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Joyce, Maureen and Sheila Rawlings, twins and a sister two years older, were the youngest in a group of 18 Shoeburyness Hinguar Street School pupils to be evacuated from their Garrison Town on 2nd June 1940.

We left home, lunch bags, a small case and our gas masks in a box over our shoulder; we were kissed and cuddled, and told to enjoy our long holiday and not to look back to wave at our mum.

We were lined up and put into coaches outside the school and taken to Southend Central Railway Station. I remember there were lines and lines of us, too many for the station platform. Our school was lined up in Nelson Street beside the steps, three steps up to the forecourt of the Police Offices, then marched to the Station platform and onto the train.

Our destination was Derbyshire, a lovely village called Castleton, located near Hope on the Yorkshire borders. The coach that had taken us from the train arrived at the village hall; there were lots of the villagers and their children there and we were sat on the pavement. Different people pointed out that certain children were due to be taken in by them, we all had labels on our coats. When all but 18 had gone, the remainder were told we were going to Hollowford Hostel. When one set of parents said they could take another child in and pointed to my sister Sheila, she grabbed Joyce and myself and said very determinedly ‘My mother said we have to be kept together’, and so we were.

Our new home was a Y.H.A. hostel, to us at the time a huge place; one large oblong black wooden faced building, with a kitchen at one end, eating area in the middle and lounge with a large piano at the other end. Behind this building was another long bungalow, this one painted green and had trellis and flowers around the doors. This was the private residence of a wonderful family named Rowlands; they were to be our family for the next four years. Mrs Rowlands never to be called auntie or anything else, only Mrs Rowlands, her son Peter was about 19 years old and a brilliant pianist, her daughter Jean and someone known to us as ’Uncle Bill Twigg’. They took on 18 children from the ages 5 to 11. The children were: - Maureen and Joyce Rawlings, Sheila Rawlings, Pamela and Derek Monk, Dorothy and Dennis Smith, Joyce and Christine Woods, Bernard Foster, Steve Sutton, Frankie Wakefield, Isobell Whitton, Derek Crow, Roy Monk, Rodney Fry, Esme Smith, Barry Smith and Mrs Smith came as a helper.

As the village school was only a small one and it was summertime we were given our books and pencils etc., and we sat in a circle in a field to do our lessons. There were sheep, some of which were quite curious at first. There was a wide brook at the bottom of the field, the stones in the water were bright orange and the sides of the book were rusty brown. The water running down from the mountains had lots of iron in it (mineral). When winter came we were able to use the bar and lounge of the Peverell Hotel, higher up the hillside but below Peverell Castle. Later the next year we all used the village hall as our school. We didn’t integrate very much with local children for a quite a while until some of the children joined brownies and cubs etc.

Every six weeks my mother organised and brought up Mums, brothers and sisters. A lot of older children, 13 and 14 year olds etc., were evacuated to Ashbourne so my mum dropped off the coach some parents at Ashbourne and picked up my older brother and sister, Pearl and Geoff, and came on to Castleton, so our little family were together every six weeks, except for my dad. He worked for the Ministry of Supply on Foulness Island.

At the time of these visits we celebrated birthdays etc. All the childrens Mum’s and visitors, as the Hostel was still open to visitors and walkers, came from Sheffield and Manchester. These regular visitors became our Aunts and Uncles and thoroughly spoilt all the children.

Our Headmaster from Hinguar Street School, Mr Bowyer, his wife and two daughters were settled in at Hope; he was our headmaster whilst we were in Castleton. Also a teacher Miss Standon had come with us all. Mr Bowyer was like a dad to lots of the children.

I’ve mentioned that the first building was the reception, kitchen, lounge etc., the second building private to Mrs Rowlands and family, the third was another long brick building and had our bedrooms or dormitories, a long building with one long central corridor and doors either side, small rooms each having two bunk beds, cupboard and a locker for our personal things. Every third or fourth set of bedrooms was a large bathroom and toilets down the corridor here and there.

There was a large wash house on one side of the building where we took turns to help mangle and fold sheets and all the wash; a lady called Mrs Payne came in from the village to help with these chores bringing her young daughter Cynthia to play with us whilst she worked.

The hostel was set at the foot of the figure eight forest in a huge field. We had greenhouses, a large kitchen garden and we had to help Uncle Bill with watering and weeding. We had ducks and geese and chickens in pens dotted about the place. The Shetland ponies came down off the hills, they wouldn’t let you get on them, they were quite wild. Half a dozen of us went down the lane about half a mile every morning for our milk from Eyres Farm; this was collected in open buckets and no playing about was allowed carrying it back to the hostel, two carrying a large bucket, one each side.

