Surname
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George
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Forename
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Wilfriid
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Date of recording
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2013
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Year of birth
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1929
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Place of Birth
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London
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Occupation
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Pharmacist, map maker etc
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Fathers occupation
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Pharmacist
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Present Address
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Aldeburgh
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Location Interview
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Aldeburgh
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Interviewer
Summary |
John Hambley
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Duration
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189 Mins approx
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No of tracks: 16
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Interviews conducted by John Hambley 15 May & 3 June 2013
MR WILFRID GEORGE note spelling not Wilfred Pharmacist, mapmaker, butterfly collector, enthusiast and campaigner for public footpaths and wildlife. Linden Road Aldeburgh IP15 5JH Born Chiswick, West London, 14 October 1929 Married Margaret Westrup 1955 1 daughter, Rosalind Track 1 Father born Norwich, pharmacist in Kensington, London. Flat in Chiswick. Wilfrid born there. Moved to house in East Acton, West London. Brother Peter, sister Margaret born. Taught to read by mother. London buses. New modern school Middlesex. 1938 evacuation preparations. Evacuation halted after Chamberlain peace pact. Sept 1 1939 leaves London with family for Beccles. Father stays London. Uncle manager Barclays Bank Beccles. Description of Beccles household including maid. Taxi from London to Beccles. Coaches packed with evacuees leaving London. Hears news of Poland invasion en route. Identity cards issued. Still remembers card number. Beccles full of evacuees from Dagenham. Old school re-opened for them. Coal fires in classrooms. Says education standard poor. Put in class below age group. Learned nothing. Track 2 Father sacked due lack of business. Family relations Beccles strained. Offer from two unmarried aunts at Haddiscoe Norfolk. Family leaves Beccles by taxi for Haddiscoe. See first rationing. Petrol coupons needed on journey. Haddiscoe house too remote to reach school. No school for 3 months. January 1940 father buys Halesworth chemist’s. Travels there by bicycle and train. Sleeps in shop weekdays. Father buys house Halesworth. Schooling resumed at Halesworth School. Schoolteacher Sam Carter. Pleasures of country living. Nature study and butterflies. Increasing impact of war. Soldiers everywhere. Anti-tank defences and pillboxes. Hit and run air-raids. Dropping landmines. Reactions of children. Bombing of stationmaster’s house. Three killed. Remembers bangs of 12 bombs. Air raid shelters. Machine gun fire. Target was gasworks adjoining school. Walking home from school in air-raid. Diving under gorse bush. Told too old to take scholarship after missing schooling. Track 3 Interviewed for local grammar schools. Scholarship to board at Framlingham College for 5 years. No car, petrol rationed. Rarely saw family. Father sometimes bicycled 13 miles to school. Life at boarding school. Mentions snobbery absent. Describes school routine. Butterfly and moth collecting with friend. No biology or nature study taught. Setting insects with gramophone needles. Follows father into pharmacy. Studies at Norwich tech. Stays at YMCA, mainly occupied by homeless ex-servicemen. Cycles Halesworth to Norwich and back for studies. Track 4 VE day holiday at Framlingham College. Radio listening. Lord Haw-Haw’s broadcasting station captured. Lines up to shake hands with Head Prefect who left to join Army. Soon whole school told of his death on Normandy beaches. Boys follow progress of war on maps in newspapers. Returns to discussion of pharmacy training. Apprenticed to father – “best teacher I ever had” - for two years. Final year Chelsea Polytechnic in London. Stays grandmother and aunt in Earl’s Court. Cycling to and around London. Cycles Brighton 1947 for practical exams because London laboratories destroyed in war. Describes not liking sport but excelling in Framlingham College long-distance steeplechase. Beats school sporting heroes although self-described “weakling”. Chest expansion measurements by school Sergeant-Major. Mentions London full of bomb sites; going to dances; shortages, rationing, emergency ration card for London. Track 5 Cycling all over Southern England. Makes log book of all places cycled to. Describes often cycling 100 miles in a day. Still has log book [which shows 1000s of miles cycled each year]. Says interests then were cycling, butterfly collecting and dancing. Works in father’s shop. Framlingham College boys hide motor bikes and car on local farms. Outing to Thorpeness dressed as soldiers. Time in school’s Air Training Corps. Flight from Woodbridge aerodrome in RAF transport plane. Remembers first sight of electric drill used by mechanic was more interesting than flight. Father no holiday for ten years because shop could not be left alone. Left in charge of shop when father bought motorbike to enable holidays. Describes chemist’s shop. Unwritten rule that each shop stuck to its own line of merchandise. Track 6 Making up medicines by hand. Pre-NHS arrangements: “the Panel”. Chemist dispensed for men, doctors for women and children. Relations between chemist and local surgery not good. Locum work in other pharmacies. Cycling to distant places. Partnership in father’s shop: W. George & Son. Youth Hostel and cycling holidays but no family holidays together. Father’s health failing. Leaves locum work. Track 7 Second Halesworth shop bought as “drug store”, i.e. non-dispensing chemist. Father incapable of work through early