Self-indulgent Saturday-Sunday #3

This third episode covers around 12 years between 1955 & 1967, following my leaving Bridlington High School (previous posts are at #1 and #2 ).

 Posing! c.1955

I coulda stayed in school for two more years, coulda then gone to university or teacher training college - coulda but didn't wanna. I wanted to earn money, see life, learn from experience, get away from regimentation, exploit my independence.

A youthful dream was to be a newspaper reporter, but living where we did, that was a forlorn hope. Second choice, and one with more chance of success: work in a library aiming to become a fully fledged librarian. I was interviewed at our County Library in Beverley, some 14 miles from home, but was unsuccessful, mainly due to my lack of work experience - my GCE academic exam qualifications well exceeded what was required. That interview did lead to another opening, and one almost tailor made for me at that time : general assistant to the County Archivist, in the County Record Office, also in Beverley. It turned out to be a fascinating job which I grew to love.

I travelled to Beverley from home by train, 5 and a half days a week. I'd been learning to type and trying to learn shorthand in evening classes and spare time for a few months. My new job wasn't simply as a typist though, that was a side-requirement. The County Archivist, Mr H. had established the County Record Office a few years earlier and was still deep in process of persuading local gentry and minor aristocracy, of which there was a goodly number in East Yorkshire, to deposit their family archives in the Record Office for safe keeping, and to be catalogued and used for research by historians and genealogists.

Mr H. was a delightful guy, I wish I had a photograph of him to share, but any I owned were lost in what I call the Great Fire of 1996. I can find no photo of him online, but did unearth a list of reference numbers to archive documents since transferred from the Beverley Record Office to the History Centre of Hull University. I noticed, with glee, that all those in second half of the list - those with prefix double D ("DD..") were those I helped to sort, catalogue, index etc. so many years ago. (See here).

Mr H's powers of persuasion worked well, our three large strongrooms soon filled with lots of valuable materials - stuff crying out for investigation and interpretation. The documents, on receipt, were often absolutely filthy, having been stored in dusty attics, or dank, musty cellars, for centuries. Our first job was to clean and sort, then Mr H. would draft entries for detailed catalogues which I would type, then stamp and number the documents, store them carefully in specially-made labelled boxes, then index and cross-index a large card index system (steam version of Google!) After the first year or so I was allowed to actually catalogue many of the later documents myself.

We had visitors to the office daily, asking to see particular documents, some were staff from County Hall - we stored all the County Council's ancient and modern records too, relating to education, highways and bridges, council meeting minutes, court records, etc etc etc. Quite frequent also were visits from out of town students, historians, and the occasional person looking for family history clues. It was part of my job to locate required documents and either log them out (modern council records) or pass them over to the researcher who would study them in an outer office.

In preparing this post I searched online for a photograph of the Record Office building, which stood next door to County Hall. To my dismay I find it has been demosished and a fancy new "Treasure House" replaces it. The old building was a single story affair, with pillared doorway (looked a bit Grecian). A corner of it can be seen on the far left in the photo of County Hall below.

The new structure is shown in an article HERE, A Diamond Anniversary for the East Riding Archives and Local Studies Service which also tells that:

There is a display in the Treasure House featuring photographs of some of the buildings the archives have been stored in and some of the staff who have helped build the service up over the years.

I doubt my photograph was there, don't recall ever having had photograph taken at work, maybe I was named as one of the early staff, there were so few of us: Mr H + one general assistant; I was that one for two separate periods of 3 years: 1955-8 and 1967-70.

After 3 happy years in the County Record Office, in 1958 my itchy feet began to tingle. I loved and respected Mr H, he'd taught me such a lot, not only about history and local history, but about poetry and politics and ....well life in general beyond what I'd experienced in my own family circle. Even so, East Yorkshire was somewhat isolated, I wanted more, began to feel trapped. Once those itchy feet began to tingle something had to give.

I don't recall what propelled me into the life of a live-in hotel receptionist, I really don't. Looking back, it seemed an unlikely next step. Perhaps, at age 19, it was the only way I could find to leave home but still have a place to live and be fed. I found an advert in some publication for a job in a North Yorkshire hotel office, was interviewed, and to my surprise was successful. The hotel was a lovely old coaching inn in a picturesque area close to the border of North Yorkshire and County Durham. From what I can glean online that hotel is now quite different in atmosphere from the Morritt Arms I knew back in the late 1950s. I guess it has been 21st-centurised, maybe now owned by an offshoot of some hotel corporation or other. There's a piece mentioning it HERE.

