Donald Hodson - setting up a business in the new town

Transcript:

Donald Hodson came to Hatfield from Burnley in the late 1950s via Essex to set up a chemist business:

“To try our luck away from Burnley because things, the cotton (industry) was not good, hadn’t been good of course for years and so at the age of 22 it seemed rather a pointless thing to stay in a declining area and so I…we…decided to try our luck. That was the drift South East. I looked in the Pharmaceutical Journal where all the job adverts were and are. I sort of knew…at that age we were in love with London…magic….(even before the swinging sixties) we’d spent holidays there and the idea of having all that entertainment locally meant that London seemed like a good idea….So the nearest place…”