Evacuated To Great West Farm

A Memory of Quethiock.

My mother Eileen and her brother Ian Carter were evacuated to Great West Farm, Quethiock in 1940. Here are her memories of that time:-

On June 16th 1940 we were evacuated from Marvels Lane School, Grove Park, London SE12 to Cornwall. We left our train at a small place called St. Germans, which seemed a very odd place-name at the time. A coach took us to a tiny village called Quethiock, six miles from Liskeard, (by mistake, we heard later). A lovely tea had been prepared for us in the Yew Tree Hut next door to the village undertakers.

While we tucked into the food, ladies in hats and pretty dresses, and gentlemen with strange accents, walked round the tables and asked us individually whether we had brothers or sisters. They were looking for attractive children to foster but realised it was Government policy to keep families together and they might have to accept a less attractive child, or children, as part of the package! In fact, children had already been allocated and they had no choice. Our future Uncle (Wilfred Wenmoth) was on the Billeting Committee and left before we did, to start the milking at the nearby farm which was to be our home. Auntie Wenmoth (Effie) collected my brother and me, and walked us the couple of hundred yards to Great West Farm.

Great West Farm was to be our home, for me for the next 15 months and for my brother for the next five years. It was certainly another world. On arrival, the first thing I noticed was the mains water tap and stone sink outside the back door. This was the farm’s only source of piped water but we went to the well at the bottom of the hill for drinking water for the dinner table on Sundays. I don’t know how pure it was but it certainly looked and tasted better than the tap water.

Later in the evening on our day of arrival, we were put in a large brass bedstead and, from time to time, a Wenmoth aunt or cousin would put their head round the door to say “Hello” and look at us. I remember the extraordinary quietness, which was unbroken until the mooing of cows and the voices of men rose from the yard below our window next morning. Living conditions were basic – an earth closet across the yard and “down the orchard” was one’s destination when nature called!

The months that followed were full of interest: hens’ “stealing nests” under hedges (hens hid their eggs so they could keep a clutch), striding triumphantly into the yard followed by their chicks, the hasty bodging up of hutches, and the collecting of eggs; learning to milk cows, their kicking and upturning buckets; the farm cats, almost all with broken legs caused by gin traps; rabbit-catching with running nooses and flashlights, dogs and ferrets.

The close contact with animals, the freedom to play in the fields and streams and the rituals of haymaking and corn harvesting filled our days. That winter, snow fell in Cornwall for the first time for 20 years and Gene Wenmoth made us a toboggan. What fun we had on those frozen hills!

Sunday was a special day in 1940 and particularly so in this Methodist home in Cornwall. The visiting preacher spent the day at the farm every other week and this in itself demanded much preparation on Saturday. The house was thoroughly cleaned and the kitchen table and benches taken outside and scrubbed.

No unnecessary work was done on Sunday and children’s play was severely restricted. The damming of a small stream and the making of a miniature haystack a few inches high with handfuls of grass, brought cries of disapproval. “No wonder there are wars!” cried Auntie at my 8-year old brother. She nearly had apoplexy when I innocently asked where my embroidery was during a Minister’s lunchtime visit. She had difficulty in persuading me that I “did not want that now”.

Uncle was a Christian gentleman in every sense of the word – quiet, courteous and with high moral standards. He always wore a stiff collar and tie, not only with his black Sunday suit, but also with his cords and leather gaiters around the farm on weekdays. We attended chapel with him, and often Auntie Wenmoth, twice on Sundays and also went to Sunday School in the afternoon without fuss. My first outing to the nearby town of Liskeard was to buy “a little hat for Sunday”. Often now, when hearing or singing hymns, my mind goes back to that little chapel.

Uncle had an especially soft spot for the little girl from London and I remember being specially privileged when he took me to borrow a horse from his brother’s farm three miles away for harvesting. We went on horseback – me sitting in front of him. We sat for a time in his brother’s lamp-lit kitchen while they talked, then rode back under the stars.

My brother and I often sat on horses going to and from the fields up the hill. Going up was fine but, particularly in hot weather when the road was shiny, the horse’s hooves would slip and his hindquarters almost touched the road. It was terrifying for us but Uncle would just say quietly “Steady Blossom, steady”.

Haymaking, harvesting and threshing were the highlight of the farm year and not without dramatic incident. Men and extra horses were brought in and these were sometimes less than co-operative. On one occasion, when a borrowed horse was being put into harness, it reared and fell back, breaking the shaft of the binder as it did so. I remember feeling rather frightened but the men seemed to take it quite calmly. It delayed things a bit but life moved at a far slower pace then and the shaft would be mended in a day or two. As the binder neared the centre of the field, the rabbits who had taken refuge there made a dash for freedom.

How the women worked in those days! There were endless cakes and pasties to be made and baked (including scones and rather dry saffron cake) and every afternoon during harvest time these were packed into baskets and carried with large kettles of tea to the fields up the hill

When the threshing was done, some months later in the yard a large Heath Robinson-looking machine arrived and again extra men were brought in. As the sheaves were taken off the stack and forked into the thresher, the rats which had nested therein ran for their lives, pursued by the farm dogs. They were caught and despatched so quickly there was little suffering for the rats, but a lot of fun for the watching children. In the evening, the family and all the casual workers gathered round the supper table. I don’t think women needed sleeping pills in those days.

The village school consisted of two rooms, one of which was divided by a curtain to accommodate the local children on one side and the evacuees on the other. The local teacher, whose name was Mrs Yelland, did just that – shouted and yelled all day long (mostly at her daughter Jean!) and was known to the pupils as “Mrs Yell-and-Shout”.

I had not passed the scholarship exam before we left London, and the LCC junior school teacher who accompanied us to Quethiock arranged for me to join the evacuated section of Catford Central School in Smarden (Kent), as she thought I would “benefit” from a higher level of education than could be provided in the Quethiock village school.

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