Alzheimer’s although term then unknown. Mother runs drug store. NHS pays pharmacy and regulates opening hours. Open until 7.00 pm like doctors’ surgery. Takes short locum in Aldeburgh after chemist there dies. Buys Panther 350cc motorbike in Norwich. AA patrolman gives advice. Motorbike enables travel to local dances. Meets wife 1951 at Thorpeness dance. Caballeros Dance Band. Track 8 Married 1955 Aldeburgh Church. Honeymoon a week at Montreux in Switzerland. First ever foreign holiday and wife’s first flight. Wife runs hairdresser’s in Aldeburgh High Street. Decides to move to Aldeburgh. Buys plot of land from Reade’s in 1954. House built and furnished ready for return from honeymoon. Buys car. Father and mother dead, pressure of work high. Resigns from NHS practice. Comparison with pharmacist and schoolteacher pay and status. Continues locum jobs. Agrees to manage Aldeburgh pharmacy for 4 years. Aldeburgh less friendly than Halesworth due to “demanding retired population”. Leaves job in 1980. Retires from pharmacy for ever in 1985. Aims to make living from map making. At first exists on savings. Track 9 Describes origin of making and publishing footpath maps. Mentions riding as a child in London buses, studying free maps of London bus, tram and trolleybus routes. As a child drew maps for walks around London. Drew a map of Beccles on arrival there as a child, and other maps of places he stayed in Suffolk. Returns to interest in nature and butterflies. Describes post-war return of gamekeepers keeping people off land and making collecting difficult. Joins committee of Suffolk Naturalists Society. Committee member Sam Beaufort an authoritative figure. Later becomes committee member of Suffolk Wildlife Trust, a different organization. Describes writing to landowners asking for permission to collect butterflies. Friend’s father tells him about public footpath rights. Track 10 Reads notice on Aldeburgh police station in 1962 about definitive footpath map. Describes going to view map. Almost alone in being interested. Council official Mr Owen suggests copying footpaths on to Ordnance Survey maps which then did not show rights of way. Buys OS maps, copies paths painstakingly with camel hair brush and green ink. Starts with paths around Aldeburgh and Halesworth. Starts to walk all the footpaths and complains about any obstructed or not maintained. Says people were laughed at in 1960s for regarding walking as a recreation. Describes personal campaign to re-open Halesworth-Mells river Blyth path. Describes organising “assault party” with two friends with a ladder and plank to cross dykes. Complains to parish councils. Supplies copies of letters to Halesworth Times editor who shows interest. Mentions that people who were subject of complaints were often also his customers. Track 11 River Blyth path reopened after 7 years’ effort. Now popular footpath. People come into shop in 1970s seeking local walking maps. Mentions difficulty of establishing rights of way. Draws a rough map of Halesworth area. Produces 100 copies on a friend’s duplicating machine. Gums each pair of pages together by hand. Puts them on sale in the shop for 10p. Joins Ramblers Association in 1962. Increasingly a campaigner for rights of way. Describes campaigning for footpaths in Huntingfield parish. Footpath campaigns supported by unexpected people. First 100 map copies sold within days, another 250 were printed, then 1000. Draws first map of Aldeburgh/Leiston area. Aldeburgh stationer will not sell them. Ironmonger John Payne agrees to take them. Describes development of the map-making and publishing enterprise. Westleton map first to be printed not duplicated. Track 12 Says expansion of the mapmaking was never planned. OS maps start carrying carry rights-of-way information but own sales still increase. Includes ancient local names of footpaths on all maps. Anecdote re Bramfield path “the Gluepot”. Importance of preserving names for posterity. Mentions that Mrs Sylvia Roberts of Snape, now of Linden Rd Aldeburgh, provided many path names. Track 13 “Approaching half a million maps” sold since 1970s. Also produced booklets. “Walking East”, about footpath law and rights. Also a book of walks. Asked to make town street maps, initially refusing. Makes map of Beccles. Retailing experience valuable in obtaining sales outlets. Anecdote re Beccles shopkeeper. Track 14 Collecting old maps. Mostly 20th century interesting land maps. Always buys maps wherever he is in world. Collection started when schoolboy. Bought old maps with sixpence or shilling pocket money. Track 15 Description of maps in collection including military map of North-West Frontier and German map of Kintyre Peninsula. Talks further about map collecting. Gave butterfly and moth collection to Ipswich Museum. Says such collections more personal than financial value. Anecdote about friend who reared a butterfly from egg collected before he crossed the Rhine after D Day. Not conscripted although pharmacy was not a reserved occupation. Says he “did not chase them up” about it. Thought would be more trouble to the Army than his worth. Tells anecdote about Acker Bilk learning clarinet while in military prison. Track 16 Reflections on nature and the environment. Mentions importance to him of nature and environment, and continuing the work of people who went before us. Says he is pleased young people are now interested in the environment, and feels it his duty to help pass on his interest. Talks about power of democracy at local and national level in preserving the environment. Mentions that there were no walking boots in his early days but he walked in rubber boots, carrying a stick. Anecdote about lost pig. Changes for the better in his view: increases in equality, and in attitudes to the disabled and to other races. Says “The more we mix up, the better it has to be.” Says Aldeburgh used to be a fairly shabby place after the war but is now a lovely place to live. Describes SatNav as a source of amusement because he would rather use maps. Describes himself as “an awkward sort of person” and quotes someone else describing him as “the most individualistic person I know”. Says “the great thing I have been is lucky”. Says the principle of enjoying life is that you’ve always got to have something to look forward to - and there is always something to look forward to in the garden. End of transcript |