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She worked at Walton Library, but this central library was evacuated for a first aid post during war (full of nurses equipment and home guard officers). She started in 1940; the library had opened in 1938. In autumn the library moved to the back of Walton school, and is still there

There was no water; heating was a huge open fire stove, which made lovely toast! So they had to go down to first aid post to fill the kettle.

The library opened till 8 in the evening, but this changed to 7 because of the blackout.
There was no light whatsoever, and it was scary at first, but they got used to it. Kids would bang on the shutters, this was scary. The readers were lovely people, and they always there till closing. One night there was a lot of noise, a lady had taken the poker out of the fire, and went out storming, luckily she didn’t meet anyone.

The library had about 7/8000 books, small libraries had to change stock frequently, but there were no books to change, no paper in the war. She must have read the books many times. There were buckets of water, in case of fire, about once a week a book would fall in or someone would trip over and cause a flood, but there was never a fire.

One summer was very hot, full of maybugs, thousands of them, came down the stove chimney in the night. Past the school there was a big open space for a gunning posting. They hadn’t room for children’s books in this ‘tin hut’ so they held a meeting on Saturday mornings at the junior school.

Moved back to the original library after the war, but there were still frequent power cuts. If there wasn’t a candle in the window in a blackout, a lady would come and check all was ok.

Tiles on the local roofs are chipped; the Germans had had a go at the brick works, with a machine gun

One day a group of elderly ladies were shot at by the Germans (with machine guns). Why? This was truly a sad event.

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