Belmont’s Evacuee Children
Geor
ge S
kinne
r
1
Belmont’s Evacuee Children
The story of how Belmont Villagers and their
Primary School gave a home to war-time
Evacuee Children.
George Skinner
November 2019
2
Contents
Introduction 3
1. The National Evacuation Programme 5
2. Belmont’s Evacuee Children 9
3. School must go on 29
4. Stories from the War Years 33
5. Belmont Primary School Remembers 51
6. Acknowledgements & Further Information 55
Notes & References 57 (Linked to “footnote” numbers in the main text)
3
Introduction
On the 25th August 1939, the small elementary school1 in the Lancashire
village of Belmont closed for its usual late summer works holidays. The
Headteacher, Mr Vincent Hill, wrote up the school Log Book2 before
leaving for home, noting the closure and adding on the next line, “Sept
11 Re-open”. But during the holiday Britain declared war on Germany
and on his return to school Mr Hill had to amend the ‘re-open’ entry by
adding, “- not done because war broke out on Sunday September 3rd at
11 o’clock”. The cause of what turned out to be a three-day delay in
starting the new term is given simply as “for War Emergency,” popular
code for the mass evacuation of children from British cities. What it
meant in practice for the village was the arrival of 80 new children, more
than doubling the number of pupils already in its tiny school.
The events which followed this unusual start to the new school year may
be traced from two official Belmont Primary School record books. The
school Admissions Register, which lists all arrivals and departures of
children, reveals the unusual comings and goings of many children,
mainly from Salford and Manchester, over the next five years. The
School Log Book, a diary of significant events in the life of the school
kept by the Headteacher (Mr Vincent Hill in 1939 and Mr Edward
Hodson from October 1943), provides clues as to what took place as the
school faced the changing circumstances brought about by the war.
Entries are spasmodic and frustratingly short on detail but the main
pattern can be deduced.
Our story draws mainly on these official records but is supplemented with
information from external reports, public information sheets, records of
Temple School in North Manchester (from which many of the evacuee
children came), contemporary newspapers and stories recounted by
villagers and evacuees. It describes the ambitious national campaign to
evacuate children from vulnerable cities to the relative safety of the
countryside and Belmont School’s part in this project, and provides a
picture of how the war impacted on the day-to-day running of the school.
Finally, it records how in 2018, Belmont Primary School took steps to
learn more about these events and to create a lasting memorial for future
generations of pupils and the wider village community.
4
5
1
The National Evacuation Programme
Long before Britain’s declaration of war against Germany in September
1939, the Government had been working on plans to evacuate children and
vulnerable adults from cities and towns thought to be at risk from enemy
bombing attacks. In World War I, bombing raids on Britain had resulted in
1,400 civilian deaths and since the 1920s, precautions against air raids had
been foremost in the defence plans for the country.1 The tactic of bombing
civilians used in the Spanish Civil War, especially the infamous attack on
Guernica in 1937, convinced the British government that evacuation would
be necessary should hostilities with Germany come to a head. During the
year preceding the declaration of war, the Government surveyed available
housing in safe areas and appointed billeting officers to administer an
ambitious programme to house the evacuees.2
The evacuation project was code-named Operation Pied Piper, perhaps an
unfortunate choice bearing in mind that in the original story the piper leads
the children of Hamelin away from the town, never to return! The exodus
of children began just before the declaration of war on 3rd September 1939.
In three days, 1,473,000 people from the cities of Britain were transferred,
often with teachers and escorts, to safer areas, mainly in the countryside.
In Manchester it had been estimated that there were 190,000 children and
priority adults that might be at risk from air raids.3 By April 1939, meetings
had already taken place between teachers and parents resulting in 71,000
schoolchildren, 58,000 pre-school children and 4,000 expectant mothers in
the area being registered to be evacuated should the need arise.
Manchester schools were sent regular memos by the Education Office
describing the steps they should take to make evacuation as successful as
possible. With limited space available on trains and buses the amount of
luggage children could take was a central issue and detailed instructions
about what could be taken were sent to parents. Rehearsals for evacuation
were ordered during the summer holidays. Teachers who might be involved
had been required to give details of their holiday address to their
Headteacher and on Wednesday 23rd of August they received telegrams
informing them that they must return to Manchester.4
6
On August 31st 1939, evacuation was officially announced by the Ministry
for Health. The Telegraph for 2nd September reported that over 100 trains
had left Manchester and Salford with 120,000 schoolchildren to be
evacuated to areas in Lancashire, Cheshire and Derbyshire. Special
ambulance trains took children on stretchers from Manchester hospitals to
the countryside. Evacuated schools were closed and many of their buildings
allocated for other war-related uses.
Turton Urban District Belmont was part of Turton Urban District which was confirmed as a
reception area and given an allocation of 1,600 women and children to billet.
The process was directed from County Office in Preston but overseen
locally by John William Rostron, a well-known businessman and politician
who was Chairman of Turton Urban District Council. Although parents in
vulnerable areas were not obliged to evacuate their children, designated safe
areas were required to provide billets for evacuees and fines could be
imposed on any household which refused.5 In 1938, Billeting Officers were
formally appointed and, having been empowered to require householders to
provide information about their homes, went out to survey the Turton
District. Belmont Village returned a total of 829 “habitable rooms”. The
Billeting Officer was asked to endeavour to find accommodation with
households who were willing6, but “in the event of failure to provide in this way for those under his charge should use the compulsory powers conferred
upon him, leaving the question of appeal to be dealt with subsequently.”
The initial evacuation plan was to move pupils in school groups
accompanied, where possible, by their teachers. Following this, mothers
with under five-year-olds would be transported. In addition to this carefully
planned project, the Government provided support for other groups and
individuals who made private arrangements to evacuate children to safe
places, resulting in the movement of many thousands more children at
various times during the war.
In 1939 the Government had expected widespread bombing of towns,
especially London, the Midlands and Manchester. In the event, no bombs
fell on England until the summer of 1940 and not until September, a whole
year into the war, did the systematic bombing of London begin. As a result
of this “phoney war” many parents decided to bring their evacuated children
home and schools in evacuated areas began to re-open. But when the war
7
escalated and the threat of bombing increased in late 1940, many children
were returned and were joined by new, private evacuees. This privately
organised exodus was mainly composed of individuals and family groups
who left vulnerable areas, often moving into the same districts used for the
initial evacuation. Over the whole period of the war, about thirty such
private evacuees registered at Belmont School in addition to school groups.7
Accounts by evacuees of how well the national scheme worked and what
emotional reaction it evoked reveal a complex picture. The following story
from the BBC’s People’s War Project8, was told by someone who, as a
child, was moved from Manchester to nearby Tockholes.
I was 11 years old when the war started. I had been at the
Crumpsall Lane Junior School in Manchester but had just started
at Elementary school. We had only been there three days when the
war began. We were given gas masks and labels and loaded onto
double decker buses outside the school and driven to the station.
No one knew where we were going but my dad worked for the
railway and he found out that we were going to Darwen. We all
landed up at St George's Hall in Blackburn and then everyone from
our school was put on another bus and taken out to the village of
Tockholes where we were delivered to the schoolroom. I sat there
with three of my friends - we were determined that we were going
to stick together.
We were told we would be sent to stay with Mrs Whittle. Her house
turned out to be a little cottage and we had to walk through three
fields to get there. There was no bed for us when we got there but
she found us some mattresses and we slept in her front room.
We used to go the village school - it was very small compared with
what we were used to - there was only one classroom. We collected
eggs every morning and went to bed early. There was no bath - but
we managed.
Mum found out where we were and all the mums came to see us.
Mine said, "You're not stopping here. You'll go up to Newcastle to
your Grandma's." So I was only there for six or eight weeks.
8
Evacuees Remembered Many other accounts of evacuee experiences have been shared during the
years since the war, and much research has been conducted to try to
understand the impact of the evacuee programme on the country’s children and families. The BBC’s WW2 People's War Project, which ran from June
2003 to January 2006, published more than
fourteen thousand such stories.
Wartime evacuation appears as a motif in many
children’s story books and films, including C.S.
Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and
Michelle Magorian’s Good-night Mr Tom. The
labels which were given to evacuee children to
wear were Michael Bond’s inspiration for
Paddington Bear’s name tag which he was wearing
when discovered lost on Paddington Station.9
In 1996 the British Evacuees Association10 was
formed to make the story of the great evacuation
better known. It recruited high profile ex-evacuees, including Michael
Aspel, Bruce Forsyth and Roger Moore as its Patrons. A memorial to all
those involved in the evacuation process, including train drivers, teachers,
nurses, billeting officers, children and parents, designed by sculptor Maurice
Blik, was unveiled at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire on
25th July 2017.
9
2
Belmont’s Evacuee Children
The 1939 Evacuation When war was declared in 1939, Belmont School was on holiday. The re-
opening of the school for the autumn term was delayed. No explicit reason
is given for this but it seems likely that the building was being used to settle
in evacuee children. The Log Book entry for September 14th, 1939 reads,
“School reopened after being closed for War Emergency. Jewish section of
the 80 evacuated children did not turn up because of the Jewish New Year,
which is a holiday. Misses Bolton, Downes and Isaacs are the 3 teachers,
who came with the children.”
The group of 80 evacuated children was from Temple Infant School in
Cheetham, Manchester. Temple School was housed in a large two-storey
Victorian building, the Infants on the ground floor and the Juniors above - a
total of 275 children. It is not known what proportion of the group was
Jewish but a 2012 report about the history of Jews in Bolton1 discusses those
who came as evacuees to the
town and observes that Temple
School was “mainly Jewish and
had some Jewish teachers”. In
1939, the movable New Year
festival of Rosh Hashanah was
celebrated from the 13th to the
15th September and children
from Jewish homes had clearly
been kept off school to celebrate.
On Monday 18th September the
Headteacher reports, “All Jewish
children turned in.”
Miss Elsie Downes was one of three Temple School teachers chosen to
accompany the pupils to Belmont. Elsie was only twenty-one years old at
the time with just one year’s experience of teaching, having completed her
two-year teaching certificate training at Bingley College in 1938. She
remained with the children in the village, her 1939 National Register2 entry
indicating that she was billeted at Ryecroft House with the Musgrove family.
Temple School before the war
10
Many years later, when married but still living in Manchester as Mrs
Mullineux, Elsie told the story of how they travelled from her school to
Belmont.3
Well, we all piled on to the buses ... not as many little ones, not whole
classes of little ones, but the bigger ones from the school above were
coming too. And there were two double-deck buses and they went
down to the back of Victoria Station and we went on at platform 14.
So we never went through the big front of the station we went
virtually on to the platform we were leaving from at the back of
Victoria Station. And when we went on to the platform there was a
train on each platform edge (island platforms) and they walked
along with their teacher and went into the compartments as they
filled up.
The organisation was really outstandingly smooth and the station
staff were very helpful both for the teachers and for the children.
Sort of where you go - here – six into there, six into there with the
teacher, six into there. The organisation was quite amazing. On an
adjacent platform was another train carrying pregnant women, and
women with very young children: And all of a sudden this lady, a
very big fat lady she was, she puts her hand out of the window waving
a little baby’s potty and shouted to the guard ‘And what the blazes do you think I’m going to do with this?’ We had no access to toilets
on our compartment trains.
Eventually the train set off and much to everyone’s surprise, they hardly seemed to have got underway when it stopped at Bromley
Cross Station near Bolton from where they were transferred by bus
to their ‘new temporary homes’ in the village of Belmont.
Miss Cissie Isaacs, also mentioned in Belmont School’s Log Book account,
was a much more experienced teacher who had been working at Temple
School for 24 years. The third teacher who arrived with the evacuees was
Miss Mary Bolton. She had learnt to teach as a pupil teacher in North
Manchester and had spent 12 years working in Manchester Jews’ School
before joining Temple School in 1937. As the war continued she played an
important link role between the school and their evacuee pupils, moving
11
between Manchester and the various reception areas to which evacuee
children were sent at different stages of the war. Manchester Authority had
agreed a scheme which allowed teachers to work alternately in reception and
evacuated areas.4 Temple School Log Book5 tells us that in September 1941
she was back at Temple School and responsible for overseeing the
evacuation of several pupils, including Betty and Lilly Ham to the Turton
area, while Miss Downes was in charge of escorting “children from the
Junior Department who were being evacuated to Nelson.”
