大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jean Reeve of Wakefield Libraries and Information Services on behalf of Esm茅 Dobby and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Student Teacher, 1939 鈥�41: A Memoir Part 3

There were two trains a day from Stafford to Newport 1pm and 4pm. Harold, Joan鈥檚 husband, had no spare petrol to fetch me so I got a train. Almost always I arrived to find the 1pm train had gone. So I left my luggage in the left luggage office, had lunch in the dining room and went out to see the sights until time for the 4pm train. At Newport I took a taxi out to Oulton Farm. Later Dr. Beeching axed the station and in better times I was collected from Stafford. The Easter visits were very enjoyable. After a winter in the blackout the Spring blossom was very much appreciated. The lanes were filled with primroses and violets, purple and white. The embankment supporting the aqueduct carrying the Shropshire Union Canal at Norbury Junction was covered with primroses. My friends said petrol rationing had its uses. The hordes who used to come out at weekends from Stafford to pick them could not. On the farm there is a quarry where the stone for the farmhouses came from in the C18. It is filled in spring with the little Tenby daffodils about 6鈥漢igh and bluebells later. Harold used to dig up a clump for Joan to keep until the blooms died, then replaced them. Others ventured across the field to pick them. One Sunday after the was, several of us walked down to the quarry to look at the daffodils. On the way back we met some people from Newport coming up the lane to the field gate. We knew them, Father, Mother and daughter. The daughter hastily put a trug behind her back. We stood at the gate talking to them about the daffodils while they shifted their feet uneasily. Joan remarked about selfish people who picked them, spoiling the show. I remarked how some individuals even dug them up. Private property too! They hastily said they had come to look so we let them go. Harold put one of the cowmen on the gate on Sundays in the season. Leaning on the gate, with his shotgun under his arm, he defended the flowers.
Summer was the busiest time for me. We had apples, pears, plums, damsons, raspberries to bottle and jam. I picked blackberries in the hedgerow and hazel nuts and walnuts also. There was a pig to be killed and Harold鈥檚 Aunt Gladys came to render the 鈥榣eaf鈥� and make pork pies, brawn, sausages. Hams and bacon had to be cured. We had pork joints and pork chops. Such luxury! I made raspberry pies and apple pies with the lard. Blackberry and apple were popular. I used to take tins of custard powder with me because Joan used a lot and found it hard to get. Fruit in tins and tinned meat were on a points system. 18 points for a large tin of fruit when you had not many to start. Large tins of sausages with lard were sent from America. I never tasted anything so good as those smoked ham Vienna sausages. Butter and bacon were also in tins for points. Barnsley was in the heavy industrial zone with mines and foundries so we got extra supplies of points goods but not extra points. In August extra sugar was released for jam making. Joan also got harvest rations of tea, sugar and cheese to distribute to the farm hands in August. The cheese was a very strong smelling American Cheddar which the men liked. We suspected it was such that the warehousemen would be very pleased to see the back of any day. The shop was very generous and pressed extra on her. We put it in a meat safe which hung outside an attic window on the north side of the house and begged the men to fetch it quickly.
To have unlimited eggs was a real luxury. I made cakes and custards, salads with hard boiled eggs and, of course, home-cured bacon or ham and eggs. On returning home, I packed up six dozen eggs in cornflake boxes and put them in my suitcase. Happy to say I never had one broken. My nerves suffered when travelling and some hearty sergeant would heave my case up on his shoulder as we changed at Crewe or Manchester. Porters were ancient and scarce. It was 鈥榙o it yourself鈥�. The weekly bus to Newport from Oulton was a revelation. We had to put the children (twins) in a push chair and Michael, the eldest son, stood on the crossbar at the back as we ran over the orchard and into the lane to the aqueduct. We careered madly down the lane to where the bus came to the arch of the aqueduct over the road to Norbury Junction. It picked us up there and reversed to go back on a very winding lane to Woodseaves and Newport. People waited at crossroads or by gates. Mrs. Parr, the coalman鈥檚 wife, was called for at home. If she was not at the gate the conductor went up to her door. Coal was rationed and her husband was very important. The bus was crowded with shoppers who were often taking eggs or butter to relations and friends or hens tied by the leg. We even had a sucking 鈥榩ig in a poke鈥� once. Coming back at 1pm (only bus) was even more hazardous. People were burdened with bundles and bags of shopping. Some had picked up parcels at the station or plants from the market. Many women cycled to town complete with baby chair on the back. A friend who lived near Oulton farm had a cycle with a motor on it, which she used up the hill from town. Her petrol ration went further because she had pedalled in between! The wives of the farm hands helped out with beet planting or weeding and hoeing. When Joan returned to Forton Hall on her in-laws鈥� retirement in 1946, she tried to employ some help but it was always very erratic. Forton Hall was built in 1663 by the son of the then Lord Norbury. It passed to the Bougheys of Aqualate Hall and became a dower house. During the First World War, Sir Francis Boughey lost three sons. They had three boys and one girl among them. They were all killed in the Second World War. The house and farm was let in 1928 to Harold鈥檚 father. Sir Francis had no use for a dower house. When he died in 1943 he left the house to the eldest of his brother鈥檚 daughters. Land had to be sold to pay death duties so Harold was able to buy Oulton. It had no water laid on although there was a new bathroom! You fetched water from a pump at the back door. If you wanted to use the bathroom you turned a switch at the pump and pumped thirty strokes which sent the water upstairs to the tanks. It was nerve-wracking when visitors came. You prepared the tank but had to remember to pump up more water if anybody else showed signs of retiring upstairs.
There was no electricity. We had paraffin lamps and candles. Cooking was by kitchen range and heating log fires. Paraffin was rationed but country dwellers were given a reasonable allowance. Joan鈥檚 Uncle came round with a van selling paraffin, cleaning materials, kitchen utensils, matches and sometimes sacks of wood or potatoes.
At one time she tried an oven heated by paraffin burners but it never got properly hot and the food smelled of paraffin. The range was not too bad and I was used to cooking in a coal oven so we managed. At Forton there was a range with two ovens and a boiler for hot water. They also got electricity in 1942. After the war a Rayburn was put in and a small electric oven. The water came from springs enclosed in a tank in the field below the church. It was pumped around the hamlet by an engine supervised by the estate manager who lived at the crossroads. It was very hard water and ruined kettles with limescale, Not very good for the complexion either. The hot water pipes got furred up and had to be replaced. To wash our hair we collected rainwater from a tap in the cellars. It came to a sink from a tap on the stables. The washing had been done down there in former days. There was a wooden sink and stone built boiler. A large game larder with cool slabs of slate was useful in hot weather. No washing machine, refrigerator or freezer, of course. A gas boiler in the scullery was the only amenity.
The school house had no water laid on. Just a tap outside. Houses in Newport had poor facilities. Some had washhouses outside the back door, no water inside and built in 1932! Excuses were made about poor water supply. A few weeks of sunshine in summer resulted in the water supply being cut off.
The war did come to Oulton one morning in about1943. We were in the kitchen when we heard a roar as a plane passed low over the roof. Joan and I ran out to see a Lancaster bomber just skimming the housetop, We saw the rear gunner in his turret quite clearly. He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. We learnt later that they made it six miles to Aqualate Hall and landed in the Mere. They were able to launch the dinghy and rowed ashore! The elderly butler met them at the lakeside with Mrs. Morris鈥檚 compliments and would they like to come up to the Hall to telephone their unit? And the coffee was on!
There were lots of airfields around because of the comparatively flat land. Sometimes planes collided with The Wrekin, which rises suddenly. In peace time a red light winks on the summit at night. There was a bad crash in which all were killed. From our bedroom windows at Oulton we could see The Wrekin quite well and if you could see the path up to the top it was going to rain!
Post at Oulton was delivered by a woman on a bicycle. She collected any post you wanted to send. You gave her the stamp money.
During the war Joan sent me a cockerel for Christmas dinner, by rail. It never arrived. On enquiry, I found she had left it unplucked, tied a label to its legs and sent it to the station. Her mother-in-law said they always did that with no trouble before the war! My father thought it never left the station with poultry being so scarce. The best thing was two hares in their skins she sent later. No sign at Christmas but in the middle of January a railway dray drew up outside our house and the driver approached our front door with two hares hanging from a stick. The stench was unbelievable. He said they had been lost on the way. We told him to keep them. He said people hung them anyway! We said 鈥榖urn them鈥� and begged Joan to send no more presents of that genre. Another wartime disaster was a parcel which clinked and smelled strongly of lavender. The postman complained all the mail smelled of it. Inside was a box with a broken bottle of lavender water and two jars mercifully unbroken. One contained 1lb of honey, the other 1lb of butter churned by a neighbouring farmer鈥檚 sister. They were untainted, mercifully.
We queued up at Christmas if the Co-op chemist had soap or talc to sell. Word went round like Freedom Radio. Brands and scents you hardly knew usually, but useful for gifts. I made soft toys such as rag dolls, teddy bears, gollywogs etc. A stall in the market had remnants of fur, fabric and cotton. We stuffed them with feathers or flocks from old pillows.

