Transcript John Willis Interview 28/10/2024 (Redacted to protect the 'innocent!')
00:00:04 John Willis
My name's John Willis. I was born in North Finchley, in London and the first, not memories of Evenley, but knowledge of Evenley, came in 1938.
00:00:15 Phillip Scaysbrook
And that's when you first came to the village?
00:00:16 John Willis
That was when the estate was sold up. My grandfather, who was a businessman in Highgate, wanted somewhere to go to as a country retreat, and the estate was sold up then and he bought, I think they've renumbered it, I think it's now number 17 the far side of the shop.
00:00:45 Phillip Scaysbrook
Was that where Raymond Roycroft lived?
00:00:51 John Willis
Go there passed the shop. That whole, row of houses
00:00:58 Phillip Scaysbrook
So, he bought the whole row?
00:01:00 John Willis
Now let me explain because I am not sure.
I think so. No. I think it was number 17, but in my day, it was number 20.
And that was empty, and so was number 19. Not the next door one, but the next door one to that. I just drove around there to have a look.
00:01:26 John Willis
Those two were empty, and my grandfather put a bid in of £100.
And the story as I've got it, he got the whole row for £100, but I don't think he did.
00:01:40 Phillip Scaysbrook
Was that at the auction in 1938 or 37/38?
00:01:42 John Willis
Can you turn that up? Is there any knowledge of that?
00:01:46 Phillip Scaysbrook
There is a book with every property that was sold and the details.
00:01:50 John Willis
Sold. Yeah, but not how they were sold because some of them weren't sold until this one on the end here much later.
00:01:59 John Willis
Because the house on the end here was lived in by somebody called Fred Chattel and Mrs Mansfield, and I think he'd got a lease on it. So, they couldn't sell it.
00:02:20 John Willis
But there were other properties like that. I don't know what the situation was with the school and the schoolhouse.
00:02:28 Phillip Scaysbrook
That was bought by the Parish council at the time through the Education Authority.
00:02:34 John Willis
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And you know where the shop is now? Well, that was a working men's club given to the men of Evenley, and that I subsequently bought. But the book doesn't cover that.
00:02:52 Phillip Scaysbrook
I presume you bought it because no one was using it anymore basically I assume.
00:02:55 John Willis
No, no, no, no, no. There was a hell of a row about selling it, but they wanted to buy the school for the village hall and the money. There was a chap called Fred Coppin who lived on the other side. I mean, he was totally opposed to it, and he was one of the trustees.
And they didn't want to sell it, but I eventually sold it.
00:03:24 John Willis
Charles's dad didn't want me to have it because he knew I was going to turn it into the village shop.
00:03:30 Charles Woodgate
Is that right?
00:03:32 John Willis
Oh, you don't know. (Your dad and) I didn't get on too well at that time.
And I, well, he opposed the planning on it. Let's put it like that. But I got it anyway.
He hadn't got a chance because he was a newcomer, and I had been here a long time.
00:03:53 John Willis
But I lived…., the village shop was in the corner here, and I'm absolutely amazed that the village has let… there was that there was a Lyons Tea sign on it, which had a preservation order.
00:04:07 Charles Woodgate
On it.
00:04:07 John Willis
Yeah, because I put it on it.
00:04:10 Phillip Scaysbrook
And that was the shop just at the top of the hollow, yeah.
00:04:13 John Willis
Just opposite.
The building went on much further because there's a cottage now and there's a house. Well, that was all one. There was a driveway up the back where I used to put all my mobile shops.
00:04:54 John Willis
Family memories are from 1938, and we used to…. I came down here first in 1938, but I can't remember it, but I can remember the year after, when I was about four, I can go back quite well until I was four. Anyway, we used to come down and stop in the cottages, play rounders and cricket and that most weekends.
00:05:21 Phillip Scaysbrook
So, you were still living in Finchley… Highgate sorry.
00:05:24 John Willis
I was still living (in Highgate). I was born in Finchley. Percy Rd. In Finchley, near TallyHo.
(Living in Highgate) until 1939. And then I jiggled around a bit, and I can't remember the dates, but we were bombed and burnt out four times in London.
00:05:48 John Willis
My grandfather, Smith, was the last family director of United Dairies of Highgate. The last time we had been burnt out in Wood Green, a Molotov Basket came through the fanlight, but it fell into the bath, and it was those old baths that were metal, and we got away with it. We got out, let's put it like that.
00:06:22 John Willis
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And then we went and stayed overnight with my grandfather at Wood Green (John tries to remember if he has got the names right). There was a massive United Dairies depot there. There were over 100 horses in the stables and within two or three nights of that we were Molotov Basketed again, I can remember that to this day - it's a nightmare with me. The horses running out on fire. Not a very……So, it was decided we would come and live down here.
00:07:06 John Willis
My grandfather moved into what I believe was number 20 then, and I think it was 22. Some friends of the family called Hyde, moved into the other empty one and my mum, my dad and myself, moved in with my grandmother in Brackley. Because my grandmother, on the Willis side of the family came from Brackley.
00:07:42 John Willis
I had a lot to do with Evenley because we used to come up here. Then we had the war and then things changed. And anyway, we lived in Brackley, and you can look this up because it will be somewhere in the records if you want to, on the first night I moved to Evenley Jerry bombed the village, and they killed a lot of cattle, up from the main road down and the last bomb was just over there in the top field.
00:08:12 John Willis
But there was also one in the garden that over at the back of where the old post office was (now 54 The Green ). Do you know where I mean if I say that? Well, there we moved into the house there (this part is indistinct) We moved into it, which belonged to a man called Shepherd. Mr Shepherd was the head gardener for the Evenley Hall estate, and he took on the gardens after the estate was sold up.
00:08:46 John Willis
I may be jumping around a bit. My mother was very good to his wife. She was dying of cancer, and she was very good to the family, and he let my mum have that house because by that time my father was in the army, and the first night I was in there, we got bombed out of our beds, but there again.
00:09:14 Phillip Scaysbrook
Yes, the teacher a Miss Law in her memo that I've got on the website, she mentions the glass going in Rose Cottage, which was next to 51 The Green, she remembers the glass coming in on the night of that raid and so there's a stick of bombs from that field.
