• Reference Number: DX-1043/27
• Ref No: DX-1043/27
• Date: Jul 2013
• Level: Item
• Extent: 1 item
• Format: CD-ROM
• Description: Track No Time
  (MM:SS) Description
  1 00:27 Father's employment - Owned a house furnishing shop in Salop Street
  
  00:52 Mother's employment - Didn't work after interviewee was born. Interviewee explains her Mother's role doing everything to look after the home.
  
  1:12 Interviewee recalls walking from town to her home near the Tettenhall Road through Chapel Ash before the ring road was built, helping her Mother carry shopping. She continues to explain how her Mother cooked for the household ("meat and two veg") and washed clothes in a spin dryer as they didn't have a washing machine. Comments that Father "didn't do anything!" and he and the family were well looked after.
  
  1:55 Childhood - Interviewee grew up in Newbridge Drive, lived there until she was married at 25. She has a younger sister.
  2:24 Education - Interviewee went to St Judes Primary School then Girls High School at 11. Left school at 18 and attended Bradford University for a year to study Commerce. Interviewee explains this was the wrong course for her and careers guidance when she was at school was not like it is today - "wasn't lots of advice." She came home to study at Wolverhampton University, which was then Wolverhampton Polytechnic, and did a BA general in English, French and German.
  
  3:38 Views on Wolverhampton - Interviewee has lived in Wolverhampton her whole life, moving to Penn when she got married in 1972. She thinks Wolverhampton is "great," commenting on people's negative views thinking it's "dirty and horrid." She feels lucky to have always lived on the west side of the city which is "lovely."
  
  4:26 Jobs - Interviewee worked for Tarmac's marketing department at Construction House on the ring road after leaving college. Worked there until having her first child in 1974.
  
  5:04 Married life and children - Interviewee has been married for 41 years. She has three children; her eldest was born at RAF Cosford Hospital which is no longer there.
  
  6:06 The war - Interviewee was born two years after the war had finished. Always aware of the war growing up, still very fresh. Her mother worked in an ammunition factory at Featherstone during the war. She wasn't there for long as the gunpowder that they were putting into the bullets gave her dermatitis so she was excused duties. Her father was running the furniture business with his mother at the time so didn't join the army, but was in the fire service and was based at Willenhall in the AFS and then the NFS. He had to go to London with the fire service during the Blitz as people from across the country were drafted in to help out.
  
  8:50 Changes to Wolverhampton's buildings - Interviewee says that Wolverhampton has changed such a lot, and the building of the ring road was the main change. It "chopped all the main roads off." The Manders Centre wasn't there; it was the Central Arcade. She comments that nowadays the Arcade would have been retained for historical interest, but 60's planners were keen to demolish the old and replace with "concrete blocks."
  
  10:01 Social changes in Wolverhampton - Women going out to work after having families. Her mother didn't and her mother-in-law was a teacher but had to stop work after marriage. She comments that it "seems awful." Societal changes spread in the 1960's.
  11:07 Immigration - Interviewee remembers being at St Judes and a little black girl from the Caribbean started school. Everyone crowded around and felt her hair as they'd never seen anyone like that before. She comments that racial prejudice has increased since then when immigration was new, which was the 50's, saying people later suffered greatly and couldn't find places to live because of their colour.
  
  12:40 Views on Margaret Thatcher becoming PM - Interviewee recalls thinking it was special and different to see a woman at the top when she was elected. In the 1980's the mortgage rate being at 16% was an effect of Thatcher's policy on the interviewee's family; she describes it as "horrendous." She names the poll tax as her most controversial policy.
  2 00:08 Strikes in the 1980's - Interviewee remembers the miners' strike being on and a series of power cuts. These power cuts were longer than they are nowadays and the family had to have a supply of candles. She also remembers a sugar shortage, a bread strike, bins not being emptied and bodies not being buried.
  
  1:24 Economic changes in Wolverhampton - Interviewee remembers Wolverhampton as once being an area of industry but a lot of the heavy industry and manufacturing companies have gone. Her husband was made redundant twice in the steel tube industry in the Black Country. She says the Midlands economy has changed a lot. Two of her children work in service industries - a lot more of these opportunities for employment nowadays than in manufacturing; it's "just gone."
  
  
  2:30 Entertainment - Interviewee remembers going out to play along the canal as a child; in the fields where St Peters/St Edmunds schools are as it was a farm back then. She recalls being safe and no one worrying about them. "Children had more freedom back then." Interviewee remembers the introduction of TV, and then when she was a teenager going to concerts at The Civic Hall and seeing 'The Searchers' there. She saw 'The Rolling Stones' at the Gaumont (now Wilkinsons) which was a cinema with a stage. She also queued all night for a ticket to see 'The Beatles' there in 1964. There was a coffee bar at the top of Darlington St called The Milano where everyone used to pack into. She remembers it being a smoky place and somewhere to meet people. Interviewee attended dances at Queens Ballroom in Queens Square; Saturday night dances were held there and at The Civic Hall. She said it was a good place to grow up as there was a lot going on.
  
  5:28 Was life more comfortable back then or now? - Interviewee says there are lots of comforts now that they didn't have back then. She looks back on times gone by favourably as she had a happy childhood.
  
• Access Status: Open
• Contact: Wolverhampton Archives, Wolverhampton Archives & Local Studies

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