Anthony Evans days at Upton St.Mary's 1936 - 1945

As recalled from memory by myself, Anthony Harold Evans, who attended this school from 1936 to 1945, covering the period of the Second World War.

I was born on 5th September 1931 and remember that I started full time at the school before I was 5 years old, and remained there until I was 13 years and 9 months, leaving school on the Friday and starting work on the following day, Saturday, as an apprentice cabinetmaker in Chester. Going back to the time before the Village Hall was built in 1929, the school was used as the Village Hall, dances were held there and my own father and mother originally met there at a ‘football dance’ in about 1927. They subsequent married on 4th June 1930.

Having recently visited the school on 3rd February 1998, after 53 years of never setting foot in the building, I was amazed to see how little it had changed; most of it is still as originally constructed. When I was there as a pupil it was known as a ‘two door school’, go through one door and you were ‘in’, and another door let you ‘out’ to the rear playground, to the rear toilets. Those toilets would remain vivid in anyone’s memory, for the smell alone, not a place to linger. A brick building with a slate roof, divided into two halves, ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ with the wooden bench type ‘privy’ seats, with two holes in each, no division or privacy, with large buckets underneath, which were emptied periodically from the rear by persons unknown. The toilet paper was newspapers, cut up into 6” squares and threaded on a string, hung on a nail, there was no flush water or hand washing facilities. The teachers used to have to use there toilets too, you could wash your hands in the cloakroom, in the only ‘sink’. You had to provide your own hand towels and soap. Some of the girls had small hand towels, the boys used their handkerchiefs. The head teacher Mr Chidlow had his own toilet in the adjacent house where he lived but no one else was ever allowed in there, except to visit his wife, Mrs Childow, who gave pianoforte lessons after school hours, I assume for a fee? I only attended three lessons, until she rapped my knuckles with a 12” wooden rule, so hard that they bled, and I could not possibly play the piano, so that was the end of that, I never did learn to play, a shame really as my own mother was an exceptionally good pianist.

Looking back it is a mystery how I ever acquired any education at all, the way we used to lark about and not pay attention properly; I was always in trouble for talking.

I got the impression that the teachers were not really qualified, as they were only wives of servicemen, who had no previous experience of teaching. Vacancies were difficult to fill in those days, as most people were in ‘His Majesty’s Armed Forces’, the teachers seemed happy to keep us occupied, maybe not a nice thing to say. My own mother was invited to be a teacher but she declined, as she worked part-time at her brother’s butchers shop. Mr Chidlow, ‘Sir’ in those years, I never knew his Christian name, ruled the place with an ‘iron hand’ and was feared by all of us – the whole time. He had a cane in one hand all day, never putting it down. He thought nothing of giving me a whack across the back whilst I was sat at my desk, behaving myself, I never knew why! for no apparent reason, on the basis “That’s for nothing, now be careful”, or to throw the backboard ‘chalk rubber’ the full width of the room, directly at me. Now-a-days he would be charged with assault, needless to say, no-one stepped out of line.

The surface of the playground was not tarmac, it was just rough gravel and very dusty. There was no play equipment at all, except for the rocking horse indoors, which was reserved for the first year infants only. One teacher would supervise the playtimes, and keep us all in the rear playground so that she could keep an eye on everyone, all of the time, even when using the toilets. We were forced to go out into the playground, no matter what the weather, “The rain and the fresh air will do you good”. Although there was a shortage of food generally, we all kept fairly healthy, there were certainly no over-weight children. There were no sweets or chocolate in the shops, only cough sweets.