The children evacuated to the Turton district were at least fortunate that the
distance they had to travel was not very far, although this did lead later to
some tensions between billeting families and visiting parents.6 Other
children spent many hours getting to their destinations. A Liverpool teacher,
travelling with ninety children who had assembled at 10 o’clock in the morning did not reach their safe town, Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire,
until 7.30 that night.7
Unlike Belmont School, most other schools across the country were not on
holiday in early September. In the days leading up to the evacuation,
teachers and parents in Manchester were given precise instructions about
how they should get ready. Guidelines on what children should take with
them were issued. These mentioned mainly appropriate clothing but also
Children from Temple Infant School being evacuated
12
included an identity card, a luggage-label type name tag, a boxed gas-mask
and a stamped postcard to reassure nervous parents that all had gone well
(see the inside back cover for examples of evacuee postcards).
Schools practised the evacuation procedures and parents were told that on
any day the practice might turn into the real thing without any warning. The
Headmistress at Temple School, Alice Richmond, had received an official
notice to expect to evacuate in July 1939 and made sure that pupils and staff
were well-prepared for their move. According to Temple School’s Log
Book, the school was one of those chosen “to go as far as the Entraining
Station,” (Manchester Victoria) during practices, so on the 28th August, “a
complete Try-out of Evacuation Plans took place.”
On August 31st the Temple School Log Book records, “School closed this afternoon preparatory to evacuation tomorrow morning.” On the next day
the pupils and their teachers set off by bus and train for the Lancashire
countryside. In line with Government policy, Temple School was then
closed, leaving parents who had chosen not to evacuate their children with
no organised opportunities for their continuing schooling.8
The evacuees seemed to have arrived to a very warm welcome. The weekly
Bolton Journal reported on September 8th that factory workers had
exchanged waves with the pupils as their train passed by. A reporter from
the newspaper spoke with the pupils and wrote, “These children, all from
Temple School Cheetham, must have rehearsed what they were to do for
their behaviour was perfect.” Clearly, all the practising had been worth it!
The paper, referring light-heartedly if a bit tactlessly to “Turton’s invading army”, pointed out that all this was purely a “precautionary measure and
that the decision does not mean that war is regarded as inevitable.”
When schools in the Turton Urban District re-opened on September 14th
1939, after the late summer works holidays, the distribution of the pupils to
their receiving schools had already taken place. Alice Richmond noted in
Temple School Log Book that their pupils had been “divided among six
schools in the Turton Urban District, Walmsley C of E in Egerton, Eagley
Mills Council School, Bradshaw C of E, Turton C of E, Longsight Methodist
in Harwood and Belmont Council School”. There were no further entries in
the Log Book until April 1st 1940 when the school “reopened in Manchester
for full time attendance”.
13
Billeting the Evacuees The distribution of evacuees was organised from Turton. Schools were
closed for the “wakes” holidays but all was ready for the arrival of the pupils.
The Bolton Evening News reported on September 1st that many residents had
even cancelled their holidays so they could take children into their homes.
A survey conducted earlier in the year had identified 175 possible billeting
places in the Belmont Ward.9 In large towns it was usual to make a local
government official the Billeting Officer but in rural areas it tended to be a
volunteer who did the job, without pay. In Belmont, Mr Alfred Hutchinson
offered to oversee preparations for the arrival of the evacuees and was
appointed Billeting Officer for the ward. Alfred was born in Belmont in
1887 and worked as a cashier in Belmont Bleach Works. He had also been
Chair of Turton UDI Council the previous year so he understood the
responsibilities and knew the people of Belmont well.
Alfred met with other Billeting Officers from the Turton District in June
1939 when they were invited to appoint their own assistants. They were no
doubt much encouraged to hear at the meeting that the Women’s Voluntary Service had agreed to find people willing to use their cars to help the
billeting officer to take children to their designated homes.10 It was also
suggested that they made use of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides to escort
children.
The Board of Trade wrote to Turton explaining that emergency supplies for
the expected evacuee children would be sent to the “de-training station” in
July to avoid congestion if an “emergency” occurred. Turton Station took
delivery of 66 cases of tinned meat, 53 cases of Nestlé Sweetened Milk and
53 cases of Ideal Unsweetened Milk in August
and stored them securely. Blankets and
“Mackintosh overlays” to protect beds were also sent by the ministry of Health in London. The
Ministry had decided that it was important to
recognise the national service that hosts were
providing by giving those who had volunteered
to take unaccompanied children a special card to display in their window.
Alfred was sent a quantity of these, with letters from the Minister for Health
thanking householders for their “readiness to undertake this service” and
host guidelines, to distribute to homes where unaccompanied evacuee
14
children were billeted. In March, it had been confirmed that 62 households
in the ward had volunteered, though it is not known how many of these
offers were taken up. Turton officials had planned to send 110 children to
Belmont but as fewer children than expected arrived on the trains all the
final destination areas received a proportionally smaller number. The
explanation given in the Bolton Journal for the shortfall in numbers was that
some parents wished to wait until the Saturday to bring their children
themselves and other parents had decided at the last moment not to let their
children be evacuated at all.
How well the national evacuation programme went appears to have varied
from area to area. An evacuee who came with his school from a different
part of Manchester to nearby Egerton reports that all the evacuees stood in
the local church hall where they were greeted by a billeting officer, and the
local vicar greeted the people who then chose one or more children.11
“It was like being in a cattle market. My brother Eric and I were left,
no one chose us. Finally the vicar took us to the vicarage where we
were stripped and bathed in the hottest water I have ever
experienced. We were put in a large double bed and fed with pobs,
(bread and hot milk sprinkled with sugar).
I spent a year in Egerton, moving from one house to another. I was
finally lodged with a Mrs Barnes who treated me like a prince. A
huge change from the previous billets.
However, the general perception of the Turton Urban District response to
the evacuation appears to have been that it went well. The Bolton Evening
News reported that “the first phase of the evacuation of school children went
through splendidly.” And when in the afternoon 352 more children arrived
at Turton Station from Manchester, “all the arrangements again worked
perfectly and the children as they alighted were very cheerful and obviously
thrilled with their new surroundings.” Newspaper reports in Bolton were
initially upbeat, if a bit naïve,12 but later the smoothness of the process of
evacuating pupils with their teachers in well-organised groups was
contrasted with the arrival into the district on the following Saturday of
1,000 mothers and pre-school children. “Many of them had sent their older
children to Turton yesterday and their chief concern was getting billeted as
near as possible to them.” Other parents had come to realise the seriousness
15
of the situation and now travelled independently with them. On September
8th under a headline “The Grim Truth”, the Journal described the “pathetic sight” as mothers with children and some expectant mothers struggled to
transfer from trains to buses and to discover where they might be billeted.
In Turton town itself, some tensions developed between hosts and parents
who had accompanied pre-school children. On September 15th, in an article
titled “Not So Welcome Now,” the Bolton Journal published reports of
“children who seemed to have never had a bath, mothers who refused to
raise a finger to help, unhealthy and verminous evacuees, children visited
by a score of relatives who expected to be fed for nothing.”
It is hardly surprising that people from very different backgrounds thrown
together by the war might struggle at times to get on. The Journal was quick
to balance the tensions with examples of caring. “One mother, when she saw
the state of her two little visitors’ clothing immediately made two dresses so
that her little charges could be clothed respectably.” Later the paper
reported how steps had been taken to help hosts and evacuee parents to work
together and that centres were being set up for parents to meet with their
children. Gradually the difficulties and irritations were removed.13 Even so,
in 1941 when Manchester was eager to evacuate more children to the area,
the Turton Head Teachers’ Association14 felt the need to pass a resolution
that “previous to putting into operation any further evacuation plans some
consultation should be held with the heads of school and billeting officers
to try to obviate some of the difficulties of the first evacuation.”
The evacuees would certainly have found Belmont, set in rolling hills and
wild moors, quite different from Manchester’s Cheetham district with its hundreds of businesses, shops and religious organisations.15
Cheetham Hill Road in the 1930s
16
Not that Belmont was some sleepy, rustic backwater. The village had been
created at the start of the 19th century to house workers in the cotton industry
and 130 years later the 1939 National Register still presented a profile of
mainly skilled factory workers rather than farmers and land-workers. Half
of the jobs reported to the interviewers who conducted the survey were
associated with the local bleach and dye works or nearby cotton and paper
mills. Many other villagers were employed in services to their neighbours
such as publicans, shopkeepers, plumbers, craftsmen and teachers. Only
about 10% of the population lived or worked on farms.
Much of village life revolved
around its two churches. The
Anglican parish church of St Peter
at the south end of the village was
built, along with its Sunday school,
in 1849 from locally-mined Ousel
Nest Grit stone to the design of the
talented young Scottish architect
John Gregan. A long tradition of
non-conformist worship in the
village was kept alive through the
Congregational Church on the
High Street, built at the end of the
19th century in an elaborate style
from stone and brick to replace the
earlier and simpler Bethel Chapel.
Both buildings were home to active and gifted communities and centres for
the development of education and music. Belmont had a history of fine
musicians especially organists, pianists and entertainers. In the 1930s, the
Belmont Village Prize Brass Band16, created in Victorian times, was still
going strong and in great
demand for concerts of
popular music although,
according to the school
Log Book, it still made
time to support a highly
successful fund-raising
event at the school in
March 1937.
Belmont in 1938. Note the
Congregational Church on the
right and the old school sign on
the left.
17
It was the Minister of the Congregational Church, Rev Isaac Bithell who,
after discussions with church officers, volunteered the church Sunday
School building on the corner of Maria Square (now a private home) for use
as the reception centre for the village’s share of the evacuees. Eileen
Edwards, who lived in Belmont at the time, remembers the children arriving
on two single-deck coaches. They looked lost and frightened and many were
disappointed. Apparently, they had been told by organisers, who weren’t quite sure where Belmont was, that they were going near to Blackpool and
the evacuee children were expecting to see the sea and golden beaches!
Parents had been asked to ensure that their children had sufficient food for
the day of evacuation. On arrival at their destination each child was given a
bag of emergency rations to tide them over the first 48 hours. In April, the
Board of Trade had written to the council asking them to distribute the food
supplies very precisely. The maximum a child should receive was a can of
meat, a can each of sweetened and unsweetened milk, two packets or one
pound of biscuits and a quarter of a pound of chocolate or “two two-penny
chocolate crisps” (forerunner of the KitKat bar). The children also received
a note from the Food (Defence Plans) Department17 explaining that the food
bag was provided as an emergency ration “until local shops received
sufficient supplies to meet the requirements
of the additional population.” There was a
widespread fear that there would be a
shortage of food in areas where hundreds of
newly-arrived children needed to be fed.
Newspapers, including the Bolton Journal
for 1st September 1939, carried appeals to
householders not to make a run on the
supplies of local shopkeepers.
A reporter for the Bolton Journal met up with some of the evacuees and later
wrote, “All the mothers have given the children plenty of food for the day
and many of them spent a lot of the journey eating it!” But when the children
received their emergency rations they began eating again, until told to wait
until they were on the next stage of their journey at one of the subsidiary
distribution centres.
Villagers in Belmont and nearby farmers provided billets for the children
who then continued their education for a few days, weeks or even years in
Evacuee children at Turton Station
18
the village school. If the approach to billeting this large group of pupils was
similar to that of placing the later private evacuees in Belmont it is likely
that Mr Hutchinson and his assistants tried to billet children from the same
family together. In the one example for which we have clear evidence in
the 1939 National Register, three Temple School pupils, brothers Brian,
Robert and Eric Royle, were all placed with the Belmont Primary School
Manager, Rev William Thwaites and his wife, in St. Peter’s Church
vicarage.
Families who billeted evacuees received 10 shillings and 6 pence a week
(about 50p but equivalent to about £25 in real terms today) from the
government for taking one child. Another 8
shillings and 6 pence per child was paid if they took
more than one. Mr Hutchinson was provided with
books of tickets to distribute to householders with
unaccompanied evacuee children which allowed
them to collect appropriate payments from the Post
Office. After the war, host families also received
a certificate of appreciation from Queen Elizabeth
(the wife of King George VI). Soon after the
evacuation the Government started to ask the
parents of evacuated children to contribute to this
cost of billeting them.18 This was one reason why
some parents later decided to bring their children
back home.
Although Lancashire's evacuation scheme went according to plan, little had
been done to prepare schools and host families in the reception areas to care
for their guests. Details of evacuation plans had been kept secret by the
Government, even from local councils whose requests to allocate funds for
preparation schemes were refused. Children who arrived in school groups
did have their classmates. They were also accompanied by their teachers
who, in many places, took advantage of the unusually mild September
weather to take pupils out on long walks to familiarise them with their new
surroundings. Voluntary organisations such as the WI and the newly-
created WVS did their best to meet practical and emotional needs.
