Title
Joyce Thompson Oral History Summary
Subject
Joyce Thompson
Description
Summary of an Oral History Recording with interviewee Joyce Thompson
Creator
Michael Romyn
Publisher
Kent's Sporting Memories
Date
12 February, 2020
Contributor
Joyce Thompson; Michael Romyn
Rights
Kent's Sporting Memories
Relation
Joyce Thompson Oral History Recording
Format
Microsoft Word Document
Language
English
Type
Typed summary
Identifier
Joyce Thompson
Text
Kent’s Sporting Memories Oral History Summary
Interviewee: Joyce Thompson
Interviewer: Michael Romyn
Date: 29/1/2020
Location: Joyce’s home in Lydd-on-Sea
0:00 Name, place and date of birth (Joyce Thompson, Ashford Hospital, 9 February, 1942); how the ‘old’ Ashford hospital has been torn down; Joyce grew up on Romney Marsh, ‘out in the fields’, where her family had a farm called Forty Acre Farm – ‘most of our life was messing around farming, working with the animals’; Joyce’s father was a farmer, her mother did not come from a farming background; Joyce never met her grandfather on her mother’s side, who hailed from Ashford – he was ‘gassed’ during the First World War, aged 42; her father’s grandfather was a farmer from Stanhope, near Ashford.
2:40 The story behind her parents’ meeting – at Crouch’s Garage in Kennington (now closed) where her mother used to work; her grandmother (father’s side) didn’t farm – ‘she was always in twin sets and pearl necklaces, very smart little lady…and she used to go round all the women’s institutes demonstrating raffia work’; Joyce explains her grandmother’s other crafting pursuits, including picking wild oats and wrapping them in Quality Street wrappers for decorating vases and trays etc.; her Grandmother was born in Kenardington and was married in Wareham, as was Joyce for her first marriage.
5:50 Joyce describes the role of women on the farm – ‘the women, they did the cooking and the feeding, make sure you got fed – haying, yeah we used to go out in the hay fields’; Joyce wanted to work with sheep, for which she learned how from a farmer in Snargate – ‘I just liked sheep’; there were approximately 200 sheep on her parents’ farm; Joyce learned to milk a cow when she was three – ‘I had a seaside bucket and I used to go out and fill that and that was my milk for the day. Grass, hair, the lot in it’.
8:15 Her father was a hockey player for the Ashfordians, and a ‘very good tennis player’; Joyce has two brothers and a sister; she had another brother, John, who was two when he drowned on the farm (Joyce was three at the time); Joyce describes the tragic circumstances of his death, and the aftermath, which saw the family move out of the farm, to a cottage in Hamstreet – ‘my Mother was a mess, and I didn’t live at home much after that for a little while, I lived with my grandparents – my Mum’s mother, and my Aunt, her sister. I didn’t go home very much.’
11:00 How 2019 has been a bad year for Joyce, with the death of her brother Roy, the death of her husband, and injuries to her shoulder and wrist; Joyce went to Wareham primary school and the South Central School in Ashford (since closed) – ‘I’ve always maintained that I’ve learnt more since I left school’; Joyce played tennis and hockey at school – in tennis she played in the Kent Youth Championship; her local court in Wareham was built by her grandfather, who also provided the pavilion – ‘It was for everybody’; Joyce then took up cricket, and became captain of Appledore Ladies, and played for Great Chart Cricket Club; she estimates the Appledore team lasted for approximately eight years (1955-1963).
15:20 Joyce describes how she was approached in a pub (the Blue Anchor) to run Hamstreet Ladies in the late 1960s, and how, despite her lack of interest in football, she eventually agreed; learning the ropes and becoming affiliated with the FA and the Kent League; Joyce eventually became chairman of the eleven-team Kent League and the WFA representative for Kent, for which she travelled all across the country; she also became vice chair of the WFA’s discipline committee.
19:00 Joyce describes the Hamstreet players, some of whom have since died; the various pitches the team played on, and how Lady Rootes, the team president and wife of British Motoring Pioneer, Sir Reginald Rootes, gave the team a cheque for fifty pounds twice a year; Joyce states that Lady Rootes was very proud of the team, and attended every Sunday home game – ‘if we scored a goal she nearly strangled you!’.
22:45 Joyce explains that Hamstreet men’s team weren’t supportive of their female counterparts, and didn’t want them to play on their pitch – ‘some of them came along and tried to take the piss out of the girls, you know, but you can imagine Annie and them – they didn’t put up with it!’
24:00 Joyce explains how she raised money for the team with sponsored walks and dances in Hamstreet village hall, which she catered – ‘beef burgers and onions…my house used to stink of onions’; the expense of away matches and putting on coaches to travel across the county; Jean’s husband, an employee of Scotland and Bates coach company in Appledore, was the team’s driver; she states attendance at the games was fairly average.
