蜜芽传媒

When the 1939 war became inevitable, plans must have been made to move the school temporarily to the Church Hall in Kirbymoorside, and Ranks Flour Mills apparently reserved the house for their offices. We actually moved on 3rd September and most of the boys came too. We used the ballroom at the Church House for the dormitory, just mattresses on the floor, and my parents slept on the stage with the curtains drawn! Downstairs there was just a large billiard room and a small sitting room with a tiny kitchen behind. There must have been bathrooms and lavatories, but I don鈥檛 remember them. The assistant cook, Miss Consitt, came with us and one master. Of course, it was still holiday time and I remember going for long walks in the countryside. My parents were frantically househunting and after a fortnight, we moved again to Firby Hall, an ancient house about 5 miles from Malton. It had no mains electricity and no mains water. There was a fearsome generator with a kick like a mule in an outbuilding, and there was a fairly primitive pump near the kitchen which only my mother could induce into life and that brought water up from an incredibly deep well. This could be peered down from a manhole in the kitchen floor. Of course, making our own electricity meant that no electrical goods that we brought with us were any good. This was DC and our equipment worked on AC! We did seem to acquire an iron fairly quickly, but I don鈥檛 remember electric kettles or toasters.

Firby Hall.

We stayed at Firby Hall all through the war. It was very isolated and the nearest village, Westow, was across two or three fields and only had a post office and a couple of tiny shops. The manager of Walter Willsons used to cycle out from Malton once a week to take the order for groceries and Bowers the butcher did deliver meat ordered on the telephone (our telephone number was Whitwell on the Hill 2!). The only other dwellings in Firby were two farms and two or three workmen鈥檚 cottages. Mrs. Thistleton who did the rough cleaning came from one of those cottages and Olive Walker who did lighter cleaning and washing up came from Westow.

As most of the boys came from the Hull area, at the end of term they were put on the train at Pocklington, having reached there in Broadbents bus, and my father escorted them to Hull. At the beginning of term, he and sometimes my mother met them at Paragon Station and arrived back at Firby again by train and bus. My mother would sometimes sit with the new boys as they waved goodbye to their parents and told them fairly forcefully to SMILE!

Mrs. Thistleton was a real Yorkshire woman and reduced my mother to giggles when she announced at the end of her elevenses that 鈥渋t鈥檚 no good sitting here like Lady Godiva鈥�. Her husband was a farm labourer and most unfortunately had a heart attack while clearing undergrowth on the path to Westow. As we had no car, the best my father could do was to take the wheelbarrow and bring him home in that.

Teaching staff was a problem. Mr. Michael V. Morton (son of H.V.Morton) taught at the school for the longest of anyone and I remember various ladies teaching the youngest boys. Mr. Poole, the vicar of Westow, came and taught and also invigilated exams. He had an ancient car but I don鈥檛 know how the other staff managed. The buses to Malton were very infrequent and it was a 45 minute walk to the road to York where the buses ran hourly.

I have a vivid memory of Mr. and Mrs. Poole coming, probably for tea, in the holidays and they introduced us to 鈥楽miling Snap鈥�. Instead of yelling 鈥榮nap鈥� at the top of our voices, we had to try and keep straight faces. The sight of Mr. Poole, sitting bolt upright without a glimmer of a smile, reduced us all to near hysterics!

When the bombing in Hull was very bad, some parents came and stayed during the summer holidays, just to get away from the place for a break. No break for my parents though! There was one summer when my Grandmother came and took over the cooking as my mother had to go into hospital for something gynaecological. Then another time, when York was so badly bombed, my father was in Malton Hospital having an operation.

I slept through the greatest drama! A German plane being chased by fighters dumped his bombs very near the school. We, of course, went to view the craters as soon as we could and searched the crater nearest the school for shrapnel. Farm buildings were missed by inches and the craters were impressive. Firby Hall was too close to the bombs to suffer blast damage, so not even one window was broken.

One of the more curious aspects of living at Firby was that the mail was delivered by an old man on a pony. He was Mr.Daniels and intrigued us with his pipe which had a lid! In those days, mail was even delivered on Christmas Day. One morning in the holidays when we were all having a lie in, he tramped into the house shouting 鈥淎re ye up?鈥� at the top of his voice. I suppose we just didn鈥檛 lock the doors! I can remember my mother giving him hot drinks when he had struggled through the snow. One winter, he was very ill with bronchitis or maybe pneumonia and, on his return to work, he told my father that he thought 鈥渢hey were going to box me up鈥�.

My father, being the son of a farmer, and having the land to indulge his interests, kept chickens from the first at Firby, and later had sheep and pigs. I remember so vividly seeing Robin, who must have been about 5 years old, walking round the field with a bucket in his hands, being followed by all the chickens. 鈥淚 was just taking the chickens for a walk鈥� was his explanation! We kept rabbits and there was a really vicious bantam cock called Nuisance which had the charming habit of attacking our ankles. Then my uncle, who also farmed, sent my younger brother Robin a bull calf for his birthday. The calf came by rail and was then met at Malton Station by Mr. Boyes and his taxi. This is also how day old chicks were delivered. The calf was fine to begin with, but then of course it grew and grew. We were terrified of it and it became very canny and did its best to get into the scullery whenever it could. The only way to get it out was to mix up a bucket of dried milk and tempt it out. In the end it went to the farm next door, having been 鈥渟een to鈥� but it never really mixed with the herd.

