BRIAN SINDEN
I was born on 11th October 1937 at Bermuda, Pett Road which is opposite Rosemary Lane. My father bought the house the previous year for £450.
I started school in January 1943. We had a mile to walk to Pett School; we used to walk home again at 12 o’clock to have our dinner; country folk it was dinner at midday then walk up there again at 1 o’clock then walk home again at half past 3. That’s quite a walk for a five year old kid.
Where were you actually living then? Still at Bermuda. I remember one afternoon walking home from Pett School with my sister, Ronnie Barden and his sister Joan and my cousin John and this 109 Messerschmitt came flying over the roof tops and it was firing at the troops who was at Pett Garage. As my cousin just walked across the road all these machine gun pellets were coming up the road and it was so scary but all the mothers came out the house to see if we were alright.
Did you say there were troops at Pett Garage? Yes. I had two friends who were up by the Village Hall, the old Village Hall, and they said this plane was coming down the road; they used to come right down low because there was anti-aircraft guns up on the bank opposite Peter James Lane and a searchlight so they used to come down low so they got below the guns.
Where was the searchlight? Up where the beacon is? This was up at the field (near Shelly’s Green).
One afternoon we were at Pett School, we were out to play and this B17 came over, a Flying Fortress, and it was all alight and the troops, they were all parachuting out, and we all had to go into the shelters because we had three air raid shelters where we used to have our lessons.
At home we had a Morrison shelter which was a table shelter and us three kids, me and my two sisters, used to sleep in there at night. One night a bomb went off and all the plaster ceiling came down. And there was lots of bomb damage at that time.
Do you know where the bomb landed? No but I remember when Mrs.Elliott and her maid at the White Hart, they took a direct hit and they were both killed and my aunt lived about 200 yards across the road and the chimney from her house came right through their roof. I remember going to my aunt’s house and seeing daylight up through her kitchen right up through the roof. (So the Elliott’s chimney went across and into your aunt’s?) Yes.
But Pett in those days was tribal – everybody’s related to everybody and you knew everybody. All the boys were taught to kill all the predators, to kill all the badgers and squirrels and crows and magpies. We had guns and knives and nobody ever got hurt. I bought my first double barrelled shotgun, 12 bore, when I was 13 years old. (Was that normal?) Yep that was normal. All the kids in the village were taught for hundreds of years that you have to get rid of predators and in them days, there was so much more wildlife around because we hunted down the predators. All the farms had chickens and ducks and geese and they all went off somewhere and hatched out and came back with loads of chicks but now I’ve still got chickens but I have to make it like Fort Knox to keep the badgers out. (I suppose you didn’t have licences then? Gun licences didn’t exist?) We did have licences – get them from the Post Office five shillings. (Any age?) Yes just go and get a gun licence. Five shillings in old money. Everybody was either related or blood related or through marriages.
There was no traffic; if you heard a car you wondered who it belonged to because there were so few. There were army lorries around but then I remember there was army everywhere. They took over some of the houses because a lot of people had evacuated. (So there were empty houses were there?) Yes there were empty houses which the army took; I remember Roughters next door to Breanross and the army being in there. It was quite a big house. The army were down Peter James Lane; yes there was an army camp down Peter James Lane too. (Whereabouts?) As you go down where it levels out, that bit there. It was all army camp there. (That’s Winterstow now?) No on the other side (where Cherry Garden is now). That flat field I remember being full of army. I remember my father taking eggs and selling eggs to them for the army. (I’m sure they had money). Yes.
So who else were you at school with? Can you remember names? My sister in ’45, she was two years older than me; Vic Goodsell; Molly and Joan Barden; Tony Turner; Muriel Turner; Peter Bateup; Phyllis Bateup; David Cooke from Pett Level; Rosemary’s sister; Jimmy Cooke. I’m talking about when I started there’s quite a few younger than me. When I started at five those were the ones that were there; Anne and Eve Bull who lived where John Cooke does.