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On the 1st September 1939 my father, thinking that the declaration of war would result in the immediate bombing of London, drove my mother and my sister and me, from our home at Cheam, about 13 miles from London, to the farm at Barcombe Mills near Lewes, where we had previously had a number of good summer holidays.

At that time I was 12 and my sister 8, and as an indefinite stay had been agreed, arrangements had to be made for us to start school at the beginning of the new term; accordingly I went to Lewes high school for Girls and my sister to the school. Mt father worked for Cable and Wireless at Electra House on the Embankment and returned home on his own.

The farm, both dairy and arable where we stayed was quite isolated and although it had a tractor also used heavy horses at that time. The farm house had neither electricity nor gas nor water on tap. It also had the traditional privy down the garden. Cooking was by a cooker using paraffin and lighting was by paraffin lamp and by candles in the bedrooms.

There was a pump in the kitchen for water and water for a weekly bath was heated in a big copper. Water from the water butt was beautifully soft, but from the pump exceedingly hard in that chalky area. I remember how difficult it was for my mother to get all the dust out of our hair when washing it at the kitchen sink after we had spent an afternoon sitting on the tractor mudguards during ploughing.

So my first term (and it turned out to be my last term) at Lewes High School began. I walked across country to the station and caught the train to Lewes. I was not happy to be there and, as time went by, we all felt rather anxious to go home, especially as no bombing, nor any other activity, started and all seemed inexplicably quiet. I can remember setting off for the station, waiting for the train to leave without me, and then going back to the farm claiming to have missed it.

In the end my father agreed that we should come home for Christmas if nothing occurred to make it seem foolhardy. I made a calendar which I kept under my pillow and the high spot of the day was to come back and cross off a days — very satisfying as the number crossed off exceeded those remaining. And so it came about that we were back in Cheam for Christmas and there we remained for the rest of the war.

It was during a beautiful late summer evening in 1940 that the first German bombers approached London from our direction, before an air raid sounded, a friend and I saw them while lying flat on Banstead Downs after a strenuous uphill cycle ride — we had put our bikes down on the grass and lay down beside them and as we looked up saw a formation of German bombers with a fighter escort which had been intercepted by the R.A.F. fighters. We had a few seconds of incomprehension and disbelief. Our downhill ride was spectacular — I don’t think we saw a single person outside in the 2 mile ride.

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Arrangements had already been made for my family to share an air raid shelter with neighbours and I found everybody already inside it after I had dropped my bike and run there.

So we spent the blitz at Cheam and as the autumn progressed we went every evening together with a number of others to the shelter built for the Elementary School very near to us where we slept on the benches very uncomfortably. We moved back to the house as winter came on where my mother and sister slept under the dining table and I slept in the cupboard under the stairs. The bombs were not destined for us, although some stray ones fell in the area. We were overwhelmed by the noise of the guns which fired as soon as the drone of the planes reached a particular level.

My father worked different shifts in London and also had fire watching duties at Electra House and, more often than not, was unable to get home.

We had an air raid shelter built in our garden furnished with bunks to enable us to sleep in it. During the period of flying bombs in 1944 it also had some daytime use, although in those days we tended to carry on with our normal life.

Our school was never closed. As the exams approached desks were carried into the shelters so that the entire school certificate and higher school certificate exams were sat in the shelters without interruption. Otherwise, we were in the classrooms until the air raid warning went. On one occasion a bomb had fallen before we got out of the classroom, near, but not near enough to damage us or the school.

At home we stood outside the shelter at times watching flying bombs, their engines stopped, drifting before dropping. Our house was never damaged by bombs, but only to some extent by the hail of shrapnel from guns.

On D-day we heard the announcement of the invasion on the 1 o’clock news at home, because we went home for lunch and thinking that no one at school could possibly know about it, I rushed back to break the news, not imagining that there would be a radio in the staff room, which of course there was.

At the end of the school term in 1944 a group of us from the lower 6th form were invited to go to York to stay with the families of 6th form pupils at Queen Anne’s School where the deputy head mistress from our school had gone as Headmistress and so we spent the holidays very pleasantly there. My mother and sister went to friends in Nottingham and Huddersfield and other friends from my class were scattered for a few weeks throughout the country.

When we returned to school in the autumn the flying bombs were no more and only the occasional distant rumble of a V2 explosion was heard and our direct involvement was over.

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