CD3

(57 mins)

3/1

MOVING TO BRUSHFORD / BUILDING BUNGALOW / RUNNING GARAGE WITH STEPMOTHER / CLOSING GARAGE / LEASING BUILDINGS TO NORTH DEVON FARMERS / GARAGE FORECOURT REMAINING / WORKING FOR OTHERS / WORKING WITH FATHER NOT IDEAL

CN enjoyed the garage. When he moved to Brushford he built a bungalow called Merryfield. He badgered his father to give him a plot of land that he had next to the garage. He begrudgingly let him have the plot of ground for £100 to build a house on, saying it was the stupidest thing he could ever do. CN had a legacy from his Swiss grandfather when he died for a £1,000, so they said they would plough all that into building a house, which he did in Brushford, right next to the garage. It was very convenient.

It was a modern bungalow built by Fishers of Dulverton. They got the contract and built it for £3,000 in1963. They built the structure, but he did all the finishing off, because they couldn't afford any more. It was architect designed. It was a chalet bungalow. He finished it off so they could do it on the cheap. That's why it was £3,000.

They lived there until 1983 when they moved to their present house. CN ran the garage until 1979. Then his stepmother wanted to pull out. She was partner with CN in the garage after his father died. They ran it together. She wanted to pull out. So they decided they would lease the buildings and close the garage down, or try and sell the business. Eventually it turned out they couldn't sell it  So they leased the buildings to North Devon Farmers. They said they would keep it on as a garage but they had no intention of doing so. Being a co-operative they really wanted it as a place of sale for goods to farmers, but they made the lease include the sale of petrol, rather naughtily because they felt it should stay as a garage forecourt. He couldn't remember why they thought that, probably nostalgia.

So CN eventually went to work for them after they had leased it. That was the terms, that they should employ him. Anyway he couldn't get on with them. He managed the branch after he had spent twelve months with somebody there. He managed it for two years. Eventually he couldn't stand them any longer because he thought they didn't know how to run a business. As it turned out they didn't because they went bust. So he went to work for another agricultural firm in Plymouth. He couldn't stand them either so he thought he had better go back working for himself again. He thinks when you have worked for yourself, you don't easily work for somebody else.

It was stormy working for his father. He was not an easy man. He was a Victorian. He was born in the Victorian era. Like all of us, he carried on the bit he was born with. He doesn't think the father and son thing would have worked. It had to work because he had to work with him but [pause] Eventually they sorted their differences out and they went on, but it wasn't ideal.

When his stepmother took it on it was less ideal. It was left in trust. His stepmother was given the option to stay there and earn a living until her retirement and he felt that he knew the job and could support her so he stayed on until she retired. Then he decided he would get out, went to North Devon Farmers which didn't work, went to work for the firm in Plymouth which didn't work, then started this garden machinery business. {BJ queries life being stormy as he had said earlier that he had enjoyed that period of his life]. Although it was stormy, it was what he wanted to do, so he was prepared  When he said stormy perhaps he was exaggerating, he thought, but it was that way inclined. It was a father and son relationship that wasn't to be. It wasn't the ideal situation, but nevertheless he thought he ought to go and work there. He enjoyed it. It wasn't a partnership. He was an employee, perhaps that was what was the problem. It was a limited company, so it was a question of directors and employees. Before he died he did actually make CN a director, but it was really a name. It was still what he wanted to do, still what he enjoyed doing, still what he felt he should do, and it was a good period of his life. [Back to top]
 

3/2

BANGER RACING / RIPHAY SCUFFLE / ROCK COTTAGE, DULVERTON / FINANCIAL STRAITS / CHAPEL STREET / IN FORCES AT TIME OF LYNMOUTH FLOOD

After his father died CN took up a thing called banger racing. It was in it's infancy. They were one of the forerunners of it. Himself and the local policeman used to race old cars on the top of Hulverton Hill, behind the garage, just for fun. He's not here anymore. He was called Bob Phillpot  He was the local policeman of the time. He had an interest in cars and he came to the garage. It just happened that they decided that was what they would do. So they took some cars up there and raced them.

