大象传媒

This story has been written to the 大象传媒 People's War site by CSV Storygatherer Coralie, on behalf of Gillian Broad. The story has been added to the site with her permission, and Gillian fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

My parents were both professional artists and my father taught art at the Southern College of Art in Portsmouth. We lived in a maisonette in Cambridge House, which was a building that I think had belonged to a knighted gentleman. It was what could be classed 'an architectural gem' with a gallery at the back of the building domed with glass.

We were the only family living there, as our building was otherwise let out as offices/practices to solicitors, dentists and other professionals, as were the buildings in the surrounding area. There were no children living in the neighbourhood for me to play with at all. In the April of 1939 my mother had twin girls, and I was nearly 6 by the time war broke out. Almost all her attention was taken up looking after the twins, although my parents tried to make up for this by giving me a fat ginger cat, who cost 2/6d, which I called 'Billy': we had him for years. For a short time I went to school, mornings only I think, and my father collected me at lunchtime. We had to walk past huge silver barrage balloons on Southsea Common. I seemed to remember spending a lot of time in the school air-raid shelter under the stairs, and I can still distinctly remember the musty smell.

My parents were very worried in general with regard to bombing, because of the extensive naval installations etc. in Portsmouth, and having me and the twins to keep safe. They were also anxious as the cellar in our building was used as an air-raid shelter, but above this was the glass dome, which could cause a disaster if the building was hit. According to the law in the war, in the case of a gas attack my mother would be required to put my baby sisters into respirator boxes and pump them both. My parents felt that this would be far less likely to happen somewhere in the country so my father decided that my mother and we three children should leave Portsmouth. A mature student in his art class, at the college, had a brother with a farm in Herefordshire. There was a cottage on the farm, and she arranged for my mother and us children to stay there. Because of lack of transport, fuel, and the difficulty going anywhere far with the babies, my parents accepted the offer without seeing the cottage first. I don't think my mother would have agreed to go if she had.

I can't remember the journey well, or how we got there, except that when we were nearly there, and travelling in a car with a large basket on the back, probably a taxi, the cat managed to escape so we had to stop to get him back, which was managed in the end.

'Poston House' was situated in Herefordshire, in the 'Golden Valley' which had the River Dore running through it. The nearest village was Peterchurch, which you could walk to across the fields. The house itself was one mile from the road, up a long drive and, although it had obviously been very grand in its time, was deteriorating. A rough track led up a steep hill to the cottage, or 'Dower House,' becoming rougher and rougher the nearer we got. It looked very ramshackle and was, in fact, a semi-ruin when we reached it. My mother also found that the front part of it was occupied by Land Girls.

The cottage had bare stone floors and we were presumably supposed to cook on the big black range. It never got hot enough to cook anything at all on, but was just warm enough to air the nappies in front of. My mother thought it might burn better if the chimney was cleared with something like a fire-cracker: I'm not sure exactly what it was but it only set the chimney on fire. Somehow she managed to acquire a paraffin stove from somewhere and she cooked on that, as well as it being our only heat. It had to be fenced off in the room as, of course, the twins were constantly crawling around the stone floors. Any water we wanted had to be drawn from a pump outside which would freeze solid in severe weather. We had very infrequent baths in front of the range, because of drawing and then heating the water. The farmer, Mr Robinson, was not very helpful on the rare occasions we saw him, and we didn't see his wife often either. All-in-all a great disappointment and very hard work for my mother! I don't know how she managed.

I don't remember any school for about the first year there, so to compensate for being on my own I suppose, I had an imaginary pet dog which was not very obedient and would not come back when I called! I spent all my time wearing thick brown stockings, with holes in the knees, and wellies, as there was mud everywhere. I wandered through the fields and woods, so to keep me occupied my mother got me some nature books from which I learnt the names of the birds, trees and flowers. We did see Pat, the Robinson's daughter, quite often as she ended up giving me piano lessons

Eventually, my mother somehow got me a bicycle to ride to school. Mr Robinson was to collect it in his lorry from Peterchurch Station. As you can imagine, being terribly excited about having a 'grown-up' bike, having only had one with stabilizers in Portsmouth,, I naturally wanted to go with Mr Robinson to pick it up. However, he wouldn't take me with him and set off on his own. Such a disappointment! Even now I can remember that bike clearly, with its shiny black paint.

