大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Marie on behalf of Mollie and has been added to the site with her permission. Mollie fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

The following are extracts from accounts Mollie wrote for her granddaughter Orianne's school project.

At the beginning of the war I went to Springhill Elementary School in Southampton. In those days this was the usual kind of school that most children attended until they were 14 when they left to start earning their livings. Children who were bright enough to pass 'The Scholarship' were able to go to either a secondary or a grammar school until they were at least 16. The Local Education Authority paid the school fees and they had a uniform allowance if their parents needed it. The other pupils in these schools were there because their parents could afford to pay for their education. Quite often some of the bright elementary children did not even sit the Scholarship because their parents needed them to go to work to help the family finances.

As the name 'elementary' indicates, the education was basic and straightforward, enough for the pupils to go out and make their way in the world. We had reading, writing and arithmetic, religious instruction, history, geography, singing, also P.E. in the playground which, in the summertime, was
sometimes country dancing (usually called folk dancing these days). Also in the Infants' playground, the far side of the playground was where the toilets were. This often meant getting cold and/or wet in the winter as we ran across the playground and back. We learned the alphabet and times tables, all of which we recited together. There was also 'drawing', which I didn't like because I was poor at it. In
those days there were some rather posh cigarettes called du Maurier which came in pale green oval tins tall enough to hold the coloured chalks we used for colouring. We also had paint boxes - very messy! At Christmas we would make coloured paper chains for decorating the classroom. I used to enjoy that. In history lessons we used a series of text-books called Marten and Carter's History Books for Schools. Five years earlier, Grandad had the same experience as me where he was at school in Cheshire. When we moved up a class the new teacher would bring out the same Book 1 and we would start all over again at the beginning. We all got sick to death of the Stone Age and cavemen and then on to Angles, Saxons and Jutes - never any further. It is amazing we are both so interested in history now. My recollections of geography are of a large wall map of the world with the countries marked, another with all the mountains and rivers and lowland shown, also a map of the British Isles - everyone had to be able to show where Southampton was and London. That was the beginning of what was to become my chosen subject in later life. The maps intrigued me, I wanted to know where places were that I heard of on the radio or saw mentioned in the newspapers.

In August 1939 it became clear that there was likely to be a war and plans were made to evacuate children from industrial towns, ports and military areas etc. which might be bombed. Southampton was one such place. I had spent the last week of the four weeks summer holiday with my grandparents in Rossmore, on the northern edge of Poole, another coastal town only about thirty miles from my home. On Sunday 3rd September I was returning from church with no-one else in sight when a woman leaned out of her window and shouted "We are at war. The war has started." It must have been after 11am since that was the deadline for Hitler to withdraw his army from Poland. I can still see that glorious morning, the green recreation ground before me with such a blue sky and little white clouds above. Somehow I was aware that this was a special moment, an important moment and I ran on to tell my Grandparents. I must have returned to my own home very soon after because I was evacuated with my school to the area where my Granny lived. We first went to St Aldhelm's church hall where we were given something to eat while we waited to be collected and taken to our billets. This was the name given to the homes where we would be staying. No-one else knew where they would be going. For me, however, no problem - I knew where and with whom I would be staying my grandparents, of course. I was very glad about this and felt sorry for the others, going into the unknown. Mind you, I was made to eat black pudding and undercooked beef sausages -new to me and quite disgusting I thought.

Another piece of good fortune was that the school we were going to share was about five minutes walk from Laurel Cottage, my Grandparents' home. It was an almost new school with lots of windows and classrooms upstairs. There was an Assembly Hall where we had music lessons and learned to sing the Marseillaise (the French National Anthem) in French! Our music teacher, who belonged to the host school, was enthusiastic and we would all sing 'God save the King' (George VI) and then this rousing tune with funny-sounding words which made us all giggle, though I enjoyed and have remembered it ever since.

