Memories of Hitchin and WW2 – Frederick William White

“I was born Frederick William White in January 1926 at Eastbourne and attended Eastbourne Grammar School at the beginning of WWII. When the war came it made a great difference to youngsters as well.”

What a difference a year makes. France has fallen and those evacuees from London are quickly moved out and because of the bombing and the fear of invasion the local schools quickly follow including the evacuation of Eastbourne Boys Grammar School to Hitchin in Hertfordshire.

Now for the next two years a much different life, interesting, challenging, sometimes boring and missing our homes and families of course. First a myth, you settled into a happy and comfortable billet until the time came to come home. In reality the hosts gave up, needed a rest break or just wanted a change of evacuee so we were often on the move. I spent time in three billets all much different and a brief spell in the evacuee hostel. Other boys from my school were also in the hostel as were girls, awaiting a new billet, all from the Eastbourne Girls High School, who were also sharing a local school.

We were sharing with Hitchin Boys Grammar School, so much reduced facilities and the  tuition was also much changed. My class had already dropped Latin and we were learning German but now our teacher was called up, and with no replacement available – no more German lessons. We had studied Physics, Chemistry and biology as separate subjects but now only General Science. We also lost Art and because of  some curriculum problems we also dropped Geography but gained Technical Drawing and Metalwork.

The Cadet Force continued which gave us an interest. I can’t remember much about sport, except for running and swimming. I remember working in fields thinning out sugar beet plants, and I was lucky to have my bicycle with me so that I could be an Air Raid messenger and spend some nights in the ARP centre and from time to time I could cycle the five miles to Baldock to visit an uncle and aunt who lived there.

The two years were coming to an end and we then took the Cambridge School Certificate Exams in the eight subjects we were studying. I was happy with my results, three distinctions, four credits and a pass but I have no idea what the average results were, but it shows that the school coped well.

Come the term end we now left the school, Most of us returning to Eastbourne and I believe the school also returned after the Summer holiday. Eastbourne was then a sad place, the blackout, a lower population, rationing and occasional attacks from German Fighter Bombers, but by September I was working in the National Provincial Bank in Terminus Road. Late the next Year I volunteered and joined the Navy as an Ordinary Seaman a better choice than being called up at 18. I trained as a radar engineer in Guildford, and in 1945, sailed from Birkenhead on HMS Berry Head, a Support Vessel for the British Pacific Fleet. Whilst en route to the Far East, VE Day was declared in mid-Atlantic, and VJ Day in mid Pacific. A great trip around the world!

After demobilisation, I returned to a banking career, finishing as the Manager of the Nat West Bank in Paignton, a town in which I still live in retirement, after a very interesting career.

Memories of Hitchin – Frank Scutt

For some little time, I’ve had the urge to revisit Hitchin and the opportunity arose during a September weekend visit to relations in Bedford. In a busy schedule of eating and drinking, interrupted by trout fishing and watching Bedford lose to Worcester at rugby, we managed a Saturday morning trip down the A600. I haven’t been back since the late 50s when I took my wife to be to visit my Dad’s favourite sister (a family approval ritual) and had doubts that I would remember the route into town, but no worries.

The central part of the town we got to know so well has changed very little and once into the built-up area I easily identified Butts Close – the green where all the fairs took place – and turned left into Fishponds Road (A505). We passed Hitchin Town FC on the left and the swimming baths on the right before parking adjacent to a hedge which separated us from the top (North) end of the Hitchin GS playing fields. On the opposite side of the road was Wiltshire Dacre School, which I        attended as a junior until passing for the Grammar School some two years later. I went to Hitchin with Sinclair, my elder brother, then a pupil at the EGS. Was I the only sibling to go to Wiltshire Dacre and then on to EGS? No-one has ever mentioned a similar situation to me.

