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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by volunteer Laya Sasikumar from CSV on behalf of Peggy Church (nee Shanahan) and has been added to the site with her permission. Peggy Church fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was born in Southend Lane, Bellingham, SE6, and was 10 when the war broke out. I went to Elfrida School in Bellingham Estate until I was evacuated to Cornwall. I was taken to a place called Hessenford near Torpoint, and stayed with the Hancock family.

Practically the whole school got evacuated to this small village, so their school became quite over-run with students. But this meant that we had very few lessons — we only had school in the mornings or in the afternoons — so I don’t think that did much for our education! We didn’t mix much with the village children, as they had separate lessons to us.

Living in Cornwall was very different to life back home in London. Mr. Hancock was a builder, and their house was massive. It was a huge detached house with its own grounds, and had two huge living rooms on each side of the house. They used to use one room in the summer and one room in the winter. It seemed like a palace to me.

One of my memories of my time here as an evacuee was eating the best bacon I’d ever tasted. The had their own pig, which had its own pen in the backyard. The Hancocks would fatten it throughout the year, and then kill it. They’d preserve the meat in salt, which would last them throughout the year — but it was the best bacon I’d ever eaten. They used to call it fat bacon, which it was. It was thick, and just had loads of fat on it, but it tasted more like bacon then anything I’d had at home!

There was a blacksmiths forge nearby. My friend Lily Dryden and I used to go and watch him shoe the horses — coming from the city we had never seen this before. Sometimes Reggie — the blacksmith — would let us have a ride on the horse up and down the streets. We’d ride it bareback without any reins. We also used to go and collect milk from the farm just up the lane. The farmers wife showed us how to milk the cow and we became quite good at it. Sometimes we’d have a drink straight from the cow — we were quite surprised to find it was actually warm. It was nothing like the bottles of milk we got on our doorstep at home!

Sometimes there would be geese wondering about in the farmyard. We tried being friendly with them, only to find that they didn’t like strangers and started squawking at us and running after us! We ignored them after that.

Every Saturday a little group of us would make our way into Looe — a coastal town which was nearby. We’d just have a look around the shops and go for a swim in the sea. But there were never any adults with us — a group of us would just go on our own. We’d all come from the same school and we all knew how to swim as we used to spend our summer holidays in Belligham Open Air Baths. We weren’t scared of the water as we’d all been pushed in and ducked under by the boys — so we had our own survival methods!

Even though I was having fun in Cornwall, I missed home terribly. I used to write home regularly, and my parents used to write back and send me comics (mainly Beano and Dandy). They would also fill me in on what was going on at home, but never told me anything about the air-raids. Because the war wasn’t where we were, it didn’t really affect us much. We just carried on with our everyday life of getting to school and getting an education. I’ve still got all the letters that my parents gave me all tied up in pink ribbon.

One night there was an all too familiar sound of many planes flying around. It bought back memories of London. When we went outside to see what it was we saw Plymouth being bombed. It was awful. We’d come to Cornwall to get away from the bombing but it was as if though it had followed us around.

After that I became really home-sick and couldn’t settle down. I wrote home and asked if I could come back. My mum and dad wrote to Mr and Mrs Hancock — they understood. My dad sent me the fare money, and I got put on a train back to London. My dad picked me up from Paddington. I was glad to be home!

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