From an interview in his shop 24-7-03. Interviewer - Eileen Williamson

Good evening, Tommy.  It's lovely to have you here and it' very kind of you to agree to this interview and I've been looking forward to it.  I know that the people of Ludham are fascinated by your store, not only do they come to buy from it regularly but also they know that there is a real history that goes back at least a hundred years.  I believe that last year, the centenary was celebrated in July?
Yes, that's right.  It should have been in January but we didn't get organised in time so we thought we'll wait until the fine weather comes and that worked very well.  An awful lot of people turned up and were very interested in the bits and pieces that my son, Guy, had dug out of the back stock-room.  It went extremely well and we were very pleased.

 I'd like you please to go right back to your first recollections of the shop.
My grandfather took over the shop in 1902 - it had been bankrupt. It had been bankrupt three times and the butcher next door was heard to comment he'd give my grandfather six months and he'd be out!  But we've now built over the site of the butcher's shop so that proves him wrong.
My father took it over after my grandfather retired and I had the option of either leaving school and coming into the business or carrying on at school.  School and I didn't get on very well, so the lesser of the two evils was to come into the shop to see whether I liked it.
  So you were pleased to come into the shop and work here?
Well no, as I said, at the time it was the lesser of two evils.

  How did you first start?  What was your first job?
The first job was just filling shelves.  I can't remember after how long, but then I was given the job of ordering the confectionary.  That was my first important job, and I can remember, my father (you could always tell when he was not in a very good mood)  saying to me one day, 'Are we selling empty shelves now?'
I said, 'Selling empty shelves?'
'Yes,' he said.  'Are we selling empty shelves?  We've given up stocking confectionery?'
  So he wasn't pleased with you?
No!  That did register and I never forgot it.
Did he tell you what sweets to put where or were you supposed to have   your own ideas?
No, not really.  I just carried on ordering the stock that we had, you know, always had stocked.  Now-a-days, the range is twenty times bigger.
 Did you have those huge glass jars then?
Yes, we used to! You always had to keep those full
  Sold them by the quarter?
Yes!
  Did you ever have to sell the sweets?  Was that your next job?
Yes! Of course, it was always counter-service in those days.  I had to do that. Confectionery was the first responsible job I had.
   And after that?
Well, I don't know - that just progressed from there.  We used to have vans on the road then when I first joined them.  We had three vans out on the road every day doing deliveries.  We used to do Neatishead, Horning, Potter Heigham, Repps, Thurne, Catfield and the furthest we used to go - I went as far as Worsted.
    Did you used to drive?
Oh yes, I had a round.  I used to do Catfield, Sutton, Stalham Green and then Worsted.  I used to do 83 calls on a Tuesday.
   What are your very first memories of Ludham?
 I can remember Ludham before I started school.There was the Baker's Arms pub right next door. I can remember the Yarmouth Road was very narrow - you couldn't pass two double-decker busses - you could only just pass two cars. There was no footpath and we used to have to go, every day, to Potter Heigham to pick up newspapers and we used to deliver newspapers between Potter Heigham and Ludham on the way back.My father used to make us go with him and he used to stop the van and we used to run up and down the garden paths, with the newspapers and Mrs Townsend, who I think is our oldest Ludham resident, lived at Red Roof Farm, as that was called then.They had a fruit farm there and we used to deliver newspapers to her, so I've known her ever since I was four or five, I suppose.
That's the earliest - I can even remember Lyons cakes used to come by British Rail in a big box and we used to have to pick that up from the railway station, as well.  That's how they used to arrive in those days.  So there's been an awful lot of changes.
  So that was when your father was in charge?
Yes!
   That was before the war.  Do you remember the war?
No, I don't.  The only thing I do remember is there were several soldiers billeted in the village, down where Nurse Pettit's house is now. There were all Nissan huts up on the airfield and we used to get a lot of soldiers in the village.  And I can remember - it used to fascinate me when they used to march past and somebody made me an army uniform and I had boots and a wooden gun.  I can remember that!
    How old were you then?
Oh, I don't know!  I suppose about three or four, before I went to school, anyway.  And of course, there was a plane crashed here, between us and the butcher's shop - that was still standing then - literally between the two.  I was only months old then when that happened and I can remember, later on,  the pilot very often used to call back here.  He was an American pilot and he always used to bring us Wrigley's Chewing gum and Mars bars and I'd never seen Mars bars and Wrigley's Chewing gum and I used to think that was wonderful.  Jim, his name was.  I can see him now!  I used to wait for him to come!
   Where did you go to school?          
I went to school at the village school - I followed my brother.  He was four years older than myself but he was very, very clever.
   That was very hard, wasn't it?
Yes, that was a very hard act to follow.  They always used to pick on me and think I was as bright as he was.

