We actually found the house we are in now, Tombrec, Briar Close 46 years ago.  It needed an awful lot of work doing to it – the garden was a jungle.  I moved in November 1976.  I remember Dave arriving – he was actually still, at that point, working in Orpington.  He would come home for weekends.  The first time he came in with his suitcase and a bag of tools – he put them both down – there was a wall at the front of our house – he got a hammer and a bolster out and he started smashing the plaster off!  He wanted to find out how the house was constructed! We had deliberately bought a house to do it up.  The first two or three years we literally camped out in the house.  The first day Dave bought me a cooker and fridge and someone gave us a ghastly MFI green sofa thing.  We had two single beds delivered as we didn’t think we’d get a double bed up the stairs as it was so narrow.  My dining room table was a camping table and chairs, and a sink on four legs. Gradually we cleared the garden and Dave started work on the house.  

The day I came to look at Tombrec there was one of those old, wooden garages that looked like it would fall over (rare in Fairlight), a little parking space in front of it, with a funny little wire and wood fence and a path that went up round the back of the house and back down again (worn by people viewing the house). We moved in in November 1976 and we have lived here ever since.  Bit by bit the house was done up, we have extended it and the garden was landscaped by Dave.  It was very different when we first came here.

When we first came here the roads were unmade.  I had an MG Midget car and the first day I came to see the house I parked it in a lay-by up the road and walked down as I didn’t think I would get it down here.  The roads were awful, the house wasn’t fenced and if you walked down towards Stream Lane, all those field were open, no fences at all over there.  There wasn’t much Wood.  It wasn’t that long after we moved here, probably a year or so, that we got our first dog so I would walk him all over there, and planted in that first field was barley.   We used to get all sorts of different wildlife then.  We would see red-legged partridges in that field.  One day we had two snipe in the garden here.  We would get fieldfares in the holly tree, we would always hear a cuckoo.  Further up, not sure if this was all the time, the top fields were planted with potatoes which were planted by Griffens Farm shop. 

The other thing I remember quite clearly my mum and dad (who were retired by then), they would come and stay.  My dad and I went for a walk down to the Smugglers. We walked across the cliffs along the path which was in a very different position to what is there now; in fact you’d be walking in mid-air as the original one went a long time ago.  To the right of the existing path further up beyond John’s Seat (which wasn’t called John’s Seat in those days), there was National Trust land.  To the right there was a guy called Jimmy Cook and he was a Rep. for the National Trust and what he used to do was cut tunnels into the Blackthorn up there, so in Spring you could walk through these wonderful tunnels with all the blossom out.  Dad and I followed these tunnels and all of a sudden we came out of these tunnels and our dog was walking along the edge of a precipice which was about 18 inches wide! So dad and I crawled on our hands and knees and this joined up with the path down to Pett Level.  There was an existing path, but we were being a bit adventurous!   There is a bit of a pond down there as well, but not sure it has water in it now.  I think he just did it for a bit of fun. 

It was common in those days to walk over to Pett Level to the Smugglers for lunch, and of course there were four or five cottages (The Haddocks) and we hadn’t lived here very long when the first one (which belonged to a writer) he had been in America – he came home and looked out of his lounge window and was looking straight down onto the beach! This was when they started to demolish them one by one.  None are left now except what was the garage and outbuildings.  For a long time, the last one was there which was open on the path. They had a retriever dog and he would wait for anyone walking along to Pett Level, and the dog would go with them! What amazes me is how much the trees and bushes have grown up from being so very open land.  The other thing that has gone is all the hedges. In the middle of the two big fields there was a hedge right along there but, of course, as soon as they put sheep in there their little hooves damage all the roots and they die.  There were far more bushes on the edge of the first field.

Erosion of the Cliffs: This was quite shocking to us, as we did not have any idea at the time.  I think it was the Daily Mail published a map which had 50 houses shown to be at risk and ours was one of them!  Although we are away from Lower Waites Lane, if this lane had gone, we would have lost our access.  It was really quite frightening.  I would walk the dogs often, up Lower Waites Lane, up Cliff Way, right down the full length of Sea Road and round.  Of course, it was still open then.  At the end of the Alleyway was a piece of land and years ago  Colin Gotts told us there were fields all across there with horses in, and a small Cafe at the top of the cliffs.  Someone I had worked with had bought a piece of land at the end of the Alleyway and she had a caravan on it, and then of course it started to erode. 

