Ö÷²¥´óÐã

Name: Mr. D.B. Lacey

Address: Weymouth, Dorset, DT3 63W.

Ö÷²¥´óÐã Address at start of war: Newtown, Ashford, Kent
Address in Witney area: Woodstock Road

Name of host family: H…….

School address before coming to Witney: Ashford Grammar School

To ask me to cast my mind back 50 years is asking an awful lot. Most times I can't remember what happened yesterday.

I think that an attempt to write such memories as these in autobiographical format would be a bit disjointed, so I have decided to respond to your prompts in the order written.

1. The Days Before Evacuation
In August 1940 I was eleven years old and due to join the Ashford Grammar School for Boys in September. The 'memory joggers' in this section don't. I can only remember the formation of Heinkels & Dormers. The cupboards under the stairs with Mother, Brother and Sister listening to the scream of bombs. One occasion when our immediate area was bombed, coming out of primary school to see many houses just heaps of rubble and wondering whether I had a home.

2. The Day of Evacuation
Absolutely no memories. My mother was very frightened of the air-raids; my mother and us three children were evacuated as a family to Chinnor. My brother was 4 years older than me, and my sister 4 years younger.

3. Journey & 4. Arrival
Nothing.

5. Main Differences
Chinnor - All I remember of this place is a cul-de-sac of council houses with a water-well in the middle of the road. I hadn't seen a well before. My brother and I were in Chinnor for only a few weeks, then we were sent to Witney to join the school.

Witney - Remembered as a small country town, with the main industry being the blanket mills. Newtown, Ashford, was an estate of terraced houses and flats, built for the employees of the very large Ashford Railway Works. Ashford being a relatively large market town on the main London/Folkestone railway line, a junction for Hastings and Canterbury, etc.

Transport - Newtown had a feeder bus service to Ashford Town. Witney had a service to Oxford, and probably other places. The only train at Witney was the diesel "Fairsford Flyer".

Speech - I don't think that there was a noticeable difference in manner of speech. I recollect only one lad who used expressions like "bain't" or "be".

Parks - Newtown was built around a 'green' which served as a play area for children and a venue for the yearly fair, bonfire night, etc. There was a formal park in Ashford Town, but it was not used by Newtown people. I remember the green that stretched from St. Mary's Church to the Buttercross. I believe it was the venue for a fair, but most activities took place on that large area behind the church and the school.

Shops - In Newtown we had a small shopping "parade", a grocers, a sweet shop and a public house. The public house had an outing (a beano) once a year. Before setting off the regulars threw halfpennies and pennies for the children. My Friday 1 penny pocket money was spent in the sweet shop - 8 aniseed balls or a liquorice strip, or a sherbet dab. Ashford town had a fair-size shopping centre, with department stores and a Woolworths (3d & 6d). This was about a mile away and was a regular Saturday trip. Witney had a fair range of small shops along the High Street, including a Woolworths.

Fields - Newtown was not a very pretty place, with the railway works along one side, under a railway bridge along the black paths into town, all railway property was fenced with old railway sleepers. We did have allotments and fields behind our house, but as children we only saw real country when we visited my grandmother. Witney was all country - fields, woods, rivers and places of interest all accessible to a child on foot or bicycle.

Gardens - Gardens to the houses I lived in in Witney all seemed to be much larger than those at home, where we had only a yard at the back of a relatively small area at the front used for vegetables.

Schools - The Ashford Grammar School was permitted to use Witney Grammar School premises mornings only - including Saturdays. I was transferred to W.G.S. later. I don't believe there was much difference in teaching standards, but with A.G.S. being all boys, and W.G.S. being mixed, I think the atmosphere at A.G.S. was more relaxed, and there was a very liberal attitude to corporal punishment which was not resented, deserved or not. At W.G.S. a thrashing was a very serious business indeed.

What was missed?
I was not conscious of missing anything, perhaps because everything was new. With hindsight, I feel that it is probable that underlying insecurity was the cause of certain physical problems and perhaps a need to belong.

Differences between Ö÷²¥´óÐã and Billet
My brother and I were billeted initially with Mr. & Mrs. H......... on Woodstock Road. They were a middle-aged couple and were very good to us. Mr. H……. was a Post Office Telephone engineer. He had a small office beside the Post Office, and drove an old square radiator Morris Van. The H........... house had large gardens, was semi-detached and had a bathroom. Our home in Newtown was terraced, a tin bath and an outside toilet. The other accommodation was much the same, except that where the H..................'s had a kitchen, we had a scullery and our living room had a range fire and served as a kitchen. Neither house had central heating, but the H........'s had hot water. I really can't remember the type of meal that Mrs. H. cooked, but at home we used to have a lot of suet puddings, steak & kidney, bacon roly poly, treacle puddings, corned beef & mash on a Saturday. Bread, marg. and brown sugar or jam for tea, 2 slices only, and if you had butter you couldn't have jam. Cake on Sunday only.