00:09:31 John Willis
Law! She wasn't there then. Miss Claire was a teacher at that time. Miss Claire was the village teacher, and she was brutal, I have still got the marks on my knuckles. She used to wrap you over the knuckles if you got a blob of ink on your paperwork. With a big heavy cane, she got with a metal end and that's what those (marks) are. Miss Clare, she was a real taskmaster, but she was a good teacher.
00:10:06 Phillip Scaysbrook
So, who lived at Evenley Hall after it was sold, was it straight to a kids’ home?
00:10:11 John Willis
No, the army took it over, and there was an infantry division there and a tank division also.
00:10:23 John Willis
But you're moving on now anyway. The family had moved down here. We become part of Evenley. My grandfather, he wasn't a farmer as such, but he was a businessman. He’d flown the first Handley Page bomber in the First World War. He would have volunteered just like that to go in, but he was just too old. So, he got involved in the village then and the first thing that came along was the War Ag. This was agricultural implements that the farmers could share, they hired for a day, a week or whatever they needed. Because you have got to think most of the farms here
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were still a horse and cart. I think there was one tractor in Evenley originally.
00:11:28 John Willis
Anyway, he and a man called Fred Booth, who lived down Bicester Hill on the left-hand side, I think they were actually called directors, but they ran it, and opposite the pub was a was a big compound where all this equipment was kept because that was public property originally because there was a pound on the V bit (of the Green)
00:12:07 John Willis
Anyway, it was taken over like everything, but during the war, at the beginning of the war, any farmer who was deemed to be under producing was chucked out of his farm, and one such was the farmland you come down broad lane on the right-hand side, that was a church farm, and so my grandfather became custodian manager.
00:12:44 Phillip Scaysbrook
Was that Rectory farm?
00:12:48 John Willis
No, Franklins that was Rectory Farm, wasn't it?
00:12:51 Phillip Scaysbrook
Franklins were at Road Farm. The furlongs!
00:12:53 John Willis
The Furlongs were long in the future. Hosfords were the farmers on that farm there.
00:13:01 Phillip Scaysbrook
Until ’49 the Hosfords
00:13:04 John Willis
The dates I wouldn't have. It was Hosfords, and that was where Tom Buggins was manager of the farm, or he was head foreman or whatever, and he was also the local Bobby.
00:13:19 John Willis
I'm not sure but I believe it was Church Farm, but I'm not sure.
But he didn't have a house that went with it. I know.
00:13:34 John Willis
You had that farm, then you had Franklins Farm. He bought when the estate was sold. They came from Kirklington. Three boys and a daughter and next door to it, where you go down to the church where all the archways are, that was Middle farm.
00:13:58 John Willis
Now Middle Farm was bought when the estate was sold up by a Sadler in Towcester.
He bought it because he had foresight of his son. He had an only son, and he knew it would be a reserved occupation, so he bought it in his son's name to keep him out of the army.
00:14:24 John Willis
The son was fanatical about horses and show jumping and racing and all that sort of thing. He hadn't got a clue about farming. Willison was their name. But he was in danger of getting chucked down of it because it wasn't being farmed properly. So, my grandfather moved in there, and effectively ran it in their name.
00:15:03 John Willis
But my old grandfather also bought odd little bits of land. They were all over the place, odd pieces.
00:15:14 John Willis
So that's the general picture for the start of the war. I could give you a list because I've got a couple of friends. Eric Mullis lived in Evenley and a chat called Ken Smith who although he lived in Brackley, knew all about this as well. We have been around the village, and we could name between us everyone here
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00:15:41 John Willis
Dormer Row. You know where I mean. If I say dorm row, they had no front doors there. The reason they had no front doors. Lady Allen didn't like the locals sitting out there, outside their front door when she went through the village up the middle of the Green up the road through the middle. So, when they built those, she wouldn't have any front doors put in them.
00:16:07 John Willis
Going round the village, you had the school, the schoolhouse. Well, you know, basically the history there, and I don't know too much about them because; I didn't realise the parish council built. But it was a church school, though and the vicar had a right to do an hour’s tuition there every week; so, the local church was involved in it.
00:16:35 John Willis
Next, door we have the schoolhouse. There was a house next to them that the Allens had sold, and I can't remember the name of the person who was in there, but they were American.
00:16:47 John Willis
And the next house to them was another one that nobody knew too much about.
00:16:55 John Willis
And then you have Dormer Row. Down (from there) you the Mrs Spencer in the old Manor house.
00:17:06 John Willis
Opposite Mrs Spencer was Joe Martin’s farm. That was a Council farm. Now, how the Council came by it, I don't know. But that was in the Allen’s time.
00:17:18 Phillip Scaysbrook
It's that College Farm (yes).
00:17:23 Charles Woodgate
Joe Martin then presumably was David and Raymond Martin's father.
00:17:27 John Willis
That's right.
And then there was a row of cottages going that way. (indicating east west)
00:17:37 John Willis
Which when Joe retired, he went into one of them. But again, that was a bit vague because somebody had bought those, and nobody knew who they belonged to; they were managed houses.
00:17:56 Charles Woodgate
That would be Broughton Terrace, that is the one that runs this way.
00:17:59 John Willis
They've changed the name.
00:18:04 John Willis
Then you'll have another house this side coming up towards the corner of this other house there. And I again, I can't remember the names of the people there, but he was he was a BBC director.
00:18:22 Charles Woodgate
Dicky Bright and Molly Bright.
00:18:22 John Willis
That's it. That's it. That's it.
00:18:24 John Willis
I couldn't some of the names go and then they come back, yeah.
00:18:29 Charles Woodgate
(Section deleted)
00:18:41 John Willis
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The lady, in the end, the bottom end of Dormer Row and this would have been after the war. I'm jumping forward a bit now, was struck by lightning down Puddle Dock, and my father was coming home from London on Saturday afternoon and found her, and it had split her head and right through her nose, and he carried her back to the village. She survived.
00:19:12 John Willis
And I can't remember her name. That one is a puzzle. I think I can virtually name all the people in Dormer Row. Then you came across to the houses that my grandfather bought and that was always known as London Row because most of the people who eventually finished up in them were Londoners. But then you had the Parishs and the Holtons and the Tanners in them.
00:19:51 Charles Woodgate
There was Ted Tanner.
