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Hilda Wallwork born 20/6/1916

Hilda was 23 when war broke out

I was born in Chorlton, Manchester. I was adopted you see and the parents that I lived with, that’s where my story starts. That was Grosvenor Road, Salford. It was Lancashire then, still is Lancashire.

At the beginning of the war I was living in a two up, two down terraced house in Grosvenor Road, with an outside toilet. Two of us lived there, my father and myself. I had always worked in clothing manufacture and by 1939, I had moved to Burton’s factory as a cutter. The air raid shelters at Burton’s Granville Street factory were in the basement and since I worked on the third floor, when the alarms sounded we had to run down 95 stone steps to the shelter. This was repeated every time we left our work for an air raid or at lunchtime, finishing time and starting time, no wonder they said we were fit during the war. On the 22 December 1940 on the Sunday night of the Manchester blitz, my husband to be had to go to Chester for his work and had to travel by train via Manchester. He was trapped there during the air raid and spent the night in the crypt of the cathedral. I married him in 1941 but remained living in the same house in Grosvenor Road. I was then directed to work at Farnworth Fire Station which was also a fire training centre. My task was to work as a cook and two of us on one shift had to feed up to 90 hungry firemen. At home our shelter originally was under the stairs but eventually we had our Anderson shelter sunk into the back garden.

Friendships were fine, oh yes, everyone was so friendly. I enjoyed work. I could walk it to work. Just Grosvenor Road to Granville Street it isn’t far. I could walk it there and back. But in 1940 we had a very heavy fall of snow which lasted for 3 days and 2 nights and they had to cut channels down the main roads for people to walk to work. You couldn’t see over the top. That was 1940. Rationing, I think everything was rationed. I don’t remember anything that wasn’t rationed. We used to get one tin of fruit twice a year, one in June, one at Xmas. That was tinned fruit, of course it had to come from abroad. I had a relative in New Zealand and she used to send parcels but she always put butter in and by the time we got it, it was rancid. But she was very good. I have been over to New Zealand once, my husband was still alive then, that was in 1995 and it was actually his cousins that we went to see and there was a family. When his cousin went out, she took one little girl, three years old, with her when she emigrated. Then she had three sets of twins all girls and then one more girl and it was all these girls that we went to see and we were made most welcome. We’d never seen them before and they hadn’t seen us.

I remember the day war broke out, one Sunday morning. I remember it being announced on the radio. I was in Grosvenor Road, at home, yeah. 3rd of September 1939, never forget it. Felt horrible. It was a big thing, we didn’t know what was going to happen and everyone said it would be over by Christmas but of course it went on for 6 years.

Before we were married, when he was in Chester, he was on government work. He had a lot of experience of manual work making things and he did, he wanted to go in the army, he passed A1 and then they said they wanted him on this course at Chester. But I mean it turned out to be marvellous for him because when he’d finished that course he was sent to Chadderton to where they were working on radar and he used to do designs for the tools that they used, for the radar equipment. But of course he had to travel to Chadderton, Oldham every day. But he was fine. We were married in 1941 and if he had lived another 9 months it would have been our diamond wedding. But he died in the January and it would have been September.

VE Day: Yes, all the street parties. We didn’t have one there, in Grosvenor Road but they were all over the town….With flags and banners and buntings. Everyone was so relieved. I remember VE day my husband was sitting an exam at Wigan Technical School and we used to have a tandem, we had a little girl then, and we used to go out on this tandem, with friends that he’d made at Oldham. And he got a side care for the little girl then when she got too big for that, he got a seat in the centre so that she held onto my handle bars. And his brother was in the army and he gave us a massive cape so when it was raining, myself and the little girl could fit in the cape and she just had her head bobbing through the cape, and that was funny. We thoroughly enjoyed it, all our years together. He was a good husband, one of the best.

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