 Do you remember any of the teachers at the school, any of the kids or any stories about the school?
I remember going to school - horrible that was!  The clock never used to move!  Never used to move and I got wrong for all sorts of things - I couldn't tell the time, my brother could, you see, and I was made to go into the top class and ask him what the time was.  I always remember that!  I was sent to school, believe it or not, and I didn't know my name!  Everybody called me Tom or Tommy or whatever. I did a year at school and I know when you moved up a class after the first year, and we had a test and I was given a bit of paper and we were told to put our name on the piece of paper and the date and what class we were in - well I just put Tommy Thrower and the teacher came and slapped it back down on the desk and said, 'I told you to put your full name on.'  I couldn't understand - I sat there and thought whatever have I done wrong?  So I just did it again.  I thought I'd spelt it wrong, you know, and I just did it again and she really tore me a strip off because I hadn't put my full name on this exam paper.  I couldn't put it on because I didn't know what it was!
   You were never called Thomas, then?  It was always Tom or Tommy?
Yes!
     As you are now, in fact!  Did you go on to Grammar School?
No, because I failed the 11 plus which was no great surprise to anybody but I did walk indoors and told my mother I'd passed.  She believed me - for about ten minutes!  My father then sent me to a private school at Scratby - he thought it would do me good.
     How long was that for?
I went there when I was eleven and I was there until I was sixteen and I should have gone on until I was eighteen but I didn't want to.  I'd had enough, by then.
    Were there many people in the shop when you first came to work here?
We had about six staff and then there was my father and myself because it was all counter service and we used to have at least two girls on each counter. We used to have - it was like an L-shape - this used to be the old shop.
    Was it?  This used to be the old shop?  So that was the extension?
Yes!  The shop originally - the doorway used to be between those two pillars
   And, of course, the post office wasn't there at all.  That was all just part of the grocery store.
That's right!  So the double-bay windows were the same design as this but the bays were only as wide as between this pillar and that wall there and the doorway was here and we had - where the wooden seam stops, we went into another room which was, I suppose, like a front room.
   That's where you used to relax?
Well they used to send me in there to do my homework and because there was a door, my mother, after about ten minutes, used to come and check to see how I was getting on and if I was still there - because I wasn't!  I would be gone!  Outside! I was not an indoor person, not in those days.
All the rest of it was living - where you go down the steps there.  That used to be what we called in those days, the front room - although it was at the back!  And that all gradually, got taken into the shop over the years; took one room in and then another room in and that's all the living accommodation has now been taken up.

