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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Hole Guard on behalf of Elsie Aldcroft and has been added to the site with her permission…

I was 17 in 1939 and originally from Doncaster. I had a lovely life at home, most people in the area either worked for the Railway Company or at the Radiance Sweet Factory.

I started work in private service at Brantwood Hall, which years later became Cheadle Town Hall. We were not allowed to speak to the lady of the house, but we did get good food, if very little pay. There was always beef, turkey and chicken in the large walk in fridge and I used to go down to the Post Office to send dripping to my mum.

We got half a day off a week to go to church and there were certain do’s and don’t’s. We had to learn to speak properly, where as I used to call pudding scoff, I had to say sweet as the gentry did. I remember I had to peel grapes before feeding them to the dogs and I recall having to fill baths with water, all on different levels of the house.

When the air raid sirens went the gentry and their dogs would walk down past the lake to the shelter in the grounds and we would follow on behind, the last to go in.

I met a lifelong friend Anne there, she was a Geordie and she said I should go to Cheadle Royal Hospital where the pay at that time was a fortune, ten shillings a week.

There were American and Polish servicemen in the hospital and the man in charge was a Dr. Roy. When he went off duty we would help ourselves to his pantry, take a chicken for a chicken dinner then entertain our boyfriends. I also remember once taking a suitcase full of chocs and cakes with me when I was going home to Doncaster.

Another memory I have is of crossing the railway line at Gatley and a warden shouting ‘Halt who goes there.’

VE Day was one long round of fun, this was really living it up, thankful that the war was at last over.

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