大象传媒

I was born in Plymouth on 23rd February, 1937 and my brother David Kellow Brenton also on 17th May 1939. My parents were Thomas Kellow Brenton born in Plymouth on 29th January 1903 and Evelyn Brett Brenton(nee Nottle) born near Boscastle, north Cornwall on 14th August, 1898. We lived at what was known then as 19 Trevarthian Terrace, Milehouse, Stoke, Devonport, Plymouth but some years later was renamed 54 Milehouse Road (apparently to assist the postal authorities !). My paternal grandparents lived next door to us at no.20.They were John Kellow Brenton born 14th May 1870 and Edith Mary Brenton (nee) Dolton born 30 January, 1870. My grandfather died in 1955 and my g/mother in 1960 so I remember them both well. By the time the war broke out my grandfather was already retired - he was by then 69. He had initially been employed as a shipwright in Devonport Dockyard. He left 'to improve himself' and was for a time an officer administering the Poor Law and later he was the Registrar for Births and Deaths in Devonport. He was by the time of his death a prominent Mason and at one time he served in Stoke, Devonport as a Conservative councillor. My father was a civil servant working for the Admiralty in the Naval Store Office of Devonport Dockyard in which capacity he served all his working life. My mother, as was the custom in those days a housewife - in fact she was never in employment.
As protection from possible german air raids
we had a Morrison shelter installed in our dining room. It was very large and solid!
It was a kind of table with a metal (iron?)
top and four metal pillars where table legs would be positioned. Around all four sides was a metal grill with squares of about 1.5
ins dimensions. this would (hopefully) protect against debris of any size but not splinters. The air raids over Plymouth started in 1940 and went on intermittently
until 1944. In either late 1940 or more probably we suffered as a result of a very bad air raid and I will give more detail of this later
later.

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