George Polley’s life history, read by George Polley. Chapter one (4135A)
Highlights in this oral history recording include:

15 secs of Happy Birthday
Date of Birth and name
2.00 Move to Ellesmere. Family details
4.15 Sale of Bridge Farm bought by Jo Porter
5.35 Details of Ellesmere purchase
6.35 Teacher Miss Ethel Moore
8.10 Description of Ellesmere plot and cost
11.10 Description of properties on North side London Road
16.03 School memories, Renee Fitch, Mary Collier leg broken by car
18.38 At 4 painful removal of thorns from bottom
21.40 1926 father asked by police to remove lorry from pond by Dobbies Lane
26.30 Purchase of crystal radio set in 1926
28.00 Garrett steam wagon used to transport builders materials, bricks and sewerage.
Coke inside Borough as smoke not allowed

George Polley Memoirs (1918-2015)

Linda: Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Daddy. Happy birthday to you.

George Polley: Thank you, Linda. Well, now I suppose I've started in my 80th year, I'd better take your advice and try and get a few, make use of this tape and get a few sort of like historical details down. I was born on the 24th of June, 1918 at the Bridge Farm, Coggeshall Road, Marks Tey. On the 24th of November, 1918 I was baptised in St. Andrews Church, Marks Tey, and given the names George Edmund. I was told that in later years that the George was in memory of mother's brother, George. He was a rifleman, in the Rifle Brigade and was killed in the awful melee of the battle of the Somme in 1916. Obviously, the Edmund came from my father's name. He'd be an Edmund Polley.

But the first three and a half years of my life was spent at Bridge Farm. And then we had a change through circumstances and we had to move from the farm, to what was known as Ellesmere, London Road, Marks Tey, or Aldham as it was at that time. The church authorities seemed to want it still to be Aldham, but the postal authorities thought it was better as Marks Tey. So Marks Tey it eventually became.

My grandfather, John Polley, had farmed at Bridge Farm for quite a few years as a tenant farmer helped by my father and my uncle. It was Edmund and Bert, the two sons.

When the Great War, in 1916, both father and uncle joined the forces in the Army Service Corps being used to steam traction engine driving for the thrashing tackles. They naturally went into the steam section driving traction engines and steam wagons, both in this country and abroad, that when Father eventually was demobbed and back home in this country, I was over six months old.

And grandfather, his health went and he passed away very shortly after father got back from the army. The owner of Bridge Farm had passed away and I think it was a lady in the London area that owned it and she passed away and therefore the estate had to be realised and Bridge Farm came on the market. Father, on behalf of grandmother, knew the value of the place. But unfortunately for us, or maybe fortunately, I don't know, a buyer came along in the form of Mr Joe Porter. His family were horse dealers and obviously 14-18 Great War, a big demand for horses. There was a little more cash floating and they bought the farm, which meant that grandmother had to relinquish tenancy and move out.

She moved eventually to a new council house on the London Road at Marks Tey, and my uncle went with her. Father bought an ex-army hut in Ellesmere Road, Felixstowe, took it down, took it to bits, brought it to the site that he had purchased next to the Wesleyan Chapel as it was then, on London Road, Aldham then Marks Tey and rebuilt this hut there and made that as a base for what had been, got to be the thrashing contractor, which he and his brother ran between them.

It meant that we were roughing it for a time. I don't remember too much about my early days. When I started at school, I was taught at Marks Tey St Andrew's Church School at Marks Tey. It stood at the junction of the A12 London Road and the A120 Braintree Road, stood in the fork. Not much of a playground. And so we were sort in rather cramped conditions. But there. My teacher was a Miss Ethel Moore, she was the teacher of the infants. There were two other rooms. What we knew as the middle room was run by Mrs Mary Ball, who was the wife of Mr James Ball, the headmaster who took, he took the older children where my sisters May, Phyllis and Connie were all pupils.

So my younger years were spent in Marks Tey and that's about all I can remember from now till I gen up on a bit more

Going back to the plot of land that Dad had bought, it was part of a field known as Livelands. It was one of the largest fields in the area. It formed part of Marks Tey Hall farm, and it was originally near enough a hundred acres. The Wesleyan Chapel was the first property to be built in it, and as we took the next plot, it was slightly tapered to one side. The frontage, it was 125 feet and it was 200 feet deep and but slightly tapering at one side. So Dad had it for half price, one pound per foot frontage instead of what would have been two pound, if it had been a square plot. This was done because it then brought the western boundary at right angles to the highway, which made it much better for future plots.