Nationally, the BBC was busy creating a range of reassuring and advisory
radio programmes and each evening it broadcast Vera Lynn singing the
specially written song “Goodnight Children Everywhere” to comfort
19
homesick children, though many ex-evacuees report that hearing it made
them feel even more sad.19 In October 1940, the 14 year-old Princess
Elizabeth gave a talk20 during Children’s Hour to encourage evacuee
children.
How Belmont School coped with the practical matters of hosting the
evacuees is not easy to glean from the school Log Book. At least initially,
the school experienced some problems with the sheer number of pupils and
received visits on October 6th from the “county organiser W. Dowse re
accommodation” and on the 11th from “HMI W Lamplugh in the afternoon
re numbers etc.” A further visit was made on January 10th 1941 by HMI
Miss Smiley to assess the impact of new evacuees on accommodation.
At the time, the school building consisted of just two classrooms, a hall and
a kitchen. The evacuee children were taught by their own teachers and local
ex-pupils recall this taking place in the hall. The national Board of Education
had not made specific plans for the education of evacuated pupils but now
suggested that schools might resort to a double shift system.21 This solution
was adopted in Bolton town schools but there is no indication that it was
chosen in Belmont. We know from the Belmont School Log Book that the
evacuee pupils certainly did join with local children for the school Christmas
celebrations on 22nd December 1939 when the Headteacher reported that,
“Gifts of apples, oranges, nuts, toffee and 2nd bar of chocolate made to all
the children, both evacuees & locals.”
The register of evacuee pupils was kept separately by the teachers who
travelled with them and no details of individual children in this first party of
evacuees appear in the Belmont School Admissions Register. Later, private
evacuees, who did join in lessons with the local pupils, had their details,
including the address where they were billeted, recorded in the village
school Admissions Register. Their evacuee status was always indicated,
usually with the letters “p.e.” (private evacuee) beside their name.
Many of the children from Temple School were Jewish and those from
practising homes faced particular problems concerning diet and maintaining
their faith and culture. The Manchester and Salford Council of Jews was
very concerned about the education of evacuees, many of whom were placed
in schools in and around Bolton, and made arrangements for a Jewish
teacher to visit them. A total of 55 children in the Bolton district were
supported in this way. In Belmont, Rev Isaac Bithell made the
20
Congregational school rooms available for such teaching. One Jewish
evacuee, Malka Cohen, who lived with her family in the village, also recalls
having lessons with a Jewish teacher at her home22. Attending Jewish
worship was extremely difficult for the Jewish evacuees but again the
Congregational Church helped out by offering the use of church rooms for
Sabbath services.
This positive response by Belmont
to its Jewish evacuees did not go
unnoticed and was reported in the
national Jewish Chronicle
newspaper. In one article23 it was
noted that, “Mr Bithell in his
sermons to his congregants had
urged them to show the fullest
respect towards Jewish religious
observance and to ensure that the
village was not unduly noisy on
Saturdays so that the Jewish
residents may properly observe the
Sabbath.”
To show their appreciation of Mr Bithell’s action, and of similar acts of
friendship shown to Jewish evacuees, the Manchester Jewish Authorities
issued an appeal to parents of Jewish evacuees to reduce Sunday visits to
reception areas to a minimum in order that “the peace of the Christian
Sabbath, in its turn, may be duly maintained”.
Apparently, much interest in Jewish faith, culture and politics was generated
in Belmont by the presence of evacuees. When a showing of a “talkie film” about Palestine called Homeland in the Making was organised by a Jewish
Zionist group a large audience, including many locals, filled the
Congregational Church Hall.24
Dietary rules could be a particular challenge for Jewish children. Joe Flacks
and his two sisters were later evacuated from Temple School to central
Bolton. They reported that, “The people we stayed with were kindly but the
food offered was often ‘treif’” (not according to Jewish dietary laws).25 As a
result, after a few weeks they returned home. It is not known how the city
evacuees got on with the food offered to them in rural Belmont, though
21
Eileen Edwards, who lived in the village at the time, does recall that a boy
and a girl who stayed in her home on evacuation day until collected by their
hosts were confused by two dishes containing salt and pepper on the dining
table. They didn’t know what salt and pepper were.
No detailed records were kept by Belmont School of the children who
arrived in school groups, or what happened to them. It may be that some
moved to other schools or, more likely, returned to Manchester during the
Phoney War period when the threat of large-scale bombing seemed
unfounded. Nationally, only thirteen per cent of children who were
evacuated in the 1939 project were still in their reception areas in the
following January. Hansard for the 8th January 1940 records that 41,000 of
the 66,300 children evacuated from Manchester and 9,500 of the 18,043
evacuated from Salford had already returned home. As early as the 24th November, the Bolton Journal reported that although
700 children were now “comfortably settled in” the Turton District, these represented only about half of the original number, the remainder having
gone back to Manchester. So many children returned to Cheetham that
Temple School was able to re-open after the Easter holiday on April 1st
1940. Most of its pupils and staff, including those evacuated to the Turton
District, appear to have returned to Manchester but two teachers still
remained in the reception area and other teachers visited from time to time.
According to the Temple School Log
Book, teacher Miss Hobson spent a whole
day in April in the Turton Reception Area
and Miss Crosby, another teacher
“having been on duty in the Reception
Area during the normal Easter Holiday
period began a corresponding period of
absence” on April 12th. Clearly some
children had remained in their evacuation
districts. Perhaps this was due in part to
the extensive efforts of the Government
through poster and newspaper campaigns
to persuade parents not to remove
children from the safety of the
countryside. Despite the war, Temple
School was able to provide a relatively
22
normal educational experience for its pupils after they returned in 1940,
though there were frequent air-raid alarms and the Temple School Log Book
often mentions that pupils were “in the shelters”. Towards the end of the
year, the Headteacher reported that 78% of its pupils were now present and
on December 17th, after celebrating the end of term with a Christmas party,
the school closed for the Christmas holidays.
The Christmas Blitz The destructive bombing of London late in 1940, known as the “Blitz” (from
the German blitzkrieg meaning “lightning war”), was extended to Britain's
other major towns and cities at the end of December. It was often
commercial centres and residential areas rather than arms factories that were
most badly affected. In the summer and autumn there had been scattered and
relatively minor attacks in the Manchester and Salford areas but in
December 1940 they were hit by two nights of raids. This 'Christmas Blitz'
resulted in an estimated 820 civilians being killed and more than 2,000
injured.26 Many children had by now returned home to Manchester and
Salford. Alan Woodford had been evacuated from Salford at the start of the
war with his younger sister Betty. Like many others, they had come to
believe that there was no longer a threat from air-raids.27
After three months we came home, because nothing really seemed to be
happening. It was the phoney war at the start. Months later my sister
came home for Christmas. It was December 23, 1940, and the timing
couldn’t have been worse. I was upstairs doing my homework, the air
raid had gone off but we had taken no notice – because sometimes you
didn’t. Suddenly there were flames coming through the loft. I ran
downstairs shouting to my mother “The house is on fire…” There were
bombs dropping everywhere. We were bundled out. Somehow I got
separated from my mother and sister. I think I was looking for shrapnel,
which we used to collect and swap at school, different shapes and so
on… An air raid warden stopped and shouted “what are you doing?” He pushed me into an air raid shelter which was full of people I didn’t know. I was in the shelter for 12 hours listening to bombs dropping all
around… When we got back to the house all that was left was a table.
All the houses had disappeared. After that we went to stay with an aunt
and shortly after that we were rehoused.
23
As early as May 1940 the Government had anticipated that the savage air
attacks experienced by towns in
other European countries would
eventually happen in Britain. In a
radio broadcast28, the Minister for
Health warned listeners not to
ignore the plans to protect the
nation’s children. “The risk of
bombing is so real that it is right
to make as complete as possible
now the plans for this
evacuation.” The Christmas air-
raids persuaded Manchester to
renew its offer to have children
evacuated to relative safety.29 On
December 30th 1940, when the re-
opened Temple School was on
Christmas holiday, the Headteacher wrote in the school Log Book, “Owing
to a bad Air Raid in Manchester the schools re-opened this morning in order
to facilitate the registration of children for evacuation.” Miss Elsie Downes was brought back from Belmont to help. The fear for the safety of children
had been rekindled and a second evacuation, including 29 children to nearby
Harwood, went ahead on 2nd January 1941.
When Belmont School re-opened after the Christmas holiday on 6th January,
1941 it faced a new influx of evacuees. The Log Book records “33 evacuees
from Manchester and district admitted, and 3 teachers”. This was a second
official evacuation and, as in the case of the first group, the visiting teachers
kept a separate pupil register. Although some of the evacuees at this time
were from Temple School, it is not certain where precisely the rest of the
second large group of official evacuees came from. Local historian Jack
Peet in his Souvenir Centenary History of the school suggested that many
were “probably from St Philips School in Manchester,” presumably based
on a note in the school Log Book for December 1941 recording a visit by
“Miss Young, Headmistress of St Philips m/c about the evacuees”.
Belmont’s Private Evacuees The Blitz drove other groups and families to make private arrangements to
move children to Belmont. Private evacuations were allowed and supported
24
by the government and tended to make up a higher proportion of evacuee
children as the war progressed. Belmont School Admissions Register
contains the details of fourteen such children who were formally registered
on January 6th, 1941.
The names of another twelve private evacuees
were added to the register in the following
months. Most were from the Manchester area
although pupils from further afield included
Doreen and Florence Matthews living in
Romford and John Kohorn whose “previous school” is just described in the Register as “Prague.”30 There were also other evacuee
children in the village who were too young to
register at the school. The picture shows, from
left to right, evacuee Roy Jardine with locals
Joyce and Doreen Wood.
The two main schools from which these new privately-evacuated children
came were Temple School, Manchester (presumably individuals whose
parents had chosen not to send them with the original group) and West
Liverpool Street Primary School, Salford. No record was kept of the religion
of privately-registered pupils but family names such as Moscovitch,
Shekeloff and Cohen suggest that many belonged to north Manchester’s Jewish community. The age range of the evacuees was wide. There were
several four and five year-olds and one or two twelve and thirteen year-olds
(who in other circumstances may have been at secondary school) and all
ages in between.
School records of the homes where privately-evacuated children stayed in
the village suggest that care was taken to try to keep families and school
friends together. Gordon, Roy, Brian and Audrey Blackshaw, who were
evacuated from West Liverpool Street School, Salford in May 1941, were
all housed in 28 South View. Irene and Brian Shekeloff and Mildred
Moscovitch, all from Temple School in Manchester, arrived (or possibly
returned if they were in the 1939 cohort from that school) in January 1941
and were housed at number one Ward Street. In September Mildred was
joined by her four-year-old sister Phyllis. Higher Fold Farm was home for
12 months from March 1941 for Ronnie, Eric and Marjorie Dodd who had
been evacuated from Pendleton in Salford.
25
Where Registered Private
Evacuees stayed 2 Deakins Terrace(5)
4 Deakins Terrace
1 Ward Street (4)
3 Ward Street
36 High Street (4)
70 High Street
77 High Street
91 High Street (2)
96 High Street 22 South View
28 South View (4)
34 South View
17 Maria Square
31 Maria Square
Higher Fold Farm (3)
Schools from which Private
Evacuee Children came
Bernay’s Thornton Cleveleys
St Matthew’s School Stretford
Derby Street School Manchester
Stowell Memorial School Salford
West Liverpool St School
Salford (3)
Broughton High School (2)
Pendleton Salford (3) Junior School Romford
Marley School Dagenham (2)
Grecian St School, Salford
Stowes Memorial School Salford
Temple School Manchester (8)
26
The number of pupils attending the school had risen dramatically again after
this second influx of evacuees and the Log Book records that on January
10th there was a “visit from HMI Miss Smiley re number of children,
accommodation etc.”
Privately-evacuated children joined in with the Belmont pupils. Planning the
teaching could not have been easy with new pupils arriving every month and
others leaving whenever parents decided it was safe to return home. Only
fifteen of the private evacuee children stayed for twelve months or more,
although Esther and Israel Cohen from Broughton, who were
accommodated at 36 High Street, stayed for three years. Their sister Malka,
who was nearly twelve when she arrived with the evacuees, stayed until
April 1941 when she left to go to Bolton School. Many other children were
present for just a few weeks.
Returning Home
For people living in Manchester and Salford, the horrors of the 1940
Christmas Blitz were followed by more attacks early in the New Year, re-
inforcing the need to move or return children to safety.
But air-raids soon became infrequent. There was a devastating attack in the
early hours of Whit Monday, June 2nd 1941, and two others in October
(which hit mainly the outskirts of Manchester, including Bolton) but apart
from a short flurry in July 1942, air activity over Manchester ceased for the
next two-and-a-half years. Many evacuee children began to move back to
their homes where blackout restrictions were eventually reduced to
“dimout” and gas streetlights re-lit. And although the Manchester area was
unexpectedly attacked over Christmas 1944 by V1 flying bombs, killing
more than 20 people, life had become more relaxed and services, including
education, were returning to normal.
