War Time In The Heights Northolt

A Memory of Northolt.

We moved from New Cross, Deptford just before the war to The Heights Northolt. As a child then, memories are now somewhat fragmented but that reflects the conditions that parents faced. As a child there seemed much freedom, school was intermittent, lots of time, putting pennies onto the rails of the trains (I still go over those rails on way to Bucks), building a camp near the arch way into the Pony Track, by then military storage. It is from that huge military site that guns fired at planes in the air and the next day we went out to pick up the shrapnel pieces scattered around. By 1942 I was 6 years old and tri-cycled to school at Wyvenhoe Road, on Northolt Road, but at some point it closed down, and/or we as a family were sent up to Wigan. Mother had three children, and we got onto the train at Waterloo(?) and proceeded to Crewe. An overnight stay in large hall, and then on to Wigan and into a miner's house - quite near the Leeds Liverpool canal. The accommodation was inadequate for mother and we returned after a week or so to home. Wigan suffered more from the war than did Northolt, and I have always wondered who made the decision to close the school and sent us to Wigan. Does anybody remember the evacuation and what was the date? The Heights seemed very long and it seemed to me to take ages to walk back to our house at 153. Father was briefly a policeman, had to sell his car for little return but later went into the Royal Navy and commissioned Sub Lieut. He enjoyed that time and I remember going down to Portsmouth and being put into a boat and speeded around an aircraft carrier - everything seemed enormous. War demands and priorities gave us ' freedom', we could use a lot of our time without supervision, but it also resulted the limited formal orderly education. As a child one wonders about things rather than worry about them. But one or two events troubled one, especially a family across the road lost their father and husband - he had been on The Hood, a RN Battleship that was sunk without survivors. And one noticed too the older gentleman walking down The Heights with sticks, struggling with a missing leg - a First World War victim. As a child such war time events and circumstances seemed normal, there were few alternatives for a child growing up in war. The shortage of meat, sweets, shoes, school, holidays, father, and other limits did not seem to be deprivation - born in 1936 no higher demands were in one's mind. When father returned in 1946 we left The Heights and returned to South London. But, as a child, The Heights for 8 years, remain as a memory of wonder how one's parents managed the disturbances, disruptions of one's employments, the dilution of one's income and diverted skills, the worry about their children and their safety and security. Looking back to that time, how did one's parents cope with such lack of provision, which now is the NHS, the Multi Benefits, Schools and hosts of other governmental 'covers' ?

Anyway - said too much - but any similar memories ? Any data about evacuation?