1939 - 1945
IVY MITCHELL nee PULLMAN RECALLED 17th Jan 2009
"I was born at Templecombe but was working in Sherborne at the start of the war. If I had stayed working at the boys and girls school I probably would not have been called up but I went to work at Milborne Port Glove Factory and that was when I was called up. I was sent to work in Reading for four years. First I had to fill shells, not the very big ones, and then later on I was trained to test them - that was dangerous. You had flames coming out of the machine around your legs. I was in lodgings and had a day off a fortnight. I couldn’t afford to go home more than once a month. My Uncle who was a Police Inspector at Bognor Regis used to pay for me to go to stay with him once a month.
I used to travel from Templecombe by train and changed at Basingstoke. I was in lodgings. I had three days off one Christmas and was going to travel back with my friend. We knew the train would be packed so we gathered a bunch of prickly holly. We soon cleared a space.
I was quite popular because I didn’t take sugar so my sugar ration was shared with the others. There was hardly any cake. Sometimes we managed to get some Huntley and Palmers cake - but that was under the carpet! It was lovely.
If we had relations working in food factories they used to share the extras their employers gave them. We swapped with something we could send them. Father used to shoot rabbits and we sent them up to Bristol relations. They used to send back cheese from the factory they worked in.
My friend’s brother was in the army. He sent a wooden box of fruit to me from France. We couldn’t get any. When it arrived the fruit had been stolen and all I got was the empty box!"
Reading
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Ivy Mitchell
Ivy Mitchell nee Pullman born at Templecombe (90 in November 2008) and sent to work in Reading filling shells.
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1939 - 1945
"I went to Westminster Bridge Road Primary School. I was evacuated with my younger brother Peter who was four. I was almost six as my birthday was the 7th October. We thought it was an adventure. It was like going on holiday. Our headteacher Mrs Campbell, Mr Foster and Miss Dobson came with us. I remember we were given barley sugar sticks to suck on the journey. We all enjoyed those. We stopped at Templecombe Station [ some eight miles outside the town, although Sherborne had its own station] and had to get off the train. I don't know why it didn't steam into Sherborne. I remember it was dark. We had to get on to coaches and were transported to the Digby Hall in Digby Road. It was very late by then and we spent the night at Cmdr. Nash's house in Sandford Road [ now called Dymor]. In the morning Peter and I were collected by Win and Jim Gould and went to the home at 2 Coombe Terrace. Win was organist at St Paul's Church Coombe, a red brick building now an engineers, on the other side of the road. She also played the organ at Sandford Orcas and Poyntington and walked to those villages as they didn't have any transport of their own. I didn't enjoy having to go to church three times on Sundays. I sang in the choir. I did enjoy collecting the stamps for good attendance at the Sunday School. They were very colourful and we stuck them in our albums.
The Goulds were such nice people. We had a good home. Jim was a carpenter - the best in the street. Jim had a large garden that stretched right up from Coombe to Marston Road where he had his workshop. They had a large chicken called Henrietta who laid well and they grew most of their own food. The meal I didn't like was fried egg and mashed potato!
At home father worked on the railway, an essential job so he wasn't allowed to join the RAF. Mum and my younger brother Bill were evacuated to Exeter but they were bombed there and evacuated to Wells! Mum and Dad sent me a pair of heavy boots once. I didn't like them at all and called them 'clodhoppers' and tried to kick them and wear them out.
We were able to take part in potato picking and paid six pence an hour. We had to walk to Crackmoor on the outskirts of Milborne Port to pick up conkers. They were packed into wooden barrells and once full sold off to the Council Offices at Ludbourne Road, Sherborne and were used as pig food. We also picked rose hips which were rich in Vitamin C. When we had filled a two pound kilner jar full we could take those to the Council Offices and wer paid two pence. They were made into rose hip syrup. Mum used to send us a three pence postal order each week from London. We used to go to Woolworths. They still had sweets. We used to spend it on MIlky Ways and Golly Bars - these were toffee strips and you got four for a penny. We always managed to get treats. Sweets were not rationed then and we also had a tuck shop at school. We could also get ice cream.
Jim made a shelter under the stairs of plywood with benches round it. When the air raid sirens went off we had to hammer on the wall to Mrs Penny next door because she was deaf and couldn't hear the siren.
When it was harvest time we used to go into the fields to catch rabbits. All of the children were given a stick and we had enough to stand right around the edges of the field. As the harvest was cut the rabbits would go into the centre of the field and when the machines got closer they would run out and we would kill them. We weren't allowed to take home all the ones we caught. We had to put them all into a pool and the farmer would share them out at the end of the day.
We would also go out sticking - collecting sticks for the fire.
We used to play a lot of games. We had a darts board and we also used to do a lot of drawing. Paper was not in short supply. Jim was good artistically, being a cabinet maker. I remember painting a large picture of a parrot and it won a local competition.
The countryside seemed strange to us. We were frightened of cows at first but soon got used to them. We thought the hills around us were mountains!
I remember the only bombing raid that hit Sherborne in 1940. I was walking home from school. I remember at least one evacuee was killed in it. I remember the strong smell of gas in the air afterwards and Uncle Jim going out with his first aid kit on patrol. One night I heard a German plane low overhead. We knew it was going to crash it was so low but we boys were not allowed to get up and watch it. The men saw it in flames. It crashed in Poyntington village a few milesd away and the crew were buried in the churchyard for some time. After the war their bodies were returned to Munich.
We used to search for bits of plane and shrapnel to keep.!
We kept in touch with the Goulds for the rest of their lives."
Sherborne, Dorset
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James Whiting
James now lives at Seaton, Devon after falling in love with the countryside after being evacuated to Sherborne on the 2nd September 1939 from London.
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1939 - 1945
"Popular Yetminster couple Kit and Harold Cheeseman, both 89, celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary today (Friday 30th). It was a chance cycle ride to Sherborne from her home at Marston Magna that led to them meeting and romance quickly blossomed. Harold worked for the then Greenham’s butchers in Sherborne and the couple enjoyed a quiet early morning wedding at West Coker. Less than a year later after war broke out Harold spent six years in the army serving with the Somerset Light Infantry, the Oxford and Bucks Regiment and after a mission to France attached to the Green Howard parachute unit found he was one of only three out of 50 to survive. During the war Kit had to leave her baby with her mother at West Coker, being called up for work at the Twine Factory at East Coker where she recalls working seven days a week from 8am – 6pm for the weekly wage of 12s 6d!
In the early 1950s the couple moved to Yetminster where they have lived ever since.
Their Platinum Anniversary will be spent with their family. They have five children, 10 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. "
Dorset
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Kit and Harold Cheeseman
Kit and Harold Cheeseman of Thornford Road, Yetminster who celebrate their Platinum (70th) Wedding Anniversary today (30th Jan)
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1941 - 1947
"I was born at Sutton Bingham, Somerset. Our cottage was pulled down when they built the reservoir in the 1950s. I left school in 1941 when I was 14 years old and went to work at Netherton Farm, Closworth three miles away. I worked there three years before I was old enough to join the Land Army as a dairymaid. I started looking after the ducks, chicken, geese and turkeys. I fed the pigs and the calves and had to hand milk the cows until they had a milking machine. There was no electricity. We had paraffin lanterns for lighting the house and the cow stalls and had to carry them with us. Then we had a milking machine powered by a Lister ending. I had a yoke to carry two large buckets of milk to the dairy at a time. It was put into a large bowl and left to strain after it passed through the cooler. We grew kale, turnips, cow cabbages, sugarbeet, mangels, potatoes and kale. It was hard work hoeing all of the crops between milking times. We still had horses to do the mowing and reaping. I met my husband Leslie in 1947. Everything was rationed. We had to have coupons to get the furniture. All we could get was a sideboard, a table and four chairs, one armchair, a bed and a dressing-table!
Edna and her husband Leslie now live at Ryme Intrinseca, about two miles from where she worked during the war. Leslie was delighted to be presented with a long service medal for his lifetime's work on the farm at the Dorset County Show."
Sutton Bingham, Somerset
1939 - 1945
"At 100 Dorothy recalled
"I was the youngest of four. My father, Charles, was shepherd on the farm and when he died my oldest brother Harry took over. I remember him coming home from the First World War. I was eight when he was called up. By the time the Second World War started, Mother, Elizabeth, had a heart condition so I was exempted from war work because I had to look after her. We were lucky in the country and being on the farm we had most things that we needed. I did gloving at home. Mine were leather samples of the highest quality that were sent out to store buyers. Ours was such a small village and off of the main road so the war didn't affect us a lot. We had our garden and I made jam.""
Closworth near Yeovil
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Dorothy Loveless
Lived all her life at Closworth near Yeovil, Somerset in the cottage where she was born.
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1939 - 1945
"Our family had started the village stores as long ago as 1800. Mother was Olive. We kept pigs and poultry. Long before war broke out we had to fill in an agricultural return. Each holding had a number and we had to declare how many animals kept every six months. Then we got coupons for animal feed. Mr Best at Bretts at Sherborne then sent out our allocation of poultry and pig meal. Strettons of Sherborne had a mobile thresher. Arthur Cooper drove it and was accompanied by Wacker Male when they came to the village every autumn and thrashed any crops for us. We then had to declare how many sacks of corn came out of the corn ricks so that surplus was not put on the black market.
I remember when the army was stationed in Thornford for two or three years they had a cookhouse behind the old village hall with a large range in it. However they couldn't properly cook some of the rations sent to them. They had large joints of meat and there was a lot of waste. I used to help father take the large wheelbarrow up there every night to collect the swill. We put it in the big furnace in the outhouse that would hold 20 - 25 gallons and boiled it for the pigs. It smelt awful but the pigs loved it. The furnace used to be used to scald the pig carcasses after they were killed.
Mother had to fill in a return every month to declare how many people were registered with her shop during rationing. Then permits were sent out and suppliers allocated the right amount of bacon, cheese and tea. Mr Rendall in Sherborne had his tea store by the Mermaid Hotel and he used to deliver our tea in his Trojan Brooke Bond Tea Van every week or fortnight. The Trojans didn't have a self starter and they had a chain drive. Mr Rendall used to have enough time to roll and light up a cigarette while he was getting the van started. He had to pull a lever in the cab up to get it started.
Mother used to make some jam but was limited by the amount of sugar she could get as it was rationed- so was the butter, marg and lard and eggs. They used to come from King Stag. I think a few of them went on the black market!"
Thornford, Dorset
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Philip Ellwood
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1939 - 1945
Now both residents of Leigh Old Vicarage Care Home our interview ended as lunch was about to be served.
They asked what was on the menu and laughed when they were told it was gammon!
""We both came from farming families. Bet lived at Bailey Ridge, near Leigh, Dorset and I lived at Glanvilles Wootton"
Bet added " he used to cycle over to see me."