27:15 Joyce sold Ashford Football Club tickets at Hamstreet games in exchange for the use of their football pitch for the women’s cup final; why the team was named ‘White Wanderers’, and how Joyce took on responsibility for washing the all-white strip – ‘I’m not being funny but some mothers didn’t know how to wash!’ – despite not having a washing machine; Jean eventually retired from the team and football in 1978 after she took over a pub – ‘I couldn’t carry on going to the meetings…it was too much.’
29:55 The popularity of women’s football in the 1970s; the ability of the Hamstreet players (some of whom went on to play for Kent) and the team, which often reached the finals; Joyce created a runner-up competition and supplied a trophy for the teams that didn’t reach the final, so as to help maintain their interest; the time and effort Joyce put in to maintaining the league, along with her fellow managers – ‘I just did what I thought had to be done.’
33:40 The difficulty of finding a pitch to play on – ‘It was bedlam’ – and the cost of not being affiliated with the men’s team – ‘and of course we had to buy our own nets, our own goalposts, then the corner posts’; the Ruckinge pitch was a field filled with sheep droppings, and equipped with fishing nets so as to retrieve the ball from the ditch; other teams’ complaining about the sheep droppings – ‘I said at one meeting I can remember, “yeah but you can slide better on it!” Didn’t go down to well.’
35:20 Joyce states that the team kept the girls occupied – ‘keeping them off the streets…to me, I feel as though I’ve helped…at least it got them out in the fresh air, and not stuck in a café somewhere, or getting up to mischief’; every Sunday, Joyce picked up her players in her car from around Ashford and the villages to take them to the home games; their lone changing facility was at Ruckinge Village Hall, which precluded post-match socialising – ‘the only socialising was when we had a dance or something’; Joyce describes how she dropped the players off again at home following the home games.
39:00 The lack of sporting provision for girls in the villages – ‘there wasn’t much, especially for village kids, there wasn’t much for them. The boys, yeah, because you’ve got…they ran those five colt teams’; Joyce on the pitch at Hamstreet: ‘They didn’t want us down there…you had to fight your way to get a pitch’; being interviewed with some of the girls on Southern Television in Dover about women’s football.
44:50 Joyce’s job at the time – a delivery driver and salesperson for AMF Engineering (hardware); getting married aged 19 in 1961, in Wareham, and having a son in 1963; remarrying aged 42 in 1986, to Trevor, a marine engineer, and moving to Southampton, Gloucester, North Wales, and then, upon Trevor’s retirement, back to the Marsh; meeting Trevor at The Swan Hotel in Hythe while he was working at Dungeness; Joyce describes Trevor’s cancer and eventual death, and her subsequent decision to move house.
57:25 How Joyce came to like football – she even watches women’s football when it’s on the television – and how far the game has come since she was a member of the FA: ‘We hadn’t got the recognition that it’s got now, you know the girls are even earning money. Jesus, cost me a fortune! No, I suppose you’ve just helped keep it going’; her responsibilities at the FA, and how she was one of the few women on the various FA committees – ‘I was thinking “come on, you’ve got to keep this going”, ‘cause too much fails through lack of interest and after a bit even the people who try to run it give up because they’re not getting supported enough’.
1:01:50 How the Hamstreet team carried on for a little while after Joyce’s retirement; giving away the team’s equipment (first aid kit, goalposts etc.) following the team’s disbandment; rivalries within the Kent league, including Hamstreet and Ashford – ‘Ashford were a cocky team, and they weren’t going to put up with that – they had to be knocked down a peg or two’; the perennial success of Herne Bay, and the relative success of Hamstreet considering its size – ‘we were the richest team, I made sure of that, through the fundraising’.
1:07 Joyce said she never played in the games, and was never tempted – ‘I could shout!’; how Joyce took on the Market Hotel in Ashford, where she played a lot of darts, and hosted five darts teams; she played darts with Anne Rutland and other players from the Hamstreet team.
1:09:30 Joyce’s aspirations when she was younger, and the idea that she would ‘always work on the land…that was it’; she describes the various farming jobs she had – ‘anything to earn a bob or two…you’re working with other women and kids would be running around. It was just a way of life you got used to.’; the various rates in farm picking, including rates for piece work, and the lack of men in picking – ‘that was beneath them!’
1:14:50 When asked what stands out the most from managing the Hamstreet team, she said: ‘Standing and freezing my butt off watching them, or getting wet through!’; a few other Kent teams were managed by women, including Folkestone, but they were mostly managed by men; attending monthly meetings in Minster for the Kent League, and what was discussed at the meetings; arranging (and catering) a League-wide fundraising event in Ashford.
