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Don McDouall was evacuated from London during World War II when he was five years old. He was sent to the small country village of East Hanney to live with Grans and Grampy at a house called Tamarisk. He now lives in Australia.
East Hanney was four miles from the nearest town, Wantage. The Great Western railway station, called Wantage Road Railway Station, was about half a mile out of East Hanney towards the village of Grove. Alongside this station was a large pond. Water from this pond supplied the steam locomotives.
The Wantage or Oxford buses conveyed passengers to and from the station and there was a goods yard where goods trains were loaded and unloaded.
On the Hanney side of the railway lines was a waiting room. On the walls of this building were many posters of places like Weston-super-mare, Taunton and Penzance. Stuck over these posters were wartime slogans 'Is your journey really necessary?', 'Talk costs Lives!', 'Dig for Victory'.
The main road running from Wantage to Oxford passed through the edge of the village of East Hanney. It then continued on to a town called Abingdon.
This ancient town was world famous at the time for 'Morris' made 'MG' cars. After the war the half finished shells of the cars were often spotted on the local roads, maybe being road tested before completion.
The village of East Hanney in the forties could boast of two general stores that sold just about everything. There was also a small shop owned by the Gilbert family. It sold sweets amongst other things. Packers general grocers was run by old 'Packer' and his equally old and very deaf wife.
Shops in those days were so very different to modern day shops. If purchasing groceries from Packers shop the shopkeeper just took from the shelves and placed on the counter items as you asked for them. Often reading from the list you had presented to him.
Gilberts was a tiny shop that sold sweets etc. It had a bell on the door that rang when you entered and when you left. There were two bakeries in East Hanney. One was called Carters Bakehouse. The owners also sold coal and paraffin. Then there was Lays Bakery. This bake house was run by two 'biddys'. They also sold paraffin that was used for domestic lighting and heating purposes.
Roy would hang down off the roof of Lays Bakery and steal a small loaf of bread from where the owner had sat the loaves to cool off while I caused a diversion by dragging a stick along the iron railings, the noise making the bakers really angry.
The Black Horse pub was run by the Walters family. There was 'Mum' Walters who was extremely deaf, 'Dad' Walters who was immensely stout and had a moustache like Hitler's and four Walter's children. Heather and Alan were the twins the same age as me. An older brother Cliff and a much older sister called Gwen. The twins were my childhood friends and remained so right throughout my time in the village.
Along the road there had been at the beginning of the war a 'Castrol' service station. It was the only petrol 'bowser' I can remember seeing during the war. It was closed down very early in 1940 the reason being you couldn't buy petrol without the required coupons. Private vehicles were few and far between during the war years.
Situated astride the Letcombe brook were two, massively built water driven mills. Each structure was built of brick. Both mills had ceased being used as mills, long before the war itself had started, although Dandridges mill was used a bit like a factory during the war. There were rumors that it was used in some clandestine fashion by wartime government!
Early in the war years milk was delivered house to house, from horse drawn milk carts. The customers supplied their own jug. It was local milk, still warm from the cows. Peggy Herman, the first lady I ever saw with trousers on, use to deliver our milk. Later on, by 1942, the milk came, still by way of a horse float, but in glass bottles. The bottled milk came from a milk factory that was situated not far out of Wantage. Us kids use to fight over who was going to help the milkman deliver milk.
Two of the bakery businesses sold paraffin. Bread and Paraffin seem now to be strange bedfellows but evidently not then. This fuel was used mainly for lighting and to a certain extent for cooking purposes in most homes. It was delivered to the roadway outside your front door and you supplied your own containers, usually a one gallon tin with a handle attached, a spout and a screw on lid. One of the traders delivered the fuel by horse and cart. The other one had an old green van.
Most houses in East Hanney didn't have electricity and there was no gas. All heating and cooking energy for the house came from rationed coal supplemented by wood that was normally burnt in a stove referred to as a Kitchen Range. Such kitchen stoves were made of cast iron. The firebox was inlaid with firebricks.
Some stoves had an oven on both sides of the firebox, but Grans had the oven on the left side only and you could remove the top hot plate off the firebox, so on winter evenings you had an open fire. Grans old cat Harry met his end in that particular oven. As it got old, the cat got into the habit of sleeping in the oven. You can guess the rest!
Groceries, bread, the coal, daily newspapers, milk and the post were all delivered to your front door. Most foodstuffs were on the ration, so you needed a ration book as well as money when you went shopping.
Some food items were just not for sale, ration book or no ration book, such as coffee. Oranges, melons and bananas one could only dream of. In fact the first banana I ever possessed was one that was given to me in 1946. I kept it for so long that it went rotten. No one told me to eat it!
Most so-called coffee that one could buy at that time was chicory syrup. This oily looking black syrup came in a square shaped bottle. For sweetening things 'saccharine' tablets came in packets of a hundred tiny white pills. These tasted awful if you were stupid enough to suck one and were a very poor substitute for sugar.
Even such things as eggs were rationed. So most people in East Hanney had their own laying hens. These were normally fed on boiled up household scraps often mixed with some bran and 'pollard'.
The main thing that kids were interested in at the time was the weekly sweet ration. Going to the shop each week to get your ration of sweets was a very important event. Mars bars, liquorice sticks, lumps of 'stick jaw' toffee and French Nougat, chocolate pennies, packets of sugar cigarettes, countless varieties of boiled sweets like black and white 'Bulls eyes', multi coloured 'Gob stoppers' and 'All day suckers'.
I the papers I use to read all about the terrible goings on in places like London. Everyone would look at the maps depicting parts of the world where the fighting was going on. These very exaggerated maps would have broad arrows, pointing like clutching fingers. Over many was the word Allies.
You could look at the cartoons and see what 'Jane' was up to in her scanty underwear! Very often Grampy would want to know 'Lighting up time' for the following week. This was when you had to turn your bicycle rear light on o you wouldn't run foul of Mr Lucas, the policeman!
Motorised vehicles were very few and far between in the two villages and virtually everyone had the use of bicycles. These trusty machines came in a variety of shapes and sizes. If you owned a bike lamp with a magnified lense you were very popular as on sunny days you could start fires with the glass or burn your friends hand with it.
If you had a bright light during the war years then the air-raid wardens would give you a 'fruity' mouthful. 'Put that light out!' was a common cry after dark, even if you just opened your door!
West Hanney had two public houses, an Off Licence and three other shops. One shop was a barn with a thatched roof. This quaint shop sold ornaments amongst other things, such as miniature animals. Roy and I were always there on Sunday mornings.
Gran Lyfords relatives would give us a few coppers now and then. But we were expected to buy presents with this money for Grans so all we ever saw for our money was some tiny animal made from glass or such sitting in a glass cabinet. At times Gran was none too pleased when she finally gained possession of the figurine's as we would play a lot of games with the gifts before they got home. This normally involved water and mud!
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