Worthing High School for Boys Wartime Evacuation

Jim Feest recounts his recollections on being evacuated to Nottinghamshire in 1941 when invasion by the Germans was thought to be imminent. This was an episode in the School's history that not many Azurians will be aware of.

In the Spring of 1941 the Worthing local authority, along with all the other South coast towns (possibly as far west as Bournemouth) were told by the Government that all children of school age, whose parents were willing to let them go, were to be sent North to safer areas of the UK. It is likely this was at very short notice, probably less than 10 days, as it was thought that it was very possible that the Germans would launch a full scale invasion of the UK very soon – perhaps in a few weeks. Happily they never came - they attacked Russia instead!

Early one Spring morning in 1941 pupils of the two separate Worthing High Schools, Boys and Girls, whose parents had agreed that their children should go, were required to assemble at Worthing Central Railway Station. We, as was required by War Time regulations, carried our gas marks in little cardboard boxes, and our suitcases which would have contained no more than a few clothes, nightclothes and perhaps a toy, and, more importantly, our ration books. I suspect that other items of clothing would be sent up later by our parents if they could afford to do so. Not all the Worthing children were sent north: enough children remained behind for the schools to retain several teachers in Worthing.

We were loaded onto a very long train, the Boys High School at the front and the Girls at the rear, with possibly the male & female teachers strategicaly placed in the middle (but in quite separate compartments I fancy). Included in the children being sent off were a few brothers and sisters of the High School children whose parents had taken up the offer of sending them to a safer place with their siblings. My sister Ann was one. My future wife, being a High School girl was sent to New Ollerton, a mining village near Mansfield. She only stayed there 6 weeks. I think it was a tough area unused to seeing girls in school uniform! A culture shock for both sides! The rest of the High School girls and boys were billeted in and around Newark. I understand that the High School boys in Newark used the buildings of the Newark Magness Grammar school in the afternoons. It is likely that the other Worthing schools were sent to the Mansfield area but I cannot be sure.

The train took us on the usual London Victoria line as far as (probably) Clapham Junction, then it wandered round the west side of London until it got on to the main east of England line (then the LNER) up to Newark. Whilst we in the London Area we could see the many Barrage Balloons that were there to stop low flying enemy aircraft. I often wondered what good they did as most of the Luftwaffe bombers flew much higher than a barrage balloon could rise.

We got to Newark late in the day ( I am not sure when) and we were taken to a large hall which was probably the Newark Town hall ballroom, where we spent the night possibly sleeping on straw or hay-filled palliasse mattresses. No doubt we were fed both before bed & in the morning, but I have no recollection of this. We did have an air raid warning in the night & (I think) we were ushered into the cellars of the building. Where the other Worthing pupils (girls and boys) spent the night I have no idea,

The next day the records say that 80-100 11-13 year old boys (but I think it was fewer than that) who were to be billeted in Southwell were put on buses or coaches and taken the 12 or so miles to a hall in that little town, where they were allocated to various houses. The rest of the school were billeted in and around Newark. How the allocation of boys was done I have no idea, but myself and another boy were taken eventually by a (what seemed to us) a very old widow lady, to an end of terrace cottage in Westgate (very near to the Holy Trinity Church), and, probably by chance, my sister and the sister of the boy billeted with me, were put with a household in a nearby house in the same street.

The accommodation myself and this boy were put into was extremely small. Just 2 rooms upstairs, one of which had a ¾ bed which he and I had to share! The old lady slept in the other upstairs room. The ground floor was largely one room, with the front door which opened straight onto the street, a door to the side through which you went into the ‘wash-house’ (just big enough for the tin bath - and where the lady did her clothes washing.) The weekly(?) bath - possibly on a Saturday took place in the wash-house. Our landlady bathed first, having laboriously filled it with hot water from the kitchen range, and then we boys bathed in the same water as she had used!