  What about your bungalow at the back?  Was all that your Dad's land?    What about the gap?
Where the driveway now is, there was a house.  There was a big three-storey house.  Next to that, coming this way, was the butcher's shop, then there was a driveway and where you go into the new part of the shop, is the old wall - you see the old wall is that thick and that was the boundary of the shop. We had a driveway that went round the back to the butcher's shop and to ours, as well.
  What was beyond that, then?
Another house!  There were actually two more big houses in The Street, down that way.
  Why  is there a black stack at the back?  Was there a hut or something there?
That wall used to be bullock sheds.  That was where they used to bring the bullocks because the butcher used to slaughter here as well.  They used to bring the bullocks and put them in the sheds down there before they wheeled them up into the slaughter-house.
  So they didn't have to have a licence then?
Apparently not!  If they weren't quite ready, they would take them down to the marsh to fatten them up for another month or two.  I was only a few months old but they told me that when the plane crashed, they had taken the bullocks down to the marsh.  Otherwise that would have been full of bullocks!  And that took the roof and everything off.  I can remember the ruins all laying there, we used to go and play in them.  Otherwise there would have been beef-burgers all round!  That would have been the original beef-burger, perhaps!
  What about your bungalow at the back?
That was the garden to the big three-storey house, which was the butcher's house and that was his garden with a big walnut tree in.
   What was the name of that butcher?  How long did he stay there?
His name was England - Billy England!  I used to go with him sometimes before I went to school.  I used to go in the butcher's van with him   - have a ride round, when he did his delivery.  When he retired, that was sold and another butcher bought it - I forget how many years he was there but he went bankrupt but he had another butcher's shop just over the bridge at Coltishall.  The three-storey house had been sold separately and I think some people from London bought it. Later, there was a fire and the whole place burned down.  I think the butcher from Coltishall, he bought it after that  and got planning permission to build a shop but before anything happened, he went bankrupt and the whole lot went up for auction.  They actually auctioned it outside on the premises and my father bought it at the auction.  We then had the butcher's shop, the old burnt-out house and all the garden that went with it which is where we built the bungalow.

    When did your father buy all this?  Was this before the aircraft crashed?  I thought the aircraft crashed in the alley-way.
The aircraft crashed in the alley-way, yes!  And on our house - you can't see it now because the warehouse has been built over the back - all the bricks were splashed with black oil.
    Nobody was hurt?
No!  No, they managed to get the pilot out - I don't remember what type of plane it was - but that had the old joystick that they used to have years ago, and that had wrapped round his foot and, of course, there was aviation fuel running down the alleyway there and he was panicking that that might all blow up and he shouted to get the butcher to chop the foot off!  But they managed to pull him out and they left the boot behind and I think all he had was a sprained ankle and that didn't catch fire.  I suppose it could quite easily have done and that was what he was afraid of.
    Did they bomb the church or around here?
No, there were no bombs dropped.  A lady - I don't know whether it was in Crown House or where the butcher now is - sat in her window and she was shot by an enemy plane that was being chased back over the Channel and he just shot anything and everything as he flew over and she sat in her window and she got shot.
   She was killed?
Yes!  I can't remember what her name was.
 
  Can you remember what was where Ludham Garage is?
Where the petrol pumps are, there was a wooden house - a Mr England used to live in there.  Next to that, I don't think there was anything. There was a wheel-wright's yard, I think, before the garage was built, because the garage used to be on the end of that property across the way and that was on the King's Arm's car-park.  There was no car-park there - there used to be a couple of petrol pumps, cranked by hand, and the garage with a lean-to piece added on to it.
My uncle used to be a farmer and he used to tell me that when he was a lad, they used to drive cattle from Norwich as far as Ludham and then they would leave them in a stockade overnight, in the King's Arms - somewhere in the garden there - and then they would drive them on to Sea-Palling or where-ever they had got to go to.