Eventually banger racing became quite a big thing for charity racing. There were big events and loads of people bought scrap cars and did racing. Then there were regulations. There was a lot of time wasted but a lot of fun had. They took them round the North Devon circuit and the Tiverton circuit. They raised a lot of money for charity and had a lot of fun with it. So that was in conjunction with the garage. He wouldn't have done it without his association with the garage. He dragged along the children and Betty and they had fun, picnics and so on, although latterly she got fed up with it and rightly so. And in the end CN got fed up with it. They started bringing in so many regulations and CN thought that was the time to finish it.

[BJ asks about the Riphay Scuffle] The Riphay Scuffle came out of it. He didn't have anything to do with it. They just ran a few banger races down there before that. Then Tom Yandle started afterwards to raise money for the hunt. It's gone on ever since. That is largely a 4 wheel drive event, whereas the racing was just ancient old cars due for the scrap heap. They use all sorts at the Scuffle. CN doesn't get involved with that anymore! He leaves that to Tom.

Before they moved to Brushford from Hartford they moved to Rock Cottage in Dulverton. They lived in one up and one down circumstances because they thought it was closer [to all the amenities]. They didn't stay there very long. They were still quite poor. They couldn't afford turkey for Christmas dinner so they had chicken. They had to store it in a meat safe because they didn't have a fridge. The meat safe was on the wall out side. Next door's cat got in and ate it, just before Christmas! They couldn't afford another one. It was a real disaster, a big disaster He thinks of it being a terrifying experience. They got over it in the end!

Then they went to Chapel Street in Dulverton. It was a nice three bed-roomed house. The only one with a garden. They were there two years or something. It was damp, because the leat runs close to it, underneath it. He expects it was coming up there.

He was in the forces when the Lynmouth flood happened. So he didn't know anything about it. It was unfortunate really. He doesn't remember anything. He was probably in Egypt. He was in the forces in 1952. Perhaps that is the only disadvantage of being in the forces! You aren't where you should be. You can't be broadening your horizons and be where you should be! [Back to top]
 

3/3

GARAGE REPAIR WORK / SELLING CARS / AGENCIES / BUILDING BUNGALOW / BUYING NAAFI BUILDING / CUSTOMERS

CN's work in the garage was all repair work. They did some sales but not very much. Sale of cars was not Carnarvon Arms forte. They sold a few second hand ones. They did have an Austin agency once. Back through the years they had several agencies. They started with Gladiators. Gladiators are 1910. They took on agencies but they were all for a very short while. He doesn't think car sales were very successful, ever. They had a Morris agency for a short time in the 50s. That was the last they ever had. They wanted too much. They wanted posh showrooms. They built a couple but they weren't good enough for them, so they sold second hand cars as well.

It was down to repair work, and that was really what he liked doing. It was a Dutch barn originally and was up to 1979, when he rebuilt it over the other side of the road, because the licensing people wouldn't let them sell fuel on the corner of a junction. So they closed that side down. It was on the northerly side of the Brushford road, where Market Close is now. It was a Dutch barn with attached corrugated buildings, and a rather charming office which was wooden, which remained up to 1979 when they bulldozed it down. They sold that bit of ground and rebuilt where it is now.

It had just been a field. That was where he built his house just behind the new site. Luckily they had retained that piece so they were able to rebuild it on the southern side of the road. He built it with the cost of the ground that he had sold for development for housing. He rebuilt it within that money which he thinks was £17,000. That was in 1969 when they started it and '79 when they finished it. He got Victor Newton, a Brushford builder then to put it up.

He bought the old NAAFI building that he had been in, in Hampshire. He did some training there when he was in the forces. It was a steel framed building and they happened to be knocking it down, and he saw it advertised. So he rang up and bought the building, which is now where the garage stands. They put up the iron framed building. He brought it all down on their trucks. It was the actual NAAFI building that he was in when he was training. It was just a coincidence. So that part of his life is still there. So they put the new garage up, which remains.