Reg continued " both farms were dairy, pigs and poultry. I had war time exemption to stay and help my father on the farm and my sister but my brother had to go in the army. We used to keep about five breeding sows [pigs]. Numbers were different then than now. Everyone had a few. Later on Bet's father put up the first pig sty, Danish type on top of Bailey Ridge. It was modelled after the Danish type. We kept Large whites, Saddlebacks and later Landrace Crosses. Black and whites were the better ones in those days. They were still natural then and they grazed the grass better. At 5 to 6 weeks they were called sucklers and we used to keep them on until they were ready. Breeds of pigs have changed. In the end we got round to keeping Landrace. Most were sold private.
Bet explained what happened to theirs " my father supplied Greehams the Butchers in Sherborne. They unsed to ring up when they wanted X numbers - usually up to five.
Reg said their used to be sold privately and to market sometimes.
"Everything was rationed - you used to have to sell the pig before you got the grub to feed them on!"
Bet agreed "you had to apply to the Ministry for the food. 5cwt. comes to mind but that might have been for the cows. You got so much a month for the piglet. We kept chicken too at home. - 100 pullets before we got married.
Reg said "everyone kept a few hens. We were alright for eggs. We weren't really short of anything in the war because we were both on farms and had everything we needed."
"when you killed a pig you salted it down - there were no freezers or anything like that. You had a lead brine bath - a large tray six feet long by four feet wide and about six inches deep for salting and you filled it with brine - mostly salt and some vinegar. We didn't have enough to drown it so you used to have to turn it and tip the brine over the meat."
Bet added "Mother made sausages and faggots and used all of the pigs head."
Reg laughed " the only thing wasted was the squeak!"
"It stayed a long time in the brine, I can't remember how long. You had to keep turning it to keep it covered."
Bet recalled "when you wanted to cook it you had to soak it overnight to get all of the salt out otherwise it would have been too salty to eat."
Reg recalled "My father used to do pigs and then send the meat up to London in baskets by train. The porters used to take it.""
Holnest, Dorset
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Betty and Reg Coffin
Reg explained.
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1939 - 1943
""I was not yet 13 when war was declared in September 1939. I remember hearing it on the radio. My chief memory is of how pleased my mother, then aged 39, was to be able to take a full time job running an elementary school at Rockford, in the parish of Ellingham, Hampshire, between Ringwood and Fordingbridge, on the edge of the New Forest. She had been trained as a teacher at Salisbury Training College but in those days and for many years to follow, right up to my own time, one had, as a woman, to make that difficult choice between marriage and a career. She had married aged 20, directly after leaving college. She had been able to do supply work as a teacher, but that was all; my father was near retirement, so it was doubly important for her to have a job. It meant that we moved out of Southbourne and I had to stay with a family in Bournemouth from Monday to Friday in term time. Although the school house we moved to had no electricity and limited bathroom facilities, I loved it and really enjoyed finding out more about the countryside, its trees and flowers etc.
Previously I had only known the countryside when on holiday or on days out - not the same as living there. We had a dog for the first time too! The house may have lacked facilities we now take for granted and sometimes, as on my first weekend back at school ,heavy rain meant it was impossible to go home as the green outside the school was flooded, as was the ford to the west of us, which had prevented some children from coming in to my mother's school. My father used the bus to go into Bournemouth where he worked at the Town Hall in the Education Department but I preferred to cycle the 15 or so miles, usually on Monday mornings (when I was let off gym) and Friday evenings, using what we had always called "the switchback road" through Matchams. The school house overlooked a wartime airfield ( now it is part of Blashford Lakes) and on more than one occasion I saw two aeroplanes (Lightnings I think they were called, they belonged to the Canadians or Americans) take off almost simultaneously and crash into each other so that the pilot was brought down in flames. They carried spare petrol, which added to the danger. On another occasion, when my mother was away, my father lent a torch to some men, dressed in uniform but without insignia, who asked the way to the anti-aircraft gun emplacement nearby. Father, always trusting, showed them the short way, but the next day the Military Police arrived and told him how spies had stolen a plane and flown it to somewhere near Salisbury!
My school, Bournemouth School for Girls, which was then in Gervis Road near the Lansdowne, had, until 1942, to share premises with the evacuated Girls' Grammar School from Southampton so one week we went to school in the mornings (8.30am until 1pm) the next in the afternoons (2pm - 5.30pm), with additional lessons, like latin, held in a nearby hall out of normal school hours. School clubs too had to make do with makeshift accommodation much of the time. If an air-raid warning came, or sometimes just for practice, we had to take shelter in the cloakrooms, half underground and adapted for the purpose with extra girders. The coast, beach and cliffs were forbidden territory during the war and I needed a pass to come into Bournemouth. Swimming lessons stopped when the army took over Stokewood Road Baths, game facilities were limited and tennis was played in King's Park. We always carried our gas marks ( and had to practice using them too).
There were talks of emergency rations, including chocolate, but we never got the opportunity of sampling them. When the evacuation of Dunkirk happened in June 1940, about 850 French soldiers were given temporary accommodation in the school for four days while we had an enforced holiday. A Guide friend and I not only collected what clothes etc we could for them ( they really wanted pants which we didn't have!) but tried out our French dictation on seemingly uncomprehending French ears. Afterwards real air raid alerts became more frequent. There were compensations as well known stars of ballet, drama and music came to Bournmemouth, as it was deemed safer than London, and our own school societies flourished despite difficulties. Our interests extended; we began to understand the Headmistress's support for the League of Nastions. We collected for charitable causes, collecting salvage, bought National Savings Stamps, learnt simple First Aid and Home Nursing. Guide Camps became Harvest Camps with camouflaged tents and the opportunity to wield a pitchfork, drive a tractor, clear river weeds and dig potatoes etc.
In Rockford my mother joined the Women's Institute and I joined in the parties and dances for various soldiers, including Canadians. We enjoyed their gifts and company.
As for rations, we accepted what came, walked the two miles to Ringwood to get "off the ration" sausages and offal, and though we grumbled when our dog stole the butter or meat, we somehow managed.
As for make-do-and-mend we were used to that anyway and Guide badges included patching and mending! I don't remember feeling we were shorter in clothing and food than usual, though when I burnt my new blazer sleeve carrying an accumulator for the radio, I was careful to hide it from my mother! My father's growing of vegetables, which he had always liked doing, really came into its own. My mother's brother was a tailor so, even when I went to university, I was given a properly tailored new two piece suit as well as two new dresses."
Dorset and Hampshire
1937 - 1945
"I worked at Harper House, a boarding house for Sherborne School, as a sewing maid with Mr Tindall as House Master. In the 1920s he asked me to join him as House Matron at West Downs Preparatory School, Winchester, the Preparatory School for Winchester College, where he had just been appointed Head Master.
Two of my friends went with him too. West Downs was a lovely school and I enjoyed my work there. I used to come home during the holidays or sometimes went on holiday with the Tindalls to the Isle of Wight or Newquay.
When the war came we were worried about the boys.
Some of my favourite Old Boys were Peter Scott who as a boy used to come and ask.
"May can I borrow your watch?" He was always drawing as a young boy but didn't have a watch. He used to draw wildlife in the grounds during his lunch hour. We also had Angus Ogilvy and his brother. Their parents gave me a clock for looking after them so well!
Southampton was bombed and we always had bombers flying overhead. Some of the parents were worried too so Mr Tindall started looking for a safe place to move the school to. We took over Glenapp Castle in Ayrshire in South West Scotland and soon the boys started arriving. All went well at first. Their parents managed to send supplies of most things they needed and there was always something for us too. Then things changed. We found we were on the flight path for Ireland and Mr Tindall started to get worried again.
I went home for the summer holidays. It was a long train journey. I used to have a break in London and go and stay with Aunt Louisa and Uncle Zeb at Finsbury Park. Uncle Zeb was an Austrian Pastry Cook but he was interred in the Alexandra Palace in the First World War in case he was a spy! Aunt used to be allowed to visit him on Sundays. After the war they changed their name back to her maiden name, from Reinthler to Hunt, in case the same thing happened again!
I was crossing Waterloo Bridge one afternoon when there was an air raid and had to go to the nearest shelter. Some time afterwards Uncle Zeb's house was bombed and most of their road. They were re-housed close by. On my way back to Scotland Mother, Louisa's older sister, used to send up a few supplies from the country -eggs, fruit and jam- and I used to drop them off.
When we got back to Scotland we had a shock. The army had taken over Glenapp castle and with less than 48 hours before the boys were due back we had to start searching for another home for the school.
Mr Tindall spent most of the next day with the army who tried to find somewhere for the boys. Then at the last minute we learnt Blair Castle, near Blair Atholl village, in Perthshire was being made available for us. Some of us went on to the castle while others waited to collect the boys as they arrived back and see they were sent on to Blair Atholl. There hadn't been time to tell them to go to Blair Atholl. It was a lovely place to stay. It had been an auxillary hospital in the First World War but was the family home of the Duke of Atholl. The Duke was the only person allowed to keep a private army and we often saw his Atholl Highlanders. While we were there the Duke died and we watched the Highlanders parade and pipe the coffin from the house to the church. We watched from the upper windows. The family made us very welcome and we had few shortages. The estate was large and the remaining keepers kept us well supplied with food.
The boys were very careful in the castle and I don't remember any breakages but they all came from well off homes so were used to such places.
In May 1945 I had a phonecall from Dorset to say Mother was seriously ill so I packed up and caught the first train home. She died soon after I got there and I stayed home to look after father and never returned to Scotland. At home we had rationing but we had a large garden and two allotments. My brother was a thatcher and got a special petrol allowance so he could carry on working. He often came home with something for the table. My Uncle was a keeper in Honeycombe Wood so he sometimes gave us things too. He kept pigs and built a smoke house near the house. He used oak shavings and smoked the joints and hams so we often had meat too. "
Dorset, Scotland, London
1939 - 1945
"I lived at the little hamlet of Lower Wraxall, Dorset, until I was 18 in 1945. We saw lots of action. I remember a huge air battle and aircraft coming down in flames. It was sad - they were someones sons weren't they?. We were milking cows at the time. We saw men coming out in parachutes. We had a lot of troops in the village and military police after Dunkirk. They went off on their motorbikes to look for the men. I worked with my father on his farm when I left school.
Then I went to Leigh in 1945 when I was 18, milking. That's why I have bad hands. We had to milk 60 cows by hand!
Troops used to live in an old cottage. They used to sing "I fell in love with Mary at the dairy" when we walked by.
We had a huge vegetable garden and got plenty of food that way. I was about 13 or 14 when the war started. We didn't really understand. We thought it was good fun really.
