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Me and Mine

1939 — 1945

My name is Yvonne Worrall nee Christian. I was born in Balham in 1935. My mother’s family have a history of being Londoner’s back to 1831. I can still remember how life was before the war, how pleasant and orderly our lives were. My earliest memories are of the trains chugging away from Balham Station as I lay in my cot.

The war changed all that. We moved to Mitcham in 1939 as my family needed more bedrooms. My father was a butcher and he worked in Norbury. My school was blown up in 1940, at the same time as the margarine factory. It was called Sherwood Park Infants School. As I was only five when the war broke out, I sometimes cannot remember the sequence of events although I do remember my first term at Sherwood Park mainly because they gave us Horlick Tablets. Mitcham was more like two villages in the1940’s. I lived there till I was 21 years old.