Individual results

Interviewee: Beryl Sykes

Track 1
Born Stoke Heath, Coventry. Married aged 23 years. Lived in "good street". Played rounders round trees. Played tip-it and whip-and-top in cracks in pavement. Played fivestones. "Neighbours helped each other". Mother a good seamstress. Mother made her a dress so she could "twizzle round".

Track 2
Mother "a really good seamstress". Holiday for a fortnight - "brown as little berries". Dad worked at Humber - his father a machinist there. Father an improver - "a natural engineer" - foreman, then supervisor. War started - father went to Ryton to set up a machine shop there. School - Stoke Heath Primary and Junior School.

Track 3
"Always in trouble for talking" (had cane at school). School strict. Mothers took children a warm drink (before school milk). Juniors - in trouble. Empire Day - stood in rows. Stoke council school.

Track 4
Failed 11+ examination. Strict teacher "but fair". War started - evacuation. Aged 11 / 12 years. School evacuated but she wouldn't go.

Track 5
Explored Stoke and Wyken. School part-time - "suited me". Aged 11 / 12 years - Mother told her she had to be a shorthand typist! Mother worked on machines. Left school aged 14 years. Curtis & Beamish - printers.

Track 6
Blitz - 1940 - Dad dug a dug-out. "Mother's nerves were giving way". Went to Marton. Cycled from Stoke Heath every night and morning. Blitz - couldn't come back into Coventry for a week. Uncle in hospital. "Terrible mess" (unexploded land mine). Bike accident.

Track 7
April Blitz - Stoke Heath - bomb exploded - got back into shelter. Water and gas were on and off. Paraffin stove. Didn't like crowded shelter. Centre of town - vacant spaces - cellars for water reserve. Gaumont, Scala and Empire cinema's - and Opera House.

Track 8
Mother didn't like her to go to cinema - "no class to films and a fleapit". Mother wanted her daughters to be posh. Met boys on Bunny Run - Saturday's and Sunday's - pictures (Gaumont) - aged 18 years (1947) - "see if there was any talent" (Americans in town) - "see if you could 'click'". Eating pork batches and drinking ginger wine.

Track 9
GEC dance hall (floor sprung). Masonic Hall in Park Street. Rialto Casino. Had to save up. Living at home. Curtis & Beamish - printers - delivering around Coventry. Shared birthday with worker. "Liked making things". "Would have loved to have gone on the stage" (but Mother wouldn't let her).

Track 10
Mother jealous of theatre group - "Mother domineering". Litho department. Connection with Lawrence Of Arabia (other worker). Married - husband in Navy - Bunny Run (Spencer Avenue) - blatant!

Track 11
Bunny Run - "have a look!" (met on Bank steps - still there in town). "Earn something!" (on Bank steps). Curtis & Beamish. On Bunny Run met a sailor (later murdered by French because he had been with a French girl) - she was aged 20 years (1947) - got photo.

Track 12
Saw his parents - husband a year younger - "within 12 months we'd got married". Daughter, then son. 1961 - at present address. "Always were hard up". Married 1951 - daughter born 1953, son 1955 - husband came out of Navy 1954. Saved for house deposit.

Track 13
House in Uplands (parents). Mother's sisters weren't in council houses. House in Linley Road - husband in Arctic. Second-hand furniture, etc. - "we were poor". Husband took Navy exam to earn more money. Had to let half the house. Lino on floor. Copper, dolly tub, and mangle.

Track 14
Husband came out of Navy in 1954. Strikes and short-time working (also redundancies). Married aged 22 years. Eldest sister married a soldier. Husband came from Foleshill - "ragged arsed little boy" - lived near 'cut' (canal). House in Linley Road (for 9 years).

Track 15
Present house. Social life - "no money to go out". Likes making things - Curtis & Beamish. Husband at Jaguar on nights.

Track 16
Husband was at Rootes - then PR Motors in Foleshill - then Siskin Drive - then Red Ring - then Jaguar (11 years on nights) - then GEC - then Woodcroft (Brandon) - then died of cancer aged 57. "Lack of money" brought husband out of Navy. She was lonely when he was in Navy (in torpedoes). Aged 14 to 16 husband worked in Morris Motors.

Track 17
Married in 1951. Coventry being rebuilt in 1950s. "Made friends with neighbours". New precinct - "quite like it - a mess up to then". Liked Godiva island. No car - bus or bike. New cathedral "great". Old cathedral - climbed to tower. Cathedral reconstruction - "typed a lot of letters for it!".

Track 18
Liked new cathedral. Sad to see things knocked down. "What is being built now is for the next generation". Sorry the Hippodrome is going. Councillors not born here - "they don't know the heart of Coventry". Coventrians kept together - "all knew each other" - "gone quite a lot" (now). Not the same pride in Coventry from non-Coventrians.

Track 19
"Roots really embedded in Coventry". Different races - "cosmopolitan place" (now) - "Coventrians swamped"…"not like it used to be". Children - son in Coventry.

Track 20
Daughter in Long Lawford. Her eyebrows were raised when her children misbehaved! "My dad was a lovely dad" - Mum disciplinarian. Dad when young went to old Hippodrome - got in without paying if in a crowd! Dad did Al Jolson routine, etc.

Track 21
Mum said to her "go and meet your father" (on saddle of his bike). Looked after parents. "Possessive and domineering mother" (her Mother). Parents cremated in Canley - "that's where I want to go".

Track 22
"I couldn't be buried - I want to be free". Bookbinding. Does embroidery and sketching / drawing. Nine friends in Binley circle. Art class - painting water colours.

Track 23
Bookbinding. Spent a lot on house - "quite happy here" - "I'm very content with what I have".

Time: 67:25

Coventry Lives Oral History Project, date of birth: 1927