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Joseph Leonard Waller was born at 29 Somercotes Hill on January 31st 1918 to Archibald “Arch” and Ida Waller (n. Sansam). His father, grandfather and uncles were coal miners and he was named Leonard after his father’s older brother, who kept the “Old House at Home” near the canal at Pye Bridge. He attended Somercotes Schools and when he was fourteen years old, he started work at Luke Evans’ Bakers at Riddings for 8/6d a week, but it only lasted for a short while. His next job was at Butterley Ironworks but when he left and tried unsuccessfully to get jobs at Riddings Ironworks, the railway and local hosiery factories, he eventually began work at Swanwick Colliery on the pit bank, much against his father’s wishes. In his book “Growing Pains” he wrote in depth about his first day working on the four conveyor belts of the colliery’s screens, where he sorted the grey “bat” from the coal. He wrote:

“I stayed for several years on Moorwood’s Bank. I hated it on the day that I left as much as I did on the day I started. I can find nothing good to say about the job. The wages were low, the plant was primitive, dangerous and lacked any sanitary arrangements or protection from the elements, the foreman was a slave-driving tyrant and the work was hard and unremitting”.

After six years working there which he referred to as “wilderness years”, he left and worked as a salesman, selling water softener in Rugby and returning home each week-end on his motor bike. Later he sold Hoover vacuum cleaners locally and was able to live at home. In 1939, aged 21, he was employed as a Bus Conductor in Derby. He related the following humorous incident in his book:

“On one of my last days as a conductor I was on a Derby to Alfreton bus working with a new driver. He didn’t know the route to Alfreton so, between taking fares, I had to tell him where to go. It was plain sailing as far as Swanwick, but when we reached the crossroads there, I was upstairs and couldn’t prevent him going straight on instead of turning right for Leabrooks. The shouts of the passengers soon told me something was up. So we turned left into High Street and back down the Green. Pedestrians stood open-mouthed as a double -decker bus, loaded with grinning passengers, approached the crossroads from the wrong direction. The same thing happened when we were coming back from Alfreton; the driver overshot the turning at the Royal Tiger. It was the first and last time that a Trent bus, bound for Derby, was seen proceeding down Victoria Street, Somercotes”.

Len, as he was known to his friends and close family, had little interest in gardening, pigeon-racing or field sports like other boys of his age in Somercotes. His hobbies were reading, bee-keeping and, from the age of 10, photography. In the 1930s there was a craze for scientific toys and he watched a demonstration of a Rontgen-ray device when he went to Ripley Fair. He was fascinated when the bones of the hand could be seen through the skin. (No-one had heard of X rays then). He explained:

“Making pictures appear on plain paper just by placing a celluloid image over it and leaving it in bright sunlight seemed like magic too. The sensitised paper was quite cheap to buy and the printing frame to hold paper and negative could be bought at any toyshop. Box cameras had been around for a few years and when I got tired of printing the same old negatives from the toy pack, I borrowed negatives from relatives and printed them. The prints, which had a tendency to curl, were warm sepia in colour and were ‘fixed’ in brine.”

Len persuaded his parents to buy the John Bull magazine for eight weeks so that he could save the coupons and receive a blue Engine E29 box camera. When the family moved into a semi-detached house, the space under the stairs became his dark room, made even darker by a heavy curtain being hung over the door to block out any chinks of light. For the next sixty years photography was a passion of his life and, for fifteen of those years, his livelihood.

In January 1940 Leonard Waller enlisted in the army. He joined the Grenadier Guards. After four weeks preliminary training at Chelsea Barracks, he was sent to Windsor Barracks to learn the art of war as an infantryman. He was posted to Scotland and Lincolnshire until 1942 when he sailed to North Africa. It was then that he started to keep a diary which enabled him to write a personal account just after the war was over. (See later). In the North African campaign he fought against Rommel’s tanks and in 1943, while fighting in Italy he suffered a hand wound. This resulted in the amputation of a finger when his hand wound deteriorated and became more serious. He was classed as unfit for active service. He ended the war as a Corporal in the Regimental Police guarding Italian and German prisoners of war near Lake Como and became a civilian in March 1946.

On his return to Somercotes it took a while for him to adjust to civilian life. In 1952 he married Joan Taylor and in 1957 their son, Simon, was born. It was at this time that Len built up the photography business at 97A Nottingham Road opposite to Seely Terrace and near to the turn for Coupland Place. The shop had a large display window, a studio section, a cellar and a work room. Simon can recall being fascinated, as a small boy, by the photograph enlarger which ran on two rails on the table in the workroom. Local newspapers were full of his monochrome photographs – of babies, children, pets, weddings, other special occasions and local shows / events. The family moved from living in Swanwick to Birchwood Lane, and Len continued his business from the Nottingham road premises for a number of years until colour photography became more popular. After that he worked at Pye Bridge Foundry although he still continued with his photographs. Even in retirement he belonged to Ripley, Clay Cross and South Normanton Photography Societies.

Leonard Waller was a prolific writer and enjoyed putting his thoughts down on paper. He published two books about growing up in Somercotes during the 1930s and 1940s and a book of poetry. One of his poems “The Winding Wheel” is on display near to the pit wheel at the beginning of Seely Terrace, Somercotes. In his eightieth year he was given his first computer and processed an account of his World War 11 experiences called “When Bugles Call” which was submitted by Amber Valley and archived by the BBC in” WW2 The People’s War”. It makes very interesting reading. He died in 2006 aged 88.

SOURCES

“Growing Pains” by J. L. Waller 1985

“My Drink was Water Bright” by J. L. Waller 1996

“When Bugles Call” by J. L. Waller 1998

“Twenty Poems” by J. L. Waller