths and farriers, but they adapted with the times and saved to buy a van when the motor car took over. Their removals business grew from here, supplemented by selling kindling from wood supplied by the arboretum at Nuneham Courtenay.
The Newell family were well known throughout St Ebbe's and Ted Newell has an encyclopaedic memory of the families in the area, reeling off names and anecdotes as he mentally walks up and down the streets where he sold kindling as a boy. Later in life, as families moved out of the area it was Ted Newell and his son Eddie who loaded up their belongings and took them out to new homes in the suburbs. He saw his community gradually unravel, but refused to move himself until, after a ten year legal battle, he finally received a settlement that would enable him to stay in the centre of the city.
He remembers Janice and Diane Stewart and their family. “They used to live in Bridport Street. Their Gran and Gramp used to live in that little yard where we was on about. Next to us in Blackfriar’s Road. We used to know them of course because they all used to go up the pub in them days and they both played Aunt Sally. The old chap and his wife. Mostly the Beehive at that time. Local pub … [laughs]… The Beehive. The Jolly Bargeman. The Duke of York."
Glennies: "There was six or seven [pubs] in one street."
Ted: "When Gramp took our place over as a pub there was four in Blackfriar’s Road. They used to open at 6 in the morning and close about 12 at night. Because the blokes on the gasworks coming home from the gasworks after they’d been in the retort houses, catch hold of the first pint you wouldn’t see that go down. Cause they’d sweated it out all day you see.
The gasworks was at the bottom of our garden. At the back of our house. The old gas works was the other side of that. Used to wake us up when they wheeled the old iron wheel barrows across there with stuff on. Clanging around!
That was in the back room when me and my brother used to sleep there. Then we shifted up to the top bedroom and then all’s you heard when the wind was blowing from this way was the blokes on the railway. On the trucks, shunting them all up, shouting the numbers and one thing and another. You could hear that as plain as day at night. Can’t now. There’s too much traffic about.
When we was kids, the gas works used to have ton lorries (Morris Commercials they were) and they were about the only traffic up and down the street bar old Mr Lovegrove’s taxi which he parked down there and old Charlie Carlo’s car cos he was the only bloke that could afford one. Charlie Carlo had the fish and chip shop at the top of the street. His name is Carlos Machete. His son Albert is my age, lives down the bottom here somewhere. His dad did a lot of good down there one way and another. When he used to make his ice cream in the summer always opened up and all the kids had a free little boat like that full of ice cream. But he done good otherwise. He take interest in the boys club and one thing and another.
Nobody had nothing. We all dressed the same. We all wore our boots out the same so nobody worried about what other people was doing. They were all just the same. If anybody was taken ill next doors women used to go in and look after them and one thing and another. Make sure they had food.
And of course, being in business, I think, when was it, must have been in the forties sometime we got a phone in, dad got a phone in for the business. People used to come round and phone the doctor up. There was a piece in the mail about it when old Dr Stewart died. He’d wrote in there before that anybody down The Friars that wanted a doctor would go to Mrs Newell. Dear old mum.
We used to keep pigs during the war. And chickens. We had ducks there. And my Gran’s daughters’ dog was a spaniel. He come down, chased all our ducks and killed two before we could catch him. One of them had his neck all ripped open and me and mum sewed it up.
The butchers was next to Del Nevo’s fish and chip shop. Del Nevo, he was Italian as well I believe. His helper was the Hookhams. They used to help him out. Their boys went to Balliol Boys.
Balliol Boys was a boys club. Where you used to go and have a race about, go in the gym, and go merry hell! But I was boxing at the age of 12 during the war when the boys were shoved off of Dunkirk and what ‘ave you. And the lads that was in there all got back on leave and so they had a boxing match at Balliol Boys. And they shoved me in with a little evacuee from London called Freddie Sewell. Fought Eddie Newell. Anyway we ‘ad about three rounds in there. In the end they brought us up as a draw. So that sorted that out. But you see them nights you brought on with the lads themselves. They used to punch ‘ell out of one another. They all come out bleeding. “Oh we’re alright!”. They was all brought up hard in them days.
I was chopping up wood at seven years old. When we was kids we used to chop this wood up and make it into bundles of firewood and we’d got this machine old Grumpy Newell made to make them with. And we used to chop them up. Dad used to make them in them days, and we had to take them on Saturday morning and sell ‘em round the streets. And they used to be ‘apenny each, three for a penny. And now. A little pack like that in these places they want two or three quid for. We started at the wrong time. That was Dad’s pocket money. We had to contribute in them days. Cos Dad was on his own and job’s didn’t come in every day of the week. We had to to survive.
