This week, we’re doing something a little different. Richard Negus sits down for a chat with his mother. Together, they travel back 90 years to explore a bygone era of Southwold and Lowestoft, sharing first-hand memories of growing up in the heart of rural Suffolk.
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The Hosts
Richard Negus website
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Edited and Produced by Amy Green for Rural and Outdoor.
Producer Amy: Hello, this is producer Amy. You're hearing my voice, not because anything terrible has happened, but because we have something a little bit different for you this week. What's going to follow this very short introduction is Richard Negus speaking to his mum about growing up in rural Suffolk, particularly on the coast in Southwold, and talking about how things have changed. The surrounding villages have changed, and it gives us a glimpse of the past and what life was like. It was quite thought-provoking for me when I listened to it, and I really hope that you enjoy it too.
Richard N: I suppose the most obvious question is, being born and bred in Southwold, what's your first memory of the town? When did you realize you lived in that place?
Dorothy N: First of all, memories are about your home, aren't they? I was born in a two-up, two-down, painted blue outside. All these shops were locally owned by people who lived and worked there. They didn't earn huge amounts of money because there were so many of them. One of my first memories would probably be going across the road to the corner shop to buy some sweeties. But my earliest clear memories are really of rationing, because you had points for sweets and things like that. Another early memory was moving from the High Street to Hotson Road, where I then lived until I got married.
Richard N: I seem to remember you telling me a story that someone offered to loan Granddad the money to buy a house when you moved.
Dorothy N: When the semi-detached houses were being built in Pier Avenue, a friend of his who had a bit of money offered to loan him the money to buy one. My dad wouldn't accept it. I suppose, thinking to himself that he'd been wounded in the First World War and still had a piece of shrapnel in his head, he worried he could go at any time and didn't want to leave debt behind. So we moved to a council-run house, and we had electricity for the first time. I can remember how happy my mum was when Gordon bought her an electric iron for Christmas.
Richard N: Were most houses rented back then, or were they owned by the people living in them?
Dorothy N: I think the great majority of them were rented, either privately—where I was born was privately rented—or council houses. All the houses were full of people. They weren't like they are now, where the majority of them are holiday lets. We had loads of different shops—there were three or four butchers on the High Street.
During the war, the local school was closed down because a lot of the children were evacuated. There was only one piece of the beach that wasn't cut off with steel defenses for the invasion. It was right to the south of the pier pavilion, and the fishermen used to wind their boats up onto the beach there because they couldn't use the harbour.
Richard N: So all those houses were full. Was it mostly fishermen?
Dorothy N: Oh, no. It was just people who worked in the shops and businesses. People didn't commute in from away. I suppose from Reydon perhaps they did, because there were buses. There were buses that ran to Halesworth and to Lowestoft every hour.
Richard N: So most people who were around you were in businesses that kept the town going?
Dorothy N: Yes. I mean, we had our own gas company, our own electricity company, and the water board. The cinema was run privately; you had the same film Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then a different one Thursday, Friday, Saturday. When I was a teenager, there was the pier with amusements, and on a Saturday, there was the dance hall where people used to congregate.
Richard N: Was the brewery a big deal back then?
Dorothy N: It was, but it didn't dominate the way it has since. They did most of it in one building. It grew a lot gradually, especially when John Adnams took over from his father. His father was an auctioneer and more interested in that side of things, but it was a local, family-run business.
Richard N: So there wasn't just one big employer. Work was spread across the board.
Dorothy N: Yes, there was employment from different things. The brewery was quite big, and there were a couple of biggish builders. People didn't travel much then.
Richard N: Until you got married, had you been out of Southwold much at all? I know you went to the Festival of Britain with the school.
Dorothy N: Yes, and I used to go stay with relations down in Surrey. Betty and I also went up and stayed with family in Corby for a week's holiday.
Richard N: Was it less common then for people to leave the town to go and work?
Dorothy N: I suppose it was. Some people would go to Lowestoft because there was a lot of employment there. In Southwold, there was the Four Docks Mills just off the High Street and Field Stile Road, where they made Slumberland mattresses. And there was the Home Knit down on the corner of Station Road and Pier Avenue. They were main employers for women. Over in Lowestoft, there was the Pye factory making radios and televisions. And some of the boys used to go and work on the trawlers. There wasn't the need to move away for work. It wasn't usual to go to uni. People took what was going in the town. There was always work in the hotels.
Richard N: So tourism was still a big thing?
Dorothy N: Yes, but it was much more confined to the three summer months. People had tourists staying in their houses. Going right back to when I was a child, locals used to move out of their bedrooms and sleep in their sheds so they could let their rooms out. You have to remember, people didn't expect an en-suite back then. They were happy to go and stay in a house with people they didn't know just to be at the seaside. It was before cheap package holidays abroad changed everything.
