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This story was sent to ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Humberside by Cynthia Watts and was added to this website, with her permission, by Olivia Cubberley and Pam Hallet

The streets that we played in are the very same that the police were raiding and looking for bombers today.

Sept 1st 1939…..

Early Friday morning the children gathered at our school ,Cross Fraits Elementary in Beeston Leeds, to start our journey into the unknown as evacuees.

We boarded double decker buses complete with small suitcase, a lable tied to our coats and not forgetting our gas mask.

We went to the local railway station accompanied by our teacher, Miss Stafford, the music teacher. Once on the train and locked in and provided with a bucket and spade, we set off to somewhere……… It turned out to be Brigg, then we had short walk to the local picture house, where we were given refreshments and a carrier bag containing food.

Once again we boarded Buses, and continued on our journey. We Stopped at various villages, every so often a man would get on the bus and ask for 30 children. We were then on our way again, and our teacher said, "This looks like a nice place, so when we stopped we got off. We went into the village hall to be faced with a table laden with food and a room full of ladies. After tea we were chosen by the ladies. As I was with my sister, it took sometime for a lady willing to take two children.

Mrs Bullivant took us to her home to meet her husband, daughter Kathleen and her elderly Father. Before we ledt the Hall, Mrs Bullivant had to fill in a post-card to let my Mother know where we were.

On Saturday morning we once again were at the Village Hall and taken by Mr Plumb, to a large Park, and we were told that we were on the . That was our first shock to see this great big house, surrounded by the biggest park we had ever see. We soon found out that living in the country was completely different from living and playing in the back streets of Leeds.

We had to get used to the idea of a toilet at the botton of the garden, no hot running water and bath night was a tin bath in front of the fire.

A bus service to Grimsby once a week, no shops, a walk of two miles to Harborough to spend our money on goodies.

School was two miles away at Great Limber, school dinner was a packet of sandwiches.

In time most of the children returned home, some after a few weeks, but my sister and I stayed for two and a half years, and in that time we had the time of our lives. Mrs Bullivant was kindness itself and a wonderful cook.

The village was a haven, not only did we have the largest park to play in, there was woods to explore and best of all we had the Brockelsby Hounds. We spend hours at the Kennels, with Mr. Peaker, we walked miles talking to the hounds on exercise. The local children taught us how to ride a bike. We spent a lot of time opening and closing the park gates for the motorists and what is more we got paid for it.

The war did show itself, The Sherwood Rangers Camped in the park with their big guns. We watched Hull Burn in the night. Grimsby and Immingham had their fair share, but when your are only ten years old, war doesn't mean a lot. I don't think we met Lord Yarborough, but we always invited to the village parties at the Big House.

We had to return to Leeds, but Leeds didn't get a lot of bonbs, we had air raid warnings every night, but the Germans were only interested in Liverpool and Sheffield.

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Ten years ago a lady called at my house and she was Kathleen Bullivant, the daughter, it was lovely to see her and she explained why we had to return to Leeds. Her father was head groomman and when Lord Yarborough gave his horses to the war effort he was out of work, so they moved to Gainsborough. She also explained the money we received for opening the gate to the park should have gone to charity. Lord Yarborough said motorists could drive across his estate if they paid a donation to charity.

Also on the morning of Sept 1st. Mrs Bullivant gave a home to her elderly Father and in the afternoon she took in two strange children into her home. So you can see how lucky we were to have such a wonderful family to look after us.

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