We didn't have evacuees but we did at the village school at Rampisham. There was a family evacuated from Weymouth. Mr Fraser had a plumbing business and he went backwards and forwards every day and there was Digby the fruit wholesalers and he did the same. I remember the troops gathering for D Day and they used to say "Careless talk costs Lives"
We had butter and loads of cheese. We had a cheesemaker and a cheese loft. When you went into the cheese room it was full off lots of truckles of cheese - mostly cheddar but sometimes Dorset Blue Vinny. I can't tell you the recipe. I never touched the stuff myself. No we weren't short really. We had pig meat and plenty of butter.
I could make butter today with a big churn. It was the good old days. You see we had all those troops in the village!"
Lower Wraxall, Dorset
1939 - 1945
"I spent a lot of the war on Salisbury Plain. I was a VAD (The Voluntary Aid Detachment was founded in 1909 with the help of the Red Cross and the Order of St. John and provided auxiliary nursing services mostly in hospitals in this country and occasionally abroad).
I worked in one of the huts. A specially made hospital had been set up there. Those coming back from the war sometimes came there but more often service men who had suffered accidents in this country. We had Despatch Riders who were injured when they came off their bikes or people who had crashed their planes or had other accidents here while serving. I worked on the wards but caught a bug that produced large abcesses under both arms and I had to be taken off the wards. I didn't have a cooking certificate so I was shifted to the canteen to cook for 100 staff. Two of us cooked 100 meals at a time. I remember a horrible thing happening to one girl. We were making scrambled egg in a double saucepan. It had boiled dry and when she tried to separate them it all blew up in her face and she was badly burned.
We had rationing. We were very short of everything. We were only allowed an ounce of butter - a very very little bit. We really didn't see any fruit because a lot of it had been imported.
My husband was serving in the navy. I remember when my son was born in a London Hospital, the day after a bombing raid. All of the windows had been blown out and they had replaced them with cellophane because they had been broken so many times. I remember seeing people going into the underground to shelter from the bombing raids.
I wanted to go on and do a dietetics course so I moved to Glasgow but then my husband came home. He had been at sea a long time. We moved to Plymouth after the worst of the boming there that had flattened the middle part. We managed to get a flat in a Doctor's house. It had been the house for the agent to Lord Morley before the war but then the Doctors took it on and they moved into part of the house and the rest became flats.
I remember my son's excitement when naval friends who had come back from the Bahamas smuggled in a few bananas and gave him one. He had never seen one before. Sometimes pilots managed to bring back a few luxuries."
Salisbury Plain
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Eleanor Clive-Powell
Interviewed and Leigh Old Vicarage Care Home
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1939 - 1945
"I was born into a farming family at Pulham, Dorset. I was a weekly border at Lord Digby's Grammar School for Girls.
The boarding house was at the bottom of the Avenue. We used to pool our coupons at the Boarding House and use them to buy blouses and gymslips. We used to share everything. We all knitted for the war effort. We had to go to a shop in the town or a stall to collect the wool if we were knitting for the forces. We knitted pullovers, socks and balaclavas. We quite enjoyed knitting for the forces. I was at the Boarding House when we had the only bombing raid of Sherborne in September 1940. We had finished school and returned to the boarding house to change out of our white blouses and gymslips and put on our casual clotes. We were changing for tea. It was about 5.30pm. The boarding house was a three storey building. Our Headteacher Miss Billinger lived next door. When the siren went we had to go down into the basement. We didn't know what was happening but we heard the noise. There was a shelter built under the shoe racks. When the All Clear went we were allowed up to the ground floor. Lots of the girls were very frightened. There was a big crack right through the walls and our Headmistress was quite badly hurt. My father was a farmer at Pulham. He was going through Sherborne to Trent when the bombing raid started on his way to see some cattle. He tried to get into the town to find out if I was alright. He didn't know at that time but he was stopped. They wanted up to wait where we were until they had recorded everybody's name, find out who was missing or injured. At last he was allowed in. There were dead and injured horses in the street and some people had been killed and a lot injured. When they had finished recording I was allowed to go home. Our first look at the town was awful. There was so much damage. A few days later the boarding pupils were billeted out around the town as our boarding house wasn't safe. Four of us were billeted with our music teacher. "
Pulham, Dorset
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Grace Fudge
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1943 - 1954
"My family was part of the Polish community at Haydon Park on the outskirts of Sherborne. I remember the galvanise roofs of the huts. They had a door at each end and were divided with one family at each end. The winters were very cold. We only had a small pot bellied stove for heat. Mum used to heat the water on top of it. I remember my Dad carrying me to the hospital hut when I was very ill with measles. When some of the families had been re-homed in the local community the hut was opened up and we had the whole hut. A new small range was fitted which was much warmer. I lived there until about 1954.
The camp was built in 1943 by the Americans as Field Hospital 228 and consisted mostly of nissen huts. Conditions were very basic when the camp was handed over to house refugees. NAFFI furniture on site was used to furnish the huts which did not have running water. There were communal washing areas and toilets. There was a central canteen and two meals a day were provided with breakfast and other small cooking needs carried out in the huts."
Sherborne, Dorset
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Liz
Sherborne Museum would like to hear from anyone else who lived at Haydon Park Camp and hope to hold a reunion at the Museum in 2011
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1939 - 1945
"I was born three miles from Wimborne, Dorset, in a little village and it remained my family home until we moved to Chetnole after the war. I was at school when war broke out. Then I began my nurse's training in Surrey. We were evacuated to Yorkshire because of the danger from bombing raids and rockets. Father was destined for the bank when he had left school but the outbreak of the First World War put paid to that. He was due to embark but slipped and fell and broke his arm so he never went to France. After the First War he went into poultry farming. He never wanted to work inside again. We were lucky living in the country when the Second World War broke out and had poultry and everything we needed. I don't remember being short of anything but we were used to shortages. Things had been much worse before the war. There were real shortages and hardships during the 1930s so we were used to making do so when war broke out those shortages were nothing new to us. We didn't keep rabbits but our cat was very good at catching them and when it brought them home we used to take them away and cook them for dinner. Father was too old by then to be called up but he did go into the RPU - the Radar Prototype Unit at Creech Moor. I don't really know what he did. I don't expect we were supposed to. Times were really hard but we had learnt to cope before the war. People didn't expect as much as people do today."
Wimborne, Dorset
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Sybil Howard
Pictured taking part in the Chetnole Church Parachuting Teddy Bears, the village she has lived in for over 60 years.
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1939 - 1945
"The family had been there over 200 years. It was a mixed farm so we had everything we wanted - pork, eggs, milk, butter, cheese and vegetables. No one had served in the forces as they had reserved occupations although my father was a member of the Home Guard. They used to meet in a hut in a sand pit but there was usually nothing for them to do. I stayed with my aunt in Winchester for two years. We had a lot of troop movements leading up to D Day. I remember the troops marching on the roads too. She had American soldiers billetted with her. We used to hear our bombers going out on raids. They went overhead both at the farm and at Winchester. Sometimes we saw them coming back with vapour trails behind some of them who just made it home.
At the farm I remember hearing the empty cartridge cases raining down on the galvanised roofs of the farm buildings and the noise it made. We weren't really short of anything. We never wasted anything in any case so it was nothing new to us."
Eastleigh, near Winchester
1939 - 1946
"Dorothy celebrated her 100th birthday on the 20th February 2010 and will be interviewed at the end of March with her family. Dorothy recalls being in the Wrens "I worked my way up to Chief Petty Officer. After the war it was very difficult to find a job and then I applied to be cook/housekeeper at Melbury House in Dorset in 1946. I loved it and stayed there until I retired in 1970." Dorothy retired to Park Cottage on the Melbury Estate and is looking forward to a special birthday afternoon tea with the Hon. Mrs Charlotte Townshend of Melbury House. She will be talking about her wartime years, thought to be connected with the code breakers at Bletchley Park and her post war years of rationing and how they coped at a big house. Dorothy has been a resident of the Leigh Old Vicarage Care Home, who have been key partners in the Make do and Mend Project, for just over a year."
Dorset
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Dorothy Darknell
Dorothy is pictured with her nephew and godson Rowland Cook of Oxford and great-niece Rosalind Cook
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1939 - 1945
"I was 11 and we lived at Petties Farm, next to the White Hart. We kept about 12 cows in those days. During the war we had to plough up a lot of our land and grow a lot of crops for animal feed too. We rented about an acre and a half of allotment land in the village as well and grew feed crops and rotated it with potatoes. We weren't really short of anything during the war. We had rationing but we grew most of the things we needed as we had a large vegetable garden too. When rationing came in and meat was short mother started keeping a lot of rabbits so we ate a lot of rabbit meat and occasionally there was a pheasant or two. Then mother started keeping Aylesbury ducks as well so sometimes we had a duck to eat. We had poultry and eggs and then mother started making our own butter too. My sister Betty and I didn't like the home made butter very much so mother and father ate that and we had the butter ration!
At school we were taught to go and lie in a ditch if there was a bombing raid and the shrapnel would go over us. We used to get a lot of air raid warnings and were used to the siren going off and didn't take a lot of notice of that but one day [30th September 1940] after school I was on my own and that was the only time during the war that I was really frightened. My job was to go to the allotments and gather rabbit food - dandelions and leaves, anything they would eat. The siren sounded. It was a cloudy day and I never saw the planes but then the noise started and I saw the black smoke start to rise in the distance and realised it was for real. It was the only bombing raid of the war but I remember how frightened I was. I remember the evacuees coming too. We had lots of them from all over London. They used to walk miles to Yetminster School each day from the villages - there weren't any school buses in those days - and then they had to walk home again afterwards."
Yetminster, Dorset
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Colin King
of Yetminster remembers his wartime schooldays at home in Yetminster.
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1939 - 1945
"Margaret Jessie Young ATS Southern Command no W/252589
"I wasn't going to be left alone in the village, all my friends were off to the war so I might as well. The village was in Leicestershire - hardly any cars about in the 1940's. Looking back now the village was idyllic, everyone knew everyone else and looked out for one another. When the church bell tolled everyone knew who had died - so many tolls for a man, so many for a woman and so many for a child. Of course there was chapel three times on a Sunday - where I learned to spell Congregational and got my finger stuck in a knot hole during the sermon! Family and neighbours brought a taste of their baking and cakes to share and on winter days Aunt Polly would tap, tap, tap up the Entry if snow was lying, with her pattens on, carrying a steaming jug of soup. It was good to grow up there.
As I said I wasn't being left behind so on the bus to Leicester and volunteers for the Navy (No - they only wanted Commander's daughters then), the Air Force (No, I didn't want to be a cook), the Army - yes!
