Evacuation

A Memory of Wetley Rocks.

My brother and I, aged six and a half and five, were evacuated to Wetley Rocks at the outbreak of war in 1939.  We only stayed for six weeks but the time is imprinted on my mind.  We were billeted in a farmhouse which belonged to, I believe, the Ridgway family who lived in a grander house nearby, now demolished.  Miss Ridgway lived there with her brother.  Their father was a pottery manufacturer.  The farmhouse had a room with a large table, covered in white crockery, and glass-fronted cupboards containing the same.  There was a cowman who I think was conscripted but I was told that his name was Mr Moss and he was still alive in 1991.  We attended the village school - mornings one week and afternoons the next.  Arriving in Wetley Rocks we were deposited in the school and given beakers of tea and a banana.  On arrival at the farmhouse we went to see the cows being milked and coming out I slipped in a fresh cow pat - I was wearing a green gymslip!!  There was a walled fruit garden where we children over-indulged in ripe fruit.  My brother and I visited the area in 1991 and I was pleased to see that my memory had served me well regarding the farmhouse.  Enquiries put me in touch with a Fay Butler whose parents, I was told, owned a shop.  Fay moved to Stone.

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