After being bombed out of her home in Battersea during September 1940, a 20-year-old young lady by the name of Joan Holman (later Woodland and now Bryant) found accommodation at Clapham. A few weeks later she married her fiancé, Bert Woodland.

Our stay in a flat at Paradise Road, Clapham only lasted two months, said Joan. In November we moved to a flat in Ferndale Road, Clapham North. The owner used to go away overnight to stay with her daughter in Morden, (her husband was in the navy). It was a very nice flat; we moved most of our belongings on a greengrocer's barrow. We had notified the P.O. that we had moved but it wasn't long before my husbands papers arrived (January 1941), he had to report to Woolwich and was then posted to Glasgow (Maryhill barracks), in February 1941.

All was well until a bomb was dropped at the end of Ferndale Road (Brixton end) in March 1941, windows were blown out again, no shelter in the garden, it was very frightening. My husband's brother told us of a flat in Bromfield Road, Clapham, a very large old house let into flats, we took the basement flat and fortunately we had a brick shelter in the garden.

Things settled down, the raids were easing up a bit. I took a job in the munitions factory. My husband had leave in May 1941. We had heard about the Hood sinking , our friend Dennis Print went down with the ship, he was a Petty Officer.

There was a lull in the bombing raids. All went well until August 1941 when my husband had another 48hr leave. The raids and bombing started again but not as heavily as before.

The next leave he had was embarkation leave in October 1941. I went to see him off at Euston station, which was crowded with soldiers and their families, very disturbing. I got a taxi back home, it was late at night.

It was just near Christmas when I found I was pregnant, and my mother-in-law wanted to move in so we could have our own place. Fortunately we found a house in Larkhall Lane, Clapham: I had the upstairs, my mother-in-law the downstairs. There was a sweet shop next door, and a builders yard, it was the builder who owned the house; our rent was twelve shillings and six pence per week.

My baby was born on the 12th July 1942 in St. James Hospital, Balham.

I stayed in that house until 1944. I knew I had to find somewhere soon as the raids weren't too bad, and wanted somewhere to settle down for when my husband came home.

I took a self-contained flat in Howard Street, Battersea. Then the Doodle Bugs started. I had been to my mother-in-law's for Sunday lunch, on returning home I found yet another disaster, quite a few people were killed further down the road.

So back I went to Larkhall Lane with mother-in-law again. I vowed I would never move again.

Then came the news on the 8th of May 1945 that the war had ended. I went to the Battersea Town Hall housing department and they granted me £100 in cash and a maisonette. The first one, in Howard Street, had (first aid repairs) bricks showing round the windows, and most walls devoid of wallpaper. The second, in New Road, was just as bad.

The Woodland family, now that they were back home, were very kind, they papered and painted ready for my husband's homecoming: that was October 1946 after four years away.

I had my second baby in August 1947 and stayed here until 1954 when we were offered a new flat on the side of Wimbledon Common, in Roehampton Lane.

Both of my daughters were married from there, one in 1963 and the other in 1967.

We were alone at last, making plans to perhaps start buying our own place. But late in November 1967 my husband was taken ill at work. He had worked at the Battersea power station from the age of 16, except for the war years. He was rushed into Roehampton Hospital on open order ('open order' means visiting allowed at any time because of the seriousness of the case). They found he had cancer, which was a terrible shock; it had travelled so far. He had many operations over the next few years but died in a nursing home at Bayswater in the Masonic ward, June 1971.

I stayed on in the flat, working for the Post Office Telephones (now BT) at New Malden. I met Reg Bryant, my present husband, in 1975, had a hip operation in 1976, and moved in with Reg at Worcester Park in November of that year.

She later married Reg Bryant in 1983 and they too are enjoying a contented partnership, in the south coast town of Worthing.