Although many of the Manchester and Salford evacuees returned to their
homes early in the war, those who arrived later, or from further away, were
less likely to leave. Turton Urban District received many evacuees from as
far away as London. In September 1944 the local WVS remarked in their
monthly report to HQ that only a small number of these London evacuees
had gone home. “They all seem to have settled in very comfortably and are
in no hurry to return.” The WVS was still running two clubs for evacuees
in Eagley and Turton Village and in December they held a Grand Christmas
Party for all of them. “Only a few who were ill did not come in spite of the
27
dreadful Weather; an excellent and enjoyable time was had by all.”
No detailed records were kept by Belmont School of the period the official
evacuee groups remained in the village but the Log Book records that on
23rd and 31st October 1941 “official evacuees” Kenneth Marsh and
Raymond Blower respectively “returned to Manchester”.
Neither is it clear how long the teachers who came with the groups of
evacuees remained in school. Miss Downes appears to have moved
frequently between Manchester and Belmont and then, on November 1st
1940, she was transferred to Walmsley, one of the other schools in the
Turton district used by the original Temple School evacuees. When a
member of the permanent Belmont School staff resigned in December 1941
the Log Book records that her class was taken over by Miss Coe, “a
Manchester evacuated teacher” and her own group of children split up. On December 19th 1941 the Head noted, “Miss P. M. Coe, the Manchester
evacuated teacher, terminates her work here and returns to Manchester.”
The final entry in Belmont school Log Book concerning the Manchester
official evacuees was written on 4th December 1944 and reads, “Lilly White
(evacuee) returned to Manchester today. There are now no Manchester
children left in the school.”
Eleven days after Lilly’s return, private evacuee Doris Harwood went back to London. But it wasn’t until 1945 that the final private evacuees left the
school. Esther and Israel Cohen returned to Salford on 9th February and
Rose Baker to London on February 23rd, the Log Book entry for that day
noting “There are now no evacuees in attendance.”
Throughout the war years the Government had actively discouraged
evacuees from going back home but in April 1945 timetables and
arrangements were being made for their return. Nearly 3,000,000 had been
displaced and by August, 76,000 children still remained in reception areas.
March 1946 marked the official end of the civilian evacuation and yet 5,200
evacuees still remained in their wartime billets.31
It is impossible to know how easily the Belmont evacuee children settled
back into their home towns and schools. Those returning early may have
found their school buildings being used for other government purposes.
Others from bombed areas faced the possibility of having no home or school
to return to. For Agnes Platt, a kind of itinerant evacuee from Manchester
28
to Belmont, the uncertainty of returning home was a daily one.32
My Dad was a lorry driver for Stott's Motors in Higher Broughton.
The manager thought it better if the drivers took the vehicles home at
night in case the depot was bombed. Usually after tea we would all
get into the back of Dad's lorry with the blankets, eiderdowns, a couple
of suitcases and off we went. Our destination was Belmont near
Bolton. We went to the Weight (Wrights?) Arms, a public house that
opened its doors to anyone who wanted refuge from the blitz. It was a
great adventure for me jogging along in Dad's lorry and sleeping on
the floor of a pub! We could hear the German bombers going over to
Liverpool and Manchester. As they crossed the Pennines, the anti-
aircraft guns would open fire to try to stop them. Some people would
shout "give itto 'em lads". Thankfully our house, 6 Albert Street, was
still standing and not damaged whenever we returned.
Most evacuees living in Belmont were near enough to Manchester or Salford
to have visited, or had visits from, family members but they still must have
found the cultural and social impact of being away from home and friends a
life-changing experience.33 Even when practical matters went well, many
children were placed in homes where the culture was quite different from
home. Some testify to this being a positive and enhancing experience. For
others it was quite traumatic and left them scarred. Margaret Lambie, on
hearing about our project, wrote to the school about being evacuated from
Broughton to nearby Egerton. She was separated from her brother and sisters
and told us, “the whole experience ruined our family”.
Fifty years after Operation Pied Piper, Ben Wicks produced the first
collection of evacuee experiences to be published. Many contributors wrote
positively about being with caring hosts and enjoying a creative time in their
young lives. Others spoke of experiencing deep sadness and even prejudice
and awful abuse34. Billeting Inspectors had been issued with forms to
complete for each household but although the form included questions about
the fitness of the property and provided a section for general comments, no
detailed assessment was made of the suitability of the hosts. For some
evacuees, the return home was equally traumatic.
29
3
School must go on
During the war years, Belmont School’s Log Book reveals an intriguing
blend of normality and disruption in school. Compared to the experience of
Temple School in north Manchester, where in 1940 and 1941 three major
air-raids disrupted school life, Belmont village children and evacuees alike
had a much quieter time. The dentist was in school to inspect all the
children’s teeth and doctors paid regular visits to check their general health.
On one occasion this was in response to a “diphtheria scare”. Fortunately
the fears were proved groundless and several days later the test results from
swabs taken by the doctor were reported in the Log Book as negative.
At least once a month the parish priest and School Manager (equivalent to a
Governor today), Reverend William Thwaites, called in and recorded in a
neat hand in the Log Book that he had “listened to opening prayers etc and
Scripture lessons in the classes,” and checked the school registers for
attendance. School Inspectors visited, police gave their regular talks on
road safety (it was an issue even then!) and the Horticultural Organiser, PT
Organiser, Temperance Teaching Scheme lecturer, Domestic Science
Organiser (“to see the girls at cookery”) all came as usual. And when in
February 1940 some typically bad Belmont winter weather arrived it must
have seemed like any other year. The Log Book reads “Deep snow and
drifts. Very poor attendance. Buses not running. Received permission to
close school in the afternoon.” According to His Majesty’s Inspectors, who
had visited and reported on the school in 1938, Mr Hill was an able
Headteacher who directed the school in a “thorough and capable manner.” He would have guided the school well through the early years of the war. In
fact, serious disruptions were more often due to weather or health problems
than the war itself. In March 1944, for example, attendance was down to
61% due to outbreaks of chicken pox and German measles in the village.
The war did cause some disruption to the school’s holiday pattern. In 1940 it had planned to close for its usual two-day Whitsuntide break in May but
this was reduced to one day because “of National Emergency and by order”. In the same year, the planned June summer holiday was cancelled altogether
“because of the war”. The school eventually took its holiday at the end of
July.
30
And even though Belmont was well away from the big towns and cities, and
not really at risk from bombing, an air-raid warning system was introduced
to the village. In August 1940 the Log Book records that the school didn’t open until 9.45am (“as instructed”) on two days because air-raid alarms had
gone off in the early hours of the morning. Starting school at a later time
after such events became the pattern and from October the school changed
its permanent winter starting time to 9.30am “irrespective of whether there
is an alert or not.” In 1942, the school hours were adapted again so that
during the dark months of November through to January the school day
didn’t begin until 9.30am because of the war blackout requirements.
Air-raid alarms sometimes sounded during the day and disrupted teaching.
A planned road safety talk by the police in January 1941 had to be postponed
“because of alert”. The school was well-prepared for the possibility of
attacks during the day and children were drilled in what to do.
On November 1st 1939 the Headteacher was able to report that an inspection
had taken place of the school’s “nearly completed” air-raid shelters.
According to local recollections the shelters were of simple brick
construction with two rows of slatted seats and a concrete bench for children
to sit on. There was no electricity installed and during drills candles were
used. At the time, the playground was divided by a brick wall into two areas,
one for boys and the other for girls. Separate shelters were therefore
constructed for boys and girls in their own sections of the playground. Local
girl Nancy Taylor remembers having air-raid drills in school and has vivid
recollections of the bare brick air-raid shelter in the girls’ playground. “It
was dark and damp and smelled. There were forms arranged to sit on but
A reconstructed photograph showing how the shelters probably looked.
31
no lights.” At home, Nancy’s family didn’t have a shelter but would hide under the table. They knew there was a shelter of some kind in the nearby
bleach works but never went to it.
From the beginning of the war, children were expected to carry gas masks
(probably manufactured in nearby Blackburn) at all times in case bombs
containing poisonous gas were dropped.1 In June 1943 the Headteacher
recorded that “Mr W Farnworth, air-raid warden, examined all the
children’s gas masks and is seeing to any replacements and wrong sizes”
and on 9th February 1944 the Log Book records that the air-raid wardens
inspected the children’s respirators again. Ex-pupil Nancy Taylor recalls
that at first the children had their gas masks with them at all times but as
time went on they tended to bring them only when an air-raid practice had
been arranged. In 1941, “anti-splinter netting” was attached to all school
windows and not removed until October 1944.
Despite the precautions taken by the school, some parents clearly preferred
to have their children at home if there was any chance of a raid. In
September 1940 the Log Book reports “during playtime an air warning
sounded. Mrs Ainsworth forced herself into the school and took 2 children
home without permission, as we were getting them to their places under
cover. She had previously kept them at home for the morning when the
school opened at 9.45am.” And two days later, “Mrs J Speak took her 3
children home during air raid alarm without permission. They came back
when ‘all clear’ sounded.”
As the war continued the pupils did their bit to back
Britain. In October 1941 the school won first prize
in the Turton Council’s salvage drive to collect the most newspapers. The Log Book records that they
managed to gather an average of 123.59 pounds (56
kilos) per head, and proudly points out that the
school which came second, Hob Lane, only managed
70lbs per head. In addition, Belmont sent three lorry
loads of scrap iron, probably including the original
school railings. Appropriately, the following month
the school received a deputation, including the
Chairman of Turton UDC, to present the children
with a trophy of an inscribed barometer when “an
interesting ceremony was performed and the children sang songs.”
32
Nancy Taylor remembers not only collecting paper for the war effort as a
child but also gathering pieces of chaff dropped by enemy aircraft. “We
used to go up on Rabbit Warren to look for tinfoil (chaff) which was used
by the air people after the development of RADAR as a decoy”. All kinds
of waste was collected in the war years and in one case it led to a novel
pastime for the children. Nancy recalls that at the top of Maria Square there
were bins for collecting household scraps where “we used to lift the lids so
we could watch the maggots!” It is perhaps not surprising that in April 1944,
Police Sergeant Taylor and Lt. Whittle of the Home Guard were in school
to speak to the children on “Safety First and the Danger of Handling
Unknown Objects”.
The children also raised money for other war causes. Perhaps, with modern
medical understanding, the Headteacher’s note for May 27 1943, “sent 25/-
subscribed by children to Overseas Tobacco Fund, London as our Empire
Day Effort to provide cigarettes for soldiers, sailors and airman,” might seem a little less praiseworthy!
It is difficult to imagine what continuing impacts the war had on school life
but we do know that at Easter 1943 it was decided to replace woodwork with
cardboard modelling “because of the shortage of boys and the difficulty of
getting wood.”
As the war started to draw to a close the school shared in the growing mood
of pride and optimism. By now, all the evacuees had left the school which
was back to the more manageable number of 75 pupils. They took a day off
on March 8th 1945 for the visit of the King and Queen to Lancashire. And
when peace eventually came, the school celebrated by closing on May 8th
1945 for two days for Victory in Europe and for two days again on August
15th “for the National V. J. holiday.”
Over the war years almost 150 evacuee children spent some time in the
village school. As with the initial Operation Pied Piper, it is difficult to
assess how effective the continuing evacuation of children was. Nearly one-
and-a-half thousand civilians were killed in Manchester during the main
period of bombing in 1940 and 1941. Of these, 184 were children below the
age of 14. If all had gone exactly to plan, these children would certainly have
been living safely outside the city.2
33
4
Stories from the War Years We know little about the names and backgrounds of the original group of
children who came from Temple School because no records were kept in
Belmont. A limited amount of information can be found in the 1939
National Register, though the entries for most evacuee children have been
redacted. The details of later private evacuees are included in the school
Admissions Register and it has been possible, in some cases, to discover
more about their lives. In this next section we share the stories of some of
the children who spent time as evacuees in Belmont during the war years or
who were living here as young villagers.
It is clear from these few accounts that, despite the careful planning and
goodwill of hosts in reception areas, the experience of individual evacuees
varied enormously. It would be easy, like some of the contemporary
newspaper reports, to romanticise the events. In truth, like so much of what
occurred during the war years, it was often a matter of ordinary people trying
to find ways to mitigate the impact of unimaginable and horrific
circumstances in order to help each other to survive. It is good to know that
the people of Belmont played some part in this.