Special Events
None, except the fair on the green and, certainly an event, the bombs dropped on the army lorries parked alongside the green.

Spare Time Activities
Scouts - I enjoyed the Scouts. I'm sure we did all the usual things.
I particularly remembered handball and going off to camp with all our year on the Trek cart. Mr. Newell was our Scoutmaster, a relation of Raymond Newell the singer, I think. He had to resign because he was a conscientious objector (conchy).

Walking/Cycling - We spent a lot of spare time out in the countryside, visiting places like Minster Lovell and Burford, Stanton Harcourt to watch the Whitley bombers.

Swimming - We used to swim in the Windrush at the swimming pool which was fenced off in green corrugated iron and in the river, where we went for crayfish, and to use a metal punt, which somebody thought they had hidden by sinking it. Sometimes we went to swim in the Thames at its nearest point.

Model Making - We made model aeroplanes from firewood and finished them with perspex cockpits, gun turrets, paints and transfers from the model shop and mounted them on stands made from a bicycle spoke and a screw top treacle jar lid. If you were lucky you could sell them through the model shop for a few pennies. We also made elastic-powered planes from balsa wood, tissue and tape and flew them indoors tethered to a pole.

I sang in the choir at the church at the top of the hill in Woodstock Road. I can still hear Mr. Baston's alto; when my voice broke I was relegated to a seat beside the organ, carried the cross and pumped the organ bellows. Choir practice was once or twice a week - Church twice on Sundays.

Went to the cinema occasionally.
There never seemed to be a time without friends to do things with. Names that particularly come to mind are the Bastons, Peter, Arthur, David and a very young Ann. We were involved together in most of the activities. I was often in their home to play billiards and other games, and sometimes to stay to tea. I have always remembered Peter as a special friend. I got in touch by phone in 1975 when I was working in the area (Thame). I had a nice chat with his wife, remembering mutual acquaintances, but Peter didn't remember me. It was disappointing, but I didn't pursue the contact. Perhaps this is symbolic of unrealised insecurity - the importance given to relationships which were not reciprocated by our hosts.

Other names that come to mind - Gordon Clack. He lived about two doors from Mr. & Mrs. H. Derek Blay, the Rotherham girls, Lilian and Maureen, Rita Smith and her brother.

Parents' Visits
I don't remember my parents visiting us at Witney. My mother and sister moved to Oxford, Oriel Street, and we were able to visit them occasionally. Sometimes my father would be there.

Leaving School.
Wt 14 years old I persuaded my parents to let me leave W.G.S. and enrolled at the Oxford Tech. I stayed there only one year and left to join the Ö÷²¥´óÐã as a Youth-in-Training in 1944. I was based at the Botley Hill Water Tower which housed a 100w Transmitter known as an °H' station. I worked a 3-shift rota and was paid 30/- per week.
I had various jobs during the school holidays, potato-picking and planting, a sorter in the Post Office, a milling machine operator and an errand boy at the Oxford University Press bookshop.

Other Billets
Mr. & Mrs. H had relatives in Reading. There were problems and my brother and I were sent to another couple for 2 or 3 weeks. I can't remember their name, but we were happy there. My brother left school and returned home in 1941/42. I stayed on with Mr. & Mrs. H. More problems and somewhere else had to be found. I phoned the couple who had us before, but they had an adult billeted on than. I was sent to a maiden lady who lived in the Oxford Road. She had a maid/companion who I had to call by her christian name, May, a very upmarket home, serviettes with silver rings, and May to wait at table.

Leaving the Area
The billet in Oxford Road was my last one in Witney. When I went to Oxford Tech. I stayed with my mother and sister in one room in Oriel Street - shared bathroom and kitchen with about six other families. My mother and sister finally returned to Ashford late 1944, and I went into other lodgings. I didn't return, except for holidays.

Other Points
My mother, sister and I returned to Ashford early 1943, but there was an air raid, and we went back to Witney and Oxford.
I can't remember any A.G.S. teachers, but I do remember one or two at W.G.S. The Headmaster - Mr. Woods, Mr. Parker - Chemistry, the form master was a Welshman, and the French teacher an Eastern European lady, There was also a very large gentleman who constantly flexed his cheek muscles. Lardy cakes at 1d each from the bakers in the street opposite the Butter Cross.
These are memories of a period of childhood some 46, 48 years ago. If there is anything of use, use it. I am sorry that I have no memento to send.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.