Early on most of the customers were grand. There were few families with cars. The cars were all ordinary, Austins and Wolseleys, which dated from pre-war. If you take it on to after the war when he went into the trade, there were still a lot of pre-war cars about. He remembers repairing those. In the fifties there were more people with cars. The old cars then were somebody else's new ones from before the war. They went down the line and they were in all sorts of hands by the time CN got his hands on them. Although they were thirties cars in the 40s they weren't used because there wasn't any fuel. They were perhaps 20 years old, they had actually only been used for 10. Cars lasted much longer.

They had the custom of the Pixton estate. There was also Coombe estates. Coombe was Harrison then Wilson. Mrs Wilson till lives there. The estate was much bigger then because Hawkridge belonged to it. Coombe itself is not a big estate, but he had all of Hawkridge. The house and estate has only just been broken up. There was Wonham estate they served then. Largely it was farming. They dealt with an awful lot of farmers in those days. Now of course it doesn't work like that.

[RECORDING SUSPENDED] [Back to top]
 

3/4

MOVE TO NORTHMOOR ROAD / DULVERTON TEXTILE MILLS / SETTING UP GARDEN MACHINERY BUSINESS / HISTORY OF TEXTILE FACTORY / FLUCTUATIONS OF GARDEN MACHINERY BUSINESS / LOCATION / CATCHMENT AREA / FOOT AND MOUTH / CHANGES IN MACHINERY / DOMESTIC MARKET

[Recording resumed Weds 6^th Feb 2002]

After CN moved from the Carnarvon Arms Garage, it was the period when they moved to 41 Northmoor Road where he is now. It was the Dulverton Textile Mill. It was a semi-derelict building full of looms and machines, that had to be moved before he could start his business.

They moved all the furniture into a roof space, which was supposed to be a flat ,which they discovered was overrun with mice. He moved the furniture in with Tom Yandle's cattle truck. They wanted to do it themselves because they wanted to do it bit by bit. They moved in atrocious weather into the flat, in a cattle truck. It worked well.

Then they had to get the machines out of the building, so they had a scrap man in to do it. The huge machines had to be broken up and taken for scrap. Then they set about making a workshop, building a showroom, and rebuilding the flat, all at the same time. The workshop was still full of looms. So they had to empty it to make an empty space. They wanted it to move from garage industry to garden machinery industry. He had had enough of cars and felt he would like to move into that field.

He had had some considerable experience during the three years when he worked for North Devon Farmers. So perhaps it was a mechanical progression from cars to garden machinery. They had to set about starting a new business right from scratch. It was a suitable building but it wasn't converted. This was about 1983.

The textile factory shut down some 3 years prior to them moving in and went bankrupt. It was started by Sir Whaley-Cohen and Auberon Herbert as a method of employing people in Dulverton, a light industry. It was successful over the years but then the textile market moved to Taiwan and other far eastern countries, where it was much cheaper to produce. It was interesting to note that when they took the machines apart, they were circular looms for making knitted yarn. They had previously made a lot of yarn involving lurex. Lurex at that time was going out of fashion, so they lost the market. Then they went bankrupt. The buildings were available for some time before CN bought them. It probably employed about a dozen people. They had brought an engineer down from the north to maintain the machines and advise them how to use them. There were a few records left there but nothing substantial.

Having got rid of all the machinery they then started the business. It's had its ups and downs through all the years following. In hindsight, it was not the location to be with garden machinery as the population factor was not very high. They serve an area from Dulverton to Lynmouth and Minehead, to Wiveliscombe, to Tiverton, to South Molton. If you take that area, they serve a big area, but in that area there is Exmoor and Exmoor has more sheep than it has people. Sheep don't need mowers. They have been reasonably successful and he's reasonably happy with it, and he has employed one or two people throughout that period. They have had recessions and various things have effected business.

