Belmont’s Evacuee Children George Skinner George

Belmont’s Evacuee Children

The story of how Belmont Villagers and their Primary School gave a home to war-time Evacuee Children.

George Skinner

November 2019

1 Contents

Introduction 3

1. The National Evacuation Programme 5

2. Belmont’s Evacuee Children 9

3. School must go on 29

4. Stories from the War Years 33

5. Belmont Primary School Remembers 51

6. Acknowledgements & Further Information 55

Notes & References 57 (Linked to “footnote” numbers in the main text)

2 Introduction

On the 25th August 1939, the small elementary school1 in the Lancashire village of Belmont closed for its usual late summer works holidays. The Headteacher, Mr Vincent Hill, wrote up the school Log Book2 before leaving for home, noting the closure and adding on the next line, “Sept 11 Re-open”. But during the holiday Britain declared war on Germany and on his return to school Mr Hill had to amend the ‘re-open’ entry by adding, “- not done because war broke out on Sunday September 3rd at 11 o’clock”. The cause of what turned out to be a three-day delay in starting the new term is given simply as “for War Emergency,” popular code for the mass evacuation of children from British cities. What it meant in practice for the village was the arrival of 80 new children, more than doubling the number of pupils already in its tiny school.

The events which followed this unusual start to the new school year may be traced from two official Belmont Primary School record books. The school Admissions Register, which lists all arrivals and departures of children, reveals the unusual comings and goings of many children, mainly from Salford and Manchester, over the next five years. The School Log Book, a diary of significant events in the life of the school kept by the Headteacher (Mr Vincent Hill in 1939 and Mr Edward Hodson from October 1943), provides clues as to what took place as the school faced the changing circumstances brought about by the war. Entries are spasmodic and frustratingly short on detail but the main pattern can be deduced.

Our story draws mainly on these official records but is supplemented with information from external reports, public information sheets, records of Temple School in North Manchester (from which many of the evacuee children came), contemporary newspapers and stories recounted by villagers and evacuees. It describes the ambitious national campaign to evacuate children from vulnerable cities to the relative safety of the countryside and Belmont School’s part in this project, and provides a picture of how the war impacted on the day-to-day running of the school. Finally, it records how in 2018, Belmont Primary School took steps to learn more about these events and to create a lasting memorial for future generations of pupils and the wider village community.

3

4 1 The National Evacuation Programme

Long before Britain’s declaration of war against Germany in September 1939, the Government had been working on plans to evacuate children and vulnerable adults from cities and towns thought to be at risk from enemy bombing attacks. In World War I, bombing raids on Britain had resulted in 1,400 civilian deaths and since the 1920s, precautions against air raids had been foremost in the defence plans for the country.1 The tactic of bombing civilians used in the Spanish Civil War, especially the infamous attack on Guernica in 1937, convinced the British government that evacuation would be necessary should hostilities with Germany come to a head. During the year preceding the declaration of war, the Government surveyed available housing in safe areas and appointed billeting officers to administer an ambitious programme to house the evacuees.2

The evacuation project was code-named Operation Pied Piper, perhaps an unfortunate choice bearing in mind that in the original story the piper leads the children of Hamelin away from the town, never to return! The exodus of children began just before the declaration of war on 3rd September 1939. In three days, 1,473,000 people from the cities of Britain were transferred, often with teachers and escorts, to safer areas, mainly in the countryside.

In Manchester it had been estimated that there were 190,000 children and priority adults that might be at risk from air raids.3 By April 1939, meetings had already taken place between teachers and parents resulting in 71,000 schoolchildren, 58,000 pre-school children and 4,000 expectant mothers in the area being registered to be evacuated should the need arise.

Manchester schools were sent regular memos by the Education Office describing the steps they should take to make evacuation as successful as possible. With limited space available on trains and buses the amount of luggage children could take was a central issue and detailed instructions about what could be taken were sent to parents. Rehearsals for evacuation were ordered during the summer holidays. Teachers who might be involved had been required to give details of their holiday address to their Headteacher and on Wednesday 23rd of August they received telegrams informing them that they must return to Manchester.4

5 On August 31st 1939, evacuation was officially announced by the Ministry for Health. The Telegraph for 2nd September reported that over 100 trains had left Manchester and Salford with 120,000 schoolchildren to be evacuated to areas in Lancashire, Cheshire and Derbyshire. Special ambulance trains took children on stretchers from Manchester hospitals to the countryside. Evacuated schools were closed and many of their buildings allocated for other war-related uses.

Turton Urban District Belmont was part of Turton Urban District which was confirmed as a reception area and given an allocation of 1,600 women and children to billet. The process was directed from County Office in Preston but overseen locally by John William Rostron, a well-known businessman and politician who was Chairman of Turton Urban District Council. Although parents in vulnerable areas were not obliged to evacuate their children, designated safe areas were required to provide billets for evacuees and fines could be imposed on any household which refused.5 In 1938, Billeting Officers were formally appointed and, having been empowered to require householders to provide information about their homes, went out to survey the Turton District. Belmont Village returned a total of 829 “habitable rooms”. The Billeting Officer was asked to endeavour to find accommodation with households who were willing6, but “in the event of failure to provide in this way for those under his charge should use the compulsory powers conferred upon him, leaving the question of appeal to be dealt with subsequently.”

The initial evacuation plan was to move pupils in school groups accompanied, where possible, by their teachers. Following this, mothers with under five-year-olds would be transported. In addition to this carefully planned project, the Government provided support for other groups and individuals who made private arrangements to evacuate children to safe places, resulting in the movement of many thousands more children at various times during the war.

In 1939 the Government had expected widespread bombing of towns, especially London, the Midlands and Manchester. In the event, no bombs fell on England until the summer of 1940 and not until September, a whole year into the war, did the systematic bombing of London begin. As a result of this “phoney war” many parents decided to bring their evacuated children home and schools in evacuated areas began to re-open. But when the war

6 escalated and the threat of bombing increased in late 1940, many children were returned and were joined by new, private evacuees. This privately organised exodus was mainly composed of individuals and family groups who left vulnerable areas, often moving into the same districts used for the initial evacuation. Over the whole period of the war, about thirty such private evacuees registered at Belmont School in addition to school groups.7

Accounts by evacuees of how well the national scheme worked and what emotional reaction it evoked reveal a complex picture. The following story from the BBC’s People’s War Project8, was told by someone who, as a child, was moved from Manchester to nearby Tockholes.

I was 11 years old when the war started. I had been at the Crumpsall Lane Junior School in Manchester but had just started at Elementary school. We had only been there three days when the war began. We were given gas masks and labels and loaded onto double decker buses outside the school and driven to the station.

No one knew where we were going but my dad worked for the railway and he found out that we were going to Darwen. We all landed up at St George's Hall in Blackburn and then everyone from our school was put on another bus and taken out to the village of Tockholes where we were delivered to the schoolroom. I sat there with three of my friends - we were determined that we were going to stick together.

We were told we would be sent to stay with Mrs Whittle. Her house turned out to be a little cottage and we had to walk through three fields to get there. There was no bed for us when we got there but she found us some mattresses and we slept in her front room.

We used to go the village school - it was very small compared with what we were used to - there was only one classroom. We collected eggs every morning and went to bed early. There was no bath - but we managed.

Mum found out where we were and all the mums came to see us. Mine said, "You're not stopping here. You'll go up to Newcastle to your Grandma's." So I was only there for six or eight weeks.

7 Evacuees Remembered Many other accounts of evacuee experiences have been shared during the years since the war, and much research has been conducted to try to understand the impact of the evacuee programme on the country’s children and families. The BBC’s WW2 People's War Project, which ran from June 2003 to January 2006, published more than fourteen thousand such stories.

Wartime evacuation appears as a motif in many children’s story books and films, including C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Michelle Magorian’s Good-night Mr Tom. The labels which were given to evacuee children to wear were Michael Bond’s inspiration for Paddington Bear’s name tag which he was wearing when discovered lost on Paddington Station.9

In 1996 the British Evacuees Association10 was formed to make the story of the great evacuation better known. It recruited high profile ex-evacuees, including Michael Aspel, Bruce Forsyth and Roger Moore as its Patrons. A memorial to all those involved in the evacuation process, including train drivers, teachers, nurses, billeting officers, children and parents, designed by sculptor Maurice Blik, was unveiled at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire on 25th July 2017.

8 2 Belmont’s Evacuee Children

The 1939 Evacuation When war was declared in 1939, Belmont School was on holiday. The re- opening of the school for the autumn term was delayed. No explicit reason is given for this but it seems likely that the building was being used to settle in evacuee children. The Log Book entry for September 14th, 1939 reads, “School reopened after being closed for War Emergency. Jewish section of the 80 evacuated children did not turn up because of the Jewish New Year, which is a holiday. Misses Bolton, Downes and Isaacs are the 3 teachers, who came with the children.”

The group of 80 evacuated children was from Temple Infant School in Cheetham, Manchester. Temple School was housed in a large two-storey Victorian building, the Infants on the ground floor and the Juniors above - a total of 275 children. It is not known what proportion of the group was Jewish but a 2012 report about the history of Jews in Bolton1 discusses those who came as evacuees to the town and observes that Temple School was “mainly Jewish and had some Jewish teachers”. In 1939, the movable New Year festival of Rosh Hashanah was celebrated from the 13th to the 15th September and children from Jewish homes had clearly been kept off school to celebrate. On Monday 18th September the Headteacher reports, “All Jewish Temple School before the war children turned in.”

Miss Elsie Downes was one of three Temple School teachers chosen to accompany the pupils to Belmont. Elsie was only twenty-one years old at the time with just one year’s experience of teaching, having completed her two-year teaching certificate training at Bingley College in 1938. She remained with the children in the village, her 1939 National Register2 entry indicating that she was billeted at Ryecroft House with the Musgrove family. 9 Many years later, when married but still living in Manchester as Mrs Mullineux, Elsie told the story of how they travelled from her school to Belmont.3

Well, we all piled on to the buses ... not as many little ones, not whole classes of little ones, but the bigger ones from the school above were coming too. And there were two double-deck buses and they went down to the back of Victoria Station and we went on at platform 14. So we never went through the big front of the station we went virtually on to the platform we were leaving from at the back of Victoria Station. And when we went on to the platform there was a train on each platform edge (island platforms) and they walked along with their teacher and went into the compartments as they filled up.

The organisation was really outstandingly smooth and the station staff were very helpful both for the teachers and for the children. Sort of where you go - here – six into there, six into there with the teacher, six into there. The organisation was quite amazing. On an adjacent platform was another train carrying pregnant women, and women with very young children: And all of a sudden this lady, a very big fat lady she was, she puts her hand out of the window waving a little baby’s potty and shouted to the guard ‘And what the blazes do you think I’m going to do with this?’ We had no access to toilets on our compartment trains.

Eventually the train set off and much to everyone’s surprise, they hardly seemed to have got underway when it stopped at Bromley Cross Station near Bolton from where they were transferred by bus to their ‘new temporary homes’ in the village of Belmont.

Miss Cissie Isaacs, also mentioned in Belmont School’s Log Book account, was a much more experienced teacher who had been working at Temple School for 24 years. The third teacher who arrived with the evacuees was Miss Mary Bolton. She had learnt to teach as a pupil teacher in North Manchester and had spent 12 years working in Manchester Jews’ School before joining Temple School in 1937. As the war continued she played an important link role between the school and their evacuee pupils, moving

10 between Manchester and the various reception areas to which evacuee children were sent at different stages of the war. Manchester Authority had agreed a scheme which allowed teachers to work alternately in reception and evacuated areas.4 Temple School Log Book5 tells us that in September 1941 she was back at Temple School and responsible for overseeing the evacuation of several pupils, including Betty and Lilly Ham to the Turton area, while Miss Downes was in charge of escorting “children from the Junior Department who were being evacuated to Nelson.”

