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This story was edited and submitted to the site by Brian Cape of Sutton Library Service with the author's permission. The
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Evacuation was necessary (my parents’ house was severely damaged during the war), but for many it was a mixed blessing. We were separated from the people who knew us- family, teachers, and friends.

I was evacuated with 3 of my sisters on September 4th 1939 from Wandsworth (London, SW 18) to Witney, Oxford. We were all different ages, and would have gone away separately, but my parents decided that we should stay together. We went via the local council to Witney, but were eventually split up into two billets. My youngest sister was then relocated away from me.

After returning home we were re-evacuated. Following the birth of another brother, and my father going into the army, it was decided that my mother should leave London. My mother, the three younger children and myself were evacuated to a hamlet in very rural Norfolk. My father’s last act before leaving in May 1941 was to bring my other three sisters to join us.

From a house on a busy main road in London, we were living in a remote cottage with one large room, a box room downstairs, and a room above. Water was from a well in the garden, shared with the family in the adjoining farm cottage. Cooking was done on two trivets on an open fire, with a Dutch oven for baking fed by a fire underneath. The light was from oil lamps that had to be filled and trimmed very carefully. There was a shed across from the back door where the oil was stored. The privy was at the end of what, to us, was a large garden. Fortunately the gentleman next door, employed by the farm that owned the cottages, undertook the necessary maintenance of the privy.

With seven children, no neighbours apart from the kind family next door, and the nearest village more than half an hour on foot, my mother coped heroically. Everything was delivered once a week by a travelling shop except the meat. This was bought on the necessary weekly trip to the villages by my mother to cash her army allowance.

After about fifteen months we were found a larger cottage with one more room. This was in a village with an occasional bus and some shops. We also had a pump instead of a well, and a kitchen range with an oven attached.

However, we all returned to London in 1943 when my mother was informed that the council intended to requisition our (rented) house.

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