The field stretched from the public footpath running along the eastern boundary, and it carried on in the westerly direction to another public footpath that ran along its boundary at the western end. As I said, a hundred acres, it was a big field. The only other property at that time was Fanum House. It was built opposite the school against the junction of the A12 and the A120, it was called Fanum House basically because the AA Scout at that time, a Mr. Salmons, lived there and that was the obvious choice of site, the road, major road junction for an AA man to be stationed.

As time went along and I was going through my early school years I watched the various properties go up, being built, various bits. The mill that is now Parkinson's, it was built as a mill for grinding corn. It was built for a Mr George Doe, and it then eventually passed into the hands of James George H. Matthews. And then eventually to the motorcycle depot of Messrs Parkinsons. The cafes, transport cafes were the next, the Windmill Cafe and the Doval Cafe. Sometimes it was called one, sometimes the other. Then there was Mill Road, which was a private road made, and a row of bungalows were built on the western side of it.

On the eastern side of it was an acre of glasshouses built for a Mr Toxapayerrs. He was a Dutchman, came over here to grow tomatoes. If one didn't know the British language he soon seemed to grasp, shall we say, the luxurious side of some of the words. And they got used fairly frequently when in conversation with him, that all the same he was a jolly nice feller.

The houses further along came up one by one and then eventually the garage was built opposite to the Prince of Wales site and what was then known as the Station Road. Then there was the butcher’s shop, the Cycle Works and the sweet shop, and then we came to the plot with the War Memorial on, the War Memorial commemorating the death of those that fell in the 14-18 War and behind that was another ex-army hut built as a Labour men's club room.

Then we had what is known as Marks Tey Motorworks now. It was a family by the name of Mr and Mrs Levett ran it and eventually they built up the business and had a taxi service and they had a fleet of lorries that were used when the Abberton reservoir was built back in 1930s. Then there was, we came up to the AA Scout’s house, which is now number 115. So that gives you a little idea how many properties have been built between the time when we, my father, bought the first one and that Fanum house being built.

As I went backwards and forwards to school, I got to know all the people that lived in the houses, and at that time it was a case you could stop and talk to different ones. There was no need to be scared of somebody picking you up and dragging you into a motor car like there is today. And that was how we went on in those days.

I don't remember too much about my sisters being at the school because they were, all three, older than myself. But one point affected the family my sister Connie was playing in the girls' playground with Renee Fitch, and it was just an earth surface, and they were writing words in the dirt with their pens, and as Renee had just finished a word, she lifted her hand up with her pen in it, and they had been writing with the handle of the pen as opposed to the nib. So the nib was pointing upwards and the nib went right into my sister's eye and so she lost the sight of that eye and had to wear an artificial one for the rest of her days.

But others I can remember were different ones. There was a Mary Collier, she was granddaughter of the original Marks Tey brickworks Collier founder. She was knocked down by a car and had her leg broken. And all these sort of things were news through the school. And nowadays well it's more commonplace, but in those days well it was something quite different.

I have one memory of my early days that sticks in my mind. I suppose I would've been about four years old. I don't think I’d started school and I got a wooden toy wooden engine, and I used to sit on the tender, the back end of the engine and pushed myself along on it. I was a great big engine driver in those days. I suppose it was practising for when I grew up, but I was doing having a ride on this engine one day, and I remember my father was clipping the hedge that ran along the front of the property and somehow or another I slipped off the engine. And of course there had to be one of the hedge cutting bushes laid quite convenient for my bottom. And one of the thorns had to go in rather a tender spot, and that took quite a little bit of removing, because in those days it wasn't a case of 999 and the ambulance would be there. It was a case of do it yourself or get Mum to do it in my case, and it had gone in so deep she used to probe with a needle that she'd sterilized in the boiling water, and try and get this thorn out from the cheek of my bottom.

