Dilys Paes
We were lucky to be living in the countryside and we were able to go around and about quite freely. There were half a dozen or so of us. We would ask our parents for something to eat. We'd have a jam sandwich, a bottle of water and if we were lucky, we'd have some sort of powder put in the water to make it taste a bit. We'd go out for hours on end and we had the freedom and there was no fear of anybody being molested or anything like that. We were so fortunate. We had some woods quite near the Strand and these woods were very, very beautiful. In the springtime the bluebells grew thickly and there were garlic flowers which smelled of onions.
We were allowed out for as long as we wanted on our own, as long as we were in a group. I remember once going out and we'd walked all the way down to what we called the cob, which was on the edge of the river Dee. We had to be careful because there are quick sands there but it wasn't a sandy beach by any means. That's why I used to walk down through the Strand woods past Basing Abbey ruins, across the main road in Greenfield and then walk along another part of the road onto the cob. If you were lucky, we would be given a penny and when we'd finished playing on the cob, we would walk to Holywell junction station and get what was called the little train for a penny ride up to Holywell town station.
Now such was the gradient of the hill going up to Holywell, the little train, as we used to call it, would stop halfway, there was a junction there, and some adjustment was made to the working of the engine or the carriages, so that the little train would never slide backwards. The same sort of thing you find in Snowdon train going up to Llandudno and the Orme. They have this special braking system, so there's never any fear of the train sliding back under any circumstances. For our penny, we had a ride up to Holywell Town station and then we had to walk from the station platform back home. If not, we had to walk all the way back through the woods, which was quite steep, but as children, we just enjoyed doing it.
One year we went down in springtime and there were two ponds there which belonged to the woollen mills and we were walking along and all of a sudden somebody said there were frogs and Gwyn, my sister, just screamed. We found ourselves standing in the middle of masses of baby frogs obviously just hatched from the pond making their way somewhere. We had to almost carry Gwyn. She almost fainted seeing all these little tiny frogs.
Another thing we used to do, half way down through the woods, there was Mr. Hurst’s farm and in Autumn time we would go to the farm and ask Mr. Hurst if we could we pick the blackberries that were edging one of his fields and we would take little shopping baskets and they'd be full of big fat blackberries. I've got to admit we were pretty full ourselves. We always came home with purple mouths and hands, but these all added to our food intake and the mums were very pleased to have them. My mother used to make a summer pudding from them, from bread lining a basin and she cooked the blackberries and filled the basin up and let it set. It was a most delicious pudding. So, you see, we didn't really go hungry, we were very, very lucky.
During this time, I've mentioned that we had soldiers coming to Holywell. Well, we also had evacuees. Rumour had it that they were coming up from London and we were given a time when they were expected, but they were much later coming. We did go down again, about 10 or 12 of us, to the Holywell station, and the little train came in and we were all ready to cheer them and I can still remember these children came out of the train onto the platform. There were about 20 or 30 of them, and the impression I still have today is of greyness, of quietness. These children never made a sound and they were dressed in dark coats which seemed to touch the ground. This is my memory of them and some of them carried string wrapped newspaper parcels. Others had sort of little suitcases and they walked up from the platform up to the exit from the station and they never said a word.
Of course, I realise now that having travelled all the way from London to North Wales in Wartime conditions, probably had to change trains at different stations all the way up, they must have been absolutely dead tired. They didn't stay very long in Holywell. I think they returned after a matter of weeks really. Then we had Liverpool evacuees which, of course, was a different situation because we had a lot of Liverpool people living in Holywell.
After the war, many of those who had been evacuated remained living in and around the area, but these were children of our own age. They were the junior school children. Some of them were wild billeted with people in our street and we had a great time with them. We really had a lot of fun. Aigburth Vale girls’ school, a high school, were evacuated to Holywell because they were grammar school girls, and we thought it was most unfair, because the child care of the school was altered and the local students sometimes would go in the mornings and have the afternoons off. I'm sure they were given work to do. The Aigburth girls would go in the afternoon and they used to alternate the routine. We felt it was a bit unfair because Liverpool Junior evacuees just fitted into our school.
One thing we were issued with when War started was gas masks. These were gas masks in cardboard boxes with string and wherever you went you had to carry your gas mask. Selwyn, being younger, had what they call the Mickey Mouse gas mask. Horrible things really, but we carried these boxes around with us with a great deal of pride.
I think there was a little bit of competition with mums to see who had the nicest cover, because the cardboard soon got destroyed. I think my mother covered ours with some sort of sticky material which you could wipe over. I would call it oil cloth. We also had Air raid practices during the day, so that if an air raid occurred, I think it only occurred once when we were actually at school, we had to go down into the basement of the school. It was quite exciting in a way really, but that was us growing up.