The cliff falls were incredible at times.  Lyn Cooke’s dad, Fred Cooke – he heard one of the cliff falls and he threw himself under the table simply because it reminded him of War-time.  At one time they lost 100 feet all at once! George Morris, not sure if he was Parish Council or something, and a few others, set up what has now become the Fairlight Preservation Society and started to raise money and get the ball rolling. We had an afternoon tea in Lyn Cooke’s dad’s back garden to raise money and there were lots of other similar fundraising events. I remember having a horrible dream – I was walking down the Alleyway and I could see the cliff falling.  I had recently done a jigsaw puzzle and you know when you slide a jigsaw back into the box when its finished – well the cliffs were falling over like a jigsaw puzzle!! I’ve never forgotten it, I was terrified.  I thought we would lose our house and everything as I doubted there would be any compensation.  It was fraught and we had not been here that long. 

Now of course we have the berms which was an amazing thing to see.  It was around about the time of Live Aid in the 1980s.  They would work with the tides, bring granite from Norway.  Beautiful rocks – pink and black.  They were brought in on a flatbed and while it was high tide they would just drop the rocks, and as soon as the tide went out, all these massive machines would start moving it. It was like watching Tonka Toys.  There were floodlights up on the cliffs and down on the beach so you could go and watch it.  I remember my friends coming for dinner and we were watching Live Aid and we walked up and watched it on a summer evening and it was like watching a Bond movie! The size and the noise!  The machines picked up the massive rocks and dumped them. Arthur Green of course had started to try to do something to protect the cliffs – putting posts in and tyres over the posts and every time there was a high tide, the tyres were blown away.  I must say the berms have been very successful and amazing how it has filled in and if it gets to 45 degrees which it may be by now, it is a really good defence.  There are obviously still small falls. There has been a massive difference since the berms have been here.  They took advice to plant trees and bushes on the edge as well so as you go up to John’s Seat – all that growth was put there as a further defence.  As you go up Cliff Way, that was why the steps and rope was put in so the men who were working on the sea defence could get up and down to work.

My name is Carol Elizabeth Ardley and my date of birth is 14/8/1947.

I have always liked amateur dramatics. As a child I was star struck. When I came down here there was an am-dram group going so I thought I’d go along. So I did and ended up with the lead role. It was a play called ‘Here we come gathering’ and it was all the oldy people. The old stalwarts such as Burt and Hilda May Moore, Percy Hodgson and the play was produced by Jenny Hatfield. There was Aubrey Sinden and Ann Graham who was one of the real original players. She was in the play as well. From there, I enjoyed myself so went into another play and carried on. Then I went on to the Committee about 1984 /85 and got really involved doing organising and publicity. I directed and produced plays as well. We put on a play, probably only the 3^rd or 4^th play we did called ‘Pardon me Prime Minister’ and on the Friday night, the director came in a little harassed because the playwright (Edward Taylor) was in the audience with his wife so it all went into panic mode – better get this right tonight then! He had a holiday place in Bexhill and he’d seen it advertised so he and his wife came over. They watched the play and then introduced themselves afterwards and we became good friends with them. They are actually honorary life members. We did another of his plays called ‘Rise in the Market’ which I was in and that was also a very good play .He was a very nice chap. He was a BBC producer / director /playwright. He did mainly comedy and actually produced the ‘Men from the Ministry’ which a lot of people won’t remember but was a very popular programme. It was the forerunner of  ‘Yes Minister’. He also produced things like ‘Just a Minute’ and ‘I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue’.