A Land Mine destroyed our School Doris Breeton lived with her parents Leonard and Ada in South Ann Street,
Salford. She attended Stowell Memorial School situated in School Street
and closely linked to the famous Stowell Memorial Church on Eccles New
Road, built by public subscription in 1867 to honour the life and work of
The Reverend Canon Hugh Stowell. She arrived at Belmont school as a
private evacuee on January 6th, 1941 having just celebrated her 12th birthday
on Christmas Day in the middle of the Salford “Christmas Blitz”.
A pupil from nearby Trafford Road School, writing 75 years later in the
Salford Lifetime Links magazine, recalls,
“After Christmas we found that our school had not been hit by the night
raids but a neighbouring school, the Stowell Memorial School was
destroyed when a landmine exploded. Pupils from there joined us at
Trafford Road School. Sitting down on the first day back after Christmas,
one of the new boys from Stowell Memorial sat beside me. He told me he
34
had gone to look at his school and the only thing that was left was a big
crater.”
Another pupil from Stowell Memorial School, Frank Lomas, who was
evacuated to Wheelton near Chorley, remembered, “Explosions went out
because a land mine fell on the school. In the morning we saw an enormous
crater in its place. As children, we were obviously happy because this meant
there would be no lessons for some time. This was Stowell Memorial School,
which was situated in School Street.”
In fact, the girls’ department of the school had been destroyed completely
and the boys’ department badly damaged. Many people died in the Stowell
School area during the raid.1
Billeted in Belmont
Perhaps in the light of this enemy action, Doris’ parents felt that moving their daughter to the nearby Trafford Road School was still a bit of a risk so
brought her to Belmont and enrolled her as a private evacuee. She lived here
at 2 Deakins Terrace, the home of retired cotton dyer Thomas Ainsworth
and his wife Emily, and their two grown-up children. She only stayed for
two weeks, then the School Log Book reports that she returned to Salford.
Eleven-year-old Barbara Walmsley also attended Stowell Memorial School
and was registered at Belmont school on the same day as Doris. She stayed
at 34 South View with Dennis and Annie Ainsworth and their two school-
age children. They had already billeted Jean Cockshoot and her sister,
evacuees with the original Temple School
group. Barbara returned even earlier than
Doris, after only 3 days.
Records show that Doris Breeton survived
the war and married local Salford boy Eric
Price in 1950. The ceremony took place in
Stowell Memorial Church which, unlike the
school, had been able to survive the blitz -
though not the early 1980s road network
development around Salford which left just
the tower standing. It remains there today at
the start of the M602 motorway as a
memorial to the church’s impressive history.
35
A Fine Romance
In September 1956, in nearby Horwich, Bolton-born 32 year-old Victor
Hornby married Florence Matthews. Florence, seven years his junior, was
also born in Bolton, although at the outbreak of the war she was living with
her family in Romford. Victor met Florence when she and her sister Doreen
were sent to Belmont as private evacuees from Romford in September 1939.
Romford was identified as a vulnerable area during the war, although the
formal evacuation of children did not take place until 1944. So, like many
other parents in such areas, the Matthews must have decided to evacuate
Florence and her sister Doreen privately.
Florence’s mother, whose maiden name was Lee, had very close links with Belmont through her family, so it was an obvious safe place to choose.
Victor Hornby’s family also had links with the village, especially through
the Congregational Church. The Rev Joseph Hornby had been the first
minister of Bethel Chapel which was built on the east side of Belmont’s High Street in the 19th century. When it was replaced by the new
Congregational church on the opposite side of the road he became the
minister.
Victor Hornby’s family lived in the village during the war, first at 33 High
Street then later at 3 Ward Street. When the Matthews girls first registered
at Belmont Primary School, Victor had already left, having reached the age
of fourteen the year before Florence and Doreen arrived. But Victor’s eight-year-old sister, Olga, was still at school and one of Florence’s classmates.
Florence and her sister, like many evacuee children, had a disrupted
education, moving back home to the Romford area twice, only to return to
Belmont School when the situation in Romford became more dangerous.
They finally left the village in October 1940 but no doubt had got to know
the Hornby children well during their visits here, possibly even staying with
them early in 1940. How this eventually led to the marriage of Florence and
Victor is not known but it seems very likely that the first steps towards their
married life together can be traced back to Florence being evacuated to
Belmont in 1939.
36
From an Art Deco Apartment to a
Victorian Terraced House
Jean Cockshoot was eight years old and in the Junior section of Temple
School when the order to evacuate was given in September 1939. Her sister
Joyce was in the Infants section and, as the policy when children of different
ages in the same family were evacuated was to keep them together, Jean
joined the group from Temple Infant School which came to Belmont. She
must have missed the company of her school friends but at least she had her
younger sister with her. The girls were billeted with Dennis Ainsworth, who
is described in the 1939 Register as a “Stenter,” working in the cloth-
stretching process at the bleach works, and his wife, at 34 South View.
When Jean was born on 24th July 1931 the family was living in Collyhurst
one of the more run-down areas of North Manchester. In the 1930s, as part
of a national scheme of slum clearance, the area was designated for
demolition. Manchester Council decided to clear as many as possible of
these poor back-to-back terraced houses and move the families into modern
multi-storey blocks of council flats. Although these new high-rise buildings
eventually proved to be inappropriate and many of them were knocked down
in the 1960s and 70s, at the time they were state-of-the-art and their designs
were often groundbreaking.
In the Cheetham Hill area, not far from Temple School, a piece of land was
given over to the building of Kennet House. This huge block of 180 flats,
popularly known as Queen Mary or “the ship”, had its own community hall,
laundry and office to pay
your rent and report any
repairs. There was a
lawned area and there was
even the possibility of
families having their own
allotment. It was a very
striking Art Deco design
by Bolton-born architect
and First World War hero
Leonard Heywood, opened
in 1935. With a green-
grocers, hardware shop,
37
newsagents, butchers, a youth club and even its own church, the estate was
seen as its own self-contained community. When their house in Collyhurst
was selected for demolition, the Cockshoot family were offered flat number
41 Kennet House and the family went to live there.
We don’t know how the girls felt about moving out as evacuees but after
five years living in their highly sought-after modern and spacious flat, with
its light and airy rooms, inside bathroom and modern plumbing, the living
conditions of their temporary Victorian home on South View must have
seemed very cramped and old-fashioned, and the village quite quaint
compared to their grand, modern building close to the lively Cheetham Hill
Road.
Jean returned to Manchester and Temple School at some point later during
the war and remained there until the end of the school year 1942, when she
moved on to St. Malachy’s Roman Catholic school to continue her
education. She survived the war and eventually died in 2005 aged 74. The
flats were demolished in 1979.
38
In Search of America.
Three of the evacuees who found temporary refuge in Belmont were Irene,
Brian and Delyse Shekeloff, children of Myer and Beatrice, both from
Jewish immigrant families.
In the 1930s, Cheetham Hill was a complex community of many cultures
and nationalities. Jewish migrants in particular had found a home there,
many after arriving in Britain on route from Europe to America but settling
instead in cities like Manchester.
The children’s maternal grandfather, Bernard Belerab, came from the
Russian town of Crakinova, now part of Lithuania, where he was born in
1892. It was a poor district where the Jewish community was often
oppressed. To escape, Bernard had followed the route taken by many
Russian Jewish migrants to Britain, arriving on the East coast of England,
probably intending to cross the country and take a ship from Liverpool for
the USA or Canada. Like others he
did not complete the journey and
eventually settled in Yorkshire. By
1911 he was living in Sheffield,
safe from the expulsion of Jews
from his home town and its
destruction by the Russians in 1915.
He describes himself as a glazier
and clothes dealer and was living
with his wife Silva and their 4-year-
old daughter Beatrice. In 1913 he
committed himself to a life in
Britain by becoming a naturalised
British citizen, swearing allegiance
to the crown and settling down to
develop his clothing business in
Button Lane, Sheffield.
Their daughter Beatrice was married in Manchester to Myer Shekeloff in the
summer of 1928. Myer’s father, Isaac, was a cabinet-maker working from
89 Pimblett Street in Cheetham Hill. Isaac’s parents had also been refugees,
from the Jewish settlement of Navaran in Lithuania. When his father died
in 1931, Myer continued in his father’s tradition of cabinet-making. He and
39
Beatrice had a son Brian, and two daughters, Irene and Delyse. The two
older children were at Temple School when war broke out. It is not clear if
they were among the children who arrived in Belmont with the first official
group of evacuees but after the terrifying Christmas Blitz in Manchester the
children were privately evacuated, or re-evacuated, to the village. Irene and
Brian were registered in the school on Jan 6th 1941 and billeted at 1 Ward
Street. Irene was just seven years old and Brian two years younger. Delyse
was registered in September when she was old enough to attend school and
stayed, perhaps with her mother, at 31 Maria Square. They remained safe in
the village until the end of the year when they returned home until the war
was over.
It is likely that the children had been told many stories by their parents about
their family’s long history of moving on and making new beginnings. If so,
it wouldn’t have been much of a surprise to them when, after the war, their
parents announced that they were going to follow the family pattern and set
out for somewhere new – this time
America. On 22nd May 1948 the whole
family, along with 1500 other
passengers, boarded the Cunard White
Star shipping company’s ship Britannica for her first post-War
sailing from Liverpool to New York.
They arrived safely after 5 days and set
off for their final destination of Denver, Colorado.
The family settled into life in America
and Brian started to explore his love of
the arts. In fact, he went on to become
a highly influential expert in art and
anthropology, especially in Japanese
folk art for which, until his death in
2014, he was an international
authority. But he always remembered
his days living in the north of England
and the day they set off for America
when he was just 13 years old.2
40
From Farmyard to Academia
Gerald Margolis was a six-year-old Jewish boy living in the Jewish Quarter
of Cheetham Hill and a pupil at Temple School when it moved its pupils to
Belmont in 1939. This is his own account of the experience.
“With war came evacuation. In September 1939, city children became
‘evacuees’ and were sent to the country to save us from air raids – each with
a gas mask and a name label. Children from my school were sent to farms
around Belmont – not too far from Manchester. But my evacuation lasted
only a week – though it was a wonderful week. I was billeted with my best
friend Harold Harris in the charge of an elderly, kind but ineffectual
farming couple with no children, Mr and Mrs Reece.
The Reece’s farm was a boyhood paradise. We were introduced to a whole
range of new knowledge and experiences – finding that milk for instance,
came from cows. And the Reeces, who had never had children of their own,
with kindness, and completely out of their depth, fed us every day on hoarded
tinned fruit – a rare luxury – and, as an added bonus, did not require us to
wash. We mucked out the pigs and were taught how to milk the cows.
But then my Auntie Dora, who had somehow wrangled a job with a car and
petrol, came to see how I was getting on. She found me covered in pig dung
with Harold alongside trying to milk a cow. She needed only to glance at
our filthy clothes and happy unwashed faces to be appalled. She stormed at
the Reeces and I was snatched up and brought home. Then she contacted
the Harris’s who arranged a similar rescue for Harold. Mam, who had been doubtful about evacuation from the start, pronounced: ‘If we’re going to die, then we’ll all die together.’”
Gerald’s family later moved to Blackpool when he was a young teenager. They changed their name to
Mars and opened a boarding house. Gerald
continued his education, then went on to study
Anthropology at University. He eventually became
a distinguished University professor and author,
often drawing on his contrasting community
experiences as a child in his work. It was in an introduction to one of his
books on Anthropology that he described his short stay in Belmont.3
41
A Note from New Zealand
When Margaret Lambie (nee Mammen) read about the Belmont School
Evacuees Project in her copy of the British Evacuee Association Newsletter
she wrote from New Zealand where she has lived for 59 years.
I was sent from Manchester to Egerton after the Christmas Blitz of 1940.
The whole experience ruined our family. We were split up and didn't see
each other for many months and in the case of my big sister, for years. My
sister, Rosemary, was six years older than me. She was sent to Cleveleys
where she stayed for nearly five years. We had little contact during that time.
She had at least two moves and didn’t find the experience a happy one. John, the next eldest, went to Fleetwood which he enjoyed. Peter and I were sent
to Egerton. The husband was in the RAF, stationed at Blackpool. We visited
him there and I saw the sea for the first time.
I lived in Egerton for nearly two years. I went back home to Manchester for
Christmas and my mother found I had nits in my waist length hair. She was
horrified and wouldn’t let me return, preferring me to dodge bombs rather than have head lice! My time there was happy and Mrs Sankey was kind.
She gave me a doll with beautiful clothes that she had made. I loved it and
called it Jill.
