Chapter Eighteen

     In the Fifties the Goddard Arms was the prime hotel, restaurant and banqueting venue in the Swindon which was expanding rapidly with many London companies moving there, The Plessey Company, Garrards Engineering and Pressed Steel relocated to this Wiltshire town. British Rail had their long established engine workshops there.

     We realised this would be yet another challenge especially as the previous Manager had been fired. He was very popular with the existing staff and our arrival was look upon with little approval. However, it was a much more congenial atmosphere to work in. Swindon was a rapidly expanding town. The hotel clientele consisted mostly of business men. It provided the venue for banquets and dinners for local organisations like Rotary and Round Ta plus many of the large companies in the town. Five Masonic Lodges used the hotel facilities for their monthly meetings and annual dinners. The rooms in the hotel were fully booked from Monday to Thursday with fairly good weekend occupancy as well. It was one of Simonds’ prime hotels producing excellent profits for the company so once again we had to maintain high standard and profitable returns.

     We lived in the hotel although we had no sitting room only two bedrooms, one for Peter and me and one for Clive. We quickly organised for the corridor to be shut off, giving us a long narrow area where at least we could be alone and perhaps relax. We had to put memories of our lovely house in Ventnor out of our mind.

     Very quickly we found we were expected to work a 120 hour week. We could not leave the hotel together for more than three hours, without prior permission from Reading and there were no such things as days off together. There was a large and very busy restaurant, the hotel rooms were almost always fully booked and we had functions in the ballroom at least twenty three nights a month. Our joint salary was £750 per annum and an occasional end of year bonus. We were allowed two weeks vacation but we had to first have a stock take of liquor and food before leaving and also on returning to duty. However, we certainly learned a lot there. I managed to take my City and Guilds 151 cookery exam and a National Development Diploma in wines and spirits which helped me to carry out a very demanding position. We obtained accolades from both the AA and also Egon Ronay.

     Peter took over responsibility for the bars and wine service and I did most of the office controls and worked closely with the Chef and Restaurant. We had a variety of Assistant Managers to help us, and a full team of kitchen, reception and restaurant personnel supplemented with a special team of part-timers for the banqueting programme.

     Initially we had a hard time with the staff, as the previous Manager had been dismissed for unspecified, to us, irregularities. He had been very popular with his staff but did not have very much control and they had run things their way for some time. It took us a few months to gain their loyalty but when they saw we were fair and that all tips received went into the pocket of the staff and not the Management, we won them over. In fact, I am still in touch with several of them from those far-back days.

     With such a busy working life and living in the hotel, we were glad that we had decided it would better for Clive, then aged eight, to be educated at a boarding school. We were not able to attend many of the school functions and I think that was unfair on him. Whether we were right not to have moved him nearer to where we worked, it is difficult to say but he had moved schools so frequently that we felt he needed stability in his education. Nor were we sure whether we too could be moved again without much notice, as Simonds owned a large number of hotels spread around Southern England. It was a hard decision to take and one Clive did not easily understand. Later when he was 13, in 1959 and time to move from a preparatory school, we transferred him to Ryde School on the recommendation of Vernon Herbert who had once been a scholar there.

     That same year, the hotel industry decided to form a professional body to be called the Hotel and Catering Institute. Initially, people, who had been in management for at least eight years, were offered direct entry in order to form a core membership. Otherwise entry would be by examination, usually after several years at college.

      By then I had ten years experience and I applied for direct entry to the Institute in March. To my disgust, this was refused because as a woman, the powers-that-be imagined I only did the flowers! I decided to challenge them. I said I would take the exam that June. Initially they demurred, informing me that students needed to undertake a four year college course to pass. I told them that if I thought I was fit for direct entry, then I should be able to pass the necessary examination. I had to be persistent and finally they agreed to send me the curriculum. It consisted of the six following subjects; Hotel Law, Food and Drink, Nutrition and Hygiene, Bookkeeping and Accountancy, Maintenance and Stock Control and the Economic Structure of the Industry.

      I considered I could manage most of the subjects but I asked the company lawyer to give me details of all laws relating to the industry, such as the Licensing Law, the Shop Act, Tax Laws, up-to-date Health and Hygiene regulations. I knew I needed to know more about nutrition so I spent all my spare moments in revising and filling in the gaps in my knowledge. Furthermore, the organising committee insisted it was up to me to find a place for the examination and arrange for an invigilation officer. I contacted the local education committee in Swindon and they suggested I joined the school children at a local Grammar school as they were taken their GCE exams the following June. I had three months for my studies of the syllabus. The exams were taken over three consecutive days, two subjects daily each of three hours duration, totalling 18 hours in all; quite a marathon. Then I had to wait until September for the results.

        The summer passed slowly, I had almost forgotten about the exam. On September 6th, just as we were leaving for our annual two week vacation, my receptionist rushed out with our mail, including a letter from the Hotel and Catering Institute. As we drove out of the car park of the hotel, I opened the letter. To the chagrin of the organisers of the Hotel and Catering Institute, and to my immense pleasure, I read that not only had I passed but I had gained the highest marks in Great Britain that year and had been award the Sir Francis Towle Gold Medal! That was my one great effort for sex equality. As we started our vacation, I screamed with elation.

Going West!

Bridging the Centuries 

By Eileen Younghusband