Published in Windlesora 23 (2007)
© WLHG
An excerpt from My Childhood in Old Windsor by Betty Goddard neé Philby Betty’s father died in December 1923 when she was five years old and she and her mother moved to Englefield Green to live with her mother’s two unmarried sisters, Annie and Emily.
My mother and I missed my father very much and life became particularly hard for her as she was having to take stock of her situation. There were some investments but by then we were in the Depression of the 1920s so they were worth little and paid small or no dividends at all. After a time my mother was given what seemed a lamentably small pension by Callender’s Cable Company, considering the importance of the contracts my father had been responsible for, and there was no pension scheme in those days. My mother decided that she must supplement her income. Both she and Aunt Annie were talented needle-women and they started to make children’s dresses for a few London shops. These were Harvey Nicholls in Knightsbridge, Woollands in Knightsbridge and Debenhams in Wigmore Street.
The house in Englefield Green was far too small for the four of us and the needlework, and so we moved to Walnut Cottage in Old Windsor. It was one of a pair of semi-detached 18th century villas, the other one being called the Hollies. They are at the northern end of St Luke’s Road, just past the Junction with Albany Road. It was in Old Windsor that I lived for the rest of my childhood, and indeed until my marriage in 1948.
The work my mother and Aunt Annie did was mostly the making of children’s dresses. The materials to be used and sample dresses were sent from London at regular intervals from the three shops. Large cardboard boxes would arrive by post and the same cardboard boxes were sent back with the finished work, so they kept our village post office busy! The dresses were usually made up in three or four different sizes. Sometimes children’s dressing gowns were made.
The work room had two large trestle tables around which my mother and aunt sat with girls from the village who came as apprentices. There were, over the years, several apprentices/helpers who, for the most part, came straight from school at 14. The apprenticeship was for 5 years and, starting at 5/- a week, wages rose by 5/-yearly until in their last year the princely sum of 25/-a week was earned. This wage structure and other regulations were set out on a large Factories Act poster pinned to the wall. I don’t remember how many girls finished their apprenticeship but some certainly did and I very much hope that whatever they went on to do they found useful the skills they had acquired.
I am very indebted to Mr Keith Moore for sorting out the names of some of the girls who worked for my mother and aunt. One of them was, in fact, his aunt, Winifred Moore, who subsequently married Mr Tom Haines. Two daughters of Mr and Mrs Lawrence Gosling, who lived in St Luke’s Road, were apprentices. The elder sister Jessie, very sadly contracted bone cancer and died. Her younger sister, Ethel, stayed with us until she married the assistant school master at Old Windsor School and, I believe, they moved away from the village when he took up another post. Other names Mr Moore and I have recalled were Winnie Matthews from Trafalgar Place, Datchet Road and MaryKnott from Albany Road and, I believe, at least one of the daughters of Mr and Mrs Moore, cousins of Keith Moore, who lived at Roseberry Terrace also worked at Walnut Cottage. Connie Heal, now Mrs Taylor, was also an apprentice and, I believe, she did some dress-making for local clients after she finished her apprenticeship. My mother was particularly fond of her.
I knew that however much my mother and aunt enjoyed doing this work it could never be my forte. However much I tried, I lacked the patience and dexterity to wield a needle successfully. On coming home from school, I would often sit in the work room until it was time for work to finish for the day. There was quiet activity punctuated by the whirr of sewing machines and gentle badinage. Brown paper patterns, pins, scissors, chalk and marking wheels were everywhere and there were lay figures for pinning and adjusting the dresses. Old fashioned flat irons were used of course and kept permanently hot on oil stoves, the padded iron holders giving off a pleasant warm singey smell.
When I was 14 my mother and I moved from Walnut Cottage to The Tapestries. She carried on work for a short time on a reduced scale and retired completely after a year or two. Not only was age forcing her to slow down but her financial position was improving because investments were at last beginning to pay dividends and I was nearly off her hands financially.
Windsor Local History Group 