My brother, Peter, had a dreadful couple of weeks when he was billeted with
an old couple. He had to share a bed with the man who wet the bed. His
teacher found out and so he was moved to live with Mrs Kay. She was lovely
and took great care of him. We met each other occasionally in the village or
at school and I was always closest to him in later life. I recall that Belmont
was nearby but as a seven year old did not know just where. I remember
there was a reservoir called The Belmont Lodge. I learnt to skim stones on
one of the reservoirs and we had great competitions after school. The
skimming skill hasn’t left me and I still enjoy challenging people. I think my best is seven but I am sure many people have beaten that over the years. I
think we shared the school with the local children so every day was a half
day. I’m sure the pupils would love that!
So memories of being evacuated are very varied and it’s lovely to share them. It was so long ago but they are still very real for me. I am delighted
that the children of Belmont are researching the evacuation.
42
Adventures of a Five-Year-Old Evacuee
Les Croft was five years old when he was evacuated with his seven year-old
sister Greta from Cheetham Hill to Belmont with the Temple School group
in 1939. They were placed with a family in Belmont but it turned out to be
an unhappy experience. Although some family members were kind to them
they felt unfairly treated by the mother. When their own mother discovered
this during a visit, she quickly took them back to Manchester. Les contacted
us from Canada, where he now lives, to tell us what happened next.
I’m not sure how long we were at Belmont before my mother brought us
home but we were in Manchester during quite a bit of the bombing. There
was a second evacuation from Temple School to Harwood in 1941 so we
must have gone then. I remember the lady with whom we were placed in
Harwood as being extremely kind and affectionate but we were not with her
long as she went to help the war effort, working in a munitions factory.
So we were sent to Mr & Mrs Gregson, a kindly elderly couple who lived in
a lovely house called “Raven Wood”. We were right next to a farm. They
had a very nice cook and maid who joked with us a lot. Sometimes when we
got fish and parsley sauce, which we both hated, I waited for the cook to go
away and snook out and tipped it over the fence on to the farmer's field!
Down the road was a tourist spot called the Jumbles with a lovely stream
where we spent many happy hours picking and eating black-berries.
Wonderful memories spring to mind of rabbits, pretty birds and squirrels. I
was too young to know fear – it was lovely to be a child in those days. I
found lots of friendly playmates. Some of the first words they said to us were
“eeh don’t thee talk posh”. By the time we came home, we had broad
Lancashire accents! I was not a bad child but I did possess a bit of a temper,
mainly expressed in brother and sister squabbles. My sister was just trying
to look after me and I did not like being told what to do. So I threw tantrums.
Once on the way to school I threw one in the middle of the road. I threw my
gas mask on the floor and held up the traffic. I was too much for the nice
elderly couple. We were separated and sent to different houses. I lived with
the Harrison family in Ruins Lane where I was well-treated. There were lots
of nice places to play. But I soon became a problem again. When they sat
43
down to dinner I was sent up to bed as I was younger. I don’t think I was scared of the dark before but I was imagining all sorts of things so I would
jump out of bed, stamp my feet for attention then pretend to be asleep. One
night the door opened and in came Mrs Harrison. Apparently, I had scared
the whole household out of their wits - and I was on the move again.
This time I was put with the Barlow Family in Church Street, just behind
Leagate Lane where my sister was staying. It was a pretty stone walled
cottage with beautiful white swans on the pond behind us. Across the road
was a quaint English pub called “House Without a Name”. I was happy
there but Greta started having trouble with an older girl in her home. She
ran away and somehow got back to Manchester, and I was alone.
The family took me for my first-ever holiday
to Blackpool. When we returned I was tucked
into bed with some night treats. They were so
kind and always kissed me goodnight. But I
started to pine for my sister Greta. So I got
out of bed, dressed myself and set off walking
to Manchester. On the way I was hungry and
stopped a man and woman to ask for money.
They gave me some coppers but I think they
recognized me as an evacuee and knew the
people I was staying with. It was close to 10pm when I was approached by
a policeman. He knelt down and said, “Where do you think you're going at
this time of the night my young man?” I said, “I’m going to Manchester” and he said, “Come on I’ll take you to Manchester”. I thought, what a nice
man. He took me to the police station and stood me on a chair to get details
from me! They put me on a bus or a tramcar and gave instructions to the
driver where to put me off. I was brought back home just in time to go back
to Temple School where I was greeted by teacher Miss Vitovsky. These
people must have been so distraught. I was not their child but they treated
me as such. I went to see them a couple of years later when I understood
what I had done and they were pleased to see me.”
Les and his family survived the war and later he emigrated to Canada where
he now lives as a very active and supportive member of his community.
Les with his Mum on a visit
to Blackpool after the war.
44
War Refugees
Johann Kohorn registered at Belmont School in 1940. His family had just
moved into Hordern Cottage on Rivington Road. His brother Ernst was
eleven and too old for the primary school so joined Bolton School.
The brothers, known now by the English form of their names ‘John’ and
‘Ernest’, weren’t evacuees but members of a Jewish refugee family from the
German-speaking Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. In 1938 Germany
annexed Bohemia forcing the Kohorns to escape to Prague where John
continued his early-years education. Germany then invaded
Czechoslovakia. At the time, John’s father, Leo, was in Britain looking for
work and for sponsors to enable the family to join him. Having been warned
in a telegram from his wife Hilda he stayed here and arranged safe passage
for her and their two sons to Britain.
John’s father was an entrepreneur and before long he was running his own
book-cloth company at the bleach works in Belmont.4 The business
flourished but at the end of the war the owners of the building required the
space and Leo Kohorn moved his business to Deakin’s Bleach and Dye works at Egerton. Here, too, he was very successful and eventually became
a Director of Deakin’s Ltd. In the meantime, the family moved to Blackburn
Road and John continued his education, eventually joining his brother
Ernest at Bolton School.
Ernest, despite his disrupted
childhood, distinguished
himself in academic work and
went on to Cambridge
University, eventually
becoming a surgeon and a
professor at the prodigious
Yale University in the USA.
Ernest wrote to Belmont
School pupils from the USA
in February 2018, “We lived in Hordern Cottage, right opposite the Church
of England and the cemetery there in Belmont while the owner was on
military service. I well remember the winter of 1940 when there were several
feet of snow and my brother and I dug a path down to the main road. We
spoke Czech still but have now both forgotten this language completely!”
John and Ernest with their mother Hilda
45
John was at Bolton school from 1942 to
1951 and then Salford University and
followed his father as manager of the
factory. Kohorn Bookcloth made the
coverings for Oxford Bibles and the early
Phaidon Art Books throughout the 1950s.
With John’s arrival it gradually turned to the
manufacture of plastic-coated cloth and later
John established a new factory in Horwich
manufacturing PVC coated fabrics. He was
also very interested in sport and a keen
footballer at school. Later he had close links
with Bolton Wanderers FC.
In 2018 John visited Belmont Primary School to tell his fascinating story to
the pupils.
My father came to Belmont because there was a big bleaching and dyeing
works here. We shared our rented cottage with another family – all we had
was what fitted into our suitcases.
We were very lucky to get here. My mother had to queue every day for 6
months at the Czech embassy from 8 to 5 o’clock to try to get visas but it
was very difficult. Without a visa we couldn’t come to England. She managed to get the visas on the 23 August 1939 and we left the next day by
train from Prague station with 7 or 8 suitcases. We went through Germany,
then through Poland and managed to get to Holland, all by train. We
weren’t stopped because we had visas which meant you had the right to leave the country. We got to the Hook of Holland and got a boat and sailed
to England and we arrived there just a week before World War 2 started.
Once war was declared there were no trains from Prague or anywhere else
to England.
When I came to Belmont I couldn’t speak a word of English. I got very upset. I went to my bedroom and closed the door and locked it and cried. My father
couldn’t speak a word of English either. He had studied at Vienna University
and was a Doctor of Philosophy. He didn’t know anything about bleaching, dyeing and finishing, but he learnt about it from his uncles who had big
works in Czechoslovakia. When he came here there was no one to run
Belmont Bleaching & Dyeing works, which had something like 90 or 100
John aged 17 in his Bolton School
football strip.
46
people. So he took over the works and ran it for the whole of the 5 or 6 years
that World War 2 took place. He used to produce extra things like blackout
blinds and other things that were useful in the war.
When I lived in Sudetenland I first spoke German. Then I had to go to school
in Prague when I was aged 6 and couldn’t speak Czech so they all thought that I was not very good but it was because I couldn’t speak Czech! But I did learn it in about 6 months.
I was only at Belmont School for about 5 months and I couldn’t speak any English so it was very difficult for me. I can remember there was a Sunday
School where I was being taught English. This was now my third language!
They decided they would have a Sunday School concert. A lady took me in
hand and she taught me how say
the poem “Little Boy Blue”. They
put me in a blue uniform. I was just
about 8 and they pushed me onto
the stage and I gave them an
audition. I can still remember the
very happy moment when I
managed to do it.
We moved from Belmont in June 1940. The snow was very high that winter.
Belmont was completely cut off from Bolton. There were no buses or cars
and we somehow had to survive. But there were shops in Belmont in 1940.
It was the highest and most snow I have ever seen.
I went on to study textile chemistry. I wasn’t a brilliant academic but I set up a business in Horwich. There was nothing there but an old weaving shed
- no electricity, no gas, no nothing. We built our own machines and we made
coated fabrics, Nylon and polyester coated with PVC which made it very
strong and waterproof. Now all the bouncy castles have this material. We
used to make tens of thousands of metres every week.
It was a terrible war and we were so happy to come to Belmont and Bolton.
And I can say I have been 100% a Boltonian for the last 80 years! And I
have been very, very lucky to come to such a lovely place where people are
kind and helpful and affectionate and they made me feel good so I am always
very, very grateful to the people of Lancashire who took me in and made my
life happy.
47
Growing up during the War
Gordon Hurst was born in Belmont in April 1940. He lived with his parents
and brother Keith at 36 South View. In 2017 he visited Belmont Primary
School to share his memories of growing up in the village.
When Gordon lived in South View there were no gardens behind the houses.
“It was just common land behind but my father, who liked gardening at
weekends, fenced off a bit of the common land behind our house. Seven
years later he was told by the legal people that he would have to pay ground
rent on it! We used to grow things, and at the top we had some chickens”.
Gordon joined the village school on 11th September 1944. “The school was
much smaller then. There was just a main block with a girls’ entrance and a boys’ entrance with a big hall in-between. There were some smaller
buildings where we ate our dinner which was cooked for us by ladies from
the village. There was a playground. Boys were on one side and girls on the
other. There was a wall across the middle of the playground. The boys
couldn’t get to the girls’ side or the girls to the boys’ side. The only time we
48
climbed over the wall was at night. The school gates were never locked so
if we were playing football and the ball went over the other side we would
climb over and get it.”
There was an air-raid shelter but I didn’t go in when I was at school. When
I was seven or eight years old I used to go in after school. But they bricked
it up. It was bare brick, it was dark. There was no electricity in it. They used
to use candles. There were slotted benches round the sides to sit on. We
practised going out to the shelter but it didn’t mean a lot to me. It was just something you did.”
Gordon still remembers the food shortages. “I
had a Ration book. It allocated what food you
could have. There were also clothing books. The
lucky ones like us had hens so they didn’t have to use their ration book to get eggs. There were
certain foods you couldn’t get because the war
was on. And for years after the war as well.
I remember having a gasmask but I never wore
one. It was in a box in the house. My father
took it out and put it on but I never wore it. I
also remember we used to have a mat which
they gave us in the afternoon and we used to go
to sleep in our classrooms.”
The Evacuees
Gordon doesn’t remember a lot about the evacuees. “My brother Keith says
that we had two boys staying in with us. I can’t remember their names - I was only four years old! But I remember my father saying to me that the boy
in the house next door was an evacuee. I can remember that all the children
who came from Manchester were meant to go back but we did wonder if they
would be able to. Their houses may not be there because of the bombing.
That they might have to stay was something which went through your mind.”
He does remember that when the war finished there were many celebrations
in the village. “There were a lot of people dancing in the street and there
were cups of tea and cakes!”
Ration Book for 19535
49
Recalling the Evacuees
Eileen Edwards (nee Farnworth) was living as a child in Maria Square
during the war. She remembers the evacuees arriving in two single-decker
buses. When they were brought out of the coaches they were very
disappointed. “They looked lost and frightened because when they had asked
where they were going to be taken to they were simply told “to Belmont”. But no one knew exactly where the village was and the children were told it
was near to Blackpool, so when they arrived they were looking for the
seaside! Where’s the sand? But I am sure that after a few weeks of being
in this area and away from Manchester they were fine.”
Eileen recalls that there was a boy and a girl who came to stay briefly in
their home because the people they had been allocated to were not available
when they first arrived in the Square. They all sat down to a meal and on
the table were salt and pepper in saucers with a spoon - but the children
hadn’t seen this at home. They didn’t know what salt and pepper were.
