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18th November 2004
My Wartime School Days
By
Freda Holliday

In 1939, I was a pupil at St. George’s School, Ramsgate, at the start of the Second World War. Before any of Ramsgate’s well-known tunnels were built, we used St. George’s Church crypt as an air-raid shelter. I dread to think what might have happened to us if a bomb had hit the Church, but fortunately there was very little bombing at that time. When the tunnels were eventually built, we used to go down, take our gasmasks and, I believe, a piece of brown paper, to sit on.
Because of the threat of invasion, I was sent to an Aunt in Yorkshire and I went to a small village school, where infants, juniors and seniors were all taught in the same building. The school mistress was very strict, and her cane was well used, but she was always very kind to the “evacuee from Kent”.
I was only in Yorkshire for about five months when I returned to Minster, where I lived. At first, if I remember correctly, there was no school open in the village but eventually it opened for half a day.
During that time, a friend who had attended St. George’s School with me, and lived in Monkton, persuaded me to sit for the entrance examination to attend the newly established Canterbury Junior Commercial School (which I understand has now become a Grammar School). I started at the School in the spring of l94l.
There were two sections of the School, one for girls and one for boys. Our school building was the old Kent and Canterbury Hospital in Longport Street and there was only one class of girls at the school already, who had started the previous term. I travelled by train from Minster daily; my friend from Monkton travelling by bus from Sarre.
As I was the first child to attend from Minster, there were no other children travelling, so I got to know several adults who worked in Canterbury; one being a land-girl working at Mount’s Nurseries.
The morning after the Canterbury blitz, I went as usual on the train to Canterbury but my land-girl companion and I were not allowed to leave Canterbury west Station and I returned home.
Our school served as a Reception Centre for people who had lost their homes, so we had an extra holiday of about two weeks.
Eventually I left School and started work a Shorthand Typist at the then Ramsgate and District Electricity Board in Queen Street, Ramsgate in February, l943

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