大象传媒

Evercreech was a sizeable village in Mid Somerset and Rodmore Crescent a rough semicircle of houses built after the First War on its very edge. In those days the front of the houses looked out on each other, fields and a finger of the Mendips called 鈥淐reech Hill.鈥� Behind them was the village with the Somerset and Dorset Railway running from 鈥淓vercreech New鈥� back into the distant countryside and down to鈥淓vercreech Junction鈥�.
My late Grandmother, who was known as Nell Carew, moved to No. 15, near the end of the crescent, as a bride in the early 1920鈥檚, She raised three children there, Kitty,who was my mother, Audrey and Elwyn, all teenagers at the start of the war. I can remember her when I was a child after the war standing in the back garden pointing in the direction of the village. She told me that the whole sky in that direction had been lit up on nights when Bath was bombed. The awfulness of the attacks was apparent because Bath was about 20 miles away. One day the war came even closer. She was standing in the front garden and heard an aircraft. She looked up and saw the aircraft coming straight towards her from the other side of the Crescent. She saw the markings and realising it was German ran into the house. She did not stop but ran straight on into the back garden. The aircraft came over her house heading off in the direction of Evercreech Junction and Castle Cary. Then to her horror she saw bombs falling. She was always puzzled as to why she ran the way she did, but her telling of the story gave the impression she was trying to get away from the Germans.
Kitty became a WAAF whilst Audrey worked in a hostel for war workers in Stonehouse, Glos but the small, three bedroomed house was far from empty. My Grandfather, Vic continued to work at the creamery in the village and Elwyn, the youngest, continued to work locally too until called up for military service in the army of occupation. Then there were the evacuees. There were private evacuees including some relations from Bristol but Audrey had met a young soldier, a Dunkirk survivor called Ernie Haines. As a Londoner he was concerned about his two sisters, Em and Grace and their children and it was arranged to bring them all down to Evercreech . Grace and her son lived at 15 Rodmore whilst her sister and her children lived elsewhere in the village. It was the start of some long standing friendships. Grace returned to live in the village with her husband in the 1960鈥檚 and Ernie and his wife followed later to nearby Shepton Mallet. Grace, her husband Ted and brother Ernie are all buried in the village cemetery.
They were not the only evacuees though. One young boy caused my Grandmother a great many problems. People in the country seldom locked their houses in those days and she found he had walked into one house and helped himself to jewellery!
The Rodmore house was also where they held my parents wedding reception apparently holding two sittings with usual ceremonies to accommodate the guests. My father鈥檚 father, Eddie Witcombe worked as a cheese turner. It involved withdrawing a long tube of cheese from a truckle to test for ripeness and apparently these cheese tubes were something of a feature of the wedding catering amidst the rationing.

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