tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48961202609548157412024-02-20T16:13:38.960-08:00The Rise and Fall of a Small BusinessThis is the story of Glastonbury Prints, the business John and I started in 1971 and which failed in the 1979-81 recession. It is dedicated to Margaret Thatcher who assisted in our demise. Luckily our shop, Glastonbury Galleries survived.
All words and pictures are Jan Morland Copyright. The Title illustration is from one of John's watercolours
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08402207878507678721noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-30339980994169946012015-06-29T13:10:00.003-07:002015-06-29T14:20:04.803-07:00Introduction<br />
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I have arranged this blog so that it reads like a book for, after all, that is what it is. It is a project which has enthused me for over thirty years and I intended to publish it as a hard copy. In 1981 I had a couple of “rants” published (Western Daily Press and The Guardian – you will find them later in my blog), in which I declared that I would write <b>“The Rise</b> <b>& Fall of a Small Business, dedicated to Margaret Thatcher who assisted in our</b> <b>demise”.</b> It is now 2013. I have written three chapters in thirty years – it has been more fun just talking about it … </div>
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The blog has come about because my granddaughter Emma, opened a blog for my daughter Julie, and now Julie has done the same for me. I am now in my eighties and not very computer literate, but with some help we are going to get it 'out there' at last. The advantage of sharing my story this way, is that I can work on it over time, add any number of illustrations from my vast collection of ephemera, and be able answer your questions and comments. As I am still working on it, you will find 'empty' chapters at the end, waiting to be filled, I may not use them all!</div>
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Welcome, and I hope you enjoy reading about our business.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><u>All the words and illustrations are copyright protected and belong to Jan Morland. Please do not use them without my permission.</u></span><br />
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Besides photographs and illustrations, which were created by members of the family, I am also including some professional photographs and newspaper articles. I understand from the copyright law that I may do this, provided I acknowledge the sources, which I have done wherever possible.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Grateful thanks to the photographers and to local newspapers such as the Central Somerset Gazette and Western Gazette etc, and later to Gifts Magazine and to The Guardian and no doubt other publications for allowing me to use this material. I apologise if my references are incorrect – please write to me at 18 Cavendish Lodge, Magdalene Street, Glastonbury BA6 9FD if necessary.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<em><u>Saturday 20 April 2013 2 am</u> The first 3 chapters were written around fifteen years ago and submitted to a Writers News magazine critique - which was quite favourable. I used them as a basis for a talk I gave to our U3A Local History Group on The Rise & Fall and then re-wrote them early in 2012. But I didn't proceed with the project because we still lived in our bungalow in Glastonbury and I had over 600 pots and tubs to look after ... Now we are reasonably settled into our retirement flat, oldest daughter Julie has insisted on setting up this blog, so I will have to get on with the story.</em></div>
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<em>Please forgive me if some of the events are repeated. I never remember what I have written, unlike local journalist Rachel Humphries. In 2001 she wrote a lovely piece about us (in the Bristol Post? I will have to find the article when I go down to the storage container this week) and last year, when Seve Balesteros died, she remembered that we had mentioned we had a letter from him after he won the Open at St Andrews, when John had sent him one of his hand coloured prints of St Andrews golf course. She remembered something she had written over 10 years previously! I can't remember what I wrote yesterday.</em></div>
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<em>I have finished my cup of coffee and must go back to bed. In the morning, I will start looking through the box of papers for 1972, which will form the basis of Chapter 4.</em></div>
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<em><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.5;">Please note- A fault in our blog access has meant that for several months, we have been unable to edit these posts. And because we are making it read like a book, all the posts had to be created at the </span><span style="line-height: 24px;">beginning. This meant</span><span style="line-height: 1.5;"> we could not add any more chapters either. I have found a rather unsatisfactory solution, which is to copy and paste the old posts onto new ones which can be edited. I do apologise for the resulting sickly-coloured backgrounds! They should improve after chapter 9 as we shall be creating them from scratch.</span></span></em></div>
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Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-26907444352968175322015-06-29T13:10:00.001-07:002015-06-29T13:27:11.450-07:00Chapter 1 1982<br /><div class="post-header" style="background-color: #c0a154; color: #997755; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">
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<b>RISE & FALL OF A SMALL BUSINESS </b></div>
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The sun is setting across Loch Sunart as we near the end of a long day’s journey from Glastonbury. It is summer 1982 and four years have elapsed since our last holiday, during which time we have contrived to lose the greater part of the small business lovingly developed with such high hopes during the Seventies, together with the home we created during 30 years of marriage, sold to pay off the debts.</div>
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The tide is out and some birds are still feeding amongst the rocks. A heron rises awkwardly and flies out across the water; I am crying, so John is driving. Though these are not the bitter tears which I shed at the beginning of the crisis in 1979, when the annual holiday had to be cancelled as we struggled to cope with the downturn in our business. These are tears of pure happiness at being back in our beloved Scotland again</div>
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“Do you remember coming to Strontian for the first time ten years ago with the children, staying in Kilcamb Lodge and driving for hours on that narrow road to the end of the penninsular to Sanna Beach, getting back just in time for supper?” I said, with a lump in my throat as John negotiated the turning onto the A884 road to Lochaline on the Morvern peninsular, where the road sign warns of sheep and passing places. (The correct pronunciation is “Loch-<b>a</b><i>-</i>lin”.) “And then over the next couple of years, when we spent our fortnight self catering in Mrs Jack Cameron’s cottage, Rockfield, in the morning we would ask her opinion as to whether the sun would shine if we went to Sanna today. She would crinkle her eyes and look up at the sky and, after some pondering, she would say yes. It would take us three hours to drive 30 miles from Strontian to Sanna, allowing extra time when we had to stop and help dig the caravans out of the ditch as people weren’t used to negotiating the passing places. And the sun always did shine.” </div>
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When we were going through that horrible time, I used to say to myself firmly: the sun always shines on Sanna Beach.” It was the only way to retain a glimmer of hope for the future. For by November 1979 we had lost £40,000 and the nightmare had begun. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Sanna is the most westerly point of the UK mainland – an enormous deserted white shell beach with a cluster of little crofts and the Ardnamurchan lighthouse close by. Icy cold, clear blue sea and a solitary telephone kiosk. It must have been a gorgeous day at Sanna today. “We found the seaside pansy on those dunes,” I said. (You will hear more about that later). “And do you remember reading “Night Falls on Ardnamurchan” – that book of reminiscences by the son of a crofter living on Sanna beach?” </div>
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We must have been staying at the time in one of the cottages at Laudale (pronounced “Lau-dle”) and Julie and her husband Simon with us. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Laudale is a Georgian shooting lodge on the shore of Loch Sunart, listed Category B by Historic Buildings, with an estate over 12,000 acres and an income from forestry and fish farming. </div>
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Without realising the similarity, they had spent all one afternoon sitting in their car somewhere near Camasnacroise, people watching through their binoculars. The author of the book (which alas I cannot find now) described how one had to check – through the binoculars – whether it was convenient to visit their neighbours after supper. Was another visitor already on the way – or were the neighbours just leaving to visit someone else? Julie described how, first of all, the postman visited the pair of cottages across the bay, obviously stopping for refreshment or gossip with each occupant. Then the old lady came out and shook her doormat and the old man next door fed his chickens; greetings were exchanged over the garden fence. And so on.</div>
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“I suppose we started renting the cottages at Laudale a few years later,” said John. “And in those days, before the Ballachuilish Bridge was built in 1976, we used to queue for two hours for the ferry across Loch Leven.” “And the Corran Ferry used to have a notice which said: This is NOT the Ballachuilish Ferry.” I added. </div>
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We have passed the fish farm where the salmon were leaping in their nets and have turned off the main road past Liddesdale, winding along the couple of miles of single track which follows the shoreline to the estate. I can smell wood smoke; sheep and rabbits bundle out of our way and the delicate white bark of the birch trees shines in the gloaming. Huge spires of foxgloves line the road. The sunset is up to expectation – is that a mackerel sky? We negotiate the corner, where the remains of the old jetty rise stark above the loch, and there is the Big House which sleeps 14 and which, a few years later, we were to rent for a memorable holiday with all the family. This time, we will be staying in one of the two wooden chalets, now called Osprey and Eagle, which were originally built for the estate workers There are wildflowers in a jam jar on the table and a welcoming note from Geoff and Liz. It is quiet except for the stream and the sheep. Nothing has changed. We shall sleep well tonight.</div>
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John and I met at Sidcot School during the war - a Quaker boarding school on the edge of the Mendips. I am not a Quaker. I was sent to live with an aunt on Exmoor in 1940 after an acrimonious divorce the previous year and packed off to boarding school. To begin with I had lived with my mother and younger sister near my grandparents in Chester, but she couldn’t cope with a ‘seriously disturbed child’, and threw me back at my father. He made me a Ward of Court and I was forbidden to have anything to do with my mother (and younger sister) until I was eighteen. My father and stepmother (Jane) meanwhile sailed from Scapa Flow in the autumn of 1940 with all the books from the British Library under the aegis of the British Council, taking them to South America where they were left with embassies or ministries for safe keeping. They had to flee from Bilbao in a cargo ship “chased by the Japanese”, and after various adventures they ended up in Calcutta. We kept in touch with aerogrammes; one had to write the letter on a special sheet of paper purchased from the Post Office. This was photographed and reduced to a negative before being sent across the world; it was then printed again in a size resembling A5 and delivered by the postman.</div>
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John was born in 1930 in his grandmother’s bed in Ynyswytryn at the bottom of Wick Hollow in Glastonbury – the family home made into flats in the 1960’s by Uncle Humphrey Morland. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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John’s father, Bry, was the youngest brother and there was no room for him at the factory. John’s Great Grandfather married Mary Clark in 1865 (the Quaker family who were already producing shoes in Street) and in 1899 the partnership of these families became “Clark Son & Morland Ltd”, occupying the site at Northover now named The Red Brick Building. In its time, it was the biggest sheepskin tannery in Europe. By the outbreak of war in 1939 Bry and his wife Deena lived in Hampstead. John remembers going up to the Elephant & Castle in the holidays and looking out at London burning, with the silhouette of St Paul’s standing firm against the crimson flames. </div>
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John left school in 1947 and I left the following year. My aunt and I were not getting on very well (teenage troubles no doubt!) and as my father and Jane had returned from India following Partition, I went to live with them in Chelsea. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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John and I got together again and after a couple of years of courting, we were married in December 1951. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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John was 21 but I was three months younger and had to ask my father’s permission. Because of the family break-up, I couldn’t decide whether to have a Quaker wedding, or to be married by Grandad the Bish – my paternal grandfather - who had retired to the Lake District. So we compromised and were married in Chelsea Registry Office with only my father and Jane, Deena and Bry (John’s parents) and a couple of friends in attendance. The Bishop’s sister, Great Aunt Beatrice, wrote to me afterwards: “What a pity you didn’t have a proper wedding with all the presents and good wishes that go with it.” I wish I had kept that letter; it caused much amusement when we celebrated our Diamond Wedding recently!</div>
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John had spent two years studying tanning at the National Leathersellers College in Bermondsey, followed by two years (deferred) National Service. This finished in August 1952, after which we came down to Glastonbury. He was the fourth generation of the family to join Clark Son & Morland Ltd, working to begin with in the Development Department; he designed and produced the first sheepskin coats in 1958 and was made a Director. By this time we had two children – Rob was born in 1954 and Julie in 1955. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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But clashes of personality with Uncle Humphrey Morland, then Managing Director, took its toll. By the Sixties, soon after our youngest daughter Ruth was born, poor John was suffering from migraines which continued to haunt him for the next 30 odd years until he had an angioplasty. So it must have been a heart problem all that time. He would get one or two migraines each week, which entailed having to sit quietly for an hour or so while his pills took effect</div>
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In 1954 we bought an acre of orchard at the top of Bushy Coombe from Uncle Humphrey; as he was chairman of the Planning Committee of the Borough Council, we (together with other members of the family) built four houses in the Coombe, three of which were designed by Jack Hepworth, who worked at Morlands and who was married to John’s first cousin. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In 1962/3 we doubled the size of our house, renaming it “Schehallion” after our first holiday in Scotland in the early Sixties. This is the name of a mountain in Perthshire – with spelling somewhat modified – and which the whole family, including Ruth aged about 5, managed to climb in gum boots. </div>
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Now I have filled you in with our back history, we must return to Laudale. It is 6 o’clock as we begin unpacking the car. We have taken 12 hours to drive nearly 500 miles from Glastonbury and we are tired. “Let’s have baked beans on toast”, I say as we struggle to carry the gas fridge (borrowed from our neighbours) into the kitchen. There is no electricity, unless it rains, when their own hydro electric comes into operation. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Only once, in all the years we spent there, did we enjoy electricity and then it was only for the first day or two of the holiday, as it <i>had</i> rained the previous week. Another time, we returned home after a perfect fortnight in Scotland, when some French visitors to Strontian had complained of the heat, to find that the floods were out on the moor at Cowbridge.</div>
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Tilley lamp and candles are the order of the day; large stocks of food ordered in advance from our nearest shop, Munroe’s store at Strontian (about 8 miles away, round the top of Loch Sunart), await in large boxes. We even have to bring our own bed linen. The trouble is that sometimes the milk was not fresh. This was delivered to Strontian from Inverness, a hundred miles away, mostly by single track road in the seventies; it was presented in plastic tetra bags which were just piled up in the shop with no thought for rotating the stock, so it would often be sour when opened. And snipping the corner was quite an art – milk would spurt out before we could pour it into a jug. </div>
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The week’s ration of a half hundredweight sack of anthracite sits beside the Rayburn. Before Geoff and Liz Abbott managed the estate, an old man living in a cottage a couple of miles down the road seemed to be in charge of the holiday lets; we used to call him “the good fairy” when he brought our second bag of coal as we were always running out. On one occasion, we had even travelled up with an extra sack on the roof rack, together with a box of worms for the fishing. Otherwise one had to drive about 30 miles to Fort William (across the Corran Ferry) to get more – and make a second journey in order to return the empty sack.to the coal merchant.</div>
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After supper we go down to the water’s edge. It is 9 o’clock and the sun is setting, but it will never get really dark at this time of the year. The sandpiper is still calling from the other side of the loch and the cool gentle breeze smells so fresh – I feel surrounded by the scent of mountain streams, heather, shell fish and seaweed, and wood smoke from the cottage occupied by Liz and Geoff. But the midges are everywhere. After fishing for mackrell from our inflatable dinghy on the loch one evening a few years ago, we had come ashore and lit two fires; <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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one on which to cook the fish and the other of dried seaweed.We stood in the smoke of the latter for awhile to escape their attention. Then, before these became commercially available, John had got his mother to buy some fine dark material from Harrods from which he made his own protective veil – the only alternative in those days was a dab of oil of citronella. “We’d better go back now”, I said. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I wonder if we will find mushrooms this year and whether the raspberries are ripe yet. We will pick raspberries for supper tomorrow. “Tomorrow is Sunday” said John. “Let’s rest after all that driving, then we can go to Sanna on Monday if it is fine.”</div>
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I look at the sky. Perhaps the weather will hold for a day or two. “All right”, I say and give him a hug. “And I hope the sheep don’t keep us awake this time”. On one occasion they had wandered round the cottage all night, calling for their lambs. Ruth can do a good rendering of a Scottish sheep.</div>
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Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-51677213437068627592015-06-29T13:09:00.011-07:002015-06-29T13:30:17.899-07:00Chapter 2 1970<div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-4653155786311152422" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: #c0a154; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5; position: relative; width: 768px;">
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<br />One Saturday morning in the summer of 1970 I found John at his desk in the upstairs sitting room in “Schehallion”. “What on earth are you doing?” I asked. “I thought I might try something based on those pencil drawings I did some years ago,” was the reply.</div>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaVT6NDL4SDp71tuE_zVUcaLeSug_0OlvVJp2zBPOm-Pcj7DNWeSBI5uuafEHpKJrfHMPfiA-XHB90wL2QGvl0TRYepmMdtUEKHL47Oo7JEm0TOXFD7ibk-JcfGymF_PAimj432EMupa28/s1600/John+drawing+one+of+the+childrens'+posters,+with+Jan+watchi+copy+800.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; color: #993322; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaVT6NDL4SDp71tuE_zVUcaLeSug_0OlvVJp2zBPOm-Pcj7DNWeSBI5uuafEHpKJrfHMPfiA-XHB90wL2QGvl0TRYepmMdtUEKHL47Oo7JEm0TOXFD7ibk-JcfGymF_PAimj432EMupa28/s1600/John+drawing+one+of+the+childrens'+posters,+with+Jan+watchi+copy+800.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px;">Western Daily Press 5 January 1972</td></tr>
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John is a natural artist. At Sidcot School, he used to design posters for films and plays. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />We have six framed pencil drawings recording holidays in Switzerland (with his parents before he left school), and in Wales, Scotland and Ireland with our young family in the late 50’s and early 60’s. During those years he had also drawn “The Siege of Mockbattle Castle”, and when he spent a few days in a London hospital while they were trying to find a cause for his migraine, he had amused himself by creating “The Hospital Tree”; which the matron had coveted, but John refused to give it to her. It was those pencil drawings which were the inspiration for a set of 4 posters (A1 size), drawing this time with a Rotring pen – no Tippex in those days. One of the posters took him 40 hours to complete. And of course this was achieved in his spare time, as he continued to work at Morlands for a further eighteen months.</div>
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We had come to Glastonbury in 1952, the year after we were married, and he had worked his way up from the development department at the factory. His early training, besides National Service, was at the Leathersellers College in London, so he was a tanner by trade. Nearly twenty years later, as a Director of Production, he was responsible for sheepskin coats (which he had introduced in 1958 from his own designs), in addition to the long established departments producing slippers, boots, rugs and even pram canopies, which had been introduced to fill the summer market. He was Chairman of the British Leather Manufacturers Research Association, travelling to meetings at Egham, as well as attending trade fairs such as the Semaine du Cuir in Paris. For several years he ran coat competitions for students attending fashion courses at the Art Colleges of Gloucester, Bournemouth & Poole and Plymouth. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSIedPhsTKT1wGoPOfXBEGwKw6vjc35poXSen0d6ZSU34olSdOaxiCMqERxZ2-0wo23Wkqn1zlIpXsczaMm0QKYL9hC7AE8fAUEe3Hu0tyb5_7cQzT4V5o0WOrZ6hskEGgeKqLr1uinJ39/s1600/juliathyer+(4)+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; color: #993322; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSIedPhsTKT1wGoPOfXBEGwKw6vjc35poXSen0d6ZSU34olSdOaxiCMqERxZ2-0wo23Wkqn1zlIpXsczaMm0QKYL9hC7AE8fAUEe3Hu0tyb5_7cQzT4V5o0WOrZ6hskEGgeKqLr1uinJ39/s1600/juliathyer+(4)+2.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="223" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px; text-align: center;">Fashion drawing by john</td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC9ii7Op2wmorOsX7q_Kt6ss54riTo1dJqeDUwAl-tPW0HVEqQq7QWKBUMGm1rIUoTPW1XdbsDWCq5f_Dbl5NbXXUSGGAI2FthfG-tLWoVHwOMm8LyBx0kd5ncrXLUkJfGW079AHR0XUNm/s1600/juliathyer+(10)+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="color: #993322; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC9ii7Op2wmorOsX7q_Kt6ss54riTo1dJqeDUwAl-tPW0HVEqQq7QWKBUMGm1rIUoTPW1XdbsDWCq5f_Dbl5NbXXUSGGAI2FthfG-tLWoVHwOMm8LyBx0kd5ncrXLUkJfGW079AHR0XUNm/s1600/juliathyer+(10)+2.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px;">Fashion drawing by John</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip1R3YCxAxjo4KHqQYSDWwZ2vIKd0uOUp_HB9eo3lGYTyEBMUtLcyzAkIlL_qRL4sWR9jFaEH94-rczeGXWi25IRMGOgUpbZ8HPrTE8FNQQ49RgiAXJryTBQMJG8fMlWo4-baGuDJ3FGiC/s1600/800+1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="color: #993322; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip1R3YCxAxjo4KHqQYSDWwZ2vIKd0uOUp_HB9eo3lGYTyEBMUtLcyzAkIlL_qRL4sWR9jFaEH94-rczeGXWi25IRMGOgUpbZ8HPrTE8FNQQ49RgiAXJryTBQMJG8fMlWo4-baGuDJ3FGiC/s1600/800+1.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a><br /></div>
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I had had secretarial training and a couple of sedate office jobs (including two years at Gould & Swayne, solicitors in Glastonbury), before we started our family. Neither of us had been on the sharp end of business administration. Small businesses and self employment was not part of the language in those days, although (as I discovered later), the Bolton Report was published in 1971. I was occupied with looking after our home and three children, going to coffee mornings supporting the National Trust and the Save the Children Fund and attending West Pennard WI. I was on the committee of Strode Theatre in Street in my role as PRO, working with the theatre manager, John Lowe, spreading the word by getting friends to help deliver posters in the Mendip area, as Shirley Powell well remembers. <br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; color: #333333; float: left; margin-right: 1em; padding: 8px; position: relative;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyT2d0XyW20SHPOtxT36DCzrLg9dMSu78rhf9Ba_tg0C7zJthV3LSKfNnAI6ej4jJXdd0f2RRjPWSlIp9vM_RXa3N0LOTEOS2nU4NwNwiCESTlx57GauvIfMOw0L6mrffFXMO_nz0-m1tp/s1600/800+5.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; color: #993322; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyT2d0XyW20SHPOtxT36DCzrLg9dMSu78rhf9Ba_tg0C7zJthV3LSKfNnAI6ej4jJXdd0f2RRjPWSlIp9vM_RXa3N0LOTEOS2nU4NwNwiCESTlx57GauvIfMOw0L6mrffFXMO_nz0-m1tp/s1600/800+5.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px; text-align: center;">Photo courtesy of Mid Somerset Newspapers</td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggNeWfdzeXomvRhbe8Fik2DwtzmjeyIIqsOEGvdCmhIMvZVmG4MZ0vnneGeTYynfjAe9YOFni031s1MKUB5cy89nQl72MSnyxDRddVbnHH7axOnFYUpRR0mOUkoyCk2VloJaDHiDlKt-ns/s1600/800+4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="color: #993322; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggNeWfdzeXomvRhbe8Fik2DwtzmjeyIIqsOEGvdCmhIMvZVmG4MZ0vnneGeTYynfjAe9YOFni031s1MKUB5cy89nQl72MSnyxDRddVbnHH7axOnFYUpRR0mOUkoyCk2VloJaDHiDlKt-ns/s1600/800+4.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="233" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px;">Photo courtesy of Mid Somerset Newspapers</td></tr>
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<br />We owned three ponies – Candy, Misty and Bracken – and a field down on the Godney road, helped in this venture by two teenage girls, Anne Hawkins and Suzanne Vine (we also accommodated her pony, Pip). The “Cradlebridge Gymkhana”, run by Henry and Joyce Tinney, was a most popular event; in its first year about 4 horses participated, and we all took turns in entering the competitions. On one occasion, riding Candy, I nearly won the “Cradlebridge Canter” – which was actually a mad gallop …<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Rob and Julie were at Quaker boarding schools by then, Rob at Leighton Park and Julie at Sidcot, where Ruth would join her in 1971. My diary is full of arrangements to pick up children at the end of term; travelling to London to visit Deena and Bry; driving down to Bilbrook (near Minehead) to visit my mother and stepfather, Bernard Kinch – who later helped a lot with advice and introductions into the gift trade.</div>