And then we had various changes on the Committee because people died or moved away and I had the pleasure of knowing Di Davidson who was a funny, funny lady. She was so talented and Linda Lee. A lot of people will remember them. They directed and acted. The Players at one time were on quite hard times – we didn’t have a lot of money in the bank so we decided we would have fund raising events. Mainly Keith and Marian Pollard got the fund raising events going but our best one was Afternoon Tea with Donald Sinden who was related distantly to Aubrey Sinden who was our President. We organised this with Sir Donald – it was his 88^th birthday so we got a birthday cake for him and we got one of those icing sugar pictures on it. So he arrived but sadly Keith Pollard had been poorly and was in hospital and missed the afternoon and  I was in charge of meeting and greeting. We expected a 45 minute talk and then a couple of questions afterwards but he spoke for an hour and a half. He was fascinating and then he asked ‘What time shall we have tea?’ so we told him that it could be when he was ready. So he came with us and had tea and we brought out the birthday cake and everything and had questions and answers. He had all these photos spread out on the chairs and the questions and answers lasted another hour and a half! He was with us for about 4 hours and he waived his fee because he knew that we were on our uppers. So we got him a gift. So Keith Pollard, Aubrey Sinden and myself went over to his house expecting him to say thank you very much but we were there for 4 hours. He was such a lovely chap. He lived in Tenterden, just before you get to the garden centre.

We did several fund raising evenings when we either had a supper or a talk or a demonstration of something or other. So we got into the position then that we could up our game because the old days of am-dram where you had to make do and mend everything had gone and you can’t get away with that now. You had to pull your socks up! So we got all that things we needed to do our productions which also meant for certain productions, hiring vast quantities of costumes which puts a strain. You’ve got to have enough money in the bank to cover all this in case the production folds. So there have been many people who have passed through the doors.

We spent a fortune on the lights and we upgraded the bar and kept the price of the tickets down but there was always a real local following by people for the Players. We have done all sorts of things – dramas, sad things, funny things, slightly off the wall things. My last play was ‘Cat and Canary’ which was 6 /7 years ago but I left the Players two AGMs ago and passed it on to the new people. My father was one of the set builders for a while before he retired and Esther Devries and her husband and Joy Wren was one of the real stalwarts. She passed away last week. Sue Trueman who lived in the Garage.

I joined Fairlight Tennis Club in the spring of 1994 and there was a grass court then, so everyone had to take turns mowing it and doing the white lines which was bit of a bore. The court was where it is now. The idea was that it would eventually be two courts and it was at a pepper corn rent – something like £5 a year. We did lots of fund raising to build our own hard court. We did several slightly naughty reviews – two day things. The Friday was sitting as an audience but on the Saturday it was dinner and a review. It was all sketches, songs and recitals which went down very well. I visited the first one which was in musical dress. I made huge hats for my mother and I. In those days the paper covered things like this and there was chap called Ted Rayner who lived in Waites Lane, he did a wonderful rendition of ‘Got to Pick a Pocket or Two’ with Linda Lee’s daughter and Jason Jay who was the son of Terry and Maureen Jay – real old tennis club people. It was a really good evening. There was also the magic act that Terry and I did which was supposed to be a mind reading act and nobody knew how we did it…We also had sales and crazy whist drives.

In those days, those involved were Terry and Maureen Jay, David and Ann Lee who lived in the village for many years, John Sewell who moved to Hastings and couple who lived in Farley Way but their name escapes me. There were a lot of members then – Jill Golding, Rachel and Derek Bliss from the Post Office. There were also members from outlying villages. There was always a membership of about 25 or so which for a club that size was enough. You could always get a court. In those days we used to have competitions in the summer – handicap competitions where we were all pitched against each other. It was a thriving club and kept going even in the Covid times. As soon as they were allowed, they were up there. Because of my eyesight I can’t play anymore.

The fund raising paid for the court plus possibly some grants but I’m not sure about that but I know they have had grants to upgrade it. I think it may have been all due to fund raising. In 1984/5 there wasn’t the Lottery but they have had one from the Lawn Tennis Association but we might not have been big enough to have been registered then.

Table tennis was mostly the same people as the tennis club but when it was dark winter evenings we played table tennis. There was actually a league at one point and there were some really serious players and they had matches but the hall wasn’t really big enough for the matches to go on so the league people moved on and the people who just wanted to play didn’t want to pay the high cost of the league people’s expenses so the league people went and gradually the numbers got less and less and they said it would have to close. The club started probably in the early 1980s and I joined in 1985/6. Terry Jay who is now deceased was big in the club.