00:19:53 John Willis
Ted Turner was in the one nearest to the shop now. Can't remember her name, but Sheila was the daughter. She moved to Mixbury, married a chap. But then before that, they went into a Council house.
00:20:11 John Willis
Then you come along there and then the house next to the village shop.
00:20:25 John Willis
That was bought by Mrs Mansfield, who lived up there, and her son eventually went to live in it.
00:20:36 Charles Woodgate
That was Ernie Mansfield, wasn't it?
00:20:39 John Willis
Well, you remember something because we're coming into your time now. Then you have the Workingmen's Club.
00:20:48 John Willis
And then your house is next door. And then you got to here.
00:20:57 Phillip Scaysbrook
I was contacted by a family in St Albans who said their family lived here for ages, called Armitage. Perhaps that was before your time. She sent some really old Edwardian looking black and white photos of the Armitages.
00:21:17 John Willis
Don't know.
00:21:17 Phillip Scaysbrook
So they've perhaps been long gone before you.
00:21:20 John Willis
The house. You, remember where the village shop was don't you?
00:21:25 Charles Woodgate
Yes, it's number 35 (The Green).
00:21:26 John Willis
That, and the garden behind it, had quite big garden belonged to the brewery Hopcraft and Norris Brewery.
00:21:48 John Willis
And the man who…. it was the only house in Evenley that didn't have electric in it when it was put into the village.
00:21:57 John Willis
Because the old boy who kept it as an off-licence; but it was an illegal drinking (den) because it was a bone of contention between that and the pub was Will Prue, and when he eventually died, my grandfather moved out of Middle Farm into that house, and it was during… I'm jumping
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forward a bit again here …. in the bad winters, that was (19)47.
00:22:43 John Willis
The bad one at the end of the 40s (1947) Evenly was absolutely cut off. It was deep, you know, 10 foot was nothing.
00:22:54 John Willis
But my grandfather was still in the farm as well, because I remember all the milk, because they milked 200 cattle down there on that farm.
00:23:04 Phillip Scaysbrook
That's Middle Farm.
00:23:04 John Willis
And a couple of 100 goats as well, because goats milk was used for dried milk during the war.
00:23:14 John Willis
Anyway, it was Will Prue who lived there. A chap called Fortune was the general manager of Hopcraft and Norris Brewery in Brackley and my grandfather knew him very well. I don't know if it was Masons or bowling or something like that, and he was looking to get out down there because he well into his early 60s then.
00:23:47 John Willis
It came up and he said, well, I'll take it on, but it needed a lot of work because it was a time, you know.
00:23:56 John Willis
And during that hard winter, my grandfather started because you still got rationing then, soups and God knows what else, and lucky he did because the village was cut off for a long, long time.
00:24:14 John Willis
But I was at Magdalen then and old Bolton and I didn't go to school. And he said you come to school and once you get here you stay. Because I was a day boy. He said there's a bed here, and that was it. He was right Tartar he was, but it was good education.
00:24:34 John Willis
So, Will Prue had it, then my grandfather had it, and then my uncle had it, and then I had it. But when I had it, I managed to buy it off the brewery, and we became the biggest outlet that Watney Mann had, from there, because I had lots of mobile shops, we had 23, and bread rounds and.
00:25:03 Phillip Scaysbrook
So, you deliver bottles of beer.
00:25:05 John Willis
I'd hate to be quoted with this, but you weren't allowed to sell it off the motor shop, but we always carried more. We had false invoices for what we got on, and people could buy it. Yeah, but it wasn't irresponsible, like selling it to kids. It's just families, you know that and that. And we became the biggest outlet that Watney Mann had got, and we were also Mother's Pride bread biggest outlet in the country. We had bread rounds that went as far as Dunstable and up there. I employed a hell of a lot of the village at that time.
00:25:51 John Willis
Anyway, I brought the Workingmen's Club and eventually got planning on it and it was sorted, and we moved the shop up there, and it became the first self-service shop for miles around here.
00:26:15 John Willis
The trouble was that with your dad (Bill Woodgate). It had to have a new roof on it, and your dad didn't want to let us in the garden to do it, and there was a quite a battle royal about it, although we became quite reasonable friends because I sold him the land where you live now (30 The Green)
00:26:33 Charles Woodgate
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Much appreciated these last 40 years.
00:26:36 John Willis
But in those it really was a different world. I think I actually owned a foot of your garden for maintenance. But you know Land Registry maps and drawings weren't terribly accurate at that time.
00:27:05 John Willis
I can tell you a story about that, but we'll leave it there and anyway.
00:27:12 John Willis
Anyway, that that became the shop.
00:27:21 John Willis
But let's go on then. Brian Robbins. Well, Myrtle (Robbins) father was a Shepherd. She was a shepherd. You know where the lodge is to Evenley Hall is the lodge? Well, his brother (Myrtle’s father’s brother?), who had the gardens at Evenley Hall had the farm opposite, and that was Myrtle's father, Tom Shepherd, who was mayor of Brackley and he went to Magdalen College School.
00:27:55 John Willis
Anyway, there well, Myrtle married Brian, but the Shepherds owned all those allotments there (on that one side (east) side of the Village Green) because there was nothing there at all, so they gave Myrtle as a wedding present, a plot of land there, and then Brian built the house there, and which started a rot and I did fall out with Brian about this because about that time I was chairman of the Council.
00:28:29 John Willis
I became chairman of the character because the parish council didn't want me to open the shop up there, and Fenwick was the chairman at that time, and he lived on Mixbury Road. I was so upset about it that I got turned down, that I put up for the Council and there was one too many put up, and Fenwick, who was the Chairman said “look if you stand down, I will guarantee you get your planning” and that so annoyed me that I didn't (stand down) and he was the one who got kicked off. But I got more votes than all the rest put together, because I was a local man, I was serving them, I knew everybody, and by that time I was part of Evenley.
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00:29:25 John Willis
I think you can look back at the records of this.
00:29:32 Charles Woodgate
Someone like Joyce Stevens has got a lot of the old records. She was the Parish Council Clerk for many years.
00:29:38 John Willis
Somebody had got a set of records of the sale, but I don't know what happened to it, it disappeared.
00:29:48 Charles Woodgate
Of the sale of which property?
00:29:51 John Willis
The village, the whole in 1938. There was a whole record of that somewhere.
