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An evacuee’s tale
We had been in Poundfield Hall, Green Lane, Jarvis Brook, Sussex since dinner time and the ladies were clearing up. Edna Ely and I had watched all the other children leave for their foster homes and no one wanted us so we hoped that we were going home.
We were evacuees from Haseltine Rd School, Bell Green, Lower Sydenham, SE26. Earlier in the day we had boarded a steam train for an unknown destination and ended up at Jarvis Brook station. We walked in a crocodile from the station down in the valley until we were halfway up the hill to Crowborough when we turned off at Green Lane.
Now it was five o’clock and as we piled into the back of a car and headed back along the lane we couldn’t wait to catch the steam train back to London. On the way we stopped at what seemed to be a church and we were told to knock on the door.
We weren’t going home but were being billeted at the Rest House of Lady Trevor!
Apart from the tiny lady dressed in black with a lacy mantilla over her white hair, there was the tall housekeeper, Miss Hadley and a young woman who was Lady Trevor’s companion. We were taken up the centre staircase to a room immediately above the front door and told that we were NEVER to go to the West wing of the house which was Lady Trevor’s.
Next door to us was the companion (soon to disappear into the land Army), then the sewing maid and opposite the dragon, Miss Hadley. Round in the East wing were the servants, Louisa the parlour maid, Alice the house maid, the little kitchen maid and Cook who was never known by any other name. The chauffeur slept over the stables to complete the household of nine people. That is how I came to have a National registration card of EKPB 102 11 because with Edna slightly older, I was the eleventh in the house.
We ate with the servants. To this day there are many foods that I cannot swallow. I was given a plate piled with liver, carrots, swedes, potatoes and boiled rice when I had the appetite of a sparrow and would have been happy with a sausage and cabbage with gravy. I wrote pathetic letters home and my parents visited leaving a long line of carrier bags full of food (I remember tins of sardines) in the servants’ quarters. Then Lady Trevor came in and was truly horrified at the impression that she was not feeding the evacuees properly. Worse still, when Edna and I went up to our room, we found the floor covered with white sailcloth because my ink bottle had leaked on to the carpet.
Two things fascinated me in this house. In the entrance hall, there was a model garden constructed from mosses of all kinds with a mirror for a pond. Ten years later at Imperial College studying for an Honours degree in Botany I was able to give names to all those mosses, liverworts too. Then every evening, we were invited into the drawing room to listen to the companion playing the grand piano and to play with a wonderful compendium of games fitted into a wooden casket.
Lady Trevor died after Christmas and I was rebilleted with a rose grower, his wife and toddler which really suited me far more but I’ve never forgotten the mysterious Lady who lived in the forbidden West wing with whom I played solitaire.

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