Bishop Wilton: Memories of Sunderland & Hull Evacuees Lily: We used to invite them back to the farm, and they used to stop the night, and we used to all get in the one bed. John: In bed with the lasses! Head to toe, it was. Lily: Molly was my age – well, she could be older. [John and Lily look at the Pickerings in the schoool photo. Connie, Stan, John and Molly have been identified.] John: [reads from an old newspaper cutting he has kept] “Two sisters were married at the same time at St Edith’s Church, Bishop Wilton, on Saturday. They were Miss Molly Pickering, the eldest daughter of Mr and Mrs T R Pickering, and Miss Carole Pickering, the third daughter. The Rev Fawcett officiated, and the organist was Miss Newby…[also present] Miss Mavis Pickering…Miss Olive Pickering…Miss T Pickering”. So there was a big family of them. Lily: Do you remember when you thought the Germans had come? John: Our Joan used to look after me at little school, but she obviously went up to big school, so I was left on me own down at the little school. I used to have to go up to top school and wait for the lasses to take me home. I come up round the corner this particular day, and looked towards Worsendale, and there was all these soldiers on the roadside. I remember it now as true as I’m stood here. To me the Germans had come….so I ran across the road, like this – crouched down – through the hedge and all the way home. When I got home, my mother slapped my backside and told me to go back to school because they wouldn’t know where I was. It was the Home Guard I’d seen!. Mike: Well, I’ve got something for you. In a wartime newspaper there was a notice ‘What to do if the Germans Invade’ and it says ‘Don’t Panic’! Lily: When we were at Beechwood, there was these Italian Prisoners of War that had escaped. And one knocked at the door and said can you tell me the way to the village. And my mother said you just go down there, and she said I’ll let that girl go with you and show you the way, and I screamed and wouldn’t go with him. It was real weird. And do you remember when that army came? John: The army, or the Home Guard or whatever they were, they used the kitchens at Beechwood to cook their meals, so my mother had no cooking to do. All our meals were cooked. Lily: It was all outside, wasn’t it? All the stoves, and where they sat and came for their meals. John: It must have been the latter part of the war, because they were exploding grenades or bombs or whatever in the chalk pit. All the soot came down the chimney and they blew the windows in at the farmhouse. The guy used to stand on the step and blow the trumpet for lunchtime “Come to the Cookhouse door, boys” – it was real noisy.
Lily: I would have loved to have stopped there. I come back here and I was real lost, I didn’t know where anything was. [John explains that his oldest sister Doreen married Roland Stead during the war]
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