I could already drive after working for the Co-op milk round in the worst of a winter and delivering milk, which was then rationed, to people in three villages. I could certainly drive being taught by the Dairy Manager, Ernie Wilkinson, on the light Ford lorry. All I was required to learn was map reading and how to maintain the vehicle. When I returned home and told my mother, she began to cry. She was ironing and I shall always remember and I wondered why the tears.
I was called up and went to the Barracks at Wigston, only a stone's throw from home. I was issued with khaki issue, had various inoculations, began drill or square bashing after that, and there was more to come when I was sent to Camberley in Surrey. I never felt so fit in my life.
Camberley was good; drill, car maintenance all being taught and being with ladies ( all well off) in the FANYs - First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. I never saw the lot I was with doing any First Aid, just good drivers, teachers and ride motor bike now and again with lengths of bloomers showing!
After being taught how to do the daily maintenance on a vehicle, how to read a map with headlights half-shaded, I was posted to Roche Court, Farnham, Hants, driving lorries day and night.
Next I was sent to Salisbury to Longford castle, billeted at the Moat, Britford. We drivers, leather straps over the top of our caps and the wheel symbol stitched on the bottom of our sleeves, we were the elite of Longford. We were called upon to drive top ranking Officers in big cars, Ford USs, Humber Snipes. Then on lighter duty to ferry girls from the Moat to Longford in the small covered PU's. On one drive the steering went and I careered along the boulders down Longford Castle drive. I was on a charge the next day but I can't remember the outcome as D Day was approaching and life was hectic. I did doze off when driving the Medical Officer, who took over the wheel and ordered three days rest!
We drove everywhere, in Dorset mainly and on Salisbury Plain, down to Weymouth where part of the Mulberry Harbour was being built. Across to the Isle of Wight - that was work on the Pluto pipeline ready for D Day but we didn't know that then. We collected Intelligence men from London at Winchester station and took them along the coast to Weymouth mainly. Very often I used to go to Wilton House and while he was in at a meeting I dare not get out of the car. I also remember when I went to Studland where men were laying mines in the bay. I was desperate for a wee. I thought I was in an area of woodland but later learnt that there was camouflage and some of the dummy trees had bodies inside! That side of things was a problem for a woman in security areas. As D Day approached our driving became less. I remember many boats along the Solent then and one day the drone of planes towing gliders flying quite low that flew over the camp.
On my so called day off I used to drive a very handsome staff sergeant to Bournemouth. He was in charge of finance for the whole camp. He used to call at houses where army personnel lodged to pay for accomodation, then on to Bournemouth to collect maybe cleaning etc and we always went to Bobby's for refreshments, then walk along the cliff top piled high with barbed wire before returning to Salisbury. I fell hook, line and sinker for him. We were married on 12 August 1944 at the Enderby Congregational Church. Somehow my mother provided lunch which was hard on rations at that time. My family was teatotal and a non smoking one yet I always remember the dishes of scented cigarettes my father provided! We had special permission to travel to Matlock for a few days and as we waited on the platfor loads of soldiers passed by with the announcement being made that the train was not for the use of the public - however we made it.
Before D Day I drove Lady Pamela Digby. Only myself and one other were allowed to drive her as we dove FAST [ Winston Churchill's daughter] There were more tanks on the road around Dorset than cars. It was a very happy time and I kept in touch with Lady Pamela until her death in a home in Dorchester.
Margaret has a newspaper cuttings about Wilton House's crucial D Day role that reads
"The planning for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944, took place at Wilton House . . . Wilton House was requisitioned as the headquarters of Southern Command in June 1940. The 15th Earl and Countess of Pembroke remained in residence while the top secret planning for D Day was co-ordinated in the famous Double Cube Room. . . . During the planning stages of the operation the house was visited by Churchill, Eisenhower, General de Gaulle and King George V. However it was all top secret so little evidence remains" Debbie Evans, the Tourism Manager at Wilton House added.
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England
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Margaret Aldridge
was born in 1924 and lived in the village of Enderby, Leicestershire, five miles south west of Leicester city and now pincered by the M1 and M69. Margaret recalls the village was dominated by the granite quarry and the shoe and hosiery factories.
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1939 - 1945
"Jean got a job working at the Headquarters of the 228th American Hospital at Haydon Park, near Sherborne in the grounds of Sherborne Castle. The camp hospital, which treated injured servicement returning to this country, became fully operational on September 18th 1943. From April the following year almost 1200 beds became available.
Jean recalled being given a box of 12 pairs of nylon stockings by the Americans which she shared with her friends but also sadly recorded the demise of her Scottish home made kilt when she was accidentally pushed backwards on to one of the coal stoves and the seat was completely burnt out of it! Her mother was really cross as the kilt had been made to preserve the ration of clothing coupons.!
More of Jean's memories can be found in her book "The 228th American Hospital at Haydon Park, nr Sherborne" a copy of which is in the Sherborne Museum Book Collection.
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Sherborne, Dorset
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Jean Treasure
fortunately recorded her wartime memories in a book which makes interesting reading as sadly she has now died.
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1940 - 1940
"I was on Parsons Hill, behind the church, when the Sherborne Air Raid started [30th September 1940]. I was there with the farmer of Manor Farm, Tom Ryall and one of his farm workers, Bill Smale. I am not sure what we were doing but it had been a long hot summer so I think we were still getting the harvest in. We boys always used to hang about the tractors and trailers. It was after school, somewhere around 4pm. The sirens went and we heard two explosions in the direction of Yeovil. Then there was a noise of planes coming this way so Tommy Ryall said "you boys had better get on home" but we hung about because we wanted to watch and see what was going to happen next. It was a cloudy day but some of the bombers were flying beneath the cloud cover and seemed to be following the railway line for Sherborne. I thought they had been turned back from Yeovil and began dropping their bombs at Lenthay Common and then across Sherborne.
[Most records say the planes could not be seen because they were above the cloud cover but Fred is adamant that some were clearly visible flying beneath the cloud.]
Sydney Helyar of Middle Farm [now Greenhill Farm] was worried about his tractor driver Fred Foot who was working in the south west of the village and he had heard bursts of canon fire. He went down and found he was alright but he said he had been fired at and Sydney insisted he came back up to the farm. There were two bombs dropped on the outskirts of the village. We had an airfield here at Thornford - Special Operations. We had several different sorts of planes. One they had to stand on a box to wind it up to get it started. I remember one day mother asking me to go down our garden and feed the chickens. Mother always asked me to after school and I saw one of our planes in flames and saw it come down."
Sherborne, Dorset
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Fred King
has lived in Thornford, Dorset all his life and as a boy took an interest in the military operations going on in the village between helping get the harvest in, feeding the family chicken and helping on local farms.
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1939 - 1945
Bill Duggan's story touched the hearts of everyone at the Yetminster Memories Tea Party
"I was an orphan in Enfield. I was sent to St Joseph's Home. Oliver Twist was lucky! We only had jam on our slice of bread on Sundays. It was a Catholic orpahange run by the Sisters of Charity. I shall never forget it. They seemed all sweetness and kindness until they closed the doors. When the air raid sirens went we all had to rush down to the Air Raid shelter in the cellar. We had to kneel down and pray. The sisters would pray to sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph - and then an Incendiary bomb dropped in the garden of the orphanage! We used to go to school at St George's Enfield, and had to walk three miles there and three miles back. It was a Catholic school. It was nothing for us to look up and see dogfights - aircraft chasing one another - and us picking up shrapnel that had dropped.
I remember the black out. The Air Raid Warden used to come round and inspect. All the windows in the school were taped except for one that wasn't. I used to try and count all the windows and always picked out the one that wasn't. They were trying years. I remember playing in the playground when we had to rush to the shelter. There was one boy who had something wrong with a leg and he couldn't run as fast as the rest of us. He used to lie down in the playground. I saw him on his own. No one was allowed to go and help him and the Sisters didn't bother either.
I saw doodlebugs coming. There was a terrific noise and then the engine would cut out. You knew they could drop just like that when the engine stopped but sometimes they would wing on a bit further before they exploded. It was daylight and we used to see them coming. I found it horrifying even as a kid. When you heard the noise of the engine you thought you would be ok - then the noise stopped and you would think they had landed on someone else. Hundreds of planes came over. I saw hundreds of squadrons, squadrons and squadrons of planes went over. As a kid you used to look up and count them 44, 45 up to 50.
We had various benefactors at the orphanage who used to come and give the occasional party. I used to think "we're getting cake!" You had to eat fast whatever was put in front of you. There was always another kid waiting in the wings to take it off of you. You weren't alone though. There were 100 other kids. Small children were in Holy Angels, next St Michaels, older St Vincents and the oldest of us in St Josephs house. The orphanage was Sisters of Charity and the Roman Catholic school Sisters of Nazareth. They appeared so angellic but behind locked doors they weren't at all. If they pointed at you you knew you were in for a hiding. We got the ruler on the back of the hands and we had to stand with our hands on our heads. I remember looking out from the cellar at the poor boy in the playground during a raid with my hands on my head."
Bill left Enfield and was sent to an Agricultural College in Gloucester - run by brothers - the Selenians.
They had 1000s of acres of land. We kept poultry and pigs. I went as a gardener. I loved every minute off it. From the regime we were under at the orphanage it was so different. It was the first time in my life that anyone had put an arm round me. When I got there one of the brothers put his hand out and I shrank away. It had always meant someone was going to hit me. The brother said no he wanted to say welcome. We have a reunion in Gloucester.
My childhood before that was cane, strap and clout!"
Enfield, Middlesex and Gloucester
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Bill Duggan
Bill Duggan entertaining at a Make do and Mend event was interviewed at Crafty Times Memories Tea Party in February 2010. His tragic story touched so many hearts
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1940 - 1945
Kathleen goes back to the evacuees reunion regularly and has kept in touch with many of her wartime friends.
"We started off going to Suffolk with an Aunt and Uncle from South East London. Three months later my Aunt fell down stairs. She tripped over the cat and we returned home and in 1940 were evacuated to Seavington St Michael in Somerset with my school. I was evacuated with my brother. We all arrived by train and gathered at the Horlicks factory at Chard and were simply tipped out there. I remember being given milk and iced buns which I thought was wonderful. Then we were bussed out to the villages. We didn't want to be separated and when my father was called up Mother came too. She worked in the local hostel where those evacuee children with problems who could not be billeted out with families used to have to live. I didn't find the country frightening because we used to spend our holidays in Suffolk.. I loved it. Mother had been a country girl from Suffolk who went into service and that was how she met my father, a Londoner.
In the early days of the war we had an Anderson shelter in the garden which we shared as they took 10. Our ARP warden gave a warning for gas. My friend's sister had just put her hair rollers in and couldn't get her gas mask on! Her father said "you aren't going to do that again for the rest of the war!"
