Just a Boroughs Girl - Part 3

By Hair Hardwick

I was still a girl when I discovered I was pregnant and you can imagine how shocked I was, but it was nothing compared to how stunned my parents were. I was lucky of course, and I knew that back then only too well. The days of being packed off somewhere to hide your shame were over by that time and it was becoming quite a common occurrence. My parents stood by me, making it clear my child and I would have a home with them for as long as we needed it.

St Edmunds Hospital

 My son was born at St Edmunds hospital and on that day, and because of how she had treated me at the time, one of the sisters was sacked. I was only fifteen, I was scared and when I cried out in pain she hit me and told me to shut up. My mother was not amused and nor was the Matron who just happened to be passing the room at the time, so because of her actions and impatience with me that woman never got another chance to hit another patient.

Money was a problem as I could not get any help until I reached the age of 16 so I had no choice but to earn what I could and any way I could. Social Services helped me with everything I needed for my child as I was determined to keep my baby. I knocked doors and asked if anyone needed anything fetching and back then people were kind and normally said they did even when it wasn’t true. I earned enough that way to buy my son’s food for him if little else, and could often be seen walking to one lot of shops after the other pushing the pram with my baby in it.

I clearly remember one of my brothers emigrating when my son was just six weeks old and how sad we all were to see him go. For the first time ever that night I heard my mother crying.

My son was nine months old when I ran away to Gretna with my boyfriend, his father, and I was waved off by my parents who wished us well. It seems just like yesterday as I can picture it all so well, yet that was 46 years ago in august. We lived with my parents for a while then moved to Towcester to one of the caravan parks there. It may seem incredible now, to think that back then my husbands wage was around six pounds ten shillings per week. He worked for brown brother’s ltd as a tyre fitter at that time.

From there we moved to the prefabs in St David’s road Kingsthorpe our first council premises. I recall the row of shops just over the road from us, and the pub with its window where you could get served stuff to take away. I recall the bakers van, Adams, calling on me twice a week and my having to run up a tab on his second call just to get basics from him to get me through until next pay day.

From there we moved to Kingsheath and I have good memories of living there in a place we made lots of very good friends. It was while living there that we spent some time running our first bar; it was at the makeshift buildings used for a while by the Twentieth Century Club at the back of what was then the fairly new bus station. The Silver Cornet was our local though from where we lived but we didn’t use it very often and we did use the other pub up on the oval but even more rarely. I can recall watching Barclays sorting house being built during our time there and also the middle school was still standing and was where my son attended until we moved once more, this time into our very own home, at Brixworth.

Over the years we moved quite a few times all in all, first into homes of our own, then staying with his mother, before buying our own home once more in Cowper Street.  

Cowper Street

Now I am not sure if this will interest you, but I think it might so I shall tell it. The front of the house next door to us had once been a shop and its front widow was still like a shop one. Neither we nor the people who lived there knew what shop it had been but we soon found out, and not by being told by anyone or looking it up. No computers back then for our use, had we had have known how to use one of course.

The cellar in my house was a door, in the kitchen area, with stairs just inside it leading down to it, the same in the other house but with that one there was a set of steps outside that led to it also. In their cellar there were some marble worktops on the top of white walled brick bases, and there was also a very deep and large sink. There was a back door that led to a small bricked area a few feet in depth and reached across from their kitchen to our house and those outside steps were opposite the door. On the right hand side of it, looking towards to my house wall, there was a bricked up wall that obviously had once had a door that had been bricked in much later than the bricks around it had been laid. From above it just looked like ground but it was hidden beneath the bit of it next to the outside steps. Removing the newer bricks they then found a huge metal rod overhead at the back of what appeared to be very much a place the size of the old outdoor toilet I once used. There was a basin shape cut into the floor and an odd looking drain cut as what appeared to be a run away for liquid. Putting it all together we presumed this place had once been used to slaughter animals in. further investigation, this time in some records, sorry I do not know what or when as the neighbour did it, it was in fact a slaughter house for cattle and sheep that were bought on the race course and kept there until being marched along to the butchers, slaughtered and used in the shop above the cellar. It was once a thriving shop, and perhaps someone in here who knows where to look may be able to tell us more about this butcher, as personally I would love to know for certain.


