When the Birmingham evacuees came to Swanwick

I was born in Ripley but grew up on Pentrich Road, Swanwick until 1953. My parents bought the newspaper each week. I joined Swanwick Junior Girls’ and Infants’ School in 1940 aged 5 years. Boys were in the Infants’ class until they were 7/8 when they moved to the Junior Boys’ School at the top of Pentrich Road not far from our house. The Headteacher of my school was Mrs Morgan while the assistants were Mrs Walker – the wife of the Boys’ school headmaster – who taught the tinies, and Mrs Atkinson who taught the older girls. I remember how the war affected the area – the damaged cross on St. Andrew’s Church (as the German planes jettisoned bombs in order to make their escape quicker), the church’s stained – glass windows being replaced by plain glass ones until after the war, and the building of an air raid shelter at the end of the Grammar School drive so that the young children from our school opposite could shelter there during raids. My mother decided that I should run home when the siren sounded but I can recall not having time to go, so sitting under the school tables until the All Clear sound rang out. I can recall ‘bombers’ in the sky as I ran, searchlights across the village, sleeping on a bed – chair under the stairs and asking if the sweep had been when the living room chimney deposited its soot all over the floor when a bomb was dropped on New Street, a few yards away. A young mum gave birth on New Street as the bomb dropped – the shock of it? Next morning a man came to check our window frames and for any house damage. Evacuees arrived in school from Birmingham, together with their teacher, Miss Washington. Maybe there was a male teacher and boys who joined the Boys’ School too. The Smith family opposite our house took in a girl named Margaret Wint and I remember a Jean Herring – a red head. There were many more in our small class / form and some made a life for themselves in the area after the war. Perhaps they had no family to return to in Birmingham. Barrage balloons by the Rolls Royce factory in Derby, no street lights, blackout curtains on frames at the windows, ration books and my father, in a reserved occupation for Butterley Company (Ironworks) near Ripley, taking munitions by lorry all over the UK, ‘going through traffic lights on red’ as they were so taped over as to be invisible in the blackout. He received a summons! I have many memories of those war years.