大象传媒

Newborough, Staffs: Holiday Venue for an Evacuee

By Heather Fogg (nee Williamson)

Schoolchildren from the Kent sea-side resort of Ramsgate were evacuated to different parts of Staffordshire on June 2nd 1940, two days before the end of the Dunkirk evacuation. The Germans were just across the Channel. My father, John R. Williamson, and his sister, Kathleen Wiliamson, both teachers at Ramsgate schools, accompanied their pupils to Staffs, my aunt to Newborough and my father to the village of Hales, in the west of the county, near Market Drayton. My mother, her parents and I, aged nine, went to friends and relatives in South Wales.

Kathleen stayed with a local family at Newborough and wondered how she could persuade her elderly parents and her sister, Grace, to leave Ramsgate and go to live somewhere that would be safer. She heard that the old vicarage at Newborough was empty and was overjoyed to be able to rent it. Arrangements were made to move the family and their furniture from Ramsgate, and my two aunts and my Williamson grandparents made the old vicarage their home for over four years. The move from Ramsgate was obviously arranged quickly for I have two picture postcards from Grace, one posted to me as early as June 20th. She said she had tried to buy a pretty coloured card but black and white ones were the only kind that the ONE village shop sold. This card showed the wide central street and the school where Kathleen was teaching. The other, sent a few days later, had a picture of the shop. Referring to their new home, she wrote, 鈥淚t鈥檚 a lovely old house and garden really.鈥� Shortly afterwards I received a card from Kathleen. It showed a scene in Burton on Trent where they had travelled by bus to go shopping.

My father found accommodation at Market Drayton and my mother, her parents and I joined him there in July. In the summer holidays I went to stay at the old vicarage at Newborough and had the first of a number of happy war-time holidays there. My father cycled all the way across country but my mother and I took our bicycles on the train and travelled to Uttoxeter station before cycling the rest of the journey. I remember some very steep hills en route. Having our bicycles there meant we could explore the area very easily. Public transport was minimal and there were very few cars on the roads.

The big, old vicarage, in its own grounds, was next to the church on the road to Abbots Bromley. It was a wonderful place for a child. The enormous garden was largely overgrown and the house had two staircases, nineteen rooms and a surprisingly modern looking bathroom. One room, with an outside door, was kept for parish meetings and someone was using a room for storing furniture. But otherwise the family were able to use all the space. My grandfather鈥檚 pieces of antique furniture and old pictures, which had made the small Ramsgate house seem cluttered, were shown off to their advantage in the large, elegant rooms.

Unfortunately there was no gas or electricity and drinking water had to be fetched from a pump in the back garden. Another pump in the scullery had to be exercised to bring water from a rainwater tank to the taps at the old stone sink in the scullery and to the bathroom. We all had to take turns at pumping. It was certainly something different and I thought it was great fun. We usually took lighted candles upstairs to bed but oil lamps provided the main lighting downstairs. One room smelled strongly of oil and seems to have been a dedicated lamp room. My grandmother cooked on a large kitchen range. She used one of the ovens for drying sticks and one of our tasks while staying there was to go 鈥渟ticking鈥�. This was no problem. It was such a lovely rural area that we always enjoyed the opportunities for walking, cycling, picnicking and collecting sticks.

Back in 1940 the population of the village must have been swelled by the evacuees, but it was a very tiny settlement and the Williamson family soon seemed to know everyone, especially as my grandmother regularly collected round the parish for the Red Cross. She took me to visit some of her friends, including the policeman鈥檚 wife who showed me the prisoner鈥檚 cell which had never been used. Of course at that time it might have been necessary to lock up captured German spies or German pilots who had been shot down. We often saw the other Ramsgate teachers and pupils around the village. It was almost like home from home.

The vicarage had its own private path to the church so was very convenient for weddings and I very much enjoyed going to two family occasions that took place there. I was bridesmaid to Grace when she married her Ramsgate fiance. Later, my father鈥檚 brother, Harold, married a young woman who also came from Kent. Horticulture was her war work and she was engaged in fruit and vegetable growing in the grounds of a big house near Newborough. On her days off she was often entertained by the Williamsons at the old vicarage and met Harold when he was visiting his parents. None of these four people would have been married at Newborough if it had not been for Hitler - and our family would almost certainly have never heard of the village. I am really glad I had the opportunity to go there on my wartime holidays and sample life in such a pleasant location.

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