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Home address at start of war : Beaver Road, Ashford, Kent.
Address in Witney area : Swinbrook, Burford.
Name of host family : G……., no children there.
School address before coming to Witney area : Ashford County School for Girls,
Maidstone Road, Ashford, Kent.

I remember going to the station at Ashford, and before we could get on the train there was an air raid, and we were all shepherded down into the sub-way until the 'All-Clear'. I was not with any brothers or sisters.

I remember we were late getting there, and then had to be taken onto Burford, where the girls grammar school was to be billeted. Boys grammar school remained in Burford. Most of all I missed my friends.

The main difference between my home and the cottage in Swinbrook was in size, number of rooms, toilet inside and bathroom. We had a small terraced house at home with outside toilet and no bathroom, a galvanised bath hung on the fence in the yard!

Mostly going for walks around Swinbrook. I remember seeing the Mitford girls riding along in a pony and trap.

My mother was lonely without me so she came to Oxfordshire, and after a short stay in Oxford, she came to Swinbrook and stayed there with me, helping the cook.

There were two other girls billeted with me at Swinbrook, one was Elizabeth W……., cannot remember the name of the other.

A bomb was dropped nearby which shook the cottage and made the plaster fall off our attic bedroom, so my mother took me home, she said we may as well be bombed there! My father and grown up brother were looking after themselves in Kent.

I have a photo taken in the garden at the cottage in Swinbrook, of me with the other two girls, and a horse, also one taken of me in September 1988 taken outside the same cottage.

I was only in Burford for a relatively short time, a matter of months, but it made a deep impression on my young mind, I never forgot it, and when I returned for the first time in the 1970s it looked just the same as I had remembered it all those years ago. It remains my very favourite place.

Betty P …(nee Foord) of Poole in Dorset
26th April 1989

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