Joe Conder

By Sue Young

Well-known former local businessman, Joe Conder is currently taking life a little more easily than in the past. Joe is probably best known for the time he ran his garage in Lincoln Road, but he has been Commodore of Peterborough Yacht Club, has served in the Royal Navy, holding the Burma Star medal, and has held several offices within Helpston Church.

Joe Conder

Joe readily admits to wishing he was ‘a bit fitter’ and it is for this reason that he is not able to get to church as often as he would like, but those at Helpston are quick to pay tribute to his years of service on the PCC, as treasurer in Revd Brian Blade’s time and churchwarden under Revd Christopher Seal. He also worked for the church when Revd David Bartholomew and Revd Linda Elliot were priests in the village and he comments :’It’s good to see others carrying on with the work.’
Joe describes himself as ‘a Rutlander’, having been born at South Luffenham.
Only four years-old when his mother died, Joe was sent to some family friends at Willesden and went to school there, returning home when his father remarried and attending Laxton Grammar School. Quashing the old myth about step-mothers, ‘I couldn’t have wished for a better one’, he told the Tribune. As a teenager, he played violin and piano, often with some friends, providing the music for dances at Barnwell School. He recalls:”Miss Young taught music at Oundle School and she organised the band. I occasionally played ‘honky- tonk’ piano at the Rose pub, Frognall, too.’
Confirmed at St Peter’s Church, Oundle, Joe was a bell ringer there.
Although he was to go on to own his own garage, being main dealer for Riley, Morris, Austin and Wolsley, his first job on leaving school was as a pastry cook for Woodcock’s of Peterborough. It was there that Joe met Betty, whom he was to marry at St Margaret’s Church, Fletton in 1942 and who would go on to be his helpmate until her death in 2003. Working briefly for Woodcock’s at Uppingham, Joe signed on with the Navy in 1940 at the age of eighteen.
Serving for five years, Joe was first sent out to Alexandria to make up numbers where men had been lost in battle. ‘But’, said Joe, ‘the ships were all sunk, so we went out to the Eastern fleet based at Mombassa and then I joined the battleship Revenge in Durban.’ Joe was trained as an electrician, being responsible for all the electrical gear including torpedoes and the telephone systems. ‘On the way home,’ he told the Tribune,’ we called at Capetown and picked up £75m in gold!’
Subsequently Joe joined HMS Ajax at Portsmouth and was involved in the D-Day landings and landings in Greece.
‘We had to buy all our own uniforms’ Joe explained, ‘ so we often wore our old clothes to work in.’ It was when Joe was casually dressed in flannels and a cord jerkin that a surprise visitor came aboard when his ship was in the port of Peiraias, near Athens.
‘I thought I’d come aboard a pirate ship!’ exclaimed Winston Churchill as he observed the lack of uniformed sailors.
There is a particular incident in Joe’s life that he is reluctant to talk about. However, he agreed to share it with the Tribune readers. When Joe’s ship, the Revenge, was anchored in Mombassa harbour, it was commonplace for the men to go for a swim. Suddenly a shark came up, ready to attack one of the swimmers. Joe was quick to take a knife, ripping open the side of the great fish and so saving the man’s life.
The man was Prince Philip, at that time a midshipman aboard the Valiant.
‘I think the shark took off with the knife!’ said Joe. Joe also met Sir Anthony Eden, General Alexander and the Greek Prime Minister, during his active service in the navy.
After the war, Joe went to work for Marshall’s garage when the company first came to Peterborough. It was his experience here that led him to rent a property in Padholme Road and set up business in his own right, carrying out vehicle repairs. Following on from this, he rented premises in Fengate, finally purchasing the Lincoln Road garage, where he spent fifty years, many of these living ‘over the shop’. Taking on the Orton Service Station meant extra work and needed help from Betty, whose mother encouraged her to learn to drive and help with the business. The two worked long hours and eventually the Orton business proved too much to manage and was sold. Conder’s garage of Lincoln Road flourished, however, and as Joe retired he managed a staff of twenty people, holding the franchise for black London-style cabs for the whole of the Eastern Region.
The sea was still in Joe’s blood and after spending more on a twenty-six foot cruiser than the purchase of the bungalow in the Nook, where he still lives today, he and Betty spent over twenty years and many happy hours cruising out in the Wash and on the Nene and Ouse rivers. St Botolph’s Junior Church members and teachers remember a trip on the boat - not to mention the cakes that always appeared when Betty was around!
Joe has two children, Gillian and John, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. John took over the Lincoln Road business and has now retired himself. Betty had a long illness, when Joe was a constant support, but after her death he was lucky enough to be seated next to a very charming and vivacious lady at a Burma Star garden party. Ellie Ashworth is the widow of a former treasurer of the Burma Star Association. The couple went out to lunch the next day and have been close friends and companions ever since.
‘Ellie gave me a fresh outlook’ says Joe. ‘It’s no fun being on your own.’
When you see St George’s flag flying out from Helpston church you may be reminded of Joe. He recalls:’ Brian Blade told me: ‘I want so see that flag flying out over the fens!’ I said I wasn’t going to go up the tower every time to sort that out, so I bought a boat and used the mast for the flagpole!’
Ever mindful of church maintenance, his last words to the Tribune were about the bells: ‘Those bells have a greasing point. Ask Roger to take a grease gun up when he goes to wind the clock.’