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Fortunately I had begun a collection of ephemera in the late 60’s, before this story begins, which I can use to jog my (rather poor) memory of events. I never did have a good memory and it is even worse now that I am writing this in my eighties …. It began with a few newspaper cuttings and letters stored in a Clarks shoebox, but later the accumulation has piled up and my “summerhouse” contains large boxes of stuff for each year from 1970-2000, when I had to STOP as I was running out of space. That part of my collection consists of general news items from local and national newspapers, a Biba catalogue, the Radio Times before it went colour, womens’ magazines and Berni Inn menus snuggled out under my coat, plus letters from friends and family. And in our spare bedroom/office is another collection, specifically relating to “Glastonbury Prints” and to Morlands. </div>
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Without all this stuff, I would never remember enough detail to be able to paint a picture of what it was like to be self employed in the 1970’s. Please forgive me if I have got something wrong.</div>
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Pat and Alban Leyshon had opened their shop “Pat Li Shun” at the top of Glastonbury High Street in the late 60’s and were very helpful mentors, advising us about the gift trade and allowing us to use their address, because we weren’t supposed to run a business from our house. Pat was an artist, designing chopping boards for Taunton Vale Industries and producing her own cards, which Alban printed on ancient Heidelberg machines in his workshop next door. Famously, she painted their frontage with brightly coloured flowers, horrifying the Borough Council – but Alban had done his homework and he could not be forced to remove this street art as the decoration did not contain any wording; it continued to delight visitors to Glastonbury for perhaps another ten years. In an article in The Guardian entitled “The Hippie Vale of Avalon”, the town was described as “strong magic”. <br /><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; color: #333333; float: right; margin-left: 1em; padding: 8px; position: relative; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnjWdoZQPlT_geiIMnrafJ3HYbW2AagrJasMttTjYCwLN_KDvmqOjLg3s0Xbnnjn3QBDpaQaR1_a-8FMR8PQcLcHvP3WZqy1c4K7NJ9fIpMhJd1BXfjptXBYf9ZTAVU2iSarcKVDA83UEZ/s1600/Pat+Leyshon+shop+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; color: #993322; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnjWdoZQPlT_geiIMnrafJ3HYbW2AagrJasMttTjYCwLN_KDvmqOjLg3s0Xbnnjn3QBDpaQaR1_a-8FMR8PQcLcHvP3WZqy1c4K7NJ9fIpMhJd1BXfjptXBYf9ZTAVU2iSarcKVDA83UEZ/s1600/Pat+Leyshon+shop+2.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px; text-align: center;">Pat is crouched down by the door to finish the painting.</td></tr>
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“One day,” Pat said, “I was visited by Alderman Goodson, who complained that this would encourage the hippies to come to Glastonbury. Alban and I managed to persuade him that this would not be the case, but just then the doorbell pinged and in walked a hippy. The Alderman turned on his heel and left the shop without another word.” <i> </i></div>
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“Glastonbury Prints” was itself born from an earlier downturn in trade. During the slump of 1969/70, Morlands was not doing well. No doubt there had been several mild winters which inhibited the sale of coats and boots, and there were other economic factors in which I took no interest. Home and family were all I cared about. There were rumours in Glastonbury that the firm was about to be absorbed into the Clark empire (these are our Quaker cousins, the well known shoe firm in neighbouring Street). The town was very jaded and shop keepers anxiously asked me – as a Director’s wife – for the latest news.</div>
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Though the crisis cannot have been as bad as feared, John was sufficiently shocked out of complacency and security to wonder what he should do if his job disappeared, so that is why he started drawing the posters. My step father, Bernard Kinch, was a sales agent in the gift trade and promised to try and sell these for us. He recommended his accountant in Woking; we found a printer (Bigwood & Staple, Bridgwater), registered the name and arranged our letter-box address. It was upon a spirit of fun, adventure and devil-may-care that we based our new business. All those years of silver spoons, conventional behaviour and of being regarded as pillars of society, based not on our personal achievement but on the family we represented, would be swept away. Alas, the euphoria of the affluent sixties and flower power was very different from the post oil crisis seventies. </div>
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How could we foresee, as we hesitatingly started on the path of insecurity and self employment, that Morlands’ own demise would occur soon after the collapse of our small manufacturing enterprise in less than a decade.Ten year old and hundred year old firms, large and small, succumbed to the same sad fate. It was the anger engendered by the destruction of established businesses such as Morlands, producing beautiful and useful things, providing employment for generations of families, creating wealth in small towns, which drove me to tell our little sob story. The feelings of disappointment, trauma and loss of everything we had achieved must have been an experience shared by many thousands of people during those dreadful years. And of course since the credit crunch of 2008, history is repeating itself as I write.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />These are photos of Morlands taken by Julie in 2012 - the family firm closed in 1981 and those buildings had been derelict until it was taken over by the Red Brick Building Trust. Bailys tannery (with the tall chimney) was already on the northern part of the site when John's great grandfather John Morland, who had married Mary Clark in the mid 1800's, built his tannery at the southern end around 1890.<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
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So here we are at the beginning of May 1971, collecting the first price lists from Clarks printing works in Magdalene Street, inscribed with the newly registered Business Name of “Glastonbury Prints”, based at 88 High Street and showing the price of three cartoon posters at 50p each including purchase tax. Bernard was supplied with a set of samples and on 7 May I sold a dozen posters to Pat Li Shun, value £6. By the end of the month I had made 20 entries in the ledger. Some of those first customers were still on our books eight years later.</div>
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I even ventured on the road, visiting Tridias, a very illustrious toy shop in Bath. Struggling with an enormous portfolio, I introduced myself. “My husband has drawn these posters which will appeal to children right up to teenagers,” I confidently asserted. The owner of the shop was doubtful and his assistant even less enthusiastic. “I would consider any of the teenagers in my family who professed such taste to be mentally deficient,” she said firmly. However, I must have persuaded them to take one of each, because I have a piece of headed paper accompanying a cheque for £1.50 on which is scribbled the words “They sold, dammit – could we have some more.” <i>(copy)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Bernard had been in the gift trade for some years, having arrived there by means of fudge. My mother made it and Bernard sold it – to the Army & Navy Stores, Fortnum & Mason and Eton College Tuckshop, as well as gift shops across the west country. Mum made one hundred weight of fudge on her kitchen stove in the last three weeks before Christmas, a year or so before this story begins, and our children nicknamed her “Fudge Grannie”. This was long before Health & Safety Regulations and fudge shops. <br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; color: #333333; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 8px; position: relative; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px;">Bernard & 'Fudge Granny'</td></tr>
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By now Bernard had several agencies, including The Russian Shop and some high class cookware called Copco, as well as representing Taunton Vale Industries which produced chopping boards and other items (some decorated with designs by Pat Leyshon). I have one of their very early chopping boards. The gift trade consisted of many small businesses (usually husband-and-wife partnerships in fact), involved with manufacturing or with managing retail outlets. The manufacturers employed selling agents on a commission basis, where the UK was divided up into a number of areas, each covered by a different agent who carried perhaps six or eight companies’ products. Besides visiting the shops on a more or less regular basis – less often as the price of petrol became prohibitive – the agents usually helped to man their principal’s stands at various trade shows during the year, when retailers put in their main orders and hunted for new lines to stock. Companies with a turnover of £1M or more however – Dartington Glass and Royal Worcester, for example – could afford full time representation, while the larger retailers and department stores employed professional buyers.</div>
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A diary entry for Wednesday May 5 1970 records what was probably our first visit to the accountant recommended by Bernard, Mr Sayers of Herbert Parnell & Co, Woking, who gave us advice about keeping records of sales. The first proper ledger is dated from May 1971, in the front of which is a foolscap sheet of detailed instructions from him “on the operation of an analysed cash book”. Bernard also introduced us to agents in the gift trade – Phil and Dave, who covered the West Country, and the redoubtable Mona Russell from Harrogate. John was packing up the odd order in our garage by this time, while I must have been writing out the invoices by hand. </div>
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John went on to design a series of black and white silhouettes. We had been invited to see a collection of Victorian silhouettes by Mrs Cotton, a venerable member of West Pennard WI. They were farmers and John remembers Mr. Cotton’s workworn fingers tenderly holding these delicate pictures. He was also impressed by the oval mounts and later commissioned a local engineering firm to produce a metal “forma” which he used to cut the apertures. This continued for several years until we invested in suitable mount cutting machinery.</div>
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Later that summer, through Pat’s generosity, we were introduced to the Jessups of Taunton Vale Industries and John was commissioned to design a set of roses for their tablemats, to be produced in black and white. This led him to consider designing pictures for Glastonbury Prints in addition to the posters. He drew five roses, four birds and one butterfly, references 1-10 in a range which finally contained nearly 600 images – the four birds continued to be the best selling pictures right up to the end.</div>
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“My customers would preferred the pictures to be coloured,” reported Bernard. It so happened that I had just taken on a cleaning lady called Rose. “Would you like to do some painting for me?” asked John. So she spent the morning in the upstairs sitting room, learning how to colour the roses under John’s careful tuition, while I had to wash the kitchen floor and vaccum the bedrooms. And this is how it all started.</div>
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To begin with, all John’s designs were drawn with the pen and printed in black and white; colour printing in those days was very expensive for short runs. And we knew nothing about picture framing – a craft at that time restricted to a few specialists in big towns offering a bespoke framing service, while a handful of larger framers supplied the galleries on a contract basis. Somehow we were put in touch with a gentleman called Bill Williams, who was an agent for a moulding manufacturer and for Whitehouse, Willetts & Bennion Ltd., Worcester, makers of photographic frames.</div>
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The trip to Worcester to collect the ready made frames became a regular run as business built up. This was my job, in my Ford Escort Estate, taking the best part of a day, as the southern leg of the M6 was still being built and the Avon Bridge was not opened until 1975. Through Wells, over the Mendips on the Old Bristol Road past Chew Valley Lake, down the steep hill from Dundry with magnificent views over the city, across the river and under Clifton Suspension Bridge along the A4 to join the motorway somewhere near Shirehampton – no falling rocks along this route in those days! Soon I could see the stilts carrying the road across the River Severn, and thence north through beautiful dying elm country, a foretaste of the devastation which Somerset was to suffer a year or two later.</div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">W.W.&B. inhabited an old three or four storey Victorian Block to the north of the town; a dusty picture framing shop fronted the main road and access to the loading bay was down a narrow back alley. There were two Whitehouse directors, one of whom spent most of his time going round the world on Rotary business, while the other worked in the office with the manager, Douglas Lee. Douglas took an affectionate fatherly interest in everything we were doing. While the car was being loaded, banter was being exchanged, laced with good advice given in a dialect reminiscent of my childhood in Derbyshire.</span></div>
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<em>Thursday 1 August 2013 – with apologies for taking so long before writing the next chapter – firstly in the spring we weren’t very well and then the hot weather has been a bit much!<span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRLiwUwW5C4YHu8yKaeYLyePWV8Y4DD55L9DS_M-WqKiwUPxJTIn6fgyqP7Dyx5UDPfoRklFBWI5r684e4KYoDbm2mb_ev5E60y011Q2_7mY_l2QFv7RY8vUE0sk1T49Esl4HSqopz8N6C/s1600/inner+relief+Road+ok.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; color: #993322; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRLiwUwW5C4YHu8yKaeYLyePWV8Y4DD55L9DS_M-WqKiwUPxJTIn6fgyqP7Dyx5UDPfoRklFBWI5r684e4KYoDbm2mb_ev5E60y011Q2_7mY_l2QFv7RY8vUE0sk1T49Esl4HSqopz8N6C/s1600/inner+relief+Road+ok.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="232" /></a>Going back to my ephemera collection for 1970 I found a copy of the Gazette dated Friday October 16 bearing the front page headline: “Petition Calls for Rejection of Road Plans”, which would lead to the Inner Relief Road Protest Movement. This favoured a by-pass following the former railway line, which was led by the redoubtable Mr E. Jackson-Stevens, supported by Councillors Ian Tucker and Hugh Barker.</div>
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The Inner Relief Road plans were still in the Council plans the following year, because in the newspaper dated 31 December 1971 the headline reads: “Traffic Study Favours the Inner Relief Road – conclusion of the County Surveyor”. Aren’t we lucky that the Protest Movement won the day?<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX7W70_LZhW7IQwY1Dlk3YfkgQ56pbO0cTlXrRDRBOUt_K8aeYpdz8Ya-eXvUdtggjJ-mn_8_n-T8PCkjKNfu97NlEqRANVpNm_kRUktqyA52rH3lccAFquNI0K7RQ-YpfqvZ2OtvJILvq/s1600/The+Jack+Blandiver+Column+2ok.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; color: #993322; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX7W70_LZhW7IQwY1Dlk3YfkgQ56pbO0cTlXrRDRBOUt_K8aeYpdz8Ya-eXvUdtggjJ-mn_8_n-T8PCkjKNfu97NlEqRANVpNm_kRUktqyA52rH3lccAFquNI0K7RQ-YpfqvZ2OtvJILvq/s1600/The+Jack+Blandiver+Column+2ok.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="270" /></a>In the same edition on the back page. the Jack Blandiver Column features “Fantasy posters start new business”. And Mr West’s Diary, Western Daily Press for Wednesday January 5 1972 has an article with photos of us both: “The boss presents his amazing imp poster circus”.<br /></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjacoNFyJk8F1MLSoJkBEPJVH_jzpm5eUVZaNUmru4e94zmGkUo5MSqTo2SWtRTE06EnaEX_wR2tqVLTSk-XP4i8dyse640z7yT1_balNN5NEMo0I0j2TINm3Bg08OHGSwhvpzNRKsT_p8k/s1600/Newspaper+article+ok+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; color: #993322; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjacoNFyJk8F1MLSoJkBEPJVH_jzpm5eUVZaNUmru4e94zmGkUo5MSqTo2SWtRTE06EnaEX_wR2tqVLTSk-XP4i8dyse640z7yT1_balNN5NEMo0I0j2TINm3Bg08OHGSwhvpzNRKsT_p8k/s1600/Newspaper+article+ok+.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px; text-align: center;">Thanks to Western Gazette and Mid Somerset Newspapers for these cuttings</td></tr>
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In the box for 1971 there is a set of new decimal coins dated Monday 15 February and a Guide which states that it was delivered to every household, containing a message from Lord Fisk, Chairman of Decimal Currency Board: “with a little practice, you will find that decimal currency is not difficult …”, explaining how the changeover will work. Thank goodness decimilisation occurred before our business got going! And there is a programme for the musical “Hair” which was being performed in Bristol Hippodrome – I took our youngest daughter, Ruth (aged 11) from Sidcot, telling her that there would be naughty words which she wouldn’t understand. Later I learned that most of the scholars knew these off by heart. Lastly, there is the prospectus for the Open University for 1971/72 and I sign on for a Foundation Year in Humanities, starting in 1972.</div>
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Our eldest son Rob is a steam buff. On Thursday 6 January 1972 I take him up to the Kilmersdon Colliery near Radstock. He is 17 years old and is already spending time on the Talyllyn Railway in North Wales, where he learns his engine driving skills. My first cousin once removed was Tom Rolt, founder of the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society in 1950, but unfortunately we didn’t realise this connection until Tom had died. Now, Rob is one of the Trustees of the At Steam Locomotive Trust and has actually driven Tornado on the Grand Central Railway in 1999. To return to Kilmersdon, here we spend a happy afternoon on the footplate with Mr Herbie Loader, taking the coal trucks from the head of the mine to the incline, where they were let down by the shunter to join the main railway line to Bath. No health and safety regulations in those days. I return home with a face black with soot. That shunting engine, named “Kilmersdon”, is now at the S & D Museum at Williton.</div>
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Returning to Glastonbury Prints in 1972: the West Country Gift Fair is held from a Sunday to Thursday in Torquay in January. My step father, Bernard, said: “Would you like to share my bedroom in the Palace Hotel? So I was away for a couple of nights the following week, taking my turn on a stand for our first trade show. The Palace Hotel bedrooms were taken over by small exhibitors and I laid out our pictures on the bed. There were a couple of other small exhibitors sharing the room, but I can’t remember who they were now. Our dentist and John’s fishing friend Frank Campbell, together with his wife Jean, had a holiday cottage nearby and they very kindly let me sleep there. As you will see later, Frank then allows us to rent his attic room behind the dental surgery in Magdalene Street, Glastonbury, as our workshop for awhile.</div>
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Early in February I visit the International Gift Fair at Blackpool for a night, meeting several sales agents who had been introduced to us by Bernard – I can’t remember much about this time though. Bernard and his colleagues could not have afforded their own stands at this show (renting a space at the West Country Gift Fair was less expensive), but they probably helped out on their principal’s stands during the exhibition, which lasted for 5 days from Sunday to Thursday. </div>
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We paid our agents 10% commission on sales and each agent handled goods from several small producers and importers – Bernard represented The Russian Shop, Copco (up market kitchen ware) and Taunton Vale Industries among others. The larger firms like Portmeirion and Royal Worcester (and Morlands in the clothing and footwear trades) employed full time representatives who visited customers.</div>
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The diary now shows when my projects (each month) for the Open University need to be completed; I am listening to radio programmes, watching the occasional television programme and doing all the necessary reading. After each section of the course we had to write an essay. All that as well as managing Glastonbury Prints; fetching the frames from Worcester and collecting packing materials from Ashton Containers in Bristol; processing the orders; visiting our accountant in Surrey; dealing with sales agents; and packing children off to boarding school or collecting them at the end of term or putting them on a train to London to visit John’s parents, Deena and Bry, in Hampstead In March, the wreck of the SS Great Britain comes to Bristol – we probably go and look at it during the Easter Holidays.</div>
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Remember, John was still working full time as a Director at Morlands. In our first year he was drawing the cartoon posters (one took him 40 hours to complete) in the evenings and at weekends. By the second year of the business, he had moved on to drawings of birds and flowers. When a collection was complete, he would take the originals up to Radstock Reproductions, who produced the plates which were used in the printing process by Bigwood & Staple, our printers in Bridgwater. Print unions were very powerful in those days, but John was privileged. Gordon – against union rules – allowed him to watch the printing process and make suggestions about how much ink was being used.</div>
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All the printing was in black and white of course, in short runs. However, after Bernard reported back that customers would prefer the birds and flowers to be coloured, this was done under John’s careful instructions; I have already told you how my cleaning lady, Rose, became our first hand painter, working at her home – our first outworker.</div>
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On 12 April 1972 my diary entry reads “saw flycatcher at lunchtime” – this would have been from our kitchen window at Schehallion. For several years, a flycatcher built its nest in the vigorous and vicious yellow rose (Mermaid?) growing at that time on the front of the house. On the first occasion, when the gales blew and the branches of the rose moved, the eggs dropped out of the bottom of the nest. Next spring when I groomed the ponies I brought handfuls of horsehair home, hanging it in a bag on the bird table. This time, the flycatcher nest survived and the great tits went off with beaks full of hair, looking just like Jimmy Edwards. When the bird table was visited by the lesser spotted woodpecker, the flycatchers would valiantly mob him. </div>
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We are still cultivating a large garden, with vegetables and lots of fruit bushes as well as harvesting Bramley apples from our orchard. There were lawns to be mown and trees to be pruned. We did have some help from Salvadore Buccione, one of the Italian prisoners of war who stayed behind here after the war ended in 1945. In 1956, the year after we moved into our new house, I started keeping records of bottling and jam making (unfortunately I did not record vegetables). That year the list is as follows:</div>
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gooseberries 40 lbs</div>
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blackcurrants 25 “</div>
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raspberries 2 “</div>
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cherry plums 31 “</div>
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Victoria plums 10 “ total 108 lbs of bottled fruit plus 21 lbs of jam</div>
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However, fifteen years later my records are fragmentary, probably because of other interests and the acquisition of a freezer.</div>
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Returning to Glastonbury Prints: the accountant, Mr Sayers (who had been recommended by Bernard), set up the first balance sheet with our year ending on 22 April and introduced us to the Kalamazoo accounting system – I am visited by their representative, Mr Maskell on April 10. We used a version of this system until the late 80’s I think; it consisted of hand written ledger cards bearing the names of customers or suppliers, using carbon paper to record the entries onto the appropriate cash or sales sheets. No small computers or calculators in those days of course, nor mobile phones or internet or any of the other stuff with which I am not familiar (all I can do is use the computer as a word processor and get our older daughter, Julie, to put the results on the blog for me! <u>Please don’t send me emails as I shall never read them).<o:p></o:p></u></div>
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This book keeping system served us well for many years – later we employed Betty Abbott as our book keeper She was so meticulous that she had the pleasure of correcting British Road Services when they issued an incorrect invoice and admitted that their accounts were in a muddle! I think our end of year figures balanced within a few pennies.</div>
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In May, I write to Mr. Sayers with a list of our expenses for the previous year of trading, totalling around £464 including £268.73 purchase tax and £80 commission paid to the four agents. (note the purchase tax). I paid Clarks Printing Works (then off Magdalene Street, Glastonbury) £2.76, probably for our price list. I didn’t realise until years later that they also called themselves “Glastonbury Prints” – but we had successfully registered our name with Companies House around 1971 I think.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrblMxWaQ0hFA0ixQwmoWnVqZadDTSU8yfMd36ubfS8cDnjCbLriEHy9k4RuVXaPwcWs_dPn2gr8-KpdO6KjFyRIIktD636l8FFC0usohZMZBRjcKWCwrwnqXF80CEr1Q4X-2DeQLElsYn/s1600/800+clearing.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; color: #993322; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrblMxWaQ0hFA0ixQwmoWnVqZadDTSU8yfMd36ubfS8cDnjCbLriEHy9k4RuVXaPwcWs_dPn2gr8-KpdO6KjFyRIIktD636l8FFC0usohZMZBRjcKWCwrwnqXF80CEr1Q4X-2DeQLElsYn/s1600/800+clearing.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px; text-align: center;">John begins clearing the land.</td></tr>
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John’s Great Uncle Oliver Morland had founded Kalamazoo before the War. Uncle Humphrey Morland, managing director in the 60’s, was looking forward to becoming wealthy when Oliver Morland (who was childless) died. We also had some shares in the company (probably given to us by John’s father) which we sold in 1953 in order to buy our acre of orchard at the top of Bushey Coombe from Uncle Humphrey, on which we built the first part of our house “Wick Beech”, with access from Bulwarks Lane. He charged us £1,000, a lot of money in those days!<br /><br /><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; color: #333333; float: left; margin-right: 1em; padding: 8px; position: relative;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg56s0cTIwbIGb-hBopVtSNrVUwAfxaIX18iZxijNBaATpeaUbWGeR0GjBwdQasQ9vYl74N7Mnvsoh4aAL-HiY4IZTcP_18H_Eh3k1rUMrz0HpdxRjElx3BAQVPVvrz5fTG3M0yOlxD2BaD/s1600/800+sch+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; color: #993322; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg56s0cTIwbIGb-hBopVtSNrVUwAfxaIX18iZxijNBaATpeaUbWGeR0GjBwdQasQ9vYl74N7Mnvsoh4aAL-HiY4IZTcP_18H_Eh3k1rUMrz0HpdxRjElx3BAQVPVvrz5fTG3M0yOlxD2BaD/s1600/800+sch+2.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px; text-align: center;">The builders.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Be9vtWYnAZwc5bZnibCWuAs6R5AnJRlysKBnicdMhInKwvueOVf9WhEouuxj_b9YXq2k8R_x2ZoqMIGr8mfAAnJjQeIP5JT3GxFhYr04yhyphenhyphenVyuF-yWMfK9oqOjUVQELsjtxJdvLw5tLu/s1600/800+sch.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; color: #993322; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Be9vtWYnAZwc5bZnibCWuAs6R5AnJRlysKBnicdMhInKwvueOVf9WhEouuxj_b9YXq2k8R_x2ZoqMIGr8mfAAnJjQeIP5JT3GxFhYr04yhyphenhyphenVyuF-yWMfK9oqOjUVQELsjtxJdvLw5tLu/s1600/800+sch.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px; text-align: center;">Under construction.</td></tr>
