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Wartime Reminiscences - Chris Pottinger

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I was born on 30/03/36 and lived in Ewell Village.

1. The air raid siren was at the Spring, half way between my home in Meadow Walk and the infants school at Ewell Grove. My mother said I was to run back home if it went off before I got to it, and on to school if it went off after I had passed it. She didn't say what to do if it went off when I was beside it but I would probably have run home as my memories of the school shelter are wooden duckboards and a musty smell.

2. My mother was an ARP warden and her post was just in the entrance to the alleyway between Ewell Castle School and Holman Court. I have a vague memory of her going through the smoke test in the pump house that was by Upper Mill (roughly opposite the Wheatsheaf).
3. There was a watchman who sat in a sort of turret on top of Jameson's Aero Engine factory (subsequently the Echo Hospital Warehouse and now demolished for John Gale Court/Carpenter Close) who always waved to us children on our way to school.
4. There was a small- holding on the far side of the Hogsmill River between the Upper and Lower Mills. Pigs, chickens, cows and a horse-drawn dairy float delivering milk.The man who ran it (I think} was a bus inspector called Mr Neville.

5. At the end of Meadow Walk were the pig bins where you put your waste food - revolting and crawling with maggots.
6. Picking up hot shrapnel was a major pastime for us young lads.
7. I can remember playing hopscotch outside my house in Meadow Walk and watching a doodle-bug in the sky - until my mother dragged me in. I think it must have been the one that landed on the sewerage farm between Ewell and Epsom. We had a two inch gap between our skirting boards and the floor which, years after, was repaired by government grants.
8. My mother took in lodgers - usually Dutch naval officers passed on to us by the Spring Hotel. Some of them became "family" and brought food parcels - I was one of the few kids to have chocolate and oranges.
9. We had an Anderson shelter dug in the garden but the first night we used it we woke up to find we had 3 feet of water - and rising - due to the springs which were prevalent at the time. We then had a Morrison shelter in the house (table height) but eventually our Dutch naval officer lodgers erected the Anderson shelter in the hall as this was much roomier.
10 I created a false alarm when I mistook a flight of swans for German parachutists.

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