Every Wednesday morning about 9.15 am the whole school was marched off to the Church for a one hour service, known as religious education, I remember the vicar’s name was Mr East, the Church of England owned the school. The whole school had all of the windows ‘blacked out’ with wooden frames covered in thick black paper, some of the lower frames were removable to allow a bit of day-light in during the day, none of these windows could be opened, the ones which did open were permanently covered up, so there was no ventilation, other than leaving the door open, during very hot weather. In order to save electricity, paraffin hurricane lamps were used and some candles too. All of the glass, in the windows and the partition between the two classrooms was covered with ‘rug canvasses’, the type used for making wool rugs, which was white squared mesh. This was cut to size and glued to the glass to make it shatterproof in case of a bomb! The older children did this job themselves. I did a lot of the cutting, while others went up the ladders to glue it on. It was put up in 1939 and washed and scraped off in 1945, after V.E. day, 8th June. It took some scraping off! As a point of interest the school was never locked at all. There was a worry about the possibility of German parachutists using the school to hide in, if they were ‘shot down’ during the night-time, as many were. I was particularly worried, as I was only 8 years old and my job throughout the whole of the war for a period of 6 years; was to start at 8 am, one hour before the official starting time, to light the fire, to get the school warm.

Entering the school in winter was eerie, in total darkness and having to close the door behind me before I was allowed to put my torch on, to find a candle and lamps and light them, because of the ‘blackout’ regulations of wartime. Then to light enough lamps to see my way around to clean out the fire-place, known as the furnace, a large cast iron box with doors on the front, and loose lids on the top for the kettle, I had to put all the ash into a large galvanised bucket and take it outside and riddle (sieve) it, putting the ash on to the garden as fertilizer, and bringing the cinders back in to go back on to the fire. The motto was “Waste Not Want Not”. I used to saw wood and chop the sticks at home and take them with me, together with some newspaper, as all the houses had coal fires, most children knew how to ‘set’ a fire and to get it going quickly to a good roaring fire, ready for 9am. This meant going over by the toilets, in the dark for a bucketful of coal from a coal-shed, I used to cheat a bit, with about a quarter of a pint of paraffin to really get it going! There was mot much time left of the hour, it was hard work. While the fire got going, I had to light more lamps and candles; empty and reset the mouse traps, throwing away dead mice into the furnace; fill all the inkwells to a depth of half an inch (measured with a matchstick) which was just the right depth to dip the pen nib in; clean all the three blackboards on both sides with a damp cloth, ready for Mr Chidlow and the other teachers; fill the kettle and put it on top of the stove to boil. This furnace heated the whole school via large, cast iron, 4” diameter pipes and cast iron radiators, a form of central heating without a circulating pump; it was a very efficient heating system. The furnace was the most important feature in the school, it was lit winter and summer, then the furnace was only used to boil the kettle, and for the teachers to make their toast, during the breaks and the lunch hour, with the doors open on the furnace and using a wire toasting fork.

The blackboards were about 4 feet by 3 feet, stood on wooden easels with pegs to adjust the height. I volunteered for all of this extra work in the hopes that I might be ‘better thought of’, but it did not work as I used to get my share of canings just the same. We had slates to write on with chalk, these were about A4 size with a widen frame around them, we had to supply our own chalks and duster, we also had exercise books some ‘rough books’ and some ‘tidy books’. The lessons were English, Spelling, Reading, History, Geography and Arithmetic. We supplied our own H.B. pencils, rubbers (erasers) and pens and nibs, pencil sharpeners and rulers and carried them home in our satchels; nothing was left in school overnight.

I am not sure what the school population was but I would say about 40 pupils in each of the three classrooms, totalling 120, divided into age groups of 5, 6 & 7 as one class; 8, 9 & 10 as another; 11 12 & 13 in Mr Chidlow’s class, at the rear wing of the school. It was overcrowded and we had to share desks and inkwells, they were ‘difficult times’. There were no craftwork or woodwork lessons, until after the war was over, but I do remember all of the older girls disappearing once a week to attend cookery classes, but I don’t know where they went.