Latterly the Foot and Mouth epidemic really hit them. The amount of moving about of the population and the amount of moving they could to pick up machines was so restricted that it was a fairly disastrous year in 2001. Now he only employs one person, his grandson, Shane, and he employs one girl part-time on the paperwork, besides himself. So that is the business in a nutshell.

He has some new machines in the window. Nowadays mowing is changing and they have moved into the tractor market much more, especially in the last 17 or 18 years that he has been there. They started with largely pedestrian mowers. They have now moved rapidly into larger machines which are sit on tractors mowers. It's altering again so there will be a lot more bigger machines, particularly on bigger properties on Exmoor.

The average price of one of the bigger machines is now about £2,800. There are machines that run up to £10,000, which he has sold one or two of, but not many. They do go as low as a £1,000. They are of a cheaper make and not so long lasting. The bigger machines are really for estate use or golf course use, or local government use. Their market is largely domestic, so they don't touch into the professional side of machinery. Although there is a big market in that, living where they do it's difficult. If they were nearer a town or city, or you were in touch with government authorities you would probably gain a lot more trade, but of course on the other hand there is a lot more competition. So perhaps in hindsight, if you look at it that way, they touch the fringes of that [market] and that is the best way they can be. [Back to top]
 

3/5

OTHER MACHINERY / COMPETITION / TECHNICAL ADVANCES / MOWER INDUSTRY LESS INNOVATIVE / DISTRIBUTION / TAKE-OVERS / HANKERING FOR CARS

He sells chainsaws, strimmers, power washers and all the spare parts.. That is the most lucrative side. The machinery part is very competitive. Even though they are out in the sticks, as some people call it, they have quite a bit of competition from 'the sheds' as they call them. That is the supermarkets. They also have farming co-operatives which are a thorn in their side. They discount heavily. So they are up against it. That's why he says that the repair market, the spares market and the accessories market are more lucrative than the bigger side of the market.

 The technical side of it is not as advanced as you might think. The motor industry has gone ahead in leaps and bounds. The mower side tends to drag it's heels, in terms of technology. There are moves where they are getting electronics. There is a lot of innovative machinery coming in from America They get a lot from Australia and a lot from the far east. It is improving. He's always looked at it as a Mickey Mouse industry, but it has to be served, so they have to accept it. The technology is getting better. The engines are getting better. The different types of cut are getting better, so there is better grass collection. It doesn't stand still but it doesn't move like the car industry.

It's a strange industry because the car industry gets a lot of support by the bigger people spreading their technology to the smaller people, where the mower industry is not very good at that. They have to fight to get courses. Technological advances are not so well known as they might be. All in all it's not a bad industry. Technology comes through their distributors. The machines are distributed by larger dealers before they get to them, on the whole. There are some machines that are brought in by concessionaires, they don't pass on the technology as well as they should, so CN has to rely on the bigger dealers to give him the information.

The chainsaw side is very similar. Nearly all machines are distributed in the same way. It's done through a larger dealer network, which isn't ideal. A lot of manufacturers change their concessionaires quite regularly. This is because they get take-overs in top industry. They find that a firm is owned by somebody much bigger. There was a firm of mower manufacturers which was taken over by Portland Cement. You would think that Portland Cement has nothing to do with garden machinery. Big business is run to make money, so a mower manufacturing business isn't necessarily to do with that, it's to do with making money. Then you find that another big manufacturer is owned by a Chinese consortium, and an English firm at that. So the continuity is not good.