We walked down Fishponds Road and came out on Bancroft opposite the gardens and turned right towards the town centre. In the 40s I recall a leather factory along there which had its own unique smell; no sign of that now. The attractions of the Saturday market and an apparently flourishing shopping centre were too much for my companions and allowed me to slip away for a couple of hours to explore further. Turning right at the end of Bancroft I went up Brand Street and found Grammar School Walk at the top. I ventured down for the first time in some fifty years but found the gates to the school locked. Through some shrubbery and over a low wall found me outside the main entrance to the school building. It seemed to be exactly as I remembered it – single storey brick built with three tall chimney stacks and a cupola on the left-hand roof.

Walking further along brought me out on to the playing fields – the opposite end of Fishponds Road – where a new pavilion overlooked a pretty decent cricket square. In the central area were several rugby pitches and at the far end a splendid floodlit hockey pitch. I sat down at the far end for a while and thought back to the 40s when we played HGS at soccer on the pitch when it was grass but sadly couldn’t recall us winning. The new hockey pitch took me back to my last year at Hitchin – I stayed on for a year after EGS came home. They had two very good players, Thomas and D J Carnhill, both of whom gained international selection – the latter, I think, as captain.

I also recall the cross-country races which went off the premises to somewhere around Ickleford and returned to the school at the south end of the field from West Hill or thereabouts. I used to train with a chap named Mitchell, about my age but whether he was EGS or HGS I can’t remember.

My sporting prowess over, I walked back to the nearest buildings, down a pathway and found myself in the ‘cloistered’ quadrangle. The three-storied building had not changed but I seem to recall that there used to be a very large conifer which was a good umbrella on wet days. I walked on further up the slope to the left and saw the main gates ahead. To the left down a little path was the corrugated iron shed which seemed familiar but was now used as a dump for anything nobody wanted. Was this the building we once used as a temporary classroom? It didn’t seem possible, but I think it was. Retracing my steps across the quadrangle I came out on the field again and sat under the trees we used to congregate around during break / lunch times to take in the scene and give my thoughts an airing.

For those who were there (others please use your imagination!), do you remember:

• Sledging down Windmill Hill on snow so deep at the bottom that you could end up in

Hermitage Road

• Testing the ice on the pond in Bancroft Gardens
• Cycling up Offley Hill without getting off and whizzing down at 30+mph
• Queuing for fish & chips in Nightingale Road where blankets were strung up over the queue to ensure the blackout wasn’t breached
• Playing / watching football / cricket in Ransoms Rec when the smells and squeals of butchered pigs were equally repugnant
• Seeing the Vickers Virginia biplane take off from Henlow for parachute-jumping practice
• Delivering newspapers in foggy weather on winter mornings during the blackout
• Watching the developing pink / red glow reflected in the night sky to the south when London was blitzed night after night
• Studying the maps of the war to see whether the white arrows (our troops) were advancing or retreating.
• Seeing the troop convoys going through especially at night with masked headlights
• Visiting the market on Saturdays and going to the cinema in Hermitage Road

I rejoined my companions but we did drive by the places I was billeted at – one an off-licence in Walsworth Road which became an exchange of goods business between the butcher / grocer for the occasional half-bottle of spirits that became available; the second a small holding in Walsworth village where chickens and ducks were kept (and turkeys until the whole lot were stolen just before Christmas ) and where we played endless games of cricket on the green until it got dark – which in summer was pretty late due to the double summer time in those days.

My mission isn’t complete and I will be back. Hitchin “looked after” me for four years and I have an affection for the place; just one more visit for a final look around!

Recollections of Hitchin – Frank Pagden?

After all the disruption of the previous year, school life now settled down. The threat of air raids persisted but locally nothing ever happened. The more serious problem was posed by loss of experienced staff. Normal retirements were planned but call-up into the Services was a different matter and some subjects, such as Latin, English and Maths suffered lack of continuity. Brighter boys took this in their stride, others less so.

