From Christine Bate’s document titled 1939.doc
1939-1945
My grandfather, John Fergus Steel, retired during August of 1939. Mother, Father, Sheila and I visited them at Broad Street in Carlisle while they were packing up to move to a rented house in Gilsland. I particularly remember that the books were all out of the bookcase and were being packed into boxes. It all seemed very exciting to see a house that I had known since being a toddler change from the comfortable, stable haven that it had seemed to me into a higgledy piggledy uncomfortable house, and I don’t remember hearing any discussion of where they were moving to. It was only later that I knew they were living in a house in Gilsland, a small village about midway between Carlisle and Newcastle. During this visit “up-North” of course, we went to visit Great Auntie Bessie and Uncle John at Crosby near Maryport. This was always an exciting day out. Carlisle station was noisy with engines letting off steam, loudspeakers, and crowds rushing to the various platforms. To get to Crosby, we went on the Carlisle to Maryport line. The rolling stock was old on this short line and there were no corridor coaches. You sat in your compartment for eight people and made sure you didn’t need the toilet en route. We got off the train at Deerham Bridge, a tiny station that wasn’t even near a village, then walked up a narrow country lane to Crosby. As usual, I spent much of the day outside in the gardern and my special delight was to go into the garage through a side door and smell the petrol odours. I’m not sure whether it is fantasy or not, but I seem to remember sitting in the car and touching the steering wheel. Now I look back, the adults must have had some serious conversations and made the arrangements for Sheila and me to go back to Crosby and stay if war was declared and it seemed dangerous to stay in Rotherham so near to the steel works.
The train journey to Gilsland was also an exciting one for me. We had to go on a stopping train and I came to know the stations by heart. Just listing them evokes memories of another corridor-less train that puffed out of Carlisle station in a different direction from the Maryport train. Scotby, on the outer edge of Carlisle, Wetherall, deep in a wooded ravine, Heads Nook, How Mill, Brampton Junction with no indication of where Brampton was, Naworth, Low Row where my Uncle Donald and Auntie Lily lived and then Gilsland. After we left the train, it continued on to Haltwhistle and then through Hexham to Newcastle.
The house that Granda and Grandma rented was up on the hillside a good walk from the village and the station. Granda kept a pair of binoculars on the windowsill and we used to watch the trains move along the valley, noting how many wagons there were on the goods trains. It was a strange house called Holm Lea on a little lanebetween a cottage where they kept hens out in the field and a more modern house owned and occupied by the village carpenter and undertaker. He was reputed to size up his future customers and be well on with the coffin by the time they died. Holm Lea was a primitive house with only two rooms downstairs and two upstairs with an added-on kitchen and lean-to outhouses. There was no bathroom but there was a bathtub in the kitchen that was covered over with a board and used as a kitchen shelf. I never saw it uncovered. I suppose the lavatory was outside, but I don’t remember. At least it flushed!
We visited Gilsland many times over the next few years. Ghyll is the northern word for stream, and it was indeed a beatiful valley with tributary streams flowing into the River Irthing. The nearest stream to the house was the Poltross that snaked down and underneath an arch of the railway bridge. At the side of the Poltross near the railway embankment a Roman kitchen had been excavated and in the spring a profusion of wild primroses covered the ground there. Of course, the largest blooms were always just a little further away and, on one occasion, I was seen to be stepping along the stonework at the top of the bridge supports, much to the horror of my mother and Grandma. We went for many walks, into the village, along the river and up onto the fells, that is, the moors. There were many different words used on the Scottish Border and in some ways I could be said to have been bilingual. The longest walk was with Granda to a farm named Moscow. It was very remote and we were warmly welcomed by the farmer and his wife, who had become good friends with Granda and looked forward to his visits. We also were invited to tea at another less isolated farm where there were several grown sons who all helped run the farm. The kitchen was crowded and the conversation lively. I just loved being addressed as “hinny”, a Northumbrian term of endearment.
This was an area where sheep farming was the main agricultural occupation. The sheep were brought down to the farms for lambing and then taken back up onto the fells for the rest of the year. Sheila and I liked to walk in the field along the Roman Wall near Granda and Grandma’s house when the lambs were still young. They were unafraid of us and sometimes sucked on a proferred finger. Late in the summer, there was a large sheep sale in the village and we were happy to be in Gilsland at the time. The programs were crudely printed in black and white, naming the farmer and the number of sheep. I believe the sheep were usually all of the same breed but I need to check on a leaflet I have. The farmers had an old way of counting the sheep. Mother knew it but all I can remember is ithera, tithera for one two.
Granda joined the Royal Observer Corps as soon as war was declared. He had set times when he was on duty and walked up to the High Road to where the observer post was. Gilsland itself was on the low road that wound through all the villages. It was a sharp walk up the hill and I have always wondered whether the walk brought on the stroke that he suffered within a year. At the observer post, there was telephone communication with the other posts across the country and in this way, when an enemy plane crossed the coast, it could be tracked as it progressed. This was before the days of radar. I was fascinated because they used the Able Baker Charlie alphabet for clarity.
At home in Brinsworth, the beginning of the war was frightening for me. I think we already had been issued with gas masks and at eight years of age I was old enough to understand what led up to listening to the chimes of Big Ben and hearing the announcement on the BBC that we were at war. I suppose it was Neville Chamberlain who spoke so gravely and there was almost a breathless hush as we listened. After that, the day seemed quite normal to me, but as night fell there was a loud knocking on the door. It was Mr.Greatorex, Joyce Greatorex’s father and our next-door-but-one neighbour, speaking in his capacity as Air Raid Warden and telling us that there was a chink of light showing through our blacked-out windows.
The worst was yet to come. Before bedtime came, the sirens “went” and that was the first time I had heard that eerie wailing sound that to this day makes my heart skip a beat. I was convinced that German soldiers would come through our windows into the house at that very moment. I remember sitting on Father’s knee and being given brandy to help calm me. The very next morning Mother took Sheila and me to Cumberland to stay with Great Aunt Bessie and Great Uncle John.
I think I have written about that elsewhere.
I returned to Brinsworth ready to go back to school in January because our air raid shelters were finished and the school re-opened.
More about 1939-1945
Seeing an Upstairs Downstairs episode I remembered that Father drove an ambulance train from Gloucester week after week late in the war. He never told us much about it, but that was when he brought back fresh damsons to help eke out our food supply for the winter. Damsons bottled without sugar and sweetened with saccharin when we opened them.
Waiting for Father to come home, peering from behind the curtains to see him coming. His bearing. Mother thought from being in the army.
Dances at the Council School. In the Mood. Father came and walked me home.
What we did during the long black-out evenings. Cards – rummy , Newmarket, whist.
Radio programs. ITMA,Tommy Handley, Dickie Murdock. NauseaBagwash
Games – snobs
Queues
Standing water tanks
Vaughan William’s 6th symphony the periods of quiet and how it felt to me when the “All Clear” sounded and life resumed. Quiet was appreciated in spite of the activities of all the steel mills, especially Steel Peech and Tozer.