Cornwall

We were in Sunday school the Methodist Chapel in Middle Row North Kensington when I in Europe, say we I mean my sister Mary my cousins and I. The pastor Mr. Brunning sent us straight home with instructions to do just that because war had been declared.

I was nine years old Mary was five, my cousins Joan and Stanley Welch were nine and ten respectively. Wars and rumours of wars had been growing continually in the papers and on the wireless the Spanish civil war, then the increasing threat of Adolf Hitler taking over countries although we did not all read easily we knew things were getting progressively worse as our parents the male members especially were building and strengthening the basements of the tenement houses we lived in to form an air-raid shelter.

After a few weeks the school closed and the children evacuated to the country town of Trowbridge, so the school was empty. Our education was badly interrupted although we did attend morning or afternoon sessions at differing venues, for a time. After a month or so both my Father and Uncle Harry decided that we would be safer in the country. So one morning we were all shipped of to the station for a rail journey to Reading, from there we were bussed to a small village called Brimpton. Mum Auntie Em Joan Stanley Mary and I were then driven by car to the chauffeur’s house on a large estate, where we were all to live. The house had no proper cooking facilities, but it did have a primeus stove to boil the kettle on, and oil lamps for lighting and cooking.

The village school was only a short walk away, when not in school we ran wild. Discovering country ways, and animals i.e. hedge hogs pigs cows etc. There were also some very long walks to Mitcham Station to meet our respective fathers on the weekends they could get free. This did not last for long however as Mum got fed up with the country so we all went back to London. At This time we moved house that is we moved into council flats in Southern Row. It was the shop flat opposite to Shepherds shop, which by contract could not sell any thing that Mr. Shepherd sold, and he sold everything. The flat was a great improvement on the Two-room tenement we had been living in, it had separate bedrooms for us, and a front room and a balcony, and most of all a bathroom with running hot water.