World War II Evacuees

The boys' gate at the primary school.

Mrs Sparrow: Mother used to take them round and usually we ended up with the ones that were left, the poor stragglers that had nowhere to go. We had them from Birmingham and we had them from Coventry, but mostly Birmingham. And of course they brought them by the bus load and they had to go to the school, the children that was of school age had to go to the school and we’d got new teachers, strange children all talking a different language we couldn’t understand, we absolutely hated them and there was quite a bitter feeling between the children at school, it caused great disruption in school. We were sitting three to a desk, things like that, you know, nothing belonged to you anymore, we had to share everything. As I say, then we had a woman and four children they lived in our front room, we changed it into a bed sitting room, and they lived there and they were absolutely disgusting. They had one bed, three of them slept in that, and camp beds. I remember, I must say this because it was… bread was rationed at the time, she used to keep her own food in her own room and the bread was left on the bed one day and I went in to see the kids as I usually did, and they were playing throwing the bread about. At the time we had no toilets and she kept a rather large pot under the bed that she didn’t empty until it was absolutely overflowing, and the loaf of bread fell in the pot and she dried it out and made the children eat it. Now I used to go home for my tea with them but because food was rationed I was fortunate enough to have to take my own food in with me, so I didn’t get any. They absolutely wrecked my mother’s house, they set fire to the curtains, they set fire to the mat, they were just filthy, and after three months they had to be moved because they were unsuitable. As I say, with the little baby boy that we had, he was a delight he was. I learnt him how to walk, but his mother didn’t want him and she wanted my mother to adopt him, but of course that couldn’t be done. But she just didn’t want this child, my mother brought him up. Then, like, they just seemed to all disappear into the blue and the next thing you would have another load, we had four girls from Birmingham, Perry Bar they came from, and they were nice. Their parents did come to see them once a month and bring them their sweet ration.

Interviewer: Did any of the evacuees stay on, at all?

Mrs Sparrow: Yes, there were one or two evacuees actually did stay on in the village and make their home there. Yes, there were one or two families stayed there. They fitted in quite nicely with village life, you know.

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