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During the war I was at school but I did live in Keighley, actually at Thwaites Brow and I was a school child.

Mother at Work
My most vivid memory is that of mother doing her war work, she was in the WVS and the Red Cross and she collected National Savings. She was always dashing about here there and everywhere that is what really sticks in my mind. She would have stayed at home outside of the war.

Restrictions
The worst restriction was definitely the lack of sweets, I think as a child it is the thing that you remember the most. My father always used to let us have his sweet ration, but it never went very far.

School Life
The war effected my school life in the sense that we were sent away to boarding school but that was only as far as Skipton, to a boarding school. It was only eight miles away from where I lived. It was very nice I enjoyed it. My sister went with me it wasn’t as if I was on my own. The people at this boarding school came from all over the country and we mixed very well with everybody.

Air Raid Shelter
I can remember that one of the first things we did at home we had a pantry which was in the house and that was our designated air raid shelter and we went in it about twice during the whole war. We shot into this little room the whole family sat amongst the eggs. When you think about it you think how stupid! I wasn’t scared, it was exciting.

Family Life and Evacuees
My father was an architect, which was a restricted occupation, there were things that had to be done in the field but no private work. His workload began to increase following the war, but unfortunately shortly after the war he died. He never really got the chance to get going again. My mother worked for various civil bodies. My sister was at school like me. My mother with being in the WVS said that when the City of London School girls came up here they had to distribute them round to various billets and there was one particular girl that my mother and father took in. They had previously taken her to a council estate, which was obviously not the sort of house she had been used to. Mother said that when they went into the house, there was washing hung all over the place and about six kids, but they were prepared to take in another. However mother could tell it wasn’t right, so they went back to the billeting centre and said it wasn’t right and so mother said I’ll take her. Now this is a person who did all this war work, also having to deal with her mother and her mother-in-law both old ladies with bronchitis, two children, a husband with a heart condition and we thought she would have had enough but she couldn’t leave this girl. I can remember coming back at night because we were all in bed and calling out come downstairs we have something to show you. So we trotted downstairs in our little navy blue siren suits which everybody had then. They were like a little suit and we wore them in the air raid shelter so we trotted downstairs and there was this poor girl standing there looking entirely lost and mother said this is Joan and from then on she was just like a big sister, but we were really quite jealous of her because we were sent away to boarding school and she could stay with mother and father. She must have been about fifteen sixteen when she came and we are still in contact even now, although she lives in New Zealand now so we don’ t see her that often .

Boarding School
We stayed at boarding school all the time and mother and father would come to visit us at half term. We were never really away from home for more than five or six weeks. They would come over at weekends and take us out for tea, but Skipton was considered to be safer than Keighley, and Keighley was safer than Bradford.

Bombs in Bradford
When the war first started they evacuated children from Bradford, but I don’t think they stayed for more than a fortnight and then took them back. I believe there was only one bomb in Bradford. They seemed to use Bradford as a sort of turning round point coming back across the channel to Hull, Grimsby and places like that. Bradford was a turning point. I think the bomb they dropped was just one they had left. It all seems a long time ago, but of course like most things you look back on them with nostalgia, but we were lucky living at Thwaites Brow, nothing nasty going on at all.

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