She's Back Again: An East End Childhood - Part Eight
Lorraine Roxon Harrington has vivid memories of worrying about a chewing gum incident, after being evacuated in the early days of World War Two to a grand country house.
Mum and Dad would take us out when they came to visit us on a Sunday and we would have a lovely time. It was as it used to be. We were all together again as a family. My brothers and I needed that comfort.
Lots of the parents arrived in a coach. They would go to the local pub while the children waited outside for them. Myy parents came by themselves on a bus. Sometimes my uncle and aunt would be with them.
I loved those times and remember The Anchor Inn where my parents took us for tea. It was owned by two brothers. Their names were Eric and Douglas Cutts. It was a lovely country inn. Everything about it was special for me.
The blackberry jam which they made consisted mostly of whole blackberries. I have tried to make jam like it over the years but have never been successful. I ask myself now, ‘Was it really that good, or was that the way a hungry child remembere it’ I can still taste and see that jam as I write about so I am sure it was special.
We went into Buscot village and Lechlade to buy sweets and post our letters. I think we were allowed to go on our own without any teachers supervision, after tea and before going to bed. I recall the evenings were always fine when we went out. We must have been evacuated in the summer time. We were not long back home when the London Blitz started in September, 1940.
Once there was a dreadful commotion and the story went around that someone had put chewing gum in the service lift. We heard that a princess was dining with Lord Farringdon at the time. The story went like this. The butler had lifted a tray from the service lift which had glasses on it. Chewing gum was found stuck to the bottom of the tray. As he lifted the tray made him pull hard, causing all the glasses to fall to the ground. Many were broken.
This could have been a story made up to stop children putting chewing gum in places where it should not be. I never found out, but I did wonder?
At the time I was very concerned, thinking one of my brothers could have done it. I imagined Mum and Dad having to pay for the broken glasses. I knew they would be very expensive because they belonged to a Lord.
At bed time we would go quietly up the stairs, all together, with a teacher in charge. As we went up those stairs we saw rooms leading off the landings. These looked so beautiful and luxurious, I imagined the many guests who must have visited and been entertained, and enjoyed staying there.
For a child from the East End of London it was quite something to see the beautiful peacocks and peahens strutting around the estate. I loved the look of them but hated the screeching sounds they made.
They were like a fantasy from one of my books. The book I loved most of all had black and white drawings in the style I know as William Morris. All my books were lost when our house was bombed. That was very sad for me. I have tried to find a copy one of these books. Sadly, having searched for it years and in many second hand book shops, I have failed to do so.
I can still feel the lovely thin paper in that book. The pages felt like silk.
One day, my parents heard that we children were going to be put into private homes in the nearby villages. There was a possibility that me and my brothers would be separated from one another. My parents took us away, back home to London.
The bombing of London started not long after we were back at home.
