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This story was submitted to the People's War site by volunteer from The Chepstow Society on behalf of Dora Lawrence and has been added to the site with her permission. Dora Lawrence fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Dora Lawrence

Army

Then we went to Sudbrook, and that was all blackouts again. Of course that was worse still down there with them tunnels. We had R.A’s on the river bank. The Royal Artillery with these little pom pom guns. I can’t remember what they used to call them. They were all lined up on the bank of the river. Four or five of them. These R.A’s had huts you know,and they used to man them over night.

Home Life

Mrs McNabb had a few Evacuees, at odd times, they would come and go.
They were all right, it was her family more or less that were evacuated. Down there at Mathern Palace, there was such a lot of black out to do! We used to have black paper, thick black paper. and we used to make blinds out of that. Well you know the old fashioned, they used to have a pole at the top, my mother used to have it with wires, cotton and a hem at the bottom ??, and then pole through to make it drop like, and then you rolled them up at daytime.

We had a steel was it Morrison shelter?, Anderson’s was the brick, they were the ones built in the garden. But we had the Morrison’s in the living room, we didn’t have much room otherwise. There was a slatted mattress so you could go to sleep on the floor if there was a raid, we didn’t bother when there wasn’t.

There were soldiers SWBs down the Sudbrook Institute. They used to have social evenings, and they used to invite all us, look. These RA’s that went off the guns they were at that end of Sudbrook. They had their huts and that, they used to have social evening, we used to go playing darts up there, and have a dance.

I remember one, he was a real nice chap though. His wife had a baby while they were in Newport pictures, and they put it on the screen! The lights had gone, and he couldn’t mend his socks, he come and ask me, did I think I could mend his socks. Of course the others wanted to come then. I should have been mending socks for ever more!

Yes he always had a garden. While we were getting married, Gales (Innage Farm)said he could have part of the garden for keeping it tidy. So we always had that. But of course the rations, cheese and bacon was his biggest bug bear, he couldn’t get enough cheese and bacon. I had a friend, she died with TB after she had her child too. I can’t remember what age she was, she was a little bit older than me, but not much, and she’d had her baby before me, Brian was a year older than Marjorie. I used to go Caldicot to her one Tuesday. That was well after we had the children we used to push the prams, you thought nothing of walking there. She used to come to me the next Tuesday. But, her husband didn’t eat bacon, and if she had her ration, and Bill didn’t want it. She’d get on the bike, the woman she lived in rooms with would have the baby, and she would bring it up to me at Sudbrook.

We started off in Oakfield School on Mount Pleasant, we were in there in rooms, for five weeks. It was a school, but I don’t know if you know it, but there is like the big house, and a cottage, semi detached at the side. Well we were in that cottage part. They used to use the kitchen as well, because the girl used to cook for the school of course, they used to do dinners there. Arty was in rooms with Mrs Bryant down there. Her brother-in-law had the shop Ron Hollins, down the bottom of Chepstow? down in Lower Church Street. She had registered Arty there. Well I was in, was it Golden Five up by the Arch, Ellis’s store? Well anyway, Thomas’s was awful, you couldn’t get a blooming jelly or nothing. That annoyed me, so I took my book eventually to Hollins’ So when we went to Sudbrook, they delivered it to my Mother up the road, and then my Father worked at Sudbrook, on the farm. They used to bring it to me bit by bit, or we used to come and fetch it. But I done a lot better with Ron Hollins, than my sister did with Thomas’ or what I’d done before.

Local Events

There was a crater up in Station Road, Portskewett once, something dropped there. The worse we could see was watching Bristol, that was all a flame. I can remember coming down Pwllmeyric, must have been to Chepstow or something. Oh Bristol was all aflame, you could see it from this side. You could see it, in the dark, you could see any flame like that from my mother’s bedroom.

Voluntary Organisations

Air Raid Warden? I wasn’t a warden, but we all had to belong to it. What did they call it, Air Raid Precautions. They had a little room on the end of the Sudbrook Post Office. When we were on duty, and the bombs did start, we had to go all along in this room, with our tin hats. Well you just had to wait, I don’t know if there was any casualties, you would have to go out. Of course the women, they weren’t so bad, the men used to go and walk the village. Arty had a certificate for being in the A.R.P.

Work in Wartime

I was working at Mathern Palace when war broke out. There were four Staff, Mrs McNabb, and then the Gardener, Chauffeur and their wives. Lydia Phipps was the cook, my sister Elsie was palour maid, and we had a couple of housemaids, Eileen Lydiard was one, but we had three or four in our time. I went there as kitchen maid, and then when the Colonel died, she sacked the cook, and I was ‘betweenie’. Cook general sort of thing, I was. My sister who was parlour maid, and the housemaid, they used to come in and help me, because I was only 15, we used to go between us. Mrs McNabb reckoned it was the happiest days of her life when they had us two, we used to cook what she wanted, sort of thing. But she didn’t like spending too much money, and when she had a cook, she had to spend a bit more money. We used to go according, she used to have a temporary cook when we had the son home, and we had dinner parties of 10 or 12.

Well Arty had gone on the railway. He was in the garden at Mathern Palace, he was gardener’s boy, and he had gone on the railway, . He went on the railway in 1939, before the war started. Of course they wouldn’t take Arty in the forces off the railway, they wouldn’t take him. He wanted to go into the Navy. That’s when we sort of turned around and got married. He said, if I’m not going in the forces, we might as well get married. But he would have liked to gone in the Navy.

I didn’t work at the Palace from Sudbrook. I used to do temporary Post Round, when the girls had their husbands home. I used to do that week or what ever. Crick was, we used to go out of Sudbrook, up round The Ballan, then back in the top of Parkwall. That was the one round, there was two sisters used do these rounds. The other one, would be come from Portskewett Post Office down through St Pierre, and across, we used to go to the big house, and the cottage on wall, from through St Pierre Drive, then back up to Parkwall and up into the Leechpool Settlement. Deliver around there. On my bike, I would never have walked it!

Marjorie was born in 1943. They used to make you work, Caldicot Tin Works and that they were sending you to, or on the stations portering, things like that. They interviewed a lot of us, and we were all pregnant! She didn’t like it much either. Your the so and so that I have interviewed this morning. I said well I’m sorry! It was an office in Caldicot, a Mrs Harper she was.

I wouldn’t have minded going to work, but Arty was never co-operative, he would never let me go out to work. The last thing he wanted me to be was a ‘Caldicot Tin Walloper’ as he used to say. He had grown up with the women’s place was in the home and he wasn’t too keen on it, you know. But I always did do odd jobs, I used to come to Gales on the bike from Sudbrook, and do their sewing, you know, turning sheets sides to middle. Go potato picking, and all that. Of course the women had to go.

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