When I joined in 1985/6 there was a children’s section. They would go first and I used to stay down there with the kids and they would be pushed out a 8pm and the grown-ups would come on. There’s no children’s section now. The club nearly folded but four of us decided that it wasn’t going to fold (probably 1996/7) so we decided to advertise for new members and they came. Before we knew it we had enough money to buy another new table and then another. In the end we had enough funds for 4 new tables. So they are all good tables and although I don’t play because of my eye sight there are still people there from when I was a member. Sometimes both halls were used. It depended. If we used the other hall then we had to pay for it. So what we did – membership for the year was £5 (initially it was less and money was collected each week) with a weekly sub. We could get 3 tables in the big hall and we played doubles. We got up to about 24 members and of course not everyone goes every week. We advertised for men and women. Usually the tables were full and just sometimes we had a fourth table in the small hall but the floor in there is appalling so it wasn’t particularly safe. And the club is still going. Kath Barron (the previous vicar’s wife) joined and she was a very keen player.

The Art Club was originally part of the WI but for whatever reason which I don’t know, the Art Club came away from the WI. Perhaps they were restricted in what they could do or they could only have WI members and no men and things like that. There were artists in the village who wanted to join. So I joined in about 1986 which was not long after the split and it was Margaret Charrot who lived in the village for many years (her husband was a teacher at William Parker), she was a teacher and the couple were well known in the village, she ran it with Maureen Brody and we had a tutor. We had two halls going. One was for freelance painting and the other was tutored. I stopped going because the boys were off my hands and I had to go back to work but then I started going again in about 2000 when I had time. Both Maureen and Margaret were involved still and there was a tutor. We had some nice tutors – professional artists and there were men there then. There was Norman Dengate and Debbie Morgan’s father. I can’t remember his Christian name. It was Hugh Morgan!! And Jim Duffy was in the club. It was decided that the tutors had become too expensive so we now have one a month whereas it had been weekly before. The class is still weekly. It was either a demonstration or a workshop with landscapes or something like that or just talks. So it has changed. Also we have a satellite group since the end of Covid where a tutor Mark Fisher will come and do 6 weeks of a weekly thing. Although it’s associated with the art club it’s not the art club itself. It’s all under the same umbrella but it’s for people like myself who are prepared to pay extra to have the tutor.

We have exhibitions. To start off with it was just coffee mornings which were very popular. There was always a raffle or a game plus pictures for sale. Then we branched out and we had an evening do – a wine and cheese do which is in May which is a big exhibition and a big charity raffle. The ticket gives you a glass of wine or a soft drink and a cheesy nibble supper. From there we progressed to from the evening do to having the hall the next day with an open gallery. We have as many members as we can cope with because of the space for all the tables. Julie Marshall is the organiser – she’s the Chairperson. It’s a very active group. We had Richard Adams come a couple of times. Once he just gave a talk and another time he gave a workshop. He was really good fun actually. Another artist Mike Funnell comes and there’s a lady who does bugs and bees and owls. Members can bring a guest to the talks. It’s a thriving group. We have also done several pop up exhibitions at the Pett Level Lifeboat in aid of them where they have taken the boat out of the boathouse and we have set up a gallery in there. It depends on the weather – last year it was so hot that people arrived with a towel and swimsuit and off to the beach. They didn’t want to bother. We have also had an exhibition at the church for the flower festival so we had flowers as a theme and pictures as well. There were cream teas of course and that was a 2 day event. That went very well. And also we’ve done a few with the Pett Methodist Church in the chapel there – we’ve done some exhibitions in line with their flower festival. We’re pretty much up to capacity. There’s a waiting list but we can usually squeeze them in. It’s all levels of work. Sometimes we have people who come who have never done a thing. I got Andrew to go because he has a great interest in art so I told him that I’m going to put your name down for the art club and he’s done some nice paintings.

