Tag Archives: Kevack

Pat Burt, Annette Haynes: WWII air raid sirens

Kevack across to North House

Kevack across to North House

I remember hearing war had broken out on the radio. We lived in the stone cottage ‘Kevack’ in the High Street. During the early part of the war when the air raid sirens went, we used to rush over and down into the cellars of North House, but that was only for a short while until we had the Morrison table shelter delivered  –  I think we had that by 1942.    Pat Burt

I was away in Castle Bromwich, near Birmingham, when war broke out. I was staying with a friend of my mother’s, I called her my aunt – she wanted to adopt me.  I was so worried because my mother couldn’t get me a gas mask because I wasn’t at home, and my ‘aunt’ couldn’t get a gas mask for me.  I had to come back home of course.
We had an Anderson shelter in the garden.  I remember my brother saying, ‘If I’m going to be killed, I’ll be killed in my bed. I’m not going down to the shelter.’
Annette Haynes

Pat Burt :Early Days living in ‘Kevack’

When we lived in Kevack in the High Street, we had an outdoor loo.  You went across a small yard, and there were 2 loos side by side. One belonged to our next door neighbour, Mr King, the head gardener at The Mount, and he had to walk through the bottom of our yard to get to his loo. They could be sat in theirs, right next to us,  –  but they were flush, those loos.

My mother was cook to the Hamiltons in the Wight/White House for some years until she was taken very ill.  When I was very small, I used to have to go with my mother when she went to work while she was cooking in the kitchen. I always remember the smell of the lovely rubbery green staircase they had.  Instead of carpet the stairs were covered in this lovely pale green rubber and it smelt beautiful.

I was knocked down by a car, when I was 7 and there were very few cars about. I was running home from school for lunch. It was a very rough day and I could see the sea  blowing up at the end of Pier Shore Lane  down between the Yacht Club and The Towers. I was coming along South Street and I ran straight across the High Street. Of course the High Street was a main road then, and there was a car coming, driven by one of the Miss Creagh Osbornes and it hit me. Luckily it didn’t hurt me much, just my ankle. It was my own fault , I was so excited, I wanted to see the rough sea.  I didn’t go back to school that day, and later Miss Creagh Osborne knocked on the door and brought me a black and white china dog as a present. Pat Burt nee Adams b 1929