In Somerset we went to the village school and after a year we moved to Donyatt. We evacuees were in the village hall. I then went to night school and learnt shorthand. I went to Dowlish Wake [a village close by] at 15 as a junior shorthand typist for the shipping department of Standard Telephones and Cables who were then making munitions. I was confirmed at St Mary's Church in Ilminster and had a very happy time there. I didn't want to go back home. I joined the choir, the Youth Club and went to dances and we had barn dances too. I walked from Donyatt to Ilminster regularly as they had a Picture Palace there. Rationing was not a problem although there weren't any sweets. Occasionally a shop in Ilminster got gelatine sweets and I used to rush to get my 2oz ration! We had plenty of eggs, cream, bread and jam and used to top up at breakfast for the day ahead. There were several smallholdings close by so we got chicken and eggs - plenty of eggs. I remember clothing coupons and we used to plan out how we were going to use them. I don't remember any particular shortages. I do remember all of us evacuees were provided with wellingtons.
Trains were blacked out. I remember travelling from Taunton to Ilminster - there were no lights on the station. We had to guess where we were as they took the station name boards down too. We came from Taunton to Chard and got off at Donyatt Halt. They had war time pillboxes there and close by was the airfield, Merryfield. I remember the Americans used to fly their wounded in to Merryfield and I used to see convoys of Red Cross collecting them. I liked the convoys - the soldiers used to throw out nylon stockings and sweets!"
Somerset
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Kath Pettigrew
Kath Pettigrew partners Val Cookson, who founded the Dollywood Dancers [named after her mother Dolly Wood], entertaining at the launch of the Make do and Mend Project Wartime Garden Party and were interviewed in February 2010 at a Memories Tea Party.
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1940 - 1940
Colin King of Yetminster, Dorset has already recorded his memories of the Sherborne bombing raid but then he also remembered.
"Father [Reginald King] was picking apples at home at Petties Farm next to the White Hart Inn when the Air Raid Siren Sounded. We had an orchard - plums, pears and apples. We used to sell some of the apples. He got down the ladder when the bombs began to fall and left the bushell basket full in the yard and rushed up to the house. After it was all over he found one of the two horses had eaten half a basket full! We had an acre and a half of allotments too and grew potatoes, corn and wheat in rotation. We heard the planes and saw our Spitfires and a Hurricane but could not see the German ones. We could see black smoke rising from Sherborne. At first we thought Thornford had been hit [the village in between Yetminster and Sherborne where his mother Freda had been born]. It looked far closer than Sherborne. We hardly ever went to Sherborne unless we needed to although it was only five miles away so I didn't see much of the damage. It took two or three years to repair the damage. I remember seeing Spitfires quite often as they were based at Warmwell. We used to see them nearly every Monday at about 3.30pm!
Although we had two horses and not a tractor we still needed a petrol ration to run the stationary engine to cut the chaff and mangel, swedes and turnips into pulp to mix with the chaff for animal feed. We had petrol coupons for the engine and I had to take the petrol can up to Mr Roberts at the garage to get our petrol."
Yetminster, Dorset
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Colin King
of Yetminster remembers his wartime schooldays at home in Yetminster.
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1939 - 1945
"18 months into the war at the age of 17 I volunteered for the RAF. Mother was upset when I told her. We lived on a small farm at Bembury, Thornford and had everything we needed. We were not short of anything. First of all I was sent to South Wales and then to RAF Locking and finally Bicester where I was running up aeroplane engines. I went home for the day sometimes. The train was blacked out. They used to ring a bell and had a system to let you know where you were. I often got sent back with two dozen eggs in my bag from mother. Some 18 months later they were looking for RAF servicemen to come out and become civilian workers in factories. I was called to the office one day and told it was my turn to go. I was sent to a factory making air screws [ propellers].
I remember the Sherborne air raid [30th September 1940]. I was in Yeovil that day. It was a typical Autumn day - fine but lots of low unbroken cloud. I heard the planes. I think they took fright and lost their sense of direction. I saw the bombs falling on Sherborne soon after 4pm. I went home to Thornford and had tea and then cycled into Sherborne. I had school friends there from Fosters School and I wanted to find out if they were alright. I left my bike at an Aunt's and walked into town. The streets were full of rubble and there was a strong smell of gas. There were some unexploded bombs too and bits of shrapnel all over the place. It was dark by then. I walked round and found my school friend's house in Newland, opposite the Carlton Cinema. It had been bombed but they were unhurt but they had to move out because the house wasn't safe. I was always amazed at how Sherborne sprang back. The rebuilding took quite a while - several years. It could have been much worse. I don't think the bombers knew where they were and were fleeing from our aircraft and dropped their bombs to lighten their load and get away.
Asked about the rumour that Sherborne might have had a secret factory that was their target Mr Mitchell replied "I never heard of a secret factory. I don't think Sherborne was the target for that day's mission. In the RAF I found out my boss had been the Tracker that day and he said he had been unable to muster enough aircraft to mount a proper counter-attack. There were too few serviceable aircraft available."
Thornford, Dorset
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Merlin Mitchell
was born at Thornford near Sherborne, Dorset.
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1939 - 1945
Pat Smith brought a tape recorded in 1983 of her mother Mabel Raison, nee Christopher, speaking about the Sherborne bombing raid of 30th September 1940.
"Mabel was living at North End Farm, Melbury Osmond, Dorset.
She had been taking tea to Pat's Uncle Ken, who was ploughing in a field called 'Radish' between the farm and the highest point at Princes Place, close to the now main road from Yeovil to Dorchester.
"the planes were tight together. They came over our copse and went in the direction of Yeovil - then they suddenly veered to the right. I saw black smoke rising in the distance"
Pat recalled "aluminium went for the war effort. We had to get the iron saucepans out again but we found we had nothing to go on the paraffin cooker. They were too heavy"
Pat also remembered the Italian Prisoner of War Camp close to the main road. "The camp was on the left hand side beyond the Clay Pigeon [cafe]. Until 30 years ago there was a tree close to the road that still had the base of the look out tower in it. It was quite a big camp. The Italians used to be dropped off in a lorry and we had six of them allocated to the farm. Joyce Smith [now living at Evershot] was a nurse at the camp."
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Melbury Osmond, Dorset
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Pat Smith
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1940 - 1940
Heather Helliar recalled the day Sherborne was bombed.
"On the 30th September 1940 I had just come home from Yetminster school and was indoors. It was about 4pm. Mother had gone up the road to Petties Farm to see her sister, Aunt Freda, and I was home alone. I heard the planes but there was a lot of low cloud and I couldn't see them. Mother heard the first bombs start to fall and came running home. The windows and doors vibrated in our old cottage. I thought they were going to fall out! I've never been so frightened - made worse because of the cloud and I couldn't see what was going on. I could hear a low rumbling noise of planes but couldn't see anything.
The following week, exactly a week later and the same time, the weather was so different. It was sunny and clear. I was walking with a friend along the Chetnole Road. We were walking along and could see planes overhead having a dog fight. We had soldiers billeted in the village. One called "you children go on home. We've got a raid going on" so I went home. I was ten years old and remember both raids were on Mondays.
The planes were heading for Yeovil. I remember bombs were dropped around but I think most of the planes were turned back but several people were killed. A few years later when I was working in Yeovil I lodged with Norman and Phyllis Glover of Newton Road. Norman had shrapnel in his head from the raid and used to get really bad headaches. He had gone to see his Aunt that day and her house had received a direct hit and they had been dug out of the rubble. Norman had been operated on. They had lifted a flap of skin from his scalp and had tried to remove all of the shrapnel but couldn't get at the very deep pieces.
I remember the air raid siren used to go off at the same time in the evenings. We used to listen for the planes overhead. They were mostly heading for Bristol. We would wait and listen. Our planes had an even sound but the German ones had a thump, thump sound in the engine so we could always tell whose planes they were.
There was a big naval gun in Barwick Park near Yeovil. It was very loud and fired big shells. We called it Big Bertha. I remember our old fashioned wide chimney used to pick up the sounds. Once we heard one of Big Bertha's shells whistling over - its range was that great.
We had a searchlight battery on the Chetnole road - on the site that is the abbatoir now. It wasn' t there for all the war but it was there for a time. I am not sure why it was moved. Then for a short time we had a German Prisoner of War Camp there. It was a small camp but it was definitely Germans. This was in addition to the Italian Prisoner of War Camp on Wardon Hill. The Germans used to be escorted by soldiers with guns into the village to work on local farms, like the Italians did. I remember one man told us he had been a Doctor in Germany. We used to think what a waste of his skills as he was hoeing and stone picking."
Yetminster, Dorset
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Heather Helliar
Heather Helliar moved to Yetminster while still at primary school, shortly after war broke out. Her grandparents still lived at Thornford and she recalls.
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1940 - 1940
"I remember the day of the Sherborne bombing raid.[30th September 1940] I was up in Five Acres, a big field up above the bend, where you had a good view. Sirens had gone and I was watching the German bombers - yes you could see them although it was a cloudy day. I saw one of our planes go up. It was spiralling round the Germans trying to turn them back - a tiny shiny shape moving about. The barrage balloons had gone up in Yeovil and I saw the planes suddenly change direction. They started to drop bombs along the railway line but the bombs landed on either side and missed the track. There were craters there for years afterwards. Our guns started opening fire. There were guns at Houndstone Camp and a big one in Barwick Park. Instead of hitting the German planes they hit that one of ours and I saw it come down.
Then we heard the planes continue on the way to Sherborne and heard the bombs hitting the town.
On another occasion a bomb was dropped at the entrance to the drive of Barwick House - which had been taken over for military operations.
I joined the Railway Home Guard at Stoford at 15. Quite often when I got home for tea Mother would say 'You will have to wait for yours tonight son - these come first' and there around the table would be an assortment of army and navy blokes who could not get home. Mother would always feed them. I went to work for a brewery delivery firm and we used to deliver up to Bristol. I got up there when they were being bombed! After that I worked for the Railway at Yeovil Junction. I used to be sent up to London and got there as the first rockets started to come over. That was frightening and I thought it was time for me to come back home. I don't remember any particular shortages. Mother always made sure we had enough of everything and of course in the country we were able to grow our own and keep chickens."
Stoford, Somerset
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Vic Whelton
was living at Stoford, Somerset on the border with Dorset when war broke out.
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1939 - 1945
"I was born at Ivy House Farm, Oborne, Dorset, a couple of miles east of Sherborne. I started school at Newland Infants School in the town but had left before the bombing raid. Newland School had a direct hit. I went on to Abbey School at the other end of the town and had to cycle there. On 30th September 1940, a cloudy day, I had cycled home and gone indoors. The sirens had gone but they had gone before and there had never been an air raid. Then we heard the planes and ran out and saw the bombs falling on the town. The planes were heading our way. We wondered if father was alright. He was on the other side of the road hand milking our cows. We went over to find him. Shrapnel was falling. We found him sheltering behind a pile of full cattle feed sacks. When it was all over we realised our friends Elsie and Ivy Cheeseman on the other side of the road from us - same name but no relation - had not returned from Sherborne. They had cycled in earlier that afternoon. Father got into his square Morris van and went off to see if he could find them. We could see smoke rising from the town. I am not sure if he did manage to find them or not. He did see a dead brewery shire horse and found a lot of damage.