    Was there much opposition when they wanted to build the bungalows here?
I honestly don't know but along that side, there was a perfectly good row of cottages that they demolished.  They belonged to Charley Green of Beeches Farm.  He was the farmer there before Nicky Brooke's father and another chap, Douglas Wright bought it and I can't remember if they sold it to the developers or not.  But they sold the land and the cottages in The Street and in the field behind it.  Before they did the development here, the road used to go round the back like an S.  But whether there was a lot of opposition, I don't know - everybody had a chance to go and have a look at the plans down at the Church Rooms and I went and had a look at them and I don't think that the plans you saw down there had much resemblance to what was built because they were supposed to be bungalows down the Yarmouth Road here.  Three luxury bungalows, as they call them, but what happened to them, I don't know!
  I was reading about the opposition to the Willow Way Estate.
Was there any?
   According to the newspaper report.
Really?  I can remember them being built but I probably wasn't old enough to worry whether there was any opposition or not.  I can remember doing a paper-round down there, when they were building those and there's a natural spring that runs down  .... and there were some old cottages down that road and there was no tap water so the people in those cottages used to go and draw their water from this well.  You used to see them walking down there with a pail and dropping the pail down there on a piece of rope.  Lovely clear water, that was!  Cold!
When they developed Willow Way, of course, they filled the spring in.  It was like two big trap-doors and that opened up with a brick surround.  They filled that in!  Well, a spring has got to go somewhere and I can remember I did a paper-round down there in the winter time, and they had got little pumps everywhere, in all the foundations, trying hard to pump the water out the footings and getting nowhere at all!
     Well, you could see, last year when it kept coming up through the road.
Yes, amazing!  Anglia Water said it wasn't theirs.  No!  It was too good - it wasn't theirs!  Old Alice Warner was one of the people who used to live down there in those cottages.
       
   Can you tell me a little bit about Frank Thrower - what relationship he is to you?
Frank's father and my father were cousins.
    Was there any connection with the shop?
No, there was no connection with the shop.  Frank's father and mother used to run the post office which was entirely separate in those days - over by the Church.  There was no connection business-wise but they were cousins.
   I believe that recently your son has taken over the management of the shop.  Is that right?
Yes, he does an awful lot now - I leave a tremendous amount now to him.  He organizes the staff - knows who's here, who's on holiday and I should think he does 90% of the ordering now.  I still do the banking!
   Are you enjoying your semi-retirement?
I don't know that it's semi-retirement!  I still put in a fair day.  I still do a lot of the paperwork but the day to day running, he does. He could do it - it's not that, and one day he will have to do it, but just at the moment, I still like to see how things are going.
    So that suits you, does it?  You're not looking forward to being able to step back, then?       
Am I looking forward to being able to step back? Yes!
    In the not-too-distant future?
No, I reckon about four years maximum.
 I believe you and your wife have recently moved quite a distance away?  Still in the village?
We're still in the village - we've moved up to Norwich Road.  We lived behind the shop for thirty seven years and Guy and his wife lived at Martham.  They were looking to move because where they were was small - it was all right for him when he was a bachelor, but it was a little bit cramped for two. They were looking for a move so we thought it really doesn't make sense for them to move somewhere else,  because then he'd have to move again so we said why don't we look for something - we'll move and you can move in here - because when the alarm goes off at half past three in the morning, I don't necessarily want to be the one who has to get out of bed.
  Does that happen often?
No, fortunately it doesn't often happen.  He is younger than me and he can move quicker and be up here quicker than I can.
   Sounds like a good plan.  It's worked out well?
Yes, I think that's worked out - first step towards retirement.
   How do you see the future of the shop?
Goodness!  I really wish I knew!  There are so many village shops that have disappeared and are continuing to disappear; when people retire nobody wants to buy them.  They revert back to being a private dwelling.  What the future holds, I don't know.  I just don't know!  When Guy wanted to join me, I did try to paint ever such a black picture for him because I must admit I was a little bit worried about the future.  You saw so many places closing, supermarkets springing up everywhere and I said there's just no guarantee that it will last until I retire, certainly not until you retire.  He worked for Norwich Union and he used to walk in here, finished at quarter to five.  I said to him, 'By all means, if that's what you want to do but you won't be home at quarter to five - you'll go out of the door at the same time as I do.  Bank holidays - forget them!'   I said, 'You'll have to be here and you'll have holidays and that sort of thing but if somebody falls ill three days before you have your holiday, guess who won't get one!'
    The shop has to be his life.
Yes, it has to, because you just have to keep at it and at it.  Probably that's why we're still here - I don't know.
   Well let's hope it will be here for many years to come because it's a super store and we all appreciate all your hard work and Guy's, as well.
Let's hope so.  Thank you very much.