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<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> In 1962/3 we built an extension and created a drive leading into Wick Hollow, changing our house name to “Schehallion”. </div>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYOcXCpd-LzZodIRKnR8Tzg9-lK20Vhe6cyK27tOV_nkpmyKUoPKZi06PTsxrI7_BEvJue7rBwq60MArbVpsjzb5BpjlyyfRa8ppj0V8pgLyKUmWC9glUxN57Do2td_DiOBNmgMV8B_kSE/s1600/sch+4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="color: #993322; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYOcXCpd-LzZodIRKnR8Tzg9-lK20Vhe6cyK27tOV_nkpmyKUoPKZi06PTsxrI7_BEvJue7rBwq60MArbVpsjzb5BpjlyyfRa8ppj0V8pgLyKUmWC9glUxN57Do2td_DiOBNmgMV8B_kSE/s1600/sch+4.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="183" /></a></td></tr>
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I must digress and tell you a story about Great Uncle Oliver. He and his wife Eileen lived in a lovely big house at Chideock and we went several times in the early 50’s to visit them, travelling down on the motor bike and sidecar before our children were born. We had noticed that there were often pheasants on the B3151 about a mile beyond the Somerton turning, so the next time we were poised and ready – I leaned from the pillion and whacked the pheasant on the head with the pump and we hastily stowed the body in the boot and went on our way. After lunch Uncle Oliver saw us off. “I see that you have been lucky with your pheasant” he commented with amusement – there was the tail sticking out of the boot which of course we hadn’t noticed! Our first bit of road kill, well out of season.</div>
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Humphrey never inherited the Kalamazoo fortune because Eileen Morland spent a lot of money after her husband died, building an old people’s home in Bridport and putting copper domes on the roof. Sadly, Kalamazoo had not kept up with modern developments and went into liquidation (in the 1990’s?); we lost around £15,000 worth of shares, which we must have inherited from John’s father.<br /></div>
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John and I had both been taking photos of people and events since before we were married. John’s first camera was a prewar Kodak bellows camera which he had bought from a retired professional photographer in Hampstead - together with a Parker pen - with his first wages earned at Columbia Fur Dressers (a Morlands subsidiary where he worked for a couple of years after leaving school in 1946). This of course used black and white film (was it 410?) and which continued to be used until after we were married and moved to Glastonbury. I took this photo of John around 1953, when we were still living in a flat at the eastern end of The Thatched Cottage, Bove Town, Glastonbury, as tenants of Uncle Harry and Aunt Elizabeth Scott-Stokes:-</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px; text-align: center;">Thatched Cottage</td></tr>
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<em>(photo of John with motor bike parked at the end of the barn, then part of the Ynyswytryn estate and now the home of Rory Weightman, Bushey Coombe Farm.)</em></div>
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Later, John was using a more up to date camera with colour film to photograph his subjects, which he would later draw with Rotring pen; sometimes he would use pencil for buildings. He always drew and painted from photographs. I have been taking colour slides since 1958 – our older daughter, Julie, has digitised the early family pictures and I have hundreds of record shots of our business from about 1971 until we retired from the shop in 1998. (You will hear about opening the shop in due course.) We didn’t go digital until 2005. </div>
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So with the Glastonbury Prints business building up, John was no longer able to continue to fulfil orders; he had been putting pictures together in his free time in the garage at home and packing them in parcels to take to the Post Office. Out fishing with Frank Campbell one weekend, they must have discussed this. “Why don’t you rent our back room?” was Frank’s helpful suggestion. After moving into the attic room up a steep staircase at the rear of the dental surgery at the end of May, we then took on our first employee, John Chaffey. I think to begin with he must have worked in the evenings on a part-time basis, but on 14 August I record that he was “officially employed” at £2.35 an hour. The back of a hand coloured and framed print of a wren bears the following inscription: “<i>Made in attic 1972 J.Chaffey</i>”. </div>
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John’s wife Elizabeth was the receptionist at the dental surgery and had introduced him to us. She was also studying the Open University at the same time as I was, so we sometimes compared notes; she went on to complete the six year course and gain her degree, while I gave up after the Foundation Year because of increasing pressures from the business. </div>
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By the middle of the summer we had four groups of agents covering the country – my stepfather Bernard; the redoubtable Mona Russell, who covered Yorkshire and Lancashire and probably further afield; Philip Smith from Rochester; and “the boys” from Marlborough who were gradually taking over the West Country from Bernard. Phil Turner and David Haines came to stay with us on one or two occasions.</div>
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On Wednesday 12 July John attends the British Leather Manufacturers Association, of which he is the Chairman, in order to receive the Queens Award to Industry. But we were now beginning to discuss whether he should leave Morlands in order to concentrate on the business. He must have given in his three months’ notice to his fellow Directors by September, though the official news would not have been released until much later.</div>
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In August I take Julie and Ruth to stay with John’s parents in Hampstead (Rob is away working on the Talyllyn Railway), while I drive up to Norwich to attend the Open University Summer School. What an experience! I had left school at 17 and my only other experience of education had been Mrs Hoster’s Training College in London, where I learned shorthand and typing and office procedure (whatever that meant). And for a term before that, in the autumn of 1948, I had attended a short housewife’s course at a Polytechnic. Still rationing of course, so ingredients were rather limited. (I have given the original cookery book to one of our children.) </div>
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A later investment would be a small Roneo machine. Producing lots of copies of documents involved cutting a stencil on the typewriter, wrapping it round a drum which had been carefully inked by hand and using it to duplicate pricelists or “Dear Customer” letters. All other letters were of course written on the typewriter with one (or perhaps two or three) carbon papers.</div>
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By now there were several hand painters, working in their own homes under John’s detailed instructions. Over time the painting round grew to about 25 colourists, with a supervisor who visited them every week, inspected the work and paid them on a piecework basis. In our prime, we produced 1,000 hand coloured pictures a week.</div>
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<br />And on the Friday we are visited by Dudley Tremaine of Cooper & Tanner Ltd., estate agents. “I hear that you are considering moving the business into larger premises” he said. “There are rooms available at 5A High Street, which you could rent from Mr. Trussler and which I think would suit you perfectly.” This building was formerly the Health Clinic – I remembered going there to collect orange juice when the children were small. When the surgery moved out into the new building in Feversham Lane, Mr. Trussler of Western Relining Services took over. It consists of a large two storey rectangular building at the back of what used to be Frisbys Shoe Shop (now a bookshop), with vehicular access from St John’s car park and a passageway from the High Street; it is now called “Number 10 St John’s Square.”</div>
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Two rooms upstairs were ideal, with plenty of good daylight. I remember spending a couple of hours cleaning the filthy staircase and suffering from a sore throat afterwards!</div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">A month later, on Friday evening, November 24, John returns home and declares “I am leaving the factory at Christmas.” Our adventure has begun.</span></div>
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Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-32381223235809058092015-06-29T13:09:00.007-07:002015-06-29T13:39:42.090-07:00Chapter 4 1971-1972<br />
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLKBjja9Y1Vk-07v004h4RC6MY2o4wVBowkxfevpYNykuVLB7HGN3XRqRThBbf1W4k32v__1nX9_2ag-Abb9WW1AkF1fbJJ5VkxX6I5AZm2_C6CuFZfSa1s4B7zdIHxE7nanPdmxA6sjem/s1600/Emma's+birthday+09+(14)Tresanton+Hotel,+St+Mawes.+1940s+Yacht+Club.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="color: #993322; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLKBjja9Y1Vk-07v004h4RC6MY2o4wVBowkxfevpYNykuVLB7HGN3XRqRThBbf1W4k32v__1nX9_2ag-Abb9WW1AkF1fbJJ5VkxX6I5AZm2_C6CuFZfSa1s4B7zdIHxE7nanPdmxA6sjem/s1600/Emma's+birthday+09+(14)Tresanton+Hotel,+St+Mawes.+1940s+Yacht+Club.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="246" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px;">John 2009</td></tr>
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Digression from our story 4 May 2014<o:p></o:p></div>
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I must apologise for not working on my blog for several months. Dear John died on 20 January at the age of 83. We had enjoyed a lovely family Christmas and over the next three weeks he just faded away, dying in his own bed peacefully, without pain.<o:p></o:p></div>
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All the family had visited him in those last days and he <i>wanted</i> to go. I have been very moved by cards from people who knew him at Morlands; who worked for us in Glastonbury Prints and Galleries; who enjoyed his U3A art groups; and from neighbours and friends whom we have known since we came to Glastonbury in 1952.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We held a private cremation and later, a memorial in the Quaker Meeting House in Street, where many people – including our children and grandchildren – spoke about their love for him. Later, someone said how lucky that we had moved a year previously from our bungalow to this flat – so darling Johnny is still here with me. I have this photograph of him on my dressing table, together with his hat.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Thank you, everyone, for all your love and support. I feel very privileged to live in Glastonbury and to have so many friends. And most important of all, thanks to our family who made so many of the arrangements and who have been so supportive over these last few months. I couldn’t have coped without you.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By the end of 1971 “Glastonbury Prints” was beginning to take off. At Christmas, my step father Bernard said: “Would you like to share my bedroom at Torquay?” It took me a moment or two to realise what he was suggesting. The Torquay Gift Fair is held in mid January from Thursday to Sunday and at that time spread across the town in various venues including the rambling Palace Hotel. Of course we agreed and arrangements were made for me to take a turn at manning the “stand”. Bernard had in fact booked two bedrooms in which to show products in his portfolio; one which included displays by Taunton Vale Industries, The Russian Shop and Copco, while we shared the other bedroom with a potter, a weaver of ties and someone else I think. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The potter moaned about wasting time trying (unsuccessfully) to sell his products when he would much rather have been producing them. This is the age old grumble of the professional craftsperson – but alas it is no good making beautiful objects unless one can sell them. I am afraid that John (the artist) and myself (office and sales) had many bitter arguments over the next decade regarding the relative importance of production and sales! <o:p></o:p></div>
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Frank Campbell, our dentist, offered us his holiday cottage somewhere not far away in which to stay. John of course was still working at Morlands and was unable to take part in this venture, so I drove down to Torquay and took over one of the beds at the Palace with our display – I think I only stayed a couple of days, whereas the show would have lasted from Sunday to Thursday.. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The range was developing from black and white posters to silhouettes and then to drawings of flowers; it was Bernard who passed on a customer’s suggestion that they would be better if they were in colour, after which John took on our first hand painter. I should explain that John’s original drawings were created in black ink, using a rotring pen. He would take the completed drawings up to Radstock Reproductions to be converted into a printing plate and then to Bigwood & Staple, Bridgwater. Here John had a special relationship with Gordon who actually did the printing. In spite of fierce unions in those days, Gordon allowed John to attend the printing session and to comment on whether the inking was to his liking etc.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We were still using the address of 88 High Street – the shop called “Pat Li Shun” at the top of the High Street. I had to collect the post from there every day, which would be left perched precariously on the electricity meter in the passage of the next door property where Alban Leyshon conducted his printing business. We owe a lot to Pat and Alban for their help and advice in those early years.<br />
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Here is a copy of our first price list, printed by Clarks Printing Works based in Magdalene Street – they did a lot of general printing for us in the early days and introduced us to Clifton Studios in Bristol who later helped with publicity material. Some time after we had registered our trading name as “Glastonbury Prints”, I was told that the printing works used to call themselves by that name too!<br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">So many people have helped us with our business over the years – was it Cyril Driver, of IMCO Plastics, who told us later about the Old Ciderhouse?</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">And I think that Dudley Tremaine tipped us off regarding 5A, which we moved into in 1973.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">Dave Rockey also gave us good advice</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">- and Roy Simpson of Palmer & Snell was very kind</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">when we bought “Number 10” in 1975.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">There must be many others whom I don’t remember now.</span><br />
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John must have been working in our garage in his free time during those first few months, putting prints into mounts and frames ready to be packed into boxes (with lots of newspaper) and rolling the posters into tubes for dispatch by parcel post to the customers that Bernard and other agents were visiting on our behalf. I was driving regularly to Whitehouse, Willetts & Bennion Ltd in Worcester to collect ready-made picture frames and John had designed a metal template for cutting oval mounts, so our production consisted of putting all this together according to the orders we received. Bernard had introduced us to his colleagues in the gift trade - Mona Russell, who lived near Harrogate, and to “the boys”, Phil and Dave, who covered the London area. They would visit customers and send us orders and later, when we had our own stands at gift trade shows, they would help us for a day or two, taking it in turns to support their “principals” – agents usually acted for 6 or 8 manufacturers. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Our trade price list dated March 1972 lists:- <o:p></o:p></div>
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black/white framed prints £1.39 including tax <o:p></o:p></div>
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hand coloured framed prints £1.67 “ “ <o:p></o:p></div>
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posters 40 “ “<o:p></o:p></div>
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We were beginning to grow out of the garage and Frank Campbell came to the rescue again. “Frank says we may rent an attic room at his dental surgery on Magdalene Street,” said John. We accessed this by the back door which led from the garden and climbed two flights of stairs – there must have been room for a bench and stacks of frames and mount board and the specially designed packing boxes which we had ordered from Ashton Containers, Bristol. One of these orders was delivered to Pat Li Shun’s shop in the High Street and were left piled up on the pavement, so I had to rush and collect them in the car and take them down to our attic room. <o:p></o:p></div>
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My records show that we took on our first full time employee, John Chaffey, on 14 August 1972 at £2.35 an hour. He had been introduced to us by his wife, Elizabeth, who worked as a receptionist in the dental surgery. He was joined by Joy Bailey on 13 October at £1.28/hour and by Pauline Gillard; they worked part-time “cox & box”.<br />
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In the spring I had embarked on a Foundation Course at the Open University, together with Elizabeth Chaffey , so we had quite a bit in common. This was the second year of the O.U. and in the Prospectus for 1972 the Vice Chancellor, Walter Perry, describes how they had accepted 25,000 students in 1971. I had left Sidcot School at 17 in 1948 (I never took Higher School Certificate) and went to live in Chelsea with my father and step mother, who had returned from India after Partition. I then attended Mrs Hoster’s Secretarial College in Grosvenor Place where I achieved certificates for 100 worlds a minute in Pitmans shorthand and 48 words a minute in typewriting. But I always felt I had missed out on higher education.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At Mrs Hoster’s I was surrounded by debutantes who had been presented at Court. I remember that we had a good view from the second floor, over the wall into Buckingham Palace Gardens where several of them were enjoying their tea. My Great Aunt Mary Birley had been presented at Court before the war - she was head of all the Guides in England. There was a photograph of her on the grand piano in her house at Wrea Green, near Blackpool, where I had visited as a child, in full court dress with tiara. I thought she was the dowager Queen Mary. She in turn had presented my aunt Felicity Hodder-Williams, which somehow meant that I was eligible to attend Queen Charlottes Ball – but I never did! This ceremony was abolished in 1958.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But the secretarial course was a good grounding for self employment. Two children were now at Quaker boarding schools. Rob (17) was at Leighton Park, Reading and Julie (16) was at Sidcot, while our youngest daughter Ruth was a day pupil at Wells Cathedral School; we still seem to have had two of the ponies, though I had sold Misty earlier that year; with the demands of the Open University and the burgeoning business I was beginning to sag.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Even with secretarial help from Vera Osmond, whom we employed on 19 September at £2.29/hour, when she would spend a morning or two each week dealing with orders and keeping accounts in her beautiful tidy writing (not like mine!), we were beginning to accept that a business we had started a year or so previously as a kind of hobby was beginning to be a serious project. My mother and step father, Bernard, were encouraging us by introducing us to the gift trade, although my mother was becoming increasingly ill and sadly died of cancer in September 1972. She was only 63 but had smoked most of her life, (as did John’s mother Deena, who died a decade later). Anyway in spite of this sadness and with little time for revision, I managed to take the Foundation Course exam for the Open University in the autumn and gained a certificate, but after that the business became my main responsibility. Elizabeth however continued with the OU for the full six years and gained her degree. (Both John and Elizabeth Chaffey died in Crete some years ago where they had been living since retirement.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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John’s health was a growing problem and we decided to take the plunge; he should leave Morlands and concentrate on “Glastonbury Prints”. In my letter to Pat Morland (Managing Director and second cousin) dated 21 November 1972 I write: <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><i>“Perhaps you hadn’t realised how many hours a week – often part of the weekend – that John spends lying down feeling utterly useless, and of course this has put a tremendous burden of responsibility for home and family on my shoulders. I have nearly given up several times! However, this Glastonbury Prints business is just what makes us both happy – we like working together, and again I feel I can help to earn our living, and will enjoy shouldering some of that responsibility now the children are more independent.”</i></span><br />
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It is Christmas 1972 and John’s cards are on the table in the dining room. I can’t remember what these cards were – probably National Insurance and tax details – but I do remember that seeing them caused a shiver down my spine. I was very aware of the saying “to get one’s cards” which, according to the MacMillan Dictionary of Contemporary Phrase & Fable, dates from the 1940’s and means to be dismissed from a job. I wrote to our doctor, Peter Nicholson-Lailey, on 10 December:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>“Well, we’ve taken the plunge…After the initial shock and fright, we are feeling very happy. I think we have a good chance of making a living eventually from Glastonbury Prints… John plans to spread his working days to suit his own ups and downs… Thank you for all your support.”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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I remember that Peter said to me after we had taken the decision to become self employed: “You will be all right as long as everything goes well.” And we heard later that John’s mother, Deena, did not approve of John giving up a perfectly good job in order to pursue an unknown venture. However, John’s father wrote around this time: <i>“Your news came as quite a surprise, but the more we think about it the more certain we are that your decision was the right one.”<o:p></o:p></i><br />
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Here is the article in the Central Somerset Gazette dated Friday December 22 1972 “Two Morlands Directors Announce Resignations.” Mike Mathias, then a local reporter (later editor of the newspaper) came to see me when the news broke. “What really happened with <i>two</i> Morlands directors leaving the firm? he asked. “It’s not my story,” I was obliged to reply. The truth was that when John gave Pat Morland his resignation, Pat said “If you go, then Dick must go too.” So Dick Bracher, another director, was sacked. There was no way I could admit that to the Press of course. Pam and Dick sold their house in Wick Hollow and moved to Surrey. Dick had been involved with the Wick motorbike scrambles in Glastonbury and after leaving Morlands, he went to work for the RAC organising motorcross events – I still keep in touch sometimes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This meant that it looked as if there had been a boardroom row, in spite of the public relations statements made to newspapers. I felt that John’s resignation had been somewhat tarnished. However, it worked out in our favour in the end, as Dick was awarded a Golden Handshake and of course John received one too - £15,000 – which was quite unexpected! And the Directors treated us to a farewell dinner and a lovely silver plated model of a stag.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Because our doctor wrote a letter to the tax office saying that John had left because of very poor health, no tax was deducted from the Golden Handshake, which I think we spent on buying a Volvo estate car. This letter also gave me a fright, as it made out that John was in danger of dying from a stroke because of his high blood pressure. I thought how on earth am I going to manage on my own with no regular income and three children still at boarding school?<o:p></o:p></div>
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When John had one of his migraines, he needed to sit quietly for several hours each time until the pills took effect. This proved difficult while he was at Morlands of course; when we became self employed, he could work round it on most occasions, though one was always aware that he could succumb to a migraine at random and this was a worry when a special event had been arranged.<o:p></o:p><br />
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With hindsight, I am glad we left Morlands when we did. At least we had the shop to fall back on when we (and Morlands) came unstuck in 1980/82. We didn’t actually go into liquidation, as we sold our house to pay off our debts, but I know that the trauma of Morlands’ bankruptcy scarred so many people; one or two members of the family who were involved at the time can’t bear to talk about it now. Years later we were in Cadbury Garden Centre, near Weston, when we were approached by a (younger) man. “Do you remember me? I am Colin Snow and I used to visit your shop sometimes as a sales agent. After you came on hard times, you were respected in the trade for paying off all your debts.” What kind words!<br />
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With hindsight, I am glad we left Morlands when we did. At least we had the shop to fall back on when we (and Morlands) came unstuck in 1980/82. We didn’t actually go into liquidation, as we sold our house to pay off our debts, but I know that the trauma of Morlands’ bankruptcy scarred so many people; one or two members of the family who were involved at the time can’t bear to talk about it now. Years later we were in Cadbury Garden Centre, near Weston, when we were approached by a (younger) man. “Do you remember me? I am Colin Snow and I used to visit your shop sometimes as a sales agent. After you came on hard times, you were respected in the trade for paying off all your debts.” What kind words!</div>
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Although we had become a limited company in 1979, our house was held as security by National Westminster Bank, so we would have been obliged to pay them off anyway. And there would have been other complications concerning the mortgage with CoSIRA (Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas) which we had taken up when we bought “Number 10” in 1975. Maybe if we had gone into liquidation, we could have avoided paying our gift trade suppliers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After the closure of the hand coloured prints business, which we had renamed “Glastonbury Galleries” in a useless rebranding attempt around 1980, the shop survived. After paying off the CoSIRA loan, we should have charged ourselves about £14,000 per year rent, but if we had done this, we wouldn’t have been viable!</div>
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Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-18028564407845446062015-06-29T13:09:00.005-07:002015-06-29T13:37:06.890-07:00Chapter 5 1973<br />
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Following the Christmas break everything settled back into a routine. After perhaps a year renting the room above the dentist, we moved the business into two rooms in the former health clinic known then as 5A High Street behind Frisby’s Shoe Shop (now 10 St John’s Square). Mr Keith Trussler, Western Relining Services, was our landlord. The 3 year lease is dated 9 March 1973 and consists of 4 huge heavy pages measuring 40 cms x 26 cms with 5 sides of typing plus a plan, stating that we were to pay £270/year rent. It seems as if we had actually moved into the premises on 8 December. Downstairs Mr Trussler ran his business, supplying motor parts. Once a week, a rack of exhaust pipes would be delivered with great clanking noises and left leaning up against the building outside in the yard until he put them away. Besides access from the car park, there was a passage through the door from the High Street next to Frisby’s Shoe Shop, now occupied by The Speaking Tree. I think I usually walked down Wick Hollow to work, while John spent most days in our upstairs sitting room at “Schehallion”, drawing, occasionally coming down to the workshop to discuss production with John Chaffey and the handful of part timers we must have been employing by then.<o:p></o:p></div>
