IDENTIFYING previously published pictures of two cottages in Horseshoe Lane, Watford:

Mrs Katherine Dimmock, aged 88, from Cassiobury Court, Richmond Drive, Watford, responds.

They used to be called Woodside Cottages. I was born there in 1914.

I had a twin sister, but she died after a day.

There were three boys and one girl and didn't I know it.

They were rotten to me. Eddy was an engineer, Tom a butcher and George was a right miserable kid, but grew up to be quite a nice man and he had a lovely son, and was a gardener at the Royal Masonic Schools in Bushey.

But they are all dead now. I am the only one left in my family.

My Mum and Dad were Kitty and Charles and my maiden name was Ebbs.

When the war started we had to have an air-raid shelter in the garden.

There was me and my mum and dad and youngest brother George.

I was about 23 when the war began and we had to sleep in the shelter every night when the air-raids were on.

That wasn't very pleasant because there was no damp course, and there was no ventilation and it got rather hot and stuffy I can tell you. But we were glad to get down there.

My father, Charles, was a chauffeur. That was a good job in those days because not many people could drive, when he was young.

He worked for Mr C Cobb, who had a butchers in Sloane Street, and owned the estate the house was on, and all the ground around there for miles.

Before cars, he used to have to take him to the the train station with a horse and trap. When cars became popular, my father went on a course in Coventry to learn how to drive.

When we were kids he Mr Cobb used to come by in the car and we used to stand to attention and my brothers would touch their caps and I would curtsey.

If we didn't he would say to my father "tell your kids to behave properly" and he would tell us off, because his job depended on us behaving properly.

When Mr Cobb died, my father went to work in Edsons printers in Leavesden. He didn't live long after he finished work. He was worn out.

On Sundays we all had to go to church and my father lined us up before we went out and looked at us to make sure we had cleaned behind the ears, and the boys had done their hair.

When I was 14 my Sunday School teacher got me an apprenticeship at Clements of Watford. I was apprentice to the window-dresser before I became a window-dresser.

I was there until 21 and then the war came along and messed things up. I was a GPO driver in a little red van during the war.

I have a picture of all the women I worked with and we had some real giggles together.

The sorting office was in Clarendon Road. And I used to cycle from Horseshoe Lane all the way there.

A few years after we finished, the GPO gave us a nice party, but not that many of them turned up. I don't know what happened to them.

I met my husband, Percy James, during the war years and we were married in the church opposite the house in 1940.

Then they sent him to the Orkneys for four years where he worked on the searchlight.

I did not see him for for years. They did not get much leave because they said they didn't do much to wear them out.

June 7, 2002 16:00