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I was six when I was evacuated from the East End of London to Suffolk. We were completely bombed out. My mother, two brothers and I had to leave London along with my aunt and her two daughters who had been living nearby. We caught the train from London with other evacuees and travelled to Colchester where four coaches were waiting. I remember the coach arriving at Boxted Hall in Suffolk which was a huge estate with a moat and tennis courts. I’d never seen anything like it!
This was the distribution point where we were all allocated to our various ‘billets’. I remember the Kray twins were billeted for a short while at East House with the Stile’s family. My family was billeted to a farm in Boxted and the four of us shared one room. My aunt and cousins also shared one room on another farm in the same village.

We had the usual problems settling in. Because we were Eastenders, people used to think we were from mice-ridden slums and had the idea that we’d be badly behaved trouble-makers. There were frequent fights with the local boys to begin with, but it soon settled down.
I loved it on the farm. For a cockney lad to see the ducks, chickens, cows and calves was a marvellous new experience and I used to love helping with the animals and collecting the eggs. When we watched the cows being milked they’d squirt our faces with milk and they’d often give us

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