It had rubbish that had been dumped in there too and one piece was truly amazing. It was a book, a proper hard back volume of what appeared to be printed pages of some sort of a journal, once kept by a woman and telling day by day, date by date, what exactly had been done in her garden, the weather and how things were progressing and it was printed in her hand writing which was beautiful. Last seen with my friend and one time neighbour and If and when I see her I shall ask if she still has it.

At the bottom of my garden there was a huge shed, the size of a double garage inside that was fitted out each side with wooden benches and shelving above and below it. We found old tools I wish I still had now and don’t, and some old empty tins without labels and that were disc and small oblong shaped rather like a tin of polish. We discovered it had in fact been the workshop of a polish maker.

The licensed trade.

Me as the barmaid at the Sunnyside

While living in Cowper Street I went to work part time in a couple of public houses to help with making ends meet moneywise. I worked first at the sunny side for Terry and Sandra Bates and I loved it there.

A while later I went to work at the White Elephant and I do wish I could recall the name of the people there but I’m afraid I don’t. To be honest I have never been sure if to thank the landlord there at that time, 1980, or to curse him for ever suggesting we went to work for the same company as he did.

The group was called The Host Group, which was part and parcel of Chef and Brewer.

And the reason I say this is because though we had many wonderful times in the trade, there was another side to it entirely. Trust me it is no fun when things do kick off in a trouble pub. I recall having to call the police, then to lock and bar myself into the bedroom and hang out of the window waiting for the police to arrive, more than once in my time, the first of which was at the Clinton Arms.

The reason I had to do that was to make sure when the police arrived, not just one or two went inside as there was no way they could have handled the situation there alone. When there was trouble, thankfully not too often, it was generally very bad. One really good thing I recall was meeting number one son as he came to be called, and though I lost touch with him many years ago, thanks to Northampton past we are now back in touch, I have seen him and his lovely new wife and that pleases me so much.

Charity Events

The best thing during my time living and working in the pubs and clubs was raising money for charity. We either held events or helped others too and were by doing so raising thousands of pounds over the years in so many different ways, all sorts of things from weight loss to the biggest one the Saint Ives Fun Bike ride as it was called back then. That still goes on over twenty years later but the fun word was taken out of it and today it is run by the British Heart Foundation I believe.

We moved from our house in Cowper Street to the Clinton arms the first of the pubs we were to run. For while we let our house when we went into the licensed trade, and that was in 1981. It was a pub that was known for trouble at the time but I can honestly say once we got to know people, through one of the customers there it turned out I knew, we loved it and had a great time. Sadly the pub was condemned at the time to make way for the ring road that is there today. We did not stay until it was pulled down though and moved on to other pubs as and when the managers above us instructed. Those were not in our county and so I left my home town and county for some time, returning a few years later to Wellingborough where we ran the Sports which it was renamed then but has now been turned back to the original it once was and that is The Cromwell. We had almost three good years there and I was able to see and spend more time with friends and relatives once again.

The Clinton Arms

It was a known thing in that company, that if profits stopped rising and steadied out they moved landlords on to another pub, as they never seemed to be able to accept that you had all of the customers there were to be had in that area, there just wasn't anyone else you could draw into your pub, just as everyone had only so much money they could spend there. So every few years we were moved on, from pub to pub, and always they gave us trouble pubs to sort out. We were not happy but got on with it as we needed the work.

Eventually we could not keep up with the payments for the house or the putting of things right due to non caring tenants that seem drawn to it rent wise, and so we sold it. This proved to be a big mistake and saw us homeless for a time.

The last pub we took was in centre of Huntingdon. We had given three months notice, due to us both feeling we needed a rest and would then go back into it, but were talked into giving that one a try. Not a good idea and we stayed there only a matter of weeks and left, not only the pub but the trade at that time.

But that break from being behind the bars was only brief, and soon we were working at The Football Club in Blisworth and living in a caravan on the site there down near the canal.

That was when we went back into the working men’s clubs.