 FULL NAME – ERIC JAMES HOLLINGSWORTH

DATE OF BIRTH – 16 APRIL 1927

PLACE OF BIRTH – ROCK FARM, COTTAGE LANE, WESTFIELD CLOSE TO WESTFIELD PLACE

I first went to school at Clive Vale School, Clive Vale because we moved to Shearbarn Farm when I was 5 or just before so that’s where I started school. Shearbarn Farm was a working farm, a dairy farm more or less, and the man who had the farm had the name Funnell; and the milk he produced on the farm, he took to a dairy in Harold Road, Hastings in Clive Vale then delivered it on a milk round around the town somewhere. The milk was in bottles but I was only 5 so I don’t know if they had his name on them (MS – you had containers). Mr Shearer in Church Farm (you’ve met Alan) -he did the same thing. (MS – They were containers rather than bottles weren’t they? You poured the milk – you had containers.) Some used what they called a hand can which was oval in shape, inside was a rail and hanging on these rails was a half pint, a pint and a pint and a half. If it was bottled it would be a pint, a pint and a half and maybe a quart. The half pint, pint and pint and a half would be glass but the other container would be metal of some sort but I don’t know – it would probably be tinned outside so it didn’t rust; it might have been brass or copper I don’t know. That’s what happened at Shearbarn Farm. There was – about 150/200 yards away from the road – there was an old farmhouse. Mr Funnell didn’t live in the farmhouse but an old lady lived there when we moved in when I was 5 years old. As far as I can recall it was doodle-bugged.

There were three cottages at Fishponds Farm and as far as I know, they went with Place Farm, Fairlight which was Fairlight Place with the Sayer Milwards or Major Sayers; they are to do with the Milwards who owned bits and pieces in Hastings hence Milward Road. Also with the same family is a farm called Platnix Farm between Westfield and Sedlescombe; and who was the famous lady who went there? The flyer – Amy Johnson – and the writer – somebody pretty famous anyway – the sort of people the Sayer Milwards used to entertain.

Fishponds – three cottages – one was occupied by my grandmother and my grandfather who were more or less retainers by the Sayer Milwards family. The middle one I think was rented to Mr Funnell for his cowman; and the end one – the other end one – I can’t be sure.

In 1941 I would have left Fairlight School and it was Clive Vale School that I went to afterwards that had been evacuated. I went to Westfield School when I was 11, took my eleven-plus and failed; father had to move up to Fairlight because of whatever in those days. So Fairlight School was up to 11 so I had to go to Clive Vale School, to the boys school; they were evacuated so I come back, finished my last couple of years’ schooling in Fairlight School – the two rooms. (So when you were there, was there a plaque remembering the soldiers?) Yes in the First World War. Alan Shearer must have remembered it because we sat in the same class together. I can only remember it was made of wood but I can also tell you that whether it was the teachers or whoever – I think it was the Beeching family lived in the bit immediately facing the big school room and there was a little sort of serving hatch that went into, although it was never opened, into the house next door because one side as I understand it was the Verger, Mr Luke Beeching; and the other side, at one time, was the teacher’s residence. He was the man who would go from farm to farm – thatching, ditching, you name it; he was also a grave digger for a lot of the undertakers in Hastings locally.

(Looking at a aerial photo of Fairlight Church and the quarry) In this piece that’s what we called the factory, with all sorts of machinery in it. It certainly wasn’t opened at the outbreak of the war; it must have been developed while I was working at Westfield and that would have been from 1941-2. There was always someone in there quarrying the sand –  supplying I should think for building but when the war broke out, they could no longer get sand from France and Belgium for glass making so whoever it was fell upon what they were doing in the quarry close to the church with the sand and they decided it was good enough as I understand what they told me when I was working there. The sand was good enough for glass making although it did have too many little specks of iron but anyway, they did the factory; there wasn’t enough sand close to the church so they opened up the one by Warren Cottage and they quarried that bit; took all the overburden off and quarried that bit and excavated it, put it into trucks, then pulled it along next to Warren Cottage and they had endless cable; and then this cable on a 2 foot railway. One could move the trucks that went up the 26 acre field and fairly opposite to the farm they built up a bank the trucks went up; then they built a crusher sort of by the old sand quarry and the wagons were tipped up and it went down through the crusher to be washed and classified; and the machinery in the factory – we had a big pump for sucking the water out of the sand before they put it on a conveyer to be piled up ready to go onto lorries to go to Ore Station. There were three or four five ton lorries; all sorts of electricity motors for compressed air and vacuumed to suck the air, suck the water out the sand; pneumatic drills for drilling holes to blast down the quarry.