Keeping us out of mischief, especially in the evenings, also featured. We were not allowed out after dark without a permit for a specific purpose; the prefects policed this prohibition. Continued attendance at Sea Cadets was important to some of us but there was no unit in Hitchin. In 1940 we continued to meet in Crawley’s garden – such was our enthusiasm! Later we discovered an office of the Navy League in Hermitage Road, Hitchin, where we were allowed to congregate. From this it was recognised that a group of erstwhile Sea Cadets from Eastbourne were sufficiently keen to become founder members of a new unit and the Lord Lloyd Unit was duly formed and flourished.  Those of us chiefly responsible were Dennis Wade, Brian Gilbert, Cyril Jackson and myself, all from the Christchurch catchment area. Some of us played in the band and sometimes had to juggle loyalty with dual membership of the School’s Army Cadet Corps. These two units were often in demand to support Warship Weeks, Wings for Victory Parades and Home Guard events. We enjoyed numerous days out at no expense to ourselves and were seen to be setting a good example.

Other war-related leisure often centred on the Saturday morning habit of queuing for food and sweets. Dennis and I spent many hours queuing to purchase the odd bar of chocolate and I did the same at the butchers, where the reward was often some pigs’ trotters with which Nora Crawley made brawn. We never went hungry but menus were often plain and monotonous.  School dinners did not start until 1943.

I suppose that catering for an enlarged family was stressful. And when coupled with the disruption of just about everything else, with no holidays to compensate, it was not surprising that Nora Crawley needed a break. I was therefore “put out to grass at a hostel for a fortnight. It was an awful communal institution and similar to life in barracks, which I was to know later. My abiding memory is the lack of washing facilities and I do not remember any bathrooms or showers. Boys don’t care much about these things, but I think my parents would have been horrified if they’d known.

1942

This was to be our last year in Hitchin and by this time school was running smoothly and academic results were good. Furthermore, competitive sport of all kinds was widely enjoyed and reports from the School Orchestra, Cadet Corps, Debating Society, Philatelic Society etc suggested that, for the time being at least, we were coping well. It was not surprising, however, that pressure was building for a return to Eastbourne. There had been a small but continuous stream of boys leaving early, and Eastbourne now seemed a slightly safer place than it had been. As a result, we felt able to cycle home occasionally, about 100 miles. Dennis and I did this at least twice, albeit straight across London; curiously, I don’t remember seeing much bomb damage.

Memories of Hitchin and Return to Eastbourne – Ron Collins

I was intrigued and interested in Frank Pagden’s mention of the fairly short stay in Hitchin when the School was evacuated. Most of us were farmed out to the surrounding villages and I finished up in Ashwell, some 11 miles out. We used to bus in every day to Hitchin Grammar School. The villages made us very welcome, although I would mention that the lady of the house I stayed in with my old friend Fred Howell took something of an exception to the state of her bicycle on its return after she lent it to me for a journey over to St Albans to see Fred’s brother. On the way back it developed a puncture and, with considerable skill and ingenuity, we stuffed the tyre with grass.

Thanks to Johnny Rivers we were lent a club room in a barn with a water wheel over a stream and a group of 20 or so of us had many happy hours there playing table tennis etc. and in elaborate discussions on where the best fruit in the village could be obtained.

When we came back to Eastbourne, I was consigned with other likely lads to Upper VB with Mr Stacey, the Geography master, in charge. We had considerable respect for him, which I don’t think was fully reciprocated. He had the habit of going off about a fortnight before the summer holiday, possibly camel-trekking in the Sudan. So consequently his exam was in advance of the usual end-of-term foray. Sheer fear made me swot and I came out with an incredible 48% and came top. I make no comment on the marking system, perhaps he was anxious to get out to his camels;but it did give me a invaluable lesson in life.

My usual position in the class was overall about 20th out of 30; however, playing football in the First XI was far more important to me. I had the left wing slot and the Captain did enquire of me after a couple of matches as to why I did not use my left foot. He looked slightly bemused when I told him I could not kick left-footed. However, as they couldn’t find anyone else I survived!