00:29:56 Phillip Scaysbrook
There are print almost large A4 size paperback of the sale with a map that quite a few of the houses have still got. Michael and Lizanne have still got a copy, so the books are still around.
00:30:10 John Willis
Yeah, but they weren't totally accurate. Let me digress totally. In my business I bought a farm at Hook Norton to run it from and it happened to be the last set of documents because it had been a church farm, an ecclesiastical farm and I got a lot of the documents with it, to the whole village and about 10 years ago, a man in the farmhouse, which I didn't own, wanted to buy a small paddock off me, and when we went to the Land Registry, it was a right mess, and I had to go to court to prove that it was mine and I went to court, and the Land Registry cock-a-hoop said No, that's where the boundary was and all this. Of course I had got the original documents, so I produced those, and they said oh well, that's history, there's nobody living who could substantiate that.
00:31:24 John Willis
But they made a big mistake because when I left college, eventually I was articled to a firm of solicitors in Banbury, and the one thing I was good at was drawing plans and I had drawn the plans for this, and my signature was on the bottom. They cost the Land Registry a lot of money.
00:31:44 John Willis
But this is how bad the Land Registry was then. I (had a) foot alongside the garden there.
Because your dad felt I had no right to put a scaffold pole down there. but anyway, it was amicably agreed to.
START OF AN ASIDE
00:32:04 Charles Woodgate
Look, I don't know whether you still have own foot there or if the shop owns the foot, because at the moment there's also scaffolding.
00:32:11 Phillip Scaysbrook
Got scaffolding up
00:32:16 Charles Woodgate
You can't quite see from here, but they're doing some roofing work on number 23 at the moment,
END OF AN ASIDE
00:32:21 John Willis
But there are often arguments. There was an argument over behind where the old post office was. It was a chicken run as it happened, and there was an argument where the line was, and they had to move that chicken line wire 9 inches. There was a massive court case. Chap called. Holton lived there then, I can't remember who the other party. But the feuds in the village where unbelievable.
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00:32:52 Charles Woodgate
Some things never change.
00:32:53 Phillip Scaysbrook
Sometimes, that’s true.
00:32:54 John Willis
Let's hope they do, Charles. But I don't know. Anyway, I don't know that I'm boring you, but….
00:33:00 Phillip Scaysbrook
No, no, no. Have you, have you got any memories of the war or any of the crashes at Croughton and Turweston or RAF always visiting?
00:33:08 John Willis
Yeah, I remember the war. I flew in my first Spitfire from Croughton. Yeah, I flew in a Hamilcar glider from Croughton, but there was a reason for this. When my grandfather took over Middle Farm effectively. The laundry to the Great Hall, Evenley Hall, was on the end of the building there, and my grandfather being very much into the RAF, my cousins got the medals he got in the First World War, he turned that into a quiet room for the pilots and navigators of the RAF bases around here.
00:34:00 Phillip Scaysbrook
There was Croughton, Hinton, Weston.
00:34:01 John Willis
Croughton, Hinton, Weston, Finmere. I can't think of them all. There were seven locally. They used to come there for coffee, calm and that at Middle Farm in the old laundry but he was a total do-gooder, my grandfather. The troops in Evenley Hall, they went in on D-Day by the way, and so did the tanks division. My grandfather went and saw every relative that got killed there because he basically knew all of them.
00:34:51 John Willis
My family had a lot of input into Evenley. When my mother died, when I was 11 here, and she was quite well known, you know? It was village life, you know, how it went on. Women went potato picking. They worked the land, there was the ARP, the Home Guard and things like this. I mean the tricks we used to get up to. The ARP, we used to tie knots in, as kids, in their hoses and things like that and we were better at surprising the Home Guard than they were themselves. The Germans could have ground all over them. You know it was the things we got up to as children, they were harmless. It wasn't like today, you know, it was hard. I could go on forever.
00:35:42 Phillip Scaysbrook
So what did do? When did you leave school and what did you do after that?
00:35:46 John Willis
Well, I left school at nearly 18 and I went to Oxford. I dropped out because I didn't like it and my father articled me to a firm of solicitors in Banbury, and I hated it. I absolutely hated it. It took me nearly two years to break the articles.
I volunteered for the RAF and they couldn't refuse to let me go, you see, cause you still had conscription (National Service). Anyway, I went in. I’d been in the Army Cadet Force at Magdalen and I had done pretty good in it because anything physical I was into and so I went in potentially as a pilot, and they found out I that I had got very bad sinuses and they threw me out, and that was it. But I never did national service because I as saw it, if I wasn't good enough for the RAF, I wasn't going to be good enough for anything and that was it.
00:36:58 John Willis
And so, then I did lots of things. I mean, you remember me racing motorbikes.
00:37:03 Charles Woodgate
I'm aware of.
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00:37:04 John Willis
Well, your dad used to bring you to the meetings.
00:37:07 Charles Woodgate
Did he really?
00:37:12 John Willis
Well, I mean, Evenley in those days, you've got to think about it, on a Sunday what happened? There was nothing. You went to church, the cinemas in Banbury opened at 6:30pm. Yeah, there was what was called scrambling. Yeah.
00:37:14 Charles Woodgate
Motorbike.
00:37:22 Phillip Scaysbrook
Yeah.
00:37:30 John Willis
And that's where people went. I mean, there was the Stoke Lynn, which wasn't too far. It was nothing to see as many as 20,000 people there. They were big events. And when I rode within a 50-mile radius, they had a blooming coach from Evenley with the locals piled in it and there and on the Monday morning, they were faster to go around the circuit than I was. You know it. That was the way it was it was a way of life.
00:38:00 Charles Woodgate
And would you have known people like Tom Greatbatch?
00:38:03 John Willis
Tom and I were very, very good friends.
00:38:07 Phillip Scaysbrook
Is that Mo’s dad or uncle or? (Mo’s brother-in-law - Maureen was married to David Greatbatch, Tom’s brother)
00:38:09 John Willis
No, I knew his father as well. I was opening bat for Evenley with Tom, his father.
00:38:17 Charles Woodgate
Brother-in-law. Because her husband, David Greatbatch, Tom Greatbatch’s brother.
00:38:20 John Willis
David was Tom’s his brother, who died? Yeah. Who's Maureen? Oh, yes, she married a teacher, didn't she originally and lived along well. She got across there.