When I left the garage at Westfield, I worked there in the fitter’s shop maintaining the three lorries and helping lubricate and maintain the machinery. There was also next door to the fitter’s shop an electrician who used to deal with the electricity for the buildings and everything and rewind some of the smaller electric motors by the name of Frank Pettitt, and he lived in Hollington.

 I was working there from 1942 to 1945 until I was called up. Because I was working there and because I was keen on the army cadets so they didn’t call me in to be a Home Guard but I used to do shifts of fire waters at the factory in case of fire bombs coming down, with another member of the staff; and in 1944 I was on duty with a member of staff when the first doodlebug come over. We heard the noise and we dashed outside to see what was happening and that was it. Had no idea what it was and at the time it was just something making a bloody lot of noise and the flames out the back. It was just something up in the air that made all this noise. You know I told you about the hump where the skips were tipped up into the crusher, during the day if the doodlebugs would come over, the people who would be on top tipping the trucks had to get off that lump a bit bloody quick as they were afraid they were going to be hit! And the farm cottages – well we lived in the one nearest the farm buildings; well one night one of the doodlebugs hit the cliff and blew my bedroom windows in cos they faced out to sea. There was a Messerschmitt or a Fokker Wolf came over and had a little go at the end room of the Coastguard Station which was the Watch Room – fired a few bullets. The Church was an Observation Post for the army. They were just soldiers about – they were in the bungalow next to what is now the (Church Café) Coastguard Café. The café then was just a little shop with a few lunches but after the war it was developed a bit by the two old ladies (MS -Harman) – they lived on the corner of Hill Road and what was then the Coastguard Lane. They used to sell tobacco and sweets – their granddaughter or niece – Nancy – she sort of took it over into the place that is now the Coastguard Café and made a little shop of it then it grew into doing a few lunches. Nancy – she employed a Polish refugee as a chef and in 1950 the Station Officer at the Coastguard Station said to me (cos I’d just got married in 1953 – I got married the Saturday before the Coronation and lived in St.Leonard’s for ten months, still being a member of the cliff rescue team) in 1954 you’re going to have a job getting here as a rescuer. Number 3 cottage he said will be empty before too long so if you want to take some training to be a Watch Keeper, that cottage is yours. So we moved in in April 1954; they were doing a few lunches then, Nancy was, so she asked me if my wife would like to go up and do a bit of waitressing which she enjoyed. That had to finish when we adopted two kids. I got married from Church Farm Cottages in 1953 when I was 26, got married, went to St.Leonard’s for ten months then into the Coastguards Cottages.

You know Warren Cottage and the field that goes down towards the cliff edge – it’s a sort of a wide field and the butts – they used to be fired towards the bank at the Coastguard Station – that was before the war by the Territorials. I can remember the four big iron things that went up and down for the targets – there used to be little places for people to lay from there up towards the cliff edge up to about 600 yards. When the war broke out they used it as a training area – Canadians especially as far as I can remember because Bob Shearer that would be Alan’s next oldest brother, and I, would go down there after they had been and pick up bandoliers of 300 ammunition; ringless cartridges where 303 British with a flange on the end but the American’s 303s got a ring for extracting the cartridge when the bullet had been fired. That narrow field that was used for training purposes because they thought it was dangerous firing towards the Coastguard Station so they did away with the butts there and they built a big bank just this side of Lover’s Seat to fire at so any stray bullets got over to sea.

I was born at Pett Level on 19^th October, 1925 and my father was a sheep grazier and a coast guard and his hobby was birds and nature; well really he was an ornithologist and you know, he used to teach us all about the birds and the wild animals, and I had a brother who’s two years older.

Unfortunately I lost my mother when I was four and he was six so he was landed with a new born delicate baby and us two, and in those days there weren’t many menfolk who were very domesticated were they? They didn’t know where to start. (Some of them still don’t) The frying pan was used a lot, nearly worn out! It’s about all he could do to fry stuff. And then of course, we went to Granny because she got a bit of spare room at the time and my aunt took my delicate young sister to look after so he was relieved of her, but we went from cousin to cousin, but we spent most of the time with Granny Cooke.

