Tag Archives: North View

Ron Wallis: Thorley WWII 1940s

WWII: a boy’s perspective

From 1941 we were living at Lee Farm, Dad was bailiff for Granny Haigh. Later we moved to Thorley Lodge, then Michaelmas Cottage ( now South Lee) and eventually North View.

I can remember seeing the overturned earth from bombs which dropped adjacent to the railway line just east of the Lee Brickyard.  I imagine they were trying to hit the railway line.  How many bombs it was I don’t know, but I can remember seeing two craters.

I was outside with father one night, because when he was not on Home Guard duty, he used to love being outside watching it all go on, and you could see the search lights and the anti aircraft shells bursting. All of a sudden there was this terrific screech, which you did get occasionally when you had stuff coming down. And there was this bang and the next morning father found this large piece of shrapnel which had gone through the roof of the meal house.   It was about twenty yards away from where we were standing.

There was a gun emplacement at the top of Broad Lane, a bit before you get to Dog Kennel, on the side of the road there where there’s a footpath goes across.  It was only about twelve foot square. Where the Home Guard used to go night time I don’t know, Brook, I think.  Father did have a rifle quite quickly after the Home Guard was formed, although they didn’t have enough to go round. Yes, he was handy with a shotgun. As well as having a couple of shotguns of his own, he did have a revolver and very nice large knife, a beautiful thing, illegal these days.  Him and Bill Welstead were Home Guards.

I would have ten or nine, I remember being fairly close to the old estate carpenters shop and I could hear vehicles coming in through the gates. At that time, closest to Thorley Lodge was a granary and that big stone barn, and alongside that was a double tin barn. I was there playing, and these vehicles came in and scattered themselves around the area in the yard and adjacent fields. There were three or four fifteen hundredweight Bedford type things with lots of aerials sticking out, with canvas backs. One had a solid back, if I remember it was a Commer.  There was at least one armoured scout car, couple of motorcycles and two or three large-ish type jeeps – and the men had an odd uniform with pill box type peak caps for officers.  I didn’t know what they were saying or who they were.  It was only when father took them down a basket of eggs we found out, not what they were about, but who they were – French. They were there probably for two days and then one morning they were gone.  That was a few days before or after D Day June ’44.

We milked in the long stable and the cows would have just been chained up. It was quite a herd.
I think there was about eighteen in the bottom shed and six or seven in the top shed, twenty five milked by hand. One man could milk twelve, they reckon, so there must have been two men milking.
We had an Italian Prisoner of War, Giovanni Azara, he became head milker along with father. Father was always up at half past five every morning and they used to bring ‘Johnny’ over about seven o’clock.
He arrived probably ’42. He had farming experience, I think he was from the Po Valley agricultural area so he knew what he was doing and he loved being with the cows.  He had a terrific pride in his work.  He was lovely chap.  I would think he was about twenty.
You weren’t supposed to allow them in the house or anything.  I must admit mother flaunted the rules a bit towards the end particularly. We had to get permission to give him a crucifix when he left and I can remember him hugging mother and crying because he didn’t want to go home.

We didn’t have holidays.  Gracious no.  Went to Grandmother’s and Auntie’s for tea on Sunday.  We weren’t short of food. Father could go and shoot a few rabbits, there were plenty about.

I remember there were two old ladies, spinster ladies, the Misses Vaudrey. They lived over at Cranmore somewhere.  And they used to come two or three times a week with mashed fish and stuff to feed the farm cats.

There were some celebrations I remember, I’m sure it was VE day. My grandmother and two of my uncles lived at Marks Corner, and I can remember going up there and there was a great big long table laid out with lots of goodies. Some of the soldiers in Parkhurst Forest were Canadians but I think these were Americans; they seemed to provide all the goodies.  We had a big party to celebrate.  But I don’t remember any parties going on in the Yarmouth area. I think it was just a sigh of relief.  Ron Wallis b 1935

Pam Bone nee Cotton: Thorley 1950s

The Cotton family

I moved from Yarmouth to Thorley in 1952 when I was 4yrs old and back to Yarmouth when I was 13yrs old. I moved with parents and my younger brother Peter to 3 North View Thorley, one of a row of 8 brand new council houses.

Thorley houses EAST

Thorley houses EAST

In No 1 were Jean and Norman Crismass with their daughters Roberta, Karen and Vanessa. I used to love to look after Vanessa when she was a baby and toddler and often carried the poor child around with me. When I was about 10 or 11 years old they had measles and I remember my mum sending me round to play with them to make sure I caught it while I was still young. Sure enough, I caught the measles, and missed a school outing to see the Royal Tournament in London!

In No 2 lived the Roberts family, and on the other side of us lived Ralph and Eileen Smith with sons Michael and Peter ( Jean came along later).

 

Next to them lived Mr and Mrs Jackman with daughters Ann and Sheila. Ann was older than me and had a piano accordian which she played very well. They later moved to Dog Kennel cottage up Broad Lane where the electricity was supplied by a generator and they had a stream running through their garden. They also had two geese called Jack and Jill that I was scared of.

The last house was No 8 where Sue and Cyril Henderson lived with their son Michael and daughter Mary. Sue’s parents, Fred and Amy Hillier and their son Ron lived in Newclose Cottage, a farm cottage opposite them, and this family became great friends with my family.
I always knew Mrs Hillier as ‘Hilly’. If I was off school ill and my mum was at work she would always pop in to make sure I was all right. She kept pet budgies and I remember we once had two of them ourselves as pets, a green one called Joey and a yellow sort of multi coloured one called Beauty. Hilly had one who could talk, but ours never did.

Ours was a 3 bedroom house, no central heating and a storage room for coal and coke in the back porch. We had a front room but that was only ever used on special occasions such as Easter and Christmas.