(Corrected below)
00:38:37 John Willis
Tom's oldest daughter married her teacher, and there was a big thing about it, but it didn't last.
00:39:02 John Willis
Mo, (Maureen) came from Cottisford, but she didn't marry for a long time. I didn't think she'd ever get married again. But she did, didn't she?
00:39:08 Charles Woodgate
Well, she lives with a chap called Alan Thornhill. They (Alan and Mo) have been a couple for 20-30 years.
00:39:12 John Willis
Redacted.
00:39:24 Charles Woodgate
Oh yes, I remember when they (Mo and David) were still a courting couple.
00:39:27 John Willis
My mobile shops used to serve her (Maureen) mother because they went all through all these villages around here.
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00:39:42 Phillip Scaysbrook
Did they do anything special on VE night or VJ night here?
00:39:46 John Willis
Oh, that was a very big night. Yeah, we blew the letterbox out of the post office with Crow Scares. Well, that's the first time I've admitted to it since (doing it).
00:39:55 Phillip Scaysbrook
Oh, we'll let you off after all this time.
00:39:56 John Willis
Oh, oh, God. We were terrible, we really were terrible. But let's continue around the village. Then later, after the war, you had next to Brian Robins, you had a health and safety officer, who worked for the RDC (Rural District Council), Caley
00:40:34 John Willis
And then next to that, the Shepherds who I was telling you about, built a house and moved in there. Then you went down in the Mixbury Road and there were some little houses set back. I can't remember the lady’s name and I doubt whether you knew her. She had no arms. But she was a paraplegic I imagine. Her arms were here, she had hands where we had elbows. But she made her name with knitting and crocheting and used to write articles that were quite, you know, people had lives outside of Evenley very much, you know. But she was here all my life that I can remember from coming here.
00:41:17 John Willis
And then the next house down was built by a chap Fenwick. He was a scrap dealer in Brackley. (9 Gables), and they had a daughter, Barbara.
00:41:42 John Willis
And then of course you have the two lakes at the bottom there. Magdalen College used to play Evenley at ice hockey up to 50 a side, when it froze over, we used to escape there every winter. When even in my days when I kept the shop, I used to go, once it closed at 10:00, so I had to keep open till 10:00pm because of the licence. I used to go skating in the moonlight.
00:42:22 John Willis
I mean, I don't know how. I mean this is just little things, Peter Franklin
00:42:28 Phillip Scaysbrook
Yes, I remember Peter, we used to get p***** with him in the pub.
00:42:31 John Willis
Well, that's right. He was a right character. Well, him and my mum's youngest brother were really good friends. Anyway, he had not got a left big toe. But not many people would know this, but we were on the lake down the bottom here. (New Pond on the Whiteley’s land) and it had some really big Jack Fish (Pike) and Peter was renowned for stripping off and swimming, that was Peter, you know. And he was swimming behind a boat and a Jackfish bit his big toe, or he mutilated it bad enough it had to be removed.
00:43:19 Phillip Scaysbrook
When you say Jack Fish, that's new to me. Do you mean a Pike?
00:43:21 John Willis
Well, they're bigger than a Pike. Oh well, the pond dried up one year, and they lay out on the mud. And I'm not kidding you. They were massive. And the row of teeth, but a Pike can get big.
00:44:02 John Willis
Then you went Bicester Hill on the left-hand side, there was only this one row of houses, and that is where Freddy Booth and his wife lived. You must have remembered, missus. She became (Redacted)
00:44:17 Charles Woodgate
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Did she? There were a few in the village like that.
00:44:25 John Willis
And then if you went down into the dip. there were buildings on the left-hand side and that was Chattel's farm. And I think it was either a county farm, or a church farm. I'm not sure. And then halfway up the hill was Joe Martin’s farm.
00:44:48 Charles Woodgate
Which is still there, but Merrick Loggins trailer building business.
00:44:54 John Willis
Is he (Merrick) still there?
00:44:57 John Willis
Well, I knew his father from Croughton, that was all through cricket.
00:45:03 John Willis
I mean little things and I don't know whether you can check this, but you can have a go. One year and I don't know the year, I think it was the Banbury and District League, Evenley never lost a match. We went to Great Borton, who probably hadn't lost a match either, or lost the one to us and this was it, and they bowled us out for 11 runs and that was it.
And we beat them. They never scored a run off the bat. And I can virtually tell you the team names for that.
00:45:48 Phillip Scaysbrook
Who was the b***** groundsman to produce a result like that
00:45:51 John Willis
Oh, I'll tell you what, you played for the village team if you dropped a catch, you did not play the next week. It was like that as a boy. Richard Franklin and myself were the first two to go into the village team, because they were very strong. They were allowed to play two outside players. One came from Mixbury, Dickens his name was. He was the landlord of the pub’s, daughter’s, boyfriend. He was very good bowler and there was another chap from Brackley called Tiddler Faulkner, who was wicket-keeper for Evenley, and he was the most devious going, you know. There would be a ball bowled, the batsman would miss it, and you'd hear a click. And they bought it. He could make that noise with his…. he was a terror….
00:46:52 Phillip Scaysbrook
So he'd fool a modern Clickometer, wouldn't it?
00:46:56 John Willis
I tell you, the stories, I can tell you like that. Anyway, we'll go on round the village and well, that does that. Then you the next one was Jack Lawence at the pub.
00:47:16 John Willis
Yeah, there were no houses built up the back. There's a lane by the side, but at the top of that, there's also Chattel’s farm.
00:47:30 Charles Woodgate
That's right, which we now own. Parents bought it back in ‘72. So we have still got that bit of land there.
00:47:30 John Willis
Then you came along. There there was a.....
00:47:42 John Willis
You'll come back to me in a minute. You had the, the Collinridges, lived in the first house along that row. The Steggles lived in one of them, and he had a farm up on the straight bit as you go towards Charlton on the right-hand side.
00:48:02 Phillip Scaysbrook
Plombers Firs?
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00:48:03 John Willis
But on the right-hand side. But Nigel Fox, I think had it as well at one time.
00:48:10 Charles Woodgate
You know, Stan Fox originally had it back in, I think ‘56. They brought that came down.
