大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by csv story collector Judy Foweraker, on behalf of her sister Joan Tarling, nee Quinn, and has been added to the site with her permission. We fully understand the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Life on the Farm

At the start of the war when I was about 10/11 years old I left East Ham where we were living and went to stay with Mum鈥檚 sister and her husband, Auntie May and Uncle Ted. They lived on a farm in Henfield, Sussex, called Brookside Farm. I just loved it there, especially having come from a townie area. I had actually stayed for some time with Auntie May when I was younger, and I was used to the cows, calves and all the farm animals, so it didn鈥檛 come strange to me. I automatically went out and collected the cows when they were needed; they all had names, and I knew which ones to collect and what to do with them. It came absolutely naturally to me and I didn鈥檛 worry about it at all. I would collect them from what they called the Brooklands, which would flood over in the autumn and in February. There was a railway line running through this area and quite often the cattle would graze over the other side of the line, so sometimes I had to cross over the line to get them in. It was a good thing that there weren鈥檛 many trains because I don鈥檛 think I ever knew when a train was due and I was bringing the cows over the line day after day, but I never got run over!

As you looked out of the farm windows you could see the South Downs in the distance, which I thought was just wonderful. I just loved all those hills and valleys in front of me, and I was out walking on the farm and round the fields all the time. The guy who worked on the farm lived in a cottage nearby, and he had four children. His eldest daughter was the same age as me so we went to school together, and were always out together doing things, which I found quite fun and thoroughly enjoyed. I would go there and have picnics and the like, and they would come to me. They were proper country children and me being from London I knew nothing, so I was being taught, which was such fun as learned so much about wild life.

Later on my mother and baby sister moved away from the bombing and came to join us on the farm. There were quite a lot of us living there; several family members and one female farm worked called Dan. My Auntie May used to cook for everybody and Mum was able to help her once she and my sister arrived.

Dan, used to be quite happy to let me do numerous jobs around the farm, and I just accepted it all quite happily. The chickens were my special 鈥榯hing鈥�, and I looked after them all, feeding night and morning and collecting the eggs. I also took care of the calves when they came off the cows. I had to mix up their special food of powdered milk and water and then get them away from the cow and put my hand in the bucket and try to get them to suck it off my fingers and then suck the milk up.

Dog Fights

There was also some wartime activity going on during that time. We weren鈥檛 far from the coast; there were just the Downs between us and the coastline, and the Germans came over in their fighter planes so there would be 鈥榙og fights鈥� between our Spitfires and the German planes. They used to go under each other and round and back and over, and we used to quite enjoy standing and watching all this. However, there were times when the German planes would come down and shoot at people on the ground, but we were never really scared 鈥� it was weird. I suppose it was because we were still children and we thought of it as just a part of life.

School in Henfield

The school I went to in Henfield was quite a small. There was a lovely headmistress who also took one of the classes. We were really altogether in one big room but it was divided by curtains into three different age groups, and I was in the class with the oldest children. On one occasion, the teacher wanted this group to vote for the most popular girl in the class, so we all put our little names on bits of paper and put them in a hat 鈥� and mine came out with quite lot of votes! I was absolutely shocked as I never thought of myself as being popular, and the schoolmistress was shocked as well because she thought the head girl was going to get it! But I got this book for the most popular girl and I was really amazed, as I never got many prizes at school, so I was very proud of this book and still treasure it today.

It was about two miles to walk to school up a very steep hill, and of course two miles downhill to come home, all along an unmade road. In the winter it seemed to snow a lot in Sussex, and at one time they had some sort of stage production at the local hall in Henfield, and they had borrowed a toboggan from one of Auntie May鈥檚 sons, either Farley or Bob. This wasn鈥檛 just a couple of boards with a bit of string, but a proper toboggan that could be steered, and I was asked to bring it back home with me, which I thought was smashing. However, it was on a day that we had our weekly cookery lessons in the local hall. There were two cookers in this hall, and we were allowed to cook something for our lunch, and at Christmas time we could cook something for our parents. Several of us had parents elsewhere, and we could either send or give it to them, so I had cooked a cake for Dad who was still back in London; it was a lovely looking cake, and the next week I iced it, but it hadn鈥檛 really dried properly and I had to take it home at the same time as the toboggan. Well, I put the cake on the toboggan, but the toboggan went off without me - and the cake went somewhere else! My poor cake! I can remember being so upset because my Christmas cake for Dad was all broken up. When I got home Mum and Auntie May were out, but Dan, the female helper at the farm, saw how upset I was and she helped me. I think she made the cake smaller because she cut lumps off it, and then I think she re-iced it so it didn鈥檛 look too bad.