The other drama was when a motherless lamb was given to Mary, my younger sister. It was fine too until it grew and grew and developed a liking for sitting in front of the drawing room fire! It also barged into classrooms and Mary was the only one who could get it out. I think it went to the butcher in the end! During the war, if edible livestock was reared, the regulation was that you could keep half of the carcass and the other half went for consumption elsewhere. We therefore had the odd half pig which created a lot of hard work for my mother, making brawn, salting the ham and making the most wonderful sausages I have ever tasted. In fact, nothing went to waste.

Mary.

My brother Robin made a harness for the sheep (now called Richard) and I would run up and down the touchline at football matches against Terrington with Richard prancing along beside me. I used to receive messages from the teaching staff, 鈥淲ill Mary come and remove Richard鈥�. He got into the kitchen one evening and was discovered eating the children鈥檚 supper of bread and dripping (delicious with plenty of salt), but he left all the crusts. I remember the matron throwing the dirty laundry at him one day when he tried to come up the back stairs. She said, 鈥淕et down them stairs鈥�! (Was that a catch phrase in ITMA?)

Entertainment was sparse. A man in a van came a few times to show a film, but as the fearsome generator never seemed to produce enough electricity, we could only see the film, not hear the soundtrack There was always a 鈥渟hort鈥� such as Felix the Cat and I remember The Mistletoe Bough. My father always used to say you could hear every word if you stood right next to the projector!

We celebrated Hallowe鈥檈n; apart from bobbing for apples, I remember we all had to sit in a ring on the floor in the dark and the first form mistress told a frightening story involving a witch and parts of her body were handed round to us, e.g. the bristles from a paint brush were her eyelashes and a filled hot water bottle was her stomach!

We went to Westow church every Sunday which was quite a walk 鈥� a mile along the road and then along the sides of two large fields. I remember my father鈥檚 anxiety on our walks to and from the church if an aeroplane came overhead. We must have been very visible from the air as we walked along the road. Mr. Poole used to complain that our shoes were always dirty 鈥� we had walked across ploughed fields!

In the summer holidays, my father always helped the farmer next door, Mr. Hodgson, with the harvest. Robin and I used to carry the tea basket from Mrs. Hodgson to the harvest field and watch every mouthful of delicious scones and cakes disappear. Very, very occasionally there would be something left uneaten and we would relish whatever it was on the way back to the farm. We, as a school, helped with the potato picking as well. Robin and I used to watch the threshing machine from the top of a straw stack. We all enjoyed sliding down from the top of the stack.

My father always believed that the best toys for children, under supervision, were fire, water and earth. So we lit small fires in the grounds at the weekends and made lead ingots. Where the lead came from I dread to think, but it was like alchemy melting the lead and pouring it into an earth mould, then waiting for it to cool. We did help in the gardens as well!

Some boys collected stamps, receiving quite a few if their fathers were in the services abroad. The preferred collection though was of servicemen鈥檚 uniform buttons. There was one very glamorous matron who, now I come to think of it, seemed to be able to produce endless supplies of these buttons. It must have been her war work!

When we first went to Firby, although there was a large vegetable garden, there was nothing in the way of vegetables growing in it. My father was a keen gardener and the next summer we had plenty of vegetables that he had grown with the help of Mr. Bielby, the ancient gardener who lived in Westow. However, to begin with we had boiled nettles and dandelion leaves which, in fact, are not unlike spinach. There were also dehydrated potatoes that arrived in large shiny tins. They were horrible to eat and quite a few tears were shed. Dried eggs were pretty awful too.

My mother did a lot of the catering and I can remember her saying she had buried many a joint of meat in the gardens - no refrigerators and her inexperience. She was, however, incredibly inventive and her huge Yorkshire puddings, 鈥淢rs. England鈥檚 special鈥�, with the smallest amount of minced ham (probably the bits no one would eat!) with tomatoes floating all around were enormously popular. All the bread had to be sliced and buttered. There were no food mixers or refrigerator in those days. In the kitchen there was a black, coal burning range. Two paraffin stoves were brought in and that is how she managed. My mother鈥檚 right arm became very painful with all the mixing, creaming, cutting and lifting of heavy pans she had to do. The children鈥檚 ration books all came to school for term time, so all the coupons had to be snipped out, though sometimes just a blue pencil marked the used coupons. Mr. Webster, the manager of Walter Willsons grocery, was very good to the school and went out of his way to get provisions. All the groceries arrived at the school in an open lorry! Until she died, Mrs. Webster used to send my mother two fruit loaves every Christmas.

My father fetched two buckets (no lids) of milk daily from Hodgson鈥檚 farm through a gate in a hawthorn hedge, so little bits of hedge etc. were floating on the milk, which had come straight from the cows! We all seemed to survive!

Eventually, the war came to an end. VE day was 8th May 1945, so it was the summer term. To celebrate, for three mornings running, my father climbed up through trapdoors and skylights to stand on the roof of Firby Hall while we children were lined up on the grass below. My father held up the Union flag and we all sang God Save the King!

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