At school we had this arrangement with a lady who lived opposite but worked in Frisby's shoe shop. If the siren went while my sister and I was at school we could go over to her house and hide in her shelter in the cupboard under the stairs.
Mother made butter - I never liked it and wouldn't eat it - and used to take it into the sweet shop in Cheap Street and exchange it for sweets and stuff she sold. There was a lot of blackmarket trading going on. I remember crossing over to the stable one night to see my horse and found a man wheeling a milk churn in. I thought it was a funny time to be shifting milk around. When we closed the door he took the lid off and it was full of joints of meat! Father had some. I'm not sure what he traded for it - butter, milk and eggs I expect.
I remember the blackout and barrage balloons. There was one at the highpoint on Sigwells where there was a Home Guard battery and lookout.
I had a school friend who lived at Middle Lodge in the middle of Sherborne Castle Park. It didn't have any modern services at all. We used to have to go and draw water from the pump outside and it had oil lamps. During the war American soldiers were at the army hospital at the other end of the park and were always driving by. I used to like staying there. They used to toss us candy bars! They were a different lot to our soldiers - less orderly, very friendly but a bit sloppy compared to ours. I remember one day I was walking home to Oborne and one of the large American ambulances was driving by, pulled up and asked me if I wanted a lift. I said yes and got in. I didn't think about it.You wouldn't do that today. I probably shouldn't have done it then but it was alright.
I remember going out rabbiting. I used to go out with my first boyfriend rabbiting. We used to go under Oborne railway bridge. We used to eat a lot of rabbit during the war. We had rabbit stew and rabbit roast and if there were any leftovers mother used to cook the bones up with some lentils - it was always lentils to make a soup."
Oborne, Dorset
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Audrey Ashman
nee Cheeseman was born at Oborne, near Sherborne, Dorset
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1939 - 1945
"I was born at Yenston near Templecombe, Somerset and now live at St Johns Almshouse, Sherborne, Dorset. I am 90 years old. During the war I was a mobile nurse. I worked in lots of different places - London way, Portsmouth, Sherborne and Yeovil. Our patients, wounded troops, came by train and transport. We had high standards in nursing then. Everything had to be done just right. I met my husband who was born in Sherborne when I was working there. I remember the evacuees arriving. My father had a mixed farm - not sure what sort of cows they were but they were brown and white."
Templecombe, Somerset
1940 - 1940
"Sherborne Farmer Jack Dimond has recorded a lot of his memories in his two books 'Dimond Gems' and 'More Dimond Gems.' He vividly remembers the day of the Sherborne Bombing Raid on 30th September 1940.
'I was over on the farm. The siren went at about 3.30pm. Father had dug us a shelter in the rock under our garden. We had a half round Anderson shelter. 13 of us packed into the shelter! We didn't expect to see anything standing when we came out - the ground shook so much. It was one big roar. Our friend Mr Ireland the saddler was killed. I had only collected the binder canvas from him three days before. We lost a sow and her ten young piglets. She was killed by debris coming through the roof of her sty. The closest bomb was about 250 yards away on the other side of the Castleton Road from the farm. Jimmy Lintern was killed by a direct hit. A Hurricane crashed quite close to us. We heard it go over. There is still a hole in the hedge there today on the opposite side of the road to us. A friend still has the propeller and parts of the engine.
We didn't have any water or services for a week. We had to fetch water from the spring across the fields in ten gallon milk churns. One of our best friends was killed in a field next to Lenthay Common by the first bomb. He had been cutting thistles. I had only seen him the week before when we got some straw from him and I had to take back his ropes.
That evening we walked down round Sherborne. We had a job to pick out the streets. Most of the bombs fell in the streets and back gardens luckily otherwise more would have been killed. It was a cloudy day although at times there were some breaks in the cloud. There are several stories about the bombing raid. They say they mistook Sherborne for Yeovil. It is also said the balloons went up in Yeovil and they were trying to get away from our fighters - not many of them - that went up after them and then they dropped their bombs on Sherborne. They followed the railway line. One of our pilots came down. It took a good four or five years to rebuild Sherborne.
Newland School had a direct hit. The children had only come out ten minutes before the bombs fell but it killed the schoolmistress.'"
Sherborne, Dorset
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Jack Dimond
Sherborne Farmer and author lives beneath the Old Castle ruins and has sold over 15,000 copies of his memoirs.
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1939 - 1945
Evacuees
"I remember the day the evacuees came. There was a convoy of about 200 buses coming down the road. It just went on and on. They were all packed with evacuees. Six stopped in Sherborne and the children were offloaded in the Church Hall. Others stopped in neigbouring villages. Some went right on down to Maiden Newton, all the villages in between and on to Dorchester and even Weymouth. Mother went down to the Church Hall and we were allotted two. We had two boys Robert and Billie. They came with their gas masks. One of them cried for over a week he was so homesick. Our evacuees stayed about 2 1/2 years. We didn't have an apple left in the orchard! They cleared them. Father didn't say anything - but they were cider apples and they still ate them! My sister still hears from one of the evacuees at Christmas."
Sherborne, Dorset
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Jack Dimond
Sherborne Farmer and author lives beneath the Old Castle ruins and has sold over 15,000 copies of his memoirs.
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1940 - 1940
"I was one of five children. I remember the day of the Sherborne bombing raid. I had come out of school, gone home and then went out to play. I was playing with a friend of mine in the ruins of some burnt out cottages in Westbury, [Bradford Abbas] that had been burnt out long before the war but were not rebuilt during wartime. We children often used to go and play there so my brother, Des, knew where to find me when the sirens sounded. He was up on the railway bridge in Back Lane, one of the highest points, with a friend and could see what was happening. He came running to find me and said we ought to run back home to the shelter 'we've got a raid' he said. We ran home and as soon as we got in the shelter it was all over - as quick as that. The time was about 4pm. Father had dug the shelter for us in our garden. He had put timber on top and covered it with earth - there was six inches of water in the bottom but it was safe on top!
We knew they had bombed Sherborne and could hear the bombs going off all the way across Wyke and Lenthay Common and into the town. My future wife Doe lived in Lenthay Close, Sherborne and she was in the heart of it. A house below theirs received a direct hit and a family was killed."
Sherborne, Dorset
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Ron Gosney
became one of the 'Grand Old Men' of the village in 2009 re-enacting the original gathering in the 1930s when the oldest residents famed for their longevity became film stars! In 2009 those Bradfordians of advancing ages were honoured at a social gathering in the village. Ron became Master Thatcher of the village.
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1940 - 1940
""I was at the top of the village when the sirens went off. I was quite high up and soon afterwards I saw our planes going in the direction of Yeovil. Shortly afterwards I could see something falling and then I realised it was our pilot and could see his parachute."
Many accounts from the time speak of the unbroken cloud cover over Sherborne but when asked Wilf said "No it wasn't cloudy from here. I could see them."
[Curator's comment. Today 15th March 2010 weather conditions in Yetminster were at first clear and sunny but as the day progressed it became cloudy. However five miles away in Sherborne the sky was clear blue with few clouds and perfect visibility. Conflicting accounts of the weather conditions and visibility on 30th September 1940 could be accounted for if similar conditions prevailed. On several occasions over the past year there has been sharp contrast in visibility from surrounding villages and the River Yeo valley which is also the route of the railway line that the planes followed to Sherborne, which is situated on the Yeo.]"
Yetminster, Dorset
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Wilf Bennett
has lived in Yetminster, Dorset all his life. He vividly recalled the day of the Sherborne Bombing Raid.
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1939 - 1945
"I remember the Sherborne Bombing Raid. I was going out to the hairdressers, Ruth Foster's Mum. I was passing Mrs Grant's house and she called "You had better come in. The barrage balloons have just gone up Yeovil way." I didn't see the damage done in Sherborne. We heard the planes and the bombs but we couldn't get about in wartime so I didn't get to Sherborne ( five miles away) very often. I always remember the start of the war. My Mum was killed on the 24th of August 1939 at the Cross Roads. She had been worried about the coming war and said she didn't want to see her boys go to war. I remember her arm was broken and she had other injuries and later that night my sister Linda came and said Mummy's dead. Mrs Gervis was a nurse, the schoolmaster's wife, and she had come to help. We used to wear black for six months. I remember Gran made us girls black and white check dresses - for four of us.
At Yetminster we had an air raid siren at Brister End up by the quarry. Quite a few men from the village used to man it - Dr Stevens was one of them and a man from Ryme came to help.
I remember looking forward to going to Sherborne by charabanc every year to Phillips and Andover in Sherborne but it was bombed. We used to pay into a clothing club at the Vicarage - a shilling a week [5p] and at the end of the year we used to enjoy the ride in the charabanc with the roof down if the weather was fine and spending the club money at the store.
I remember Harry Saunders was Sexton at Yetminster. He lived in the thatched Sexton's cottage next to the church - it isn't thatched now. His job was to light the lamps in the church and each night he used to go into the church to ring the Curfew Bell. I worked for Dr. Stevens - in service. Mrs Stevens had a canteen in the garage for soldiers. There were lots billeted in Yetminster and it was my job to fry the soldiers breakfasts. Miss Buckler helped and Miss Trubridge - but she was killed at Hendford, Yeovil when her mackintosh got caught in the wheel of her bicycle. Nearly every house in the village had someone. Aunt Kath had an evacuee - a girl and then later another girl. She had such pretty hair she was such a pretty little thing. When the evacuees came they didn't have anything. A lot of them were so poor. We tried to get them things. At our school - we had a boys school at Boyles and a girls school - it was difficult to fit them all in.
I remember Ration Books. Mrs Stevens kept all of my food coupons as I was in service there and provided the food. I just had my sweets coupons and clothing coupons. There was a lot of jiggery pokkery going on. They were in with some of these high up people and they didn't go short of anything! We used to see it going on.
Ourselves we made do. We knew we couldn't have it and we didn't have the money to buy things either. If you wanted a bigger garment it was more coupons you had to use. I didn't need much clothes. I was in service so I had my uniform. I had my dress and apron and cap - stiff white cuffs and starched cap. Mrs Gould did all of the house washing and Mrs Dean was the Parlour Maid - she was very smart. Lyn my sister was cook. I was allowed out once a week and then had to be in by 10pm.