There was also a Cookery Room - unheard of in Springhill. I was interested but only moderately successful. I remember having to walk home carrying a jelly which refused to set. Granny was not at all pleased. We had to take our own ingredients and she said I had wasted them. My grandparents only had the old age pension for themselves - 10/- (shillings) each a week (50p) from which they had to pay rent. I never lived down the fact that I couldn't even make a jelly! (I did get the knack later, though. . . )

There was an extra, unexpected addition to my education which I was not able to do at home - my father would have none of it - which was to have piano lessons. My older cousin, who also lived with Granny, had saved hard to buy a second hand piano and she agreed to let me learn on it as long as I didn't annoy Granny and Grandad by practising too long. It was kept in the "front room" and I loved it, learning enough to read music to a degree and to play some tunes during those six months. My teacher charged 2/3 an hour (11 p). I had half an hour so I paid her 1s1/2d. Being a spinster, she must have had a very Spartan life, even for those days. I often wondered how many people had piano lessons in that low paid district and how she managed. No wonder she was so thin. My mother sent me a postal order for 1/6 every week, to pay for the lesson, a penny stamp for the letter home and 31/2d as pocket money.. .

I stayed in Rossmore for nine or ten months before returning home and back to Springhill again to join those who hadn't been evacuated, which was not compulsory. The classrooms had a veranda outside along their whole length - a roofed area where we could be dry during rainy playtimes and
play dibs and marbles. It was also the place where crates of free milk were kept - one third of a pint bottles with cardboard tops and a straw to push through the punched hole. They were not like today's plastic ones, but literally of straw. We had to be careful not to squeeze them or they would flatten and often split and we were allowed only one each as a rule. I remember a very cold winter when the milk top had been pushed right out and was sitting on frozen milk about half an inch above the bottle! Then in summer it often tasted lukewarm, which was not so good.

Springhill had a tuck shop, which I didn't find in any other school I went to. Mr & Mrs Spratt were the caretakers who also cooked the school dinners - stew in a great big pot or shepherds' pie. Not many people usually stayed for lunch, only those who lived a long way off or were entitled to free dinners. We had two hours for lunch (12 - 2pm) so I was able to go home, about a twenty minute walk. I only stayed at school on very wet days or if my mother was going to be out at lunchtime. I don't remember how much the dinners cost, but not very much. In the kitchen, where we all sat at a long well scrubbed trestle table to eat, there was a glass fronted cupboard containing sweets. Nothing was more than 2d -that was expensive! I remember long, very narrow strips of hard chewy toffee in a paper wrapper called Everlasting Strips (which they nearly were - woe betide if you went into class still chewing, you might even be forbidden the tuck shop for a week or two.) The Spratts knew every child by name and also what they were likely to choose. Like the strips, you could have five aniseed balls for a farthing. We could have sticks of liquorice, liquorice wheels with a coloured sweet in the centre, sherbet dabs with a piece of toffee on a stick and sherbet fountains (more costly at 2d) a cardboard tube of sherbet with a liquorice tube which acted like a straw, also small, thin bars of chocolate for a penny, I think. So if we ever picked up coins in the street there was always a use for them, also for the pennies you could get on jam jars and lemonade bottles - you didn't see many of those lying about, too valuable.

For writing, we had inkwells in the top corner of the desk and pens with separate nibs making medium or fine lines. They would soon get scratchy and we had to ask the teacher for a new one. It was the monitor's job to fill the inkwells. I remember getting into trouble for messy, untidy writing and having to stay behind after school to do the piece of work again. I genuinely tried my best but still was rapped on the knuckles with the edge of a ruler. This stung so much that my writing was even worse, and my mother wanted to know where I'd been all that time. . .

The cloakrooms had wash-basins and my memories of these were having to gargle with an inky tasting liquid because there was a diphtheria epidemic (a bit before the war) and many children in the area died. The other thing was that if anyone was rude or said bad words they were sent to wash their mouths out with soapy water.

A good thing was that we all learned to swim, but I really disliked the soggy communal changing room, where sometimes the benches were also wet, with nowhere dry to put one's clothes. We used to walk there and back in a crocodile with a teacher and would hold our noses and run as we passed the cooling pond for the power station - it was foul! !

Soon after our late night journey to Rossmore on the first night of the blitz in November 1940, I was sent off again to my step-brother, John's, home in the Buckinghamshire village of Den ham, not far from the town of Slough. He was in the RAF at the time but his wife, Peggy, had agreed to look after me so that I could be away from the bombing. The school was one of the really old-fashioned buildings still found in many rural areas, probably going back to 1872when a new law provided education for the children in the whole country. There was a cast-iron coal burning stove in the middle of the classroom to keep us warm - we had snow and many frosts that winter. You roasted if you were near it and shivered if you were far away. I don't remember much about the lessons, but I didn't mind going to the school, although I was a bit of an oddity, not being a village child but a stranger. By Easter, however, I was back home again, at my request.

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