Evacuee

A Memory of Oxford.

I was evacuated from London to Oxford with Burlington School on 1st September 1939. At first we had our lessons in the old Milham Ford School premises but after a few weeks transferred to the new school in Marston where we shared the classrooms and facilities but were kept as a separate school from the Milham Ford pupils. Both schools were grammar schools for girls only. My sister and I lived in Woodstock Road in a house backing on to Port Meadow. We lived with Mr Charles Thompson M.A. a retired Don and Fellow of Queens College. He had a cook and housemaid, Lizzie and Edie Govier. We walked to school through University Park but later I had a bicycle and remember falling off it at the bottom of Headington Hill and breaking my arm. On Saturday mornings we sometimes queued for cakes at Oliver & Gurden's factory in Summertown and often on Saturday afternoons Mr. Tompson took us out to tea to the Cadena Cafe. Once he took us to the Boars Head Dinner and Procession in Queen's College. I remember early one May morning standing on Magdalen Bridge listening to the choir singing at the top of the tower. We went swimming near Iffley Bridge and were taken in a punt on the river by our schoolteacher. I left Oxford in 1943 when Burlington School returned home to London.

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