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BACKGROUND TO ARTICLE REPRODUCED IN ‘MELBOURN MAGAZINE’

Melbourn, Cambridgeshire - is a village 10 miles south on Cambridge on the railway to Kings Cross and the A10 to Ely and Kings Lynn.

I was born in Thornton heath — 42 Hitchener Road, in a house we owned (mortgaged). The article covers the period of evacuation with our own family (grandparents and aunt and uncles homes!) — We then moved to Cambridge town in a rented house — until my father’s company moved back to London 1946/7. We then had to apply to a court to move back to Hitchener Road (the people living there had to find new accommodation first!). When we moved back in 1947/8 and I attended Norbury Manor School — then Croydon Polytechnic; working at the Croydon Company of Creed & Co until they moved to Brighton. My wife and I moved from Kitchener Road, Thornton Heath to Limpsfield Avenue. So the time I spent in Cambridgeshire was some of the happiest in my early life - only 10 people were killed in Cambridge in the war — and at the limit of the ‘Doodlebug’ Range — but the many airfields were attacked by German planes, in fact my father’s workplace was machine gunned once.

ON BEING AN EVACUEE IN MELBOURN

In February 1939 I had an eye operation at London’s Royal Eye Hospital. In May my brother Peter had his first bicycle (a Rudge Whitworth). It was often the custom pre-war to spend some time with relatives, often at Ramsgate or at Melbourn with our grandparents, Joe and Margaret Jackson, or our uncle’s family, Cecil and May Jackson with their son, Robert (Bob) Jackson.

Our grandparents lived in one of 5 cottages (now Long Thatch) on the Moor in Melbourn, which had 2 bedrooms upstairs and 2 rooms on the ground floor — a living cooking room and a scullery for food store and preparation etc. There was an outside earth toilet in a wooden shed. Water was from a central shared pump. Lighting was by oil lamps and candles. Cooking on an open hearth fire with a side oven (always with a kettle on or near the boil).

The wireless set ran on accumulators (re-charged at the cycle shop, Harry Stanford’s). Milk was delivered by a horse-drawn milk float and ladled out of milk churns.

Cecil, May and Robert Jackson lived in Moor End, Moat Lane, in a house called ‘The Poplars’ after a large poplar tree by the road, which had 3 rooms plus a dairy/food store on the ground floor and 3 bedrooms on the floor above. The house had a clunch built outside toilet. Water came from a semi-rotary hand pump in the kitchen — into a wood fired copper in the corner. Cooking was by an ‘Aga-type’ range, lighting was by oil lamps and the radio was again on an accumulator.

Peter and I came on holiday on 3rd August 1939 and were still in Melbourn when war was declared on 3rd September 1939.

My father’s firm, Blue Circle Cement Company, moved to a prepared ‘War Reserve’ site from its London HQ to the Saxon Works in Cambridge (near Oldhams Lane Sainsbury’s). My father went into lodgings in Melbourne Place, Cambridge. My mother, Dorothy, her sister Mrs. Phyllis Hawkins and my aunt, Miss Frances Bottom, all arrived in Melbourn (letting our Croydon house) to stay.

My brother, Peter, went to stay with his cousin at ‘The Poplars’ and the rest of us, 3 adults and 1 child, lived with our grandparents, 6 in a 2 bedroom cottage. We 4 slept in the front bedroom and our grandparents at the back.

Mrs. Hawkins moved out into rented accommodation in Cambridge, with her husband who was also a Blue Circle employee.

Peter attended Melbourn School for a short period, with our cousin. Being too young for school I remember long walks with the aunties, over ‘overdowns’ or round the river Mel to Meldreth. I used to dam little streams or play ‘boats’ down the moor in the ‘Dipping Pool’, a clear stream (near where Thatcher Stanford’s is now), said to be a washing area for clothes etc, in the past. Fishing with a net and jam jars was also a pastime.

My ‘evacuee’ status ended as such in late 1939 when the family rented a house in Perne Rd Cambridge until 1947 when we went back to Thornton heath in Surrey.

My brother Pete went on to go to ‘The County School’ in Cambridge with other Melbourn boys, Ron Whiting, Robert King and Bob Jackson.

After 1939 we used to visit Melbourn regularly by 108 bus, and we spent our school holidays with out relations. As the youngest boy I used to attach myself to the ‘big boys’ and can remember collecting fruit at Whitings Farm on an old Morris Cowley pick-up and watching ‘Elbourn Melbourn’s’ traction engines rumble through the village. We visited Jack Ward’s Mill when it was working (Sheene Mill), he was a friend of my father.

By this time, in Cambridge, I’d learned to ride my brother’s bicycle and well remember my first long ride with my parents from Cambridge to Melbourn and back again, 20 miles. We stopped at the King’s/Queen’s? Head in Hartson for a lemonade. On a later holiday in Melbourn my mother and I was blackberrying at Whaddon Gap but we were told to MOVE ON by American Military Police. It appears we had got too near to their B17 Flying Fortress hidden in the woods.

Before this time I remember in August 1940 the oil bomb, in Cecil Jackson’s orchard, which killed a pig and some chickens.

A whole ‘stick’ of bombs, from the Station to the A10 straddled the north of the village. The Jacksons had already dug their air raid shelter, so there were no injuries. It was a cold and damp place!

During summer holidays I remember going up to ‘Dodkin’s Farm’, where my cousin worked. I actually led the hay cart once or twice ‘Leading Stock’ I think it was called. I came into contact with the Italian POWs who worked there.

At the same time my Uncle Cecil Jackson worked at the Atlas works in Whaddon. He worked with the German POWs as he was the WWI veteran and a Sergeant in the Home Guard. I don’t think he ever lost any.

The frequent visits to Melbourn ended in 1947 when we returned to London. Now visits were by coach or train. I even bought a Croydon school friend on holiday and stayed at ‘The Star’ when relatives were unwell.

We borrowed bicycles and toured the area. This cycling ‘bug’ caught me and I became a club cyclist — in 1949 I cycled from Croydon to Melbourn and back in a day, having told my parents I was going to Brighton. I was frightened that someone would see me and tell my dad!

My interest in Windmills brought me to the area again as a base, but from 1939 to the present Melbourn has been as influence in my life, and started when I was an evacuee.

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