There were no cleaners or gardeners, whatever work was required to be done around the school, was done by the pupils themselves, either volunteers or conscripts, if no-one put up their hands to volunteer. The only work which any-one came to do, was an elderly man who used to come and cut the high hawthorn and holly hedge around the playground. We used to help him rake it all up and barrow it on to the front garden, to be dug in as fertiliser. The work which the older pupils used to do was weeding and raking the gravel on the playground; weeding and digging all of the garden around the headmaster house and right up to the front railings, this was a very large area; planting potatoes and other vegetables for the ‘save the Chidlow fund’ and watering the vegetable garden during dry weather. Most young children were ‘good gardeners’ in those days, as it was something which was being done at home for the ‘war effort’, all our lawns at home were dug up and planted with potatoes, under the “Dig for Victory” campaign. There was never any shortage of volunteers for gardening, anything to get out of school and into the fresh air, particularly when the weather was nice. Sweeping and mopping the floors throughout the school was done daily while the classes were in progress, on the basis that you can do this work and still listen to the lesson at the same time. Looking after the seedlings in Mr Childlow’s greenhouse and cleaning out and feeding his pet rabbits, was a favourite job which was much sought after, no shortage of volunteers for that work.

Every pupil was given one third of a pint of milk each day, in a glass bottle with a cardboard lid, which had to be drunk at 10.30 am, often while the milkman waited to take the bottles back. No food was ever provided, you had to bring with you anything that you wanted to eat, and consume it at your desk. One hour’s dinner break was from noon to 1.00 pm when we all ran home for something to eat, if there was anything to eat, usually a jam sandwich, with no butter on it, as the ration of butter was 2 ounces per person per week, which did not go very far!. There were no sweets or chocolate bars in the shops, only cough sweets were available, needless to say there were no overweight children, we all seemed to keep fit enough. Historians now say it was a healthy diet. I was about 14 years old before I tasted white chocolate, coffee or a banana! They were not available during the wartime.

There were a group of about 10 children who were brought to school from the outlying areas of Wervin and Croughton by bus, they had to bring food and drink with them, to eat at their desks at lunchtime, they were all the children of farmers, and seemed to eat well, there was no shortage of food on the farms which were all self supporting. The bus was provided by a company called ‘Faichneys’ who ran it for years. The same bus was used once a week to take about 30 of the older children to Chester swimming baths, for lessons, for one hour on a Friday afternoon. The same school uniforms existed then as now, blue, grey and gold; caps, ties and jackets, grey trousers, and skirts for the girls, but they had to be purchased by the parents. It was not compulsory to have uniforms and many parents did not have sufficient money to spend on such luxuries.

At the rear of the school and Village Hall was an enormous sand quarry, about 300 yards long by 200 yards wide and 50 yards deep. The access road alongside the school playground, which now leads to a bungalow, was the access to the pond quarry. This quarry was eventually filled up with clay, when the Capenhurst Atomic Energy factory was constructed. This quarry was a very dangerous play area after school, with the sides often falling in, and deep water in the bottom, fortunately no-one ever came to any harm. At the rear of the Village Hall, an underground air raid shelter was built in 1939, to a size to accommodate all of the hundred pupils, there were four rows of wooden bench seats running the full length of it, a small table at one end, no toilet, hurricane lams and candles; it was very airless and damp. We were taken there each week, as a practice run, for the first few months of the war, it then tailed off to once a month, unless the air-rail siren ‘warning’ sounded, then we all marched off into it, complete with our gas-masks, this shelter accumulated water, often 6” deep, it used to take all day for six of us to bail it out with buckets, it also attracted a lot of frogs, eventually we set up rows of scaffold planks on bricks to walk on above the water level and mud, thank heavens we never needed it for real, by the end of the war the seats were floating, as it was half full of water. We reached a stage where everyone took little notice of the air-rail sirens and only ‘took cover’ when there were any enemy aircraft in the sky, the danger was not so much from bombs, as the debris, called ‘shrapnel’ falling from the sky, and small pieces of metal showered down, small but heavy enough to break roof tiles, or to kill you.