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John was designing his flower and bird prints to fit an oval mount. He drew everything with a rotring pen on a piece of paper measuring 10 x 8 inches. These were printed on larger sheets of paper and suitably trimmed afterwards by Bigwood & Staple, while miniature versions of the same designs were also produced (4 ½ x 3 ½ inches). John had invented a “forma” which John Chaffey used to cut the oval mounts out of mount board – sophisticated mount cutters had not been invented yet. This consisted of metal plates, prepared for us by someone in Walton I think, containing the oval apertures required.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For awhile I still continued to drive to Worcester to collect the picture frames from Whitehouse, Willetts and Bennett. By this time we had bought a trailer, and I used to go bump/bump/bump very slowly up the motorway, with lorries breathing down my neck, - was the speed limit 50 mph when towing a trailer? When I stopped for lunch at Strensham Service Station, I would have to use the lorry park and was terrified of being caught out as no way could I reverse! Even worse when I finally reached the frame makers - their access was via a very narrow back alleyway and I dreaded meeting the British Road Services lorry head on. Driving along the motorway I was reminded of the awful Dutch Elm disease which was on its way – later we lost a small elm on the edge of our drive at Schehallion in spite of attempts to inoculate.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Before we bought the trailer, I would make the journey in my Ford Escort Estate car, travelling via Bristol because the bridge carrying the M5 over the river Avon was not completed. On one occasion, returning with a huge load of frames, I decided to weigh myself. Morlands ran a public weighbridge on the main road outside O Block (somewhere near where the traffic lights are now). Was it Derek Witcombe in charge? I don’t remember how much I weighed, but the comment was “I hope you aren’t going very far with that lot.” I didn’t dare admit that I had come all the way from Worcester and up over Dundry – about 70 miles – and that this was a regular occurrence every couple of months or so.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As already mentioned, I had taken on Vera as my secretary/book keeper in September 1972. She continued working for a couple of mornings a week at home until we took over two more rooms at 5A for office and storeroom, and her husband Tony Osmond, who had previously worked for Clarks, became our manager.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anyway, we are now off to our first professional trade show where we joined 17 other small exhibitors in the Rosetor Hotel, Torquay, from 4 – 11 January 1973. This was a private venture by Sherriff & Williams; I don’t remember how we became invited to exhibit with them. The main Torquay Gift Fair took place at the Palace Hotel (where I had shared Bernard’s bedroom last year) and other venues across the town. We attended the Rosetor in our little group for several years until the building was demolished. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I should explain that manufacturers and importers of gifts also reached their customers by using sales agents as well as trade shows, while large companies, like Morlands, employed full time representatives. Agents covered specific areas and worked on a sales commission basis (we paid them 10% of all sales coming from the area) and who needed to carry several different products in order to earn a living. Then there were the trade shows and the agent covering a particular area often helped to man our stand. We joined the Giftware Association and their subsidiary, Trade Promotion Services (TPS) were contracted to erect the shell stands at selected venues across the country during the year.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Small producers like ourselves would rent a space – we usually occupied a stand measuring 10 x 10 feet. The organisers of the shows would put up partitions enclosing different spaces to suit which were known as “shell stands”, consisting of three walled partitions about 7 feet high with the fourth side open to the walkway. Some basic lighting was provided, together with floor covering, but any other additions were charged as extras or the proper contractors had to be used, otherwise there would have been a strike. Later, Tony Osmond would hide his hammer or whatever and use it discretely! But we were allowed to hang our pictures up somehow – could we bang in nails, or did we hang them from picture hooks? We would provide a small table and perhaps a chair or stool. In those days, we could stand all day. The shows lasted usually from the Sunday to the Thursday, so we small exhibitors all arrived on Saturday to bring in the stuff and had to clear it up on Thursday evening, while the bigger companies of course took several days each end of the shows to build and unpack their sophisticated stands.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our sales agents carried samples; perhaps one framed print, plus some corner pieces of moulding and mount board in the different colours, so that the customer could choose their preferred combination. They also carried a folder containing a coloured copy of each design with its reference number – see our catalogues – and we usually produced new designs for the spring and autumn season with new prices in January each year. John made boxes for the agents’ samples, with a carrying handle and lined with sheepskin (of course!) which were used for the first few years until we invested in proper suitcases. <i>(I have kept one of these boxes!)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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The shows we began to attend were: the Torquay Gift Fair in January; the International Gift Fair held in Blackpool in early February; Harrogate Gift Fair in July (I think this was under a different management), and sometimes other small independent fairs such as Nottingham and even Glasgow on one occasion. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The Glasgow Gift Fair, which must have been held in early spring, was situated in the Kelvin Hall. Was this originally a bus depot or a sports hall? Anyway, it was enormous, with high ceilings so all the heat was wasted, and as we were situated in the worst position by the enormous double doors at the back we were frozen. We only had tables on which to display our wares. Kiss-me-quick hats and other seaside memorabilia did much better on the front benches … On our return we were driving down through Cumbria in John’s lovely Morland’s Rover – this was probably the last year before he left the firm – and an RAC man was coming in the other direction and saluted us! This tradition had ceased in 1963, so we were very privileged.<o:p></o:p><br /></div>
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John often designed the layout of a trade stand beforehand with a rehearsal somewhere where he could emulate the three wall spaces, and Torquay was a good dummy run for the International Gift Fair a few weeks later. There were no mobile phones in those days, or laptops or even electronic calculators, though no doubt larger companies did have more sophisticated equipment, so it was pads and pencils for taking down the orders. Our first adding machine was brought home from Leighton Park boarding school by Rob one holidays. The boys had a habit of raiding Reading rubbish dump and he found a large hand operated calculator, abandoned when VAT was introduced. One cranked the handle and it printed out pounds, shillings and pence on a paper roll, so we just used the “£” slot and put the decimal place in by hand afterwards (orders weren’t very large so there were enough spaces in that section for both figures) . This would have resided on the dining room table and was used by Vera to do our accounts; it was too bulky to bring to the shows.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The first Spring Fair we attended at Blackpool was a nightmare. We were in the Talbot Hall, which was actually a multi-storey car park swathed in something to keep out the rain. But we must have been able to park not too far away, as I don’t remember any difficulty with unloading, although all our stuff had to be carried up two or three flights of narrow stairs, as of course we were relegated to the top floor with other small manufacturers. There was the dreaded hoist system but we never attempted to use that.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The top floor was freezing – John wore his pyjamas under his suit – and the lavatories in this makeshift exhibition centre were pretty primitive; the water condensed on the ceiling and dripped onto us as we perched on the loo. Here we met our good friends and competitors, Peggy and Reg Bates with their firm “Peter Bates”, producing delightful black and white miniatures. They lived at Somerton for many years with their production in a large barn next to the house – maybe the business has survived to this day – though both Reg and Peggy have passed away now. We also met Peter Dufour who produced corn dollies under the trade name “Somerset House” in Cheddar. It is a pity that I threw away our old trade show catalogues each year when the new one became available, as these would have been full of useful information….<o:p></o:p></div>
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Somehow we got to know Harry Polly, who was the secretary of TPS (Trade Promotion Services) – probably because he found out we were Quakers. By the next year, the Giftware Association were discussing a proposal to move the “International Gift Fair” from Blackpool to the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham, when it opened in 1976. Some members were not pleased; they enjoyed staying locally in hotels and meeting up with friends in the evenings and were perfectly happy with their stands. They weren’t relegated to the top floor of the Talbot Hall of course. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There were bitter arguments about this decision; Harry would come upstairs and pour out his problems. Knowing the fury that would be aroused, at some point the wily Chairman of the Giftware Association, Elkan Simons, had bypassed all argument with a fait accompli – he had already booked the NEC and the gift trade would be the first exhibition, together with the hardware trade, to be held in this new venture. All the stands would be under one roof in a purpose built exhibition space and no longer would our export customers have to put up with the inadequate facilities of the “Talbot Hall”. The great Leap Forward had begun, with Glastonbury Prints in tow.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It was accepted in the trade that producers and importers of gifts would guarantee exclusivity to one or two outlets in each conurbation within reason; I think my criteria, later using a Whittaker’s Almanack which Rob gave us in 1976, was to allow one shop for a population of around 10,000. For a small town like Glastonbury, this meant supplying Glastonbury Gifts & Crafts (now St Margaret’s Hospice shop) which at that time was run by Mr Tovey until Denis and Ena Allen took it over, together with the Unicorn Shop in Wells, which was run by Mrs Chapman, wife of Freddie, the owner of the Swan Hotel. In Taunton, we supplied the County Stores and later the House of Fraser group. We often left it to the agents to use their common sense in this matter. When potential customers approached us at trade shows, we could look up the area in our card index of existing customers and check whether it would be appropriate to supply them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In our prime in the mid 1970’s we produced 1,000 hand coloured pictures a week, framed or “mounted only”, supplying 500 shops across the country, as well as exporting prints to France, Austria, America, New Zealand and even to Japan. Our agents listed in 1973 were: Robert Cleary (Scotland – he found us at the Glasgow Show); Ray & Sybil Curtis (they took over from Bernard’s protégées Phil and Dave and covered the West Country); John Reeder (London area – I had a letter in June 2014 from his wife in the USA, where they went to live many years ago, and he has sadly died); Mona Russell (who lived near Harrogate and covered the North of England); and Philip Smith (who lived in Rochester, so perhaps he covered the Home Counties).<o:p></o:p></div>
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There were two trade magazines, which we patronised – The Gift Buyer International and Gifts Magazine – where we would place advertisements for our stands and trade shows and hopefully get write-ups for new ranges of prints. After we opened our shop in 1975 I started writing articles a couple of times a year for Gifts Magazine, under the pseudonym “Trader”, telling stories about running a shop; I continued to do this for about 14 years I think. After a couple of years my editor, Vhairi Cotter, said: “At the risk of giving you a swelled head, we find from our survey that your article is the first thing that readers turn to when they receive the magazine”! At least I was paid £100 a time for my double page spread …<o:p></o:p></div>
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I have a note dated March 1973 stating that we have 300 live customers and that Mr Sayers, our accountant, advised us to use the Kalamazoo (hand written) system for our accounts, which served us well for many years. Kalamazoo had in fact been started by John’s Great Uncle Oliver Morland sometime between the wars, and went into liquidation over a decade ago I think. We still had shares in the company at that time, which probably were left to us by John’s father, Bry, and lost about £17,000. I remember during the Morlands days in the 60’s that Uncle Humphrey Morland expected to inherit more of these very profitable shares when Oliver Morland died, but most of the money was spent by his widow on building an old people’s home in Chideock “with copper embellishments”- much resented!<o:p></o:p></div>
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John and I visited Uncle Oliver and his wife Eileen several times in the early fifties, before Rob was born. We would drive down in the motorbike and sidecar for lunch. There were often pheasants in the middle of the road just past Somerton, so one day we were prepared – I was leaning out of the sidecar brandishing the pump and dealt the final blow after John had run it down. Quickly, we stuffed into the boot of the sidecar and continued our journey. I don’t think the term “road kill” had been invented in those days. After our visit, Uncle Oliver came out to his parking space to wish us goodbye and remarked wryly: “I see you already have your supper.” To our consternation, our secret was revealed – tail feathers were protruding from the boot of the sidecar for all to see.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Harrogate Gift Fair in July was another matter. It seems that Peter Dufour was taking our pictures to the show in 1973 and I have a list of samples and other information provided, dated 9 July 1973.. There were 3 boxes of made up pictures – 15 framed 10 x 8 birds @ £1.70 each plus VAT, and 20 miniature prints of birds @ £1.05 each plus VAT. Also 4 miniature roses and 15 miniature silhouettes (so we must still have been selling these which, after the posters, were the first designs that John produced in 1970/71). We provided 2 sample books and a note “<i>new price lists are not yet printed but I hope to get them sent to you at Cheddar on Thursday”. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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In addition to the business of course, we still had to organise our children, fetching them from boarding school in the holidays (Julie and Ruth were both at Sidcot by now and Rob must have had another year to go at Leighton Park), putting them on trains to London to visit Deena and Bry (John’s parents), and looking after a very large garden. We had an acre of land, about half of which was still apple orchard (lots of lovely Bramleys), and the other half was huge terraces, lawns, pond, retaining walls full of rock plants, large shrub border and veg garden and the beginning of a wood along the boundary with Bulwarks Lane which John had planted in the sixties.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It took John about 2 hours to mow all the lawns each week and he also had a larger machine with which to cut the long grass in the orchard in the summer. However, in 1954 he had damaged his back, digging out some old apple trees from the plot when we first bought it (for £1,000 from Uncle Humphrey). In those days doctors didn’t understand backs and it wasn’t until much later that John was able to go to a chiropractor – though he did not dare to tell our doctor at the time, as they weren’t accepted in the early sixties. It was too late, the damage was done; and he often suffered a lot of back pain after such vigorous exercise, which was in addition to the migraines, poor John.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Along the lane were two pink horse chestnuts. At some point I got fed up with the boys from Windmill Hill council housing estate who would damage the fence by climbing over to pick conkers, so I let it be known that they could queue up on the bench in Wick Hollow, opposite our drive. I would let them into the garden, two at a time with 10 minutes on the tick-a-tock (the timer, which I perched on one of the walls below the house). At the designated time, I would go out and ring my hand bell. This worked well for many years. I have given that bell to one of our sons in law. I bought it at a West Pennard WI sale in the fifties perhaps, and it was made out of salvaged metal from a crashed WW2 German bomber. About a decade ago I was shopping in Safeway – now Morrisons – in Glastonbury and a lady came up to me and said “Can I introduce you to my son, who was one of your conker boys?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the early years since we built the house (1955 with extension 1963) John had grown lots of vegetables and fruit and I have records from 1956 of bottling and jam making – the totals that year were:<o:p></o:p></div>
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40 2 lb kilner jars gooseberries<o:p></o:p></div>
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25 1 lb “ “ blackcurrants<o:p></o:p></div>
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2 1 lb “ “ raspberries<o:p></o:p></div>
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19 2 lb “ “ cherry plums (actually from Ynyswytryn garden, courtesy of Uncle Humphrey and Aunt Gwladys)<o:p></o:p></div>
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21 lbs jam<o:p></o:p></div>
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By 1966 I had a freezer and I was not keeping such detailed records, but in 1973 I froze 13 lbs of gooseberries and some bags of plum puree. It is a pity that I never recorded the vegetables however. We did have some help from Salvadore Bucione, one of the Italian prisoners of war who had remained in England in 1945 at the end of the war. He worked for Woodwards (plumbers) but must have come to us in the summer evenings or at weekends. As we had a very large vegetable plot, he asked if he and his family could have a space and grow some garlic. Garlic? I had hardly ever heard of the stuff at that time. Together with courgettes, we weren’t familiar with such exotic veg – certainly I never used it in my cooking.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our garden was at its best in the spring. I had never been successful with herbaceous borders; my mother, like her parents before her, had been a keen gardener. However both our daughters are gardeners and our eldest daughter, Julie, has opened her garden at Congresbury under the National Garden Scheme for the last few years.<o:p></o:p></div>
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John built the first wall below the house in the late fifties, using dressed stone recycled from a couple of large pillars somewhere in Street. One Saturday morning, Colonel Gould walked past along Bulwarks Lane with his dog. Pointing his stick, he barked: “Who built that?” John bristled, but politely answered “I did.” “Jolly good show”, was the reply. Then after extending the house in the sixties, we terraced the sloping lawn and planted a shrub border, which came from John Scotts Nursery at Merriott in two seed boxes – they must have only been rooted cuttings in those days. <o:p></o:p><br /></div>
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<i>See</i><i> one of 5 pages of an invoice listing over 50 plants delivered on 12 December 1964 at a total cost of £20.12.6d. and which could have included the shrubs for that border. Their catalogues contained drawings of plants by Robin Tanner.</i></div>
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Robin Tanner was an etcher and an HMI, together with my father and stepmother, before the war. He was a Quaker, living near Chippenham, and he and his wife Heather often visited us when we lived in Chelsea in the late forties – he attempted to teach me (aged about 18) manuscript writing, not very successfully, though I used to produce reasonable notices for the shop later. We have a framed letter from Robin in his beautiful writing, dated 14 January 1971 inviting us to lunch, when he showed John how he produced his beautiful etchings. He used to buy old books, remove the unused pages and print on them. Although I am sure John could have produced beautiful work that way, even after attending one of Bronwen Bradshaw’s courses at the Dove Centre, he never took it up.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To return to the garden, I spent hours after the walls were built, filling the holes (which I demanded should be left for that purpose) with rock plants and watering them assiduously with a teapot during the summer until they were established. Nearly a decade later they were a blaze of colour, with spring flowering heathers along the top full of bees, and purple aubretia, pink and yellow rock roses, yellow alyssum saxtile and blue campanula tumbling out of the walls. <o:p></o:p></div>
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John planted a wood on the steepest ground, which fell away from our boundary along Bulwarks Lane and below the two existing pink conker trees. He arranged for John Snow to cut down the large ash tree further along (this was before any conservation orders) as he thought it created too much shade; the heavy machinery damaged the road and nearly tipped over.</div>
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So from our windows in spring we could look across the pond and terraced lawn to the prunus autumnalis and magnolia stelata in the shrub border below, over the bramley apples flowering in the orchard to the town at the bottom of Bushy Coombe, to Wearyall Hill, Street Road and beyond. Everything was framed with trees – John’s growing woodland along Bulwarks Lane on the left, and trees bordering the top of Wick Hollow and the private road leading to Pam and Dick and Hum and Gladys’ houses on the right. In spring and autumn we – and the Tor – were often in sunshine while the moor was covered in mist and Glastonbury was in a gloom; going shopping, one had to be prepared with a coat. The sunsets were magnificent, and I always knew when to take in the washing because there was plenty of warning as the storms gathered from the west. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In the last week of July 1973 we drove to Strontian with the three children. However, once we got there we put Rob on a train. He had arranged to travel round Scotland, staying for several days in b & b’s – there is a note in the diary for Friday 27 July: “<i>meet Rob at Fort William”</i>, presumably at the end of his trip. We booked into Kilcamb Hotel, and explored the Ardamurchan Peninsular for the first time – on the recommendation of Vera Osmond as she and her husband had enjoyed a holiday on Morvern the year before. This was when we visited Sanna beach. As I have said earlier, it used to take us 12 hours to drive 500 miles from Glastonbury, including spending two hours queuing for the Ballachuilish Ferry before the bridge was built in 1976. One did not need to queue for the Corran Ferry, which had a notice declaring “This is NOT Ballachuilish Ferry”, as people travelling down from Fort William often made this mistake.<o:p></o:p><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; color: #333333; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 8px; position: relative; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX0R9__r12Z0_aeGqb_Q-Itts65YZM_j1sFcWpj7cAPqvGJWqDUVLrh4jlRuVOLvU9NS1YwB96ZRrJXbePX7_WfRLUEGIillHPBHOtxtyCxI9ulHDP9uLniISbdfy8q3-CdU9PLFEMIcYJ/s1600/1985+(7)%2BThis%2Bis%2Bnot%2Bthe%2BBallahuilish%2BFerry.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="color: #993322; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="409" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX0R9__r12Z0_aeGqb_Q-Itts65YZM_j1sFcWpj7cAPqvGJWqDUVLrh4jlRuVOLvU9NS1YwB96ZRrJXbePX7_WfRLUEGIillHPBHOtxtyCxI9ulHDP9uLniISbdfy8q3-CdU9PLFEMIcYJ/s1600/1985+(7)%2BThis%2Bis%2Bnot%2Bthe%2BBallahuilish%2BFerry.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px;">The Corran Ferry in 1985</td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcLOmcfNJol8mo5Ypjiu1MJnTMa-C8vnejHf4KwkzMfCpvH2t8SYI6AGqxCLehBcKAKNtg3fL_Kv0Ln6uREmwMGOPQQ0JkPIZQR_dfDcMK_oHdVfvGb4aBVKE6VaaVtkKhUBRXJfOVj45g/s1600/1985+ferry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; color: #993322; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="414" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcLOmcfNJol8mo5Ypjiu1MJnTMa-C8vnejHf4KwkzMfCpvH2t8SYI6AGqxCLehBcKAKNtg3fL_Kv0Ln6uREmwMGOPQQ0JkPIZQR_dfDcMK_oHdVfvGb4aBVKE6VaaVtkKhUBRXJfOVj45g/s1600/1985+ferry.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px;">The bridge under construction at Ballachuilish</td></tr>
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Years later when we used to spend our holidays on Skye, we discovered the Kylerhea Ferry. This crossed the peninsular between the mainland and Skye at its narrowest point and meant turning off the main road at Sheil Bridge and climbing the magnificent Mam Ratagan Pass, before coming down to Glenelg. On the first occasion as we caught sight of the old ferry, I said in a loud voice “This looks like the Ballachuilish Ferry.” and Donald John McLeod, who ran this as a private venture during the summer months, replied: “This <i>is</i> the Ballachuilish Ferry.” It was the last turntable ferry still working in Scotland. <o:p></o:p></div>
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However, in 1973 this was not our first visit to Scotland. You may have noticed that we called our house “Schehallion” after that well-known Scottish mountain “Schiechallion” in Perthshire – I left out some of the more difficult spellings of the name. When we first built the house in Glastonbury, access was from Bulwarks Lane and we called it “Wick Beech”, although my first choice had been “Bulwick” until a farming friend pointed out the rude connotation! We extended the house and created a new drive into Wick Hollow in 1962/3 (though building work had to be halted during the Big Freeze). </div>
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For our summer holidays in the sixties, we had put our car on the sleeper train at King’s Cross a couple of times, arriving once in Stirling and the other time in Perth, and staying on both occasions in the Bunrannoch Hotel, Kinloch Rannoch, near Pitlochry. All five of us climbed Schehallion in gumboots in 1965, but I think we renamed our house after the first visit the previous year, when we had left Ruth behind with Deena and Bry.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We would have liked to retire to Strontian. However, at the time we were considering this, their nearest general hospital was 100 miles away in Inverness, across the ferry and on a road with passing places, whereas here in Glastonbury we are only about 25 miles away from Taunton and even nearer to Yeovil or Bridgwater. (I think that the hospital at Fort William only dealt with mountain rescue casualities). Also if we had moved so far north we would have missed family and friends. And you can’t grow runner beans, as the season was too short, so we decided to stay put. </div>
