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This story was submitted to the Peoples War site Terry Cleaver and has been added to the website on behalf of Morvyn Foskett Moss Williams with his permission and they fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

Who am I? Morvyn Foskett Moss Williams?

Morvyn Foskett Moss

I was named after an Australian doctor who was working in St Georges Hospital in London where my father was employed as a Medical Librarian.
I have engaged a firm of genealogists to uncover my forebears. There is nothing untoward on my mothers side but on my fathers side my grandfather married my grandmother, Florence Mary Moss, in 1909 on the Marriage Certificate being described as the daughter of William Foskett Moss, an undertaker, so it looks like an old family name.

I was born in 1933 in the Salvation Army Maternity Hospital in Hackney, North London, and, on leaving hospital, lived with my parents in Wood Green, an area in North London famous for Alexandra Palace the first home of television. In 1935 I was joined by a sister, Jean who was born in the same hospital. I attended Bounds Green School prior to the outbreak of war but only for a short time.
When war broke out in 1939 my sister and I were evacuated privately to a Mr and Mrs Robert Hind, a family in Brigham a small village some 3-4 miles from Cockermouth in Cumberland. They lived in Croft House, a property with 4-5 bedrooms. I can remember my father borrowing a car to take us to Brigham and vaguely remember arriving there in the middle of the night (there were no motorways in those days). My father was registered as a conscientious objector; and prior to the outbreak of war I was aware that meetings of persons of like mind used to take place at our home and it was through these meetings that a link with the family in Brigham. There was a joke in the family that as my father was a conscientious objector he was subjected to the Directed Labour policy and for a time dug holes for telegraph poles. He subsequently went on to become a Bevin Boy working down a coal mine.
Fortunately for us, my sister, and myself, he was directed to work in a mine outside Whitehaven and my sister and I were able to see him on the odd occasion as Whitehaven was not too far from Harrington. We used to see our mother every Christmas as she would make every effort to get up to Cumberland at that time of year.

The Brigham family were Quakers and Uncle Robert, as we called him, appeared to the local leader of the Quakers meetings in Broughton, a small village a couple of miles from Brigham. I can remember attending one or two of the meetings at the Friends Meeting House. In Brigham we were part of the family, Uncle Robert, Aunty Sannah and their various grown up children, being looked after mainly by Molly, the youngest daughter, but when she went into Nursing we were moved to Harrington, a small town some 3-4 miles down the coast from Workington, to live with Uncle Roberts sister, Aunty Mary and her husband, Uncle Bob, this couple were Mr and Mrs Robert Blair, and they lived at 12, Archer Street, Harrington. They had no children of their own but I understand that they had looked after other children before we came on the scene. They were staunch Presbyterians.
As far as I can remember my family were not church goers, but during the war my sister and I regularly attended, firstly the Wesleyan Sunday School in Brigham where it so happened that Uncle Robert was the leader, and secondly the Presbyterian Sunday School in Harrington. I still have my Methodist School Hymnal presented to me in 1941 in Brigham. In Harrington on a Sunday, my sister and I attended the Presbyterian Church in the morning, Sunday School in the afternoon and Church again in the evening with Uncle Bob and Aunty Mary. I was also in the Cubs at the Church, rising to be Sixer of the Grey Six. My sister and I attended the local school, and in 1944 I took the 11 plus exam to attend the local Grammar school in Workington (a year earlier than normal) but was unsuccessful but I did pass it in 1945. After the war we returned to Wood Green, but I have kept in touch with the family in Cumberland and managed to visit various members for short holidays during the late 1940s and 50s. I maintained contact with the family and I am still in touch with Molly, exchanging Christmas cards annually, normally with a snippet of news. I returned to Bounds Green School for a couple of months prior to transferring to a local grammar school in Wood Green.

While in Wood Green after the war I regularly attended Sunday School at Bowes Park Methodist Church (now known as St. Michael at Bowes) and I married for the first time at that church in 1957, and moved to rented accommodation in the area prior to purchasing our first house in Southgate in 1961. We both attended Bowes Park until 1968 when we moved to Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. During the 1960鈥檚 we discovered we were unable to have our own children and adopted a boy and girl through the National Childrens Home, one in 1964 and the other in 1966. The boy, my son Paul, was, by coincidence, born in the Salvation Army Hospital in Hackney.

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