L-R Maisie Randall with Peggy and Ivy Everest in Oveny Green Farm vegetable garden
Reference: WH0733
Peter Finch “…another memory is of the street-signs all being removed, there were a load stored beside the Corn Stores in Oxted and I remember a big heap of them in the cobbled yard of Winterton Lodge here in Westerham. Nobody was living there then and it was used as the collection point for the signs ...
Reference: WH0739
Rationing began on January 8 1940, with the first items of food being bacon, ham, sugar and butter. In March 1940, meat was rationed, and by July that year, tea, margarine, cooking fat and cheese had also been included. March 1941 saw jam, marmalade, treacle and syrup rationed and in June of that year, distribution ...
Reference: WH0737
Some significant redevelopment took place around the town between 1936 and 1938, including the building of the new fire-station behind the oast house of the then closed Delegarde farm. The farmhouse was demolished, but the oast-house remained and was requisitioned as the control centre for Westerham’s Air Raid Precautions activities. This tranquil view taken in ...
Reference: WH0718
Mons Bell “…During the war my parents lived in the flat over the shop (then Wm. Dove the butchers, currently Prelude ladies fashion boutique) and they had five air-force chaps billeted with them from Combe Bank at Sundridge whose job was collecting remains of friendly and enemy aircraft that had crashed around the area. They ...
Reference: WH0729
Peter Finch “…I don’t know whether they suspected another war was coming, but there was lots of building going on just before the war – the fire station was resited at the top of Croydon Road in a smart new building, with a mortuary to the side of it. Outside the mortuary window they erected ...
Reference: WH0717
Peter Finch “…those were very exciting times for twelve year old boys like Bob Combley and myself – during the time of the Battle of Britain school was optional, so I said to my mother ‘in that case I ain’t going to school’ and she didn’t mind, she’d rather us just be around – we hadn’t ...
Reference: 0084
Peter Finch “…The army erected two big water tanks – just an iron frame supporting a canvas liner – and they put one on the Green and the other beside the new fire station in Croydon Road. The fire engine could fill-up rapidly from these water tanks, but to us boys, the fire station tank ...
Reference: WH0719
The Home Guard were officially known as ‘Local Defense Volunteers’ (LDV) and was formed in 1940 in response to Anthony Eden’s broadcast request for ‘…large numbers of men in Great Britain who are British subjects between the ages of seventeen and sixty-five to come forward now and offer their service in order to make assurance ...
Reference: WH0731
Arthur Waterhouse “…I went home and got my kit and my mother said ‘I’m coming with you’ but I said ‘oh no you’re not, you just stay here at home’. I went down to the Drill Hall and they were all turning up – they’d had their papers too, lots of them…” Mons Bell “…in 1939 ...
Reference: 0079
L-R Mrs Richardson, Mrs Pattenden, Edie Wood, ?, ?, Vivian Talbot [Knockholt], Les Gorrick [Manager], Mrs Laurence [Brasted], Gertie Dix, Mrs Jones [Cobblers wife, Brasted] Charlie Sharp’s garage (where Squerrys Mead is today) was the other major site of ‘war work’ in Westerham apart from the Sterling Works at the bottom of Hosey Hill. With RAF ...
Reference: WH0728