An idyllic childhood

Peter Woods recalls his time as an evacuee, staying in a flat above Woodrow’s ironmonger, overlooking Market Hill, in the 1940s …

“Our ‘front room’ looked out onto the market square and in one corner of this room stood a Morrison shelter.  This had a flat top with a cage like construction underneath.  When the siren went dad would remove the detachable side of the cage framework and we would crawl into the shelter.  Once inside we would settle down into the bed which was always made up in readiness.  My father would replace the wire from the inside and we would wait anxiously for the ‘All Clear’.

The front, or shop-end, of the house was connected to the back – where the kitchen was located and where we had our meals – by a long corridor.  This was covered with a veritable river of coconut matting.  It was so long that it had to be rolled up by my mother and steered along the remaining stretch of passage and outside the back door.  Today, whenever I see a field with round bales of hay I’m reminded of the Woodrow house rolls of coconut matting.  This then had to be dragged and man-handled over our heavy-duty washing line, draped in a series of fancy, pelmet-like, curves.  Thus suspended above the yard my mother would attack it from both sides with a sturdy yard brush.  The much flimsier wicker carpet-beater was totally inadequate for the coarse, and surprisingly heavy, coconut matting.  Boudicca could not have attacked the Roman legions with more vigour than my mother expended on this thankless task!  The very first glimmerings of an aesthetic awareness came into play at that time when I became fascinated by the intricate patterns formed by the dust that had worked its way through the matting.  This residue from countless footfalls would be carelessly swept up and removed with a dustpan and long-handled brush.  I can recall thinking, albeit in a very simplistic and ill-defined way, that  that it was wrong that such beauty had to be destroyed in the name of cleanliness.  It’s amazing what kind of memories are stored in that reference library we call a mind.

Because of the size of the property we had several Land Army girls billeted with us.  My mother had the very demanding job of feeding and generally keeping an eye on them.  She must have done a reasonably good job because several of the girls continued to correspond with her when the war ended.

As described above, the Woodrow house filled the right angle created by the intersection of the London Road and Market Hill.  Sometimes the large U.S.A.A.F trucks that plied to and from the railway station, where they collected munitions destined for a large dump over towards Elveden, would break their journey on the main square close to Woodrow’s corner.  These trucks were a magnet both for us children and for the local girls.  Our interest lay in the sticks of chewing gum and more exotic commodities like pieces of chocolate and small squares of dates which our colourful allies dispensed from their ration packs.  The older girls were more interested in dates of a different kind and if they were especially lucky, or perhaps particularly accommodating, a pair of nylons – the most cherished of all gifts – might be produced from the dark, inner recesses of one of the tanks.  Our engaging transatlantic compatriots were viewed with suspicion and not a little envy by the locally based British servicemen.  The aphorism of them being, “Over-paid, over­sexed and over here,” was frequently applied.  For my part I can certainly recall a certain buzz amongst our Land Army boarders whenever the Americans were in town.  At such times I think my mother reluctantly accepted that on such occasions her role as guardian of the morals of her newly liberated charges was a virtually impossible task.  I still have the mental image of a near-demented mother hen desperately trying to gather up and protect her chicks in a henhouse that has been penetrated by a family of foxes.

When we were living in the Woodrow Shop house I sometimes encountered Mr. Woodrow’s sister, Doris Rawlings.  This was particularly so when I had my after-school job in the ironmongers.  Doris had a small hat shop in the same building as the ironmongers.  Her shop window was just round the corner from the London Road and looked out onto Market Hill.  She also sold hosiery and other articles of female attire in her shop which I believe was rather unimaginatively called The Hat Shop.  The pragmatism of this name was somehow very much of its time and reflected the austerity and highly focussed vision of the war years – no looking back to the past and a name like The Hat Shoppe or a more futuristic name like The Hat Box or Mad as a Hatter.  No, this was plain, unadorned, straight-down-the-line The Hat Shop for middle class ladies who wanted to forget the war with a little indulgence in the local milliners.  After Doris was widowed Reggie lived with his sister in a bungalow in Church Street.  But it was not really Doris or her hats and hose that interested me, but her little black and white dog called Scamp.  Scamp was very playful and I spent a lot of time making a fuss of him.  We became real friends.  I really loved Scamp and he always seemed pleased to see me when he came into the shop.  Perhaps my love of dogs started during these sessions.”