Children from Temple Infant School being evacuated The children evacuated to the Turton district were at least fortunate that the distance they had to travel was not very far, although this did lead later to some tensions between billeting families and visiting parents.6 Other children spent many hours getting to their destinations. A Liverpool teacher, travelling with ninety children who had assembled at 10 o’clock in the morning did not reach their safe town, Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire, until 7.30 that night.7

Unlike Belmont School, most other schools across the country were not on holiday in early September. In the days leading up to the evacuation, teachers and parents in Manchester were given precise instructions about how they should get ready. Guidelines on what children should take with them were issued. These mentioned mainly appropriate clothing but also

11 included an identity card, a luggage-label type name tag, a boxed gas-mask and a stamped postcard to reassure nervous parents that all had gone well (see the inside back cover for examples of evacuee postcards).

Schools practised the evacuation procedures and parents were told that on any day the practice might turn into the real thing without any warning. The Headmistress at Temple School, Alice Richmond, had received an official notice to expect to evacuate in July 1939 and made sure that pupils and staff were well-prepared for their move. According to Temple School’s Log Book, the school was one of those chosen “to go as far as the Entraining Station,” (Manchester Victoria) during practices, so on the 28th August, “a complete Try-out of Evacuation Plans took place.”

On August 31st the Temple School Log Book records, “School closed this afternoon preparatory to evacuation tomorrow morning.” On the next day the pupils and their teachers set off by bus and train for the Lancashire countryside. In line with Government policy, Temple School was then closed, leaving parents who had chosen not to evacuate their children with no organised opportunities for their continuing schooling.8

The evacuees seemed to have arrived to a very warm welcome. The weekly Bolton Journal reported on September 8th that factory workers had exchanged waves with the pupils as their train passed by. A reporter from the newspaper spoke with the pupils and wrote, “These children, all from Temple School Cheetham, must have rehearsed what they were to do for their behaviour was perfect.” Clearly, all the practising had been worth it! The paper, referring light-heartedly if a bit tactlessly to “Turton’s invading army”, pointed out that all this was purely a “precautionary measure and that the decision does not mean that war is regarded as inevitable.”

When schools in the Turton Urban District re-opened on September 14th 1939, after the late summer works holidays, the distribution of the pupils to their receiving schools had already taken place. Alice Richmond noted in Temple School Log Book that their pupils had been “divided among six schools in the Turton Urban District, Walmsley C of E in Egerton, Eagley Mills Council School, Bradshaw C of E, Turton C of E, Longsight Methodist in Harwood and Belmont Council School”. There were no further entries in the Log Book until April 1st 1940 when the school “reopened in Manchester for full time attendance”.

12 Billeting the Evacuees The distribution of evacuees was organised from Turton. Schools were closed for the “wakes” holidays but all was ready for the arrival of the pupils. The Bolton Evening News reported on September 1st that many residents had even cancelled their holidays so they could take children into their homes.

A survey conducted earlier in the year had identified 175 possible billeting places in the Belmont Ward.9 In large towns it was usual to make a local government official the Billeting Officer but in rural areas it tended to be a volunteer who did the job, without pay. In Belmont, Mr Alfred Hutchinson offered to oversee preparations for the arrival of the evacuees and was appointed Billeting Officer for the ward. Alfred was born in Belmont in 1887 and worked as a cashier in Belmont Bleach Works. He had also been Chair of Turton UDI Council the previous year so he understood the responsibilities and knew the people of Belmont well.

Alfred met with other Billeting Officers from the Turton District in June 1939 when they were invited to appoint their own assistants. They were no doubt much encouraged to hear at the meeting that the Women’s Voluntary Service had agreed to find people willing to use their cars to help the billeting officer to take children to their designated homes.10 It was also suggested that they made use of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides to escort children.

The Board of Trade wrote to Turton explaining that emergency supplies for the expected evacuee children would be sent to the “de-training station” in July to avoid congestion if an “emergency” occurred. Turton Station took delivery of 66 cases of tinned meat, 53 cases of Nestlé Sweetened Milk and 53 cases of Ideal Unsweetened Milk in August and stored them securely. Blankets and “Mackintosh overlays” to protect beds were also sent by the ministry of Health in London. The Ministry had decided that it was important to recognise the national service that hosts were providing by giving those who had volunteered to take unaccompanied children a special card to display in their window. Alfred was sent a quantity of these, with letters from the Minister for Health thanking householders for their “readiness to undertake this service” and host guidelines, to distribute to homes where unaccompanied evacuee

13 children were billeted. In March, it had been confirmed that 62 households in the ward had volunteered, though it is not known how many of these offers were taken up. Turton officials had planned to send 110 children to Belmont but as fewer children than expected arrived on the trains all the final destination areas received a proportionally smaller number. The explanation given in the Bolton Journal for the shortfall in numbers was that some parents wished to wait until the Saturday to bring their children themselves and other parents had decided at the last moment not to let their children be evacuated at all.

How well the national evacuation programme went appears to have varied from area to area. An evacuee who came with his school from a different part of Manchester to nearby Egerton reports that all the evacuees stood in the local church hall where they were greeted by a billeting officer, and the local vicar greeted the people who then chose one or more children.11

“It was like being in a cattle market. My brother Eric and I were left, no one chose us. Finally the vicar took us to the vicarage where we were stripped and bathed in the hottest water I have ever experienced. We were put in a large double bed and fed with pobs, (bread and hot milk sprinkled with sugar).

I spent a year in Egerton, moving from one house to another. I was finally lodged with a Mrs Barnes who treated me like a prince. A huge change from the previous billets.

However, the general perception of the Turton Urban District response to the evacuation appears to have been that it went well. The Bolton Evening News reported that “the first phase of the evacuation of school children went through splendidly.” And when in the afternoon 352 more children arrived at Turton Station from Manchester, “all the arrangements again worked perfectly and the children as they alighted were very cheerful and obviously thrilled with their new surroundings.” Newspaper reports in Bolton were initially upbeat, if a bit naïve,12 but later the smoothness of the process of evacuating pupils with their teachers in well-organised groups was contrasted with the arrival into the district on the following Saturday of 1,000 mothers and pre-school children. “Many of them had sent their older children to Turton yesterday and their chief concern was getting billeted as near as possible to them.” Other parents had come to realise the seriousness 14 of the situation and now travelled independently with them. On September 8th under a headline “The Grim Truth”, the Journal described the “pathetic sight” as mothers with children and some expectant mothers struggled to transfer from trains to buses and to discover where they might be billeted.

In Turton town itself, some tensions developed between hosts and parents who had accompanied pre-school children. On September 15th, in an article titled “Not So Welcome Now,” the Bolton Journal published reports of “children who seemed to have never had a bath, mothers who refused to raise a finger to help, unhealthy and verminous evacuees, children visited by a score of relatives who expected to be fed for nothing.”

It is hardly surprising that people from very different backgrounds thrown together by the war might struggle at times to get on. The Journal was quick to balance the tensions with examples of caring. “One mother, when she saw the state of her two little visitors’ clothing immediately made two dresses so that her little charges could be clothed respectably.” Later the paper reported how steps had been taken to help hosts and evacuee parents to work together and that centres were being set up for parents to meet with their children. Gradually the difficulties and irritations were removed.13 Even so, in 1941 when Manchester was eager to evacuate more children to the area, the Turton Head Teachers’ Association14 felt the need to pass a resolution that “previous to putting into operation any further evacuation plans some consultation should be held with the heads of school and billeting officers to try to obviate some of the difficulties of the first evacuation.”

The evacuees would certainly have found Belmont, set in rolling hills and wild moors, quite different from Manchester’s Cheetham district with its hundreds of businesses, shops and religious organisations.15

Cheetham Hill Road in the 1930s

15 Not that Belmont was some sleepy, rustic backwater. The village had been created at the start of the 19th century to house workers in the cotton industry and 130 years later the 1939 National Register still presented a profile of mainly skilled factory workers rather than farmers and land-workers. Half of the jobs reported to the interviewers who conducted the survey were associated with the local bleach and dye works or nearby cotton and paper mills. Many other villagers were employed in services to their neighbours such as publicans, shopkeepers, plumbers, craftsmen and teachers. Only about 10% of the population lived or worked on farms.

Much of village life revolved around its two churches. The Belmont in 1938. Note the Congregational Church on the Anglican parish church of St Peter right and the old school sign on at the south end of the village was the left. built, along with its Sunday school, in 1849 from locally-mined Ousel Nest Grit stone to the design of the talented young Scottish architect John Gregan. A long tradition of non-conformist worship in the village was kept alive through the Congregational Church on the High Street, built at the end of the 19th century in an elaborate style from stone and brick to replace the earlier and simpler Bethel Chapel. Both buildings were home to active and gifted communities and centres for the development of education and music. Belmont had a history of fine musicians especially organists, pianists and entertainers. In the 1930s, the Belmont Village Prize Brass Band16, created in Victorian times, was still going strong and in great demand for concerts of popular music although, according to the school Log Book, it still made time to support a highly successful fund-raising event at the school in March 1937. 16 It was the Minister of the Congregational Church, Rev Isaac Bithell who, after discussions with church officers, volunteered the church Sunday School building on the corner of Maria Square (now a private home) for use as the reception centre for the village’s share of the evacuees. Eileen Edwards, who lived in Belmont at the time, remembers the children arriving on two single-deck coaches. They looked lost and frightened and many were disappointed. Apparently, they had been told by organisers, who weren’t quite sure where Belmont was, that they were going near to Blackpool and the evacuee children were expecting to see the sea and golden beaches!

Parents had been asked to ensure that their children had sufficient food for the day of evacuation. On arrival at their destination each child was given a bag of emergency rations to tide them over the first 48 hours. In April, the Board of Trade had written to the council asking them to distribute the food supplies very precisely. The maximum a child should receive was a can of meat, a can each of sweetened and unsweetened milk, two packets or one pound of biscuits and a quarter of a pound of chocolate or “two two-penny chocolate crisps” (forerunner of the KitKat bar). The children also received a note from the Food (Defence Plans) Department17 explaining that the food bag was provided as an emergency ration “until local shops received sufficient supplies to meet the requirements of the additional population.” There was a widespread fear that there would be a shortage of food in areas where hundreds of newly-arrived children needed to be fed. Newspapers, including the Bolton Journal for 1st September 1939, carried appeals to householders not to make a run on the supplies of local shopkeepers. Evacuee children at Turton Station

A reporter for the Bolton Journal met up with some of the evacuees and later wrote, “All the mothers have given the children plenty of food for the day and many of them spent a lot of the journey eating it!” But when the children received their emergency rations they began eating again, until told to wait until they were on the next stage of their journey at one of the subsidiary distribution centres.

Villagers in Belmont and nearby farmers provided billets for the children who then continued their education for a few days, weeks or even years in 17 the village school. If the approach to billeting this large group of pupils was similar to that of placing the later private evacuees in Belmont it is likely that Mr Hutchinson and his assistants tried to billet children from the same family together. In the one example for which we have clear evidence in the 1939 National Register, three Temple School pupils, brothers Brian, Robert and Eric Royle, were all placed with the Belmont Primary School Manager, Rev William Thwaites and his wife, in St. Peter’s Church vicarage.

Families who billeted evacuees received 10 shillings and 6 pence a week (about 50p but equivalent to about £25 in real terms today) from the government for taking one child. Another 8 shillings and 6 pence per child was paid if they took more than one. Mr Hutchinson was provided with books of tickets to distribute to householders with unaccompanied evacuee children which allowed them to collect appropriate payments from the Post Office. After the war, host families also received a certificate of appreciation from Queen Elizabeth (the wife of King George VI). Soon after the evacuation the Government started to ask the parents of evacuated children to contribute to this cost of billeting them.18 This was one reason why some parents later decided to bring their children back home.

Although Lancashire's evacuation scheme went according to plan, little had been done to prepare schools and host families in the reception areas to care for their guests. Details of evacuation plans had been kept secret by the Government, even from local councils whose requests to allocate funds for preparation schemes were refused. Children who arrived in school groups did have their classmates. They were also accompanied by their teachers who, in many places, took advantage of the unusually mild September weather to take pupils out on long walks to familiarise them with their new surroundings. Voluntary organisations such as the WI and the newly- created WVS did their best to meet practical and emotional needs. Nationally, the BBC was busy creating a range of reassuring and advisory radio programmes and each evening it broadcast Vera Lynn singing the specially written song “Goodnight Children Everywhere” to comfort

18 homesick children, though many ex-evacuees report that hearing it made them feel even more sad.19 In October 1940, the 14 year-old Princess Elizabeth gave a talk20 during Children’s Hour to encourage evacuee children.

