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This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Don Nicholson and has been added to the site with his permission…

I was 3 years old when war started and my family moved from Whalley to the Pendleton area. Four Lane Ends cottage was on Major Aspinall’s Standen Hall estate and my father worked for him as the estate joiner. The Major donated a superb horse box to be used for an ambulance should the need arise, which indeed it did, as I remember that a plane did crash in the Nick of Pendle and the horse box was put to good use.

The East Lancs regiment did a lot of their training at Barrow at the mill there and would march to Pendle Hill, for both day and night maneuvers. As children it was a great sight to see the soldiers marching through the village on to the slopes of Pendle. They used to look so smart and clean on the way up, but it was a different story on the way down. Pendle was a bog and often they would be dirty and full of mud and one more than one occasion some poor soul would come down injured. Night maneuvers were the best as we could see the tracer bullets, like red and green fire across the hills; we used to call them our fireworks.

We next moved to Bothey Cottage and I recall my brother Barry and I playing on a wood pile near the sawmill, along the side of a loose stone built wall, suddenly down the road came a bren gun carrier, with dispatch riders following close behind. They had obviously got permission to do maneuvers in the woods. To our amazement they drove the carrier right over the stone wall, creating a large gap, through which the dispatch riders followed. The riders wore round tin hats and my brother and I ran home shouting that the Germans had arrived.. One day after following the soldiers into the wood, we watched them digging trenches in the ground to use as ovens with a sort of blower at one end, they made rice pudding and I remember them giving us some with sultanas in it and how good it tasted.

Mother used to go to whist drives and of course it was pitch black and one night as she was entering the road to the woods, soldiers dashed out of the undergrowth to challenge her, scaring her half to death. It wasn’t a good time for ladies to be out on their own, in the country at night in the black out.

As the family grew we moved again, this time to Ivy cottage, still on the estate. The East Lancs forces were still training at Barrow and their cook George had a girlfriend called Rose who came and stayed with us at Ivy cottage at weekends.

Rationing didn’t affect us too much, mother was a time served baker and ‘took in baking’ as a way of making money. I can remember the baking she had done spread all over every flat surface in the kitchen along with what was left of the ingredients people had brought in for her to bake with, they never let her have the remains, always took them away with their cakes and pies. Dad worked very hard, he would work all day on the estate then do joinery at night, building trailers etc. for farmers in the area and they would pay him in kind eggs and the like. We used to keep eggs fresh by putting them in a dolly tub in isinglass, which was a type of white jelly substance, this would keep them fresh for quite a long time.

The government made the farmers turn over their fields to growing potatoes, which were put in clamps in the fields. The farmer next door to us let us have one row on the field for helping him with the rest and as children we worked very hard at ‘stick and stoning’ which was clearing the soil and at planting and gathering, it was hard work but at least we got the potatoes and it kept us busy. We also would go around gathering the bits of wool off the fences where the sheep had rubbed, we would then add these scraps to the full sacks of wool;in wartime nothing is wasted.

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