- Iris Theobald and Ivy James, railway children (Rogiet)
Iris Theobald and Ivy James (Emma Drabble)
▶ Watch interview with Ivy, Terry and Iris
George and Fanny Kibbey moved from Worcestershire to work on the Great Western Railway. As daughter Iris Theobald recalls: “Nearly every family had a man working on the railway.” Iris had four sisters: Ivy, Olive, May and Rose. Ivy (James) remembers the family receiving cheap coal. “The railway would dump a ton in the road and we’d to shovel it into the coal house.”
Their father drove steam engines on ‘double homes’ (staying one night away) and emergency stand-ins - “the call boy came knocking any time of the day or night to get him up.” The Royal Train, meanwhile, was sometimes parked close to the Severn Tunnel near Portskewett Station. “They said it was a secret, but we all knew.”
The railway sisters would roam the Levels. Iris: “The fields were just all wild flowers: we spent half our life on the Moors. There’d be cockling between the tides - you’d got to be careful - the tide comes in quickly” and perhaps a penny’s worth of ice cream in a glass on Sundays “shared because there was no money then”.
“We’d be down the moors, make a house in the woods, follow the fox hounds and red coats, or chat to the Gypsies with their brown and white horses and old-fashioned caravans.” When war came there was munition work, making blackout headlamp covers and, if you were lucky, dancing with GIs. It was, says Ivy, “ten time better than it is now.”
Life on the Levels Interview:
Iris and Ivy grew up in ‘railway’ town, Rogiet, where their father worked on steam trains. They reflect on the building of the M4, wartime fun, wildlife and the sea wall.