大象传媒

In 1940, just before the Battle of Britain (May/June) we were evacuated to Cornwall. Myself and my sister. We travelled to Paddington on the train and split off to Helstead, and just outside there was a village called Gunwalloe where we were picked out for places to be evacuated to.

We were both sent to a farm, to a couple who farmed the land. We had a bedroom, lovely food and were looked after well. We went to a village school, with a teacher who was evacuated with us.

I am not sure how many children were there, but many left after a week because they were home-sick. We would have some Cornish pasties for our packed lunches and plenty of other lovely food, chicken etc. We were lucky to stay on a Farm, because the Farmers wife did a lot of baking.

We would write home occasionly, Mum and Dad then wrote back. They were never allowed to tell us what was happening in London. So we had no idea of the Battles going on over the city.

This was the situation that lasted for two years. I returned home when I was 14 years old to live in Tottenham. Mum wanted me to earn some money. So I had to dodge all the bombs.

When the Summer came, so did the harvesting in the summer holidays.I was allowed to do some work on the farm from feeding the chickens, stacking the corn and helping with harvesting. In those days the Farmers were all related, so they would harvest each others crops to help out.

They would have to send for a work-permit for me to work on the farms. This gave me the chance to learn some farming, including bringing the cows in for milking and cleaning out the barns, which was an experience for me at the age of twelve!

We were also near the sea, and spent time climbing across the rocks, in between our schooling. At one point Pensanze was bombed during the night.

We watched it as we were in a bay in the area. We didn't hear much about it, but there were four bomb craters in a field. These were just dropped to unload unused bombs from other raids.

We didn't stay on the same farm all the time. We got transferred to a second one, which was run by a father and son. The father was nearing retirement, and his son who was married. They had a daughter, who is still alive today. Their grandmother was there too, and was excellent at kniting, and she would make all our clothes, and send them to London for us once we had returned home.

I didn't want to go home to London, and because we couldn't split myself and my Sister, she came back with me. My father and mother had five girls, but not all were evacuated.

My father had a fleet of lorries as part of his job that would visit bomb-sites of houses in the area once they were declared safe. My dad would pick up their furniture and stored a lot of it in the seating underneath The Tottenham Hotspurs Football Ground until the owners found some else to live.

In 1942 I was fourteen, in August of the same year once I had finished school, I went down to a factory called Dunlops, working on a flat machine, making the uniforms for the R.A.F., Navy, Army. I did this until 1946. I then went to work in a small hotel for a season as a chamber maid, waitress and much more. The hotel still exists today.

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