Washing day used to go on all day. We used to have to make a bowl of starch and then there were little bags of blue. We used to buy little squares of blue for about two pence (2d). Wash days started in the morning and was still going on at night. At home we all had a stool each that Mr Hillier the wheelwright made and at the end of washing day all the stools were scrubbed and the brushes and handles.
When someone died we always kept a light burning in the bedroom all night with the body. I'm not sure why but it was something everybody did because we kept the dead bodies at home those days. I remember Mr Hillier made my Dad's coffin and carried it from Brister End down across Vecklands on his shoulder to our house. Dad had been ill from January until May. We didn't have any electric and lit a fire upstairs in the grate to keep him warm.
Meat - well I know the Stevens got it on the Blackmarket. I used to stay with the Loveless family in Yeovil sometimes. They had soldiers billeted with them and they used to bring them chickens, towels and blankets!
I remember working for a mr Zimner too. When he had to go to London occasionally I used to have to post big parcels for Mrs Zimner to her daughter in London. I don't know what was in them but I remember they used to cost 2 shillings and 6 pence to post.
My brother Norman was in the Home Guard. He used to be up all night and then have to go to work all day.
I was born in Mill Lane, Yetminster and lived there for 82 years. Dad's people came from Scotland but my Mum never saw them. Dad was in the navy and was posted to Portland. My Mum had relations in Portland and used to go and stay sometimes and that was how they met. There was never enough money for her to go to Scotland to meet them. Dad used to be away in the navy for three years at a time.
When my brother Norman worked for Willis's in Sherborne he used to ask me if I wanted a lift into Sherborne and I used to have a ride on the cart - sitting on the board across the cart. He used to drop me in Westbury , Sherborne anbd I used to go up to Carters the butchers. They used to sell a big bag of bacon bits for 6d. It all made a difference as we only had £2 in wages coming in and then you had to pay rent and everything.
In service I used to get £20 a year and I used to have to pay a shilling a week stamp."
Yetminster, Dorset
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Cis Bell
at 97 is amazingly active and with an excellent memory.
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1940 - 1940
"I took command of 56 Squardon at North Weald on the 24th August 1940. It was the height of the Battle of Britain and the Squadron had suffered continual casualties. I knew I had an important job to do and I was determined to lead by example. My first five days as Squadron Leader were intense to say the least. I flew 14 sorties - three of them in one day and with only eight operational pilots available. After a week of this the squadron was so depleted we had to rebuild taking in pilots from Poland and Czechoslovakia. On the 30th September we were scrambled to intercept a heavy formation of bombers over Portland. The 30 or so bombers had fighter support and were heading for an important aircraft factory in Yeovil. In all I was leading just six Hurricanes for the attack. As Squadron Leader I decided not to attack head-on but to come in from the side giving our six Hurricanes more of a chance to damage the bombers with long bursts of machine gun fire. Within seconds I was caught up in a frantic dog fight. I shot down one DO 215 but was hit by return fire. The cooling tank in my Hurricane exploded and the cockpit was filled with fumes. I could hardly see a thing but I managed to nurse the plane down safely. We later discovered the bombing raid had been a disaster. Because of the thick cloud the Germans had dropped their bombs by mistake on Sherborne causing huge loss of civilian life. It became known as Black Monday. By December 1940 I was leading 56 Squadron in daily patrols and sweeps over France. I was 27, married and with one son."
Sherborne, Dorset
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Squadron Leader Moreton Pinfold
contributed his memories of the Sherborne Bombing Raid of 30th September 1940 to the BBC web site in 2004 and we are indebted to them for allowing us to copy it to our project.
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1940 - 1940
"I was an auxiliary nurse during the Second World War in Sherborne. I had been training as a hairdresser but that was considered a luxury occupation. I was 17 in 1940 when I remember the bombing raid. I was at my parents home when the sirens sounded and later on in the dark I picked my way from Westbury to the Yeatman Hospital where I knew I would be needed. The planes were heading for Yeovil but they saw one British plane, and they thought there were more, so they jettisoned their bombs and we caught it. We lost people. Some dear little children were killed too."
Sherborne, Dorset
1939 - 1945
""When I was first married I lived in the New Forest. I remember the bombing raids on Southampton. We didn't have a shelter so we hid under the kitchen table. I remember the blast and shock waves when our road was hit."
Nancy also recalled her family life and the worries, separations and the wonderful Gurkhas.
In her own words:
"Most of us who are still surviving have experienced the sadness of the Second World War, especially the ones on active service and the families left behind. My husband and I were so happy and blessed with our dear little daughter that we never realised we would ever be parted. As a young man he was eventually called up to do duty and training in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. We so enjoyed having him home on leave. Sadly the dreadful day came when the Regiment had to do service Overseas. I did not have any idea where he had gone for a long time. He was in the 14th Army against the Japanese. What the troops suffered in the jungle was sheer hell. His Regiment was with the wonderful Gurkhas. It was some years before I saw my husband again and my daughter was between six and seven years old and had to get used to a Daddy she did not know. Thankfully he came back to us but I am sure it affected him but he never complained or talked of the horrors of that time. We were the same age but I have survived for some time so I am sure he suffered and it affected his life. Like hundreds of families we all had our trials and upsets and it was far from easy but thankfully he came through.""
Hampshire
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Nancy Pidgley
In 2008 Nancy was a keen supporter of the Gurkha cause and wrote to Joanna Lumley and was delighted to receive a personal reply which she treasures. She lent both her letter and the reply to Sherborne Museum to complement the touring Dance Nepal exhibition which the museum hosted for two months in 2009.
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1944 - 1944
"On 6th June 2004 came to light the tragedy in Lyme Bay and the secret was revealed. Wounded Americans were brought to Sherborne by train to be taken to the American Hospital at Haydon Park that had been put there in readiness for the casualties from D Day. At Sherborne Station they were not discharged on to the platform but taken through to the Goods Shed where ambulances were waiting for them. This was one of the earliest uses of the American Hospital.
Alec's father worked at Sherborne station for many years and few beyond the railway staff knew what was happening that day. Alec looked at eyewitness accounts including those of his father, Arthur, and has included these in his pamphlet that is available in the museum shop. Exercise Tiger was a training manoeuvre in Lyme Bay but was attacked by German E-Boats on April 28th 1944. Almost 750 American servicemen died in an incident that was kept under wraps until the 60th anniversary of the D Day landings."
Lyme Bay
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Alec Oxford
has written a celebration of the 150 years of the railway coming to Sherborne, the anniversary being 7th May 2010 and recounted a little know wartime railway story at the Museum Memories afternoon.
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1940 - 1945
"I was in a trench on the far side of Foster's Field during the Sherborne air raid with the rest of Fosters School pupils. We saw the bombs hitting Newland. My sister worked in the Southern Electricity shop and office. She was under her desk when a bomb landed on Newcombe's shop. She was fortunate not to be injured.
Alec then went to Canada to get his wings going in the Elizabeth I. First of all he saw floating ice and a couple of days later he was sweating in the sun, the journey being completed in five days. His flying training was in Ontario and when he came back he undertook a night vision course. In Canada there were lights but over here he had to learn to fly using his instruments as there was a blackout.
We had worked up as a squadron to go out to the Far East but after they dropped the two nuclear bombs there was no point so we went to South West Wales, to Dale which was chosen as the runway went off the cliff edge - with the purpose to train naval officers to use radar. I was there two years doing experimental flying - ground control approach - fog landing. I was flying Fireflies there, a spitfire with a hook known as a Seafire and Wildcat - an American aircraft. I moved about a bit and had some interesting times."
Sherborne, Dorset
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Alec Oxford
has written a celebration of the 150 years of the railway coming to Sherborne, the anniversary being 7th May 2010 and recounted a little know wartime railway story at the Museum Memories afternoon.
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1940 - 1941
"I was at the Lord Digby's School boarding house at Sherborne, Dorset. I was 13, almost 14 and was a weekly boarder. My home was at Bishops Caundle so I stayed at the boarding house at Stonegarth at the bottom of The Avenue in Sherborne during the week and went home at weekends. On the 30th September 1940 we had finished school at Sherborne House and had walked back to the boarding house. We had gone to change for our afternoon walk before tea but the sirens had gone and we had to go to the cellar where our shelter was. This was where the food was cooked and they had a winch that pulled the food up to the first floor. The bombs started falling to the West of the town on Lenthay Common about 4.15 - 4.20 - I know we would have gone for our walk at 4.30. Every day we had to walk from Sherborne House in crocodile along Newland to Stonegath and take off our uniform - quite a long walk and I remember we were getting changed when the sirens started. We heard the bombs coming down and getting closer and closer. One screamed down and we thought it was going to hit us but it hit our Headteacher Miss Billinger's house, Stonegarth Cottage, next door. My dear friend Phyllis and I were some of the first people to go outside after it was all over. Next door Miss Billinger's bath was hanging out of the wall. She had been having a bath. We found her across the road at Miss Dew's and Miss Whitworth's house, other teachers. Miss Billinger was wrapped in a blanket and was covered in dust and plaster. She only lived 18 months afterwards. I am sure it affected her life. As we walked out down our little short drive tiles fell off of Stonegath and one clipped my ankle. I had a scar - the only school child scarred in the bombing raid! Newland Infants School, a short distance away received a direct hit. Fortunately the children had gone home. So had the Gartell's cottage next to it. The Gartells had once had a china shop where the museum is now at Abbey Gate House. At Newland deliveries from the station were being made by carters with shire horses. The carter wasn't hurt but the horse was killed by shrapnel.
When I left school I was going to work at Phillips and Andover but their premises had received an almost direct hit in the bombing raid and was badly damaged at the corner of Half Moon Street. I had always done Red Cross work so I was given the choice of either working at the Silk Mills in Sherborne making parchutes or the munitions factory at the end of Bradford Road - no one knew exactly what was going on there. With the Red Cross training I had done they sent me to Guys Marsh Hospital, near Shaftesbury. I was there six months, then the Barracks at Dorchester and lastly at Bovington."
Sherborne, Dorset
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Nora Oxford
nee Northover
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1939 - 1945
"I was born in Sherborne but my father took the farm at Henstridge that is now the aerodrome. I went to school in Henstridge. I was a cow boy. I had to milk by hand ten cows before school and ten cows afterwards. During the war we had to get cards to exempt us from school. It was child labour really. I was 9 - 10 years old. I became a full time tractor driver at about 11 or 12. We were allocated with a plough and so many acres to plough up. I remember Mr Louch of Henstridge came round and told us how much land had to be ploughed. I remember the farmer over the road had an incendiary bomb land in his hay rick and was killed when he went to move it.
Then the Fleet Air Arm came and my father was given just six weeks notice to move out. Our farm was to become an aerodrome. While we were at Henstridge I remember the evacuees came from London and Southampton. A lorry went over the parapet of the bridge one day and landed on a troop train.