Addendum: Peggy鈥檚 Air Raid

My friend Peggy Giles, who was one of our happy band at Bingley, was sent to Hull for her first teaching post. It was 1941 and bombing was continuous. One night she was asleep and was awakened by an almighty crash outside. The entire front wall of the house was gone. A landmine had dropped in the street. This was not one of the small ones we hear of being scattered in Bosnia or other places. It was a mine like the ones dropped in the sea but it came down by parachute. Peggy heard wardens calling her to get out of the house. She grabbed her shoes and her new coat, which had cost eighteen coupons and two coupons respectively that day. Fortunately, the house did not collapse and she collected the rest of her possessions later.
The schools of Hull had been evacuated but when the bombs did not fall straightaway, the mothers and children drifted back. Then they were sent off again in the time of the intensive bombing and Peggy went with her school to a small East Yorkshire village. The school was small and could not hold the village children and the evacuees at the same time, so both lots went part-time. It was very trying for the teachers supervising the restless 鈥榯ownies鈥�, who were not wanted and did not want to be there.
Before the evacuation Peggy was sent to fire watch in a warehouse on the docks with another 20 year old girl. They were alone in the warehouse in air raids with bombs all around. Their building did not receive a hit luckily. They had to walk home, often at 4 am, after the air raid in the dark. The air raid wardens were very good and escorted them from one post to the next. One morning Peggy set out at her usual time to walk to school but the road was blocked. Two whole streets were bombed to the ground. Her school was in the next street and untouched but many pupils lived nearby and were killed on injured.
As I said, Liverpool was one place that was bombed early on, as the port bringing aid from America. My College 鈥楳other鈥�, Mollie Benyon, died in one of the raids soon after she left College in 1940. I felt very fortunate in Yorkshire, only the coast was attacked by ships and there were a few bombs on Leeds and Bradford. My aunt in Bristol endured years of Hell and thinks we knew nothing!

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