Richard N: You moved away in 1956. When did you first start noticing that the town was changing from that self-sufficient place run by locals?
Dorothy N: It was a very gradual process. People started to get a bit better off after the war. People started getting cars, so you weren't just relying on the buses. And when locals inherited those little cottages, they started to sell them. Some of them probably found work in Lowestoft and realized they could buy a much more modern house there for the same price that stupid people from London would pay for their old, pokey place in Southwold. The builders did alright out of it because they were busy updating all those cottages.
Richard N: Why do you think Southwold didn't go into decay the way Lowestoft did when the fishing industry declined?
Dorothy N: Because it was smaller and prettier. And they had the lovely common right on the doorstep for walking. It was an idyllic place to grow up when there wasn't much traffic about. You don't appreciate it so much at the time, but we had everything we needed. Lowestoft got hit hard. They lost the fishing, the boat building, and the centralization of things like the Eastern Counties bus depot moving away.
Richard N: One of the things I notice now is that Southwold seems to have lost its local heart. It's full of visitors treating it almost like a museum. Do you think losing that self-sufficient nature was a price worth paying to retain it as a pretty, prosperous place?
Dorothy N: It's difficult for me to say. When we retired, we went back to enjoy the beach and the nice walks, and all the physical things I remembered were still there. But there was hardly anybody from my youth who actually still lived and worked there. A lot of my age group had moved away to get work. When Dad and I were planning on getting married, he was working in Lowestoft putting in the sewerage lines to the villages. But then the government grants stopped, and suddenly he was out of a job. We always moved to where he could get work.
Richard N: I suppose one of the biggest changes is the loss of local industry. Other than Adnams, the only real industry in Southwold now is tourism, or builders servicing the tourist trade by converting houses for second homes.
Dorothy N: Yes, it's true. And I think the biggest difference in the town itself is that there are very few locally run shops anymore. There are so many chains.
Richard N: It's almost like having a shop there is a loss leader for brands, just to associate themselves with the town, like Salcombe or Burnham Market. It's become an iconic brand. But there are still some locals. During that big RNLI and Coastguard training exercise, I recognized some of the lifeboat crew from the rugby club, but a lot of them were retired hedge fund managers or Sizewell workers.
Dorothy N: Yes. In the past, all the people on the council were local business owners. They wouldn't have let it change so much.
Richard N: Once people realized their houses were worth a lot of money, they sold up. You lost the generations living next door to each other, you lost the independent shops, and tourism took over entirely. Which is why, in the off-season, you can walk around at 10 o'clock at night and it feels like a ghost town.
Dorothy N: Yeah. I think you've got enough!
Richard N: I've got plenty.
Richard N: I suppose the most obvious question is, being born and bred in Southwold, what's your first memory of the town? When did you realize you lived in that place?
Dorothy N: First of all, memories are about your home, aren't they? I was born in a two-up, two-down, painted blue outside. All these shops were locally owned by people who lived and worked there. They didn't earn huge amounts of money because there were so many of them. One of my first memories would probably be going across the road to the corner shop to buy some sweeties. But my earliest clear memories are really of rationing, because you had points for sweets and things like that. Another early memory was moving from the High Street to Hotson Road, where I then lived until I got married.
Richard N: I seem to remember you telling me a story that someone offered to loan Granddad the money to buy a house when you moved.
Dorothy N: When the semi-detached houses were being built in Pier Avenue, a friend of his who had a bit of money offered to loan him the money to buy one. My dad wouldn't accept it. I suppose, thinking to himself that he'd been wounded in the First World War and still had a piece of shrapnel in his head, he worried he could go at any time and didn't want to leave debt behind. So we moved to a council-run house, and we had electricity for the first time. I can remember how happy my mum was when Gordon bought her an electric iron for Christmas.
Richard N: Were most houses rented back then, or were they owned by the people living in them?
Dorothy N: I think the great majority of them were rented, either privately—where I was born was privately rented—or council houses. All the houses were full of people. They weren't like they are now, where the majority of them are holiday lets. We had loads of different shops—there were three or four butchers on the High Street.
During the war, the local school was closed down because a lot of the children were evacuated. There was only one piece of the beach that wasn't cut off with steel defenses for the invasion. It was right to the south of the pier pavilion, and the fishermen used to wind their boats up onto the beach there because they couldn't use the harbour.
Richard N: So all those houses were full. Was it mostly fishermen?
Dorothy N: Oh, no. It was just people who worked in the shops and businesses. People didn't commute in from away. I suppose from Reydon perhaps they did, because there were buses. There were buses that ran to Halesworth and to Lowestoft every hour.