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This is the range sheet that we produced around 1980, which shows the hand coloured prints business just before we came unstuck the following year. You will notice that we rebranded ourselves as "Glastonbury Galleries", which was the name of the shop we opened in 1975, instead of "Glastonbury Prints".</div>
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Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-63610721272411411072015-06-29T13:09:00.003-07:002015-06-29T13:39:54.804-07:00Chapter 6 1973-1974<div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-3439108267845360133" itemprop="description articleBody" style="background-color: #c0a154; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5; position: relative; width: 768px;">
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I never kept a proper written record of events, only sketchy appointments in diaries. I am weaving this story from a collection of ephemera which I troll through and then forget which bit I wanted to include. I have even mislaid one important folder which listed all our employees when we closed the production side of the business and whom I wanted to name at appropriate times. It will turn up again, no doubt, but I have wasted a lot of time looking for it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Perhaps it doesn’t matter if this story isn’t quite in the correct order. The main thing is to try and paint the picture of what it is like to run a small business. The advantage of writing a blog against publishing a proper book is that I can always correct things later.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The spare bedroom in the flat is full of stuff, including thousands of slides which must eventually be sorted, though dear Julie spent ages some years ago digitising the early photos of the family, and she is providing some of the illustrations which will appear in the blog. But I never did have a good memory and in old age it is certainly deteriorating. How we managed to hold a business together I don’t know – probably through the tremendous support we received from our employees. The cost being that we spent rather too much on wages, employing people to do the jobs we didn’t like doing!<o:p></o:p></div>
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While John was dyslexic – something which was not understood when we were at Sidcot School during the war – I have “face blindness”. Its proper name is prosopagnosia, caused by brain damage after birth. I cannot bring John’s face up in my head and I find it difficult to remember people unless I see them regularly; it can be so severe that one doesn’t recognise one’s own children. This was a disadvantage in business of course when people were the most important players in the story. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I am also red/green/brown colour blind, which is quite rare in women. I can see colours, but sometimes matching them can be difficult in artificial light – John always used to check whether I had indavertently mixed green and brown clothing when we were going out at night. Once, on holiday in Ireland years ago, John said: “What are those flowers in the hedge?” I had to get out of the car and have a closer look. They were brilliant red fuschias in a brilliant green hedge and the two colours had merged together when seen from a distance. This of course made things difficult if I was helping a customer to choose some picture framing when we had the shop.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Stop making excuses I hear you say and get on with the story.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In my box of ephemera for 1973 I have found a Berni Inn menu which I must have smuggled out under my coat. We were regular patrons, especially when taking Rob out on half term visits to Leighton Park School, Reading – though this copy is from Nottingham and presumably I filched it when we were attending the Nottingham Gift Fair (which we only did on the one occasion). Those lovely steaks. The most expansive meal was fillet steak for £1.41, “served with French fried potatoes, button mushrooms, a fresh lettuce and tomato salad, roll and butter.” But on one occasion at Blackpool Gift Fair, when we were taking a couple of agents in a taxi out to supper and requested that we should be taken to the local Berni Inn, the driver said “This one isn’t really your sort of pub – rather a rough house,” and he took us somewhere else. I look back now and wonder if he was paid to bring the other place some business!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Linda Garland started work at 5A on 6 August. Her job was secretarial and to help with sorting out the prints for the hand painters, based on current orders, ready for the supervisor to visit every fortnight – we called this the “milk round”. We had a duplicating machine for producing our own forms and some circular letters. This entailed typing a stencil on the typewriter, inking the drum of the machine, carefully stretching the stencil round it and then feeding it with paper and turning the handle. Ink would get everywhere. No photo copiers in those days. Linda became an expert in this.<o:p></o:p></div>
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John was finding it difficult to supervise the workshop, undertake the milk round and find time to produce new designs, so we were taking on staff to do those jobs for us. Other names mentioned in my diary are Joyce Walton, Jean Batten and Tony Osmond, Vera’s husband, who left his job in Clark’s to join Gprints as our Manager.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After Blackpool Gift Fair, we took on Bertram Ellis who lived in Carlise and who covered Scotland with his son Peter. He achieved sales in March worth £176.86 and I think we were paying 15% commission at that time; his file is full of letters discussing customers, new prices, problems with damaged goods and late payment. My policy was to refuse any further orders from a shop which kept us waiting for their cheque and once, at Torquay, I actually turned away a lady looking at the new range with the words “Sorry, you are a slow payer and I am afraid we won’t supply you any more”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I see from a letter written to Bertram that in May, John and I drive to Scotland in order to visit castles, which John photographed in order to draw them later. Another letter on 3 July says “John is really going to have a concentrated bash at the castles … we expect a worthwhile range being on time for the new year.” On September 28 we write “We were thrilled with your news about the reception of Inverary Castle.” We must have provided him with an advance example of the picture. The reaction from the Duke of Argyll was “Where is my standard?” John’s photo had been rather indistinct and he hadn’t bothered to include it in his original drawing, but dutifully added it to the final version. And later next year, when Bertram took the castle series to the gift shop at Craigevar, the manageress commented “Oh dear, we don’t want any more publicity.”<o:p></o:p><br />
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Craigevar is my favourite Scottish Castle; it reminds me of the story “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down thy hair.” A delicate, fairy tale building, one enters very gloomy, cramped rooms because of the thick walls, but as one ascends to the upper floors the spaces become larger and larger, until one reaches the huge room spanning the top of the tower with magnificent views, where the residents would promenande when the weather was unclement. As for Blair Atholl Castle, we had visited that for the first time in the sixties. On one occasion there was a demonstration of Scottish piping and I was a little disconcerted afterwards when I overheard them talking with American accents. This reminds me of the time when I took the children to an event at the American Museum in Bath, when the Red Indians performing their war dances turned out to be from Birmingham.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At some point in the early years of Gprints (as we used to call it), John and I went on a 6 weeks evening course at Bridgwater Technical College, conducted by Mr Mayman of Bristol University, on “How to Read a Balance Sheet”. I am still none the wiser, and John wasn’t much better – after all, at Morlands he had been supported by departments whose job it was to manage such affairs as finances and publicity – he was the creative one. But I do remember one piece of good advice which we should have acted upon years later. “Whatever your advisors such as bank manager, accountant or business consultant may suggest, only you know your business best.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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The bank of course has the greatest power of withdrawing its services; our bank manager was too eager in the late 1990’s to lend us more money and no doubt this was the same problem with Morlands and the other companies who came unstuck in the slump. We ended up paying 17% interest on our huge loan – how can a small business make a profit with that hanging round its neck? Our mortgate with CoSIRA (Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas) on Number 10 High Street, taken out in 1975, was 14% but the mortgage on Schehallion was only 4 ½% and fortunately, by the time the crunch came, our insurance policy had paid back the loan.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So when exactly did we take on two more rooms at 5A High Street? And then there was the expansion in January 1975 into making our own frames in Garvin’s Old Ciderhouse, Back Lane off Benedict Street – demolished when Garvin’s Way and Carmen Close were built – at least our landlord’s name lives on. Was it Dudley Tremaine of Cooper and Tanner or Cyril Driver of IMCO Plastics who tipped us off about this property becoming vacant? <o:p></o:p><br />
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Before that we had made arrangements with Roly Bisgrove, who had done a lot of building work on our home over the years and who was a good friend from Cradlebridge Gun Club days, for us to use his premises at Baltonsborough for our expanding production. We even got as far as installing a huge old guillotine for cutting mount board. Alas, I am sure it was our arbitrary decision to pull out of this arrangement and I have always felt very guilty about letting Roly down, as he had given up his other work and must have lost money, taking time to get back into his former self employed lifestyle.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We learned the rudiments of picture framing from Bill Williams (then acting as agent for Whitehouse, Willetts & Bennion and for Artistic Framing) and from Douglas Lee of W.W. & B. who couldn’t have been kinder to us, so that when eventually we no longer needed to buy finished goods from them, we really missed those trips to Worcester. But a fortnight after beginning to make our own frames etc. the compressor on the pinning machine broke down and we had to ring Douglas and plead for emergency supplies of frames to tide us over. The silence at the other end of the phone was most worrying – he turned out to be in fits of laughter at our predicament and we were afraid he would do himself an injury.<o:p></o:p></div>
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John has always been a stickler for quality and his high standards at all stages of production have often driven us to moments of despair. But coming from a craft industry he knew only too well the pitfalls which can await any manufacturer when complaints come in, resulting in damage to works morale besides losing customers. All the artists’ watercolours used in the hand colouring were light tested (in the roof of our greenhouse at home), together with samples of mounting board (which eliminated most of them). John wrote a letter to the Fine Art Trade Journal (November 1977) complaining about lack of colour fastness in the trade, even with limited edition colour prints which were inclined to fade.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is January 1974 and we are getting ready for the Torquay Gift Fair, to be held as before in the Rosetor Hotel under the aegis of Sherriff & Williams. And we have booked the International Gift Fair, Blackpool – in the Talbot Hall again, staying in the Elgin Hotel, Queens Promenade. John and I once made nine trips each from the top to the bottom of the building, carrying our the contents of our stand down unlighted steps for the car (while others waited for hours to get porters) and then, exhausted and filthy dirty, we went round the corner and had the best fish and chips we’d ever tasted.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We must have carried it all up there in the first place too.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Julie’s Idle Fancies are included in the new range for the spring. It seems we only took about £2,000 worth of orders at Blackpool that year, but we also had export enquiries from Amsterdam, Basel, Canada and Macy’s of New York - I don’t think the latter ever ordered from us though.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photos by Brian Walker for the International Gift Fair News, Feb 3rd 1974 </span></div>
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Julie and I enjoyed an adventure in the autumn of 1974; somewhere I had read about the Americans</div>
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celebrating the 200<sup>th</sup> anniversary of American Independence with subsidised trips to the States under the banner “Meet the Americans”. We flew out to San Francisco on October 11 with 248 other people for a 10 day visit to California and stayed with a family in San Diego. I did offer to return their hospitality but sadly they didn’t want to visit the UK. They took us on a trip across to Tihuana in Mexico on one occasion and I bought a very heavy glass lampshade for ten dollars and a kiss. It was packed up carefully in a huge cardboard box and fortunately there was a spare seat on the plane home.<br />
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_9RIc-nucnwEkW1A9oG7GNZlzXFnLCtI7Q85Z-TZee6BcoB_C5H2aKQliWyu1FUnzexTpTZ9nOFuNjrwK291bC3S4YCYnLSrKE5TsYFzSlqRoOlYih50qLjxw2nJ2n9Gy3TSBu7rVMJU1/s1600/San+Diego+Julie+&+Jan+(32).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="color: #993322; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_9RIc-nucnwEkW1A9oG7GNZlzXFnLCtI7Q85Z-TZee6BcoB_C5H2aKQliWyu1FUnzexTpTZ9nOFuNjrwK291bC3S4YCYnLSrKE5TsYFzSlqRoOlYih50qLjxw2nJ2n9Gy3TSBu7rVMJU1/s1600/San+Diego+Julie+&+Jan+(32).JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 11px;">Wrapping the Lampshade</td></tr>
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An American couple once bought an enormous framed picture from Glastonbury Galleries – about which we were most doubtful. However, they returned the next year and told us that it had been safely stowed away behind the pilot’s seat when they flew back.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-68998940394076505342015-06-29T13:09:00.001-07:002015-06-29T13:39:30.317-07:00Chapter 7 1974-1975<br />
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Before I move on to 1975, I have some more comments to make about 1974.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I see from notes dated a few years ago that we rented the Old Ciderhouse, Back Lane, Glastonbury from Leo Garvin for £1,000 a year, later increased to £2,000, and that we were introduced to this by Cyril Driver of IMCO, who had been the last tenant. We were there making frames and cutting mounts for the next five years. We didn’t use the cellars as they were inclined to flood. On 3<sup>rd</sup> June we took on John Grinter at £2.24/hour, and Yvonne Jones and Norma West for £1.13/hour.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The huge obsolete guillotine which we had first installed out at Baltonsborough in Roly Bisgrove’s barn was moved here, used for cutting up mount board, though the apertures had to be cut afterwards by hand. Our daughter Ruth, who now runs Glastonbury Galleries, has a marvellous computerised machine which can be programmed to cut sophisticated shapes. But remember we were in the early days of picture framing, still using the oval forma for our mounts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I have found in my keeping box for that year a couple of booklets written by our landlord. One is entitled “Garvin’s Gazette Oct-Dec 1974 (52<sup>nd</sup> Year)” and the other is the Golden Jubilee of L.Garvin & Co. Ltd. 1920-1970, which is a fascinating story of how Leo Garvin came over to London from Denmark, and which contains a photo of an elderly gentleman outside his Victorian house, which I think we visited, somewhere up on the Mendips, and where perhaps he moved after the war. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Their main business became the importing of honey from all over the world. He describes his first few years of business “in a small, rather dark, one room office in Change Alley, off Cornhill … with one typist and the writer, Managing Director, Sales Manager, Advertising Manager, Cashier and office boy all rolled into one.” Sounds familiar. He also dealt in milk powder, which became an important part of the business during the war. It was during the war that they became involved in producing cider and acquired the Cider House. (I can remember going there to buy a bottle of cider in the early 50’s.) He also tells a funny story of trying to dig peat on Dartmoor at Bridestowe, from which “we retired, wiser but considerably lighter of pocket.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Tony Osmond had became our full-time manager on 2 January at £3.62/hour – he would have worked at 5A High Street, where we expanded into 4 rooms including one tiny room as an office, shared by Tony, his wife Vera, and myself. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The main room at 5A was where John Chaffey was in charge of putting together the orders for framed or mounted only prints, and somewhere along the corridor was a cupboard where Linda Garland would assemble the black and white prints ready for the hand painters to colour. Natasha Smith became hand painting supervisor on 2 December at £1.68/hour – did she take over from John, or was there someone else before her? John Chaffey (known as John Chaff, to distinguish from John Grint and John M) also supervised the packing and dispatching of parcels. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We obtained specially designed packing boxes from Clifton Containers in Bristol into which framed and mounted only prints were placed for dispatch by Royal Mail Parcel Service – the lorry would call at 5A several times a week to collect the orders. Glass of course is fragile and everything was wedged with newspaper, as bubble wrap and other materials had not yet been invented. We consumed large quantities, so all our staff had to bring us their newspapers – how did we collect enough? The parcel weight was limited to 10 kgs I think. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There were breakages of course, in spite of the large “fragile” labels. On one occasion, the customer provided us with evidence that the delivery lorry had actually run over the parcel – there were the tyre marks.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another problem was naughty customers. If a customer was known to be a late payer (the rule was within a month of invoice), they had a red sticker on their ledger card. I don’t know what mark we used for the ones which never paid. Certainly we would not let them have another order until they had done so. And our agents were asked to chase these up. No doubt there were occasions when we had to take someone to the Small Claims Court.<o:p></o:p></div>
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John and I went on photographic trips in the spring. My notes describe how on May 7 we drove to Exeter, where John took photos of the cathedral and we visited The Blue Boy Gallery (one of our customers), driving on to Penzance before returning on May 10 via Dunster Castle. We set off again on May 14 until Thursday 23 May, when we visited Chepstow Castle; Cardiff Castle; “bought stuffed birds at Machynlleth”; Harlech Castle; Conway Castle; Chester Cathedral; Rievaulx Abbey; York Minster; Fountains Abbey; Harewood House and Peterborough Cathedral, where we were taken round the Palace garden by the gardeners Mr & Mrs Barnard. <o:p></o:p></div>
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My grandfather Claude Martin Blagden was Bishop of Peterborough from 1927 – 1949 and was one of the senior bishops who sat in the House of Lords. The express trains used to stop specially at Peterborough station to pick him up and drop him off from his trips to London. Before the war, my father said, they had 25 staff! This would have included gardeners and secretaries and a chauffeur as well as domestic servants. During the war, when I stayed as a child (10 or 12 years old), there were land girls helping in the garden and Grandad the Bish was adept at laying and clearing away the table after meals, no doubt produced by Grannie Hester. I remember bedrooms which were called “Cathedral 1” and “Cathedral 2” and Heaven’s Gate Bathroom. </div>
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<br />After the war when I was a teenager, he leaped on and off London buses in his gaiters and took me to see the House of Lords, which was at the time was occupied by the House of Commons, since that had been bombed. I even typed much of his memoir “Well Remembered”, published in 1953, the year after he died, by his son in law Paul Hodder-Williams, who was MD of Hodder & Stoughton.</div>
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After the war when I was a teenager, he leaped on and off London buses in his gaiters and took me to see the House of Lords, which was at the time was occupied by the House of Commons, since that had been bombed. I even typed much of his memoir “Well Remembered”, published in 1953, the year after he died, by his son in law Paul Hodder-Williams, who was MD of Hodder & Stoughton.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After visiting Peterborough, we went on to Cambridge and Woburn Abbey, calling on the RSPB at Sandy Lodge (who stocked our bird prints in their shop). This is only some of the venues – there are lots of comments about buildings being no good – covered with scaffolding or because it was raining – visiting customers, difficulties with finding bed and breakfasts. “Carlisle Castle and Holm Cutram Abbey – neither very attractive and wasted a whole morning.” Altogether we travelled 1,500 miles in around 14 days. John went on to draw many of these castles and cathedrals<o:p></o:p></div>
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And at the end of May we visited my sister and brother in law, Sal and Ben Lewers, and we all went to the opera at Glydebourne. Next day we drove down to Canterbury and then, at Dover Castle “John hurt his right foot by jumping off a bank into the road”. Poor John was in great pain so I had to take over the driving, and he was obliged to sit on the grass while I walked over to Bodiam Castle. After returning to Sal and Ben for the night, we visited our accountant Mr Sayers at Woking and came home “via Stonehenge”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">We must have become familiar with CoSIRA - Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas – an advisory and credit service, sponsored by the government with stipulation that “members should not employ more than 20 skilled persons and be situated in a rural area or country town with a population of 10,000 or less”. Glastonbury Prints is listed as a craft workshop at 5A High Street, Glastonbury, not open to the general public, in their booklet “Craft Workshops in the Countryside – England and Wales 25p” which has my note saying that this pre-dates 1975 because of our address.</span><br /><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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Here is the invitation to our stand at the Harrogate Gift Fair in the Crown Hotel, July 14-18 1974, This was our first time at Harrogate, though Peter Dufour had displayed some of our prints on his stand the year before. The Crown was a grouping of exhibitors who couldn’t fit into the other venues and our “passage” in this hotel provided us with adequate space, with nearby rooms occupied by Denby and other well known names, so that plenty of prospective buyers passed through. John designed the layout of the prints beforehand – I have a copy of this particular exhibition carefully executed on graph paper with all the references, consisting of about 40 10 x 8” prints and 50 smaller framed pictures, so it was quite a spread. Presumably we provided display boards onto which the pictures were hung, as I don’t think we would have been allowed to bang nails into the walls! Somehow he fixed spotlights on a couple of beams balanced precariously across the passage. One year, a beam came crashing down on Mona Russell’s head as we were erecting the stand, nearly knocking her out. She was our agent for that area and must have been quite elderly (late sixties?) at the time, but she carried on bravely without complaint.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As soon as we had returned from Harrogate Gift Fair on Friday 19 July, we needed to get ready for our holiday in Scotland. I see that on Saturday we need to drive to Castle Cary Station to meet Rob and Ruth off the London train – presumably Julie had accompanied us to Harrogate while the other two stayed with Deena and Bry (John’s parents) in Hampstead.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anyway, we then board the motorail at Bristol, travelling with our Volvo estate car on the sleeper train to Stirling and driving to Edinburgh to stay for a couple of days, before making our way to Mr & Mrs Jack Cameron’s cottage, “Rockfield”, for the rest of the fortnight’s holiday. The Camerons moved out of their home in the summer, sleeping in a caravan on the croft and spending most of the day in a large shed outside the back door. We continued our exploration of the Ardnamurchan Peninsular, using this lovely folder entitled “Strontian – car tours and notes for the visitor” dated 1972 with leaflets covering Ardgour, Moidart, Ardamurchan and Morvern. One of these sheets includes the Ardnamurchan Lighthouse: “The road ends a short distance from the lighthouse. Here you may clamber down the rocky shore and stand on the most westerly point of the mainland of Great Britain, over 20 miles further west than Lands End The view to the Hebrides is magnificent, more so from the lighthouse, which may be visited at the discretion of the head lighthouse keeper.” </div>