In the afternoon they were allowed to play outside. They went in the gardens
in Maria Square and were looking at the flowers. They had never seen
anything like that in Manchester.
Although there were many air-raid warnings in the village Eileen only
remembers just one explosion. This was not in the village but in the Stones
Bank area and probably due to a German bomber off-loading bombs as it
returned home. There were two large craters made by the bombs.
Eileen also remembers meeting evacuee Lilly White. Lilly was born in
November 1932 and attended Temple School. She was among the evacuees
who came in January 1941 after the Manchester Blitz and was billeted at 7
Lake View with Tom Lawrence, worker at the local Bleach Works, and his
wife, WVS volunteer, Edith. Lilly kept in touch with the Lawrence family
and returned to Belmont for Edith’s funeral.
50
A Friend for Life
Nancy Taylor (nee Whittle) was born in Belmont in 1934. Her family lived
in a rented house on Belmont High Street. When she was approaching five
years of age the family moved from High Street to Ornamental Cottages,
just beyond Belmont Bleach Works and on the road to Egerton.
At the same time, Esther Cohen was living in the Broughton district of
Salford. Soon after the Christmas blitz of 1940 the Cohen children came
with their mother as evacuees from Broughton to Belmont and moved into
the house in High Street vacated by the Whittles. Malka (aged ten and a
half), Esther (aged six and a half) and Israel (just turning five) registered at
Belmont School on 6th January 1941. Malka moved on to Bolton School in
the April. Esther and Israel remained at Belmont school until the December
when they returned to Salford but were back in Belmont in March 1942 and
remained here until February 1945.
Nancy remembers getting to know Esther soon after her arrival. They
became “best friends” and remained so for years. Long after Esther returned
with her family to Salford they regularly wrote to each other (“nothing
special; just the usual rubbish!”).
When Esther was in Belmont they would walk home from school together
down the High Street, Nancy continuing her journey through Maria Square
and on to Ornamental Cottages. The Cohen family appears to have been
quite orthodox and Nancy recalls one Friday evening being asked to go into
Esther’s home to switch on the lights, an action seen as “work”, so that the
family wouldn’t have to break the Sabbath by doing work. Esther, like the
other Jewish children, did not join in school Christian assemblies and Nancy
recalls the time when she was leading a small reading-table group in school,
which involved a passage where Jesus was mentioned. Esther, like many
religious Jews, was unwilling to speak his name aloud. Nancy remembers
that there were several Jewish evacuees living in the village at the time.
The girls remained friends and kept in touch, even when Esther married and
moved to London. When many year later Nancy visited the Capital as part
of a Belmont Women’s Institute delegation, the two friends arranged to meet
up and immediately recognised each other.
51
5
Belmont Primary School Remembers
After re-discovering in 2017 that Belmont School had hosted a number of
evacuee children during the war it was decided to investigate the events in
more detail and to consider the possibility of working towards the
production of a permanent school and village memorial. At the time, the
school was in the process of work for the renewal of its ArtsMark award and
the evacuee experience was soon incorporated into the programme with
plans made for the introduction of a curriculum-based, long-term study
leading to the possibility of a variety of arts-focussed outcomes.
Initial study and analysis of the school records was made by the author,
School Governor and retired educational researcher George Skinner. A
report was presented to staff and Governors and formed the basis of a
possible bid for funding for a suitable project outcome.
In January 2018 a curriculum-based programme was started with a class of
Year 3 and Year 4 pupils. It was intended from the outset that the pupils
should be involved sufficiently early in the project to enable them to be part
of the research process as the school tried to understand the nature and
circumstances of this little-known period in the village’s history.1 Although
essentially a historical topic, the uniquely local dimension of the experience,
together with the mixed-faith nature of the evacuee group, suggested that
the project might sit well in a number of cross-curricular themes, especially
understanding about Britishness in the context of social, cultural and
religious diversity. Furthermore, the prospect of relating to, and working
with, the wider village community presented an opportunity to both learn
more from those in, or from, the village who could provide personal
recollections - and later, to share the school’s findings with the present wider community.
There were also potential opportunities for cooperating with village groups
such as the Belmont Local History Society and Belmont Village Residents’ Association and linking with one or more of the schools involved (supposing
they still existed) thus providing an inter-school relationship founded on a
common interest in a moment of shared history.
52
The Curriculum Project One session of about 45 minutes a week was allocated to the term-long
project. The materials and teaching were developed by George and the class
teacher, Mr Luke Ainsworth.
The pupils began by looking at the actual documents which had stimulated
the project. Through dramatized readings based on the Headteacher’s Log
Book account and the transcribed personal recollection of one of the teachers
who had brought the children from North Manchester to Belmont, the pupils
soon came to an understanding and anticipation of a “history mystery”
worthy of further exploration.
Some guided analysis in lessons of the information to be gleaned from the
school Admissions Register provided children with helpful insights into the
value, and the limitations, of historical records and discussion of different
kinds of evidence. While doing this analysis the class actually discovered
that one of the families who were thought to be evacuees were in fact
refugees from Czechoslovakia. This discovery led to the tracing of, and
correspondence with, one of the children from the family, now in his 80s
and living in the USA, and later a visit from his younger brother to speak
with the children (see Chapter 4).
The general background to the war-time
evacuee experience was explored through
case studies drawn from the excellent BBC
People’s War materials and led to pupils
thinking about their own reactions to such
a challenge. They grappled with the
almost impossible task of having to decide
what chosen belongings to pack in a small
evacuee’s suitcase and they designed and
wrote reassuring postcards, based on those
originally given to evacuees, to send home
to parents. Pupils worked with facsimiles
of documents produced for the evacuee
programme and other wartime artefacts,
and also some original family items
discovered and brought in by one of the children.
53
Eager to see if Temple School, the main school from which the original
evacuees came, was aware of the event or had records or local families
involved, a group of pupils wrote letters to the current Headteacher. As a
result, details of Temple School’s Log Book from the period were made
available to us.
Four ex-pupils who lived in Belmont at the time of the arrival of the
evacuees were also identified and provided a unique oral history experience
by sharing their experiences from the perspectives of being from a village
family and what they remembered of school life during the war.
Activities exploring the billeting process, based on the school register and
historic records held by Bolton Local History Centre, helped to create a
picture of the distribution of the many private evacuee children. A day spent
on the East Lancs Railway Evacuee experience brought home the reality of
the combined feelings of adventure and insecurity the original evacuee
children must have felt.
Class-teacher Mr Luke Ainsworth, Governor Mr George Skinner and Headteacher
Mrs Judith Peel with Year 3 and Year 4 pupils appropriately dressed for their
evacuee experience.2
54
The term-long study stimulated much lasting interest on the part of the
pupils. Nine months later, when they were no longer engaged in curriculum
work associated with the project, a review and updating lesson with the
group revealed substantial retention of stories and issues associated with
Belmont’s evacuee children. The children quickly engaged with new
findings about the village’s response to the Jewish section of the evacuees and reflected perceptively about issues to do with the value and degrees of
dependability of first-hand experience, newspaper reports and documentary
evidence. About the same time, two pupils played very effective roles as
evacuees in a presentation about the project to a meeting of a village society.
The idea of creating visual expressions of the ideas and issues arising from
the project (already achieved in a small way through such activities as
designing evacuee postcards to send home and creating outfits for the
evacuee experience trip) became a more specific focus. At this point, and
after discussions with the school Arts Council and villagers, it was decided
to move the project on to the very practical long-term objective of creating
a permanent memorial.
In the summer of 2019, children from the original group of Year Four
children, now in Year Five, explored the village through three guided visits
to discover how people and events had been remembered in the past.
Discussions with the children of their findings led to the exploration of a
variety of approaches to making an appropriate memorial for the evacuees.
Three particular ideas which emerged were a small memory garden, a bench
or seat of some kind and a memories/information board.
With the generous help of a local gardener and builder, the first step was
taken in creating a memories garden just inside the main entrance gate using
original local stone rescued from a recent school building project. At the
time of writing, pupils are working with a tiling company to design and
create mosaics for the garden using Gaudi’s Parc Güell as inspiration whilst
drawing on ideas and symbols associated with the Evacuation. Plans have
been made to share the findings of the project with the wider community
and other schools in the Spring of 2020.
55
6
Acknowledgements and Further
Information. It is impossible to mention all those who have helped with our project and
the production of this book. However, I would like to express particular
thanks to Nancy Taylor, Eileen Edwards, Margaret Lambie, Gordon and
Keith Hurst, Les Croft, John and Ernest Kohorn for sharing their stories with
us. It was Mrs Peel, Head of the School, who saw the potential from the
outset and provided full support and resources for the project. I am grateful
to Ms Shagufta Talib, Head of the present-day Temple School (now
Oasis Academy Temple) in Manchester, for giving us access to school
records and to Eileen Brookes for help with interpreting the 1939 Register.
For background resources our project, and this book, drew on WW2 People's
War, an online archive of wartime memories contributed by members of the
public and gathered by the BBC, which can be found at
bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar. The material is used here under 'fair dealing'
terms as part of a non-commercial project. A number of internet groups
associated with the history of north Manchester and Temple School allowed
us access to their sites which enabled us to make some valuable contacts,
and the British Evacuees’ Association publicised our project on-line and in
their newsletter.
A special and very personal thank you is due to all the Year Three and Year
Four pupils (2017/18) and their class teacher Mr Luke Ainsworth who
joined in the quest to understand this history-mystery with great interest and
creativity. And finally, to my wife Valerie for her enthusiasm and support
from the very outset of the project. This book has benefitted hugely from
her creative suggestions and meticulous checking of the text.
To Find out More There have been many books and articles written about evacuees (though
sadly few which mention Belmont!) so I have tried to suggest just a few key
books and websites. Specific references to sources I have used in telling the
story, linked to numbered references in the text, may be found in the Notes
and References section which follows, but the following publications and
56
sites are particularly useful for finding out more general information about
Operation Pied Piper and the experiences of those who were involved.
If you have any additional information or were an evacuee to Belmont, the
school would love to hear from you.
The People’s War: Britain 1939-45 by Angus Calder, first published in
1969, has become a classic record of the war written from the perspective of
ordinary people. It includes an excellent analytical section on evacuation.
Send them to Safety: a story of the Great Evacuation of the Second Wold
War by James Roffey was published in 2009 by the Evacuees Reunion
Association (later The British Evacuees Association). It is a very personal
account, fully illustrated and well-researched.
No Time to Wave Goodbye, by one time evacuee, Ben Wicks, is an edited
collection of many stories told in their own words by evacuees. Published
in 1988 when many evacuees were still alive, it was the first, and probably
the most thorough and honest, account of the range of experiences of
evacuee children.
The Memories of War project led by Dr June Balshaw and Malin Lundin
from the University of Greenwich has conducted and transcribed hundreds
of individual and group interviews which may be found at
www.memoriesofwar.org.uk/category/index.aspx.
Luftwaffe over Manchester – The Blitz Years 1940-1944 by Peter Smith,
(published by Neil Richardson, 2003) has full details of the impact of
bombing on Manchester and Salford.
The British Evacuees Association (http://www.evacuees.org.uk) was
formed in 1996 to ensure that the true story of the evacuation would become
better known and preserved for further generations. It publishes a bi-
monthly magazine and has a world-wide membership.
WW2: The People’s War (bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar.online) is an archived
but searchable source of wartime memories contributed by members of the
public and gathered by the BBC.
George Skinner, November 2019
57
Cover Illustration A stained glass window by Michael Stokes in All Saints Church, Sudbury, Derbyshire,
dedicated on 3rd June 2001. Presented by
former evacuees from the inner-city of Manchester to the community of Sudbury who looked after them. The words are those of Jesus in The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25.
Introduction 1. What today we call Primary Schools were
known as Elementary School before the 1944 Education Act. 2. Quotes from the School Log book are from the original, unpublished copy, currently held by the school.
Ch 1 The National Evacuation Programme 1. Churchill's Children: The Evacuee
Experience in Wartime Britain by John Welshman OUP Oxford, 2010, has a good summary of the history of defence planning. 2. Turton Urban District Council received a
“confidential and very urgent” request from the Ministry of Health to conduct a survey dated 16th September 1938 (Bolton Archives) 3. Manchester Arrangements for Evacuation, Manchester Museum Archives, https://manchesterarchiveplus.wordpress.com/
2016/02/16/the-lead-up-to-1939-evacuation/ 4. Manchester Education Authority Circular EV/14 from W. O. Lester Smith, Director of
Education, 18th July 1939 5. As early as 4th September 1939 a householder in Caernarvon was fined £25 for “not
complying with the requirements of the
Billeting Order” (Manchester Evening News, 4.9.1939) 6. Instructions for Billeting Officers, County Office, Preston, March 1939
7. Evidence concerning the evacuation status of
pupils and their dates in school are based on Belmont Primary School’s original Admissions Register, currently held by the school.
