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Great Moor Library in the Second World War – by Elsie Howard (nee Walker)

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Chris Comer of Stockport Libraries on behalf of Elsie Howard and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

My maiden name was Elsie Walker and I was working at Great Moor library as a 22 years old library assistant when World War Two broke out. I joined the staff at Great Moor just six weeks after the library opened in its ‘new’ building which had formerly been occupied by the Conservative Club. I was paid 17 shillings a week at the time.

Because the building had a large cellar the local people used it as an air raid shelter. I can remember a heated debate breaking out between the Librarian and the local vicar, who was also the local Air Raid Warden, about whether the locals could use the staff toilets when they were in the building during an air raid. They eventually came to a compromise that a chemical closet could be installed and used by the public.

If an air raid happened during working hours there was no getting away from work – the staff were expected to take issue trays and paperwork down to the cellar and carry on working. But from 8 o’clock on our late nights the time became our own – and if it was safe to do so we’d go home.

We were also expected to do fire watch duties at Central Library once a week. We were assigned to the upper floor and set up camp beds to rest on there. I was always a light sleeper and did not get much sleep on my fire watch nights – particularly with the library sign squeaking outside the window and if the girl I was sharing with that particular night liked to chat.

We were then allowed to go home for an hour to snatch some breakfast before putting in another full days work!

I met my future husband, Frank Bennett, during the war. He lived just across the road from the library in Gladstone Street. He was an engineer at Avros in Woodford and later at Faireys. He worked a lot of night shifts during the war which I think had a long term impact on his health.

We were married just after the war and I had quite a struggle getting time off. We were due to get married on Thursday afternoon and I should have been working Thursday morning but a colleague offered to give up her Thursday off for me. I should then have gone back to work on the Friday before going on our two week honeymoon from the Saturday but again another kind ex-colleague offered to work for the Friday for me for free so that I could have the day off. Strictly speaking you were only supposed to have two weeks leave at one time but because of these kind offers from my colleagues the Librarian relented and let me have those two extra days off.

This extra leave was essential as there were all sorts of complications to attend to – for example I needed to obtain a new ration card as a married woman so we could have access to rations during our honeymoon!

After our marriage we lived in Gladstone Street and I returned to work at Great Moor Library. After the war married women found that there was more encouragement to return to work because of the impact the war had had on the labour force. But not long after that I changed from full time to part time work – running a home in those days took a lot more time than it did today as there were not so many labour saving devices.

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