OH607 Interview with Pat Peters (Tales of the Vale)
Please note this is not a full complete transcript but a detailed summary of the recording
00.00 Liz Napier (LN) introduces Pat Peters (PP) and explains how they met and the family history research which she has undertaken since then, confirming that PP’s two sets of grandparents were living in Avonmouth by approximately 1900. She asks for PP’s date and place of birth (April 1934 in St Mary’s Road, Shirehampton) as the oldest child. Not long after, they moved to Richmond Terrace in Avonmouth, houses owned by the Port of Bristol Authority, where her father worked. By 1941, the family felt it was too unsafe living by the docks, so they moved to Sea Mills. PP went to junior school in Sea Mills, then to the ‘famous Portway’ school in Shirehampton at age 11.
05.00 PP explains that her father was in a reserved occupation as a dock worker, and not called up to military service. Her grandfather was also working in the dock at the start of WWII. She describes what it was like in Avonmouth, under the route of the German bombers along the Bristol Channel, and the morning in 1940 when the family stood outside in the garden watching the daylight raid on the aircraft factory in Filton. They used a brick air-raid shelter in Avonmouth but, after moving to Sea Mills, they hid under the stairs as there was no communal shelter. Conversation then turned to 1945, when she started at Portway School.
10:00 During her first year at secondary school, they had a whole day each week of Domestic Science, during which the girls washed and ironed shirts belonging to the teacher’s husband! LN asked about life outside school, such as holidays. There were none during the war years, apart from day trips and Sunday School outings to Clevedon or Weston-super-Mare, and PP recalls cycling through fields to Severn Beach and going in the Blue Lagoon swimming pool, before the motorway and development of the Lower Severn Levels.
15:00 LN asked what she did after leaving school. PP went to the Sumlock Comptometer college in Clifton for six months in 1949, and after getting her certificate, worked in the payroll office of a boat repair company at Avonmouth Dock until she married and left to have her first child. Staff were paid weekly in cash. PP describes meeting her future husband, the role of the PBA social club, the Savoy Cinema in Shirehampton and its ticket prices and seating arrangements for courting couples in the 1950s.
20:00 PP describes their courtship, including meals at the Berni Inns which had become popular and other restaurants in Bristol, their engagement and wedding in 1960. After their marriage, they moved to Priory Road in Shirehampton, then eventually to St Mary’s Road where PP still lives. Her husband, Roy, was a crane driver at the docks and LN and PP discuss how big a part the docks have played in PP’s life.
25:00 Discussion moves to memories of Shirehampton village and changes in the last 50 years. PP shows LN a photograph in Ethel Thomas’ book “Shirehampton Story” of the Mothers’ Union group in the 50s which includes relatives. After an interruption from LN’s husband, PP talks about the ‘cockle lady’ who used to come to the village from Swansea, standing in the High Street, and villagers would take a jug and buy from her.
30:00 PP has further memories of Shirehampton village, including the knife grinder and the rag and bone man, and then memories of each shop working down the High Street from The Green.
35:00 PP describes the changes to the lower part of Shirehampton and into Avonmouth caused by the building of the M5 bridge across the River Avon, plus changes when the first Severn crossing was built. LN asks about the Pill Ferry and PP tells the story of when her daughter was a little girl, aged about two, her husband used to leave Sarah in the care of the ferry owner going back and forth across the river, while he had a drink in the pub in Pill. PP found this out years later!
40:00 PP has a final reminiscence of living in Avonmouth during the war, and remembers St Andrews Church being bombed, plus bombed houses near her family home. She also has a dim memory of going by bus along the Portway and sheltering in the Clifton Rocks Railway one time, as her father refused to stay in Avonmouth after dark as the war progressed.
45:00 LN thanks PP for sharing her memories. Ends.
00.00 Liz Napier (LN) introduces Pat Peters (PP) and explains how they met and the family history research which she has undertaken since then, confirming that PP’s two sets of grandparents were living in Avonmouth by approximately 1900. She asks for PP’s date and place of birth (April 1934 in St Mary’s Road, Shirehampton) as the oldest child. Not long after, they moved to Richmond Terrace in Avonmouth, houses owned by the Port of Bristol Authority, where her father worked. By 1941, the family felt it was too unsafe living by the docks, so they moved to Sea Mills. PP went to junior school in Sea Mills, then to the ‘famous Portway’ school in Shirehampton at age 11.
05.00 PP explains that her father was in a reserved occupation as a dock worker, and not called up to military service. Her grandfather was also working in the dock at the start of WWII. She describes what it was like in Avonmouth, under the route of the German bombers along the Bristol Channel, and the morning in 1940 when the family stood outside in the garden watching the daylight raid on the aircraft factory in Filton. They used a brick air-raid shelter in Avonmouth but, after moving to Sea Mills, they hid under the stairs as there was no communal shelter. Conversation then turned to 1945, when she started at Portway School.
10:00 During her first year at secondary school, they had a whole day each week of Domestic Science, during which the girls washed and ironed shirts belonging to the teacher’s husband! LN asked about life outside school, such as holidays. There were none during the war years, apart from day trips and Sunday School outings to Clevedon or Weston-super-Mare, and PP recalls cycling through fields to Severn Beach and going in the Blue Lagoon swimming pool, before the motorway and development of the Lower Severn Levels.
15:00 LN asked what she did after leaving school. PP went to the Sumlock Comptometer college in Clifton for six months in 1949, and after getting her certificate, worked in the payroll office of a boat repair company at Avonmouth Dock until she married and left to have her first child. Staff were paid weekly in cash. PP describes meeting her future husband, the role of the PBA social club, the Savoy Cinema in Shirehampton and its ticket prices and seating arrangements for courting couples in the 1950s.
20:00 PP describes their courtship, including meals at the Berni Inns which had become popular and other restaurants in Bristol, their engagement and wedding in 1960. After their marriage, they moved to Priory Road in Shirehampton, then eventually to St Mary’s Road where PP still lives. Her husband, Roy, was a crane driver at the docks and LN and PP discuss how big a part the docks have played in PP’s life.
25:00 Discussion moves to memories of Shirehampton village and changes in the last 50 years. PP shows LN a photograph in Ethel Thomas’ book “Shirehampton Story” of the Mothers’ Union group in the 50s which includes relatives. After an interruption from LN’s husband, PP talks about the ‘cockle lady’ who used to come to the village from Swansea, standing in the High Street, and villagers would take a jug and buy from her.
30:00 PP has further memories of Shirehampton village, including the knife grinder and the rag and bone man, and then memories of each shop working down the High Street from The Green.
35:00 PP describes the changes to the lower part of Shirehampton and into Avonmouth caused by the building of the M5 bridge across the River Avon, plus changes when the first Severn crossing was built. LN asks about the Pill Ferry and PP tells the story of when her daughter was a little girl, aged about two, her husband used to leave Sarah in the care of the ferry owner going back and forth across the river, while he had a drink in the pub in Pill. PP found this out years later!
40:00 PP has a final reminiscence of living in Avonmouth during the war, and remembers St Andrews Church being bombed, plus bombed houses near her family home. She also has a dim memory of going by bus along the Portway and sheltering in the Clifton Rocks Railway one time, as her father refused to stay in Avonmouth after dark as the war progressed.
45:00 LN thanks PP for sharing her memories. Ends.