How Belmont School coped with the practical matters of hosting the evacuees is not easy to glean from the school Log Book. At least initially, the school experienced some problems with the sheer number of pupils and received visits on October 6th from the “county organiser W. Dowse re accommodation” and on the 11th from “HMI W Lamplugh in the afternoon re numbers etc.” A further visit was made on January 10th 1941 by HMI Miss Smiley to assess the impact of new evacuees on accommodation.

At the time, the school building consisted of just two classrooms, a hall and a kitchen. The evacuee children were taught by their own teachers and local ex-pupils recall this taking place in the hall. The national Board of Education had not made specific plans for the education of evacuated pupils but now suggested that schools might resort to a double shift system.21 This solution was adopted in Bolton town schools but there is no indication that it was chosen in Belmont. We know from the Belmont School Log Book that the evacuee pupils certainly did join with local children for the school Christmas celebrations on 22nd December 1939 when the Headteacher reported that, “Gifts of apples, oranges, nuts, toffee and 2nd bar of chocolate made to all the children, both evacuees & locals.”

The register of evacuee pupils was kept separately by the teachers who travelled with them and no details of individual children in this first party of evacuees appear in the Belmont School Admissions Register. Later, private evacuees, who did join in lessons with the local pupils, had their details, including the address where they were billeted, recorded in the village school Admissions Register. Their evacuee status was always indicated, usually with the letters “p.e.” (private evacuee) beside their name.

Many of the children from Temple School were Jewish and those from practising homes faced particular problems concerning diet and maintaining their faith and culture. The Manchester and Salford Council of Jews was very concerned about the education of evacuees, many of whom were placed in schools in and around Bolton, and made arrangements for a Jewish teacher to visit them. A total of 55 children in the Bolton district were supported in this way. In Belmont, Rev Isaac Bithell made the 19 Congregational school rooms available for such teaching. One Jewish evacuee, Malka Cohen, who lived with her family in the village, also recalls having lessons with a Jewish teacher at her home22. Attending Jewish worship was extremely difficult for the Jewish evacuees but again the Congregational Church helped out by offering the use of church rooms for Sabbath services.

This positive response by Belmont to its Jewish evacuees did not go unnoticed and was reported in the national Jewish Chronicle newspaper. In one article23 it was noted that, “Mr Bithell in his sermons to his congregants had urged them to show the fullest respect towards Jewish religious observance and to ensure that the village was not unduly noisy on Saturdays so that the Jewish residents may properly observe the Sabbath.”

To show their appreciation of Mr Bithell’s action, and of similar acts of friendship shown to Jewish evacuees, the Manchester Jewish Authorities issued an appeal to parents of Jewish evacuees to reduce Sunday visits to reception areas to a minimum in order that “the peace of the Christian Sabbath, in its turn, may be duly maintained”.

Apparently, much interest in Jewish faith, culture and politics was generated in Belmont by the presence of evacuees. When a showing of a “talkie film” about Palestine called Homeland in the Making was organised by a Jewish Zionist group a large audience, including many locals, filled the Congregational Church Hall.24

Dietary rules could be a particular challenge for Jewish children. Joe Flacks and his two sisters were later evacuated from Temple School to central Bolton. They reported that, “The people we stayed with were kindly but the food offered was often ‘treif’” (not according to Jewish dietary laws).25 As a result, after a few weeks they returned home. It is not known how the city evacuees got on with the food offered to them in rural Belmont, though 20 Eileen Edwards, who lived in the village at the time, does recall that a boy and a girl who stayed in her home on evacuation day until collected by their hosts were confused by two dishes containing salt and pepper on the dining table. They didn’t know what salt and pepper were.

No detailed records were kept by Belmont School of the children who arrived in school groups, or what happened to them. It may be that some moved to other schools or, more likely, returned to Manchester during the Phoney War period when the threat of large-scale bombing seemed unfounded. Nationally, only thirteen per cent of children who were evacuated in the 1939 project were still in their reception areas in the following January. Hansard for the 8th January 1940 records that 41,000 of the 66,300 children evacuated from Manchester and 9,500 of the 18,043 evacuated from Salford had already returned home.

As early as the 24th November, the Bolton Journal reported that although 700 children were now “comfortably settled in” the Turton District, these represented only about half of the original number, the remainder having gone back to Manchester. So many children returned to Cheetham that Temple School was able to re-open after the Easter holiday on April 1st 1940. Most of its pupils and staff, including those evacuated to the Turton District, appear to have returned to Manchester but two teachers still remained in the reception area and other teachers visited from time to time.

According to the Temple School Log Book, teacher Miss Hobson spent a whole day in April in the Turton Reception Area and Miss Crosby, another teacher “having been on duty in the Reception Area during the normal Easter Holiday period began a corresponding period of absence” on April 12th. Clearly some children had remained in their evacuation districts. Perhaps this was due in part to the extensive efforts of the Government through poster and newspaper campaigns to persuade parents not to remove children from the safety of the countryside. Despite the war, Temple School was able to provide a relatively 21 normal educational experience for its pupils after they returned in 1940, though there were frequent air-raid alarms and the Temple School Log Book often mentions that pupils were “in the shelters”. Towards the end of the year, the Headteacher reported that 78% of its pupils were now present and on December 17th, after celebrating the end of term with a Christmas party, the school closed for the Christmas holidays.

The Christmas Blitz The destructive bombing of London late in 1940, known as the “Blitz” (from the German blitzkrieg meaning “lightning war”), was extended to Britain's other major towns and cities at the end of December. It was often commercial centres and residential areas rather than arms factories that were most badly affected. In the summer and autumn there had been scattered and relatively minor attacks in the Manchester and Salford areas but in December 1940 they were hit by two nights of raids. This 'Christmas Blitz' resulted in an estimated 820 civilians being killed and more than 2,000 injured.26 Many children had by now returned home to Manchester and Salford. Alan Woodford had been evacuated from Salford at the start of the war with his younger sister Betty. Like many others, they had come to believe that there was no longer a threat from air-raids.27

After three months we came home, because nothing really seemed to be happening. It was the phoney war at the start. Months later my sister came home for Christmas. It was December 23, 1940, and the timing couldn’t have been worse. I was upstairs doing my homework, the air raid had gone off but we had taken no notice – because sometimes you didn’t. Suddenly there were flames coming through the loft. I ran downstairs shouting to my mother “The house is on fire…” There were bombs dropping everywhere. We were bundled out. Somehow I got separated from my mother and sister. I think I was looking for shrapnel, which we used to collect and swap at school, different shapes and so on… An air raid warden stopped and shouted “what are you doing?” He pushed me into an air raid shelter which was full of people I didn’t know. I was in the shelter for 12 hours listening to bombs dropping all around… When we got back to the house all that was left was a table. All the houses had disappeared. After that we went to stay with an aunt and shortly after that we were rehoused.

22 As early as May 1940 the Government had anticipated that the savage air attacks experienced by towns in other European countries would eventually happen in Britain. In a radio broadcast28, the Minister for Health warned listeners not to ignore the plans to protect the nation’s children. “The risk of bombing is so real that it is right to make as complete as possible now the plans for this evacuation.” The Christmas air- raids persuaded Manchester to renew its offer to have children evacuated to relative safety.29 On December 30th 1940, when the re- opened Temple School was on Christmas holiday, the Headteacher wrote in the school Log Book, “Owing to a bad Air Raid in Manchester the schools re-opened this morning in order to facilitate the registration of children for evacuation.” Miss Elsie Downes was brought back from Belmont to help. The fear for the safety of children had been rekindled and a second evacuation, including 29 children to nearby Harwood, went ahead on 2nd January 1941.

When Belmont School re-opened after the Christmas holiday on 6th January, 1941 it faced a new influx of evacuees. The Log Book records “33 evacuees from Manchester and district admitted, and 3 teachers”. This was a second official evacuation and, as in the case of the first group, the visiting teachers kept a separate pupil register. Although some of the evacuees at this time were from Temple School, it is not certain where precisely the rest of the second large group of official evacuees came from. Local historian Jack Peet in his Souvenir Centenary History of the school suggested that many were “probably from St Philips School in Manchester,” presumably based on a note in the school Log Book for December 1941 recording a visit by “Miss Young, Headmistress of St Philips m/c about the evacuees”.

Belmont’s Private Evacuees The Blitz drove other groups and families to make private arrangements to move children to Belmont. Private evacuations were allowed and supported

23 by the government and tended to make up a higher proportion of evacuee children as the war progressed. Belmont School Admissions Register contains the details of fourteen such children who were formally registered on January 6th, 1941.

The names of another twelve private evacuees were added to the register in the following months. Most were from the Manchester area although pupils from further afield included Doreen and Florence Matthews living in Romford and John Kohorn whose “previous school” is just described in the Register as “Prague.”30 There were also other evacuee children in the village who were too young to register at the school. The picture shows, from left to right, evacuee Roy Jardine with locals Joyce and Doreen Wood.

The two main schools from which these new privately-evacuated children came were Temple School, Manchester (presumably individuals whose parents had chosen not to send them with the original group) and West Liverpool Street Primary School, Salford. No record was kept of the religion of privately-registered pupils but family names such as Moscovitch, Shekeloff and Cohen suggest that many belonged to north Manchester’s Jewish community. The age range of the evacuees was wide. There were several four and five year-olds and one or two twelve and thirteen year-olds (who in other circumstances may have been at secondary school) and all ages in between.

School records of the homes where privately-evacuated children stayed in the village suggest that care was taken to try to keep families and school friends together. Gordon, Roy, Brian and Audrey Blackshaw, who were evacuated from West Liverpool Street School, Salford in May 1941, were all housed in 28 South View. Irene and Brian Shekeloff and Mildred Moscovitch, all from Temple School in Manchester, arrived (or possibly returned if they were in the 1939 cohort from that school) in January 1941 and were housed at number one Ward Street. In September Mildred was joined by her four-year-old sister Phyllis. Higher Fold Farm was home for 12 months from March 1941 for Ronnie, Eric and Marjorie Dodd who had been evacuated from Pendleton in Salford. 24 Where Registered Private Schools from which Private Evacuees stayed Evacuee Children came 2 Deakins Terrace(5) 4 Deakins Terrace Bernay’s Thornton Cleveleys 1 Ward Street (4) St Matthew’s School Stretford 3 Ward Street Derby Street School Manchester 36 High Street (4) Stowell Memorial School Salford 70 High Street West Liverpool St School 77 High Street Salford (3) 91 High Street (2) Broughton High School (2) 96 High Street Pendleton Salford (3) 22 South View Junior School Romford 28 South View (4) Marley School Dagenham (2) 34 South View Grecian St School, Salford 17 Maria Square Stowes Memorial School Salford 31 Maria Square Temple School Manchester (8) Higher Fold Farm (3)

25 The number of pupils attending the school had risen dramatically again after this second influx of evacuees and the Log Book records that on January 10th there was a “visit from HMI Miss Smiley re number of children, accommodation etc.”

Privately-evacuated children joined in with the Belmont pupils. Planning the teaching could not have been easy with new pupils arriving every month and others leaving whenever parents decided it was safe to return home. Only fifteen of the private evacuee children stayed for twelve months or more, although Esther and Israel Cohen from Broughton, who were accommodated at 36 High Street, stayed for three years. Their sister Malka, who was nearly twelve when she arrived with the evacuees, stayed until April 1941 when she left to go to Bolton School. Many other children were present for just a few weeks.

Returning Home For people living in Manchester and Salford, the horrors of the 1940 Christmas Blitz were followed by more attacks early in the New Year, re- inforcing the need to move or return children to safety.

But air-raids soon became infrequent. There was a devastating attack in the early hours of Whit Monday, June 2nd 1941, and two others in October (which hit mainly the outskirts of Manchester, including Bolton) but apart from a short flurry in July 1942, air activity over Manchester ceased for the next two-and-a-half years. Many evacuee children began to move back to their homes where blackout restrictions were eventually reduced to “dimout” and gas streetlights re-lit. And although the Manchester area was unexpectedly attacked over Christmas 1944 by V1 flying bombs, killing more than 20 people, life had become more relaxed and services, including education, were returning to normal.

