Official evacuees from Erith in Kent, arrived in Worlington in June 1940. They would have been transported by train, wearing tags giving their name, address and school, and on arrival at the station, would then have been brought by bus to the school to be collected by local residents, to live with them until it was safe for them to return home. A local Billeting Officer would have arranged places with anyone who had space in their house, an arrangement that didn’t please everyone. Some children were lucky, with good placements and happy lives, while others were put into unsuitable billets, with allegations that they were poorly fed and not looked after well.
For children who had lived in cities all their lives, their new environment could be very confusing and it is not surprising that some of their parents were concerned and sometimes critical of the places where their children were staying. Sadly, we only know of these few negative experiences, rather than the many happy ones that most of the Worlington evacuees would have had.
On 12th June 1941, the log book records the complaint of parents of two children from Bristol:
“These parents, in common with most other parents of official evacuees, complain that their children are not receiving proper meals, being kept short of eggs, milk and vegetables, in particular, and on school days receiving no hot, cooked meal at all. The parents were advised to take their observations and complaints to the local Billeting Officer.”
At the same time, the local Billeting Officer also advised notifying the mother of an evacuee child, Patricia F, aged 6, after she took food from other children, saying she was hungry. This was duly reported to the mother, who wrote back to the headmistress on 1st July 1941, to say that her children would be taken home if there was any further trouble. The next day, the father wrote to say he was removing his children the following weekend. It is recorded
“Since the County Authority have asked that the drift back to London shall be firmly discouraged (Circular 10, par.3) a letter has been sent asking the parents to reconsider their decision, and to get in touch with the District Evacuation Office with a view to getting two of the children to a more suitable billet”.
The children did, in fact, return to Erith, but three weeks later were re-evacuated to the village, after new billets had been found for them.
In 2005, an ex-evacuee, Beryl Williams, told her story of being evacuated to East Worlington. She wrote “Perhaps we were ill-nourished, we caught impetigo, my mother was informed that we were not being cared for”.
The log book throws further light on this story. She and her sister were removed from their billet and taken back to Erith by their mother on 28th July 1941.
“A message has been received to say that the mother is most dissatisfied with the attention the children have received in their billet (especially the younger one, Beryl, who has been covered in sores since early in June). The child had frequently had to be bandaged during school time, because the sores were left exposed, or covered with unsuitable rags and the Health Visitor was asked to call at the billet, which she did. A letter stating what action had been taken by the school authorities was sent to the mother who had made threats of writing to the National Press, stating that the children have been neglected and ill-cared for”.
A representative from the Education Office, South Molton, came to the school at the beginning of September, to follow-up the story and make exhaustive enquiries after which, we are told, the representative “was satisfied that the School Authorities had acted rightly, and cared for the children as much as possible.
Reading Beryl’s account, it does seem that her time in Worlington was a happy one, with positive memories that had stayed with her. See her account below from BBC’s People’s Wars, Contributed by LlandoveryU3A 28.9.2005
I was six years old. With my sister eighteen months older, we were destined to live temporarily in the Devonshire countryside. Our suburban home was in Bexleyheath with orchards fringing the locality. Unfortunately we lived close to an army camp with heavy gun emplacements and in the flight path of enemy bombers making for the Thames docks and shipping, not to mention the Woolwich arsenal and Canning Town industries. It was to be our second evacuation. The first to Ditton in Kent was aborted as it too was bombed.
After an interminable journey by train my sister and I were taken with many other children wearing labels to a tiny remote village, East Worlington. There in the two roomed school we awaited selection. No one was prepared to take two young sisters so we were left discarded like abandoned livestock. Late evening, the billeting officer took us to Grove House a small farm run by Mr and Mrs Burrows and their daughter Mary. A great cavernous chimney opening, revealed a sad fire of faggots of dried sticks over which hung from chains, black cauldrons. This was my first impression of our new home.
Before the hearth stood an enormous wooden settle, more like a panelled screen, which still allowed the draughts to eddy round the huge, cold flagstoned kitchen. We soon discovered we would have to run the gauntlet of a particularly nasty cockerel in order to reach the dry privy; learning to always carry a stick to beat off his advances.
We walked three miles to school in all kinds of weather, winters were cold; my poor sister suffered badly from chilblains; but a pane of glass was missing from our bedroom window all the time we were there. The Head Mistress would make us a mug of hot strong cocoa to accompany our lunch of a thick slice of bread. I was often left in a corner of the school room to read alone whilst the rest of the class struggled with phonetics. I hardly remember tackling arithmetic. On one occasion we were given a lift to school in a pony and trap which carried churns of milk.
One job assigned to us, was to climb the steep hill to a locked building which housed the well. We would pump the water into an earthenware pitcher and carry it back to the house quite a heavy job for little girls. Later on Mrs. Campbell, her son Colin and daughter were assigned one of the front rooms. Her husband was in the army and her oldest child left in a school for the blind in Guernsey. He later became organist in one of the cathedrals in the south. Colin provided us with many diversions including teaching us games such as Truth or Dare, one of the daring requirements being to climb over a gate and confront a gaggle of geese. Mr Burrows, once was very angry as we played amongst his stooks of freshly gathered hay. On Sundays he wore his shiny brown leather gaiters and highly polished brown boots to attend
the parish church, with the rest of us meekly following. We passed a chapel but we were given the impression that it was a very inferior place of worship. During Lent we were not allowed to play our favourite game of whist.
They had two cows Molly and Daisy and a beautiful large horse and numerous fowl. It must have been a hand to mouth livelihood but they owned some machinery, a huge wagon and a very handsome gig which were kept in the courtyard barn. They owned some 30 acres including a very pretty copse, an orchard and a well worked garden. Somehow they had raised a family of three girls and a boy, Cyril, who would return occasionally when he would show off his climbing ability. Mary would make butter turning her arm endlessly in the bowl of milk.
Perhaps we were ill nourished, we caught impetigo, my mother was informed we were not being cared for, but my memories of Devon are still of a carefree playing time. We returned to Bexleyheath facing nightly sojourns in the Anderson Shelter, school held in neighbours’ houses, being left alone in the evenings whilst my mother worked as an air raid warden and my father in the docks. He cycled all the way to North Woolwich using the pedestrian tunnel under the Thames.
Ack-Ack guns fired outside our house and search lights criss-crossed the sky. Barrage balloons, restriction on travel, bombed out streets and domestic privations were the forerunners of the scourge of the doodle bug and V2 which caused havoc in our fairly small community. My mother’s best friend was killed in one of these raids causing a lot of damage to our convent school and our own ceilings fell down.
Today we would assess this childhood as deprived, but it gave me an enduring fondness for wildlife and the wonderful countryside of Britain, from this experience of being an evacuee in World War 2. Grove House is now a desirable listed gentrified building. At Christmas time I hear from Mary and once visited her in her bungalow in Witheridge.