There was one large rectangular brown sink in the cloakroom, and this was the only place to get water or to wash your hands, only one tap, hence cold water only! The lead pipe was heavily wrapped in Hessian sacking, to prevent it freezing during the winter frost, another job was to light a candle under the sink to try and prevent it freezing, although the tap needed a new washer and dripped continuously quite fast, which meant that the water was always moving, which also helped to prevent it freezing. This sink was the only water for drinking, the only place to empty the mop buckets or to fill the watering cans for the garden. Needless to say it was a busy little corner of the cloakroom The cloakroom had about 100 hat and coat hooks, some low down for the infants, each pupil was allocated a hook, for coats and gas-mask, with your name on it. For the first six months of the war we had to carry our gas-masks with us at all times, in the classroom and in the playground, but as the war progressed and there did not appear to be so much danger, the rules were relaxed and we left then on our hook. Only one small bomb, an incendiary device, dropped in the rear playground. I found it one morning when going for coal, and hid it in the hedge bottom, later taking it home; I still have it and propose to present it to the school as a memento of the 2nd world war. Any bombs or bullets were supposed to be reported to the police, I was running a risk of severe reprimand, and had to keep it a secret for years. In the school garden was a wooden post, with a metal roof on it, about a foot square, it was painted pale green with a special paint, which would turn pink if there was ever a gas attack, by which time it was then too late to put on your gas mask, so it was treated as a joke, fortunately it always remained green.

Across the road from the school, on the west side of Mill Lane, there were no bungalows, only a big hawthorn hedge, all the way along from the Wheatsheaf to Church Lane, behind the hedge was thick woodland, all the way along, with many ‘conker’ trees (horse chestnut) so that was a very popular way, to and from school, across the road and through the woodland. Most of this has now gone to make space for the bungalows. The golf course was there, but overgrown, being used by a local farmer to graze cattle as the golf club was closed throughout the war period.

Another scheme within the “Dig for Victory” campaign in which most of the school children were involved after school hours, was to work for a Mr Houlbrook, a potato merchant who owned the two big fields, where Upton Manor School now stands, from Flag Lane to Demage Lane. The work was planting and harvesting potatoes, at the appropriate time of the year. Potatoes formed a very important part of England’s food supply during the war. Starting on Good Friday, planting potatoes by hand, for about one month. The ground was prepared into furrows, by horse and a furrowing plough. We had to place the seed potatoes in the bottom of the furrows, with an 18” long spacer stick to keep them all the correct distance apart, we had to fill a heavy galvanised bucket with seed potatoes, place each potato down and stand on it to push it down into the ground, and keep going back to the trailer for another bucket full, hour after hour, day after day. Mr Houlbrook paid us 2p per hour, in today’s cash terms this would be equal to 2p for 3 hours.

Then the same at harvest time, the whole field had to be dug up with a hand fork, to find all the potatoes and bucket them back to the trailer, where they were tipped into sacks. Carrying a metal bucketful of potatoes which was heavy, across a ploughed field, was quite an effort for an 8 or 9 year old child, it was exhausting work, the girls did it too and no-one grumbled. We just felt proud to be doing our bit for the ‘war effort’ with everyone pulling together.

I do not seen to be able to recall very much about education, although we were taught to read and write and spell, and arithmetic up to long multiplication and division, other subjects were history and geography, with the war in progress all over the world, the whole world was in the news daily, therefore we learned a lot about geography from the newspapers and the radio (there was no T.V.). Most of us seemed to be more involved with the maintenance of the school buildings, the playgrounds and the gardens, anything but lessons seemed to be the order of the day. However I do know that a lot of the pupils eventually became educated and did very well in life and in business. It may be difficult to comprehend that at the time, only three people in Upton Heath had cars in 1945, the school had no telephone and was never locked, there was really nothing inside it worth stealing; and in any case, people did not have the tendency to touch anything which did not belong to them, we were trained that way. I was born in Upton Heath, in the house where I still live today, my mother never had a lock on the rear door of the house, even at night, it was always open until 1945 when my father came home from the war service, and decided to fix a lock to the door. The school playground was used as a collection point during the war for ‘salvage’, paper, cardboard, glass bottles, and any metal cans pots and pans, all for the ‘war effort’, recycling is not a recent idea. We used to take our salvage to the school where it was all sorted and collected weekly.

