大象传媒

James McHugh talks to Elaine Taylor about his memories of World War II at the Tullie House 60th WWII Anniversary Event in Carlisle.

School
I remember the evacuees from Newcastle. During the war I lived in the Belle Vue area of Carlisle. We had 2 evacuees living with us - they were from an area of Newcastle called Middle Street Tech. I was at the grammar school in Carlisle. We shared the premises with evacuees from Newcastle Royal Grammar School or Rutherford Tech College. The arrangement was that the Carlisle Grammar school had Carlisle pupils in the mornings and the Newcastle pupils in the afternoons. The Carlisle pupils also had to attend on Saturday mornings. Later in my working life I happened to meet up with one of the evacuees who had shared my desk at school.

We also had to walk to Tullie House in the afternoons for our art lessons. The name of the art mistress was Miss Holmes. We had to do afternoons as well as mornings as we were older and needed more education than the Newcastle evacuees.

During the war there were holiday weeks at Bitts Park, where there would be fairs and entertainment. The holiday week in Carlisle was known as Race Week and was at the end of June/beginning of July. This was because we couldn't really have holidays elsewhere, although people did go to Silloth on the train.

There were always collections for war funds - for example the Spitfire Fund. My wife presented the Mayor of Carlisle with money from such a fund.

Shops
In the lower Arcade in Carlisle there was a shop called Cliftons. It sold sweets and chocolate. We used to queue to get sweets and chocolates from this shop. We also used to queue at a shop in Lonsdale Street called Lambs the Fruiterers. We queued for tomatoes and any other different fruit which would come from abroad.

Attacks in the Area
There were air raid warnings in Carlisle but no real attacks. I remember an attack on the masonic lodge at Gretna and people were killed. During the war, cars had to have their beams shielded. I think that same night of the Gretna bomb that some people at the meeting in the masonic lodge had left their car lights on so the Germans had seen them and bombed the building. Also, there were other potential targets in the area, so maybe the Germans had been looking for them and thought they had located one of them. During the 1st World War, Gretna was one of the main ammunition depots which was also effective in World War II, so this may have been another target on their list.

The other bombing experience I remember may have been a single raider who had lost his way. One of the bombs landed on a farm at West Silloth - it made an absolute mess. He also dropped one on a school at Maryport. During the war there was a large airfield at Silloth. A lot of aircraft were delivered to Silloth from the States. There were Hudgsons and Liberators. Quite a few Hudgsons didn't actually make it across the Atlantic - for example they ran out of fuel just before they reached their destination. Some of them crashed into the Solway Firth. To quite a number of people the Solway Firth became know as Hudgsons Bay.

There was an airfield at Kingstown with an aerodrome. It became a training airfield for the airforce. They had Tiger Moths and Miles Magistars. We used to see them flying around in training.

Food Storage
There was a church in the Carlisle Cathedral grounds called St Marys. This church was commandeered by the government. Similarly a church at the bottom of Botchergate called Christchurch was also commandeered. They were used to store food and were called buffer depots. Presumably they'd been deconsecrated then demolished after the war.

State Managed Pubs
As there were many people shipped into the ammunitions depot at Gretna at that time, they regularly used to come drinking in Carlisle and it got really bad with people getting drunk and causing trouble. So CDSMS was started - Carlisle and District State Management Scheme - the first state managed pubs were in Carlisle as a result of the problems during the war. The object of the scheme was to minimize the amount of drink people had.

Collecting Memorabilia
The train station in Carlisle was very busy as a result of the troop trains coming through the station. Something that some of the boys like myself would do was to spend a lot of time at the station asking the troops for cigarette packets. We were particularly interested in the Amercian & Canadian packets - two brands that I remember were Lucky Stripe and Sweet Caporal. We wanted to collect them. From this interest we would speak to the Americans and Canadians and ask them about where they were from. I remember writing to places in Canada and they would send me information brochures about the places. This was very helpful for our Geography lessons.

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