 As was

I spent the summer there, fell in love, for the very first time, but after a few months the object of my affection disappeared one night without any warning to me, or to the hotel owners or other staff members. A mystery! Owen was his name, he was working as general hotel dogsbody and hall porter, but really didn't seem to fit that role. He befriended me immediately, we "clicked" right away. His disappearance haunted me for years. Later on I learned, from his sister, that at the time he disappeared he had been AWOL from the RAF and had either been apprehended by the authorities, or had gone "on the run". I did, eventually, meet him again, just once - that'll likely be mentioned in #4.

 Married 1962, his pic gone.  With my  parents

The years following were filled with seasonal work in the offices of 10 different hotels around the UK - north, south, east and west. Checking around the internet for photographs of said hotels told me that all have changed almost beyond recognition. One has been taken over by Best Western, others have been tarted up to the eyeballs, extended, modernised. Inevitable, I guess. There were intervals, too, as cashier in a city restaurant, secretarial work in a Rolls Royce Gas Turbine factory, assistant in the Devonshire public transport accounts offices.

In 1960/1 I met first husband, married in 1962, separated in 1963. Tried again a little later - still didn't work. I ought not to speak ill of the dead (if he is ). I'll say only that it was because of him I got to experience Rome, twice, for several weeks; for that, and perhaps for introducing me to Sinatra's genius I have to thank him. He, Val, was Italian, sometime head waiter, sometime ordinary waiter, sometime gambler, philanderer....Enough said, for now. He was removed from the wedding photo (right) it came from my mother's collection, any photos of Val I had in my own collection were destroyed in the Great Fire.

Life as a hotel receptionist, more accurately in those days described as book-keeper/receptionist, because we had to keep "the books" - detailed account ledgers as well as the usual booking records. The luxury of computers to do much of the work for us was non-existent back then. It was from learning how to keep a ledger that I taught myself, through constant practice, to add very long columns of figures (L-S-D: pounds, shillings and pence) without the aid of a calculator. I can still do that, amazingly! We answered correspondence, phone enquiries, typed menus, and in some hotels I was also responsible for making up wage packets for the staff, and dealing with related tax and National Insurance issues. We worked in shifts, very early morning to mid afternoon, or mid-afternoon to late night. We were expected to wear black - navy blue might be tolerated, though not always. I could usually eat in the hotels' dining rooms, choosing from the full menu, or sometimes from a limited list. It was politic, of course, to always cultivate a pleasant relationship with the hotels' chefs - and waiters! Occasionally office staff would be asked to do a shift in one of the bars, or assist at a wedding or banquet - that was fun! Live-in staff were sometimes allocated a room in the hotel itself - top floor or at the back; occasionally there'd be a designated staff house nearby.


Before meeting first husband there had been some boyfriends. Two of the longer lasting ones were Douglas in Devon, who loved big cars (his Jaguar in photo) and dreamed great plans for the future - I hope they transpired; and Ronnie in Lancashire who loved his pint of beer and a game of soccer. Neither ticked all my boxes, but both were good friends. Dang - but I was picky, falling in love again was not easy! There were lots of short term friendships with hotel staff members. Pam, a fellow receptionist in a Lancashire hotel, who was also training as a fashion model, comes to mind. I have her to thank for teaching me how to put on makeup properly, and how to style my hair. Pam was another friend with a birthday close to mine; it's odd how that kept happening.

I have especially nice memories of a pair of travelling representatives for tobacco firms who used to co-ordinate their visits to a North Devon hotel where I worked for one summer and an autumn in the mid-1960s. These two, Tony and Bill, were great buddies, witty, easy-going, well-read, and amazingly they befriended yours truly whenever they were in town. I loved 'em - quite innocently, like brothers I guess...they were both happily married. I often wonder if I was always looking for the brother(s) I never had. Another visitor, to the same hotel, a relief bank manager, Mr S. asked me out regularly for a meal during the time he was seconded to the area. He was a sweetie, middle-aged bachelor, rather old fashioned. I could've, probably should've....but I didn't. When he left, after a month or so, he sent me a huge bunch of wonderful long stemmed bronze chrysanthemums (because I'd told him how I loved the scent).

Mid 1960s, with Mum and Grandparents

It had all been a big adventure for me, hotel life became addictive for a time, even though in retrospect this period of my life was a chaotic patchwork of good, bad and indifferent experiences, lots of movement, not much real progress. Eventually the novelty and addiction wore off, it became tiresome, I began to long for stability.

By 1967, working in a non-hotel environment in Devon, living in a tiny rented apartment, I received a letter one January day, from Mr H, the County Archivist in East Yorkshire, my first boss. Mr H. and I had kept in touch by letter occasionally all through this chaotic patchwork time of my life. He told me that my successor, his assistant, was leaving, would I like to go back to my old job? I decided to take him up on his offer, it was a damp and cold January in Devon, I was lonely, and my feet had stopped itching.

To be continued....