Although many of the Manchester and Salford evacuees returned to their homes early in the war, those who arrived later, or from further away, were less likely to leave. Turton Urban District received many evacuees from as far away as London. In September 1944 the local WVS remarked in their monthly report to HQ that only a small number of these London evacuees had gone home. “They all seem to have settled in very comfortably and are in no hurry to return.” The WVS was still running two clubs for evacuees in Eagley and Turton Village and in December they held a Grand Christmas Party for all of them. “Only a few who were ill did not come in spite of the 26 dreadful Weather; an excellent and enjoyable time was had by all.”

No detailed records were kept by Belmont School of the period the official evacuee groups remained in the village but the Log Book records that on 23rd and 31st October 1941 “official evacuees” Kenneth Marsh and Raymond Blower respectively “returned to Manchester”.

Neither is it clear how long the teachers who came with the groups of evacuees remained in school. Miss Downes appears to have moved frequently between Manchester and Belmont and then, on November 1st 1940, she was transferred to Walmsley, one of the other schools in the Turton district used by the original Temple School evacuees. When a member of the permanent Belmont School staff resigned in December 1941 the Log Book records that her class was taken over by Miss Coe, “a Manchester evacuated teacher” and her own group of children split up. On December 19th 1941 the Head noted, “Miss P. M. Coe, the Manchester evacuated teacher, terminates her work here and returns to Manchester.”

The final entry in Belmont school Log Book concerning the Manchester official evacuees was written on 4th December 1944 and reads, “Lilly White (evacuee) returned to Manchester today. There are now no Manchester children left in the school.”

Eleven days after Lilly’s return, private evacuee Doris Harwood went back to London. But it wasn’t until 1945 that the final private evacuees left the school. Esther and Israel Cohen returned to Salford on 9th February and Rose Baker to London on February 23rd, the Log Book entry for that day noting “There are now no evacuees in attendance.”

Throughout the war years the Government had actively discouraged evacuees from going back home but in April 1945 timetables and arrangements were being made for their return. Nearly 3,000,000 had been displaced and by August, 76,000 children still remained in reception areas. March 1946 marked the official end of the civilian evacuation and yet 5,200 evacuees still remained in their wartime billets.31

It is impossible to know how easily the Belmont evacuee children settled back into their home towns and schools. Those returning early may have found their school buildings being used for other government purposes. Others from bombed areas faced the possibility of having no home or school to return to. For Agnes Platt, a kind of itinerant evacuee from Manchester 27 to Belmont, the uncertainty of returning home was a daily one.32

My Dad was a lorry driver for Stott's Motors in Higher Broughton. The manager thought it better if the drivers took the vehicles home at night in case the depot was bombed. Usually after tea we would all get into the back of Dad's lorry with the blankets, eiderdowns, a couple of suitcases and off we went. Our destination was Belmont near Bolton. We went to the Weight (Wrights?) Arms, a public house that opened its doors to anyone who wanted refuge from the blitz. It was a great adventure for me jogging along in Dad's lorry and sleeping on the floor of a pub! We could hear the German bombers going over to Liverpool and Manchester. As they crossed the Pennines, the anti- aircraft guns would open fire to try to stop them. Some people would shout "give itto 'em lads". Thankfully our house, 6 Albert Street, was still standing and not damaged whenever we returned.

Most evacuees living in Belmont were near enough to Manchester or Salford to have visited, or had visits from, family members but they still must have found the cultural and social impact of being away from home and friends a life-changing experience.33 Even when practical matters went well, many children were placed in homes where the culture was quite different from home. Some testify to this being a positive and enhancing experience. For others it was quite traumatic and left them scarred. Margaret Lambie, on hearing about our project, wrote to the school about being evacuated from Broughton to nearby Egerton. She was separated from her brother and sisters and told us, “the whole experience ruined our family”.

Fifty years after Operation Pied Piper, Ben Wicks produced the first collection of evacuee experiences to be published. Many contributors wrote positively about being with caring hosts and enjoying a creative time in their young lives. Others spoke of experiencing deep sadness and even prejudice and awful abuse34. Billeting Inspectors had been issued with forms to complete for each household but although the form included questions about the fitness of the property and provided a section for general comments, no detailed assessment was made of the suitability of the hosts. For some evacuees, the return home was equally traumatic.

28 3 School must go on

During the war years, Belmont School’s Log Book reveals an intriguing blend of normality and disruption in school. Compared to the experience of Temple School in north Manchester, where in 1940 and 1941 three major air-raids disrupted school life, Belmont village children and evacuees alike had a much quieter time. The dentist was in school to inspect all the children’s teeth and doctors paid regular visits to check their general health. On one occasion this was in response to a “diphtheria scare”. Fortunately the fears were proved groundless and several days later the test results from swabs taken by the doctor were reported in the Log Book as negative.

At least once a month the parish priest and School Manager (equivalent to a Governor today), Reverend William Thwaites, called in and recorded in a neat hand in the Log Book that he had “listened to opening prayers etc and Scripture lessons in the classes,” and checked the school registers for attendance. School Inspectors visited, police gave their regular talks on road safety (it was an issue even then!) and the Horticultural Organiser, PT Organiser, Temperance Teaching Scheme lecturer, Domestic Science Organiser (“to see the girls at cookery”) all came as usual. And when in February 1940 some typically bad Belmont winter weather arrived it must have seemed like any other year. The Log Book reads “Deep snow and drifts. Very poor attendance. Buses not running. Received permission to close school in the afternoon.” According to His Majesty’s Inspectors, who had visited and reported on the school in 1938, Mr Hill was an able Headteacher who directed the school in a “thorough and capable manner.” He would have guided the school well through the early years of the war. In fact, serious disruptions were more often due to weather or health problems than the war itself. In March 1944, for example, attendance was down to 61% due to outbreaks of chicken pox and German measles in the village.

The war did cause some disruption to the school’s holiday pattern. In 1940 it had planned to close for its usual two-day Whitsuntide break in May but this was reduced to one day because “of National Emergency and by order”. In the same year, the planned June summer holiday was cancelled altogether “because of the war”. The school eventually took its holiday at the end of July.

29 And even though Belmont was well away from the big towns and cities, and not really at risk from bombing, an air-raid warning system was introduced to the village. In August 1940 the Log Book records that the school didn’t open until 9.45am (“as instructed”) on two days because air-raid alarms had gone off in the early hours of the morning. Starting school at a later time after such events became the pattern and from October the school changed its permanent winter starting time to 9.30am “irrespective of whether there is an alert or not.” In 1942, the school hours were adapted again so that during the dark months of November through to January the school day didn’t begin until 9.30am because of the war blackout requirements.

Air-raid alarms sometimes sounded during the day and disrupted teaching. A planned road safety talk by the police in January 1941 had to be postponed “because of alert”. The school was well-prepared for the possibility of attacks during the day and children were drilled in what to do.

On November 1st 1939 the Headteacher was able to report that an inspection had taken place of the school’s “nearly completed” air-raid shelters.

A reconstructed photograph showing how the shelters probably looked. According to local recollections the shelters were of simple brick construction with two rows of slatted seats and a concrete bench for children to sit on. There was no electricity installed and during drills candles were used. At the time, the playground was divided by a brick wall into two areas, one for boys and the other for girls. Separate shelters were therefore constructed for boys and girls in their own sections of the playground. Local girl Nancy Taylor remembers having air-raid drills in school and has vivid recollections of the bare brick air-raid shelter in the girls’ playground. “It was dark and damp and smelled. There were forms arranged to sit on but 30 no lights.” At home, Nancy’s family didn’t have a shelter but would hide under the table. They knew there was a shelter of some kind in the nearby bleach works but never went to it.

From the beginning of the war, children were expected to carry gas masks (probably manufactured in nearby Blackburn) at all times in case bombs containing poisonous gas were dropped.1 In June 1943 the Headteacher recorded that “Mr W Farnworth, air-raid warden, examined all the children’s gas masks and is seeing to any replacements and wrong sizes” and on 9th February 1944 the Log Book records that the air-raid wardens inspected the children’s respirators again. Ex-pupil Nancy Taylor recalls that at first the children had their gas masks with them at all times but as time went on they tended to bring them only when an air-raid practice had been arranged. In 1941, “anti-splinter netting” was attached to all school windows and not removed until October 1944.

Despite the precautions taken by the school, some parents clearly preferred to have their children at home if there was any chance of a raid. In September 1940 the Log Book reports “during playtime an air warning sounded. Mrs Ainsworth forced herself into the school and took 2 children home without permission, as we were getting them to their places under cover. She had previously kept them at home for the morning when the school opened at 9.45am.” And two days later, “Mrs J Speak took her 3 children home during air raid alarm without permission. They came back when ‘all clear’ sounded.”

As the war continued the pupils did their bit to back Britain. In October 1941 the school won first prize in the Turton Council’s salvage drive to collect the most newspapers. The Log Book records that they managed to gather an average of 123.59 pounds (56 kilos) per head, and proudly points out that the school which came second, Hob Lane, only managed 70lbs per head. In addition, Belmont sent three lorry loads of scrap iron, probably including the original school railings. Appropriately, the following month the school received a deputation, including the Chairman of Turton UDC, to present the children with a trophy of an inscribed barometer when “an interesting ceremony was performed and the children sang songs.” 31 Nancy Taylor remembers not only collecting paper for the war effort as a child but also gathering pieces of chaff dropped by enemy aircraft. “We used to go up on Rabbit Warren to look for tinfoil (chaff) which was used by the air people after the development of RADAR as a decoy”. All kinds of waste was collected in the war years and in one case it led to a novel pastime for the children. Nancy recalls that at the top of Maria Square there were bins for collecting household scraps where “we used to lift the lids so we could watch the maggots!” It is perhaps not surprising that in April 1944, Police Sergeant Taylor and Lt. Whittle of the Home Guard were in school to speak to the children on “Safety First and the Danger of Handling Unknown Objects”.

The children also raised money for other war causes. Perhaps, with modern medical understanding, the Headteacher’s note for May 27 1943, “sent 25/- subscribed by children to Overseas Tobacco Fund, London as our Empire Day Effort to provide cigarettes for soldiers, sailors and airman,” might seem a little less praiseworthy!

It is difficult to imagine what continuing impacts the war had on school life but we do know that at Easter 1943 it was decided to replace woodwork with cardboard modelling “because of the shortage of boys and the difficulty of getting wood.”

As the war started to draw to a close the school shared in the growing mood of pride and optimism. By now, all the evacuees had left the school which was back to the more manageable number of 75 pupils. They took a day off on March 8th 1945 for the visit of the King and Queen to Lancashire. And when peace eventually came, the school celebrated by closing on May 8th 1945 for two days for Victory in Europe and for two days again on August 15th “for the National V. J. holiday.”

Over the war years almost 150 evacuee children spent some time in the village school. As with the initial Operation Pied Piper, it is difficult to assess how effective the continuing evacuation of children was. Nearly one- and-a-half thousand civilians were killed in Manchester during the main period of bombing in 1940 and 1941. Of these, 184 were children below the age of 14. If all had gone exactly to plan, these children would certainly have been living safely outside the city.2

32 4 Stories from the War Years We know little about the names and backgrounds of the original group of children who came from Temple School because no records were kept in Belmont. A limited amount of information can be found in the 1939 National Register, though the entries for most evacuee children have been redacted. The details of later private evacuees are included in the school Admissions Register and it has been possible, in some cases, to discover more about their lives. In this next section we share the stories of some of the children who spent time as evacuees in Belmont during the war years or who were living here as young villagers.

It is clear from these few accounts that, despite the careful planning and goodwill of hosts in reception areas, the experience of individual evacuees varied enormously. It would be easy, like some of the contemporary newspaper reports, to romanticise the events. In truth, like so much of what occurred during the war years, it was often a matter of ordinary people trying to find ways to mitigate the impact of unimaginable and horrific circumstances in order to help each other to survive. It is good to know that the people of Belmont played some part in this.

A Land Mine destroyed our School Doris Breeton lived with her parents Leonard and Ada in South Ann Street, Salford. She attended Stowell Memorial School situated in School Street and closely linked to the famous Stowell Memorial Church on Eccles New Road, built by public subscription in 1867 to honour the life and work of The Reverend Canon Hugh Stowell. She arrived at Belmont school as a private evacuee on January 6th, 1941 having just celebrated her 12th birthday on Christmas Day in the middle of the Salford “Christmas Blitz”.