1:19:15 Joyce describes ambiguously a problem encountered in the League with a certain team, but states the atmosphere among the teams was good generally; she explains that she hasn’t missed football, but that she’s had a ‘good life’.
Interviewee: Joyce Thompson
Interviewer: Michael Romyn
Date: 29/1/2020
Location: Joyce’s home in Lydd-on-Sea
0:00 Name, place and date of birth (Joyce Thompson, Ashford Hospital, 9 February, 1942); how the ‘old’ Ashford hospital has been torn down; Joyce grew up on Romney Marsh, ‘out in the fields’, where her family had a farm called Forty Acre Farm – ‘most of our life was messing around farming, working with the animals’; Joyce’s father was a farmer, her mother did not come from a farming background; Joyce never met her grandfather on her mother’s side, who hailed from Ashford – he was ‘gassed’ during the First World War, aged 42; her father’s grandfather was a farmer from Stanhope, near Ashford.
2:40 The story behind her parents’ meeting – at Crouch’s Garage in Kennington (now closed) where her mother used to work; her grandmother (father’s side) didn’t farm – ‘she was always in twin sets and pearl necklaces, very smart little lady…and she used to go round all the women’s institutes demonstrating raffia work’; Joyce explains her grandmother’s other crafting pursuits, including picking wild oats and wrapping them in Quality Street wrappers for decorating vases and trays etc.; her Grandmother was born in Kenardington and was married in Wareham, as was Joyce for her first marriage.
5:50 Joyce describes the role of women on the farm – ‘the women, they did the cooking and the feeding, make sure you got fed – haying, yeah we used to go out in the hay fields’; Joyce wanted to work with sheep, for which she learned how from a farmer in Snargate – ‘I just liked sheep’; there were approximately 200 sheep on her parents’ farm; Joyce learned to milk a cow when she was three – ‘I had a seaside bucket and I used to go out and fill that and that was my milk for the day. Grass, hair, the lot in it’.
8:15 Her father was a hockey player for the Ashfordians, and a ‘very good tennis player’; Joyce has two brothers and a sister; she had another brother, John, who was two when he drowned on the farm (Joyce was three at the time); Joyce describes the tragic circumstances of his death, and the aftermath, which saw the family move out of the farm, to a cottage in Hamstreet – ‘my Mother was a mess, and I didn’t live at home much after that for a little while, I lived with my grandparents – my Mum’s mother, and my Aunt, her sister. I didn’t go home very much.’
11:00 How 2019 has been a bad year for Joyce, with the death of her brother Roy, the death of her husband, and injuries to her shoulder and wrist; Joyce went to Wareham primary school and the South Central School in Ashford (since closed) – ‘I’ve always maintained that I’ve learnt more since I left school’; Joyce played tennis and hockey at school – in tennis she played in the Kent Youth Championship; her local court in Wareham was built by her grandfather, who also provided the pavilion – ‘It was for everybody’; Joyce then took up cricket, and became captain of Appledore Ladies, and played for Great Chart Cricket Club; she estimates the Appledore team lasted for approximately eight years (1955-1963).
15:20 Joyce describes how she was approached in a pub (the Blue Anchor) to run Hamstreet Ladies in the late 1960s, and how, despite her lack of interest in football, she eventually agreed; learning the ropes and becoming affiliated with the FA and the Kent League; Joyce eventually became chairman of the eleven-team Kent League and the WFA representative for Kent, for which she travelled all across the country; she also became vice chair of the WFA’s discipline committee.
19:00 Joyce describes the Hamstreet players, some of whom have since died; the various pitches the team played on, and how Lady Rootes, the team president and wife of British Motoring Pioneer, Sir Reginald Rootes, gave the team a cheque for fifty pounds twice a year; Joyce states that Lady Rootes was very proud of the team, and attended every Sunday home game – ‘if we scored a goal she nearly strangled you!’.
22:45 Joyce explains that Hamstreet men’s team weren’t supportive of their female counterparts, and didn’t want them to play on their pitch – ‘some of them came along and tried to take the piss out of the girls, you know, but you can imagine Annie and them – they didn’t put up with it!’
24:00 Joyce explains how she raised money for the team with sponsored walks and dances in Hamstreet village hall, which she catered – ‘beef burgers and onions…my house used to stink of onions’; the expense of away matches and putting on coaches to travel across the county; Jean’s husband, an employee of Scotland and Bates coach company in Appledore, was the team’s driver; she states attendance at the games was fairly average.