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The lighthouse was still run by a keeper at that time, and we climbed up to the balcony which runs round the light and watched the keeper taking weather records and also inspected the huge boilers which produced the energy for the fog warning system. After that, we went to Sanna beach and some of us were brave enough to swim in the clear, cold sea before we enjoyed a picnic in the dunes – or “machair” as it is called in Scotland. The coarse grasses were full of wild flowers and to begin with I thought the little yellow ones were cinquefoil. But upon crouching down to spend a penny, I discovered what turned out to be a yellow pansy, which we called the “seaside pansy” – John drew this and a number of other flowers, sitting in the front porch of “Rockfield” where there was good light.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We must have packed up on Friday 9 August, driving back to Stirling across the Corran Ferry – we needed an early start and I think the first ferry ran at 8 am – in order to put the car on the train again and return to Bristol overnight. On Sunday, we put Rob on a train to London.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our business adhered to the tradition of the “factory fortnight” stipulated by both Clarks and Morlands, consisting of the last week in July and the first week in August, which made it more convenient for some of our part-time staff whose families worked for those factories. This is not usually the best time to visit Scotland, but we seemed to be lucky with the weather; one year when we stayed with the Camerons, she reported that the village stores had overheard some French visitors complaining of the heat. When we returned home, the floods were out on the moors.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By this time we must have employed quite a few people, most of them part timers, though John Chaffey (in charge of the workroom at 5A), John Grinter (in the Old Ciderhouse, making frames) and Tony Osmond (our manager) were all full time. Tony’s wife Vera kept our accounts in her meticulous beautiful script together with a typewriter for the invoices (quarto in those days), using the Kalamazoo system of ledger cards and carbon paper, which enabled everything to be recorded again on the ledger sheets.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Linda Garland must have been full time too, in charge of the painting round and preparing orders for the workroom to put together, plus running errands up to the Post Office, though the completed parcels were either collected from 5A by the Post Office service, or were wheeled up the High Street on a trolley by one of the men. She was also involved with using the duplicating machine, which consisted of an inked roller round which the prepared stencil was stretched, which had previously been cut into a special foolscap sheet on the typewriter. When the handle was turned, a printed page was produced – used for some pricelists and for the dear customer newsletter I used to write at Christmas. Proper pricelists and other material were printed for us at Clarks Printing works and later by someone else in Street. The office was a tiny sliver of a room with a bench each side – maybe Vera and I worked cox and box while Tony was able to use the other side. John of course was at home, designing new ranges, taking the original drawings to Radstock Reproductions to be made into plates ready for Bigwood & Staple, Bridgwater, to print.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The ancient guillotine had been installed in the Ciderhouse, as I have already described, together with simple machinery for cutting and pinning the frames. We could cut large pieces of mountboard into 10 x 8” and 4 ½ x 3 ½ “ sizes, then the oval apertures would be cut by hand using John’s metal forma – later perhaps we obtained a simple machine to do this. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I think we invested in a little van so that John Grinter, or perhaps his assistant Ron Dunsmore, could bring the required frames and mounts up to 5A, no doubt using instructions provided by Tony after the current orders were analysed. We offered 4 choices of frame – F1 etc – and around the same number of mount colours. Agents were supplied with a box of loose mounts, frames and a large folder containing one of each hand coloured print in the range. The various permutations of mount and frame could be demonstrated by putting these over the images. The first set of agents sample boxes were made individually by John, lined with sheepskin of course, but later we invested in suitable suitcases – I still have three of these!<o:p></o:p></div>
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On Saturday 12 October, Julie and I fly from Gatwick to Los Angeles, Californjia, with a group of other Europeans on a subsided trip, celebrating the 300<sup>th</sup> anniversary of American Independence under the banner “Meet the Americans”. We must have been met at the airport by our hosts Bev and her husband driven to their home in San Diego, where they entertained us for over a week. Somewhere I have a diary of this visit, together with masses of slides. I do remember that we went across the border to Tihuana in Mexico one day, where I bought a huge heavy glass lampshade for 10 dollars and a kiss. I still have it – now in a cupboard. It had to be packed carefully in a large cardboard box and somehow we were allowed to secure it on an extra seat on the plane back home. Years later, an American couple visited Glastonbury Galleries and bought a very large heavy framed and glazed painting from us, declaring that they would not have any problem getting it back. They visited us again the following year and told us that it had been safely secured behind the pilot’s seat<o:p></o:p>…</div>
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From my diary I see that I am still doing meals on wheels with Pam Bracher; attending WEA English Classes; taking Julie to Taunton College of Art, Rob to Plymouth Technical College and Ruth to Sidcot when the autumn term begins; going out to supper with friends; attending West Pennard WI (there was no Women’s Institute in Glastonbury in those days); on top of helping to run the business. John would visit the workrooms at 5A and the frame making department in the Old Ciderhouse nearly every day and then work at home. But a couple of times a week he would be overtaken by migraines – he reckoned he lost each day a week because of this, poor John. Maybe I have already said that these continued right up to about 1998 when he had an angioplasty. It was a small hole in his heart, perhaps caused by conflict and tension at Morlands 30 years ago, when Uncle Humphrey Morland was keeping John back in order to make room for his own son.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In succession from the early sixties, for the next forty odd years I took my turn as secretary of the following organisations:-<o:p></o:p></div>
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West Pennard WI (just mentioned above);<o:p></o:p></div>
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National Federation of Small Businesses, Wells Branch - I will be coming to that organisation later; <o:p></o:p></div>
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Glastonbury Chamber of Commerce - I don’t think this organisation is still alive – we must have joined when we bought the shop and John became chairman in 1976/7, while I did a stint as chairman in 1986/87;<o:p></o:p></div>
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Glastonbury in Bloom - Bill Knight and I started this in 1982, though we didn’t hold it every year, then Alan Gloak took over a decade later and built it up to what it is today;<o:p></o:p></div>
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Glastonbury Conservation Society;<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mid Somerset Camera Club – I was also chairman for one year only, sometime in the late 90’s perhaps.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I have thrown away all the paper records of these organisations, but I must have some more recent material on this computer which I will investigate when I have the time! In the early days I would have used shorthand, but I soon forgot how to do this and scribbled instead. Fortunately I have never forgotten how to touch-type, because I continued to use this facility regularly. Sadly I threw away my old Imperial typewriter when we moved a couple of years ago. When did we have our first computer? Our son Rob is an IT specialist and I have an invoice from Watford Electronics Ltd dated 29/5/96 totalling £1,693.19, so perhaps that is the one.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-72567931770480138032015-06-29T13:08:00.013-07:002015-06-29T13:41:21.760-07:00Chapter 8 1975<br />
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I have reached 1975 and some exciting events are about to take place. I have been looking at my office and home diaries for this year which, although they only contain “appointments”, are useful guides to what happens next.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ruth is still boarding at Sidcot, while Rob attends Plymouth Technical College and Julie is at the Somerset College of Art, so there is lots of going backwards and forwards arranging their visits home in the holidays and trips to London to stay with John’s parents, Deena and Bry. Everyone – including my in-laws – would have spent Christmas with us at Schehallion and now on Thursday 2 January I see that we hire a van from Abbey Garage (which used to occupy the site now Heritage Court in Magdalene Street) and start moving into the Old Ciderhouse, Back Lane.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Glastonbury Prints now occupies 4 rooms on the first floor at 5A High Street and we are preparing for the spring trade shows – John and I are off to the Torquay Gift Fair on Saturday 12 January “after putting Whisky and Soda into kennels”. Have I mentioned our naughty beagles before? As the old Rosetor Hotel was going to be demolished, our group of exhibitors under the umbrella of Sheriff Textiles has moved to the San Remo Hotel (see the leaflet which we would have posted to all our customers before Christmas).<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then on Saturday 1 February we leave for the International Gifts Fair, Blackpool, where, as before, we occupy a 10 ft square stand on the top floor of the “Talbot Hall” – the multi-storey car park swathed in waterproof material and adapted for this purpose. As usual, the weather closes in as we drive north, but we manage to unload all our boxes of framed prints and carry them up the very steep and long flight of stairs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This trade show (together with Torquay) was mainly organised by Trade Promotion Services (TPS), which was a commercial offshoot from the Giftware Association. The secretary of TPS, Harry Polley, had discovered that we were Quakers, and visited our stand, pouring out his troubles. Apparently Elkan Symons, who was the President of the Giftware Association, had taken the bold step – without consulting his membership – of booking the International Gift Fair next year in the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham. This was to be the opening event at the NEC, shared with the Hardware trade, and seemed a reasonable move to us considering the poor quality of places like the Talbot Hall where, in the loos, the water condensed off the ceilings and dripped on top of one … and John was so cold he wore his pyjamas underneath his suit. But the members were furious. They loved Blackpool, ;enjoying staying locally in the hotels and meeting up after the day’s show. They did <u>not</u> want to move!<o:p></o:p></div>
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During the show we would have met lots of new customers including the odd export. When were we first contacted by Monsieur Dumont of Paris? And our agents will have taken turns in manning the stand as usual, advising us on whether we should open a new account with a certain shop in their area, making sure it did not compete with an existing customer. I think I used to try and keep to one outlet in a town up to about 10,000 population. We were arranging with a Mr Barnet to appear in his mail order magazine and at some point we became involved with “Made in Europe”, which included a complete Glastonbury Prints colour catalogue in their publication and we were able to buy copies of this insert for our own use (our first one in colour). <o:p></o:p></div>
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Returning home with lots of orders ahead, I see that we are also becoming more involved with the National Federation of Self Employed, attending a meeting in the Johnson Hall, Yeovil on Wednesday 26 February, and three weeks later we catch a coach to London to participate in a demo regarding pensions and benefits for the self-employed “attended by 2,000 members” – see p 40 of “The Growth of a Business Pressure Group” published in 1999. I don’t remember any details of this exploit however.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Probably early in March, walking back via the High Street and up Bove Town and Wick Hollow for lunch with John, who worked mostly at home producing new pictures for the range, while I would spend the day squeezed into our tiny office, which I shared with Tony and Vera Osmond, I noticed that sale boards had gone up outside the former Boots the chemist property. Number 10 had been empty for a couple of years after Boots had moved to Street. We had been looking vaguely for somewhere else in which to house the workshops and office presently occupying four rooms on the first floor at 5A. We had even gone round Dr Boyd’s former house, 43 High Street (now Becketts Inn). In order to obtain planning permission to manufacture goods in the High Street, one had to have a shop selling what was made. I felt that tourists would not make it up so far beyond St John’s Church, although the property had an attractive frontage which could have been developed as a retail outlet, together with a building in the garden which would have housed the workshops.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anyway, I burst into our house after panting up Wick Hollow and the first words I spoke were: “Number 10 is up for sale”. Things moved very fast after that. On Friday 21 March at 4 o’clock we look round the property with local architect Alan Tilsley. We must have visited our Nat West Bank manager, Mr. Bonner and arranged a loan for the purchase price. Palmer & Snell were in charge of the sale which was to be a “closed bid”, which we had never come across before. So with some trepidation we presented Roy Simpson with an envelope containing our bid of £12,500; Roy took it with a smile, saying “I think it feels warm”. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtWUFQeOuICherzWm50uEJjzP7hTmgRF3bczv-tTzamUXcL2DBzNxuxW_MPGicxL6UUOD_LJ8njk_GuaCwrBoyuhEX5utBsnnQ1IAVZGWZyeopvBLNX_iynz9sSu-KQeatMOtjhQbsHHgt/s1600/Freehold+10+high+street.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #993322; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtWUFQeOuICherzWm50uEJjzP7hTmgRF3bczv-tTzamUXcL2DBzNxuxW_MPGicxL6UUOD_LJ8njk_GuaCwrBoyuhEX5utBsnnQ1IAVZGWZyeopvBLNX_iynz9sSu-KQeatMOtjhQbsHHgt/s1600/Freehold+10+high+street.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="442" /></a></div>
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As you will see from the enclosed sale particulars, <i>(Palmer, Snell & Co)</i> the property comprised over 3,000 square feet, with three floors fronting the high street and two floors reaching back to the Abbey wall and abutting the Assembly Rooms. There was a “flying freehold” over the entrance to the alleyway from the pavement; a right of way over the alleyway (which was owned by the Abbey Trustees as this had been one of the entrances to the Abbey through the whalebone arch after the Abbey was purchased by the Diocese in 1907, until the gate was closed in the early 50’s), and another “flying freehold”. Boots had bought the property from Barrett Brothers in 1939 and had only occupied the ground floor front shop; the stock room, now occupied by the Pilgrim Centre; and perhaps they used the adjoining back room as storage (we expanded this shop area in the 80’s); I think they must have used part of the first floor above the shop as their rest room. The downstairs lavatory, which opened out of the stock room, had been created from an old air raid shelter (and has now been changed into a tiny walled yard). <o:p></o:p></div>
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The rest of the building was pretty well in ruins; there was a hole in the roof of the second floor over the alleyway and the rain had caused another hole in the floor of the room below. The rear of the property had been virtually boarded up since the end of the war. Some American solders had been billeted in Glastonbury in 1944 before “D-Day” and had used the Assembly Rooms and the back of Number 10 – there was a connecting door between the two properties – for their leisure facilities. There were tanks painted on the wall of the Billiard Room and “Troop Office – keep out” was just visible under the paint on a door leading to a tiny passage of a room.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The building was a labyrinth on different levels with unexpected staircases, wavy corridors (I used to call the main one on the first floor leading to the billiard room “the sandy passage” after Beatrix Potter), uneven floors, steps, peculiar attics, and one of the back rooms housed a set of gents urinals left over from the war. <i>(see the valuation dated 10 October 1975 listing all the rooms).<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Planning blight presently affected the last third of the property, together with the Assembly Rooms and the rear of all the buildings from Hanover Square, because the County Council proposed to extend Silver Street <i>(plan herewith, produced by the County Surveyor, Taunton, April 1975).</i> </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGOpJ8EAf0q-aBxKrE3ZCEGuo-5IzLLjFjXdraus6KVfEIGIKPpH-LU8wJ9n-WzWOHrKujDb7NOSE5Exc5372dHtbpfNv5844GzSZmStQW4cD1Gej4IRaL4Rpa5t6aM2xjYuAyoOsGkaQh/s1600/High+street+plan+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #993322; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGOpJ8EAf0q-aBxKrE3ZCEGuo-5IzLLjFjXdraus6KVfEIGIKPpH-LU8wJ9n-WzWOHrKujDb7NOSE5Exc5372dHtbpfNv5844GzSZmStQW4cD1Gej4IRaL4Rpa5t6aM2xjYuAyoOsGkaQh/s1600/High+street+plan+1.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="446" /></a></div>
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This of course was the reason for the low valuation. We decided, with the aid of our builder Don Cribb, to put the roof in order, decorate the front, renovate the shop and leave the blighted bit alone. However, planning blight may have been lifted soon after we acquired Number 10 because on Tuesday 12 August we are shown round the Assembly Rooms by Mr. Boggan from Somerset County Council, with the offer to purchase that property for £500. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We did seriously consider this for our framing workshop instead of the Old Ciderhouse, but following a rather poor survey we withdrew and a group of townspeople stepped in and set up the Assembly Rooms Trust – see Bruce Garrard’s book “Free State”, launched on 6 June 2014. However, we must have prevaricated over this for the next year or so because John used to go through the connecting door in the billiard room and practise setting up our trade stands in this space. It must have been when we were preparing for Harrogate Gift Fair one evening in 1976, when I was upstairs in the offices on the top floor at the front of the building and at about 8 o’clock I felt a shiver down my spine. Something strange had happened to John. I should have gone to investigate. An hour or so later he climbed the stairs and announced: “I was nearly killed by a huge piece of ceiling plaster – I could feel the wind as it whistled past my shoulder.” We were told later that the ceiling was indeed unsafe. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Planning permission for retail shop with workshops above was lodged with Mendip District Council on 2 May and in September we were granted “change of use of vacant shop to craft workshop and picture gallery”. On June 3<sup>rd</sup> Mr. Henzel Thomas of CoSIRA (Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas) came and had a look (we later took out a mortgage with that organisation, see below). Completion of the conveyance of the property is dated 4 July. The summer was full of high hopes and excitement. The builders did a marvellous job, while Eric Wilkins and his father fitted out the shop. Don Cribb’s men found a charming love letter under the floorboards upstairs where some of the Americans might have been billeted just before D-Day; it is dated May 1944 from “Ruby”, Fort Laramie. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9kJgOAQulmo3X3OPVKFC_RAEmcfKvYlp_hdeqE-iJwMrRtntoja76rXi13duobS9Zun4vrgtG6CkBS34xxhyphenhyphenlKVL64jAc1n9Zxg3EqD6oo8EWlr9EjcRcSr7eO8CGUaoSCBldZaTZGm_m/s1600/American+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #993322; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="448" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9kJgOAQulmo3X3OPVKFC_RAEmcfKvYlp_hdeqE-iJwMrRtntoja76rXi13duobS9Zun4vrgtG6CkBS34xxhyphenhyphenlKVL64jAc1n9Zxg3EqD6oo8EWlr9EjcRcSr7eO8CGUaoSCBldZaTZGm_m/s1600/American+2.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>(see the copy which I produced as a card some years later).</i> We framed the original letter, unfortunately sticking it to the backing board as we didn’t understand about archival storage in those days, and a few years ago I gave it to the Rural Life Museum. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In between all these events we are attending more NFSE meetings, and visit Mr Judd, manager of Fred Keetch’s framing workshop in Taunton. Later when the shop opened, we used to farm out our bespoke picture framing service to them, as we only mass produced a limited range of frames and mounts for Glastonbury Prints in the Old Ciderhouse. We also visit our accountant at Woking again and I advertise in the Gazette for a “shop assistant”. <o:p></o:p></div>
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John goes down to Bigwood & Staple and Bridgwater, who are printing a new range of pictures, and then on Saturday 19 July we are off to Harrogate Gift Fair. My note says that we have 32 ft of wall space in the passage at the Crown Hotel. We found this a very good position as buyers visiting more prestigious companies like Denby, who were in the room towards the end, had to go past us on their way. <o:p></o:p></div>
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No sooner than we have returned from Harrogate Gift Fair on the following Friday, we have to pack our things for a fortnight’s holiday, leaving on Saturday 26 July, when it would take us 12 hours to drive 500 miles to Strontian including queuing for 2 hours for the Ballachuilish Ferry. Glastonbury Prints would be closed too for what was known locally as the “factory fortnight”. We observed Morlands and Clarks holidays as some of our staff had family members who worked for those companies and it made everything easier. </div>
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These are some of the expenses and renovations which took place during the next few months:<o:p></o:p></div>
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Don Cribb & Co Ltd,(builders), 46a Northload Street, Glastonbury £5,000 <o:p></o:p></div>
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Timber Decay Treatment, Farmborough, Nr Bath 606<o:p></o:p></div>
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Eric Wilkins, (shop display), 96 Main Street, Walton 1,330<o:p></o:p></div>
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David Fear (electrical contractors), Bristol 2,364<o:p></o:p></div>
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J. Barker & Son (plumber), 27 Northload Street, Glastonbury 1,963<o:p></o:p></div>
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JTS Alarms, Bristol 418<o:p></o:p></div>
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K. Bancroft (carpets), 14 Benedict Street, Glastonbury 259<o:p></o:p></div>
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Paul, signwriters 23<o:p></o:p></div>
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Benches, shelves & fitments for workroom, inc. labour 824<o:p></o:p></div>
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Painting & decorating – undertaken by our own women employees<o:p></o:p></div>
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and including 570 hours labour @ £1 hour 775<o:p></o:p></div>
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Total recorded expenses £13,562<o:p></o:p></div>
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In addition of course one needs to add the ridiculously low purchase cost of £12,500 (because of planning blight and the poor condition of the remaining building), and legal expenses etc. I think our CoSIRA mortgage was probably around £30,000. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>(before and after photos of Number 10)</i></div>
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Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-55363684807326970922015-06-29T13:08:00.011-07:002015-06-29T15:59:17.461-07:00Chapter 9 1975 Continued<br />
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When I go down to the office at 5A on the morning of Friday 5 September, I find everyone in a great state of excitement. “Tony has found some bottles hidden away in a cupboard at Number 10”. Our manager had been checking up the shop fitting arrangements and decided that he would investigate a cupboard under the stairs. Finding that the last few feet in the toe of this cupboard had been boarded off, he prized this open too and there they were, eleven half gallon jars of brandy and gin which must have been squirreled away by one of the Barrett brothers who owned the property before the war.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Most of the corks had rotted and the contents had evaporated; what was left of the gin tasted terrible but the dregs of brandy were delicious. I only have two (empty) bottles left and their labels are now illegible, but we put one or two bottles back into the cupboard with copies of the publicity, boarding it up again for posterity behind the shop fitments. I recently gave the one with the best label to the Rural Life Museum. “Why don’t you write to Gilbey Vintners and tell them about the bottles,” said Tony, so I did, with swift reaction. We were visited by Mr. Brierley (Gilbey’s area manager) and a member of the Vintner’s Company as a result during the autumn. As we had no reception area at 5A and there was no room in the tiny office, we had to entertain these illustrious guests in the corridor, where we stood sipping brandy from our coffee mugs. We donated two bottles for their museum at Tring and they provided us with all the sherry for our huge opening parties in November - and we were able to buy the wine at trade price, so it was a reasonable deal.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Number 10 High Street, together with Number 8, had comprised The White Hart Inn Coaching Inn from 1650 to 1850, when it had been converted into shops and the Assembly Rooms had been built on the former stables. The small side window fronting onto the High Street had been where one took the post – and presumably collected any which had been delivered to Glastonbury that day. A General Directory dated 1840 states that coaches from Bath and Bridgwater travelled daily, calling in at The White Hart Inn in Glastonbury.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In 1685, 6 rebels were hung from the inn sign following the Monmouth Rebellion, one of whom was John’s six times great grandfather Thomas Bryant, a Quaker from Greinton A snuff box, now in the Blake Museum in Bridgwater, was presented to the Duke of Monmouth to Thomas Bryant of Greinton Gate Farm, after he sheltered in “a poor shepherd’s dwelling”on the night before the Battle of Sedgemoor.. John’s father, Bry, had produced a Morland family tree a few years previously, going back to the late 16C when he still lived in London and could visit Friends’ House, where all the Quaker records are kept, so he was able to extract this information. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Apparently the smell of the rotting corpses put off the customers in the White Hart and they all went across to the George & Pilgrim instead. When Somerset celebrated the Pitchfork Rebellion in 1985, we organised another “hanging” with the assistance of the Civil War Society and a very good dummy, made by Sue Palmer of the Assembly Rooms; John painted the White Hart sign and some of us dressed up for the occasion. This figure was so realistic that a lady taking her children to school the next day came into the shop and complained that it frightened the children, so we had to take it down! <i>(see photo which includes Jim Bobbett, our Town Crier in the 70’s, with John Brunsdon and myself dressed appropriately.)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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To return to Barrett Brothers, Adrian Pearce’s mother, who was related to that family, very kindly gave us copies of some lovely ephemera concerning their shop, which the family had occupied from 1898 until they sold it to Boots the Chemist in 1939. There had certainly been a restaurant on the first floor above the shop and I think they must have used the billiard room at the rear as well, since one of the advertisements states <i>“Spacious Room for Schools and Picnic Parties, to seat 400.”</i> </div>
