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Growing up in Peace and War (1.58 MB)
This is a story of a young girl growing up in a middle class family
in middle England. Stella's adventures took place in the years
leading up to, and during, the Second World War.
Stella's family lived first on the outskirts of Newcastle, then Wallington,
outside of London, and then back to the North-East. It is a quintessentially
English tale of simple pleasures - school-friends, picnics, daily routines,
a number of house moves, holidays, and a fairly strict Methodist upbringing -
what they used to call being, 'prim and proper'.
For the early war years, she and her sister, Rita, were evacuated to
Yew Tree Farm, near Canterbury in Kent. Her father was a Ship Surveyor,
deeply involved in the war effort and rarely at home for a number of years.
Life for Stella changed with the family home being requisitioned by the Air Force.
This was closely followed by the blitz, her first Forces' boy friends, air-raids,
and the transition from school to work. After office-based work in central London,
January 1945 found her travelling to Filey, to help in the re-establishment of Billy
Butlin's camp on the North-East coast. Later that year at 18, she was engaged to be married.
It was a time of hope, some naivety, and aspirations in adversity.
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Growing up in Peace and War