Old cottages in Westgate, Southwell, near Holy Trinity Church

Beyond that was the coal store and the “bucket & chuck it” toilet which was emptied weekly at dead of night by the “night soil” men. A very smelly job! Cooking was done on a kitchen range from which she also got her hot water for washing etc. The ancient staircase was found through a door from the living room, an area on the left side of the stairway door serving as her larder.

Whilst I cannot remember what we ate, I am sure she fed us well! She, of course, had our ration books. One saving grace was that there was an excellent fish & chip shop not to far away in the same street. Not that I remember going there but there was a little cinema a little way from where I was billeted. Some of the Worthing boys in Southwell were billeted in the various Bishop’s Palace and Arch Deacon’s houses - lucky them!

Whilst it must have rained – from this distance in time it seems to have been sunny most of the time, but as far as I was concerned, I had quite an idyllic time there. It is a long time ago, of course, but I am reasonably sure that whilst I was in Southwell the air raid sirens only sounded once or twice and that was for a training session for the Civil Defence people in the area, and perhaps when Nottingham or Newark were being bombed. (Civil Defence corps was the re-named name for Air Raid Wardens) they were all volunteers – both men and women who, with a little training , had to report any bombing incidents, help with rescues from bombed houses etc.

During my time in Southwell we High School boys shared the Southwell Minster Choir School buildings which were in a (Georgian?) house just outside the Minster grounds in (I think in Church Street). We just got on with our lessons seemingly with not much change. We used the Choir school buildings in the morning and the choir school were there in the afternoons.

We were required to go to church most Sundays and several times we went to a service in the Minster. Otherwise we had to go to morning Sunday School (which I detested). However I was befriended by a local boy who was a member of the Minster choir & with the help of a man who was associated with the Minster we were taken all over the building, including the two towers and other parts which were not open to the public.

My parents sent my bicycle up by train which was very useful, especially as some of us cycled to Newark to swim in the baths there. I remember the smell of the breweries in Newark! We played in and around the little stream that flowed more or less parallel to Westgate and in the large green area that was between the Bishop's Palace gardens and Nottingham Road. On the north side of Westgate, set back (say) 200 yards there was an Army tented camp. We never saw any of the soldiers: I expect they went to Newark where there were more pubs!

By the late autumn of 1941 most of us had returned to Worthing and rejoined the children who had stayed behind in Worthing.

Jim also told me that a school from Battersea was evacuated to Worthing in 1939. The two sets of boys used the school premises in shifts, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Apparently the two schools got on well together apart from one occasion when the combined staffs had to be called out to break up a rough snowball fight between the two schools. -Ed.

John Osman has this to say about his evacuation experience:-

I remember quite clearly the Southwell couple, Mr. And Mrs. Walton, who took me and another boy in for a year or so. I was 11 at the time and I am 85 now, so I can’t remember precisely how long we were there, but to me, away from home for the very first time, it seemed to be an extremely long time indeed. Mr Walton, to the best of my memory, was the manager of a bank in Southwell. He and Mrs. Walton had a son who was in his twenties or thirties.

My memories of evacuation were stirred when my mother died in 1998 at the age of 94, and I found among her belongings a photograph of myself which Mrs. Walton had organised to be taken, together with one of Ken Parton, the other boy billeted with her. The respective photographs were posted to our parents along with the weekly letter that Mrs. Walton ensured that we wrote home. I seem to remember that she took us to a photographic studio in Newark or Nottingham to have the photographs taken, after making sure that we had spruced ourselves up for the occasion, in my case that meant donning a tie and my very new school blazer complete with breast pocket badge with the Sussex martlets on it. I was much moved that my mother had preserved this photograph so carefully for the rest of her life.

Among my memories is that the Waltons lived in a spacious house with a large garden. Mr. Walton had a sizeable bed of asparagus and Ken Parton and I helped to weed it. I’ve loved asparagus ever since – because of food rationing it was an amazing luxury then.