00:48:14 John Willis
I don't know, when it came up for sale I tried to buy it but I didn't, it went to auction.
00:48:22 John Willis
Anyway, that couple there, they were a brother and sister, and they had two evacuees. I remember the evacuees coming, a coach load coming to Evenley, and Princess Margaret was on that coach. She came down on the train on that one. And they had two girls, and they gave them a hell of a life, it was terrible, really. They had to even polish the soles of their shoes, that sort of thing. There weren't many evacuees came to Evenley that hadn't self-evacuated.
00:49:12 John Willis
Anyway, you come along there then. Do you remember the Ward Jacksons?
00:49:19 Charles Woodgate
No.
00:49:21 John Willis
You move along those houses, then you've got another block of houses with porch ways where the Coppins and those lived, and then there's a house on its own. Ward Jackson was the name. His daughter played cricket for England women. In fact, I think she was captain of England cricket. He was a nightmare because the cricket pitch ran along level with the Middle Road, and when you batted at the top end, it was a nice sweeping shot out there; and I remember paying 10 bob for breaking his bloody window afterwards
00:50:08 John Willis
Then there was a couple of houses together. One was a Holton and the other one was a relation of his. Then you have the post office (54 The Green) with Miss Reynolds, and when she died, I took over the post office and….
00:50:24 Charles Woodgate
That that's number 54, isn't it?
00:50:26 John Willis
I don't know cause the next door one was 20 as well. There were two 20s in the village. You see the village was built over the last century, I suppose, and infilled, and numbers went awry. So, they did have a big thing, and they renumbered the whole village.
00:50:48 John Willis
I lived next door to that one. Mrs Mullis lived next door to us, Eric, I shall have Christmas lunch with him next month, because I still run, it's been going 57 years. We meet once a year and these are people who lived or were associated with Evenley
00:51:06 John Willis
Just before I came here, I went to the Paisley Pear to book 17 of us in for lunch for at Christmas. Eric is 10 years younger than me, might be a bit more because I remember him being born, you know. I can't remember all the people in that row. I've got it written down somewhere.
00:51:33 Charles Woodgate
Was Mrs Seaton there?
00:51:36 John Willis
Yeah, that was further along. Then you had the road which, you know, School Lane, used to Bone Hill. Really the School Lane bit really came into its own when they built the council houses.
00:52:00 Phillip Scaysbrook
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When did they build the council houses, before or after the war?
00:52:02 John Willis
After, very much after because the Greatbatches moved up there, David Martin moved there, the Tanners moved there..
00:52:04 Phillip Scaysbrook
Afternoon. Yeah.
00:52:15 Charles Woodgate
Once for.
00:52:17 John Willis
No, the Hunts were on the corner. Is there any of those about?
00:52:22 Charles Woodgate
No. Arthur died about 3 years ago now I think, but his younger brother Tony, Buddy, is.
00:52:28 John Willis
Buddy, oh yeah, Buddy. Whenever I go to the pub, he says he will pay for it, you know.
00:52:34 John Willis
Well, that little house on the corner which was there? When I came to Evenley, there was an old boy who had a horse and a covered waggon and he went from Brackley to Buckingham through the village and he was the local carrier and he would drop stuff off there and if you bought something in Brackley, that's where it was dropped off.
00:53:08 Phillip Scaysbrook
Right, so we still called them carriers and that was war time, just after, just before.
00:53:13 John Willis
Oh no, before the War. He had been going for donkey’s years, winter or summer. He got lights and he went to Buckingham and back and that took him a week, and he slept in his waggon.
00:53:29 John Willis
Down here you had the Foxes (Albert Fox), and before them you had the Halls.
Albert Fox then bought the schoolhouse when he retired, the youngest daughter was Betty, then Roy then Jack and then Bill. I see Bill occasionally. He's a couple of years older than me and he lives out near Edge Hill. They came when the Halls sold up. He came from Moreton-in-Marsh. He was in the tied farm and moved over here.
00:54:36 Phillip Scaysbrook
The Whiteleys were they the next ones along to the Halls.
00:54:38 John Willis
The Whiteleys lived in Mixbury, the big house on the right-hand side as you go in.
00:54:45 John Willis
I remember the boys there. I finished up in the marquee business, and I did a lot of functions out there, but I knew a lot of people in Mixbury. I belong to a thing called Mixbury Gals, which is a thing about Mixbury, but it's all the girls have done it. It's very good, but I contribute to it because I knew a lot of them, and they're very much like you're doing now, they are trying to put the record up.
00:55:23 John Willis
But also Brackley and Northampton, because I had a lot to do with both of those and I've I have just done a thing with Northampton very much like this because I worked for a couple of years for Northamptonshire farmers, so I had a lot to do with all the farmers in the county you see.
00:55:47 John Willis
But then you come there, you. Then you went up Bone Hill and the first house was the Hall. They had two daughters. One died in childbirth, which rather killed him off. He was head of the church choir. Evenley used to have a good church choir in my day because if you look at the
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records, I think it's a three-year period, there were no girls born in Evenley, they were all boys, and we had a good boys choir
00:56:26 Phillip Scaysbrook
I think my youngest was the last actually born in Evenley. I don't think there’s been any since Alice actually born in the village where she lived, in the bathroom!
00:56:38 John Willis
Yeah, you had these phenomenals. There's a place called Deanshanger, the other side of Buckingham, between Buckingham and Milton Keynes. There were no boys born for 10 years in that village; they were all girls. They put it down to the lead oxide, there was a paint factory there.
00:57:07 John Willis
Then you had the Halls in the first house, then you had the Chaplains who were Londoners again, moved down. There were the Harmans, the Buggins’s
00:57:23 Charles Woodgate
Were the Browns there in those days and the Coxes?
00:57:28 John Willis
Coxes were in the council houses. Well, Ethel Cox's mother lived in in Dormer Row, and she outlived all her children.
00:57:44 Charles Woodgate
Ethel Cox had a reputation (how loud her voice was), you could hear her clear across to Brackley, if she wanted to summon the lads for lunch or whatever.
00:57:52 John Willis
Yeah, the Browns lived in the Council houses.
00:57:55 Charles Woodgate
Yes, and they had a tragedy, as you probably know, with their son committing suicide.