A pupil from nearby Trafford Road School, writing 75 years later in the Salford Lifetime Links magazine, recalls,

“After Christmas we found that our school had not been hit by the night raids but a neighbouring school, the Stowell Memorial School was destroyed when a landmine exploded. Pupils from there joined us at Trafford Road School. Sitting down on the first day back after Christmas, one of the new boys from Stowell Memorial sat beside me. He told me he 33 had gone to look at his school and the only thing that was left was a big crater.”

Another pupil from Stowell Memorial School, Frank Lomas, who was evacuated to Wheelton near Chorley, remembered, “Explosions went out because a land mine fell on the school. In the morning we saw an enormous crater in its place. As children, we were obviously happy because this meant there would be no lessons for some time. This was Stowell Memorial School, which was situated in School Street.”

In fact, the girls’ department of the school had been destroyed completely and the boys’ department badly damaged. Many people died in the Stowell School area during the raid.1

Billeted in Belmont Perhaps in the light of this enemy action, Doris’ parents felt that moving their daughter to the nearby Trafford Road School was still a bit of a risk so brought her to Belmont and enrolled her as a private evacuee. She lived here at 2 Deakins Terrace, the home of retired cotton dyer Thomas Ainsworth and his wife Emily, and their two grown-up children. She only stayed for two weeks, then the School Log Book reports that she returned to Salford.

Eleven-year-old Barbara Walmsley also attended Stowell Memorial School and was registered at Belmont school on the same day as Doris. She stayed at 34 South View with Dennis and Annie Ainsworth and their two school- age children. They had already billeted Jean Cockshoot and her sister, evacuees with the original Temple School group. Barbara returned even earlier than Doris, after only 3 days.

Records show that Doris Breeton survived the war and married local Salford boy Eric Price in 1950. The ceremony took place in Stowell Memorial Church which, unlike the school, had been able to survive the blitz - though not the early 1980s road network development around Salford which left just the tower standing. It remains there today at the start of the M602 motorway as a memorial to the church’s impressive history.

34 A Fine Romance

In September 1956, in nearby Horwich, Bolton-born 32 year-old Victor Hornby married Florence Matthews. Florence, seven years his junior, was also born in Bolton, although at the outbreak of the war she was living with her family in Romford. Victor met Florence when she and her sister Doreen were sent to Belmont as private evacuees from Romford in September 1939. Romford was identified as a vulnerable area during the war, although the formal evacuation of children did not take place until 1944. So, like many other parents in such areas, the Matthews must have decided to evacuate Florence and her sister Doreen privately.

Florence’s mother, whose maiden name was Lee, had very close links with Belmont through her family, so it was an obvious safe place to choose. Victor Hornby’s family also had links with the village, especially through the Congregational Church. The Rev Joseph Hornby had been the first minister of Bethel Chapel which was built on the east side of Belmont’s High Street in the 19th century. When it was replaced by the new Congregational church on the opposite side of the road he became the minister.

Victor Hornby’s family lived in the village during the war, first at 33 High Street then later at 3 Ward Street. When the Matthews girls first registered at Belmont Primary School, Victor had already left, having reached the age of fourteen the year before Florence and Doreen arrived. But Victor’s eight- year-old sister, Olga, was still at school and one of Florence’s classmates.

Florence and her sister, like many evacuee children, had a disrupted education, moving back home to the Romford area twice, only to return to Belmont School when the situation in Romford became more dangerous. They finally left the village in October 1940 but no doubt had got to know the Hornby children well during their visits here, possibly even staying with them early in 1940. How this eventually led to the marriage of Florence and Victor is not known but it seems very likely that the first steps towards their married life together can be traced back to Florence being evacuated to Belmont in 1939.

35 From an Art Deco Apartment to a Victorian Terraced House

Jean Cockshoot was eight years old and in the Junior section of Temple School when the order to evacuate was given in September 1939. Her sister Joyce was in the Infants section and, as the policy when children of different ages in the same family were evacuated was to keep them together, Jean joined the group from Temple Infant School which came to Belmont. She must have missed the company of her school friends but at least she had her younger sister with her. The girls were billeted with Dennis Ainsworth, who is described in the 1939 Register as a “Stenter,” working in the cloth- stretching process at the bleach works, and his wife, at 34 South View.

When Jean was born on 24th July 1931 the family was living in Collyhurst one of the more run-down areas of North Manchester. In the 1930s, as part of a national scheme of slum clearance, the area was designated for demolition. Manchester Council decided to clear as many as possible of these poor back-to-back terraced houses and move the families into modern multi-storey blocks of council flats. Although these new high-rise buildings eventually proved to be inappropriate and many of them were knocked down in the 1960s and 70s, at the time they were state-of-the-art and their designs were often groundbreaking.

In the Cheetham Hill area, not far from Temple School, a piece of land was given over to the building of Kennet House. This huge block of 180 flats, popularly known as Queen Mary or “the ship”, had its own community hall, laundry and office to pay your rent and report any repairs. There was a lawned area and there was even the possibility of families having their own allotment. It was a very striking Art Deco design by Bolton-born architect and First World War hero Leonard Heywood, opened in 1935. With a green- grocers, hardware shop, 36 newsagents, butchers, a youth club and even its own church, the estate was seen as its own self-contained community. When their house in Collyhurst was selected for demolition, the Cockshoot family were offered flat number 41 Kennet House and the family went to live there.

We don’t know how the girls felt about moving out as evacuees but after five years living in their highly sought-after modern and spacious flat, with its light and airy rooms, inside bathroom and modern plumbing, the living conditions of their temporary Victorian home on South View must have seemed very cramped and old-fashioned, and the village quite quaint compared to their grand, modern building close to the lively Cheetham Hill Road.

Jean returned to Manchester and Temple School at some point later during the war and remained there until the end of the school year 1942, when she moved on to St. Malachy’s Roman Catholic school to continue her education. She survived the war and eventually died in 2005 aged 74. The flats were demolished in 1979.

37 In Search of America.

Three of the evacuees who found temporary refuge in Belmont were Irene, Brian and Delyse Shekeloff, children of Myer and Beatrice, both from Jewish immigrant families.

In the 1930s, Cheetham Hill was a complex community of many cultures and nationalities. Jewish migrants in particular had found a home there, many after arriving in Britain on route from Europe to America but settling instead in cities like Manchester.

The children’s maternal grandfather, Bernard Belerab, came from the Russian town of Crakinova, now part of Lithuania, where he was born in 1892. It was a poor district where the Jewish community was often oppressed. To escape, Bernard had followed the route taken by many Russian Jewish migrants to Britain, arriving on the East coast of England, probably intending to cross the country and take a ship from Liverpool for the USA or Canada. Like others he did not complete the journey and eventually settled in Yorkshire. By 1911 he was living in Sheffield, safe from the expulsion of Jews from his home town and its destruction by the Russians in 1915. He describes himself as a glazier and clothes dealer and was living with his wife Silva and their 4-year- old daughter Beatrice. In 1913 he committed himself to a life in Britain by becoming a naturalised British citizen, swearing allegiance to the crown and settling down to develop his clothing business in Button Lane, Sheffield.

Their daughter Beatrice was married in Manchester to Myer Shekeloff in the summer of 1928. Myer’s father, Isaac, was a cabinet-maker working from 89 Pimblett Street in Cheetham Hill. Isaac’s parents had also been refugees, from the Jewish settlement of Navaran in Lithuania. When his father died in 1931, Myer continued in his father’s tradition of cabinet-making. He and 38 Beatrice had a son Brian, and two daughters, Irene and Delyse. The two older children were at Temple School when war broke out. It is not clear if they were among the children who arrived in Belmont with the first official group of evacuees but after the terrifying Christmas Blitz in Manchester the children were privately evacuated, or re-evacuated, to the village. Irene and Brian were registered in the school on Jan 6th 1941 and billeted at 1 Ward Street. Irene was just seven years old and Brian two years younger. Delyse was registered in September when she was old enough to attend school and stayed, perhaps with her mother, at 31 Maria Square. They remained safe in the village until the end of the year when they returned home until the war was over.

It is likely that the children had been told many stories by their parents about their family’s long history of moving on and making new beginnings. If so, it wouldn’t have been much of a surprise to them when, after the war, their parents announced that they were going to follow the family pattern and set out for somewhere new – this time America. On 22nd May 1948 the whole family, along with 1500 other passengers, boarded the Cunard White Star shipping company’s ship Britannica for her first post-War sailing from Liverpool to New York. They arrived safely after 5 days and set off for their final destination of Denver, Colorado.

The family settled into life in America and Brian started to explore his love of the arts. In fact, he went on to become a highly influential expert in art and anthropology, especially in Japanese folk art for which, until his death in 2014, he was an international authority. But he always remembered his days living in the north of England and the day they set off for America when he was just 13 years old.2

39 From Farmyard to Academia

Gerald Margolis was a six-year-old Jewish boy living in the Jewish Quarter of Cheetham Hill and a pupil at Temple School when it moved its pupils to Belmont in 1939. This is his own account of the experience.

“With war came evacuation. In September 1939, city children became ‘evacuees’ and were sent to the country to save us from air raids – each with a gas mask and a name label. Children from my school were sent to farms around Belmont – not too far from Manchester. But my evacuation lasted only a week – though it was a wonderful week. I was billeted with my best friend Harold Harris in the charge of an elderly, kind but ineffectual farming couple with no children, Mr and Mrs Reece.

The Reece’s farm was a boyhood paradise. We were introduced to a whole range of new knowledge and experiences – finding that milk for instance, came from cows. And the Reeces, who had never had children of their own, with kindness, and completely out of their depth, fed us every day on hoarded tinned fruit – a rare luxury – and, as an added bonus, did not require us to wash. We mucked out the pigs and were taught how to milk the cows.

But then my Auntie Dora, who had somehow wrangled a job with a car and petrol, came to see how I was getting on. She found me covered in pig dung with Harold alongside trying to milk a cow. She needed only to glance at our filthy clothes and happy unwashed faces to be appalled. She stormed at the Reeces and I was snatched up and brought home. Then she contacted the Harris’s who arranged a similar rescue for Harold. Mam, who had been doubtful about evacuation from the start, pronounced: ‘If we’re going to die, then we’ll all die together.’”

Gerald’s family later moved to Blackpool when he was a young teenager. They changed their name to Mars and opened a boarding house. Gerald continued his education, then went on to study Anthropology at University. He eventually became a distinguished University professor and author, often drawing on his contrasting community experiences as a child in his work. It was in an introduction to one of his books on Anthropology that he described his short stay in Belmont.3

40 A Note from New Zealand

When Margaret Lambie (nee Mammen) read about the Belmont School Evacuees Project in her copy of the British Evacuee Association Newsletter she wrote from New Zealand where she has lived for 59 years.

I was sent from Manchester to Egerton after the Christmas Blitz of 1940. The whole experience ruined our family. We were split up and didn't see each other for many months and in the case of my big sister, for years. My sister, Rosemary, was six years older than me. She was sent to Cleveleys where she stayed for nearly five years. We had little contact during that time. She had at least two moves and didn’t find the experience a happy one. John, the next eldest, went to Fleetwood which he enjoyed. Peter and I were sent to Egerton. The husband was in the RAF, stationed at Blackpool. We visited him there and I saw the sea for the first time.

I lived in Egerton for nearly two years. I went back home to Manchester for Christmas and my mother found I had nits in my waist length hair. She was horrified and wouldn’t let me return, preferring me to dodge bombs rather than have head lice! My time there was happy and Mrs Sankey was kind. She gave me a doll with beautiful clothes that she had made. I loved it and called it Jill.

My brother, Peter, had a dreadful couple of weeks when he was billeted with an old couple. He had to share a bed with the man who wet the bed. His teacher found out and so he was moved to live with Mrs Kay. She was lovely and took great care of him. We met each other occasionally in the village or at school and I was always closest to him in later life. I recall that Belmont was nearby but as a seven year old did not know just where. I remember there was a reservoir called The Belmont Lodge. I learnt to skim stones on one of the reservoirs and we had great competitions after school. The skimming skill hasn’t left me and I still enjoy challenging people. I think my best is seven but I am sure many people have beaten that over the years. I think we shared the school with the local children so every day was a half day. I’m sure the pupils would love that!

