Separate lives

Heartache, horrors and lifelong friendships made by evacuees

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Historian Margaret Sheridan, who lives in the village of Alveley in Shrops, which hosted 80 evacuees, tells how children generally weren't shipped that far away from their homes.

She said: “For many children the journey will have felt like a million miles away but in fact they weren’t that far away from home, just far enough away from danger.

“But for a lot this was the first time they'd ever been on a train and when they arrived to their destinations, the first time they'd ever seen a cow or a sheep. This was a real culture shock for some.”

Margaret says many of the kids sent to Alveley came from nearby Liverpool. She said the village was small but the people there were labourers and quarrymen and money was tight. Having more mouths to feed was tough on the locals.

She said: “During the Second World War the population of Alveley was in its hundreds and then you have an extra 80 children sent to the village who you have to feed and clothe.

“The city kids arrived with nits and dirty clothes. They would be taken to a church hall and the families taking the children in were really looking for kids who would be able to help them in their line of work.

“Being an evacuee in Alveley was no easy task, you were put to work.

“Locals were selecting children who looked healthy and strong.”

Bill Collins was just seven when he was evacuated to Chichester, West Sussex, from his home 65 miles away in Wimbledon, London.

It hadn't been a hopeful start though, after travelling by train with his label attached to his lapel and clutching a gas mask, he and his sister Joan, 14, were taken to a couple of addresses but nobody would take them in. Luckily the family at the third home, who had two children of their own, welcomed Bill and Joan into their small terraced home. Bill had left behind a pleasant tree-lined home in London to live in the terraced house with an outside loo and no bathroom.