大象传媒

As so many of your contributors were, I was evacuated from my home in N.E Lancs ~ Higher Blackley ~ to the green fields and safety (?) of Cheshire.
I was just over 9 years old in Sept 1939, living a couple of miles away from a huge aircraft factory AV Roe Chadderton Lancs, later to become British Aerospace, which I believe was being geared up for the manufacture of Lancaster bombers: not the best place to be in the event of an air-raid!!
So along with my two younger brothers aged 6 and 3 years, (now as I look back, mere babies),complete with labels and gas masks I was bundled onto a bus from my primary school 'Victoria Avenue Primary, Higher Blackley' to tht old London Road railway station, now known as Piccadily.
I was taken as I now know, but had no idea at the time, to Gatley, Cheshire and from there by another fleet of buses to my destination Cheadle Hulme, being unloaded at Queen's Road Primary School. After being unloaded and assembled in the school hall the rest is thankfully a bit blurred although I do recall being taken to a few houses only for the adults with us to be told "we only want girls".
One thing I'm fully aware of is the fact that it was very late and only after a long, long day did a lovely lady and her equally lovely husband agree to take us into their large house along with three other brothers of a similar age.
Who but a "saint" would take 6 tired, hungry, dirty kids, especially all boys into her lovely home which incidentally was called Farley House, 21, Cheadle Rd, Cheadle, Cheshire.
(Farley House itself has a little story: it was built, I was told, to design for Mrs M Behrens by her husband as an exact replica of her childhood home in Yorkshire which was at that time a vicerage.)
Mr Enriques Behrens ran his own company in Orient House, Granby Row, off Sackville Street in the city of Manchester, being 'Importers and Exporters'. The company was called Overmann and Co Ltd and although both his surname and that of his company sound German he was in fact Venezuelan by birth, born in Caracas.
I only mention this fact as the over-active imagination of the 8,9,10 year old children, filled with stories from their comics the Dandy and Beano, imagined everybody who was not called Smith or Jones to be a German spy and with a name like Behrens it was obvious I was living with a spy!
As stated I was moved from my home for one reason only ~ safety ~ which seems ironic giver the following incident:although I'm unsure of the actual date, sometime in 1943(?) a huge land mine drifted right over the roof of Farley House before landing luckily ,(though not for the golfers), right in the middle of the fairway of Cheadle Golf Course on which the house was built, creating a huge crater and peppering the back of the house with shrapnel.
During the same raid a complete street was demolished in Cheadle village and various instances of incendiary bombs dropped all around were reported. Why should an area of green fields become a target as it surely had?
Fast forward a year or so ahead to D Day June 1944 and the invasion 'The Floating Harbour', Mulberry Harbour as it was called ~ where were the parts built? At the very small factory at the opposite end of the golf course which I believe was called Clays Factory, Cheadle Heath. As it was still wartime this was never confirmed or denied.
I finally left two of the most wonderful people I have ever known in August 1945 shortly after VJ Day having completed my somewhat interrupted education.

(NB Please note all dates are only approx. jim@avmail.co.uk)

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