00:58:00 John Willis
Yeah, I had forgotten about it, to be honest with you. Because he (Mr Brown) came out of the army. I think it was the army and started a taxi business. But it was not very reliable.
00:58:16 John Willis
And then the Council houses came along, and it was basically villagers who moved into those.
00:58:29 Phillip Scaysbrook
So, when did you leave Evenley?
00:58:36 John Willis
Well, my mother died when I was 11, and at that period of time I could have finished up in Australia because any males with a wife, who had children, this is a big scandal that you have got now. So my grandmother and grandfather took me over, but they didn't, because my father was always there. Then when my grandmother died, I went and lived with my (other) grandmother in Brackley, for a short time and then I came back. Must have come back to my aunt and uncle and then my grandmother in Brackley died, and I would have been about 18. But my dad owned the house, so I went and lived there, and my dad worked in London and he used to come home at weekends.
01:00:00 Phillip Scaysbrook
How did he get up? Did he you come up the train to the central or the bottom station or the top station.
01:00:03 John Willis
Yeah, the top station, (Brackley Central). He used to go on the Monday morning. Come back on Saturday lunchtime. But he never gave up the house in Evenley, he kept that. That was it, I went there. Because I came to it Evenley and I went to Magdalen, nobody really knew how old I was. I mean, I had a motorbike at 15. My dad came home at the weekend to me with a motorbike, and I
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put a year back on me license. He threatened to take you down to the police station himself. He never did, but that was it. So, nobody ever really knew my age because I went there.
01:00:57 John Willis
Ashley Steggles, the Steggles who lived in the council houses, or they lived up nearer the pub in that row there, and he went to Magdalen. But he went from the County School to Magdalen, he was picked out, had a brilliant brain but never used it. But you get that.
01:01:21 John Willis
Well, I went to school and university with a lad from Banbury, whose father was manager of Smith's the paper shop. He was absolutely brilliant, came out at the Uni with every degree you could have and became a bus conductor. And you, you had quite a lot of that.
01:01:47 John Willis
But then when I went to Magdalen, it was a different world. I mean, you had the ambassador to Brazil's sons there and people like this. There were quite a lot of Jewish people there and things like that.
Section redacted – not relevant
01:02:53 John Willis
But anyway, you were asking. Then I think, but you could check this through the licencing laws, I think I came back and took over the shop in 1957. Because there was…, it was ridiculous. I got done by the police for having a dangerous weapon, and the dangerous weapon was I had put my car in Manor Road in Brackley, down where the Plumbers Arms used to be, and it was on a hill, and I put the front wheels into the curb because brakes on cars in that period weren't brilliant. The local Sergeant had come down, flipped the wheels, cars didn't have locks (in those days). So, he flipped the wheels, put it down the road, and then did me for it, and they did it as a dangerous weapon. So, when I came to get a liquor licence, you couldn't have any convictions on you at all. I had a hell of a fight to get it. But they'd give the Kray brothers and people like that lots of, you know what I mean
01:04:16 Phillip Scaysbrook
So, they said your car was a dangerous weapon because it had a poor handbrake.
01:04:18 John Willis
They described it as a dangerous weapon. The world was different then.
01:04:25 Charles Woodgate
Was it because someone was out to get you?
01:04:30 John Willis
Oh, I suppose I was a bit of a Jack the Lad. There you are. I think by that time he had probably realised that I had a licence a year before I should have had it. I got fined 10 shillings and the chairman of the justices paid it. He was a farmer from Farthinghoe. But he became County Sheriff. It will come to me, but I can't remember his name
01:05:20 Charles Woodgate
The only ones I remember were the Lombards, which I think we're Farthingoe based.
01:05:25 John Willis
No, the Lombards were the on the nasty bends as you go to Croughton, near the Barley Mow and the gravel pit at Astwick.
01:05:54 John Willis
Johnny Lombard was champion jockey, but he was really a point to point. The reason that I know was my grandfather bred pit ponies during the war for the coal mines, but he was into horses, and he had horses as well and I had to ride Point to Point on them and I didn't like it. Well, I gave up in the end because I had a bad accident at North Newington and went into a jump, and in those days, it wasn't plastic bits it was hard rails and the horse didn't and stopped and didn't want to go
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over and went over and hit my head and was quite badly concussed.
01:07:11 Phillip Scaysbrook
I remember Johnny Lombard junior because he used to play tennis with Christine, my wife, at Kings Sutton.
01:07:16 John Willis
That would be the son.
01:07:19 Charles Woodgate
He would have had a sister called Lesley Lombard because I was at school with St. John's School in Banbury Road, Brackley.
01:07:29 John Willis
You went to St. John's.
01:07:30 Charles Woodgate
Yeah.
01:07:34 John Willis
Yeah, you see I am learning more. I wish more people would talk about these things. You learn a lot.
01:07:40 Charles Woodgate
How I know is because most of the pupils there were farmers children, like the Beers, the Browns (plus the Jones*2, Callow, Bowerman)
01:07:57 Charles Woodgate
Well Jan Brown, who is the widow. She's 92, and comes into the (Red Lion) pub regularly on a Sunday night for the rock'n'roll music there is live band on them.
01:08:21 John Willis
Now, now which Lombard was she married to? The oldest one, he's dead and his wife's dead. The middle one got killed in an aeroplane crash. So, it's got to be the younger. The younger one was married to a very good friend of mine. But they divorced because he drank. Am I talking the right person? Well, this this one came from Northampton area. I went to school with her brother, and I've known Sue ever since then because, you know because of the connection, and she's got a sister as well.
01:09:35 John Willis
What you got to think is the highlights of those things were farmers Balls and they were drawn from a large area. There was a farmers Ball every week. I remember when I was at the Solicitors Office going coming back from a farmer's Ball in my DJ and getting right told off going to work in the DJ.
01:10:07 John Willis
Well, there was a Brown who built a house down towards the church, Church Lane.
Because I'll tell you what we had different names for these things.
01:10:25 Charles Woodgate
The farmers, I can remember that had Middle Farmer when we came here (in 1963) were the Warrens.
01:10:33 John Willis
Yeah, well, I knew them very well
01:10:37 Phillip Scaysbrook
There was a smallholding opposite Middle Farm called White House.