North View, Thorley

North View, Thorley

 

My dad was a volunteer Fireman at Yarmouth and we had a big bell in the wall in our house which clanged loudly when the fire siren went off to alert him that he was needed. He would then get on his bike and pedal as fast as he could to Yarmouth.

I remember my mum getting the boiler out every Monday morning to do the washing and then putting it through the wringer before it went out on the washing line. There was great excitement, many years later, when she acquired her first washing machine and spin drier! We had a large garden where my dad grew vegetables and gooseberries and blackcurrants. Peter and I each had our own little patch of garden.  Mine had various flowers in it, such as marigolds and cornflowers; Peter’s usually had a big hole because he was digging to Australia.

There was a sloping path up to our front gate where Peter Smith (next door) and I used to race snails!

(The barn opposite our house was used to store hay and as children we sometimes played in there and I remember taking some of our cat’s food over there to “secretly” feed the stray cats who often occupied the barn although they were probably well fed on mice! Our own cat was called Sooty and at night he often slept in my bed right at the bottom and kept my feet warm. We didn’t have a cat flap and Sooty used to come in and out of the house via the front porch roof and Peter’s bedroom window.
He did this one night when my Gran came to stay and she was sleeping in that room. I will never forget all the screams and shouts when he frightened her one night by climbing in the window and jumping on her bed!  Vertically next to photo of Jean)

Pam Cotton b 1948

Peter Smith: Thorley 1950s, North View

Jean Storie, North View gate

Jean Storie, sitting on the North View gate of her Hillier grandparents’ house.Barn behind .


Snail racing was popular, the snails could always be found behind the grass at the base of the barn wall opposite our house. To avoid argument about whose snail was whose we got round to marking them with a dab of paint, red, blue and white.  Some weeks later when we were looking in the usual place for some snails for another race we found that the ones with paint on had somehow made it back to their home completely unaided. After this I made a point of letting my snail go after the racing was finished in our garden and then over a period of days going out and looking for it to see where it was. Sure enough after a couple of weeks or so it reappeared in the usual place by the barn. Having done this a number of times it became clear to me that the snails saw the barn wall as their home, and did not want to live anywhere else, which was interesting, at the time!

Peter Smith: Thorley North View, 1950s

Thorley houses EAST

Thorley houses  with North View


We moved from my Gran’s in South Street, Yarmouth into a new council house at North View, Thorley in 1952. It had two inside flush toilets and a bathroom…. very impressive for me as I’d been used to using a cold, dark outside toilet and no bathroom in my 6 previous years of childhood.

Moving to the new council houses also meant new neighbours with children and new friends to play and argue with. Mostly we got on well with each other and invented our own entertainment in the open air.

Eileen Smith: Thorley, North View 1950s

Thorley from Broad Lane

Thorley from Broad Lane

The Smith family

Ralph and I had applied for a house in Yarmouth, but with no success. Then one of the chaps who was offered a house at Thorley, turned it down because it was too far from the shops. We didn’t mind!

The women in the cottages opposite North View, Elsie Squibb and Miss Drake, came out and said they didn’t want Council Houses in the village. We said, ‘Dont you think that people who have done their bit in the War, deserve somewhere decent to live?’
Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921

Mike Smith, Mary Henderson: Thorley, Squibb family 1950s

Elsie Squibb wasn’t always popular. When we used to sit on the bank writing down the number plates of the cars coming through –  and there weren’t many, – she’d come out and complain, and say we were making too much noise; she needed some peace and quiet.
On one afternoon she had brought home a nice box of cakes from Wrays Bakery in Newport. Mike Henderson kicked a football and it knocked into the box, and the cakes weren’t improved…. Mike Smith b 1951

North View, Thorley

North View, Thorley

 

We all used to be so envious of Phyllis Squibb. She seemed to have all the things our parents couldn’t buy us.  Years later, she said how she’d envied our freedom. Her Dad used to insist on meeting her and walking her home, even from Wellow Institute.
Poor Els., her bark was worse than her bite. If you were in real trouble, she’d be there to help. Mary Henderson b 1954

Pete Smith: Thorley, Broad Lane 1950s

Broad Lane above Thorley

Broad Lane above Thorley, looking towards Yarmouth and the Solent

Broad Lane

The fields at the top of our garden at North View were owned by Wellow Farm and although they were large, they still had hedges. Sheep or beef cattle were often grazing the fields and I remember going with my Dad ( Ralph Smith) to visit a shepherd up Broad Lane who was living in a field in his shepherd’s hut. This was a wooden hut on wheels that had steps up into it at the back. It had a primus stove for cooking, an old table and chair, and a makeshift bed. It was all very basic but the shepherd seemed happy enough to live there.

 A few years later all this changed when the hedges were grubbed out by a crawler tractor to create huge fields. It was the first time I had seen a crawler tractor and I remember being impressed by the sheer strength of the machine as it grubbed the hedges out. The technique used was fairly brutal: an assistant would wrap a length of chain around the trunk of the bush to be removed and the driver would haul it out, roots and all. Later all the hedging was burnt. The crawler used was not a nice shiny new one, it looked dirty and well used.  It was something of a mystery to me about how the steering worked as it had no steering wheel.

From time to time, and especially noticeable during school holidays because we were always around, were sudden loud explosions. Mum used to say “That’ll be Uncle Joe again,” meaning that Uncle Joe (who was the last Newbridge Blacksmith) had gone to work at the Quarry at the top of Broad Lane. There they used explosives to blast out the chalk so that it could be dug up and crushed for roads and other uses. The explosions varied from a dull thud to a loud window rattling noise even though we were over a mile away as the crow flies.

Peter Smith b 1946