Iris Jones-Simantel

Return to South Oxhey

By Beverley Small

Iris Jones Simantel signing books
by Beverley Small
Iris Jones Simantel speaking
by Beverley Small
Enjoying cakes and photos of Oxhey
by Beverley Small

Iris Jones-Simantel returned to South Oxhey for the first time in many years, to speak to a crowded room about her new book “Far from the East End”.

Moving in

Iris was evacuated to Oxhey on May day in the 50s and she spoke about a clear memory of “a sea of mud” which your feet would sink into and you couldn’t get out. Her best friend from Dagenham, Sheila McDonald, and her sisters Maureen and Kathleen moved there too.  Her mother put up sheets at the windows to stop people looking in.

They thought they were in heaven because of all the woods and fields, where they gathered armloads of bluebells, it was “the happiest summer of my life”.

Shopping

There were no shops and she used to go to Braziers Farm with an old pram to carry the shopping back in.  They used to use the pram to go to the gasworks to fill it up with coke.  Barkers van and the Co-op van came next.

School

There were no schools when they arrived so she started at Watford Fields, where her teacher was Mr Handiman.  She used to get the bus from Oxhey Lane.  She remembers tripping and falling, and breaking her arm at school.

Iris then went to Victoria School for Girls where she was taunted by the other pupils.  The headmistress told them that as “council girls” they would not be there long as they would soon have their own school, and good riddance.  They experienced the worse discrimination from the other children.

Hampden was a wonderful school however, and Iris loved it.  She, Myra Austin and Sheila McDonald all got the cane, but did not tell their parents, they dumped Miss Chater the gardening teacher in the compost heap.

Life after school

Iris’s first job was in Jax Womenswear shop in Watford High Street.  Then she went to work at Odhams.  Her mother blew tea out of her nose when Iris told her that she had met an american soldier, and got engaged on her 16th birthday.  She got married in Oxhey Chapel as the new All Saints Church was not yet consecrated.  After she had moved abroad with her new husband, her parents would wait by the phone box in Little Oxhey Lane for her weekly phone book on a Sunday night.

Would you like to read more about Iris’s life?  Then why not read her book FAR FROM THE EAST END

This page was added on 19/04/2013.

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  • Moved 1947 Caldwell Rd remember no bus service train to Watford schools often knocked over by building workers rushing from station always known as Carpenders Park only small parade of shops at Little Oxhey Lane milk and bread men delivered to homes then. No where for kids to go played on the Steets no big problem.Any of the Boar or Drury Scott Hide or Bacon families still around. I’m 82 so be interested if you are.

    By Henry Gardiner (28/04/2018)
  • I went to Watford Grammar School and heard many critical comments from the headmaster about the students from the LCC Estate at South Oxhey, but since I was above average as an athlete was accepted as being “almost” normal. It was a good school, although South Oxhey left something to be desired. I left the estate at the age of 16 and became Chartered Accountant. Tom Miller

    By Tom Miller (21/11/2017)