大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Sharon Lambert of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Roberta Bateson and added to the site with her permission.

We moved onto Hope Street, Primrose when I was two and I lived there for the next 65 years.

I grew up during the war. I was 3 years and 4 days old when war broke out and my brother Stuart was only a baby. My dad went away in 1940 and we never saw him again till 1946. He got the Croix de Guerre. He wouldn鈥檛 talk about it and we still don鈥檛 really know how he got it but it was something to do with saving a wagon full of French men in North Africa. He was a POW and it was 1946 before he finally got home. Jim Bell, our neighbour, painted a great big banner 鈥榃elcome Home Bob鈥� and you鈥檝e never seen anything as big in your life. We decorated the air raid shelter with it for him coming home.

Dad was away all the time so consequently my mum had to work. She worked in the Co-op caf茅 and in the chippy at the end of the street for a while. My cousins next door, Harriet and Dorothy Till, used to see us off to school in a morning. And I think I had every illness under the sun, I must have cost my mother a fortune. I had measles, scarlet fever, yellow jaundice, chicken pox, I had everything. And everything had to be paid for. You used to pay so much a week in them days into a doctor鈥檚 fund. I only threw doctor鈥檚 bills away recently and there was one for four pound odd, for when I had measles. It was hard for the mothers, they all worked while their husbands were away at war.

I loved it growing up on Hope Street. It was happy times; poor but happy. You never locked your door and everybody used to come in and out. You could leave your money on the sideboard with your book and the insurance man would just come in and collect it if you weren鈥檛 around. You only locked your doors when you went to bed and even then everybody put their keys on a bit of string behind the letterbox in case anybody was coming in late.

Money was scarce, particularly during the war, and you used to borrow a bucket of coal if you ran out. Or you鈥檇 go and have one night in one house and they鈥檇 light their fire, and then another night in another house and they鈥檇 light theirs, to save coal, you know, and to save lighting. It was gas lighting; we didn鈥檛 have electric till 1948, after my dad came home. And we had no bathrooms, just a tin bath in the yard that used to come in once a week. My mam used go across to Peel鈥檚 and play cards and we went with her. Kids went everywhere with parents then. We used to go to Mrs Bell鈥檚 a lot and they鈥檇 play cards or dominos, not for money 鈥榗ause they couldn鈥檛 afford it, just to pass a night on. There was no telly, it was just radio.

All the kids from other streets seemed to converge and play on Hope Street. The air-raid shelter was right outside number 11, our house. We never had to go in the shelters, they just finished up as play areas. There were no cars on the street when we were kids. I think the first person to have a car on Hope Street was Ted Williams and his car and my husband Gordon鈥檚 motorbike were the only two vehicles on Hope Street in the sixties. We played out on the streets but we were always in at quarter to seven at night. My mum used to come and shout: 鈥淐ome on kids, Dick Barton鈥檚 on!鈥� And everybody scattered and went in to their house to listen to Dick Barton Special Agent on the wireless.

Across the road, at number 24, were the Cartlidges and he was a beautiful pianist. Mr Cartlidge organised a concert party that used to travel all the country villages during the war for entertainment. Jim Bell and Margaret Bell were in it, all the slightly older kids who were able to look after themselves, and they were called the Primrose Juveniles.

It was any excuse for a party on the street, so we could dance. We were noted for street parties and Mr Cartlidge used to play for us. They used to come from all over Lancaster to dance on Hope Street because he was such a brilliant pianist and the music was so good to dance to. We used to put soap powder on the street to make it slippier for dancing. He used to carry his piano outside the front door and put it on the street. The lads used to climb and sit on top of the air-raid shelter and watch all the lasses dancing. Me and Elaine Bush organised the last street party we had on Hope Street, for the Queen鈥檚 silver jubilee in 1977.

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