´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Joan Smith, and has been added to the site with the author’s permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

These memories are taken from a special edition of a newsletter kindly submitted by Longstone Local History Group. It was edited by Liz Greenfield and published in Autumn 2002. Longstone was a village which sheltered evacuees and was comparatively unaffected by air attack, although the night sky was often lit by the fires of the Sheffield Blitz.

Longstone Local History Group — ‘We watched the flames of Sheffield' Evacuees remember
by
Joan Smith
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Other parts to this story are at:

Introduction: A7887487

Roy Finney’s Story: A7887784

Frank, A and S Hurst: A7888396

Molly Thornhill’s Story: A7888882

Tony Greenfield’s Story: A7889133

Martin Simon’s Story: A7889557

Stella Holmes’ Story: A7889971

Home defence remembered: A7890230

Burma servicemen Remembered: A7890492

Norman Hoare’s Story: A7891004

Norman Hassal’s Story: A7891202

Women’s Institute: A7891888

One family’s War Part One: A7892562

One Family’s War Part Two: A7893534

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joan was nine years old when war broke out. She lived with her parents and two older brothers, Reg and Ken, in Sheffield. Both her brothers joined the RAF during the war. Her father was works manager for Pickfords, a large garage in Ecclesall Road, which had a Ministry of Defence contract for the repair of army vehicles. Several of our memories refer to the Sheffield blitz Joan experienced it before being evacuated to Great Longstone. Joan's memories start with the air raid on Sheffield, which made her homeless.

We had to use the shelter on several occasions, although not for long periods, until one evening in December 1940. The sirens went very early, we heard planes droning overhead and my father decided this was the real thing. He stood in the garden and saw us all to the shelter, but as I raced across the lawn, a bomb whistled overhead and landed with an almighty bang some distance away. The blitz went on all night. An anti-aircraft gun was being used at the top of our road and a stick of bombs was dropped in the road, demolishing a house just above ours, and several more further down. The target was apparently Laycock Engineering in Archer Road, which was engaged in war work.

I sat in the shelter for 11 hours with my fingers in my ears, whilst my now sister in law, Nora, spent the whole time writing a letter to Reg, describing everything that was happening. When we emerged next morning the house was in a terrible state. All the inside door panels were blown out and all the windows were broken. The front bay had been blown across the room into the piano, which happened to be open. We were finding glass in the piano for many years afterwards. The warden came to tell us that we had to move out because there was an unexploded bomb in the front garden across the road, so we stayed with some friends for a couple of nights. My brother Ken had been at work when the blitz started and had spent the night helping to fight fires, so there was great rejoicing when he eventually arrived home, even though he looked like a chimney sweep.

Mr. E C B Farmer, who lived at The Croft, was the owner of Pickfords and my father's boss. He was a colonel in the army and was serving in India at the time, but two days later, Mrs. Farmer came to the garage to see how things were. She asked my father if we were all right and when he told her we were homeless, she immediately invited us to Longstone for the time being, and gave us rooms at The Croft. Shortly afterwards, we moved in permanently and occupied what is now the restaurant at The Croft Hotel, with a small kitchen next to it, two bedrooms and a bathroom halfway up the front staircase. That is how we came to live in Longstone.

I attended Longstone School from January to July 1941. I remember that on my first morning there seemed to be a shortage of writing implements and Percy Buggins, the headmaster, lent me his fountain pen to do my sums. Another vivid memory is of Mr. Buggins disappearing into the cloakroom every morning, clutching his blue milk of magnesia bottle and a teaspoon, to skim some of the cream off the milk churn for his own use before we had our school milk.

I was very disappointed not to be able to go to Lady Manners School, but I had missed the 11-plus in both Sheffield and Longstone. My mother tried to get me a place as a private pupil but there were a lot of evacuees in the area and the school was full to overflowing, so I had to be content with Bakewell School. We did all sorts of things for the war effort. We gathered foxgloves in the woods for digitalis, rose hips for rose hip syrup and nettles for what reason I do not know except that the boys used to swipe our legs with bunches of them. In our last year we did a bit of farming, thinning marigolds in rows across a field, which seemed to us to stretch to eternity.

I really enjoyed living in Longstone. I had a huge area in which to play. There were ponies and horses and I kept rabbits, but best of all I joined the girl guides. Eileen Arning was a dream guide captain. She was not the most glamorous of ladies, but what she lacked in looks she made up for in personality. My father rather naughtily christened her stirrup pump. The guides took part in a Remembrance Day parade and the captain walked in front of the guides with an S P notice in her hand; he rather thought it suited her. I learned so much as a guide, that has stood me in good stead ever since.

My mother and I regularly attended the Methodist church. I had piano lessons with Mrs. Ward. I never became a great pianist, but later I did play for some church services.
As the war ended we moved into Heath Bank. Mr. Farmer returned home, but the marriage had broken up and Mrs. Farmer moved to a farm in Sussex. The children were sent to boarding school and Mr. Farmer went with his new wife to live in South Africa.
I attended Wright’s Offices in Buxton in 1944 to learn shorthand and typing and in 1946. I too started work at Pickford’s, travelling in each day with my father.

My father loved Longstone and never wanted to go back to Sheffield. We stayed there until he died suddenly from a heart attack in 1957. My mother and I decided we had to move to be near my brother and we moved to the East Riding of Yorkshire in December 1957, near to where Reg lived in Hull. My mother died in 1984 at the age of 92, and both she and my father are buried in Longstone Churchyard.

I have lived in several places and therefore have never put down roots, but I remember Longstone with great affection and regard it as my home and that's why I come back to visit.

Pr-BR

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.