One of my Aunts had moved out to Enfield, and when the bombing became very bad in Central London my Mother moved to Enfield to live with them. After about a year of being evacuated, I went back to Enfield and stayed with my Aunt for a while and eventually my parents bought a house in Busher Park in Enfield. I was at school then in Enfield, a place called Enfield Central School and later when there were V2 rockets I was evacuated again to Southport in Lancashire and I stayed for about another year.

I was an office boy first of all after I left school, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, I had no qualifications, I hadn’t decided anything at that stage. I got this job eventually as an office boy at the Lea Conservancy Board. The Lea Conservancy Board managed the River Lea and the River Stort, now there were two boards, but they worked together. One was the Lea Conservancy Board and one was the Lea Conservancy Catchment Board. The Conservancy Board was mainly concerned with navigation and the Catchment Board were mainly concerned with protection and purification of water and things like that and after being there for some months as an office boy, I liked the Engineering work, because there engineers based there doing improvements to locks and weirs and steel sheet piling for river walls etc. and I was quite interested in that. I asked if I could be trained as a Draughtsman, the Agreement of my Apprenticeship was for 5 years from 1946 to 1951, starting at the princely sum of 35/- a week and rising by 2/6d a week for 5 years to 42/6d.

The Engineers office was based at Enfield Lock which was where I worked. It was quite a fascinating place, because as well as the Engineering works, it was a base for boat building with things that are called adzes, like an axe but with a flat blade, so they were doing boat building and repairs, they had the horses there of course and they were fascinating as they were massive horses. I had an arrangement with the people who looked after them, and as they arrived at the top of the yard, I used to dash up there and have a ride on the horse, which was very nice, down to where they were stabled.

It was a rich sort of life, there was always something happening, there was a time when in 1947 we could hardly get near the yard when things were flooded. I worked around Enfield and towards Bishops Stortford where the Stort ended, because the Lea goes from Limehouse Lock to Hertford and then at a place called Sawbridgeworth the Stort joins the Lea and goes up to Bishops Stortford.

I used to do a lot of work as a Surveyor, I was apprenticed as a Draughtsman but a lot of surveying was involved. We used to check on the levels, we’d have a punt and a wire or string which would stretch across the river and we’d take dippings to measure how deep the bed was and to check when it was necessary to dredge if the waterway was getting restricted.

The canals were the main arteries, they were used a lot, but they stopped using them. Horses were then changed to small tractors and it all changed. It was so relaxing going by river, there was for a long time when I thought Id like to be a Lock Keeper, I’m glad I didn’t at the end of the day, but it was an idyllic lifestyle, they had their patch, and also they had a lot of land for gardening, a very pleasant lifestyle.