I think if I remember rightly, it took three different evenings to have a go at it and as a reward for letting me do, letting them have a go to get it out there was some Christmas crackers left over from the Christmas, and so I was allowed to have a Christmas cracker. But being at the age I was, scared stiff of the bang from the cracker so I used to hide behind the chair while mum and dad pulled it between them and then I could have the paper hat that was in it, but even that didn't cons, it wasn't a consolation really for the fact that I'd got a sore bottom and that just didn't work out. But I'm still here today anyway.

Another of my memories when I was about, I would say, eight years old, one Friday evening, the police or the authorities of some sort came. And asked Dad could he take one of the engines and pull a lorry out of a the pond. It was at the corner of Dobbies Lane where it went off from the A12 at Marks Tey.

There was a slight bend in the road there, and this lorry was coming towards Colchester - Marks Tey, Colchester. And he didn't take the bend. And of course he went straight full length into this pond. The lorry belonged to a firm by the name of AJ Pullen, haulage firm from Ipswich, and he'd got five ton of Bryant and May's safety matches on board.

As it was the, I think, if I remember rightly, it was getting dark about eight o'clock at night. And they thought it best to leave the lorry where it was until Saturday morning. Then father took the, got up steam in the Aveland and Porter traction engine, and stood on the road.

And if he had got in a little further along, he would've been able to get into what was the pub yard of the Trowell and Hammer. But that wasn't the right position for pulling the truck back out. So he had to stand on the main road, which didn't hold up too much traffic because in those days, that would be round about 1926 and the National Strike being on round about that time, that was, not a lot of traffic about. Anyway, it was slow, but they tried and tried to get it out, and it was a bit of an awkward job because they couldn't, hadn't got anywhere to anchor the engine down. And instead of pulling the lorry out, it was dragging the engine back.

So it looked as if it was gonna be darkness before they had eventually got it. So Dad sent me back to the workshop, which was a mile down the road. I walked back down there to get the lamps to go on the engine because he would need them because it would be dark for going. So that was the two lamps that went on the front of the engine and a hurricane lamp, lantern, with the red glass that would be hung on the back cutler. That was all the lamp lights that were necessary in those days. I put those lamps in my homemade trolley and took them back up to them. The lorry was eventually pulled out of the pond. And the charge for the job, for the engine and that, was 10 pounds, which eventually was paid by the firm, by Pullen name. And that's one of the memories.

And I did just mention that that was around about the time of the National Strike in 1926, which brings me onto another memory as. It was a job with newspapers and that sort of thing. Dad decided that he would have a crystal set radio, and I've still got that set today, but it used to please us kids when we were at home because there would be Mum and Dad sitting one each side of the table with their earphones on, and there would be father fiddling away with the cat’s whisker, trying to get the right position to get the two LO call sign through, and us kids, we just couldn't keep serious. We'd keep tittering and laughing. And that brought the rebuff, 'Can't you be quiet?' And of course we knew that we only had to be told once because otherwise the second time we felt it rather than heard it. But that's just another little memory. Our parents weren't cruel in any way, but it was just family life. And as I say, I've still got that crystal set today that Dad bought in 1926.

In those early days, we had a Garrett Overtype steam wagon for haulage trade. We used to cart builders’ materials for the local builder, bricks from the brickworks, Colliers at Marks Tey, sewage sludge from the Colchester sewage works to be spread on the various fields of the farms in the area and a general haulage.

And I know I used to like to cadge a ride. On a Saturday or during school holidays, it was my uncle that usually drove the wagon. And of course when we was on the sewage runs, it was rather smelly, so we had to be a little bit careful where we went. And I always remember for raising steam in the wagon, there was a restriction within the borough boundary Colchester. We hadn't got to make any smoke, so there always used to be a bag of coke on board so that they could keep the fire going with coke when in the borough. But as soon as we got out in the countryside we went back to coal because that was more suited for getting steam in that particular type of wagon.

So that was another little episode in the firm's history. Dad had bought the wagon from a haulage farm by the name of Jordan's in Sudbury, Suffolk. They had either replaced it with another wagon or gone over to petrol lorry type replacement, something of that sort. I don't know. The government imposed heavy taxes eventually on that type of wagon for haulage so that was scrapped, I would say, about 1927, as it was too costly - the road fund licence taxation.

And of course the boiler inspections and insurances for that sort of thing. So the wagon was scrapped.