So memories of being evacuated are very varied and it’s lovely to share them. It was so long ago but they are still very real for me. I am delighted that the children of Belmont are researching the evacuation.

41 Adventures of a Five-Year-Old Evacuee

Les Croft was five years old when he was evacuated with his seven year-old sister Greta from Cheetham Hill to Belmont with the Temple School group in 1939. They were placed with a family in Belmont but it turned out to be an unhappy experience. Although some family members were kind to them they felt unfairly treated by the mother. When their own mother discovered this during a visit, she quickly took them back to Manchester. Les contacted us from Canada, where he now lives, to tell us what happened next.

I’m not sure how long we were at Belmont before my mother brought us home but we were in Manchester during quite a bit of the bombing. There was a second evacuation from Temple School to Harwood in 1941 so we must have gone then. I remember the lady with whom we were placed in Harwood as being extremely kind and affectionate but we were not with her long as she went to help the war effort, working in a munitions factory.

So we were sent to Mr & Mrs Gregson, a kindly elderly couple who lived in a lovely house called “Raven Wood”. We were right next to a farm. They had a very nice cook and maid who joked with us a lot. Sometimes when we got fish and parsley sauce, which we both hated, I waited for the cook to go away and snook out and tipped it over the fence on to the farmer's field!

Down the road was a tourist spot called the Jumbles with a lovely stream where we spent many happy hours picking and eating black-berries. Wonderful memories spring to mind of rabbits, pretty birds and squirrels. I was too young to know fear – it was lovely to be a child in those days. I found lots of friendly playmates. Some of the first words they said to us were “eeh don’t thee talk posh”. By the time we came home, we had broad Lancashire accents! I was not a bad child but I did possess a bit of a temper, mainly expressed in brother and sister squabbles. My sister was just trying to look after me and I did not like being told what to do. So I threw tantrums. Once on the way to school I threw one in the middle of the road. I threw my gas mask on the floor and held up the traffic. I was too much for the nice elderly couple. We were separated and sent to different houses. I lived with the Harrison family in Ruins Lane where I was well-treated. There were lots of nice places to play. But I soon became a problem again. When they sat 42 down to dinner I was sent up to bed as I was younger. I don’t think I was scared of the dark before but I was imagining all sorts of things so I would jump out of bed, stamp my feet for attention then pretend to be asleep. One night the door opened and in came Mrs Harrison. Apparently, I had scared the whole household out of their wits - and I was on the move again.

This time I was put with the Barlow Family in Church Street, just behind Leagate Lane where my sister was staying. It was a pretty stone walled cottage with beautiful white swans on the pond behind us. Across the road was a quaint English pub called “House Without a Name”. I was happy there but Greta started having trouble with an older girl in her home. She ran away and somehow got back to Manchester, and I was alone.

The family took me for my first-ever holiday to Blackpool. When we returned I was tucked into bed with some night treats. They were so kind and always kissed me goodnight. But I started to pine for my sister Greta. So I got out of bed, dressed myself and set off walking to Manchester. On the way I was hungry and stopped a man and woman to ask for money. Les with his Mum on a visit They gave me some coppers but I think they to Blackpool after the war. recognized me as an evacuee and knew the people I was staying with. It was close to 10pm when I was approached by a policeman. He knelt down and said, “Where do you think you're going at this time of the night my young man?” I said, “I’m going to Manchester” and he said, “Come on I’ll take you to Manchester”. I thought, what a nice man. He took me to the police station and stood me on a chair to get details from me! They put me on a bus or a tramcar and gave instructions to the driver where to put me off. I was brought back home just in time to go back to Temple School where I was greeted by teacher Miss Vitovsky. These people must have been so distraught. I was not their child but they treated me as such. I went to see them a couple of years later when I understood what I had done and they were pleased to see me.”

Les and his family survived the war and later he emigrated to Canada where he now lives as a very active and supportive member of his community. 43 War Refugees

Johann Kohorn registered at Belmont School in 1940. His family had just moved into Hordern Cottage on Rivington Road. His brother Ernst was eleven and too old for the primary school so joined Bolton School.

The brothers, known now by the English form of their names ‘John’ and ‘Ernest’, weren’t evacuees but members of a Jewish refugee family from the German-speaking Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. In 1938 Germany annexed Bohemia forcing the Kohorns to escape to Prague where John continued his early-years education. Germany then invaded Czechoslovakia. At the time, John’s father, Leo, was in Britain looking for work and for sponsors to enable the family to join him. Having been warned in a telegram from his wife Hilda he stayed here and arranged safe passage for her and their two sons to Britain.

John’s father was an entrepreneur and before long he was running his own book-cloth company at the bleach works in Belmont.4 The business flourished but at the end of the war the owners of the building required the space and Leo Kohorn moved his business to Deakin’s Bleach and Dye works at Egerton. Here, too, he was very successful and eventually became a Director of Deakin’s Ltd. In the meantime, the family moved to Blackburn Road and John continued his education, eventually joining his brother Ernest at Bolton School.

Ernest, despite his disrupted childhood, distinguished himself in academic work and went on to Cambridge University, eventually becoming a surgeon and a professor at the prodigious Yale University in the USA. John and Ernest with their mother Hilda Ernest wrote to Belmont School pupils from the USA in February 2018, “We lived in Hordern Cottage, right opposite the Church of England and the cemetery there in Belmont while the owner was on military service. I well remember the winter of 1940 when there were several feet of snow and my brother and I dug a path down to the main road. We spoke Czech still but have now both forgotten this language completely!” 44 John was at Bolton school from 1942 to 1951 and then Salford University and followed his father as manager of the factory. Kohorn Bookcloth made the coverings for Oxford Bibles and the early Phaidon Art Books throughout the 1950s. With John’s arrival it gradually turned to the manufacture of plastic-coated cloth and later John established a new factory in Horwich manufacturing PVC coated fabrics. He was also very interested in sport and a keen footballer at school. Later he had close links John aged 17 in his Bolton School with Bolton Wanderers FC. football strip.

In 2018 John visited Belmont Primary School to tell his fascinating story to the pupils.

My father came to Belmont because there was a big bleaching and dyeing works here. We shared our rented cottage with another family – all we had was what fitted into our suitcases.

We were very lucky to get here. My mother had to queue every day for 6 months at the Czech embassy from 8 to 5 o’clock to try to get visas but it was very difficult. Without a visa we couldn’t come to England. She managed to get the visas on the 23 August 1939 and we left the next day by train from Prague station with 7 or 8 suitcases. We went through Germany, then through Poland and managed to get to Holland, all by train. We weren’t stopped because we had visas which meant you had the right to leave the country. We got to the Hook of Holland and got a boat and sailed to England and we arrived there just a week before World War 2 started. Once war was declared there were no trains from Prague or anywhere else to England.

When I came to Belmont I couldn’t speak a word of English. I got very upset. I went to my bedroom and closed the door and locked it and cried. My father couldn’t speak a word of English either. He had studied at Vienna University and was a Doctor of Philosophy. He didn’t know anything about bleaching, dyeing and finishing, but he learnt about it from his uncles who had big works in Czechoslovakia. When he came here there was no one to run Belmont Bleaching & Dyeing works, which had something like 90 or 100 45 people. So he took over the works and ran it for the whole of the 5 or 6 years that World War 2 took place. He used to produce extra things like blackout blinds and other things that were useful in the war.

When I lived in Sudetenland I first spoke German. Then I had to go to school in Prague when I was aged 6 and couldn’t speak Czech so they all thought that I was not very good but it was because I couldn’t speak Czech! But I did learn it in about 6 months.

I was only at Belmont School for about 5 months and I couldn’t speak any English so it was very difficult for me. I can remember there was a Sunday School where I was being taught English. This was now my third language! They decided they would have a Sunday School concert. A lady took me in hand and she taught me how say the poem “Little Boy Blue”. They put me in a blue uniform. I was just about 8 and they pushed me onto the stage and I gave them an audition. I can still remember the very happy moment when I managed to do it.

We moved from Belmont in June 1940. The snow was very high that winter. Belmont was completely cut off from Bolton. There were no buses or cars and we somehow had to survive. But there were shops in Belmont in 1940. It was the highest and most snow I have ever seen.

I went on to study textile chemistry. I wasn’t a brilliant academic but I set up a business in Horwich. There was nothing there but an old weaving shed - no electricity, no gas, no nothing. We built our own machines and we made coated fabrics, Nylon and polyester coated with PVC which made it very strong and waterproof. Now all the bouncy castles have this material. We used to make tens of thousands of metres every week.

It was a terrible war and we were so happy to come to Belmont and Bolton. And I can say I have been 100% a Boltonian for the last 80 years! And I have been very, very lucky to come to such a lovely place where people are kind and helpful and affectionate and they made me feel good so I am always very, very grateful to the people of Lancashire who took me in and made my life happy. 46 Growing up during the War

Gordon Hurst was born in Belmont in April 1940. He lived with his parents and brother Keith at 36 South View. In 2017 he visited Belmont Primary School to share his memories of growing up in the village.

When Gordon lived in South View there were no gardens behind the houses. “It was just common land behind but my father, who liked gardening at weekends, fenced off a bit of the common land behind our house. Seven years later he was told by the legal people that he would have to pay ground rent on it! We used to grow things, and at the top we had some chickens”.

Gordon joined the village school on 11th September 1944. “The school was much smaller then. There was just a main block with a girls’ entrance and a boys’ entrance with a big hall in-between. There were some smaller buildings where we ate our dinner which was cooked for us by ladies from the village. There was a playground. Boys were on one side and girls on the other. There was a wall across the middle of the playground. The boys couldn’t get to the girls’ side or the girls to the boys’ side. The only time we 47 climbed over the wall was at night. The school gates were never locked so if we were playing football and the ball went over the other side we would climb over and get it.”

There was an air-raid shelter but I didn’t go in when I was at school. When I was seven or eight years old I used to go in after school. But they bricked it up. It was bare brick, it was dark. There was no electricity in it. They used to use candles. There were slotted benches round the sides to sit on. We practised going out to the shelter but it didn’t mean a lot to me. It was just something you did.”

Gordon still remembers the food shortages. “I had a Ration book. It allocated what food you could have. There were also clothing books. The lucky ones like us had hens so they didn’t have to use their ration book to get eggs. There were certain foods you couldn’t get because the war was on. And for years after the war as well.

I remember having a gasmask but I never wore one. It was in a box in the house. My father took it out and put it on but I never wore it. I also remember we used to have a mat which 5 they gave us in the afternoon and we used to go Ration Book for 1953 to sleep in our classrooms.”

The Evacuees Gordon doesn’t remember a lot about the evacuees. “My brother Keith says that we had two boys staying in with us. I can’t remember their names - I was only four years old! But I remember my father saying to me that the boy in the house next door was an evacuee. I can remember that all the children who came from Manchester were meant to go back but we did wonder if they would be able to. Their houses may not be there because of the bombing. That they might have to stay was something which went through your mind.” He does remember that when the war finished there were many celebrations in the village. “There were a lot of people dancing in the street and there were cups of tea and cakes!”

48 Recalling the Evacuees

Eileen Edwards (nee Farnworth) was living as a child in Maria Square during the war. She remembers the evacuees arriving in two single-decker buses. When they were brought out of the coaches they were very disappointed. “They looked lost and frightened because when they had asked where they were going to be taken to they were simply told “to Belmont”. But no one knew exactly where the village was and the children were told it was near to Blackpool, so when they arrived they were looking for the seaside! Where’s the sand? But I am sure that after a few weeks of being in this area and away from Manchester they were fine.”

Eileen recalls that there was a boy and a girl who came to stay briefly in their home because the people they had been allocated to were not available when they first arrived in the Square. They all sat down to a meal and on the table were salt and pepper in saucers with a spoon - but the children hadn’t seen this at home. They didn’t know what salt and pepper were.

In the afternoon they were allowed to play outside. They went in the gardens in Maria Square and were looking at the flowers. They had never seen anything like that in Manchester.