Richard N: So most people who were around you were in businesses that kept the town going?
Dorothy N: Yes. I mean, we had our own gas company, our own electricity company, and the water board. The cinema was run privately; you had the same film Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then a different one Thursday, Friday, Saturday. When I was a teenager, there was the pier with amusements, and on a Saturday, there was the dance hall where people used to congregate.
Richard N: Was the brewery a big deal back then?
Dorothy N: It was, but it didn't dominate the way it has since. They did most of it in one building. It grew a lot gradually, especially when John Adnams took over from his father. His father was an auctioneer and more interested in that side of things, but it was a local, family-run business.
Richard N: So there wasn't just one big employer. Work was spread across the board.
Dorothy N: Yes, there was employment from different things. The brewery was quite big, and there were a couple of biggish builders. People didn't travel much then.
Richard N: Until you got married, had you been out of Southwold much at all? I know you went to the Festival of Britain with the school.
Dorothy N: Yes, and I used to go stay with relations down in Surrey. Betty and I also went up and stayed with family in Corby for a week's holiday.
Richard N: Was it less common then for people to leave the town to go and work?
Dorothy N: I suppose it was. Some people would go to Lowestoft because there was a lot of employment there. In Southwold, there was the Four Docks Mills just off the High Street and Field Stile Road, where they made Slumberland mattresses. And there was the Home Knit down on the corner of Station Road and Pier Avenue. They were main employers for women. Over in Lowestoft, there was the Pye factory making radios and televisions. And some of the boys used to go and work on the trawlers. There wasn't the need to move away for work. It wasn't usual to go to uni. People took what was going in the town. There was always work in the hotels.
Richard N: So tourism was still a big thing?
Dorothy N: Yes, but it was much more confined to the three summer months. People had tourists staying in their houses. Going right back to when I was a child, locals used to move out of their bedrooms and sleep in their sheds so they could let their rooms out. You have to remember, people didn't expect an en-suite back then. They were happy to go and stay in a house with people they didn't know just to be at the seaside. It was before cheap package holidays abroad changed everything.
Richard N: You moved away in 1956. When did you first start noticing that the town was changing from that self-sufficient place run by locals?
Dorothy N: It was a very gradual process. People started to get a bit better off after the war. People started getting cars, so you weren't just relying on the buses. And when locals inherited those little cottages, they started to sell them. Some of them probably found work in Lowestoft and realized they could buy a much more modern house there for the same price that stupid people from London would pay for their old, pokey place in Southwold. The builders did alright out of it because they were busy updating all those cottages.
Richard N: Why do you think Southwold didn't go into decay the way Lowestoft did when the fishing industry declined?
Dorothy N: Because it was smaller and prettier. And they had the lovely common right on the doorstep for walking. It was an idyllic place to grow up when there wasn't much traffic about. You don't appreciate it so much at the time, but we had everything we needed. Lowestoft got hit hard. They lost the fishing, the boat building, and the centralization of things like the Eastern Counties bus depot moving away.
Richard N: One of the things I notice now is that Southwold seems to have lost its local heart. It's full of visitors treating it almost like a museum. Do you think losing that self-sufficient nature was a price worth paying to retain it as a pretty, prosperous place?
Dorothy N: It's difficult for me to say. When we retired, we went back to enjoy the beach and the nice walks, and all the physical things I remembered were still there. But there was hardly anybody from my youth who actually still lived and worked there. A lot of my age group had moved away to get work. When Dad and I were planning on getting married, he was working in Lowestoft putting in the sewerage lines to the villages. But then the government grants stopped, and suddenly he was out of a job. We always moved to where he could get work.
Richard N: I suppose one of the biggest changes is the loss of local industry. Other than Adnams, the only real industry in Southwold now is tourism, or builders servicing the tourist trade by converting houses for second homes.
Dorothy N: Yes, it's true. And I think the biggest difference in the town itself is that there are very few locally run shops anymore. There are so many chains.
Richard N: It's almost like having a shop there is a loss leader for brands, just to associate themselves with the town, like Salcombe or Burnham Market. It's become an iconic brand. But there are still some locals. During that big RNLI and Coastguard training exercise, I recognized some of the lifeboat crew from the rugby club, but a lot of them were retired hedge fund managers or Sizewell workers.
Dorothy N: Yes. In the past, all the people on the council were local business owners. They wouldn't have let it change so much.
Richard N: Once people realized their houses were worth a lot of money, they sold up. You lost the generations living next door to each other, you lost the independent shops, and tourism took over entirely. Which is why, in the off-season, you can walk around at 10 o'clock at night and it feels like a ghost town.
Dorothy N: Yeah. I think you've got enough!
Richard N: I've got plenty.