My youngest sister, Amy, was born in the thatched cottage on the Green where Mum and Dad lived for fifty-two years. I remember the day, I was five. Phyl Dell, my mum’s friend from her school days at Stretton-on-Dunsmore, told me as I came out of school that I had a baby sister. I was asked to make Mum some Oxo, which I made with cold water from the bucket in the pantry. Our water came from a well in the garden, just in front of the passage. The passage led to our front door and was where we kept our little trikes. Dad used to take his bike into the big kitchen and would fill up his Acetylene lamps to be ready for the next morning. He would also get the coal and sticks in for the black lead range, this was still in use when I was sixteen years old. It was lit at 5.30 am to make cups of tea and toast before I caught the 6.30 bus to the GEC [General Electric Company], Queen Victoria Road, Coventry.

During the war we housed evacuees from Coventry, they had our beds and we slept under the table in the living room. Every morning they would return to Coventry to work, and we would go to school with our gas masks in a cardboard box with string over our shoulder. My sister had a Mickey Mouse one, red and blue, I think. Going back to school one lunchtime we saw a plane, which we were told had machine gunned the Parade in Leamington Spa.

The night the Germans bombed Coventry I had just had my bath and was on my way to bed. Bombs were dropped on the Cement Works nearby, Garrets Field, the Green Man pub and I think, Bascote. Mum thought the gable end of the house had been hit.

In our big garden we three girls, Jean, Amy and me, would play a lot together, houses and mums, with dolls in a pram and string for lines to play “houses”. We also played “Whip and Top” down the road and in the Square, we only had to move out of the way of the farmer on his old Fordson tractor or sometimes a horse and cart.

During our school holidays we would go over the fields to the brook to do some fishing with string on a cane and a knobby pin for a hook. We had a two-pound glass jam-jar to put a few minnows in. Sometimes we would go a little further to the canal where we could have a paddle in our home-made bathers, made from an old woolly jumper with sleeves and neck cut out and sewn up hem, away we would go. It would fill up with water, but we didn’t care. We would have a good laugh. They were happy days, so carefree and never in danger.

 

Southam Heritage Collection is located in the atrium of Tithe Place opposite the Library entrance.  Opening times Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings from 10am to 12 noon. To find out more about Southam’s history, visit our website www.southamheritage.org  telephone 01926 613503 or email  southamheritage@hotmail.com  You can also follow us on Facebook.