Winnersh and St Paul鈥檚 School

Later in the war Auntie May and Uncle Ted moved from the farm in Sussex to a house in Winnersh near Wokenham in Berkshire. I was very upset about leaving the farm. However, they did have another small farm a couple of miles from the house and I used to cycle there whenever I could. I went to the nearby church school, where there was a really good headmaster. He used to encourage us to work big plots of land at the back of the school, and he kept beehives. I remember when these bees swarmed, and we all watched as he collected them together again. We had rabbits and everything there, and it was all so much nicer that just school, because we used to learn about everything that was going on. Around that time, Mum used to take my little sister and me to Reading every Saturday, where we would go shopping or visit the cinema, and on one occasion I remember meeting Dad there in the park. We very rarely managed to see him during the war.

American leftovers

On my uncle's farm in Winnersh some Americans were billeted in a barn, and when they left my friend and I went round all the barns and fields and collected so many things they had left behind 鈥� even a rifle! We gave them to my friend鈥檚 father who lived in the farmhouse and we supposed he gave them back.

A bottle of . . . .!

I remember one very funny story from that time. Apparently it was difficult to find bottles then, which could be used for filling with samples to be tested at the hospital. This person used a whisky bottle and cycled off with the bottle in the front basket. She stopped briefly at a shop on her way to the hospital, but when she came out the bottle was missing. Whisky was in short supply at that time!!

Cookham, and starting work

We weren鈥檛 in Winnersh for very long before we then moved to Cookham in Berkshire where my Uncle owned the garage opposite the railway station. There was a petrol pump there and he also ran a taxi service. At that time Auntie May鈥檚 son Bob, who was in the Army, got married, and his wife Molly came to live with us. Auntie鈥檚 other son, Farley, lived there for a while, but then he got married and moved away. Molly helped Uncle Ted with the garage, and Mum and Auntie May ran the house. My little sister started at the village school whilst we were there. I left school and helped at the garage for a while, but my Mum thought it would be a good thing for me to work in the dressmaker鈥檚 shop in the village (I would have preferred a job on a farm). This was a first class dress shop that had moved away from the bombing in Bond Street, and Mum reckoned I was good at sewing, so she took me there and asked if they wanted an apprentice 鈥� I wouldn鈥檛 need any money, she said! Can you imagine it! I can remember that they gave me 8 shillings a week, which was under 50p because that was 10 shillings, and then I gave that to Mum. One of my jobs was to go to this little teashop in the village once a day and fetch a tray with a teapot and two cups and saucers and some beautiful iced cakes for the girls in the shop. I never ever had one of these until later on when Mum would give me just 2d once a week, which I then used to buy just one lovely iced cake. The shop was really a high-class boutique and designed all its own clothes; also everything was sewn by hand, and as I enjoyed designing, I did quite like this.

Working in Bond Street, London

When it appeared that the bombs had stopped in London (although this was before the flying bombs) they decided to move back to Bond Street, and paid my fare to go with them. I used to get a half yearly season ticket to travel up and back on the steam-train each day from Cookham to Paddington where I would catch the underground to Piccadilly and then on to Bond Street. I remember they gave me all these notes 鈥� it was very expensive. As we lived opposite the station I could see the signalman start to close the gates, and I knew that meant my train coming, so I used to race out, cross the gates and just catch my train! Very often the signalman would open the little gate for me to cross the line and then I would jump on the back of the train. I always caught it so they must have known I was coming!

I got to know all the little back alleys and lovely squares with churches around Bond Street and Regent Street, where all the tailor shops were, and I thought it was all quite fun. I loved the market in Brewers Street, where I went in my lunch hour. Of course, being young I was expected to go out to the big shops and match materials with cottons and bindings etc. Many of the younger customers preferred not to wear any, or too many, underclothes when they came for fittings. They would often bring their boyfriends with them. The person who owned the shop had bought loads of rolls of beautiful materials from France before the war, so she used to say that all her materials were 鈥淔rench fabrics鈥�. Designs would be sketched out and materials chosen, and people used to think it was wonderful as there was nothing like that during the war.

Making good

I very often made use of used clothes for my family and myself. For my sister I especially remember I used my old school gymslip and turned it into a full skirt and bolero with embroidered daisies all around the edges. It was very difficult to buy materials at that time, and we learned that if you bought canvas and boiled it, it came out like linen in a yellow or daffodil colour, or even lighter. It was really lovely, and then you could cut it out and make up something. Also you could turn some clothes inside out and there would be a different colour inside, which you could then use to make up something else.

The flying bombs

The V1 and V2 bombs started whilst I was working in London. One night I stayed with a friend and we were woken in the middle of the night, and there was this terrific crash; the windows didn鈥檛 break, but the glass literally came in and went out again 鈥� weird! I always remember that, and then we all went down to the shelters and stayed there all night long. Needless to say that when the flying bombs went over Cookham and everybody dived under the stairs, I wasn鈥檛 too bothered after being in London, and was quite happy to stand and watch them going over (hoping they didn鈥檛 stop of course!)

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