大象传媒

Joan Groves was interviewed at Yate Heritage Centre by Darren Thomas on the 25th of July 2002. Margaret Jones (St Nicholas Centre Youth Worker) and David Hardill (Community Heritage Officer) were present. Though the question and answer format have been taken out and changed into a story format.

My name is Joan Groves. I was born on the second of the third 1940. I was born and bred in Yate. I was actually born in Wellstead Avenue.

My parents come from Manchester. They came to Yate, during 1938 and they lodged in Wickwar for a short time. Then they moved to Yate and they lodged in the White Lion. My father was a bricklayer, he worked for Rangers, which was a building firm in Yate and my mother worked in the White Lion in the kitchen, until they moved to Wellstead Avenue and that is where we lived for seven years.

Well the War had already started when I was born, but it was always very friendly place to live. Because my parents came from Manchester and my relations lived up there, everybody in Yate was my 鈥渁untie鈥� and 鈥渦ncle鈥� and even now, as old as I am I still call some of them auntie and uncle now. They were always very friendly, it was always a friendly atmosphere. Everybody helped everybody else. We all had large gardens and if you couldn鈥檛 grow something in your garden, then probably someone else could, and you would swap over things. There was a great community spirit in Yate during the War.

We made many new friends during the War and were there many new people in Yate, who had come to work in the factories. We had lodgers, because we had spare bedrooms. So I think we had some come from Swindon I think. But I can remember the children coming here and I can remember the lodgers used to work in Newmans. Although Yate was small we had two factories, so a lot of people came into Yate working.

I remember the refugees and the Prisoners of War (POWs) around Yate. I can remember that when we moved up to Lawns Road, that was when they built the prefabs in 1947. And because we were living in a three bedroom house and there was only my mum and dad and I, we were given a smaller house and they were called prefabs, which were built in Lawns Road. They had the German Prisoners of War building the bases for these houses. I cannot remember the Italian POW's, though it was said that there were Italians here. I think though I had heard that they were in Stanshawes house, but I can remember the Germans POW's being here. They were quite friendly and it used to seem to me 鈥淭here must be people like these people here that didn鈥檛 want to fight, didn鈥檛 really want the War鈥� I can remember the Germans especially, because they were very friendly.

People coped with the bombing and the effects of War. I think they seemed to be alright. Parnalls was bombed and there were two houses near us that were bombed. But I cannot really remember a lot, just my mother mentioning that when the house behind us was bombed she had gone out to let the dog out of the kitchen and as luck would have it, she was bending down letting the dog off the lead when a bomb went off and the back door came in. If she had been stood up she would have been killed, but the table saved her. What happened was that the door went over on top of the table and she was underneath it, so she was saved, but I cannot really remember much about it myself.

I do remember though a specific event linked to a local bombing. Only once, I suppose I must have been about three and we were going into Bristol to have our photographs taken and the sirens went off and we did not go to Bristol we went home instead. I cannot remember anything like what happened during the Bristol bombing.

Travelling by bus was very different during those times. If the buses were running, you could travel into Bristol, but you were careful not to go in sometimes in case there was an air raid or anything like that. We were able to go to Chipping Sodbury to do our shopping if we wanted to.

We did not have cars, so we walked everywhere. Chipping Sodbury was the main place where we could shop, and also the few shops in Station Road that used to be there. We did not do an awful lot of travelling out of Yate.

The main changes our house underwent for the War, was having more people living there like lodgers. I can remember the black out curtains and the shelter we had in the front room, I think it was the Anderson shelter, which was just a big metal box with wire on the side.

I cannot remember any restrictions there were on food, again I was very young I know I was never very hungry. People would keep chickens. Men would go out catching rabbits. We were never short of meat up to a point, because we were lucky we had all the fields round us. If you could not buy anything at the butchers somebody would go out with a dog, or the ferrets and catch a rabbit or you鈥檇 have a rabbit perhaps for sixpence, which was a lot of money in those days. Nowadays that would be about two and a half pence, so you could have a good rabbit and that would do you for perhaps two days. So I cannot remember being short of food.

Also I cannot remember there being any shortages of fuel. Because I cannot remember being cold or anything. I know the bedrooms were not heated, so I can remember my mum鈥檚 old fur coat being on the bed during the winter to keep me warm and the hot water bottles. I think we burnt logs to put on the fire, because we lived out in the countryside, it was easy to come by.

We all had big gardens, so we all grew our seasonal vegetables and fruits and as I explained before if someone could not grow beetroot during the summer and your beetroot were lovely and they had carrots, you would swap over. But that was the atmosphere, Yate was like a village in those days. It was a very friendly atmosphere.

My father worked in Newmans during the War making anchor chains. My mum was just a housewife. She took in sewing, and she took in lodgers. So that was her job I suppose. Not many women went out to work, they stayed at home mainly looking after their families.

I was spoilt, I did not have any jobs to do, I was the only one. I think I was spoilt. I was five by the time war was finished. I suppose one job I can recall was taking the caterpillars off the cabbages. When your cabbages were growing and the white butterflies would come down, and you would have the green caterpillars eating away at the cabbages. So our job out in the garden, was to collect all the caterpillars and then they would be thrown onto the fire. So I suppose that was our job, saving the cabbages. I remember collecting the blackcurrants, and blackberrying in the fields, and finding mushrooms. Nothing nicer than some mushrooms out in the field with some bacon. They used to be lovely.
We were out during the summer blackberrying, and our mothers made jam. So I helped out there doing little jobs like that. But the children found something to do all the time.

Like many people my father was involved with the auxiliary forces in Yate. My father was in the Home Guard, just like Dad鈥檚 Army on the television. And his company was looking after the Wickwar tunnels, you had to look after the tunnels. People were looking after the Sodbury tunnel and the Wickwar tunnel. My father said how they used to spend their time in the cider tunnel so they were quite happy doing it. When I see Dad鈥檚 Army, I always think of them. I imagine that was how they were.

Yes I suppose I was very lucky indeed, I had a very happy childhood in wartime Yate.

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