four four forty-four

Yes, 4/4/44 was the momentous day I entered this world.

Here was where I was born – 27 Summervale.

Born under weight and blue I was put in a drawer, covered with a blanket and left to see if I survived.

I was blue as my Mum was rhesus negative and Dad was positive which meant that both me & my brother were”blue” babies.

Obviously I did survive as I’m still her 65 years later.

I remember my Mum saying that it was a beautiful April with loads of daffodils and primroses in the garden. Nowadays most daffodils have flowered and died by April – another sign of global warming?

The STC houses at Eltham were  damaged when a house across the road was hit by a bomb, and a lot of papers got sucked out into the road. The police were aware that secret work was in progress and, not daring to even look at the papers, blocked off that section of the road until the STC staff arrived to pick them up. This prompted STC to look for alternative premises, and in November 1940 the whole valve division moved to Ilminster in Somerset. My father was one of those employees.

Initially, my parents lodged on a farm in Chard along with Mr & Mrs Fred Wren and their daughter Lillian.

STC had 50 prefabs built for their employees and all the families moved in sometime between 1940 and 1944 when I was born.

Those prefabs were amazing; we had three good sized bedrooms, separate bathroom and toilet, a kitchen big enough to house a kitchen table under which our dog Joe  slept in his basket. It was his domain & no one dare put their hand under the table.

There was a large black range on the wall adjoining the sitting room and,on the other side of the wall, was a big open fire. I can remember my dad and several other men going off to Herne Hill to cut down trees for firewood. Once a heavily wooded area it is now a rather sad sight.

Off the kitchen was a scullery/ lean-to where various bits and pieces were kept including a willow cane which was used frequently by my volatile mother.

Here, from a very poor memory, is the layout drawn totally without any scale whatsoever and some dodgy right-angles!

REAR

FRONT

We rather pretentiously called the prefabs

  “ bungalows” and I never knew until many years later what a real bungalow was.

JJ