Blisworth Football Club

We moved full time to The Double Top, a place that had been The Trades club when I was a girl and when my son was young. Dad was very much a club man and so I knew and had been to so many of the clubs in Northampton over the years, this one included.

From there we left our county once again and moved to Leicester, first in a rented house and then, once again, to buy our own. There I worked for a while in a shoe factory, and I can honestly say it must be in my blood, my relatives’ of the past working in that trade over the years, I have recently discovered.

I learned a great deal there, about marking pieces to sew that would eventually be the side, tops or straps of shoes. How to sew and use both a flat machine and post machine and I wish I had one of the later today as I could do so much with one of those.

I made buttons covering them with leather of just the right thickness and I lost count of how many times I was called into the cutting room to tell them if it had been scathed enough or needed more doing, much to the annoyance of the forewoman who I am afraid I made a bit of a fool of. Well she did it herself really, by trying to show me up for wasting bits of leather. She tried to show me it was okay and there was nothing wrong with it, and in the process wasted metal fittings that were the really expensive bits of the buttons. She could not make one out of it, so she walked away in anger and just sent evil looks across the room at me then, which made me smile and annoyed her even more.

For a while after the factory closed I worked as a filling in job packing shoe soles, but it didn’t pay enough and so it was onto a cob shop, (known as bread rolls here.)

Again made redundant but with an excellent reference I worked as yet another gap filler as a domestic in a home there and it was the night before I was offered a job full time that my back first went.

I lay in bed for weeks, and it took a long time for me to get back onto my feet, even longer to be able to make the stairs and what seemed like forever until I was able to step outside the back door just to sit for a while in my garden.

At this time hubby had taken over running yet another club bar, right in the centre of Leicester. Eventually I was on my feet and though could not at that time do a full time job I was eased back into work by doing the odd few hours on quieter sessions at that club. And then we moved again, to take the job together in Kent and while there was when I lost touch completely with most of the people, though not all thank goodness, of the people I once new here in the town, just as it was during that period that, as I see it now, our town changed so much.

Tovil Club in Kent

My back went again and that was it, I was declared disabled, unable to do that work ever again. So I became miss sandwich maker doing so many trays of sarnies and I soon lost count of how many. I cooked endless trays of roast potatoes, sausages and so much other stuff during the next years and honestly, I was not sorry to leave that place even if I was of course sorry it was because of my hubby’s ill health. With the food of course, most of what I did was in the sitting position; I had to have help along the way and did not get paid for my work. Should you wonder why I did it then, simple answer is, it made me feel of some use. I also made a lot of friends while there and some of which are on my friends list.

It was also during that period that I began to write, and now though I do not do quite as much of it, I do still enjoy doing it. Within a few days I had got to grips with typing which seemed to come to me with comparative ease. Through doing it I have learned how to overcome in the main, with a computers help, my dyslexia and other problems associated with that and so was able to put this together for you the way I have, in a comparatively short space of time. I have had a few poems published but still have to re write and correct most of my other work now I feel able to. God willing I will have time left to do at least some of that, and if not I am just grateful that it has filled so many hours with something I have loved doing.

We returned here, two years ago to our home town, a place we hardly knew anymore about compared to how it once had been for us.

Suddenly I was in a place I had longed to come back to, but nothing was the same for me. The few friends I was still in touch with had their own lives and families, though thankfully I still had good, long term friends, in Brixworth, and some of their children living right here in this town. It was wonderful to catch up with them and I just wish we could see each other more often.

And then, during the last year, I joined Northampton past, and once more home seems just that once again. I have met and befriended so many of you, I have found old friends right here within this site, I am finding through it that not the entire town has changed as much as I feared and I am glad about that. I am of course saddened to see how much has gone and is still being taken from us.

Progress has a lot to answer for as well as a lot to be said for it and we can do little about that can we, though many of us will still try to see we hang onto some of it so our children, grandchildren and so on, can one day still have a town to be proud of as I am, as hopefully those reading this are too.

Thanks to the members and those running this site, and thanks to Frank’s brilliant idea of starting it, they will at least have a record of what it once was and know how the members of this site feel about it today.

Tid bits.