I distinctly remember a large wall clock. Which ticked loudly, and was another job for someone, to get the step-ladder out of the cloakroom and wind it up every day, with a big brass key. I spent a lot of time watching the minute hand moving around in little jerky movements, we were never allowed out of school early, no parent ever met a child out of school, the younger children were escorted to and from school by the older children, we looked after one another. My own mother only ever took me to school on the first day that I started, There was not the fear in those days of traffic, as there were virtually no vehicles on the road due to the petrol rationing, even doctors were only allowed two gallons per week, if my memory serves me correctly.

Once a year at Easter, was the ‘school outing’ for all the pupils, parents and grandparents, which usually filled four busses. A trip to the beach at New Brighton, calling at Thurstaston Hill on the way there, where each pupil was given a pint of milk and a hot-cross bun. The qualification to go on this trip was governed by Church attendance at Sunday-school, you had a card which was stamped at the church each Sunday by a verger, you required about 40 attendances to qualify.

I remember a row one year at the bus door, when I was one stamp deficient and refused admission, along with my Mother and Grandmother. That was the last trip I ever bothered about, as a protest I never went to Sunday school again, by which time I was about 13 years old, and near to leaving school. I had the choice of leaving school at 14 or to continue until I was 16, I elected to leave at 14 and to start work, but carried on at night-school for 7 years at the Chester Museum, until I finished my apprenticeship. Night-school was 7pm to 9pm Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, for subjects relating to the building trade, including maths, english, practical drawing, geometry and technical building. I did concentrate and learned a lot at night-school. Another annual occurrence was the Christmas nativity play, known as the ‘school concert’, which was performed on stage in the Village Hall, it usually included everyone in the school. Everyone had a part to play even if it was only a ‘walk on’, others were singing, dancing or reciting, a lot of effort was contributed by everyone, the teachers, the pupils and the parents, the latter making the costumes, which were often very elaborate and colourful. I think that the same customs are carried out today with just as much enthusiasm, maybe this is one thing which has not changed.

A further annual event was for every pupil to have their individual photo taken, sitting on a chair outside in the sun against the school wall. I forget the cost of the photos, but everyone purchased them, when they were displayed a few days later. The ‘dunces cap’ was in regular use, this was a large white cone, with a black ‘D’ on both sides, you were made to stand on a chair, in the corner, wearing it and facing the wall without moving, until the teacher decided that you had been there long enough, one hour was often the length of time, or until the end of the lesson, whichever came first. Just before 9am a large black cast iron kettle was filled with about a gallon of water, and placed on top of the stove where a small round lid was removed, it used to take about half an hour or more to boil, then was left to carry on boiling away until 10.30, when one of the teachers made a large brown mug teapot of tea for themselves, they sat around a small table in the dunces corner and kept an eye on us while we drank our milk. Mr Chidlow went into his own house for this 10 minute break. The kettle was refilled and replaced for the procedure to be repeated, What hot water was left in the kettle was used to wash the teachers’ cups, and to wipe over the table, by one of the girl pupils. 12 o’clock until 1 o’clock was lunchtime, when the tea-making was repeated, the teachers had their lunch in school, the bulk of the pupils disappeared home or outside to play, usually in the woods, opposite. The teapot had about a quarter of an inch of black tannin on the inside, it was horrible; I’m sure you could make a pot of tea in it without adding any more tea-leaves! There was yet another tea break at 2.30pm, for the teachers only, when the kettle was put down on the hearth, ready for the following day. None of the teachers had cars, and came to school on the bus or by bicycle; we, the pupils, were not allowed to bring our bikes to school, although there was a bike shed in the back corner of the playground, no reason was ever given.

