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I attended Richmond Street Infants School until I was 7 years old. I lived opposite the school in Ashton Street (between Richmond Street and Albion Hill). Our house was next door to the Ebenezer Batist Chapel, where I went to Sunday School.

The School’s air raid shelter was built beneath the playground. To reach it, we had to hurry down a flight of stone steps, then across the open, exposed playground. This was extremely dangerous, as the enemy planes would swoop down and the machine-gunners would fire on anything that moved! If insufficient warning was given, we would be kept inside the building, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the corridor, arms folded and made to sing at the tops of our voices, presumably to shut out the noise of the bombs falling and the ‘dog-fights’ taking place in the skies above!

On one such occasion (24 September 1940 — according to David Rowland’s book!) there was an air raid — no time to get to the shelter. Bombs dropped very close to the school. When the raid was over and it was deemed safe for us to go home, my friend Jackie and I (aged 5), came out of school to find our street covered in dust, glass and rubble. The butcher’s shop at the top of the street (Albion Hill end), had received a direct hit which had killed the owner.

The entrance to the street was cornered off with a rope, and manned by Air Raid Wardens. We stood at the rope, wondering if we had homes left! We were asked what we wanted and replied, tearfully, that we wanted to go home! Asked where we lived, we each pointed to our houses which were opposite each other. The rope was lifted and we were allowed to go to our homes.

We had no glass in our windows and a huge hole in the inside passage wall — Mum’s front room covered in dust and rubble!

I cried and my Dad was there to pick me up. He said that everything was alright and my Disney transfers were still on my bedroom wall! My room was the ‘slip room’ (or boxroom), and was painted with primrose yellow distemper. Mum always did the decorating etc as Dad ‘couldn’t bang a bloody nail in the wall’ she always said!

Dad had rushed home from our greengrocer’s shop in Sydney Street, as he’d heard that Ashton Street had ‘copped it’! At first, he couldn’t find Bessie, (who looked after me and the house while Mum and Dad ran the shop). She wasn’t in the basement of the house, which had been ‘shored up’ (reinforced) with large tree trunks (timber), as an air raid shelter. Bessie was found terrified, in an ‘alcove’ on top of the bath in the kitchen, behind the curtain which hid Mum’s pots and pans!

This story was submitted to the People's War site by volunteer Sue Craig on behalf of Beryl Tucknott, and has been added to the site with her permission. Beryl fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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