大象传媒

This story was submitted to the site by Helen Rogers from the 大象传媒 in Newcastle on behalf of Ray Pope and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My name is William Raymond Pope. I was born on 24th June 1935. I lived at 9 Kimberly Gardens, Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne.

The Germans dropped a stick of bombs which landed along the Jesmond Vale and into Jesmond Dene. Several of us went to look at the bomb crater the next morning and went down into it. I found a piece of bright metal (shrapnel). My brother and I went home and gave the piece of metal to my father. He was furious and gave us both a good hiding (with the slipper) and told us never to go near any craters and pick pieces of metal again.

My brother David and I left for Keswick shortly after this bombing. We arrived by bus and went to the main post office building at the bottom of Main Street. There were quite a number of children in our group. We went upstairs into a large room, everybody sat around a big round table. On the table were tins of biscuits and milk, I was so small I could not reach or see over the edge of tbe table, my brother picked me up and placed me on the table in such a way that I ended up with a tin of biscuits between my legs all to myself. I remember tucking into those biscuits and the milk.

That afternoon, my brother and I were taken by a lady to a hotel not far away. We slept on a mattress on the floor of the downstairs front lounge between chairs and tables. The next day two ladies collected us and we seemed to walk miles along a country lane. At the bottom of a hill, we parted, my brother went up a hill and I to a road on the right ( I never saw my brother again for possibly 18 months). At the end of a very long road, I arrived at the last house near to a farm. I met the lady who was going to take care of me. Mrs Hope was tall, slim, had white hair and wore long dresses that went to the floor.
I ate my meals at a small round table in the corner of the dining room. Mrs Hope ate at the big table. The same happened when the visitors came and had a meal. I remember when she was picking peas, carrots and beans from the back garden, I would ask if I could help her, but she wouldn't let me and I had to sit on the back door step. I would have loved to have helped, or even just watch by her side.

On my bedroom window ledge, I had a glass oval shaped "shaker" which when shaken, would look like snow falling. Every morning and before bed I would shake it time and time again and watch the snow fall. It was the only toy I had. One day Mrs Hope was very angry with me and said I had broken the "shaker", she also smacked me on the back of my legs. I hadn't broken the "shaker", but she didn't believe me. I now believe that her cat had been into my bedroom and knocked it off the window sill. I used to wet the bed on a very regular basis. It always meant a telling off and a smack behind the legs. I was with her for only a few months. I think she couldn't handle the situation and requested I be taken from her and transferred elsewhere.

One day a lady came to collect me and my little suitcase and off went went on another very long walk (2 miles for a 6 year old is a long way). We arrived at Mr and Mrs Mordue's house and I sat in front of a large fire talking to her. Mrs Mordue decided to bring down my mattress to air before making the bed. When it was aired in front of the fire she asked me if I would like to help her carry the mattress upstairs to make my bed, I did and it was a moment in my life I shall always remember. At last, I was able to do something and help someone. I liked her and it was the beginning of a wonderful bonding between us and her husband.

They were a wonderful loving couple who brought me into their home, looked after and cared for me and treated me as their son! I called them Mam and Dad and regarded them as my mother and father, as I didn't realise or thought that I had other parents that I had at the time, except on two occasions when my real father paid a visit to see my brother I together whilst on leave in the RAF. We would spend the time in the park and had our photographs taken. These were the only two occasions when my brother David and I were ever together whilst in Keswick. We will both never know why! My brother left Keswick after 18 months to join my eldest brother near Carlisle as evacuees.

I enjoyed my school days at Briggs Infant School, which is on the road from Penrith to Keswick beside the river and half a mile from the town centre. We had a teacher there called Mrs Jones, who was tall, slim, had white hair and was very strict. If you were naughty she brought you to the front of the class and on the wall next to her desk were five canes of various thickness for you to choose from. We all always picked the thinnest as the thicker ones looked as if they would hurt more, they did. I had the thinnest cane on several occasions, usually for larking around. Playtime was great fun, there were always a lot of games to play, some were rough and rowdy.

If it was a lovely summer's day, the whole class would spend the afternoon outside and go to the river on the opposite side of the road to the school. Here we would learn about the trees, flowers and birds. We would gather moss, acorn cups and beech seed cups to make miniature gardens in class. We were sometimes taken to Derwent Water Lake by bus or into Fritz Park near to the school. A good friend of mine was the son of a farmer who had a farm next to the school. I would often have my tea there and my father would collect me from work at the nearby local garage where he was the head mechanic and in charge during the war. I had great fun at the farm feeding the hens, playing in the hay loft, or watching the cows being milked.

Every Saturday morning I would go and collect a parcel from the butchers. My treat for doing this, was to go round the corner to the paper shop, and choose a comic and a stick of barley sugar, which I was allowed to eat on the way back home.

Just before the evening meal, my mother and I would be watching for my Dad coming round the corner at the bottom of the street on his way back home from work, from a small downstairs home window. We would then go into the kitchen and get things ready for when he arrived home. After the meal my father would get a 2lb jam jar and fill this with milk and bread. He and I would then walk back to the garage and feed the big black cat. After feeding the cat, he would take me round the garage looking at the cars that he had been working on that day. I would sit in his office looking at car magazines, while he secured the garage doors.

