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CHESHIRE MEMORIES OF WORLD WAR II

Most of my memories of the second world war are related to the Davenport Theatre which my family – the Burns family – owned and ran. The war years were the zenith of the cinema industry drawing hundreds of people to every performance and crowds of people on a Saturday night. My grandmother worked in the advance booking office, which as the owner she had no need to do, but she liked to have daily contact and keep her finger on the pulse of the business. After bookings had closed for the night we would all walk round to her home in the flats at 49 The Crescent, Davenport, Stockport in North Cheshire, in the pitch black with small hand-held torches to light the way. The dark was intense, and our mile-long walk was very familiar, which was a good thing because there was nothing to guide our steps. The sirens would wail, there would be bangs and searchlights in the sky but we always arrived home safely and without incident. One would hesitate to take such a walk in the dark today, even with the aid of modern street lighting.

The large Victorian house which my grandmother had converted into two flats had cellars which were made into air raid shelters. Many a night I remember falling asleep upstairs in my own bed and waking hours later downstairs in the cellar where my father had carried me. I would lie and listen to the conversation of the grown-ups sitting in the candlelight and the discussion was mainly what my grandmother was going to do to Mr Hitler if she could get her hands on him. My grandmother’s sister lived before the war in Nice on the south coast of France, and during the occupation she managed to arrange a passage on a boat to England, leaving all her possessions behind her in France. After many months she arrived in England and came to live with her sister in Stockport, which was rather a trial for both of them as they didn’t really get on together very well. At the very first opportunity she returned to Nice to resume her former way of life.

My parents owned a bungalow in Gatley where my brother and I were born in the 1930s, but in the early days of the war our home was damaged by bomb blast from incendiaries dropped on the nearby golf course which the bombers mistook for Ringway airfield not far away. Many a morning on the way to school there would be a fresh crater on the golf course, or one of the bungalows on Styal Road would have disappeared completely overnight. When the warning siren sounded my father would load us all up in his old Austin 16 with blankets and a mattress covering the back seat for my brother and myself to sleep on, and take us out in the country away from the bombs which might fall on and around the airfield. To us children this was dead exciting – to be travelling around in the car while everyone else was in bed asleep. One night we returned home after the all clear had sounded to find the damage which had been done. The only building work allowed during the war was to repair war damaged houses, so our family had to move out whilst work took place. We moved into the spare flat in grandmother’s house in the Crescent, Davenport, and I would have been 4 to 5 years old at that time. I remember having my fifth birthday in the lovely garden there.

I have many other memories of the war – the shortages – the ration books – the simplicity of entertainment compared to today – Tommy Handley and ITMA - the cold in the winter without today’s central heating – the thrill we had over quite simple things like a new doll or a picture book. One of my birthday presents at this time was a packet of wool from an auntie – unheard of luxury! My mother knitted a cardigan out of it for me but there was only enough wool for it to have short sleeves and much to my chagrin it had to have some coloured stripes put in to eke out the wool supply.

My main memory though is of the spirit around at the time. People were kind to each other and helped out. If one had sufficient food you might make a gift of some to one who was short. There was a spirit of all pull together against the common enemy – back to Mr Hitler again – and a great sense of Englishness and national pride. How dare the Germans think we were going to surrender our British way of life? The country was united in its struggle to win the war and the desperate shortages after the war made one wonder whether we really had won it in the end – but that’s another story.

SYLVIA HILL
11 June 2004

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