I had to learn to ride it next, and my mother took me to a gently sloping field and I freewheeled down, somehow managing to stay on. It took more practise to reach the stage of riding safely, as the rough track to the road was so bumpy for a bike. However, I was soon told that I could ride down to the bottom of the one-mile drive and meet a 'big girl' who rode with me to Vowchurch, to a girl's school, called 'White Gables' I think, evacuated there from Bognor Regis. After a few days, I decided, with hardly any cars around, I could manage alone, which I liked better. I was quite an isolated child, as we were at Poston for 3 years and I never saw any other children there. No children resided around the school either, so once again I was alone, the twins being so much younger, but I was used to making my own entertainment by that time.

We had various visitors during our stay at Poston, and I think my father must have come in the holidays, as I have a painting he did of the view between Poston and the next farm. Although Mrs Robinson grew vegetables, we always had to walk quite a way to that nearby farm to get ours. Father came one Christmas with a large tin of chocolates, which was hidden in the wardrobe, but I managed to find! My maternal grandmother also moved to Peterchurch, but was ill and bedridden and always seemed to me to be bad-tempered. The only thing I ever remember her saying was that I needed glasses, which proved to be correct. I went alone across the fields to visit her, trying to avoid the hissing geese on the way, which I was frightened of. I had had to pass them before I was attending school, on my way to Mrs Pritchard's house, which was near Peterchurch, but not actually in the village. She was a very Welsh teacher, and I remember her giving me a lot of arithmetic problems to do.

After 3 years, we moved to Bullington, Hampshire, where we lived with my father in a large old Rectory with a big garden where my mother was able to grow the fruit and vegetables which we needed. I went on the bus to a private girls' school in Winchester, 12 miles away, which entailed 3 buses. I didn't fit into the school very well, as I had had such a different sort of life in the previous 3 years, from the other girls. At home, I had a friend called June, who was the only child I ever met at Bullington, but unfortunately my father didn't approve of her, however, he was away working during the week.

We were in Bullington for 2 years, and then returned to Portsmouth. I had been at Portsmouth High school for a couple of terms when I was 5 or 6, before going to Hereford. The Headmistress at Winchester was connected with Plymouth before the war, and arranged that as I was an 'old girl', I could return to the High school without taking the usual 'entrance exam'. I was about 11 by then and this was wonderful for me and changed my life. I was good at sports and had got off to a flying start in swimming, netball and lacrosse at school in Winchester. At Portsmouth, I was able to have swimming lessons, as there were swimming instructors with no pupils to teach at the tail-end of the war. I joined the swimming club and was the only one to represent my school in the Portsmouth Interschool, and Hampshire swimming circuit competitions. I also joined the lifeguards as a cadet, and they had a hut on the beach where we could take shelter in bad weather.

I visited Poston again, in my twenties, and saw Mrs Robinson and Pat, but the properties were more dilapidated than ever. In about 1995, on the return journey from my son's wedding in Scotland, I visited again. However, what a difference! The whole place had been renovated and when I knocked, the door was opened by a very pleasant well-dressed lady. I explained that I had been evacuated there in the war and she kindly invited me in and offered me coffee. The renovation had been done with immaculate taste. She asked if I knew who she was, and when I said I didn't she told me that she was Mrs Bulmer, of Bulmer's Cider, who had bought the estate. She said that I could go and look at the outside of the 'Dower House' but that her son and family now lived there, so she didn't want to disturb them. It was not possible to equate the, now beautiful, cottage with the almost derelict house my mother had battled with. When I returned home I sent her some black-and-white photos of when we were there, which she acknowledged with a charming letter saying how pleased she was to have them.

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