Published in Windlesora 18 (2000)
© WLHG
Michael Bayley tells of his family’s long association with The Goddards.
My grandfather, Fred Bayley, who owned Ganes boot and shoe manufactory and shop and WV Browns shirt and hatmaker’s shop in Eton, doubtless knew Michael Goddard’s grandfather, Henry Goddard the second, as a fellow trader. My father, Hugh Bayley went to Miss Butt’s preparatory school in Slough with Michael Goddard’s father Dick, and I first met Michael at Miss Roche’s dancing class in Datchet, where we had both been taken, aged about 6 or 7, to our elder sisters’
dancing class. Miss Roche, doubtless hoping for two more fee paying pupils, wanted us to join in, which we did reluctantly. From then on I think we both decided that the other Michael was quite a sensible sort of chap.
Although as children we met from time to time, boarding school made this difficult and then World War II stopped our further education, except in military matters. He certainly had a more uncomfortable war than I did, being captured in the Italian campaign, then escaping and joining the partizani in the mountains. At the end of the war he went to work in the family business, and found it still being run much as it had been in his grandfather’s time. It was his grandfather, Henry Goddard the first, who had a row of cast iron spikes put on the low window sill of the shop, to prevent Eton boys with nothing better to do, from sitting there and kicking their feet against the stall rises below, and knocking off both paint and plaster!
When he rose to become a director, he persuaded the older directors that in the second half of the twentieth century, with its inflation, one could not allow accounts to accumulate, and perhaps only be settled at the decease of the account holder. This had been the practice of some of the more noble families who sent their sons to Eton, and who therefore patronised the local tradesmen. He introduced discounts for payment within a month, and greater discounts for cash. Suddenly, new orders were being placed and paid for in cash by third and fourth generation customers.
It was at this time that Michael Goddard and I became acquainted again. Our children happened to go to the same preparatory school in Maidenhead, and his daughter, Rachel, came home talking of the terribly naughty things a little boy called Hugh Bayley was doing there. To her father, the name of that boy was familiar from his own father’s stories of his school days, and he wondered if this might be the grandson of the original, so we reintroduced ourselves.
Just after the Windsor Face Lift, to spruce up the town, Michael Goddard had crossed Eton High Street to have a word with a neighbouring shop keeper. His shop was having its usual five yearly coat of green paint, and as was the custom at this time the undercoat, after making good, was grey. As he looked back to see how the work was progressing, he suddenly realised that his shop showed up as never before. Everyone had always painted their shopfronts green. It was the only proper colour to use. He realised a new colour scheme would make his premises much more noticeable. That was how I came to design the colour scheme that has been used ever since.
The family connection with the Eton Gas works explains another of Michael Goddard’s discoveries in his modernisation of the premises. This was a gas lit set of illuminations that were put across the High Street for some national celebration. Another victim of the post-war refurbishment was the very ornate heating stove, that stood in the centre of the shop for just over a century. It was bought from the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace when it closed for its move to Sydenham. I understand it went to someone who appreciated its art and antiquity, and so helped to provide its more efficient successor.
Of course, with such a venerable business, one must expect it to gather some local gossip, and with the passing of the years it becomes difficult to separate fact from fiction. One such story from the prosperous Victorian era, probably in the time of Henry Goddard the first, was that the Provost of Eton College made it his business to rebuke Mr Goddard for driving into town in a phaeton or gig, instead of a tradesman’s van, as would more properly fit his station. But then it was also said that this same Henry Goddard claimed that his great-great-grandmother had been Lady Elizabeth Smythe, and his great-great-grandfather was King George III. According to local gossip, that would have made the Windsor publisher Charles Knight a first cousin twice removed. No wonder the Provost of Eton felt it his duty to see that proper distinctions between classes should be maintained.
Michael Bayley
Windsor Local History Group 