Bread and dripping, bread and jam without margarine or with jam, not both, golden syrup, bread with margarine and sprinkled thinly with sugar, a fried slice on occasion, all done using a tin loaf that with ten children was sliced thinly and went around the table again until it ran out. That was once a typical tea for us kids.

Meat for main meals would consist of stew made from bones, and thickened with lentils using whatever vegetables could be bought cheaply at the end of the market day. Meat would be rare and probably pigs trotter, a shoulder of pork or lamb or other cheap off cuts that mother managed to get with her frugal means. Fish in parsley sauce would in truth be the heads and tails boiled up and stripped, the stock kept making sure of flavouring. She fed us, it was always filling and tasty, so what if the bacon and onion roll was made from bacon bits, and was it was mainly the dumpling that filled us. So what if the left over stew would fill the centre of a dish with pastry round the edge the next day, with fresh potato and onions on top and then stuck in the oven to finish it. Did we care, no, not really! We never went hungry, mum saw to that by slaving doing other peoples washing, cleaning and so many other jobs, just to earn enough to feed us. She spent hours making us clothes from old things she bought and we had to search for from Perrit’s scrap place just off the Mayorhold, knitted us jumpers after unpicking and washing the wool from hand knitted jumpers also obtained from there.

But you know what, she was one incredible woman. She taught me so much and I will always be grateful to her for that. Like mother I can sew, knit, and do so much other stuff it’s untrue. Basically life back then taught me, and I am sure a lot of those reading this, how to make the most of everything that comes your way, whatever that might be.

Just the other day, at the treasure hunt, one lady, no names given as she knows who she is I am sure, and who is a lovely person, said something that set me to thinking. She said too much pride is not always a good thing. Perhaps she is right, but for me you see, its not so much about pride, more that I am disabled now, I know it and make the most of every day, yet, its more about remaining independent, something people like me need to retain as long as they can, until the day comes we are forced to accept the help we need simply because we have too.

There were holidays along the way as well, one we were lucky enough to win was to Australia, where after a period of thirty years I was able to meet with my brother once more. So we have seen not just the tourist side of that vast country but also spent a little time seeing how the people there really live, just as we have done in Spain with yet more members of my family. My all time favourite places are, of course my home town, and North Devon especially Exmoor with which I feel I have link from the past though what I do not know, and a small town called Schillersee at the foot of the Alps in Bavaria. Some of the views there are astounding!

I have played hostess, to big wigs, stars of the sports world such as world champion dart players, snooker players, pool and so much many more people during my time in the licensed trade. We hosted a social night for Northampton cricket team that was never advertised but truly was a night of fun and relaxation for them. They enjoyed it immensely and so did our regulars who they played at an assortment of games such as snakes and ladders, Ludo and many more.

And once many years ago now Paul and I decided it was time to do some of the things we had always wanted to do, the first for me was the wish to hold a new born lamb. I held one just hour’s old, and then just for a few seconds and one at a time, twins still covered in the gunk they were born covered in. It was wonderful! But then I was a town girl and had not had the chances to do what children are able to do today.

Me & the Lamb (THE FIRST THING I WANTED TO DO)

DOLL OUTFIT I MADE IN 1978

Recently I was sent a picture of a doll from a girl I knew when she was a child back in 1978 and imagine my surprise that she still has it, that now her children love it too, and it’s just how it was, all bar a missing hat, dressed as I dressed it for her, way back then.

Right now my health is better than it was by far, at least short term, and I make the most of it while it is like that. No stairs to climb here I believe to be the reason for a lot of the changes. I am normal, so I am told, Ha Ha! I have my up days and my down days just as everyone does I believe. I have a wonderful son, daughter in law and two gorgeous grandchildren who I adore and so believe myself to be lucky.

Mostly I am happy being here, to be, just a girl from the boroughs, back home in my town, Northampton, today Tuesday 19-6-2012.

A last tribute

I feel this should be added at the end here, for the woman who taught me the values I live by today, who taught me so much about creating something out of nothing, but mostly taught me how to care for others. What comes around goes around, she used to say, a term many of us use today.

R I P mum, may the lord keep you safe so that one day, we will meet once more.

Thank you all for reading this AND I hope you have enjoyed it.

(HAIR.)