Sometimes he hankers after what he was trained to do, cars. He doesn't want to go back to it but he misses it. [Back to top]
 

3/6

PAPERWORK / COMPUTERS / BETTY'S EMPLOYMENT / DAUGHTER CHRISTINE'S CATERING BUSINESS / BUILDING COMMERCIAL KITCHEN / PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

Paperwork has changed in so much that it must have tripled. They were one of the first firms in the neighbourhood to have a computer. When they started the garden machinery business they had a little Amstrad. They took on board a Sage accounting programme which he still uses. He's not sure it was the right thing to do. They thought that was the way to go. It's said that computers would do away with paperwork, but in his experience it triples paper work. Accountancy and the Inland Revenue being what they are, he finds that they nearly always have to produce hard copies of everything. He hates the paper work but he has to do it. He thinks if he had paid more attention to the paperwork, he would have made more money. He works with his hands. He's not a paper work man!

Betty his wife was school secretary for a number of years. She gave up that five years ago, because she was retiring age. Then she started voluntary work. In 1993, when things were a bit difficult money wise so they decided to split some of the building down. They used some of the premises to convert to a commercial kitchen. His daughter Christine was working with them at the time doing his paperwork. They said they ought to make more use of the building. She was trained for catering, so she decided she would like to continue with that. So he built a commercial kitchen, 5 or 6 years ago. They started a business from scratch.

At the Christmas of the year he had applied for planning permission and got it and built it in 3 months, with the help of one or two local people. He got his daughter up and running by April. She has set off on the business of doing cakes and outside catering. They thought it would be a part time job for her and she could still do the paperwork. That was a disaster because the business took off so quickly. CN was left trying to handle all the paper work and she was booming away making cakes and catering. Then his wife had to take over the catering paper work because that became so large that Christine couldn't run it. She was working hard cooking. So now his daughter manages the catering and his wife does the paperwork. It has been more than successful. Probably in the not too distant future he will shut down the garden machinery business because she needs more room to expand. He will let her go forward.

He wants to get out of it because he's now 68 and perhaps ought to be thinking about finishing, although he doesn't really want to. She does need more room. She makes more money than CN. That is possibly is one of the more deciding factors. So he will have to let his grandson take the garden machinery some where else, and Christine will expand the catering side. He doesn't know if he will step down entirely, it is to be seen! [Back to top]
 

3/7

AUSTIN 12 INTEREST / SOMERSET AUSTIN 10 & 12 CLUB / RALLIES / PYRENEES TRIP / FRIENDS THROUGH RALLYING

One of CN's interests in the past is that he runs an old 1933 Austin 12 as a hobby. He's also got another vehicle which is a 1935 Standard 10, which he bought some years ago. He thought he would be able to get going and restore within a year. That was six years ago. It still isn't finished purely through lack of time. If he finishes with the garden machinery he would like to restore old cars, as long as he is able, more as a hobby than making money. He doesn't think you can make money out of that. He would like to work with his hands but not under pressure. That is the way he sees it in the future.

The Austin is now being used. He restored it, 15 years ago. That same car when he was in the motor industry, did a partial body restoration on it, for a local school teacher, who was a Miss Leadbeater from Brompton Regis. She found that she couldn't afford to pay the bill so she gave him the car in lieu of the bill. She said you will keep it, so he said he would.

He ran it for a year ago and it wasn't very good. He didn't have time to restore it so when he came to Dulverton he decided to do it properly. Then he joined the Austin drivers club which is the one that looks after that car. There are different clubs for different cars. There isn't an Austin 12 club so they joined the Austin 10. He became quite active in that club. He started a Somerset region 10s and 12s club which was affiliated to the main club. Since then he has run rallies and days for this region. He's attended the national rallies. That took up quite a lot of his time and he made a lot of friends through that and still have a lot of friends through that. So the interest in old cars continues.

He keeps it in a garage down the road because he's short of space. He was hoping that he might get a bit more space to do that when he finishes with the garden machinery. He uses it regularly at weekends. It's really not a high class expensive motor car, because it's what was known as a bread and butter motorcar in its day. It's the sort of car that some local chap might have had for collecting people from the station. So it isn't worth great money, so that when he restored it he wasn't going to keep it in a show room condition. He uses it and he uses it a lot. It's not concourse so if it's not concourse you don't enter it for a lot of competitions. Concourse is like working in the horse world for dressage. He's been all over the place with it.