    Did you ever go skating, when the river was frozen?
Yes, down at Womack.
     How far did you go?
We never used to go up the river.  I don't know why.  I was always told we had to stay where the grown-ups were in case anything should happen. But people did used to skate up the river, in fact, Mr Stanley Hunter, from Hunter's boatyard, had a little Austin 7, I think it was, and he drove it, on the ice, to Thurne Lion.  That was what I was told.  We skated on Womack one year, it seemed, for weeks on end and Russell Brookes from the foundry, he used to fix up car batteries in the middle of Womack with a couple of 150 watt bulbs.
    So you skated at night-time?
Yes, we skated at night-time.
    Did you skate as a grown-up or just as a boy?
I haven't ice-skated since - I can't remember how old I was but that was brilliant, we really had some fun and when the ice started to melt, several of us used to go down to the marshes at Ludham Bridge because they were flooded as well and they were only about eighteen inches deep.  A little bit rough but we used to skate on there until that thawed out.  That really was good!
 A surprising number of people used to get down to Womack Staithe.  All ages used to get down there!  One lady used to skate with a chair in front of her.  She was quite a large lady and when she fell we used to wait for the ice to crack and if that held, well it must be good!  She was the butcher's daughter - Mary England - and she was a school teacher in North Walsham and she never got married.  Quite good fun that was, but we don't get the winters like that now - not to have the ice that thick.  I don't know how many people used to get on that; it used to creak and crackle a bit.
    Everyone tells us they used to have much harder winters then.
That's true, yes!  I can't remember how many times Womack froze over.
   You never had any accidents?
No, nobody ever fell through.
   Would they all have had their own skates?
Yes!  I don't know what happened to mine.  Got thrown out, I suppose.  I'm surprised at the number of people who had skates; all the doctors used to skate; Dr Gabriel, Bob Jarvis.

  When did you get married?  Was that in Ludham?
No, I got married in Martham thirty-seven years ago, in the Church of England because my wife's family were Church of England but we actually met at Martham Methodist Youth club.  They used to hold a Youth club every Friday and I used to bike from here to Martham every Friday night.  They say that will draw you further than gun-powder will blow you!

   Who else have you known for a long time around here?
Bill Sloper, of course.  I've known Bill Sloper for as long as I can remember.  He worked in the shop here all his life until he went in the army.

Mike Fuller - I knew his father right well.  His father was cow-man down at Clifford Kittle's (Green Farm).  That's what I wanted to be - a farmer.  I used to spend an awful lot of time down there on my uncle's farm.  Every moment I had - all holidays, Saturdays, not allowed to go Sundays but all the time I could.  I can remember when we used to have horses on the farm and a lot of the work used to be done with horse and cart, collecting up sugar-beet, sugar-beet tops to feed the cows with and strawing.  We used to do that -and cut kale, all by horse and cart.  You can take a horse and cart right into the cow shed while the cows are still there and the old horse wouldn't worry the cows at all.  You could clear up and I've done that!

At harvest time, we used to walk behind the binder with a stick - walk for miles, round and round the field - stop when the men stopped; you have your pack-up lunch and your bottle of fizzy pop in the old Corona bottles.  They were the days!  You could while away the school holidays, they would go just like that!  It was unbelievable.  You can't believe how quick school holidays used to go because you were outside all the time.  Of course, you couldn't now a-days; they'd be frightened to let children out all day.
 