Once in a while the local cinema showed films for children on a Saturday morning. You did not pay any money to get in, to gain entrance you had to have 1lb or 2lb jam jars, bundle of newspaper or magazines. 1lb jam jars got you in the back rows, 2lb jam jars in the centre rows, but bundles of newspaper or magazines, depending on quantity, got you into the front rows. Because the garage had a lot of magazines and papers, a friend and I always got near to the front row seats.

Every Sunday I would attend Sunday school. I enjoyed going as we would sing and sit and listen to Bible stories. Because of my good attendance I was given a leather bound Bible with a certificate inside. I gave it to my grandmother when I got home for safe keeping and regrettably never saw it again. I was in the cubs for a long time. I enjoyed the games and the times we would go into the nearby woods in groups to find each other or go on treasure hunts.

If the weather was fine, after Sunday school mum, dad and I would go for a walk either to the Great Wood nearby or along the lakeside to Friar's Crag. I loved this area and walk; it is still my favourite place in Keswick, which I always visit when in the area.

I remember a very embarrassing time we were visiting my parents'daughter in Penrith for a few days. While in the market place looking at shops, along came some young girls and I heard them saying that we were wearing the same coats and how funny we looked. The three of us had the same herring bone light coloured coats which looked identical. I never wore my coat again if they wore theirs. Fortunately I had a second coat I could wear of a different colour and texture.

I had many friends who lived close by of the same age and went to the same school. My best friend was called "Blackie". He was slightly taller than me and very plump. He was the leader of the gang. Next to where we lived was a field where the Keswick Convention was held. The tent that used to be erected here was supposedly the largest tent in the world (so I was informed). We would play in this field and would inevitably be chased by the owner. We would go and sit on the wall and wait till he got more than halfway. He was a small man with a big stick and said one day he would catch us. We would then jump off the wall and run to the other end of the field, climb the wall and tell him where we were. He would turn about and begin chasing us again. This all stopped when he complained to my father and I promised not to go in the field again, or torment him!

There are many other happenings, I can recall learning how to ride a bike, sowing corn in my small allotted garden at the back of the house and watching the seed grow into tall corn. Helping my father in his garden shed, going with my friend (whose father owned the Keswick laundry) in the big van to collect baskets of laundry from hotels and large houses throughout Keswick and the outlying areas. This is how I got to know the Lake District so well.

I loved my time in Keswick, the wonderful couple I lived with, the friends I made, Sunday school, cubs and infant school, walking the hills and woods and touring the Lake District in the back of a laundry van. I never once missed or even thought of the other home, mother, father or brothers I had. My brother David had gone a long time ago and like my real father I had forgotten them both.

After more than 5 years as an evacuee the time came when I had to return to Newcastle and home, this was a long while after the end of the war. My mum, dad and their daughter saw me off from Penrith bus station. I was placed in charge of the conductress and sat in the middle of the long back seat of the bus beside a young couple. The bus moved off and I remember I got up and knelt on the seat looking out of the back window at my mum, dad and aunty. As the bus quickened pace, so they became smaller and eventually disappeared. I remember crying a great deal, I don't remember stopping at Alston, and I must have cried myself to sleep. The bus arrived at Marlborough bus station. Everybody got off, and I was at the back of the bus; I was the last to get to the front of the bus to get off.

As I stood ready to go down the bus steps to get off, a lady was standing in front of the door on the pavement. This lady looked up at me and said "Are you Raymond", I said "yes, I'm Raymond" she then said, "Do you know who I am?" I said "No - I don't", she then replied "I am your mother, and I've come to take you home".

There were no hugs, kisses, or embraces (my real mother and father were never ones for that sort of physical contact).

We got on a tramcar and eventually got off along Jesmond Road, opposite Churchill Gardens, my mother met a lady and they started a conversation. I remember looking at the shops opposite to me and seemed to recognise the paper shop and corner green grocers shop. I approached my mother and said I would make my own way home.

I came to Kimberly Gardens, I walked down the street on the left hand side, and halfway down I knew I had arrived at the house where I was born and lived in. I walked up the steps and knocked on the front door. It was opened by a young boy with curly hair, he held the door open while I walked in, and we went through a second glass door into the hall, where we met a young girl.

I asked the boy "who are you", he replied "I am George and this is my sister Elizabeth", I then replied "I'm Raymond, I've come from Keswick and have come home to stay," they both looked at me and George then turned to his sister and said "Doesn't he talk posh". I suppose my Cumberland accent was something they had never heard before.

Looking back on my life in Keswick as an evacuee, I regard as being one of the happiest times and without doubt a time when I developed my personality, love for the countryside and respect towards other people was formed and helped shape me into the person I became. I was fortunate to have a good loving home in Keswick, I have heard that some evacuee children did not enjoy their time. At the end of our evacuation, whoever we were, we had one thing in common. We all came home to our families and a much safer environment. I came home to meet my mother who I did not know or recognise at the bus station. I met my young sister for the first time. She was born in 1941 while I was away. Before long the family started to come together and a new period in my life started.

For several years after coming home, I would go back to Keswick to see and stay with my evacuee parents during the summer holidays for one or two weeks. I shall always be so very grateful to them, and never forget what they did for me. I shall remember them with love and affection as my other Mum and Dad.

The turning point for me after the war was that moment when I was asked "Are you Raymond" and "I've come to take you home," for when I stepped off that bus onto the pavement, I WAS NO LONGER AN EVACUEE.

Please, if you were an evacuee from Newcastle and stayed in Keswick during the war, perhaps went to Briggs Infant School, or lived near to the Convention Centre, I would very much like to hear from you.

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