The Village Hall was in continuous use throughout the wartime, by the W.V.S. ‘Women’s Voluntary Service’ as a headquarters and a collection and distribution point, for any donations of clothing, bedding, blankets and furniture, beds and mattresses, pots and pans, any household goods in fact, for the needy people who had been ‘bombed out’ and had nothing left at all. There were plenty of needy people in the London area, Coventry, Birmingham and Liverpool. The only house in this area which was badly damaged with a bomb was the house behind the Moston Garage. The Dale military hospital was also the scene of devastation, with two ‘land mines, these were very large and destructive bombs which descended by parachute. The Village Hall was also set up as an emergency first aid unit; used by the WI ‘Women’s Institute’; used for whist drives, jumble sales, old time dancing and Morris dancing classes and a badminton club. At the appropriate time of the year, about September, it was set up as a ‘canning factory’ by the WI, anyone could take their stewed fruit there and pay about one penny per can to have it canned, this was quite a busy enterprise, as most people grew soft fruits, raspberries, black & red currants, gooseberries; and all had fruit trees, with apples, pears, plums and damsons, as food was at a premium, nothing was ever wasted. Any food which was not fit for human consumption was collected and used to feed pigs or hens, most houses had a few hens for their eggs, they also kept doves and rabbits for the same reason. Rabbits were not really pets in those days they were a food supply. Butchers shops used to stock horse-meat and whale-meat, times were certainly different than they are today. All of the lawns were dug up to grow potatoes and vegetables, under the “Dig for Victory” campaign. We did not realise at the time that so many supply ships were being sunk, trying to get across the Atlantic, the whole situation was a lot more serious than the public were ever told at that time. I remember that I never tasted chocolate, coffee or a banana, until I was 14 years old and the war was over. Geography was a favourite subject, as it was prominent in the daily news, other subjects which I forgot to mention were science and biology, although it was only verbal, nothing practical as we had no facilities. History was a bore; I remember being caned for remarking “What is the use of asking me questions about things which happened before I was even born”! Physical Education, known as P.T. ‘Physical Training’ was a daily jump around, up and down, and running around the playground for half an hour, in the rear playground, anything which got us out of school was looked upon as a good idea. There were music lessons too, singing in accompaniment to a teacher, struggling to play on an old upright piano, which badly needed tuning, and had several ‘notes’ missing altogether. Practicing for the school concert was a riot!