He's taken it to the Pyrenees. He took it across the channel and down into Spain and did a run across the Pyrenees. He won't do that again, unless he allows himself more time. He allowed himself 10 days and it wasn't sufficient. He spent all the time driving. It was an interesting trip. Nothing happened. The car behaved absolutely perfectly. The speed was quite slow averaging about 35 miles an hour. The most you would get out of it was 50. It's quite slow, but reasonably reliable. So it was a bit of fun. Normally they rally over England. He hasn't been much further north than say York, and probably out the east coast. He does use it quite a lot.

If he goes out at the weekend they just go out and walk the dog. They have had some fun things locally. There are several local gatherings where they just have a run over the moor. Different clubs do different things and you get involved with them. The old car latterly has been a large part of his spare time.

They call it nut-brown but it's really chocolate brown and black. Of course all pre-war cars were black, although most of them were. This one happened to be nut-brown. He quite likes the colour. It's quite interesting. It's been through lots of breakdowns and stuff like that. You get that with old cars. So that is half the fun of using it.

Of course nowadays on high speed roads it can be a bit frightening, because you cannot get out of somebody's way when you want to. So you have to be careful as to what roads you use. He tends not to use the motorway. He uses minor roads. Consequently a run of 180 miles will take the best part of a day. Whereas with a modern car you could reckon doing it in 3-4 hours. You tend to under-estimate everything. Also it's quite interesting, whenever his father took the car out, perhaps they were going to Salisbury, it used to be we'll have to get the car ready the day before. It's like that now if you use an old car you have to get it ready beforehand. Whereas with a modern car you just jump in and go. So things have changed.

The motoring side is still in his blood but not really for gain or reward! The reward is in running it now and using an old car. Because he joined this club and then started to run their own club locally, they have made an awful lot of friends and still do a lot locally. They even have things like Christmas dinners that they organise with the club. They organised one only a month ago I January. They went Crowcombe church hall. They didn't actually take the cars but they had 40 people there, children all sorts. It's part of seeing people and meeting people. That's really where the car bit comes in and is probably why he still likes to do it He still restores [cars] and keeps within it. [Back to top]
 

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CHILDREN'S CAREER PATHS

CN's son farms in Lincolnshire for a big estate. When he left Dulverton he went to Cannington Agricultural college. He shirked his exams much to CN's dismay, then cleared off. He did go back into the agricultural industry. He tried working in West Somerset  His father advised him that he wouldn't do anything here and that he would be better going into big farming. After one or two different jobs, he's now in Lincolnshire. This arable farm decided to do away with the sheep, because of last year [the foot and mouth epidemic] and he was into sheep. So he's gone off on his own now doing some contract work. He does all sorts. So CN goes up to see him occasionally, probably twice a year.

His middle daughter, Suzanne, got married quite young. She had a family into their teens, then she had a marriage bust up. Then she kicked about not knowing what she wanted to do. She became what CN calls a middle-aged hippy! She wanted to opt out. She went to Glastonbury, where all the opt-outs seem to go. She is perfectly happy. She lives there by herself now. She helps run a restaurant.

Christine after she worked for CN, she was trained to do catering, she went to the Technical at Taunton. She went into the catering industry and then she got dreadful dermatitis, so she had to come out of that. Then she worked for CN doing paperwork and now she's back into the catering industry again. She's lost the dermatitis and making quite a success of it. So that is the family in a nutshell. They all went to school in Dulverton.

The headmaster of the primary school, when his son went there, they got quite friendly with him and they still correspond, although he lives in Cheddar. He went to be a headmaster elsewhere. All the children went through the first school and the middle school, then to Minehead. So they all went locally to school, unlike CN. He vowed that when he went to public school that he would never send his children there. It wasn't the best time of his life. They've proved to be quite successful. He thinks the local schools were the best system. [Back to top]