She was quite religious, quite strict really with us when I look back and she was always giving us jobs to do and one of the main jobs she used to give us to do, my brother and I, was she gave us a sack each and told us to go onto the beach and pick up the driftwood for firewood, but you see, it had to dry out, it was full of sea water. It had to dry out so we stacked it up and it dried out during the summer ready for the winter.

That was very frequent; I remember it was sometimes so heavy so all I could do was to drag it  but my brother and I, and Andrew Dunlop’s father, went to a private school in Pett Level. When I say a private school, it was private they had to pay and he was an ex-teacher but I was always in trouble because I used to scribble too much on their books for him, being only four but I soon learnt.

Were you punished?  You got sort of sent out.

Then as we grew older, of course, we went to the village school and that was quite different to what it is now. Pett School was rather primitive toilets, the toilets and so on.

Were the toilets outside?  Yes but we had a nice piece of ground along by the school, which the boys cultivated and grew vegetables and I think they quite enjoyed it, and us girls, we had the flower beds

and it was amazing what we learnt, you know, and what we grew and we became quite enthusiastic gardeners, all of us, boys and girls.

Of course, soon the war came and everything changed. We had evacuees from Camberwell, I felt so sorry for them; some of them so little, five year olds, saying goodbye to their parents and not everybody welcomed them. (They didn’t?)  No although they got room.

(Do you remember seeing them being allocated to families?) Yes yes. (What do you remember about that?)  Well they tried to keep the families together. Sometimes there were twos and threes and they tried their best to keep them together, but they didn’t. Some people, you know, they just didn’t want them and they didn’t do their best for them. I used to feel so sorry for them because little ones

used to cry and wanted to go back to London and of course, the school wasn’t very big and so we used to share it. We would have it perhaps in the morning and then the evacuees had it in the afternoon and vice versa. (They kept the two groups separate then?) Yes we were quite separate. Now of course, that went on until France fell and then they were all shifted off to down the West Country and I think some of the mothers joined them and things were happier. Of course we had so many German planes just come across the Channel, they’d drop a bomb or two where they thought they could do some damage and they got to know very quickly that the top of Chick Hill was military. (Right). We had to move out of our home at Pett Level because it came within a restricted area and of course it was all barbed wired up and and mined and we had to get accommodation at the top of Chick Hill.

We couldn’t take much with us because it was already furnished, this place. We could only really take our personal things and clothing. We had to leave our furniture behind, apart from my father’s desk and those sort of things.

Then of course we couldn’t get down there after that. You know, we just, we just had to hope for the best, our home was left intact but it wasn’t. They took various pictures of the walls and they just disappeared, whether they sold them or not, whether they took them home and I lost quite a lot of clothing.

(You said dresses you’d been given?). Yes they were lovely dresses; they were evening dresses because in those days, although it was wartime, we used to go out for the evening in a long dress, (Really? even in wartime?)  Yes what we got, you know, we couldn’t afford to buy new ones but we used to titivate up the old ones a bit, you know?  I mean, you wouldn’t think of going to a dance without an evening dress on.

(What was your favourite one like?) Well, mine was pink and it was a very nice shade of pink. I had it a long time because we didn’t have enough coupons to buy any more and the ones I left behind because you didn’t do much socializing in the war time and I left a lot of my evening dresses and things behind at Pett Level and they just disappeared.

(You must’ve been heartbroken?) Yeah but you see we couldn’t take them, and there wasn’t room and we didn’t think they would do such a thing. The sentry stood at the end of the pathway and you couldn’t go anywhere past that.

(So you did try sometimes?) Yes but of course it was too dangerous; it was barbed wired and mined.

(What are your memories of, you mentioned rationing?)  Oh yes of course. For the rationing, sometimes it was a bit better than others but we, father kept sheep and we also had a house cow which I don’t think I mentioned.

Our Oral History Project has shown us how important it is to preserve the memories of those who have lived in our communities. Sadly we have lost several of the interviewees who kindly agreed to share their story but we are fortunate to have those memories to remember how life was in the past.

If you know of anyone who would be happy to share their memories, or you yourself, we would love to hear from you. Please contact us on 07751 251523 or via our website.