27:15 Joyce sold Ashford Football Club tickets at Hamstreet games in exchange for the use of their football pitch for the women’s cup final; why the team was named ‘White Wanderers’, and how Joyce took on responsibility for washing the all-white strip – ‘I’m not being funny but some mothers didn’t know how to wash!’ – despite not having a washing machine; Jean eventually retired from the team and football in 1978 after she took over a pub – ‘I couldn’t carry on going to the meetings…it was too much.’
29:55 The popularity of women’s football in the 1970s; the ability of the Hamstreet players (some of whom went on to play for Kent) and the team, which often reached the finals; Joyce created a runner-up competition and supplied a trophy for the teams that didn’t reach the final, so as to help maintain their interest; the time and effort Joyce put in to maintaining the league, along with her fellow managers – ‘I just did what I thought had to be done.’
33:40 The difficulty of finding a pitch to play on – ‘It was bedlam’ – and the cost of not being affiliated with the men’s team – ‘and of course we had to buy our own nets, our own goalposts, then the corner posts’; the Ruckinge pitch was a field filled with sheep droppings, and equipped with fishing nets so as to retrieve the ball from the ditch; other teams’ complaining about the sheep droppings – ‘I said at one meeting I can remember, “yeah but you can slide better on it!” Didn’t go down to well.’
35:20 Joyce states that the team kept the girls occupied – ‘keeping them off the streets…to me, I feel as though I’ve helped…at least it got them out in the fresh air, and not stuck in a café somewhere, or getting up to mischief’; every Sunday, Joyce picked up her players in her car from around Ashford and the villages to take them to the home games; their lone changing facility was at Ruckinge Village Hall, which precluded post-match socialising – ‘the only socialising was when we had a dance or something’; Joyce describes how she dropped the players off again at home following the home games.
39:00 The lack of sporting provision for girls in the villages – ‘there wasn’t much, especially for village kids, there wasn’t much for them. The boys, yeah, because you’ve got…they ran those five colt teams’; Joyce on the pitch at Hamstreet: ‘They didn’t want us down there…you had to fight your way to get a pitch’; being interviewed with some of the girls on Southern Television in Dover about women’s football.
44:50 Joyce’s job at the time – a delivery driver and salesperson for AMF Engineering (hardware); getting married aged 19 in 1961, in Wareham, and having a son in 1963; remarrying aged 42 in 1986, to Trevor, a marine engineer, and moving to Southampton, Gloucester, North Wales, and then, upon Trevor’s retirement, back to the Marsh; meeting Trevor at The Swan Hotel in Hythe while he was working at Dungeness; Joyce describes Trevor’s cancer and eventual death, and her subsequent decision to move house.
57:25 How Joyce came to like football – she even watches women’s football when it’s on the television – and how far the game has come since she was a member of the FA: ‘We hadn’t got the recognition that it’s got now, you know the girls are even earning money. Jesus, cost me a fortune! No, I suppose you’ve just helped keep it going’; her responsibilities at the FA, and how she was one of the few women on the various FA committees – ‘I was thinking “come on, you’ve got to keep this going”, ‘cause too much fails through lack of interest and after a bit even the people who try to run it give up because they’re not getting supported enough’.
1:01:50 How the Hamstreet team carried on for a little while after Joyce’s retirement; giving away the team’s equipment (first aid kit, goalposts etc.) following the team’s disbandment; rivalries within the Kent league, including Hamstreet and Ashford – ‘Ashford were a cocky team, and they weren’t going to put up with that – they had to be knocked down a peg or two’; the perennial success of Herne Bay, and the relative success of Hamstreet considering its size – ‘we were the richest team, I made sure of that, through the fundraising’.
1:07 Joyce said she never played in the games, and was never tempted – ‘I could shout!’; how Joyce took on the Market Hotel in Ashford, where she played a lot of darts, and hosted five darts teams; she played darts with Anne Rutland and other players from the Hamstreet team.
1:09:30 Joyce’s aspirations when she was younger, and the idea that she would ‘always work on the land…that was it’; she describes the various farming jobs she had – ‘anything to earn a bob or two…you’re working with other women and kids would be running around. It was just a way of life you got used to.’; the various rates in farm picking, including rates for piece work, and the lack of men in picking – ‘that was beneath them!’
1:14:50 When asked what stands out the most from managing the Hamstreet team, she said: ‘Standing and freezing my butt off watching them, or getting wet through!’; a few other Kent teams were managed by women, including Folkestone, but they were mostly managed by men; attending monthly meetings in Minster for the Kent League, and what was discussed at the meetings; arranging (and catering) a League-wide fundraising event in Ashford.
1:19:15 Joyce describes ambiguously a problem encountered in the League with a certain team, but states the atmosphere among the teams was good generally; she explains that she hasn’t missed football, but that she’s had a ‘good life’.