We were taken out on walks to the most beautiful countryside in England, and we explored down mine shafts into the ‘Blue John’ mines Peak Cavern. All these beauty spots were on our doorstep and then were unprotected; now they are part of the National Trust and you have to pay to enter these areas. I have a large piece of ‘Blue John’ brought back from evacuation with me.

Mrs Rowlands who always had very short straight hair and was a small cuddly lady was very strict with us, but if we were unwell or a bit homesick she was very kind and loving and had time for us all. After we had been there a couple of years there was a very bad air raid on Sheffield and aircraft were escaping the British fighters and gunfire and off loaded their bombs just short of the village. The authorities were so worried it was decided we should have an Air Raid Shelter; this was built. We did not take too much notice of this going up. It had been finished a few days and Uncle Bill had been busy going about some jobs inside finishing it off when we were told we had to go to the Air Raid shelter as a practice in case we should ever need to use it. We queued up along the back of the shelter when we turned the corner and were taken inside the door. Our dear Uncle Bill, who hadn’t wanted the children to be frightened at going into the dark shelter, had put fairy lights up and made us a lollipop tree which was a large branch from a tree with the round chalky coloured lollipops tied to the branches. This had been put into a large barrel and we had to take a lollipop before going into the dimly lit shelter. We never actually had to use this shelter.

We were, it seemed, a million miles from the war, but not many miles away Sheffield, formerly the home of the steel industry making knives and forks, was now turned into making munitions and was a prime target for the German bombers and had been bombed flat. During one of these very bad air raids my mother had come to Hollowford to collect us as my father was very ill and had to have an operation. We sat on the train that had been run into sidings absolutely terrified, bombs exploding nearby, sirens, fire engines — the noise was deafening. The train continued and we arrived in London, after another air raid, crossed London and continued down to Shoebury. We were used to seeing soldiers as Shoeburyness was a Garrison Town but now all the houses that had been left empty by the people who had been evacuated had been requisitioned by the army and lived in by soldiers.

Our little school was used as a Civic Restaurant for soldiers and the local community. My dad recovered and we were taken back on one of the long coach trips with visiting parents.

Gradually some of the older children went home but we also had children joining us. There was Rodney Fry’s sister Jean, also Pat, Richard and Peter Done from Manchester, a girl named Deena. We were all brought up as brothers and sisters in one large family. We were accepted by the village families, went to church, brownies, cubs, Saturday morning pictures at the village hall and we always had the most wonderful day in May dressing up. There was a village band, all the girls in white with flowers decorating their hair and necklines, a huge May pole on the village green, dancing all the patterns around then a large party for all the village. Very, very happy days.

We had lots of laughs remembering the goats eating our washing; one or two of us would have to play in the drying area near the washing line to shoo the goats off as they would eat anything, sheets, jumpers, they were not too fussy. We would get inside the pens of baby chicks and ducklings and play with the fluffy chicks. One memory that scares me still is the thought of the dozen or so geese that would nip the top of our legs if we didn’t run past quickly enough, they made excellent guards. We had a lovely sheep dog, brown and white, her name was Keeper, who we all loved very much. In the very hot weather and when the Hostel was busy we would move out of the brick dormitories to the wooden summer houses. We would lay terrified at night as the horses from the fields nearby would break into our fields and gallop round and round the buildings, it sounded so noisy in the dark.

We stayed at Hollowford for four years, very happy years and we had been looked after by folks who had loved us very much. All the other children had returned home and now it was our turn. It was a sad day but we promised to stay in touch and visit again. This was awkward as travel and transport was not that easy then. No one I knew had a car until my friends dad bought a Ford and we were then fifteen years old. We wrote letters to lots of the visitors that had taken us out and about for a few years after the war but then gradually lost touch. Mrs Rowlands and Uncle Bill with Jean moved down to Wellington in Somerset. They had missed all the children and couldn’t stay at Hollowford any longer. I used to write at first and then when I got married I decided to visit them. We chatted and laughed over lots of the past events with this now little old lady, Mrs Rowlands and Uncle Bill who had a great influence in my life. They had accepted all of us, bad tempers, feeling unhappy sometimes, sickness and given us the most wonderful four years any child could wish for when others were having very hard times.

We settled into school back at Hinguar Street easily as Mr Bowyer was back as Headmaster there, Miss Standon was back teaching and slowly life returned to normal at home with Mum, Dad, sisters and my brother.

M.A.Andrews.

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