One major event which occurred in the school during most of the war years, from 1940 to 1945, was the arrival of the ‘evacuees’. These were the children who lived in large cities which were a target for bombing, like Liverpool and Birkenhead docks. These children were transferred to country areas, for their own safety. About Easter 1940, two bus loads of children arrived at the village hall one morning, about 60 or 70 in all. It had been pre-arranged for any housewife or mother or grandmother who had the room and a spare bed, to go and choose, one or two children and look after them as though they were their own, which included accommodation, feeding, clothing, and schooling, in fact their every need. There was no payment for this as far as I know; it was looked upon as a civic duty which everyone accepted as part of the ‘war effort’. All of these children were from Birkenhead and Liverpool city & dock areas. My mother chose two brothers who were a similar age to my brother and myself, about 7 and 9 years old. My Grandfather and Grandmother, who lived next door to us, chose two sisters, also about 7 & 9 years old. This created a lot of problems generally, as the school was overcrowded to begin with; when about 70 children were added overnight, there were not enough coat-hooks or desks, which were all being shared, we bought all of the bench seats out of the air-raid shelter for a while, until some more desks arrived from somewhere. The total number never decreased, some disappeared and more evacuees arrived. This situation lasted for about 5 years. Everyone was trying to be nice to them and to sympathise with them, as they had been up-rooted from their homes and separated from their mothers. They arrived with nothing only the clothes in which they stood, plus their gas-masks The ‘nit nurse’ used to visit the school and examine everyone’s scalp with a magnifying glass, looking for head-lice, this was routine and everyone was clear until the outbreak when everyone was crawling with them, including the teachers. This developed into a full time job for the ‘nit nurse’, combing everyone’s hair with a dust comb, over a sheet of newspaper. You did not need a magnifying glass, you could hear them falling on to the newspaper, when someone else squashed then with the flat blade of a knife, this was not the answer. After about a week, a barber was brought in to shear everyone’s head, as short as possible with a pair of hand-clippers, then we all had our scalps given a coat of paraffin with a brush, this went on for about a month until everyone was clear. All the hair was immediately burned in the stove, the girls were the worst infected as they had the most hair, the girls were in tears as no one was spared from the clippers, even the ‘nit nurse’ herself had them, the procedure of dust combing carried on at home as well as at school. The smell of paraffin was overwhelming. We were all banned from swimming lessons for ages, and glad when that episode was over. No sooner was that over when there was an outbreak of Scarlet Fever, which was serious, I was one of the victims and was carted off to Clatterbridge Isolation Hospital for a period of eight weeks, this outbreak eventually closed the school, for how long I do not know, but the school had to be fumigated! Plus our house, and lots of other houses too, most of my clothes and toys were taken away and burned! No-one really minded no swimming lessons, as the water in the baths was freezing cold, there was no fuel to heat it, being taken straight our of the taps or the river, where ever it came from. It was bitter cold, we used to come out of literally blue and shivering with goose pimples, I used to hate it, although I had already learned to swim with the ‘cubs’ so I could keep a bit warmer by swimming all of the time and the teacher did not bother me very much, as they were lessons. Others used to get undressed quickly to be first in the water, not me, the wise ones slowly folded their clothes to be the last, the less time in that water the better, we used to call it ’holy water’, because everyone who jumped in, came up saying “Dear God” ! This experience would be very vivid in anyone’s memory for life! The episode with the short haircuts and the barber too, sticks in the memory (he had a wooden leg) can you imagine what we all looked like? We all wore out hats and caps even in school, as our heads were cold. It was the first time I had seen anyone with a wooden leg, and for this reason he was exempted from war service, being disabled. There was no finesse about his styling, to cut over 100 children’s hair in one day, did not leave any time for any fuss. I still remember my Mother’s reaction when I arrived home, it was the first time that I had heard my Mother swear, there was no choice – no parental consent. Another major happening, apart from the evacuees, was the ‘bargees’ or ‘water gypsies’, who were the children who lived on the canal narrow boats (barges) which were in their heyday during the war, as a barge could carry 50 tons of coal, and be pulled by one Shire horse, this using no fuel. These children perhaps as many as twelve, would get off the barges at ‘Pretty Bridge’ (this is the canal bridge at the bottom of Caughall Road) and walk up to the school for the rest of the day, then at finishing time they would walk into Chester to Crane Wharf at Canal Street or to the flour mills or lead works, to find their parents and their boat. They were not very old 8 to 11, but could not read or write, as they only attended school on odd days in different parts of the country, where ever their barge was moving, or static each day. These barges used to travel all over the country, mainly in this area from Ellesmere Port to Birmingham or Stoke-on-Trent. Those children thought nothing of walking miles and certainly knew their way around. The barges were owned by a company called Thomas Clayton. The children had a ‘right’ to go to any vicarage to be taught by the vicar or his wife, and to be given something to eat too. But any who went there were brought to the school by the vicar Mr East, as the church owned the school or the vicar did not like them at his house, I do not know the reason. An interesting point about Upton during the wartime is that all of the road names were removed, and all the names on the shops and pubs and Upton Heath Post Office were also removed and painted out. This applied all over the country, to foil the enemy spies or parachutists, who would not know where they were, with no names anywhere, maps were obsolete. There were so many strangers and soldiers in the area, who were always asking for directions. We were told by the local policeman, who visited the school regularly to listen for anyone with a foreign accent and to report them to the police, this was a joke as the whole country was overrun with soldiers from all over the world at that time, even the Americans and Canadians sounded foreign to us, let alone the Polish, Czechoslovakian, Norwegian, Dutch, New Zealand, Australian, South African, every nationality was in this country helping Great Britain throughout the war. One incredible story on this subject was the name Long Lane, I remember this being removed in 1939 when I was 8 years old. After many applications to the local council, recently it has been reinstated, in 1997, believe it or not Long Lane has been without a name board for the last 58 years! I hope that this insight into Upton St Mary’s School and Upton during the war has not digressed too much into the ‘war’. Yes I remember the wartime, the shortages, the poverty, the grief and the tears; the dangers and the hard work. Why anyone ever refers to them as the Good Old Days, I do not know.

20th February 1998
Anthony Harold Evans