We used to go round the marshes with Mike Fuller's dad.  Used to trail behind him - he used to go down and check up on some of the bullocks on the marshes because they used to graze down there, then we'd go across somewhere else to see if the heifers were all right on another marsh and he'd say, 'Right!  So we've got to jump this dyke, boy!' and he'd jump and I'd think, his legs are longer than mine.
'You'll be all right,' he'd say, 'take a running jump at it!'
And I remember the first time I did it, I ran and one foot hit the bank and the other foot trailed in the dyke and he said, 'That's all right.  Take your boot off.' And this is the sort of thing these old boys would do.  He took my Wellington boot off; tipped it all out - dyke water, mud and all - washed it out, 'take your sock off!' and I took my sock off.  He wrung it out then he got some dry grass and wiped my rubber boot out and then he lined it with dry grass, put my sock and boot back on and, do you know, that foot was warmer than that one?
I never did forget that - because that was in the winter time.       

 We used to walk round and there was a pond out on the marshes where he used to feed the ducks with a bag of corn on Saturdays.                                                     
    And then have them for dinner on Sunday?
They did have bands of farmers come to shoot - organised shoots.
    And he organised them, did he?
Yes, they'd be on his farm one week and on another week they'd be somewhere else.
    Did they have these duck-hunts?
No, that wasn't big enough for that.  It was just an area, I don't know whether he'd dug it out or whether it had flooded or how that had come about but he'd let stuff grow up round it.  You couldn't actually see the duck-pond but that was there.

 What do you think about your uncle's house being pulled down?
Well I think that's probably the only answer to it really.  Uncle never really spent a lot of money on it, he just didn't.  He had it thatched once, I remember, but as far as keeping up with it, he didn't.  It's been empty for such a long time now and an empty house will just deteriorate, won't it?  I should think that the best thing is to pull it down and start afresh.  It is a really lovely site.  The view across the marshes there to Repps and Potter Heigham is wonderful.
   From upstairs?
Even downstairs you can stand and look out of the windows there and there's nothing in front of you.  Wonderful!  Wonderful! 
 
    The village has changed.
Well it has!  But I don't think it has changed an awful lot - not the centre!  When you look at these old photographs, that's still there, the little bungalow is still there, the King's Arms is still there, Crown House is still there.  The only thing that's missing is the Baker's Arms and all those houses that side of the road, and, of course, we now have the garage there.  That was quite a big wooden house there and the wheel-wright's yard.  So that hasn't changed a tremendous amount - just a little and over the years, I think that's quite good going.
    Ludham is still a lovely village to be in, isn't it?
I think that people who have lived here all their lives don't appreciate it - there's a centre!  There's not many villages where you have the Church as close.  The Church is sometimes half a mile out of the village and we've still got a pub, a butcher and we're very fortunate with the doctors - we've got a tremendous doctors' surgery - and one of the few villages that have still got a garage with petrol pumps.  When you think about it, there's not many, is there?  They've all disappeared!  Repps is an exception because they are on a main road but we are not on a main road.  And I think, generally speaking, there is a nice centre to the village and, of course, it's got a good shop.  We'll throw that in!
   Yes, we'll throw that in!  Everyone knows Throwers, though - in Wroxham, Yarmouth and Norwich - they've all heard of Throwers.  You can't get cheese like this anywhere else. What a choice!  Great variety!
We had a couple of ladies come in the shop last Friday and they walked round and they said, 'We don't believe this!  Oh, no!' and I thought whatever's wrong?
So I said, 'Sorry?  Is everything all right?'
'No, not really!  they said.
'What's the problem?'
'We've only just found you.'
'At least you've found us,' I said.
'Yes, but we're going tomorrow!  If we'd only found you earlier!  It's been dreadful.  We haven't found a decent shop.  You walk into some of these shops and they ask if you would like a loaf of bread or a packet of ham.'
  And  now your pastry counter; your latest addition.
 Yes, a lady last week, wanted to know if there was any chance I could move up to Leicester.

Thank you, Tommy.
My pleasure!