A cattle truck came off the railway track one night. We went out with torches to help and wondered if we would be bombed. Later on I remember two planes got stuck in the runways - they had not been made thick enough!
My father managed to find another farm to go to at Bruton so I wasn't at Henstridge when Sherborne was bombed. I heard about the raid. At Henstridge we often had bombers going over us on their way to Bristol. I remember a pinnacle at King Alfred's Tower was knocked off by a German plane. It lay on the ground for years. People below were killed and all at one farm.
At Childs Farm we had 10 - 12 in the house. - a cousin from Bristol, Grandparents and a lodger.
My brother was in the Home Guard. Father used to go up the church tower fire watching. At Henstridge we had a searchlight battery in Lancher Lane.
I was near Bruton when peace was declared. Times were hard during the war. I remember we had coloured fuel and had to have ration coupons for fuel for stationary engines, tractors and all equipment."
Sherborne, Dorset and Bruton, Somerset
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Jim Adams
was born in Sherborne, Dorset but spent the early war years at Henstridge, Somerset on the family farm.
Jim is now a resident of St Johns Almshouse close to Sherborne Abbey.
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1940 - 1940
THE BOMBING OF SHERBORNE 30th SEPTEMBER 1940 - A personal and eye witness account by Frank G. J. Childe D.C. 58
"Having been born on February 4th 1913, I applied and was accepted as a Constable of the Dorset Constabulary. At that time it was considered an honour to be accepted.
Having been stationed in various areas as a single policeman I was then stationed at Sherborne as a married policeman in 1938. It was necessary at that time to serve five years as a single man prior to being granted permission to be married and granted a married station.
War against Germany was declared in 1939. As of this time, I was enjoying the privilege of occupying one of a pair of Police houses at Lenthay, Sherborne. Soon after taking over this tenancy, the Local Authority decided to demolish the old workhouse in Horsecastles. As a result, one hundred and sixty tons of building stone was deposited, in two vast piles, in a field to the rear of the two police houses in Lenthay.
The war progressed with successive raids by the Germans, mainly on Midland targets. This meant them flying their squadrons of bombers over the Sherborne area with the occasional indiscriminate unloading of bombs in the district. Toward the latter half of 1940 these bombing raids increased in both force and frequency.
On the 30th September 1940 the day was dry with a complete unbroken canopy of cloud. In these circumstances all were on the 'alert' for a possible raid. It is to be understood that, in these times, a policeman was 'on duty' 24 hours per day and was expected to be 'on duty' for each raid alert. It was on this day, at approximately 16.00 hours that the 'alert' sounded. I was 'off duty' so my post was at the Lenthay Post Office 'a front room affair' about three doors away. I met Ted Lemon, the postman, who was there collecting the mail. He lived at Nether Compton, about three miles away. As we stood outside the Post Office thinking 'Oh, just another raid' we were soon to be abused of this idea when we became aware of the unusually menacing roar of an extraordinary number of aircraft engines with the air vibrating from the concentrated noise. As I looked westward into the sky I saw what appeared to be a double handful of peas, thrown towards the earth and breaking through the clouds. Ted Lemon and I dashed into the Post Office and threw ourselves to the floor. The time was now 16.40. At this point all hell broke loose and, for myself, it felt as though the whole world was a bouncing ball and that nothing would survive such an onslaught. Then, suddenly, dead silence, so uncanny after the firece onslaught to the hearing.
Ted and I got up from the ground, surprised we were still alive. He took me by the hand and said 'thankyou for saving my life', following which he was my friend for life. It was dark as a moonless night. First, I ran the few yards to my home, my wife being in the shelter I had constructed from green pine wood, for such an occasion. Seeing she had survived I then dashed off to my duties, picking my way back to my post over tangled telephone and electricity cables. Work then commenced throughout the area with regard to rescue and on services; water, electricity and telephones having been completely demolished. It was a case of 'make do and mend'.
I found myself in the Lenthay Council House estate at a house which had sustained a direct hit.The complete roof had been lifted off by the blast and come down again on to the demolished house. Neighbours informed us that it had contained a mother and three children. We had no tools or other equipment but, nonetheless, we started to make a way through the roof and the rubble. The mother was located by her fingers showing beneath the door of the cupboard under the stairs. Whilst we were trying to work our way through the debris, we were encouraged by the arrival of a small ARP squad from Yeovil, complete with suitable tools and also a doctor, who was able to crawl through the tunnel we had made, and give the trapped woman an injection.
At this point, I must give credit to the Licensee of the 'Coach and Horses Inn', Horsecastles, for his gallant gesture on this day. In spite of the Law and Regulations and having in mind that all public services were out of action, he kept his pub open until midnight serving free refreshments to all those persons engaged in the rescue operations.
The path of the enemy planes had been eastwards from the direction of Yeovil, across Sherborne and towards Templecombe, leaving a path of death and destruction. It was the following day we were informed of the toll. 16 killed, 32 injured and 393 bombs dropped in two and a half minutes.
A friend of mine, Harry Ireland, had a saddlery business in Half Moon Street, next door to Phillips' drapery business. His premises were found demolished by a direct hit and poor Harry was later found, still in his chair, beneath the debris in the cellar.
Percy Coaker, a well known character, who ran a furniture store in Cheap Street, opposite the Methodist Church, suffered extensive damage to his premises. On the following day, however, a notice appeared on his premises as follows: 'we have been bombed, buggered and bewildered but, business is as usual', a typical indication of the spirit of that time.
It was on this same day that I found that the two piles of building stone, deposited in the field behind the two police houses, had each received a direct hit by bombs, the large blocks of stone causing considerable damage to nearby dwellings.
Mr Harold Pitman, a taxi owner from Cheap Street, was driving his car from Chetnole to Sherborne on the day of the raid when he saw a parachute descending. This was the gallant British pilot of a fighter plane, who attached the German bombers, getting himself shot down in the process.
In spite of the fact that practically all the roads in the centre of Sherborne were blocked with debris and all services disrupted, the local authorities and services did a wonderful job in getting everything going again in the shortest possible time.'"
Sherborne, Dorset
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Frank Childe
was a policeman and key eye witness to the Sherborne bombing raid, Dorset.
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1939 - 1945
"I was a 17 year old pupil at Sherborne School in September 1940. On the afternoon of the bombing raid I was seated at my desk in one of the ground floor classrooms on the North side of the Courts, attending (coincidentally!) a German class given by Henry Howard-Baker, when there was a sudden distant rumble which grew rapidly louder. "I think we had better get under our desks" said he, and we did so, as the explosions erupted deafeningly and the windows fell in amid a shower of stones and grit.
The Headmaster, Alexander Ross-Wallace, was on the scene at once and we were directed to return to our boarding houses - in my case Harper House in Hound Street. There were several large craters in the Courts, and as we walked back across Cheap Street we could see considerable damage in the area of Newcombes and Coombs bakery and cafe. Apart from broken windows there was miraculously little damage to Harper House and the directive to get on with our education was followed (by candlelight). During the following days our spare time was devoted to helping local householders to clear up damage, but I don't think any of us realised quite what a mess the raid had made of the town until some days later.
The most remarkable thing was that although over three hundred bombs were dropped and there were many casualties and considerable damage in the town, both the Abbey and the School were virtually untouched. As my Housemaster was always getting stick for showing lights after blackout in one or other of the many windows in the rambling buildings, I think it was lucky that the raid was in daylight or he might have been lynched!"
Sherborne, Dorset
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Lt. Col. David Russell
of Sherborne recalled the Sherborne bombing raid.
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1939 - 1945
"Thatching was a reserved occupation but I became a member of the Home Guard. In summer it was difficult to keep going as there were lots of ricks to thatch - first the hay ricks and then the corn ricks and we were often out all night on watch with the Home Guard. It was made more difficult in the war because farmers were not allowed to build more than two ricks within 20 yards of each other because of the fire risk so instead of lots of ricks being made in rick bartons they were made in all corners of the fields and we had to take everything out to them - this used up our petrol ration too. Our spars used to come from all sorts of small copses and when a lot of land was ploughed up for the war effort so were the tracks and we couldn't get to some copses to cut the hazel. We used a lot of willow spars instead down by the river."
Thornford, Dorset
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Simon Garrett
recalled in his memoirs
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1944 - 1944
"We were living in Tarrant Keynston and we would often walk to Badbury Rings. We stopped to talk to some children who were on a Sunday School outing from Wimborne. The boys were more interested than I was in what was happening at Tarrant Rushton airfield. You had a good view from where we were. We were used to lots of activity, soldiers and army lorries and things but on that day there were more planes than usual. My Dad said a lot of them were gliders. They spilled over into the fields around the airfield there were so many of them. My Dad spoke to the Sunday School teachers. They thought it must mean something special was going to happen. We used to get a lot of Americans too. I saw my first black soldiers. They were very friendly with big smiles and very white teeth and they seemed much bigger than the others. They used to say that from Badbury Rings you could see Southampton burning after some of the worst bombing raids. We had a lot of evacuees from Southampton in the area.
[In June 1944 on the night of the 5th/6th 34 Halifax tugplanes took off from this airfield towing 30 Horsa gliders and the other four pulling even larger Hamilcars that had a massive wingspan of about 110 ft. HUndreds of soldiers and their equipment, guns, tanks and jeeps were heading for Normandy for D Day. Three months later a similar exercise brought the planes on a route west of Sherborne where villagers saw them flying overhead]."
Dorset
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Mabel Scott
remembered after reading an article by Roger Gutteridge in the Blackmore Vale Magazine that she too had witnessed the same scenes in 1944 in Dorset.
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1939 - 1945
"The story of Annie Baker of Bristol, who married Bertram Brown an employee of the Bristol Aeroplane Company, has been passed to the Curator for inclusion in 'Make do and Mend'. Mrs Brown became well known across Bristol for her kindness to children who had suffered loss during the war or been bombed out of their homes. She made at least 3000 rag dolls in different styles and had each blessed by a Rector before delivering them. She continued to make dolls after the war and was awarded the OBE for her charity work. All across the country similar schemes, but usually on a much smaller scale, took place whether making knitted blankets for those bombed in the East End or items for Red Cross sale."
Bristol
1939 - 1945
"My Dad came home one night saying there was something going on at Monkton Farleigh quarry. We lived just outside of Bradford on Avon and we heard the old stone quarry had become a huge underground ammunition store. It was busy on the lead up to D Day. Some time later about 1942 time I think, Bath was bombed badly. We could see the flames. They said 500 people had been killed on two nights of bombing and hundreds of houses had to be demolished.
Lots more people have recalled special stores and ammunition caches in farm buildings, isolated barns and special factories across the West Country."
Bradford on Avon, Somerset
Do you remember having to make do and mend? Please submit your experiences.