I think during the war when we kept pigs. And when I was about thirteen or something about that. When Dad was at work I ‘ad to go around and pick up all the pig food up. People used to leave all their potato peelings and greens and offcuts, bits of old crusty bread that they couldn’t eat in a bucket and I used to open the door shouting “I’m ‘ere” and used to tip it in the big old barrel I used to ‘ave, bloody near as big as me, and used to push that round the streets, all round the Friars, and I used to take it ‘ome, chuck it in the old tub. Wash it all, pick out all the old rhubarb or anything like that, ‘cause that would give the old pigs the scours. put it in the boiler, light it up and boil it, mum would keep it going while I went off to school.
And I used to get the cane every othering week for ‘aving dirty ‘ands. During the winter the old dirt used to get in, you couldn’t get it out.
“But I’ve been working with Dad.”
“Well you shouldn’t do.”
Bash. That was that. You just got used to it. Cruel world wasn’t it. But we didn’t worry about it. Never hurt me. Never hurt anybody.
Dad bought the big house. And bought the other three and give us the middle one for our wedding present. Weren’t a lot of money in them days, but it was enough. The other two. Next door to us on the left was old Mr Casey. And he died. And the other side was Mr & Mrs Robey. And they was getting on. And old Mr Robey died. And Mrs Robey went to live with her sons somewhere up on Wood Farm. That left both houses empty. And my sister got married and move into the one next door to us in old Casey’s house until they got some money together, and they got a place up in Elm’s Rise in Botley. Some of the Friars people went up there as well.
Eddie: There was mum, dad and us five kids in a two bedroom house. So we was all in one bedroom. I was 10 when we moved house, and Ed was 3 when we moved so she doesn’t remember much of it. we all fell down the stairs in the house didn’t we.
They wanted to put us up in Blackbird Leys. I told them where to go. And she never wanted to come ‘ere. She still keeps on she don’t like it ‘ere.
I says well where we gonna move now?
Glennies: I miss my old ‘ouse.
Blackbird Leys – That’s where they all happened to go in them days. Cos that’s where they were building new ‘ouses. Rose Hill on the estate where they built all the prefabs just after the war. Because a lot of them then come ‘ome and was married and wanted to move out. Because there families were getting too big to live with the old people down there. Blackbird Leys was only just beginning. Cutteslowe estate was built in the ‘30s there was still empty ‘ouses up there and what ‘ave you. Wolvercote. All the new estates round there was all soaking up these people. And of course Wood Farm was being built. That took a lot of people from the Friars. We must have shifted 90% of the people out the friars. Because it went gradually over the years. I mean if we could have had it all in one year we’d have been all right. We’d have had money to do something with but it never happened.
But all the old ladies that their husbands had died, were on their own, was moved out into those old people’s places as they called them in them days. And within six months a lot of them had died off. They didn’t know anybody. A lot of the families had moved away, and died out and one thing and another.
When dad died, in 1972, he stopped on at work as he called it, until he was 70 so he’d get a little bit more extra pension. His 70th birthday was December 13th in 1971 and in 1972 in February he died. So he drew a lot of pension out didn’t he? So when my pension turn came around I said ‘That’s it’.
Yes, I carried on. Because mum was down Blackfriars Road still at the time because the council wouldn’t… cause we had land on the corner of Friar’s street and the two houses that were by us belonged to Dad and his own big house belonged to him and the council only wanted to give us a few hundred quid in them days. And so we got somebody to help fight it. And I kept having colds all the time from /72 right up to ’78 when it was all sorted out with the council and solicitors and everything. And as soon as that was sorted out I never had colds anymore. So it just showed that it was worrying about that I suppose. Not realizing it.
The council was very fly about it. They said to people down there “Oh we’ve got a nice new house with a bathroom. ‘Cause they didn’t have bathrooms down there see.” And of course the people took it up. They did have an association going on down there trying to stop the council from putting the comp purchase order on. And the council bought a lot of them little houses up for £50 a time.
A lot of the houses were owned by private people who bought them to have the rent as collateral over the years. And that’s why they had a job getting any work done on them. Because they would say ‘we’ll sort it out and sort it out’ and it went on for months and years and never got done. That’s why some of them got a big dilapidated. It was exactly the same in Jericho. People bought them up. And you can’t buy them for love nor money now. It would have been exactly the same down the Friars. There were a thousand families down the Friars. Well there was 110 houses in our street and 110 next door in Friars street. And that’s two big streets and there was all the little streets off there and we called Speedwell Street part of the Friars and all round there.
Before they ever talked to the people. They had all these meetings and I went to a couple of them. And you might as well have sat at home. There was no point in going. It was already thought out and made up beforehand.