Cultureshock

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Video transcript

A time, a place, a girl to remember.

I shivered and grimaced as I ate the raw liver given to me for my pudding. But soon all was well, for my friend Margaret told me that it was chocolate blancmange! Once again, Margaret was my saviour during out time as evacuees during the Second World War at Wallington Hall, the beautiful home and gardens of Sir Charles and Lady Trevelyan.

Just before this time my family was on holiday at Whitley Bay, little did we realise that in a weeks time war would be declared. We were at war. The next time I was evacuated with my school, Heaton Park Road, holding my little brown case of clothes and my gas mask strapped over my body, to Kirkwhelpington Hall where I lived with the school master, Mr Wardle, and his family. I was so happy with them but at Christmas my parents brought me home as there had not been an invasion or bombing. The period is known as the phoney war.

Soon the bombing did begin. Each night we heard the sirens and hurried down to the Victoria Tunnel as the noise of bomber aeroplanes followed us. We were terrified and when a bomb fell on my street my parents decided I must be evacuated again.

So I was sent to Wallington Hall, my haven of peacefulness and green beauty. The teacher said “Margaret, this is a new girl, please look after her”. From that moment Margaret was my friend and guardian and cared for me in everything we did. We played in the woods at house and were so engrossed one day we missed the bell and everyone was looking for us. We swam in the river. We held hands when Lady Trevelyan played the grand piano as she taught us country songs and dances. We walked in line together as the teacher took us through the woods and taught us the names of the wild flowers and trees and birds and animals. We admired the pond with the water lilies and ducks. Here I got my continuing interest in nature and later became a teacher where I passed on this wonderful interest to others. We picked potatoes during October holiday week for which we were given some pocket money and we picked rosehips to be made into a sweet syrup. We ran, skipped and chased on the green among the other girls and sat and made daisy chains in the summer. Margaret and I were inseparable during the day but at night I slept in the Hall and while she slept in a room above the stables, where the restaurant is now. After a year we asked if I could sleep there too as we could not bear to be parted. We could smell and hear the animals down below during the night.

Margaret took such great care of me but when we left to go home, because we lived on different sides of Newcastle, and perhaps because we were so young, we never saw each other again. All my life I remembered Margaret. I wish to thank her for caring for me. Every time I visited Wallington with friends or family I remembered her. Over sixty years later I was invited to and evacuees reunion and I hoped that Margaret would be there. I imagined greeting her with open arms but she wasn’t there. No one had even heard of her. There was an exhibition of photographs of us as evacuees and she is there in one of them, kneeling behind me as we have a picnic. So I know she did exist. Each time I walk through the clock tower there we are in my mind’s eye, on the green, running and chasing in the sunshine among the other girls. She is watching me around a corner, around a tree, always in the sunshine. My friends and family talk to me as we walk through the woods but I don’t hear them, Margaret is calling to me, I am listening to her. I wish to go to be with her, to find her but as we were then. I am now eighty years old but we will always be two little girls loving and caring for each other.