8. WW2: The People’s War online archive of wartime memories contributed by members of the public and gathered by the BBC, accessed
at bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar.
9. “Paddington Bear 'inspired by evacuees'
says author Bond”, Emma Midgley, BBC News 13 February 2012. 10. British Evacuees Association
www.evacuees.org.uk.
Ch 2 Belmont’s Evacuee Children 1. An Industrious Minority: A history of the
Bolton Jewish Community, Hilary Thomas and John Cowell, 2012 (private publication available at Bolton Library). 2. On the 29th September 1939 65,000 enumerators were employed to visit every
house in England and Wales to take stock of the civil population and create a National Register. The information they recorded was used to issue Identity Cards, plan mass evacuations, establish rationing and coordinate other war-time provisions. Each record includes the
names of inhabitants at each address, their date of birth, marital status and occupation. We have been able to draw on some information from the
Register but because of data protection, entries of people born less than 100 years ago are redacted unless they are known to have died.
3. Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Elsie Mullineux. Oral History GB124.OH/3404
NB All the archive records and newspaper reports identify Turton as the de-training venue
for the evacuee children. In November 1938,
Turton UDC suggested using Bromley Cross and Turton stations but were told by County Office in Preston that the Railway Company would not agree to using more than one detraining station - but offered to bring the matter up with the Railway Company. The
outcome of the discussion is not recorded. It
could be that coaches were booked to collect the
Notes & References
These endnotes, which are linked to numbers in the text, have been added to
help readers who might like to know more about the sources of information
or to carry out further research.
58
small group of Belmont bound pupils from
Bromley Cross, the station before Turton, perhaps to enable a much simpler journey to the village. 4. “Staffing, Reception and Evacuation Areas”,
Letter of instructions to Manchester headteachers from W.O.Lester Smith, 15th
April 1940, manchesterhistory.net. 5. Information and quotations about Temple School are based on the Log Book and other unpublished records held by Temple School, (now Oasis Academy Temple), Manchester. 6. The placing of evacuees in such close
proximity to Manchester was described as short-sighted in a Bolton Journal (15.9.1939) article because it proved to be one of the causes of tension between parents and Turton residents. The paper reported evacuees being visited by “a score of relatives who expected to
be fed for nothing”, and illustrated this by noting that “two carloads of people came to a
house in Bromley Cross and asked for tea to be
provided at the house where one of their
relatives was staying” - and the hosts weren’t offered a penny.
The general issue was raised by the MP for Kincardine and Western in the House of Commons Debate on the Evacuation on Sept 14 1939. “I think one mistake has been that in
some cases we have placed the evacuees too
near the cities from which they have been sent.
Just as it is unwise to send a boy to a boarding
school which is too near his own home, so it is
unwise to send evacuees to places within a bus
ride of the cities which they have left. The
temptation to return is too great. Even if they
are only making a return in order to pick up
some extra garments or to see how the old man
is getting on, still it is costing money which they
can ill afford, and it has an unsettling effect
upon them.”
7. Norman Longmate: How we Lived Then - A
history of everyday life during the Second
World War (1971), Pimlico
8. Initially, at least, no provision was made for children who had not been evacuated, or had returned, resulting in much criticism in the press. The Bolton Evening News for 27th October 1939 reported how in the Burnage
district of Manchester a vicar, helped by volunteer teachers, was using his church hall as a temporary school for 80 6-11 year-old pupils.
9. Specific details of the part played by Turton
District Council are taken from the TDC original correspondence and records held by Bolton Library Archives. 10. The WVS, founded in 1938, was originally
set up to train women to help with air raid precautions. This soon expanded into running
emergency rest centres, feeding stations, first aid posts, and assisting with the evacuation and billeting of children. By 1941, one million women belonged to the WVS. At the start of the war there were at least five members in the village: Annie Farnworth, Edith Lawrence, Eva
Hutchinson, Kathleen O’Toole and Lily Robinson (who ran a First Aid Point at Lower Lodge). Belmont was part of the Turton Urban District branch which was led by Kathleen Freeman. Its members engaged in a range of activities from raising money for battleships,
knitting socks for soldiers and prisoners of war and running a mobile canteen in support of the
home guard. They took an active interest in the evacuees and reported in June 1944 that they had surveyed, as requested, the area for further billeting and the response was slightly better
than expected. “In the event of another
evacuation it would be possible to meet our
billet quota without resorting to compulsion”. www.royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk
11. Robert Fuller WW2 People’s War.
12. On September 8th the Journal reported the
arrival of children under the headline “Happy
Little Exiles” recording “the carriage doors opened and from each emerged a dozen smiling
faces…”
13. How War Came To Bolton, 1938-1940 G. J. Bryant. According to the author of this paper,
published in the Journal of the Historic Society
of Lancashire and Cheshire (vol 146, 1996), at Turton, “an initial open welcome turned sour as
hosts and evacuees did not get on, and a
tribunal had to be set up to adjudicate disputes.
There was growing relief in Turton when the
evacuees steadily drifted home as the skies
stayed quiet.”
14. Minutes of the meeting held on April 18th
1941 recorded by the Head of Belmont School. 15. In his Tales of Manchester Jewry and
Manchester in the Thirties (Neil Richardson
Publications, 1986) Monty Dobkin lists more than 250 shops, small businesses and manufacturers on Cheetham Hill Road alone!
59
16. Bolton News, Looking Back 24.9.2003.
17. “Instructions for Billeting Officers” letter from the Ministry of Health, 27th April 1939, held in Bolton Library Archives. 18. A letter from the Minister of Health was
sent to Local Authorities in October 1939 for distribution to parents explaining that the whole
cost of the evacuation scheme, including billeting, had been borne by public funds and commented “I am sure that no parent would
wish this to continue indefinitely where it can
be avoided”. The maintenance cost had been calculated at nine shillings (45p) a week but
recognised that the saving of expense to families in keeping children away from home was considerably less. They therefore proposed a charge of six shillings a week, though reduced for poorer families. 19. By Gaby Rogers and Harry Phillips.
Goodnight Children Everywhere
Your mummy thinks of you tonight.
Lay your head upon your pillow,
Don’t be a kid or a weeping willow. Close your eyes and say a prayer,
And surely you can find a kiss to spare.
Though you are far away, she’s with you night and day,
Goodnight children everywhere
Sleepy little eyes in a sleepy little head,
Sleepy time is drawing near.
In a little while you’ll be tucked up in your bed,
Here’s a song for baby dear.
Soon the moon will rise, and caress you with
its beams,
While the shadows softly creep.
With a happy smile you will be wrapped up
in your dreams,
Baby will be fast asleep
20. “Thousands of you in this country have had
to leave your homes and be separated from your
fathers and mothers. My sister Margaret Rose
and I feel so much for you as we know from
experience what it means to be away from those
we love most of all. To you, living in new
surroundings, we send a message of true
sympathy and at the same time we would like to
thank the kind people who have welcomed you
to their homes in the country.” 21. A letter from the UDC in March 1939 to the
Bolton Post Office concerning the proposed
placement of evacuees implies that there would be sufficient space in schools without using a shift system. Bolton Library Archives. 22. An Industrious Minority: A history of the
Bolton Jewish Community, p104 23. Jewish Chronicle, 1939.22.09, p14
24. Jewish Chronicle, 1941.04.07, p14 25. An Industrious Minority: A history of the
Bolton Jewish Community, p104 26. Paul Gallagher “How many people were killed in the 1940 Christmas Blitz across
Greater Manchester?” Manchester Evening News, 17 Feb 2016. 27. Alan Woodford, WW2 People’s War. 28. Malcolm MacDonald in a BBC Radio Broadcast, 30 May 1940. 29. In total, it is estimated some 1,250,000 people were helped by the Government to leave
the bombed cities in the period between September 1940 and the end of 1941. By
February 1941, the number of evacuees officially billeted in the reception areas had reached 1,370,000 – only about a hundred thousand short of the first phase of evacuation.
The last major phase of evacuation commenced as Germany in 1944 began a new wave of bombing British towns and cities using V1 flying bombs and, later, the V2 rocket.
30. There are issues to do with privacy and protection when considering the details of
individual children who came as evacuees. Where accounts or interviews have been published by a person (as in the case of Gerald Mars) or used publically with permission, they are safe to draw on. The status of data in school Log Books and registers is less clear.
31. Evacuees UK, 26,08.2016,
https://www.facebook.com/EvacueesWW2/ 32. ID:A5723363 WW2 People’s War. For details of the full impact of bombing on Manchester and Salford see Luftwaffe over
Manchester – The Blitz Years 1940-1944 by
Peter Smith, (Neil Richardson publication, 2003).
33. The intention to survey reception areas was
announced in a radio broadcast to the nation (later published as a leaflet by the Government) by MP Walter Elliot on January 6th 1939, during
which he explained, “We have to see not only
that the houses for instance are suitable for the
children, but that the children are suitable for
60
the homes. We want this to be a matter of real
human relationship and affection – a willing
host and a willing guest”. Visitors completed Record Form EV2 for each house. It asked for the number of rooms, residents and potential
billets plus willingness to take unaccompanied children. It also asked if any aspects of the
house made it unsuitable and gave the inspector space to add comments (eg about old age, infirmity or if help was needed). Many examples of mixed experiences of evacuees may be found on the University of Greenwich Memories of War project website.
www.memoriesofwar.org.uk. 34. Ben Wicks, No Time to Wave Goodbye, Bloomsbury, 1988.
CH 3 School Must Go On 1. In 1936, a disused mill in nearby Blackburn
became a national gas mask assembly-plant where, by the time of the Munich Crisis of 1938, more than 30 million gas masks had been manufactured, requiring, amongst other components, 90 million safety-pins. 2. Casualty numbers are from the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It has been argued that the initial evacuee project was essentially a failure. Insufficient
awareness of the social and psychological impact on families, inadequate planning for education and social support in reception areas
and the premature start to the campaign resulting in the sense of a “Phoney War”, all combined to promote the premature return of many evacuee children and the reluctance of parents to evacuate children later when the blitz
became a reality. However, if the Luftwaffe had
chosen at the start of the war to adopt the strategic bombing of towns and cities in Britain as they had in Spain, Poland and the Netherlands the number of civilian casualties, including children, might have been enormous.
CH 4 Stories from the War Years 1. Our Blitz - Red Sky Over Manchester, Jan 5, 1941. Digitised version accessed at https://issuu.com/cyberbadger/docs/ 2. www.lafayettemorehouse.com/brian_
meets_vic.html 3. Gerald Mars, Becoming an Anthropologist: A
Memoir and a Guide to Anthropology, 2015, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 4. Charles Trevor, in his anecdotal account of the history of Belmont, explains how during the war Leo had been sub-let part of the Belmont Bleach and Dye Works building. There he
established a book-cloth industry called Belmont Bookcloth Ltd, later Kohorn Bookcloth. See C M Trevor A History of
Belmont, 1956, privately distributed manuscript, later edited and privately reprinted by Jennifer Rhodes in 2010.
5. One of several family ration and clothing books donated to the project by Mr and Mrs
Phillips.
CH 5 Belmont Primary School Remembers 1. In “Enquiry Skills in History: the Blitz and
evacuation” (Journal of Citizenship, Social and Economics Education, Volume 9 Number 1 2010), historian Francis O’Hagan argues for the
inclusion in the school curriculum of this important time in British history and provides useful information about drawing on the varied
experiences of evacuees “with a view to developing enquiry skills in History.” “One of the main aims of any history course is
to develop pupils’ imagination and empathy with people living in other periods. By working
with sources pupils are able to develop an
understanding of the nature of evidence in its
various forms and come to appreciate that the
value of evidence depends on the reasons for
which it was created in the first place and the
time and circumstances of its origin. 2. Photograph by Mr Chris Hoddle.
When Headteacher Vincent Hill closed his school in the
Lancashire village of Belmont for the late summer holiday in
August 1939 he anticipated re-opening it in two weeks’ time. But a national emergency delayed the start of the new term.
Operation Pied Piper had begun and the school, and village,
were now host to 80 additional children, evacuees from North
Manchester.
Drawing on historical records and personal accounts this book
tells the story of the ambitious war-time campaign to save
the country’s next generation from the anticipated bombing
of British cities and Belmont Village’s role in this project.
George Skinner is a retired University of Manchester researcher and
teacher who lives in Belmont Village where he is a Governor of Belmont
Community Primary School.