Although there were many air-raid warnings in the village Eileen only remembers just one explosion. This was not in the village but in the Stones Bank area and probably due to a German bomber off-loading bombs as it returned home. There were two large craters made by the bombs.

Eileen also remembers meeting evacuee Lilly White. Lilly was born in November 1932 and attended Temple School. She was among the evacuees who came in January 1941 after the Manchester Blitz and was billeted at 7 Lake View with Tom Lawrence, worker at the local Bleach Works, and his wife, WVS volunteer, Edith. Lilly kept in touch with the Lawrence family and returned to Belmont for Edith’s funeral.

49 A Friend for Life

Nancy Taylor (nee Whittle) was born in Belmont in 1934. Her family lived in a rented house on Belmont High Street. When she was approaching five years of age the family moved from High Street to Ornamental Cottages, just beyond Belmont Bleach Works and on the road to Egerton.

At the same time, Esther Cohen was living in the Broughton district of Salford. Soon after the Christmas blitz of 1940 the Cohen children came with their mother as evacuees from Broughton to Belmont and moved into the house in High Street vacated by the Whittles. Malka (aged ten and a half), Esther (aged six and a half) and Israel (just turning five) registered at Belmont School on 6th January 1941. Malka moved on to Bolton School in the April. Esther and Israel remained at Belmont school until the December when they returned to Salford but were back in Belmont in March 1942 and remained here until February 1945.

Nancy remembers getting to know Esther soon after her arrival. They became “best friends” and remained so for years. Long after Esther returned with her family to Salford they regularly wrote to each other (“nothing special; just the usual rubbish!”).

When Esther was in Belmont they would walk home from school together down the High Street, Nancy continuing her journey through Maria Square and on to Ornamental Cottages. The Cohen family appears to have been quite orthodox and Nancy recalls one Friday evening being asked to go into Esther’s home to switch on the lights, an action seen as “work”, so that the family wouldn’t have to break the Sabbath by doing work. Esther, like the other Jewish children, did not join in school Christian assemblies and Nancy recalls the time when she was leading a small reading-table group in school, which involved a passage where Jesus was mentioned. Esther, like many religious Jews, was unwilling to speak his name aloud. Nancy remembers that there were several Jewish evacuees living in the village at the time.

The girls remained friends and kept in touch, even when Esther married and moved to London. When many year later Nancy visited the Capital as part of a Belmont Women’s Institute delegation, the two friends arranged to meet up and immediately recognised each other.

50 5 Belmont Primary School Remembers

After re-discovering in 2017 that Belmont School had hosted a number of evacuee children during the war it was decided to investigate the events in more detail and to consider the possibility of working towards the production of a permanent school and village memorial. At the time, the school was in the process of work for the renewal of its ArtsMark award and the evacuee experience was soon incorporated into the programme with plans made for the introduction of a curriculum-based, long-term study leading to the possibility of a variety of arts-focussed outcomes.

Initial study and analysis of the school records was made by the author, School Governor and retired educational researcher George Skinner. A report was presented to staff and Governors and formed the basis of a possible bid for funding for a suitable project outcome.

In January 2018 a curriculum-based programme was started with a class of Year 3 and Year 4 pupils. It was intended from the outset that the pupils should be involved sufficiently early in the project to enable them to be part of the research process as the school tried to understand the nature and circumstances of this little-known period in the village’s history.1 Although essentially a historical topic, the uniquely local dimension of the experience, together with the mixed-faith nature of the evacuee group, suggested that the project might sit well in a number of cross-curricular themes, especially understanding about Britishness in the context of social, cultural and religious diversity. Furthermore, the prospect of relating to, and working with, the wider village community presented an opportunity to both learn more from those in, or from, the village who could provide personal recollections - and later, to share the school’s findings with the present wider community.

There were also potential opportunities for cooperating with village groups such as the Belmont Local History Society and Belmont Village Residents’ Association and linking with one or more of the schools involved (supposing they still existed) thus providing an inter-school relationship founded on a common interest in a moment of shared history.

51 The Curriculum Project One session of about 45 minutes a week was allocated to the term-long project. The materials and teaching were developed by George and the class teacher, Mr Luke Ainsworth.

The pupils began by looking at the actual documents which had stimulated the project. Through dramatized readings based on the Headteacher’s Log Book account and the transcribed personal recollection of one of the teachers who had brought the children from North Manchester to Belmont, the pupils soon came to an understanding and anticipation of a “history mystery” worthy of further exploration.

Some guided analysis in lessons of the information to be gleaned from the school Admissions Register provided children with helpful insights into the value, and the limitations, of historical records and discussion of different kinds of evidence. While doing this analysis the class actually discovered that one of the families who were thought to be evacuees were in fact refugees from Czechoslovakia. This discovery led to the tracing of, and correspondence with, one of the children from the family, now in his 80s and living in the USA, and later a visit from his younger brother to speak with the children (see Chapter 4).

The general background to the war-time evacuee experience was explored through case studies drawn from the excellent BBC People’s War materials and led to pupils thinking about their own reactions to such a challenge. They grappled with the almost impossible task of having to decide what chosen belongings to pack in a small evacuee’s suitcase and they designed and wrote reassuring postcards, based on those originally given to evacuees, to send home to parents. Pupils worked with facsimiles of documents produced for the evacuee programme and other wartime artefacts, and also some original family items discovered and brought in by one of the children.

52 Eager to see if Temple School, the main school from which the original evacuees came, was aware of the event or had records or local families involved, a group of pupils wrote letters to the current Headteacher. As a result, details of Temple School’s Log Book from the period were made available to us.

Four ex-pupils who lived in Belmont at the time of the arrival of the evacuees were also identified and provided a unique oral history experience by sharing their experiences from the perspectives of being from a village family and what they remembered of school life during the war.

Activities exploring the billeting process, based on the school register and historic records held by Bolton Local History Centre, helped to create a picture of the distribution of the many private evacuee children. A day spent on the East Lancs Railway Evacuee experience brought home the reality of the combined feelings of adventure and insecurity the original evacuee children must have felt.

Class-teacher Mr Luke Ainsworth, Governor Mr George Skinner and Headteacher Mrs Judith Peel with Year 3 and Year 4 pupils appropriately dressed for their evacuee experience.2

53 The term-long study stimulated much lasting interest on the part of the pupils. Nine months later, when they were no longer engaged in curriculum work associated with the project, a review and updating lesson with the group revealed substantial retention of stories and issues associated with Belmont’s evacuee children. The children quickly engaged with new findings about the village’s response to the Jewish section of the evacuees and reflected perceptively about issues to do with the value and degrees of dependability of first-hand experience, newspaper reports and documentary evidence. About the same time, two pupils played very effective roles as evacuees in a presentation about the project to a meeting of a village society.

The idea of creating visual expressions of the ideas and issues arising from the project (already achieved in a small way through such activities as designing evacuee postcards to send home and creating outfits for the evacuee experience trip) became a more specific focus. At this point, and after discussions with the school Arts Council and villagers, it was decided to move the project on to the very practical long-term objective of creating a permanent memorial.

In the summer of 2019, children from the original group of Year Four children, now in Year Five, explored the village through three guided visits to discover how people and events had been remembered in the past. Discussions with the children of their findings led to the exploration of a variety of approaches to making an appropriate memorial for the evacuees. Three particular ideas which emerged were a small memory garden, a bench or seat of some kind and a memories/information board.

With the generous help of a local gardener and builder, the first step was taken in creating a memories garden just inside the main entrance gate using original local stone rescued from a recent school building project. At the time of writing, pupils are working with a tiling company to design and create mosaics for the garden using Gaudi’s Parc Güell as inspiration whilst drawing on ideas and symbols associated with the Evacuation. Plans have been made to share the findings of the project with the wider community and other schools in the Spring of 2020.

54 6 Acknowledgements and Further Information.

It is impossible to mention all those who have helped with our project and the production of this book. However, I would like to express particular thanks to Nancy Taylor, Eileen Edwards, Margaret Lambie, Gordon and Keith Hurst, Les Croft, John and Ernest Kohorn for sharing their stories with us. It was Mrs Peel, Head of the School, who saw the potential from the outset and provided full support and resources for the project. I am grateful to Ms Shagufta Talib, Head of the present-day Temple School (now Oasis Academy Temple) in Manchester, for giving us access to school records and to Eileen Brookes for help with interpreting the 1939 Register.

For background resources our project, and this book, drew on WW2 People's War, an online archive of wartime memories contributed by members of the public and gathered by the BBC, which can be found at bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar. The material is used here under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non-commercial project. A number of internet groups associated with the history of north Manchester and Temple School allowed us access to their sites which enabled us to make some valuable contacts, and the British Evacuees’ Association publicised our project on-line and in their newsletter.

A special and very personal thank you is due to all the Year Three and Year Four pupils (2017/18) and their class teacher Mr Luke Ainsworth who joined in the quest to understand this history-mystery with great interest and creativity. And finally, to my wife Valerie for her enthusiasm and support from the very outset of the project. This book has benefitted hugely from her creative suggestions and meticulous checking of the text.

To Find out More There have been many books and articles written about evacuees (though sadly few which mention Belmont!) so I have tried to suggest just a few key books and websites. Specific references to sources I have used in telling the story, linked to numbered references in the text, may be found in the Notes and References section which follows, but the following publications and

55 sites are particularly useful for finding out more general information about Operation Pied Piper and the experiences of those who were involved.

If you have any additional information or were an evacuee to Belmont, the school would love to hear from you.

The People’s War: Britain 1939-45 by Angus Calder, first published in 1969, has become a classic record of the war written from the perspective of ordinary people. It includes an excellent analytical section on evacuation.

Send them to Safety: a story of the Great Evacuation of the Second Wold War by James Roffey was published in 2009 by the Evacuees Reunion Association (later The British Evacuees Association). It is a very personal account, fully illustrated and well-researched.

No Time to Wave Goodbye, by one time evacuee, Ben Wicks, is an edited collection of many stories told in their own words by evacuees. Published in 1988 when many evacuees were still alive, it was the first, and probably the most thorough and honest, account of the range of experiences of evacuee children.

The Memories of War project led by Dr June Balshaw and Malin Lundin from the University of Greenwich has conducted and transcribed hundreds of individual and group interviews which may be found at www.memoriesofwar.org.uk/category/index.aspx.

Luftwaffe over Manchester – The Blitz Years 1940-1944 by Peter Smith, (published by Neil Richardson, 2003) has full details of the impact of bombing on Manchester and Salford.

The British Evacuees Association (http://www.evacuees.org.uk) was formed in 1996 to ensure that the true story of the evacuation would become better known and preserved for further generations. It publishes a bi- monthly magazine and has a world-wide membership.

WW2: The People’s War (bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar.online) is an archived but searchable source of wartime memories contributed by members of the public and gathered by the BBC.

George Skinner, November 2019

56 Notes & References

These endnotes, which are linked to numbers in the text, have been added to help readers who might like to know more about the sources of information or to carry out further research.

