My Friend and Mentor Middy Page

Middy is a well known local character, of the luike that only comes along once in a lifetime. His father was known as ‘Wag’. He along with Middy, his brothers and mum were Romany Gypsies. Middy, his dad and brother Johnny were poachers on local farms and estates. This was mostly out of neccessity for a meal, or to sometimes sell on. A few of these were rabbits, pheasants and the occasional deer if it came their way.

Middy, along with his family travelled around a lot to different parts of Hertfordshire and surrounding areas often in their gypsy horse drawn wagon and would pitch up in farms or a quiet verge somewhere to stay for a night, or to maybe work in the local farms as hired help.

Middy and his family were mostly known in the Welham Green area of Hertfordshire and were well respected as hard working people.

Middy and his dad worked together a lot during farm work like Hedgelaying, rick building, thatching and using various bits of farm machiney, eg thrashing machines and seed sowing. They could do almost any type of manual work required on a farm at that time.

Sadly, Middy’s father died a while ago leaving Middy to carry on doing some of the work that he and his father used to do together. At this stageI think I should give Middys two brothers a mention.

His older brother was Charlie Page, who was a real nice gentleman. His occupation was as a scaffolder and general builder. When I look into peoples front driveways of areas that Charlie worked in, you could generally say that that was a Charlie Page driveway or a Charlie Page brickwall if you knew his style.

His other brother was called Johnny. Middy told me he was a rather shy man, who liked to keep to himself and often went out on his own with his dog to catch rabbits.

Middy often told me, over a beer or two, different stories about him, his dad and brother Johnny and what they would get up to. Johnny used to work at the local nursery and was not very good at reading his watch. He could only tell the time when the hands pointed at the hours. He apparently would often miss his breaks because he forgot to look at his watch during the correct time. So he would then have to work until the hands went around to the next hour, so he could again tell the time. By then, he would have done an extra hour of work and missed his lunch or tea break. He was often too embarrassed to ask the time as Middy said he would often blush due to his shy nature.

He worked for the nursery for a long time and they liked him. Johnny was also a very good hedgelayer - probably as good as Middy- and often made little miniature hedges to practice his skills. Unfortunately, Johnny and Charlie are no longer with us, but they are not forgotten.

This is a part of a hedge that runs along the Great North Road, towards Brookmans Park, Herts. The whole length of both sides of the road was laid during the war by Middy, his father and the Land Army girls. They did a great job of laying the hedge - as it has stood the test of time, as you can see from the photos below.

After the work was done at the end of the day, it was off to the pub, The Cock ‘o’ North, for a well earned pint.