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Charlotte Mary Foot nee Panes and Edwin Colston Lee Foot

Farming and Ack-Ack

I was 15 years old when war was declared. I was on my first guide camp at Blue Anchor near Minehead in North Somerset, so of course we were quickly brought home which was Patchway Farm in Almondsbury. Our farmhouse is now a pub called named The Black Sheep where Aztec West is situated. Most of the land, which my parents farmed, is now covered with offices and buildings. I went to Colston’s Girls School and at 16 years of age, I took the School Certificate, and more often than not, the sirens would go off when we were doing our exams, and we all had to rush down to the shelters. I didn’t mind as I wasn’t very good at doing exams, so I was quite pleased when there was a warning.

Opposite to the entrance to our farm house there was an Army Camp where they kept the Ack-Ack guns. These guns moved around when the German Planes were about, so there was always a lot of noise going on, especially when the bombs were screaming down as well, my father (who went right through the First World War) re-enforced the space under the stairs for us to go when there was a Blitz on. There was just enough room for my mother, brother, sister and myself to shelter. Father was in the Royal Observer Corps, his look-out post was at Almondsbury Hospital, so he would either be on duty or milking the cows etc. You would hear the bombs coming down and you just hoped they didn’t land on you. We had four or five bombs land in our fields but fortunately no animals were killed. One day a lot of incendiary bombs were dropped over the farm, they set the buildings alight, so father thought he would try and put out those nearest the house. He tried to do it with a broom, which of course caught on fire so that was the end of that! They just had to burn themselves out.

Another story I have about my mother. Our local pub was the New Inn at Patchway, just down the road from the farm. Mother of course had never entered a pub in her life, (women did not go in pubs in those days). Anyway she was waiting for a bus outside of the Inn with other people, when a German Plane swooped down out of the sky and started to machine gun them, they all flew into the pub and got under the bar, fortunately no one was hurt but I’ve had quite a laugh about it over the years as it was her first visit to a pub, not a nice one though!

We also had two or three barrage balloons tethered in one of our fields. These were put up when the enemy were around. One became loose and father tried to stop it, by holding onto the rope, but he nearly went up as well!

My parents had a couple of friends in Bristol. One of which was a grocer, and the other one was a butcher, who used to come and sleep at the farm to get away from the Bristol raids. Through them we got a bit of extra food other than our rations!

My war job was as a nursery nurse. The powers that be were then took over a hotel called ‘Penscot’ at Shipham near Cheddar; and turned it into a residential nursery for babies and children. These were evacuated from Bristol. They stayed until the end of the war, it was an enjoyable job.

The war of course was horrible but it taught me and no doubt others, to be thoughtful to other people, and how little food one could live on. We had very little entertainment, and it certainly made us appreciate the life we have had since the war.

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