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Funnily enough they also owned Number 7 High Street, both of which properties opened as gift shops within a few months of each other. We opened our gift shop in November 1975, but Michou and Martin Godfrey had already opened Gothic Image at Number 7 in August. (Some years later, Jamie and Frances George took over the shop and they still run it today). I said to Michou: “When people come into my shop and look astonished, I send them across the road.” Michou replied: “We do the same.” I used to say that we ran the alternative alternative shop.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ruth reminds me that she was with us when we prized open the locked door of the “Ice House”, which was situated in the open alleyway beneath the billiard room, and found that it contained collapsed shelves containing rotting records, which we found out later had been lodged there by the old Glastonbury Borough Council whose rating office was above the Gas Showrooms at Number 8. Amongst these was the Glastonbury Invasion Committee War Book, prepared by the Home Guard about thirty years earlier, some time during the later stages of the war – unfortunately it is undated. I have given the original copy to the Antiquarian Society Library. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It is a marvellous social history with names of many people who were familiar to me when we first came to live here in 1952. It listed 3 cars which would have been available in an emergency, one belonging to Mr Meyers, headmaster of Millfield School and another to Mrs. Pinnegar, our doctor’s wife. And there were 3 tractors, one of which belonged to Henry Tinney’s father at Cradlebridge Farm; Henry told us at the time we found this document that he still had that old tractor. There were also piles of old invoices, together with two bills for drinks provided by HP Colmer, Avalon Restaurant, 10 High Street for the Coronation Luncheon (£23.0.7p) and Tea (£15.1.6d) held on May 18 1937 <i>(see the invoice).</i> By the mid 1930’s a son-in-law of the Barretts had taken over the business, hence the change of name to Colmer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The rear of Number 10 was purchased by our youngest daughter, Ruth, in 1992. Together with Elizabeth Chaffey, she ran “Glastonbury Framing” there for a few years. When the Chaffeys retired and moved to Crete in 2004, Ruth took over the framing business. In 1998 when we had closed the shop and sold the front part of the property, she used our trading name “Glastonbury Galleries”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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During this exciting year, we also continued with family acitivities, fetching the children from school or college; attending NFSE meetings; visiting friends – there are lots of appointments with people in the diary, many of whom I cannot recall. There are meetings about Glastonbury’s Twinning with Bretenoux and we are visited by Sergeant Cook on 8<sup>th</sup> September with advice on security for the shop. The next day we discuss the possibility of taking over the Assembly Rooms with our staff at the Old Ciderhouse. A couple of weeks later we are visited by Mr Leo Garvin, our landlord and his companion Mrs. Beirholm. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Michael Watts of Clifton Studios in Bristol design our advertisements in local and gift trade newspapers and John goes fishing with old friends Frank Campbell (our dentist) and Vigo Weidemann. It looks as if we are also meeting artists whose work we propose to display in the shop, including Paul Branson and Michael Cooper. We have even joined the Bristol Chamber of Commerce in order to tap into their advice on exporting John’s pictures.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My job in the office was probably dealing with the sales agents, sometimes visiting them in their areas across the country; twice a year, at the beginning of the new season, I would write “Dear Customer” letters to all the shops we supplied – 500 of them by the end of the 70’s. Vera Osmond’s job was keeping a record of the accounts while her husband Tony, who was our manager, oversaw the workshops and made sure that supplies of raw materials were in hand. John was mostly working at home (though he did visit 5A and the Old Ciderhouse at regular intervals), producing new drawings. He would take these to Radstock Reproductions who transferred them to printing plates, which John would arrange to deliver to Bigwood & Staple in Bridgwater.<o:p></o:p></div>
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John was also training new hand painters, presumably at home – later he would undertake this in the Billiard Room at the rear of Number 10. Natasha Smith started as painting supervisor in December 1974 and her hourly pay by the time we made Glastonbury Prints employees redundant was £1.68. (The girls in the framing department earned £1.13 per hour and Vera £2.29, while Tony was earning £3.62 in the end.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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All three of our children have contributed to the business over the years. Julie designed two ranges for G.Prints; first of all the black and white “Idle Fancies” and then the hand coloured “Animal Friends.” She also helped in the shop at Christmas on at least one occasion and both girls would accompany us to trade shows (principally Harrogate in the summer holidays). Rob with his technical ability began by bringing back our first adding machine from Reading Dump and then when we expanded the shop in the 80’s, he installed three security cameras.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Returning to the autumn of 1975, we were introduced to Eric Lewin, who worked for Clarks on shop display. He came to Number 10 one evening and dressed our windows ready for the opening of the shop on Saturday November 1<sup>st</sup>. He continued to dress our windows on a regular basis for about 10 years, creating lovely displays especially for occasions like Easter, the Glastonbury Carnival and Christmas. I can’t remember how often, but we would also have changed things around ourselves every week or two as well. Later, Ruth gradually took over the mantle after she came to work for us as our manageress in 1983. In 1986 she won a national window dressing competition and the prize was a fortnight’s holiday in Japan. Mother went too.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I remember we sold a china tea set from the window display during that first week of opening and then what on earth could we put in its place? We didn’t have another one! My budget for buying gifts for our new shop at the Harrogate Gift Fair was only £2,000, when I probably bought a little Royal Worcester China, some Dartington Glass, maybe some Caithness Glass, Woods of Windsor and Crabtree and Evelyn, and Camden Graphics cards among other products. About a decade later we had over 80 suppliers. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Eric had recommended buying display stands from a small business in Ashcott, which we needed for our windows and for the alcoves against one of the walls. For further display in the shop we invested in a couple of large cabinets and perhaps two card racks, while the table which housed the second hand till and a pile of tissue paper was covered with a velvet cloth. Next to the till was a telephone, one of several installed throughout the building; the others were in the workshop and the offices which were above the shop, and one was in the billiard room at the back. I remember the GPO engineer complaining that the latter was 70 or so feet from the connecting box! This also served as an internal communication system.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In those days there was no Sunday Trading and we also observed early closing on Wednesday afternoon. Tuesday was always busy, as it was market day – the farmers would bring in their livestock to the pens which occupied land beyond what is now St John’s Car Park, very often driving the animals through the streets. while the wives would come into the town to do their shopping. One lady from Crannel Farm was always smartly dressed with hat and gloves. A certain farmer would come in smelling strongly of stale milk and worse and we had to ventilate the shop after he had gone.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We took on Pat Grinter, wife of John (who was in charge of the Old Ciderhouse) as our manageress and employed a “Saturday girl”. These usually stayed with us for a couple of years from age 16 to 18 before moving on to higher education – we once even employed a “Saturday boy”. I didn’t work regularly in the shop during the week as I was based in my office, but I was always on call if required. A few years after we opened, I happened to be behind the counter standing in for Pat, and a customer commented: “Has the shop changed hands then?” On another occasion I happened to serve Kate Adie, the well known BBC reporter. She produced a gold credit card and I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with this, as I had never handled one before. In those days one used a machine to impress the card onto a paper receipt and then we had to ring up, in front of the customer, and obtain a confirmatory number. I decided that this wasn’t necessary. Her purchase went through without question.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We decided to hold two opening parties for friends in the week before the shop opened, assisted by our staff (did we buy in the refreshments from somewhere – remember that Gilbeys helped us out with wine and sherry). I have recorded that 43 people came on the evening of Tuesday 28 November and over 60 on Thursday. At that stage, renovations had not been completed and there was no electricity on the top floor, but we allowed small groups of people to explore with torches and candles and even venture into the Assembly Rooms through the connecting door in the Billiard Room.. The shop opened on Saturday 1 December.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Vernon Smart was PRO of Clarks. Over a decade earlier when I was PRO of Strode Theatre, helping John Lowe the manager when the theatre first opened in 1963, Vernon was giving us advice about publicity. On one occasion it was arranged that we would meet him in a room behind the Bear Hotel, which was teetotal in those days. He brought a Gladstone bag, from which he produced three wine glasses and a bottle and we sat sipping wine while we discussed business. Cousins Sarah and Roger Clark would have turned in their grave! Unfortunately I didn’t know at the time that he was something of an alcoholic.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He was a good friend nevertheless; when we bought Boots he gave me a china bedpan (which I still have) and made suggestions about our opening party invitations which are in the form of a prescription as you can see. I had also invited the Managing Director of Boots and here is his witty reply. And Jean Pike’s lovely poem. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis5llH5t_bY_BJrI6ScrShBbOWayGUcXGj-B0XwyGw9W2-QUFOvSaBg2sx0Fsya6p9449FkMd8pp50clMCsOams6BhRPpFQzjG2kdbHuW2dxfcZ5pw-B5UZrYx-3wCthXJxaKDUWDrfgLG/s1600/Jean+&+John.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; color: #993322; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis5llH5t_bY_BJrI6ScrShBbOWayGUcXGj-B0XwyGw9W2-QUFOvSaBg2sx0Fsya6p9449FkMd8pp50clMCsOams6BhRPpFQzjG2kdbHuW2dxfcZ5pw-B5UZrYx-3wCthXJxaKDUWDrfgLG/s1600/Jean+&+John.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="315" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz7aAAj_7EOJsx4HbU7x733gjaS_KeQtYxdq1KFw0Q7-nP_vtawUcmOFhfxQSpPToI-2BdF3mWZ337k0226NY7BYhmRT4SEd5xM8N9X6WUuxAl96T5BV95pbH-HZMKGD-zbB2PJ1rDXprq/s1600/Boots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #993322; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz7aAAj_7EOJsx4HbU7x733gjaS_KeQtYxdq1KFw0Q7-nP_vtawUcmOFhfxQSpPToI-2BdF3mWZ337k0226NY7BYhmRT4SEd5xM8N9X6WUuxAl96T5BV95pbH-HZMKGD-zbB2PJ1rDXprq/s1600/Boots.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="272" /></a></div>
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We hold a dinner/dance for our staff in Friday 5<sup>th</sup> December in the Star Hotel, Wells, which included the hand painters. It was our 24th wedding anniversary on the 14<sup>th </sup>. (but no mention in the diary of a celebration). G.Prints close for a week over Christmas, though the shop would only have closed on Christmas and Boxing Day. On Sunday 28<sup>th</sup> December we and the three children go to stay with Deena and Bry (John’s parents) in Hampstead for three days and go to “The Nutcracker” in the Royal Festival Hall. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There is a note in the diary to say that I musn’t forget Meals on Wheels on 6<sup>th</sup> January. And the dates for the Torquay and Birmingham Trade Shows next year are noted – this will be the first exhibition to be held in the newly completed National Exhibition Centre.<br />
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Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-50825194273774683312015-06-29T13:08:00.009-07:002015-06-29T15:26:34.324-07:00Chapter 10<div class="MsoNormal">
In the late autumn of 1975, after all the Glastonbury Prints
orders had been dispatched, our employees manfully donned boiler suits and
began working on Number 10.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The shop of course had been properly fitted out by
professionals and opened at the end of November (see last chapter), but the men
now began putting up work benches etc. in the three rooms directly above the
shop, ready for our move from 5A, while the girls painted everything including
the three offices on the top floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(These became our flat after 1981).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I think some tidying up also took place in the Billiard Room at the rear
of the property – it is a pity I haven’t photographs of the tanks etc. which
had been painted on the walls when the Americans were here before D-Day in
1944.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another couple of rooms opening off the long back passage on
the first floor were made into the rest room and kitchen, the latter being a
very narrow slip of a room which bore the words “Troop Office Keep Out” on the
door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The lavatory on the first floor
landing was renovated by Eric Lukin’s father, 70 year old Bill Lukins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For some reason the old ceiling had to be
brought down, and here is the photo of Bill, covered with plaster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was always known as “Bill’s loo” after
that.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There was of course another lavatory on the ground floor
which served the employees working in the shop, which Boots must have converted
from the old air raid shelter, leading off the stockroom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We would have employed quite a few people in
this building in our heyday, and I think there were more lavatories next to the
rest room.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Except for the front shop and the stockroom, most of the
ground floor was still unused.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
were <i>four</i> staircases leading up to the first floor with another steep
twisting staircase going up to the top floor offices at the front of the
building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The main staircase led from
the side door under the alleyway to the first floor landing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If one walked from the stockroom on the
ground floor into what must have been the old kitchen (extended into ground
floor shop in about 1980), a tiny staircase led up
inside a cupboard to a landing on the first floor where a door opened onto the
“sandy passage” (from Beatrix Potter’s Mrs Tittlemouse), which led past the
lavatories and rest room to the Billiard Room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This door had been kept locked by Boots after the war – they just
allowed the greater part of Number 10 to become virtually derelict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Half way down this passage there was a wooden staircase
leading to another derelict room on the ground floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lastly, there was a stone staircase from the
Billiard Room down to the open alleyway (over which we owned the flying freehold),
which housed the Ice House where we had found the Borough Council records and
the Invasion Committee War Book, and the former entrance to the Abbey under the
whalebone arch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is this part of the
building which our daughter Ruth has developed into a flat on the first floor
and her version of “Glastonbury Galleries” on the ground floor, next to the
Assembly Rooms.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
One always had to plan one’s route to various parts of the
building and work out which staircase would be most appropriate.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTcDH0IlFUQ0pi49gs2tdJqkxbtkGV1RQUnxan3D6PEz4MTr_lnzXXwImNhyphenhyphenAASzTH3rP2HLgveM_WFTFqEevN-lMOW1dVMOfXi_obM0zzH9ouffDXd5WPqnke4IYHArHUl4WFHdP-1ITL/s1600/A+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTcDH0IlFUQ0pi49gs2tdJqkxbtkGV1RQUnxan3D6PEz4MTr_lnzXXwImNhyphenhyphenAASzTH3rP2HLgveM_WFTFqEevN-lMOW1dVMOfXi_obM0zzH9ouffDXd5WPqnke4IYHArHUl4WFHdP-1ITL/s400/A+copy.jpg" width="357" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJVBdO0JbPslcPLtFKz3MZF9cZDtpc3psj8eeLbkU2MA3ABqFx4yI9h_pikVSAOLEkCcSTt8_JpHpytQI1J13tC2QeGuB6OeZfC_0xU6skTxVsu9BrHqQOHDEXAR__SXcBCLPgQpraCHbn/s1600/B+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJVBdO0JbPslcPLtFKz3MZF9cZDtpc3psj8eeLbkU2MA3ABqFx4yI9h_pikVSAOLEkCcSTt8_JpHpytQI1J13tC2QeGuB6OeZfC_0xU6skTxVsu9BrHqQOHDEXAR__SXcBCLPgQpraCHbn/s400/B+copy.jpg" width="295" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Now it is January 1976 and we must brace ourselves for the
spring trade shows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We hadn’t yet moved
everything from 5A of course, as the new workrooms weren’t ready, and the Old
Ciderhouse continued to produce frames etc. as before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Torquay in January as usual;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this was always a good rehearsal for the
International Spring Fair, but we faced the unknown with opening in the
National Exhibition Centre on Sunday 1 February – the first exhibition to be
held in this new venue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Giftware
and Hardware trades had booked this together, occupying halls 3 and 5 around
the Piazza (that’s all there was in the beginning, before the expansion into
the huge complex it is today).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLsMm3wmD3SEADDVzTjwlPf-0XhXBK161LWT_jil-rf0RAq8MgBMPtvpjO38IQSUU5ctLVmVlVuHhHRgRR3EkxjpqdkMXAKnU2AY4JdGZK4kqmLcT-YIn2YRu21PlF0azCb8-MnoPUs8bh/s1600/C+1+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLsMm3wmD3SEADDVzTjwlPf-0XhXBK161LWT_jil-rf0RAq8MgBMPtvpjO38IQSUU5ctLVmVlVuHhHRgRR3EkxjpqdkMXAKnU2AY4JdGZK4kqmLcT-YIn2YRu21PlF0azCb8-MnoPUs8bh/s640/C+1+copy.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCj8GdYjVSV2Tm_7NPLonnu0vf5UIddQOmVNYjk6vmri0J372IwY4dKVXtUPzJXsYjXZIkXH2b32q9uOx5Bnup-fLGV8OPVZ4C2HgHXWwmCrIOGaWpno6WTQShnzHhlSloHaq6KNCWqcYA/s1600/C++copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCj8GdYjVSV2Tm_7NPLonnu0vf5UIddQOmVNYjk6vmri0J372IwY4dKVXtUPzJXsYjXZIkXH2b32q9uOx5Bnup-fLGV8OPVZ4C2HgHXWwmCrIOGaWpno6WTQShnzHhlSloHaq6KNCWqcYA/s640/C++copy.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On Friday January 30 my diary states “dogs to kennels” and
on Saturday the comment reads “Go to Birmingham early”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We seem to have booked one double room and 2
single rooms in the Standbridge Hotel, Sutton Coldfield, from Saturday January
31 to Wednesday February 4 –which were actually booked well ahead in February
the previous year, as we had been warned of shortage of beds in reach of the
NEC.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These would have been for John and
myself, Tony Osmond and another member of staff – or perhaps for someone like
our London agent John Reeder perhaps?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1m9uoGCE4E-ouzNMxpwj_p4E32CNulxE3-oY_60iXUayOd5GhL9dUKYu4lm3BtdBdbOJkU5Qy1rHmhLUR8UJS2tYDR1Ad9au4SqOJ3_G_ybp6nv5JdrLidCVdmG7mAv2krc5UVcmQpyIU/s1600/D+1+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1m9uoGCE4E-ouzNMxpwj_p4E32CNulxE3-oY_60iXUayOd5GhL9dUKYu4lm3BtdBdbOJkU5Qy1rHmhLUR8UJS2tYDR1Ad9au4SqOJ3_G_ybp6nv5JdrLidCVdmG7mAv2krc5UVcmQpyIU/s400/D+1+copy.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
John had prepared detailed plans of our 10 ft square stand
which I still have, together with the full scale plan of Hall 3.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There we are on Row K;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it looks as if there must have been around
458 stands altogether.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sadly, I threw
away the trade show catalogues each year when the next year came out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two cars were piled high with boxes of framed
prints and other material, plus all our luggage of course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I should add that we did not need to take
stands to Birmingham (or to Torquay), because we could attach the pictures to
the partition walls, whereas for Harrogate of course when we were in the
passage of the Crown Hotel, we had to go provided.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUTzwkFbRzXVnfmv9jNEUDDxlip9U3tIzNxzhiXs9tSOnRMrPoRfgtNwJFVPkUvQcYSCPgcGAfmwQ7miSEsxrLtfoc_u_7FsbRME5ny8zB6TmNSxuT5FLCJeF0AOzMYQD86faBxIC43oK0/s1600/D+2+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUTzwkFbRzXVnfmv9jNEUDDxlip9U3tIzNxzhiXs9tSOnRMrPoRfgtNwJFVPkUvQcYSCPgcGAfmwQ7miSEsxrLtfoc_u_7FsbRME5ny8zB6TmNSxuT5FLCJeF0AOzMYQD86faBxIC43oK0/s400/D+2+copy.jpg" width="186" /></a></div>
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyFpbKRStulRReukumTDYKzmpgWetwBgO0Y0MzjukkuOuD1rf4V2YfRKFsvpDvD8JThTvU95E5NnJz6sfUEGMbDe9RsZKe1bWe-VmnVJLIolEMCt93hLKtytKtt4UL0P-HtqVPgT6G8RuR/s1600/D+4+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyFpbKRStulRReukumTDYKzmpgWetwBgO0Y0MzjukkuOuD1rf4V2YfRKFsvpDvD8JThTvU95E5NnJz6sfUEGMbDe9RsZKe1bWe-VmnVJLIolEMCt93hLKtytKtt4UL0P-HtqVPgT6G8RuR/s320/D+4+copy.jpg" width="148" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTqfufNdC3jNfOFnCvbgTHn4zWoKrX32toqQuj31B0qIFL2RmCY9IHlqAdRvaFWNfCWO1zCQ2S1th4j1CsU-guc7t0oa7cY5yQg8smxwUAYamT6asPy3773dVlzjG8qgl73Cxaa9jvc2EX/s1600/D+3+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTqfufNdC3jNfOFnCvbgTHn4zWoKrX32toqQuj31B0qIFL2RmCY9IHlqAdRvaFWNfCWO1zCQ2S1th4j1CsU-guc7t0oa7cY5yQg8smxwUAYamT6asPy3773dVlzjG8qgl73Cxaa9jvc2EX/s400/D+3+copy.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We drove north on the M5 - was the Avonmouth Bridge
completed yet, so perhaps we didn’t need to go through Bristol?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the M42 was <i>not</i> yet built and
we would have turned off before spaghetti junction and threaded our way east
somehow to Solihull and then to the NEC. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course all the small exhibitors arrived about lunchtime
on the Saturday morning, but TPS (Trade Promotion Services) hadn’t planned for
this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Huge queues of cars and vans piled
up on the site, prevented from going any further by the chap in charge who
blocked the road and waved us to a halt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“You will have to go into the car park and carry your merchandise to the
loading doors, as there is no more room nearer to the building”, he said,
having verified these instructions from a telephone in his little cabin.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We happened to be at the front of the queue and no way could
we carry all our stuff any distance – we hadn’t come prepared with sack trucks
–so we refused to obey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To our
surprise, the chap wilted at our determination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we looked round, we could see why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A long row of cars and vans, their owners
standing in the road shaking their fists, were supporting us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So we all drove on, parking on the muddy
banks at the back of the building as no other space was provided.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After an hour or two, the lights went out in
the hall and we were threatened by a loud speaker announcement:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Unless you move your cars, the lights will
not go on again”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Somehow we must have managed to complete the stand according
to John’s plans and retreated to our hotel for a well earned supper.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
During the five days of the fair, we would have been
supported by our sales agents with a rota set up beforehand, since of course
they had to spend some time with all their suppliers who had stands at a
particular trade show.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The agents would
have a portfolio of six or more “principals” and would be paid on a commission
basis for the orders emanating from their areas – even if they hadn’t actually
visited the customer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ray & Sybil
Curtis represented the West Country, but perhaps they didn’t come to Birmingham
as they had been well covered by Torquay a few weeks earlier, but John Reeder,
whom I have already mentioned, would have spent time with us, as well as Mona
Russell, who covered Lancashire and Yorkshire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Bertram Ellis had begun carrying our pictures in February 1973 around
Scotland and the far north and was joined by his son Peter the following year,
when they covered 99 customers including the Castle Shop, Inverary;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fenwicks of Newcastle;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and Gosdens of Tyndrum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The latter sold our pictures for several
years - we would always stop at their visitor centre to top up with petrol and
for a cup of tea towards the end of our long drive to Strontian for our summer
holiday in Scotland, before tackling Rannoch Moor and Glen Coe.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf3c6P73mRbRFrafYQCUe1rJBb4HJbYcj-MYdbzjke10njKwaRKxPnbjuWb6UbF-yGENCaBQA0Rew_PNY-tddl9Zjw4miPlikTV4nHCbaU3KT53cnE4wYTFMAMBaFztHeCSIOqz22c_rpb/s1600/F+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf3c6P73mRbRFrafYQCUe1rJBb4HJbYcj-MYdbzjke10njKwaRKxPnbjuWb6UbF-yGENCaBQA0Rew_PNY-tddl9Zjw4miPlikTV4nHCbaU3KT53cnE4wYTFMAMBaFztHeCSIOqz22c_rpb/s640/F+copy.jpg" width="464" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjp3LDS2_3nf6TCQEYOQi1075YW2MuiHRpiMXGGFVWk5o2EFCFAepDAVfqZdqNE42YxGXd5p-ToEf8nA92Kg2ajWsheQnXumP5_YB2UeaJqGgWk_7b1MYIGjv1NdCDrP8P8Bq7-c7_MnBg/s1600/H++copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjp3LDS2_3nf6TCQEYOQi1075YW2MuiHRpiMXGGFVWk5o2EFCFAepDAVfqZdqNE42YxGXd5p-ToEf8nA92Kg2ajWsheQnXumP5_YB2UeaJqGgWk_7b1MYIGjv1NdCDrP8P8Bq7-c7_MnBg/s640/H++copy.jpg" width="552" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifYAJyDVA2FGgHio7IggEhzMFPiAvZ9TsFrhLxv8bNQsMQwmOf7ZCYJvDrvWNXB5RwpQg4D1bf8pmaEdGlHxLGsSLFt7LcUGSdAepyZPKDipP42zEIyygqIgc1jDAAHK5CwjU0WvTwVhWv/s1600/G+2+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifYAJyDVA2FGgHio7IggEhzMFPiAvZ9TsFrhLxv8bNQsMQwmOf7ZCYJvDrvWNXB5RwpQg4D1bf8pmaEdGlHxLGsSLFt7LcUGSdAepyZPKDipP42zEIyygqIgc1jDAAHK5CwjU0WvTwVhWv/s400/G+2+copy.jpg" width="281" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8ybjA4NL-INcYB06KaYvFcGbxFYpERwe3OxL8RMyLk7Y9XWIuo5xnZkulQhTu_Mm35-337pwsZqjh0gVdyLhUmnvtI-s6wOGfae95hyphenhyphenofp-OSXsL49gpQHGCelc-CC5VjGglRmHgwmTWe/s1600/G+1+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8ybjA4NL-INcYB06KaYvFcGbxFYpERwe3OxL8RMyLk7Y9XWIuo5xnZkulQhTu_Mm35-337pwsZqjh0gVdyLhUmnvtI-s6wOGfae95hyphenhyphenofp-OSXsL49gpQHGCelc-CC5VjGglRmHgwmTWe/s400/G+1+copy.jpg" width="290" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiER2zWn5R_CmeaohHQCSjj1lq-V6vOeNgQRHAFAMTUsgKapFkUSXTAxneiOB1L9QfCWn_K4MKNuOopmXXswtVq9v_YZzUW1oN8zIQ0v60-oJ-M7yivQ2E1UwAYAvlhIn0SsWKU_lB0_J3h/s1600/G+4+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiER2zWn5R_CmeaohHQCSjj1lq-V6vOeNgQRHAFAMTUsgKapFkUSXTAxneiOB1L9QfCWn_K4MKNuOopmXXswtVq9v_YZzUW1oN8zIQ0v60-oJ-M7yivQ2E1UwAYAvlhIn0SsWKU_lB0_J3h/s400/G+4+copy.jpg" width="281" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZYZCZgdMp3fZSB96KROewXs6wm8UMYwXeLrLsBZjnO4gLaFx1wcO7yY0GHPIQnkwSEcd_ijJu9ww-v-V5NDOAxUTiNd6X7DL4Fu2rIcmra4nRZ2rDFlwpp-yV4UzLD4AQWVT0Yfxyg6kQ/s1600/G+3+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZYZCZgdMp3fZSB96KROewXs6wm8UMYwXeLrLsBZjnO4gLaFx1wcO7yY0GHPIQnkwSEcd_ijJu9ww-v-V5NDOAxUTiNd6X7DL4Fu2rIcmra4nRZ2rDFlwpp-yV4UzLD4AQWVT0Yfxyg6kQ/s400/G+3+copy.jpg" width="290" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Here is a copy of the
sales account for the Ellises for April 1976 – it looks as if we had
constructed these sheets about 3 years previously and I have carefully chosen
one where no embarrassing unpaid accounts are listed!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The original form is printed on foolscap
paper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our staunch young secretary,
Linda Garland, would roll off copies of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>these forms, using the roneo machine and a stencil which had been<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>cut on a typewriter – a very dirty job