01:10:40 John Willis
That was Miss Dickie and Stan Fox. Well, you know, the little house on the corner just before you get to it (Peverill Cottage). Miss Dickie had that, and I don't know whether Stan ever married her or not, and they had Nigel. Stan appeared after the war. Miss Dickie lived there and had a
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small acreage on the opposite side of the road where the old windmill was for the water supply for the village. Then Stan came on the scene, and they became an item after the war.
[Redacted section]
01:12:11 John Willis
I only knew her, miss Dickie. She was quite a straight lady really. She bred Jersey and Guernsey cows and milked them. She was very much a woman of the land.
01:12:33 John Willis
Anyway, going on about me, I then left (Evenley) when I was about 35, so about 1970 I suppose, I can't remember exactly.
01:12:47 Phillip Scaysbrook
And what did you do then?
01:12:49 John Willis
I well, I had run myself into the ground because the business had gone from one shop to one in Brackley, one in Buckingham, one in Tingewick, one in Winslow and one in Byfield and all these mobile shops and bread rounds. I crashed in Mixbury, out when filling (in for an employee). You know, if one employee didn't turn in, I went and did their job. If two didn't turn in, I went and did two men's job. It was that sort of thing. And I basically told if you don't pack up you will kill yourself.
01:13:28 John Willis
And so, I then sold up. I sold all the bread rounds for Mother's Pride bread, and Ernie Holah took over some of the stuff; he came out of London as well.
01:13:52 John Willis
And then I started work and I started…… well, I've got another side to my life. You don't know. I was an international disc jockey for 25 years; amongst other things, but I also, with the money I had with that (sale) and things like that, I put into marquees, and I built (a business), and at one time I had the second biggest marquee company in the world. And if you ever went to the Barcelona Olympics, you can see some of my work, because all the various shapes of all the things were my design.
01:14:38 John Willis
I started (the marquee business) off as County Contracts, although I had registered the name, Banbury Marquees Limited, but I had an agreement with a local firm that I would not use it, and I traded as County Contracts initially, but I owned seven marquee companies in this country and one in France and one in Spain.
01:15:08 John Willis
The Barcelona Olympics was a disaster. I won the design award for it. Because I make - like marquees were pegs, poles and guys in the old days - and I was the first one in England to make the aluminium frames, although they were German, and I broke the patent.
01:15:37 John Willis
Bit of luck really, and I don’t mind admitting it. I don't want you to put this in the book or whatever you do with it. I banked at Lloyds Bank in Brackley in those days. In fact, I'm the oldest customer of Lloyds Bank apparently. I opened my first account when I was 3. So that's 87 years ago. I became Businessman of the Year in the Lloyds complex from my marquee business, starting and doing the growth. My bank manager called me, and I remember these dates very well the first of May. He said, “Will you come and see me?” (I thought), Oh Christ what have I done wrong now. So, I went in, he said, “Well, look, you and another company are the only marquee companies Lloyds have got on our books and this other company is in trouble, would you be interested?” As soon as he said the name I said “No” because they were the second largest marquee company in the UK at that time.
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I said this out of my league really, and anyway, this year I'd spent all my money on stock for the next season so there was no spare money about. He said, well, will you go and look at it and assess it.
01:17:30 John Willis
I owed him a few favours, so I said yes, and I wanted a complete stock list. It was a massive concern. It was in Chelmsford, and the father had died, and he had built an animal, really that couldn't be sold because he was the driving force, and I did exactly the same, unfortunately, when I came to get out. He had got a son and a daughter, and they fought, and they (redacted). They own the centre of Chelmsford, but this company was based there. And the bank was owed a lot of money, a lot of money. So, I went and looked at it. It was a perfectly good business, but it needed management and running.
01:18:29 John Willis
I went back and I said, well, it's good but you have got to sell it. Who's going to spend that sort of money? If you have got that sort of money you didn't have to work really. And he said. Well, what would you value it at? And I said, what if I was buying it? And he said yes. So, I went away and every item they had on their (stock) list, I valued at one hiring. So, if the hiring of that tent was £100 or £200, that's what I valued it. When I gave it to them, they laughed themselves silly. I mean, because I couldn't have afforded to buy it at that. But they were really desperate, they must have been. And on my birthday, which is the 23rd of May, they came back and said you can have it. I said I can't afford it. Well, you better come and talk to us, and I finished up buying it.
01:19:42 John Willis
And then I did the usual thing, worked myself silly, because I knew if I could hire it once, it was paid for. But you haven't got your labour and your transport costs.
01:19:53 Charles Woodgate
What about the property itself in Chelmsford? Did you acquire the property in transfer as well?
01:19:59 John Willis
No, no, no, no. That was how they got the money out. But they couldn't, there was a terrific amount of stock. The farm up at Hooky (Hook Norton) is 80,000 square feet. At our biggest we had 10,000 tables, 20,000 chairs. I put 415 marquees up on Hyde Park for one event, 100th anniversary of what’s you call it (name of event not stated)….. That's a lot of room. Well, it's 11 industrial units. But, but even then, I was only halfway there because I had two properties in Adderbury I owned which I was running the business from which were maximum, and I had the old bus station at Helmdon. It was the old Sammy Walters coaches. I rented that. I hadn't got any room, it was look for a room, what can I buy?
01:21:15 John Willis
And again, a bit of luck happened really because this farm had been used for helicopter crop spraying, so the buildings were like hangers, big. It was ideal, but I hadn't realised that they were selling the farm as a whole. To be honest, I couldn't afford it, I'm committing myself to this other bank. So, I thought I would have to rent anyway, it turned out he had individually mortgaged each barn, each field, each paddock to Middle East companies, banks. And so I was able to pick them off. But you got to have a bit of luck in life. You got (to get) lucky.
01:22:08 John Willis
But then I when I came to get out, I came in to exactly the same position. I couldn't sell it to anybody (redacted). (My) son-in-law got what was Banbury Marquee Hire. All the others are somewhere….
01:22:25 Phillip Scaysbrook
John, it's been absolutely fascinating.
01:22:28 John Willis
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I don't know whether there's been any help or not. I mean there, is far more I can tell you about Evenley. Really. And.
01:22:28 Phillip Scaysbrook
Absolutely fascinating. Of course it has. Yeah. Well, I'm sure I'm sure that as we go through it, things will occur to me.
01:22:39 John Willis
I think that the the.