Cover Illustration 8. WW2: The People’s War online archive of A stained glass window by Michael Stokes in wartime memories contributed by members of All Saints Church, Sudbury, Derbyshire, the public and gathered by the BBC, accessed dedicated on 3rd June 2001. Presented by at bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar. former evacuees from the inner-city of 9. “Paddington Bear 'inspired by evacuees' Manchester to the community of Sudbury who says author Bond”, Emma Midgley, BBC News looked after them. The words are those of Jesus 13 February 2012. in The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25. 10. British Evacuees Association www.evacuees.org.uk. Introduction 1. What today we call Primary Schools were Ch 2 Belmont’s Evacuee Children known as Elementary School before the 1944 1. An Industrious Minority: A history of the Education Act. Bolton Jewish Community, Hilary Thomas and 2. Quotes from the School Log book are from John Cowell, 2012 (private publication the original, unpublished copy, currently held available at Bolton Library). by the school. 2. On the 29th September 1939 65,000 enumerators were employed to visit every Ch 1 The National Evacuation Programme house in England and Wales to take stock of the 1. Churchill's Children: The Evacuee civil population and create a National Register. Experience in Wartime Britain by John The information they recorded was used to Welshman OUP Oxford, 2010, has a good issue Identity Cards, plan mass evacuations, summary of the history of defence planning. establish rationing and coordinate other war- 2. Turton Urban District Council received a time provisions. Each record includes the “confidential and very urgent” request from the names of inhabitants at each address, their date Ministry of Health to conduct a survey dated of birth, marital status and occupation. We have 16th September 1938 (Bolton Archives) been able to draw on some information from the 3. Manchester Arrangements for Evacuation, Register but because of data protection, entries Manchester Museum Archives, of people born less than 100 years ago are https://manchesterarchiveplus.wordpress.com/ redacted unless they are known to have died. 2016/02/16/the-lead-up-to-1939-evacuation/ 3. Manchester Libraries, Information and 4. Manchester Education Authority Circular Archives, Elsie Mullineux. Oral History EV/14 from W. O. Lester Smith, Director of GB124.OH/3404 Education, 18th July 1939 NB All the archive records and newspaper 5. As early as 4th September 1939 a householder reports identify Turton as the de-training venue in Caernarvon was fined £25 for “not for the evacuee children. In November 1938, complying with the requirements of the Turton UDC suggested using Bromley Cross Billeting Order” (Manchester Evening News, and Turton stations but were told by County 4.9.1939) Office in Preston that the Railway Company 6. Instructions for Billeting Officers, County would not agree to using more than one Office, Preston, March 1939 detraining station - but offered to bring the 7. Evidence concerning the evacuation status of matter up with the Railway Company. The pupils and their dates in school are based on outcome of the discussion is not recorded. It Belmont Primary School’s original Admissions could be that coaches were booked to collect the Register, currently held by the school. 57 small group of Belmont bound pupils from 9. Specific details of the part played by Turton Bromley Cross, the station before Turton, District Council are taken from the TDC perhaps to enable a much simpler journey to the original correspondence and records held by village. Bolton Library Archives. 4. “Staffing, Reception and Evacuation Areas”, 10. The WVS, founded in 1938, was originally Letter of instructions to Manchester set up to train women to help with air raid headteachers from W.O.Lester Smith, 15th precautions. This soon expanded into running April 1940, manchesterhistory.net. emergency rest centres, feeding stations, first 5. Information and quotations about Temple aid posts, and assisting with the evacuation and School are based on the Log Book and other billeting of children. By 1941, one million unpublished records held by Temple School, women belonged to the WVS. At the start of the (now Oasis Academy Temple), Manchester. war there were at least five members in the 6. The placing of evacuees in such close village: Annie Farnworth, Edith Lawrence, Eva proximity to Manchester was described as Hutchinson, Kathleen O’Toole and Lily short-sighted in a Bolton Journal (15.9.1939) Robinson (who ran a First Aid Point at Lower article because it proved to be one of the causes Lodge). Belmont was part of the Turton Urban of tension between parents and Turton District branch which was led by Kathleen residents. The paper reported evacuees being Freeman. Its members engaged in a range of visited by “a score of relatives who expected to activities from raising money for battleships, be fed for nothing”, and illustrated this by knitting socks for soldiers and prisoners of war noting that “two carloads of people came to a and running a mobile canteen in support of the house in Bromley Cross and asked for tea to be home guard. They took an active interest in the provided at the house where one of their evacuees and reported in June 1944 that they relatives was staying” - and the hosts weren’t had surveyed, as requested, the area for further offered a penny. billeting and the response was slightly better The general issue was raised by the MP for than expected. “In the event of another Kincardine and Western in the House of evacuation it would be possible to meet our Commons Debate on the Evacuation on Sept 14 billet quota without resorting to compulsion”. 1939. “I think one mistake has been that in www.royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk some cases we have placed the evacuees too 11. Robert Fuller WW2 People’s War. near the cities from which they have been sent. 12. On September 8th the Journal reported the Just as it is unwise to send a boy to a boarding arrival of children under the headline “Happy school which is too near his own home, so it is Little Exiles” recording “the carriage doors unwise to send evacuees to places within a bus opened and from each emerged a dozen smiling ride of the cities which they have left. The faces…” temptation to return is too great. Even if they 13. How War Came To Bolton, 1938-1940 G. J. are only making a return in order to pick up Bryant. According to the author of this paper, some extra garments or to see how the old man published in the Journal of the Historic Society is getting on, still it is costing money which they of Lancashire and Cheshire (vol 146, 1996), at can ill afford, and it has an unsettling effect Turton, “an initial open welcome turned sour as upon them.” hosts and evacuees did not get on, and a 7. Norman Longmate: How we Lived Then - A tribunal had to be set up to adjudicate disputes. history of everyday life during the Second There was growing relief in Turton when the World War (1971), Pimlico evacuees steadily drifted home as the skies 8. Initially, at least, no provision was made for stayed quiet.” children who had not been evacuated, or had 14. Minutes of the meeting held on April 18th returned, resulting in much criticism in the 1941 recorded by the Head of Belmont School. press. The Bolton Evening News for 27th 15. In his Tales of Manchester Jewry and October 1939 reported how in the Burnage Manchester in the Thirties (Neil Richardson district of Manchester a vicar, helped by Publications, 1986) Monty Dobkin lists more volunteer teachers, was using his church hall as than 250 shops, small businesses and a temporary school for 80 6-11 year-old pupils. manufacturers on Cheetham Hill Road alone! 58 16. Bolton News, Looking Back 24.9.2003. Bolton Post Office concerning the proposed 17. “Instructions for Billeting Officers” letter placement of evacuees implies that there would from the Ministry of Health, 27th April 1939, be sufficient space in schools without using a held in Bolton Library Archives. shift system. Bolton Library Archives. 18. A letter from the Minister of Health was 22. An Industrious Minority: A history of the sent to Local Authorities in October 1939 for Bolton Jewish Community, p104 distribution to parents explaining that the whole 23. Jewish Chronicle, 1939.22.09, p14 cost of the evacuation scheme, including 24. Jewish Chronicle, 1941.04.07, p14 billeting, had been borne by public funds and 25. An Industrious Minority: A history of the commented “I am sure that no parent would Bolton Jewish Community, p104 wish this to continue indefinitely where it can 26. Paul Gallagher “How many people were be avoided”. The maintenance cost had been killed in the 1940 Christmas Blitz across calculated at nine shillings (45p) a week but Greater Manchester?” Manchester Evening recognised that the saving of expense to News, 17 Feb 2016. families in keeping children away from home 27. Alan Woodford, WW2 People’s War. was considerably less. They therefore proposed 28. Malcolm MacDonald in a BBC Radio a charge of six shillings a week, though reduced Broadcast, 30 May 1940. for poorer families. 29. In total, it is estimated some 1,250,000 19. By Gaby Rogers and Harry Phillips. people were helped by the Government to leave Goodnight Children Everywhere the bombed cities in the period between Your mummy thinks of you tonight. September 1940 and the end of 1941. By Lay your head upon your pillow, February 1941, the number of evacuees Don’t be a kid or a weeping willow. officially billeted in the reception areas had Close your eyes and say a prayer, reached 1,370,000 – only about a hundred And surely you can find a kiss to spare. thousand short of the first phase of evacuation. Though you are far away, she’s with you The last major phase of evacuation commenced night and day, as Germany in 1944 began a new wave of Goodnight children everywhere bombing British towns and cities using V1 flying bombs and, later, the V2 rocket. Sleepy little eyes in a sleepy little head, 30. There are issues to do with privacy and Sleepy time is drawing near. protection when considering the details of In a little while you’ll be tucked up in your individual children who came as evacuees. bed, Where accounts or interviews have been Here’s a song for baby dear. published by a person (as in the case of Gerald

Soon the moon will rise, and caress you with Mars) or used publically with permission, they its beams, are safe to draw on. The status of data in school While the shadows softly creep. Log Books and registers is less clear. With a happy smile you will be wrapped up 31. Evacuees UK, 26,08.2016, in your dreams, https://www.facebook.com/EvacueesWW2/ Baby will be fast asleep 32. ID:A5723363 WW2 People’s War. 20. “Thousands of you in this country have had For details of the full impact of bombing on to leave your homes and be separated from your Manchester and Salford see Luftwaffe over fathers and mothers. My sister Margaret Rose Manchester – The Blitz Years 1940-1944 by and I feel so much for you as we know from Peter Smith, (Neil Richardson publication, experience what it means to be away from those 2003). we love most of all. To you, living in new 33. The intention to survey reception areas was surroundings, we send a message of true announced in a radio broadcast to the nation sympathy and at the same time we would like to (later published as a leaflet by the Government) th thank the kind people who have welcomed you by MP Walter Elliot on January 6 1939, during to their homes in the country.” which he explained, “We have to see not only 21. A letter from the UDC in March 1939 to the that the houses for instance are suitable for the children, but that the children are suitable for 59 the homes. We want this to be a matter of real CH 4 Stories from the War Years human relationship and affection – a willing 1. Our Blitz - Red Sky Over Manchester, Jan 5, host and a willing guest”. Visitors completed 1941. Digitised version accessed at Record Form EV2 for each house. It asked for https://issuu.com/cyberbadger/docs/ the number of rooms, residents and potential 2. www.lafayettemorehouse.com/brian_ billets plus willingness to take unaccompanied meets_vic.html children. It also asked if any aspects of the 3. Gerald Mars, Becoming an Anthropologist: A house made it unsuitable and gave the inspector Memoir and a Guide to Anthropology, 2015, space to add comments (eg about old age, Cambridge Scholars Publishing infirmity or if help was needed). 4. Charles Trevor, in his anecdotal account of Many examples of mixed experiences of the history of Belmont, explains how during the evacuees may be found on the University of war Leo had been sub-let part of the Belmont Greenwich Memories of War project website. Bleach and Dye Works building. There he www.memoriesofwar.org.uk. established a book-cloth industry called 34. Ben Wicks, No Time to Wave Goodbye, Belmont Bookcloth Ltd, later Kohorn Bloomsbury, 1988. Bookcloth. See C M Trevor A History of Belmont, 1956, privately distributed CH 3 School Must Go On manuscript, later edited and privately reprinted 1. In 1936, a disused mill in nearby Blackburn by Jennifer Rhodes in 2010. became a national gas mask assembly-plant 5. One of several family ration and clothing where, by the time of the Munich Crisis of books donated to the project by Mr and Mrs 1938, more than 30 million gas masks had been Phillips. manufactured, requiring, amongst other components, 90 million safety-pins. CH 5 Belmont Primary School Remembers 2. Casualty numbers are from the 1. In “Enquiry Skills in History: the Blitz and Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It evacuation” (Journal of Citizenship, Social and has been argued that the initial evacuee project Economics Education, Volume 9 Number 1 was essentially a failure. Insufficient 2010), historian Francis O’Hagan argues for the awareness of the social and psychological inclusion in the school curriculum of this impact on families, inadequate planning for important time in British history and provides education and social support in reception areas useful information about drawing on the varied and the premature start to the campaign experiences of evacuees “with a view to resulting in the sense of a “Phoney War”, all developing enquiry skills in History.” combined to promote the premature return of “One of the main aims of any history course is many evacuee children and the reluctance of to develop pupils’ imagination and empathy parents to evacuate children later when the blitz with people living in other periods. By working became a reality. However, if the Luftwaffe had with sources pupils are able to develop an chosen at the start of the war to adopt the understanding of the nature of evidence in its strategic bombing of towns and cities in Britain various forms and come to appreciate that the as they had in Spain, Poland and the value of evidence depends on the reasons for Netherlands the number of civilian casualties, which it was created in the first place and the including children, might have been enormous. time and circumstances of its origin. 2. Photograph by Mr Chris Hoddle.

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When Headteacher Vincent Hill closed his school in the Lancashire village of Belmont for the late summer holiday in August 1939 he anticipated re-opening it in two weeks’ time. But a national emergency delayed the start of the new term. Operation Pied Piper had begun and the school, and village, were now host to 80 additional children, evacuees from North Manchester.

Drawing on historical records and personal accounts this book tells the story of the ambitious war-time campaign to save the country’s next generation from the anticipated bombing of British cities and Belmont Village’s role in this project.

George Skinner is a retired University of Manchester researcher and teacher who lives in Belmont Village where he is a Governor of Belmont Community Primary School.