involving lots of ink.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibIWkIhoEZjY6Zs55DbYEWly7gBKSu45WeuHXXv5tPZsC_p96ZBCJ88zOz5U7iwfjjEHpX3t2hCvUw7WVTmROmUweHybaITQEb6PVzgy5zfecq9BsKAYpU-yROq7PUGHHyvCQNbvzCqEln/s1600/J++copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibIWkIhoEZjY6Zs55DbYEWly7gBKSu45WeuHXXv5tPZsC_p96ZBCJ88zOz5U7iwfjjEHpX3t2hCvUw7WVTmROmUweHybaITQEb6PVzgy5zfecq9BsKAYpU-yROq7PUGHHyvCQNbvzCqEln/s640/J++copy.jpg" width="436" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The agents would have been consulted if new customers had
approached us, as we had a policy of not opening an account too close to an
existing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>shop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My criteria was about 10,000 population per
account, which I would check with the help of a handbook – perhaps one produced
by the RAC – which gave the size of the towns and villages across the UK.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Spring Fair was also an important time
when one was discovered by export customers;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Monsieur Dumont,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paris, found us
in this way, while the publicity in the trade press would have helped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The record of sales at the NEC shows that we took £6,474.69
worth of business from Sunday to Wednesday – there seems to be no record for
the last day unfortunately.<o:p></o:p></div>
Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-38136836541430695062015-06-29T13:08:00.007-07:002015-06-29T13:08:28.801-07:0011Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-2686878500050056252015-06-29T13:08:00.005-07:002015-06-29T13:08:20.384-07:0012Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-18366819692993924212015-06-29T13:08:00.003-07:002015-06-29T13:08:10.283-07:0013Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-13349719242643502212015-06-29T13:08:00.001-07:002015-06-29T13:08:00.411-07:0014Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-47394944587366655432015-06-29T13:07:00.011-07:002015-06-29T13:07:52.412-07:0015Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-24138887772515262702015-06-29T13:07:00.009-07:002015-06-29T13:07:44.478-07:0016Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-26547039578953712572015-06-29T13:07:00.007-07:002015-06-29T13:07:36.362-07:0017Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-51361610501593050772015-06-29T13:07:00.005-07:002015-06-29T13:07:28.097-07:0018Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-15042459902375739502015-06-29T13:07:00.003-07:002015-06-29T13:07:19.431-07:0019Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-23822011480053876602015-06-29T13:07:00.001-07:002015-06-29T13:07:09.522-07:0020Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-51724588282340280162015-06-29T13:06:00.005-07:002015-06-29T13:06:58.264-07:0021Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-39235802293385319552015-06-29T13:06:00.002-07:002015-06-29T13:06:46.741-07:0022Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-57666864036496753822015-06-29T13:03:00.001-07:002015-06-29T13:03:14.967-07:00<br />
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Chapter 1 1982</h3>
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<b>RISE & FALL OF A SMALL BUSINESS<span> </span></b></div>
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The sun is setting across Loch Sunart as we near the end of a long day’s journey from Glastonbury.<span> </span>It is summer 1982 and four years have elapsed since our last holiday, during which time we have contrived to lose the greater part of the small business lovingly developed with such high hopes during the Seventies, together with the home we created during 30 years of marriage, sold to pay off the debts.</div>
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The tide is out and some birds are still feeding amongst the rocks.<span> </span>A heron rises awkwardly and flies out across the water;<span> </span>I am crying, so John is driving.<span> </span>Though these are not the bitter tears which I shed at the beginning of the crisis in 1979, when the annual holiday had to be cancelled as we struggled to cope with the downturn in our business.<span> </span>These are tears of pure happiness at being back in our beloved Scotland again</div>
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“Do you remember coming to Strontian for the first time ten years ago with the children, staying in Kilcamb Lodge and driving for hours on that narrow road to the end of the penninsular to Sanna Beach, getting back just in time for supper?” I said, with a lump in my throat as John negotiated the turning onto the A884 road to Lochaline on the Morvern peninsular, where the road sign warns of sheep and passing places.<span> </span>(The correct pronunciation is “Loch-<b>a</b><i>-</i>lin”.)<span> </span>“And then over the next couple of years, when we spent our fortnight self catering in Mrs Jack Cameron’s cottage, Rockfield, in the morning we would ask her opinion as to whether the sun would shine if we went to Sanna today.<span> </span>She would crinkle her eyes and look up at the sky and, after some pondering, she would say yes.<span> </span>It would take us three hours to drive 30 miles from Strontian to Sanna, allowing extra time when we had to stop and help dig the caravans out of the ditch as people weren’t used to negotiating the passing places.<span> </span>And the sun always did shine.”<span> </span></div>
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When we were going through that horrible time, I used to say to myself firmly:<span> </span>the sun always shines on Sanna Beach.”<span> </span>It was the only way to retain a glimmer of hope for the future.<span> </span>For by November 1979 we had lost £40,000 and the nightmare had begun.<span> </span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUk86zVCB6lYPRwdqceQig1DiT2y7hh0qFTZw2SjuC4GLeDJ2HOyssxmpIkTbyQUXEWHb8IeWz4vbhXwYsn3EYxfLx50_YH1vl7GUthjfHCMH6grmV0DKAakcjrOXqyWBvXyJmcCpwl8vm/s1600/White+shells+at+Sanna+copy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; color: #993322; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" dua="true" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUk86zVCB6lYPRwdqceQig1DiT2y7hh0qFTZw2SjuC4GLeDJ2HOyssxmpIkTbyQUXEWHb8IeWz4vbhXwYsn3EYxfLx50_YH1vl7GUthjfHCMH6grmV0DKAakcjrOXqyWBvXyJmcCpwl8vm/s320/White+shells+at+Sanna+copy.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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Sanna is the most westerly point of the UK mainland – an enormous deserted white shell beach with a cluster of little crofts and the Ardnamurchan lighthouse close by.<span> </span>Icy cold, clear blue sea and a solitary telephone kiosk.<span> </span>It must have been a gorgeous day at Sanna today.<span> </span>“We found the seaside pansy on those dunes,” I said.<span> </span>(You will hear more about that later).<span> </span>“And do you remember reading “Night Falls on Ardnamurchan” – that book of reminiscences by the son of a crofter living on Sanna beach?”<span> </span></div>
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We must have been staying at the time in one of the cottages at Laudale (pronounced “Lau-dle”) and Julie and her husband Simon with us.<span> </span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxYa0zsra35E4dhKCec4dWxC6CgO1o6ENaRbPmVZdA1qc36qUM32kTSQocYfWwDO8Y9zUMJZl-9ucwK7lSCUrQIYVZjmKgdJzcmR-6UKlXOrBbMHUX4wQyrRH3sm69cEfXKLW5yIvHd2gv/s1600/6-3-2006_048.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; color: #993322; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" dua="true" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxYa0zsra35E4dhKCec4dWxC6CgO1o6ENaRbPmVZdA1qc36qUM32kTSQocYfWwDO8Y9zUMJZl-9ucwK7lSCUrQIYVZjmKgdJzcmR-6UKlXOrBbMHUX4wQyrRH3sm69cEfXKLW5yIvHd2gv/s320/6-3-2006_048.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span> </span>Laudale is a Georgian shooting lodge on the shore of Loch Sunart, listed Category B by Historic Buildings, with an estate over 12,000 acres and an income from forestry and fish farming.<span> </span></div>
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Without realising the similarity, they had spent all one afternoon sitting in their car somewhere near Camasnacroise, people watching through their binoculars.<span> </span>The author of the book (which alas I cannot find now) described how one had to check – through the binoculars – whether it was convenient to visit their neighbours after supper.<span> </span>Was another visitor already on the way – or were the neighbours just leaving to visit someone else?<span> </span>Julie described how, first of all, the postman visited the pair of cottages across the bay, obviously stopping for refreshment or gossip with each occupant.<span> </span>Then the old lady came out and shook her doormat and the old man next door fed his chickens;<span> </span>greetings were exchanged over the garden fence.<span> </span>And so on.</div>
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“I suppose we started renting the cottages at Laudale a few years later,” said John.<span> </span>“And in those days, before the Ballachuilish Bridge was built in 1976, we used to queue for two hours for the ferry across Loch Leven.”<span> </span>“And the Corran Ferry used to have a notice which said:<span> </span>This is NOT the Ballachuilish Ferry.” I added.<span> </span></div>
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We have passed the fish farm where the salmon were leaping in their nets and have turned off the main road past Liddesdale, winding along the couple of miles of single track which follows the shoreline to the estate.<span> </span>I can smell wood smoke;<span> </span>sheep and rabbits bundle out of our way and the delicate white bark of the birch trees shines in the gloaming.<span> </span>Huge spires of foxgloves line the road.<span> </span>The sunset is up to expectation – is that a mackerel sky?<span> </span>We negotiate the corner, where the remains of the old jetty rise stark above the loch, and there is the Big House which sleeps 14 and which, a few years later, we were to rent for a memorable holiday with all the family.<span> </span>This time, we will be staying in one of the two wooden chalets, now called Osprey and Eagle, which were originally built for the estate workers<span> </span>There are wildflowers in a jam jar on the table and a welcoming note from Geoff and Liz.<span> </span>It is quiet except for the stream and the sheep.<span> </span>Nothing has changed.<span> </span>We shall sleep well tonight.</div>
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John and I met at Sidcot School during the war - a Quaker boarding school on the edge of the Mendips.<span> </span>I am not a Quaker.<span> </span>I was sent to live with an aunt on Exmoor in 1940 after an acrimonious divorce the previous year and packed off to boarding school.<span> </span>To begin with I had lived with my mother and younger sister near my grandparents in Chester, but she couldn’t cope with a ‘seriously disturbed child’, and threw me back at my father.<span> </span>He made me a Ward of Court and<span> </span>I was forbidden to have anything to do with my mother (and younger sister) until I was eighteen.<span> </span>My father and stepmother (Jane) meanwhile sailed from Scapa Flow in the autumn of 1940 with all the books from the British Library under the aegis of the British Council,<span> </span>taking them to South America where they were left with embassies or ministries for safe keeping.<span> </span>They had to flee from Bilbao in a cargo ship “chased by<span> </span>the Japanese”, and after various adventures they<span> </span>ended up in Calcutta.<span> </span>We kept in touch with aerogrammes;<span> </span>one had to write the letter on a special sheet of paper purchased from the Post Office.<span> </span>This was photographed and reduced to a negative before being sent across the world;<span> </span>it was<span> </span>then printed again in a size resembling A5 and delivered by the postman.</div>
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John was born in 1930 in his grandmother’s bed in Ynyswytryn at the bottom of Wick Hollow in Glastonbury – the family home made into flats in the 1960’s by Uncle Humphrey Morland.<span> </span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIy7NMyqC2SeRTwUdvAhyphenhyphenwx1ga7KqEZuwiFQz0rM0lCN316vxlVGFe5TIP7GJVls1_Yjc9J913siyIJ5789swSoeBKTGqVxq36aX4m_uMYdHaUtaLq3ovtMVYHMqsx4MkGgN5f8IlJG3aY/s1600/Ynyswytryn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; color: #993322; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" dua="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIy7NMyqC2SeRTwUdvAhyphenhyphenwx1ga7KqEZuwiFQz0rM0lCN316vxlVGFe5TIP7GJVls1_Yjc9J913siyIJ5789swSoeBKTGqVxq36aX4m_uMYdHaUtaLq3ovtMVYHMqsx4MkGgN5f8IlJG3aY/s320/Ynyswytryn.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="280" /></a></span></div>
<span> </span>John’s father, Bry, was the youngest brother and there was no room for him at the factory.<span> </span>John’s Great Grandfather married Mary Clark in 1865 (the Quaker family who were already producing shoes in Street) and in 1899 the partnership of these families became<span> </span>“Clark Son & Morland Ltd”, occupying the site at Northover now named The Red Brick Building.<span> </span>In its time, it was the biggest sheepskin tannery in Europe.<span> </span>By the outbreak of war in 1939 Bry and his wife Deena lived in Hampstead.<span> </span>John remembers going up to the Elephant & Castle in the holidays and looking out at London burning, with the silhouette of St Paul’s standing firm against the crimson flames.<span> </span></div>
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John left school in 1947 and I left the following year.<span> </span>My aunt and I were not getting on very well (teenage troubles no doubt!) and as my father and Jane had returned from India following Partition,<span> </span>I went to live with them in Chelsea.<span> </span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrGQQzhkWcqIAhyphenhyphenoZ71eiBg6PqHgqSYUdEfFSN2yABZ_h1xHdA78DZyF8mSDtWkwQHFlZIgTfgAgPNBlflZ09qm72f933pZL7Sy6w5f4PdSSlHWhLUpZ4Y6aYjRFgY4iBMkK9cde321o_W/s1600/Jan+and+John+at+their+wedding.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; color: #993322; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" dua="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrGQQzhkWcqIAhyphenhyphenoZ71eiBg6PqHgqSYUdEfFSN2yABZ_h1xHdA78DZyF8mSDtWkwQHFlZIgTfgAgPNBlflZ09qm72f933pZL7Sy6w5f4PdSSlHWhLUpZ4Y6aYjRFgY4iBMkK9cde321o_W/s320/Jan+and+John+at+their+wedding.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="220" /></a></span></div>
<span> </span>John and I got together again and after a couple of years of courting, we were married in December 1951.<span> </span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span></span>John was 21 but I was three months younger and had to ask my father’s permission.<span> </span>Because of the family break-up, I couldn’t decide whether to have a Quaker wedding, or to be married by Grandad the Bish – my paternal grandfather - who had retired to the Lake District.<span> </span>So we compromised and were married in Chelsea Registry Office with only my father and Jane, Deena and Bry (John’s parents) and a couple of friends in attendance.<span> </span>The Bishop’s sister, Great Aunt Beatrice, wrote to me afterwards:<span> </span>“What a pity you didn’t have a proper wedding with all the presents and good wishes that go with it.”<span> </span>I wish I had kept that letter;<span> </span>it caused much amusement when we celebrated our Diamond Wedding recently!</div>
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John had spent two years studying tanning at the National Leathersellers College in Bermondsey, followed by two years (deferred) National Service.<span> </span>This finished in August 1952, after which we came down to Glastonbury.<span> </span>He was the fourth generation of the family to join Clark Son & Morland Ltd, working to begin with in the Development Department;<span> </span>he designed and produced the first sheepskin coats in 1958 and was made a Director.<span> </span>By this time we had two children – Rob was born in 1954 and Julie in 1955.<span> </span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK1F7SnZikwnYRmdPSGyhYd-hUS9SRT-T9aj0dFz-3BUrpo0ff69vS0eLgsjvUQ89RYSzUkVZJHtQYWFtRdeEwzJBUpf9JGvXbXZYfdAQ-QAgEMvV4BYP6Mlo9I2q591RKCaCEIimCzuhN/s1600/Scan+37800.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; color: #993322; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" dua="true" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK1F7SnZikwnYRmdPSGyhYd-hUS9SRT-T9aj0dFz-3BUrpo0ff69vS0eLgsjvUQ89RYSzUkVZJHtQYWFtRdeEwzJBUpf9JGvXbXZYfdAQ-QAgEMvV4BYP6Mlo9I2q591RKCaCEIimCzuhN/s320/Scan+37800.jpeg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span></span>But clashes of personality with Uncle Humphrey Morland, then Managing Director, took its toll.<span> </span>By the Sixties,<span> </span>soon after our youngest daughter Ruth was born, poor John was suffering from migraines which continued to haunt him for the next 30 odd years until he had an angioplasty.<span> </span>So it must have been a heart problem all that time.<span> </span>He would get one or two migraines each week, which entailed having to sit quietly for an hour or so while his pills took effect</div>
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In 1954 we bought an acre of orchard at the top of Bushy Coombe from Uncle Humphrey;<span> </span>as he was chairman of the Planning Committee of the Borough Council, we (together with other members of the family) built four houses in the Coombe, three of which were designed by Jack Hepworth, who worked at Morlands and who was married to John’s first cousin.<span> </span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span></span>In 1962/3 we doubled the size of our house, renaming it “Schehallion” after our first holiday in Scotland in the early Sixties.<span> </span>This is the name of a mountain in Perthshire – with spelling somewhat modified – and which the whole family, including Ruth aged about 5, managed to climb in gum boots.<span> </span></div>
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<span> </span>Now I have filled you in with our back history, we must return to Laudale.<span> </span>It is 6 o’clock as we begin unpacking the car.<span> </span>We have taken 12 hours to drive nearly 500 miles from Glastonbury and we are tired.<span> </span>“Let’s have baked beans on toast”, I say as we struggle to carry the gas fridge (borrowed from our neighbours) into the kitchen.<span> </span>There is no electricity, unless it rains, when their own hydro electric comes into operation.<span> </span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span> </span>Only once, in all the years we spent there, did we enjoy electricity and then it was only for the first day or two of the holiday, as it <i>had</i> rained the previous week.<span> </span>Another time, we returned home after a perfect fortnight in Scotland, when some French visitors to Strontian had complained of the heat, to find that the floods were out on the moor at Cowbridge.</div>
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Tilley lamp and candles are the order of the day;<span> </span>large stocks of food ordered in advance from our nearest shop, Munroe’s store at Strontian (about 8 miles away, round the top of Loch Sunart), await in large boxes.<span> </span>We even have to bring our own bed linen.<span> </span>The trouble is that sometimes the milk was not fresh.<span> </span>This was delivered to Strontian from Inverness, a hundred miles away, mostly by single track road in the seventies;<span> </span>it was presented in plastic tetra bags which were just piled up in the shop with no thought for rotating the stock, so it would often be sour when opened.<span> </span>And snipping the corner was quite an art – milk would spurt out before we could pour it into a jug.<span> </span></div>
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The week’s ration of a half hundredweight sack of anthracite sits beside the Rayburn.<span> </span>Before Geoff and Liz Abbott managed the estate, an old man living in a cottage a couple of miles down the road seemed to be in charge of the holiday lets;<span> </span>we used to call him “the good fairy” when he brought our second bag of coal as we were always running out.<span> </span>On one occasion, we had even travelled up with an extra sack on the roof rack, together with a box of worms for the fishing.<span> </span>Otherwise one had to drive about 30 miles to Fort William (across the Corran Ferry) to get more – and make a second journey in order to return the empty sack.to the coal merchant.</div>
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After supper we go down to the water’s edge.<span> </span>It is 9 o’clock and the sun is setting, but it will never get really dark at this time of the year.<span> </span>The sandpiper is still calling from the other side of the loch and the cool gentle breeze smells so fresh – I feel surrounded by the scent of mountain streams, heather, shell fish and seaweed, and wood smoke from the cottage occupied by Liz and Geoff.<span> </span>But the midges are everywhere.<span> </span>After fishing for mackrell from our inflatable dinghy on the loch one evening a few years ago, we had come ashore and lit two fires;<span> </span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdSr7XPAJtGaDwqrBfMkPN3TMOnff3gK0bt_L_O7mFhqzu7cQvzNtmSgZqODxXqwcjAUKTB58j-Nebtv7IEYJjzdqRcK-1QMExgx7rIXRla12tN_IWnqOsObCXH9huxcU-fRDsNKyOr7EK/s1600/cooking+beach+800.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; color: #993322; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" dua="true" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdSr7XPAJtGaDwqrBfMkPN3TMOnff3gK0bt_L_O7mFhqzu7cQvzNtmSgZqODxXqwcjAUKTB58j-Nebtv7IEYJjzdqRcK-1QMExgx7rIXRla12tN_IWnqOsObCXH9huxcU-fRDsNKyOr7EK/s320/cooking+beach+800.JPG" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span> </span>one on which to cook the fish and the other of dried seaweed.We stood in the smoke of the latter for awhile to escape their attention.<span> </span>Then, before these became commercially available,<span> </span>John had got his mother to buy some fine dark material from Harrods from which he made his own protective veil – the only alternative in those days was a dab of oil of citronella.<span> </span>“We’d better go back now”, I said.<span> </span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I wonder if we will find mushrooms this year and whether the raspberries are ripe yet.<span> </span>We will pick raspberries for supper tomorrow.<span> </span>“Tomorrow is Sunday” said John.<span> </span>“Let’s rest after all that driving, then we can go to Sanna on Monday if it is fine.”</div>
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I look at the sky.<span> </span>Perhaps the weather will hold for a day or two.<span> </span>“All right”, I say and give him a hug.<span> </span>“And I hope the sheep don’t keep us awake this time”.<span> </span>On one occasion they had wandered round the cottage all night, calling for their lambs.<span> </span>Ruth can do a good rendering of a Scottish sheep.</div>
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<span class="post-author vcard" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 1em;">Posted by <span class="fn" itemprop="author" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><a class="g-profile" data-gapiattached="true" data-gapiscan="true" data-onload="true" href="https://plus.google.com/116746904017877971038" rel="author" style="color: #993322; text-decoration: none;" title="author profile"><span itemprop="name">Jan Morland</span> </a></span></span><span class="post-timestamp" style="margin-left: -1em; margin-right: 1em;">at <a class="timestamp-link" href="http://riseandfallofasmallbusiness.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/chapter-1_18.html" rel="bookmark" style="color: #993322; text-decoration: none;" title="permanent link"><abbr class="published" itemprop="datePublished" style="border: none;" title="2013-04-18T02:53:00-07:00">02:53</abbr></a> </span><span class="post-comment-link" style="margin-right: 1em;"></span><span class="post-icons" style="margin-right: 1em;"></span><div class="post-share-buttons goog-inline-block" style="display: inline-block; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em; position: relative; vertical-align: middle;">
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Julia Thyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11256393798968998132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4896120260954815741.post-30418712253426695382013-04-18T02:55:00.002-07:002014-09-09T13:01:40.490-07:00Introduction<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXAc4TD5WiRqMRsRYnUH_Fmu1jkN4CjMniSLhJYVVe2H2-hd0aOfhcFmeUBVNCsNrr2B6-zGUqcQL5jW5v4lPH3vJIDhI0T0Rg6xIiZ7CsgUAuvj3Gl4F-kHyyyVp_s4RXtxXJb_K8eEGV/s1600/Scan+54.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXAc4TD5WiRqMRsRYnUH_Fmu1jkN4CjMniSLhJYVVe2H2-hd0aOfhcFmeUBVNCsNrr2B6-zGUqcQL5jW5v4lPH3vJIDhI0T0Rg6xIiZ7CsgUAuvj3Gl4F-kHyyyVp_s4RXtxXJb_K8eEGV/s1600/Scan+54.jpeg" height="320" width="197" /></a></div>
I have arranged this blog so that it reads like a book for, after all, that is what it is. It is a project which has enthused me for over thirty years and I intended to publish it as a hard copy. In 1981 I had a couple of “rants” published (Western Daily Press and The Guardian – you will find them later in my blog), in which I declared that I would write <b>“The Rise</b> <b>& Fall of a Small Business, dedicated to Margaret Thatcher who assisted in our</b> <b>demise”.</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is now 2013.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I have written three chapters in thirty years – it has been more fun just talking about it …<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
The blog has come about because my granddaughter Emma, opened a blog for my daughter Julie, and now Julie has done the same for me. I am now in my eighties and not very computer literate, but with some help we are going to get it 'out there' at last. The advantage of sharing my story this way, is that I can work on it over time, add any number of illustrations from my vast collection of ephemera, and be able answer your questions and comments. As I am still working on it, you will find 'empty' chapters at the end, waiting to be filled, I may not use them all!<br />
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Welcome, and I hope you enjoy reading about our business.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><u>All the words and illustrations are copyright protected and belong to Jan Morland. Please do not use them without my permission.</u></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><u><br /></u></span></div>
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Besides photographs and illustrations, which were created by
members of the family, I am also including some professional photographs and
newspaper articles. I understand from
the copyright law that I may do this, provided I acknowledge the sources, which
I have done wherever possible.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Grateful thanks to the photographers and to local newspapers
such as the Central Somerset Gazette and Western Gazette etc, and later to
Gifts Magazine and to The Guardian and no doubt other publications for allowing
me to use this material. I apologise if
my references are incorrect – please write to me at 18 Cavendish Lodge,
Magdalene Street, Glastonbury BA6 9FD if necessary.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<em><u>Saturday 20 April 2013 2 am</u> The first 3 chapters were written around fifteen years ago and submitted to a Writers News magazine critique - which was quite favourable. I used them as a basis for a talk I gave to our U3A Local History Group on The Rise & Fall and then re-wrote them early in 2012. But I didn't proceed with the project because we still lived in our bungalow in Glastonbury and I had over 600 pots and tubs to look after ... Now we are reasonably settled into our retirement flat, oldest daughter Julie has insisted on setting up this blog, so I will have to get on with the story.</em><br />
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<em>Please forgive me if some of the events are repeated. I never remember what I have written, unlike local journalist Rachel Humphries. In 2001 she wrote a lovely piece about us (in the Bristol Post? I will have to find the article when I go down to the storage container this week) and last year, when Seve Balesteros died, she remembered that we had mentioned we had a letter from him after he won the Open at St Andrews, when John had sent him one of his hand coloured prints of St Andrews golf course. She remembered something she had written over 10 years previously! I can't remember what I wrote yesterday.</em><br />
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<em>I have finished my cup of coffee and must go back to bed. In the morning, I will start looking through the box of papers for 1972, which will form the basis of Chapter 4.</em></div>
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