An evacuation story – source: Jackie Tolfree
I’ve had my Mum staying for a week and I got her talking about when she was evacuated. First of all she went to a big old house in Buckinghamshire along with her younger brother and sister and her Mum who was heavily pregnant. The follwing day they were told that they had to go and register at the local school and they had to walk along a long pathway with cows either side. None of them had ever seen cows before and they all ran back screaming and so never got to go to school, they had a tutor at home!
After a few months they were told it was safe to go back to London and so all went back and lived in a tenement block for a while, close to Tower Bridge.Later, the bombing got worse and they were told they would have to leave London again. Her and her sister left one day, dressed in their best red blazers with brass buttons, white pleated skirts and white shoes and their gas masks hanging around their necks. They were about 10 and 12.All they knew was that they were going to Somerset and that their Mum, brother and new born sister would be joining them the next day. When they arrived at Taunton station a middle aged couple came and collected them and took them back to their house. They were given their own lovely bedroom each but my Mums younger sister cried and asked to sleep with her as she had never slept alone, my Mum said that up until then, three or four of them had shared a bed, let along a room! She said the next day the woman, who was really kind, took them into town and bought them two new summers dresses each from Woolworths and four new sets of underwear which they were really thrilled with. They hadn’t taken any spare clothes because their Mum was supposed to be arriving the next day with the luggage. The next day she began to get a bit concerned because her Mum hadn’t turned up and it seemed that nobody knew where she was.It turned out that my Nan was equally frantic because she had got on a train the next day expecting to be taken to her daughters but was taken somewhere else in Somerset. There had been a mix up because Nan couldn’t read or write and hadn’t filled in the evacuation forms properly. They were finally reunited two weeks later and were all sent to a huge manor house called Gerbestone Manor where Linda, the baby, stayed until she was five or six, living the life of “lady of the manor”!! . Mum said that she remembers a nanny looking after her and pushing her around the grounds in a huge basinet pram and as soon as she could walk she was given her own pony.
What was really terrible was that the day my Nan left London with her two babies, her best friend and neighbour and her children were supposed to be going with them but she decided to wait another day as her eldest son was coming home. That night the building received a direct hit from a bomb and the whole family were killed.
In spite of all that my Mum still thinks that they were some of the best days of her life! While they were at Gerbestone Manor they didn’t have to go to school, they had private tutors and had huge gardens with a lake to play in.The manor is still there and these days it is let out for weddings etc. I’d love to be able to rent it out for a weekend for a huge family get together but suspect I couldn’t afford to!!
Jackie