Evacuated to a home from home (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

Evacuated to a home from home

11:22am Thursday 23rd October 2008 in

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A series of events will take place next year to commemorate the evacuation of thousands of London schoolchildren to the countryside as the Second World War began. In the run-up, Gary Godfrey is hoping to track down some of his fellow evacuees.

“THEY were the best years of my life.”

These words – generally applied to school days by people who are well past them – are the ones which Gary Godfrey uses with real feeling to describe his four years as an evacuee from Walthamstow.

He was not far off his eighth birthday when he and his classmates at the then Maynard Road School (now Henry Maynard) left the capital on September 3, 1939, to travel to the safe haven of Langham, a village near Oakham in Rutland.

There he lived at Box View, Wells Street, with Mr and Mrs Christopher Smith, whom he describes as “really wonderful”. He was so fond of them that he kept in close touch with the couple for the rest of their lives, and is still in contact with their family.

It was a markedly different life for the evacuees from the one they had left behind.

Langham, the home of the famous Ruddles Brewery, was a country village with country pursuits, in which the youngsters and their teachers joined with enthusiasm.

The Maynard group, who were accompanied by their headmistress Miss Widdicombe and other women teachers, were taught first in the Langham Village Institute and the Scout hall, and when they grew older went on to the secondary school in Oakham.

As the photographs illustrate, they had an interesting life even in the face of wartime shortages and tragedies.

Mr Godfrey, who was later joined by his younger brother Alan, said: “I can’t thank the people of Langham enough for taking us in and taking us to their hearts.”

He returned to Walthamstow in 1943, some of his schoolmates the year after.

But the link remained and it is interesting to note that one of the boys, Tony Parrot, was adopted by the woman who looked after him and was buried in Langham churchyard after his death in 1997.

Mr Godfrey went on work in electronics and later in sales and marketing and now lives in Harlow with his wife Mavis (formerly Cornhill), who was a Chingford girl.

Rebbecca Davis, 33, said: “It is touching being able to perform something all over the world that has a family connection. I think love separated by conflict happens all the time. It is timeless. We don’t write so often by letters now, maybe by email, but people still relate to the separation.

“This piece is also a real snapshot of life in London at that time.”