Evacuated to Ironville

I was born in 1931 in Norton Street, Winson Green so when WW2 broke out in 1939 I was 8 years old and we lived in Hartley Road, Kingstanding. In common with two and a half million other families, we had an Anderson shelter at the bottom of our garden in anticipation of the expected Luftwaffe air raids. At first, when the sirens sounded my parents woke me and took me down the garden to sit in the shelter until the “all clear” sounded. As the raids became more frequent, practically every night, we children went straight into the shelter, supposedly to sleep while our parents stayed in the house unless and until the bombing got nearer. We children would then come up to the entrance of our shelters and watch the planes and the gunfire, listening to all the noises. We soon learned to recognise the different engine sounds of bombers and fighters, British and German, and we would hear the shrapnel from the anti-aircraft guns falling like rain on the house roofs. It was an exciting time for us – we didn’t appreciate the gravity of all that was going on. As most people are aware, Birmingham gets its water supply from reservoirs in the Elan Valley in Central Wales. It travels along a pipeline from reservoir to city and one night, a stray bomb hit a section of the pipe, causing the water to become contaminated and unfit for drinking unless it was first boiled. This became a real concern as children would still get water straight from the taps so it was decided that there should be evacuation of school children to a safer water area. I attended Peckham Road Junior School and a group of us, supervised by two teachers, Miss Aslin and (I think) Miss Stimson and Miss Aslin’s mother were directed to go to Alfreton in Derbyshire. We were taken by bus to Castle Bromwich railway station, then by train to Alfreton and then by a further bus to a small industrial village called Ironville. We travelled very light – just the clothes we wore, our gas masks, a change of underwear and a luggage label showing our names, ages and school. We were assembled in the school hall and people began coming in, looking at us and choosing which of us they wanted to foster. I was chosen by a couple, several years older than my own parents, Mr and Mrs Howes. They had no children but had a permanent paying guest, a Church Army sister named Gertrude Emily Thornton. Their house was a tiny cottage that had once been part of a pottery and was right alongside the Erewash canal, then a busy, working canal. I was offered supper, something we never had at home so I settled for a hot drink and was taken to my bedroom, quite small but adequate and comfortable. I had a little homesickness weep – I had never been parted from my parents before – and then went to sleep, tired out after a very long, eventful day. The following day I was given some money and told to go and find Annie Bailey’s shop to see if she had any “tuffies”, which I interpreted as toffees. I found out that all sweets were called tuffies so that was the first dialect word I learned; however I soon learned others like ’appen, ayup and meduck to name but three! My parents were not church-goers so going to morning service with Mrs Howes was another new experience for me. I slotted into church attendance quite easily and soon became a member of the choir and used to attend at least twice and sometimes three times each week. Sister Thornton had a ministry at a small, corrugated iron sheeted chapel in a neighbouring hamlet near the village of Selston. This was reached via a walk along the canal tow path and then across several fields. She did the whole service herself – played the harmonium for the hymns, read the lesson, preached the sermon, led the prayers and generally ministered to a small congregation. I think her favourite hymn was “I will make you fishers of men” because every time I visited the chapel it was sung. She was a bit of a tartar – we used to have regular battles on Sunday evenings when the radio programme “The Happydrome” was broadcast. She considered it unsuitable listening for the Sabbath and I absolutely loved it. Fortunately I usually had the verbal support of Uncle Charlie and Aunty Sue (as I now called Mr and Mrs Howes) but she was also very kind to me. She was an enthusiastic market shopper and every Saturday she would take me to one of the many nearby markets, Ilkeston, Ripley, Heanor, Belper, Long Eaton, Alfreton and many others. We evacuees were taught alongside the local children in their classrooms – some lessons led by our teachers and some by theirs. The headmaster was Mr. Hardwick and two girls of our party were billeted with him and his wife. I only learned recently that the Hardwicks were newlyweds at the time and were often disturbed by the two girls as they tried to have a kiss and a cuddle. Uncle Charlie had many relatives in the village. His mother and father were still living but mostly bed ridden. His dad was quite a character. He used to have a large china mug filled with beer. He would spoon into it several spoonfuls of sugar and then stir it with a red hot poker. He would encourage me to have a drink of it, which, of course, I did. Charlie had a sister, Daisy, who had several daughters, one of whom, Lily, lived to almost 100 years old and died in December 2010. Ironville was a product of the Industrial Revolution. It was built by the Butterley Company to house workers in their iron foundries and their families. Of course, there were no health and safety issues in those days and the foundry was a ready made playground for us children. We loved to go and stand beside the men operating the machinery – the puddlers skimming the impurities off the surface of the vats of white hot molten iron, pouring it into the “pigs” (hence – pig iron) dodging the white and red hot sparks flying everywhere. Then there were the rolling mills reducing the thickness and increasing the length of the iron rods with every pass. It was a child’s paradise. I’ve already mentioned the canal. It ran in three sides of a square around the village. There were several lock gates and we children loved to operate them for the boat people and they would let us jump onto the boats, cruise around the village and get off again at the top end which was only about 300 yards from where we started. They were tough people living a tough life. Several families lost a child by drowning during the time we were there. Our parents endeavoured to visit us once a month although in the winter months this was not always possible. Someone used to organise a coach and they would arrive at around lunch time and would have to start back about two or three hours later. Bear in mind that this was a time of strict food rationing and so our mothers used to save up all the little luxuries they could to bring to us when they visited. Some children (or possibly parents) couldn’t adapt to being apart and went home earlier than the rest of us. While living at Ironville we reached the age when we sat the Grammar Schools Entrance Examination, the 11+. Lines of communication were not very sophisticated in those days – no-one had phones and news had to be sent by letter. Several of my classmates had heard from their parents that they had passed (or not). The aforementioned headmaster, Mr Hardwick, seemed to delight in castigating me for not having studied hard enough – I obviously had failed. Imagine my surprise and delight when my next letter from home said how pleased my parents were that I had passed. The decision then had to be made as to whether we enrolled for a local school or returned to Birmingham. One of the available local schools was Swanwick High School, a very good school. The only problem was that if our parents agreed to us entering that school, they had to agree to us staying there for the whole of our educational careers. My parents decided I should return home and attend Central Grammar School, Birmingham. I was very sad at the thought of having to leave my second family in Ironville. I have nothing but happy, loving thoughts of the three years I spent there and my time there has given me a real love of Derbyshire – I return there as frequently as I can.