Evacuees

Were you evacuated to Cransford, Bruisyard, or Badingham? 

I’d love to hear your memories, or tales that have been passed down to you. Why? Because I’m currently writing about the local area at the time of the 1939 Register and the war years following.

From Ilford to Cransford

In 1939, evacuees from Ilford arrived at Saxmundham railway station with their class teachers. A little later, they travelled onwards to surrounding villages. Other children, from different places, came to Cransford and its neighbours to stay with relatives and friends.

The 1939 Register of Cransford has several children from Ilford recorded in its pages. Sadly, most of the visible names in the Register belong to people no longer with us. In that case, maybe you are a descendant of one of them.

There are plenty of redacted rows within its pages too though, and those people are likely still ‘out there’ somewhere. Perhaps you are one of them, and you’re reading this?

It doesn’t seem right to list the names of the known evacuees here as it’s such recent history, but where I can identify individuals, I have researched their families a little and, using maps, worked out which area they came from. 

The exact school still eludes me, but it was probably a boys’ school not far from Goodmayes Park. There are a few potential options, but the Framlingham evacuees were girls from Becontree Middle Girls’ School under their headmistress Miss F A Stoneham, and Cransford’s boys were definitely from nearby. 

The children didn’t all stay for the duration of the war. Tragically, at least one of Cransford’s evacuees from Ilford was later killed at his home, along with his parents, as a direct result of the bombing.

Village life

There are stories in the local newspapers about various treats and Christmas parties for children, including evacuees. These are the positive stories of events that attracted the great and the good. For example, in January 1940, the Mayor of Ilford (Mr C A Farman) and Deputy Mayoress (Mrs Beddison) visited the New Year’s party at Bruisyard Iron Room.

‘An excellent tea’ was served by ‘lady helpers’, and Lady Hamilton of Cransford Hall provided the crackers. Incidentally, her husband, Sir George Hamilton, had been Conservative MP for Ilford Division from 1928 to 1937. Alongside the rest of the guests at the party were Mr W G Orvis (Headmaster at Rendham, where the Cransford children went to school), Rev C L W Bailey (Rector of Cransford with Bruisyard), Paster A J Lankester (from the Baptist Chapel), Mr F Seggons (my Great Grandad, so it’s somewhat likely Great Grandma was a ‘lady helper’!) and Mr H Norman.

Little is reported about the day-to-day lives of evacuee children in the parish as they got used to their new friends and surroundings. It must have been quite a change to swap bustling Ilford and its regimented terraces (with a population estimated at 166,900 in 1938) for rural Cransford’s farms and cottages (with just 192 people, including evacuees, in 1939).

I know that my Great Grandparents hosted evacuees at their farm and have heard stories about them first-hand. It would be wonderful to listen to the view from ‘the other side’. Please comment below or send me a contact form to tell me more.

A contemporary account

To finish this post, I’ve transcribed a submission to a local newspaper from one of the Becontree school teachers. It was submitted to the Diss Express and you can find it in the Friday 1 March edition, on page three:

Evacuation! What a variety of meanings that word holds for people in every part of England! Can you imagine, you who have seldom had to leave your home except at will, what it meant to the evacuee, when the great move came?

We had never felt so powerless, so like matchwood in a relentless sea, knowing the tide would wash us up later “somewhere”. Our “Somewhere” was to be between The Wash and Lands End, and, as we studied the map, we felt smaller than ever before in our lives, so unable were we to lift a finger to stem the mighty force outside ourselves, the tide in which we were to drift.

Perhaps we seemed outwardly calm when we “landed”, but each concealed anxiety to some degree. How would our children fare? Anxious parents from whose sides they had been torn, had committed them to our care. How would they feel in their new homes, and at a strange school? Would we all be treated as usurpers? (We were conscious enough of being such!) How would a Headmaster with an up-to-date school treat an invasion such as ours, upsetting his time-table, making accommodation most difficult, and interfering with the smooth running of his curriculum? And the school staff? How they would object to interlopers breaking into the sanctity of the staff room, so jealously guarded by teachers as a rule!

Such were or fears. What really happened? To begin with- our children. In most cases they were given real homes where they are extremely happy and have benefitted from the fresh air and new experiences of country life. They were accepted at once by the Area School children with whom they are on the best of terms. What then of the staff and workers? No higher tribute can be paid to Mr Reeve and his staff than to say that not for one moment since we entered the Framlingham Area School have we been made to feel we are usurpers in any way. Mr Reeve, with his habitual geniality, “adopted” us at once, allowing us to unite in every detail with his school. In the staff room too, when the work is done, we are admitted to the happy circle round the fire, where we sit together and knit for soldiers, and discuss “our” school, that being the Framlingham Area School!

For all this, what can we say? Only a heartfelt “thank you” to all in Framlingham, and especially to Mr Reeve and his co-workers.

Additional sources

1939 Register. Cransford.

Diss Express. 12 January 1940. Bruisyard. p. 3 Available online: britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk