by Jacky Hyams
Happy days! Good old Skeggy!
Rambling or hiking holidays were another popular, inexpensive option. Youth hostel accommodation was cheap – about 1 shilling a night – and some offered cooking facilities too. It was all very basic: segregated dorms, smoking or drinking banned, lights out at 10.30pm, but for the health-minded, the price was right. By 1939, Britain boasted close to three hundred youth hostels dotted around the country, many in remote or scenic locations.
Such was the craze for rambling or hiking that the railway companies, always keen to commercialise a trend, started offering an unusual type of excursion: the Mystery Hiking trip. One-day excursions out of mainline stations, like Paddington in London, were priced at a few shillings for a return train trip to an unknown destination.
Once on the train, passengers were handed maps and information on the ‘secret’ destination; the train drivers did not know their route until they opened a sealed envelope containing the information. On arrival, groups of passengers started their hike, following the maps with the prescribed route – which often included a meal along the way. A healthy day out with an element of surprise. Railway companies as far away as Australia and New Zealand quickly took note and also started selling these mystery train rides.
For most children, a summer holiday meant a stay with relatives.
Dawn* and her brother Eric spent most of the school summer holiday on the beach near their home in Whitley Bay, in Northumberland. One week every summer was spent with their grandparents, travelling by train or bus to visit them.
For Eric and me, that was either Bishop Auckland or Sedgefield [both in County Durham]. Sedgefield was very primitive, lit only by oil lamps, and water had to be drawn from the village pump and carried home in large white enamelled buckets. Rainwater was collected in barrels and used for washing facilities. Country food was too rich for me: fresh cream and butter, raw fruit straight from the garden, eggs still warm from the hen’s nest.
Granny was a farmer’s daughter and an excellent cook, but it was not what we were used to. Granny’s meats were roast pheasant, partridge, jugged hare, pigeon pie and even rook pie [a traditional country staple] – which was mainly little bones. No one was allowed to know Granny’s recipes. She made delicious cakes and biscuits, jams, chutneys, pickled walnuts and mushrooms, having learned her culinary skills at home on the farm. Her husband – our grandfather – was registrar of births deaths and marriages. His office was in their house at Sedgefield; he also travelled to the local villages, writing letters for illiterate people. He had a pony and trap for such journeys.
Back at home, the beach was only a short walk away and there was very little traffic on the roads so it was quite safe for us to walk down. Tram cars ran from North Shields ferry to Whitley Bay bandstand on the Links. We had plenty of free entertainment with pierrots [male French pantomime clowns, traditional seaside entertainers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, clad in distinctive black-and-white or loose baggy costumes, with pointy hats with pom-poms] who performed at the bandstand and also on a stage below the slope on the Central Lower Promenade.
They really were very good performers, comedians who also danced and sang. There was an area roped off, which had deckchairs where the audience paid to sit. Of course, we schoolchildren never had any money so when the clowns came around with their collecting boxes, we disappeared onto the beach!
There was also Uncle Jim with his team of Evangelists on the beach, who played hymns on an organ. At the bottom of the slope on the Central Promenade a one-legged former serviceman from the 1914–18 War built beautiful sandcastles. He used coloured powders and sprinkled the finished castles in reds, greens and blues. People put coins in a box for the poor ex-soldier. Sometimes stray dogs would run across his castle or high tides would wash away his beautiful work. I can picture him yet with his suntanned skin and his peg-leg, which sank into the sand with each step.
There were sandcastle competitions for us children, sponsored by local newsagents – we had to buy a comic paper to display on our effort. There were other attractions on the beach: donkey rides and shuggy boats [big double-seated swings that looked like boats, suspended on iron rods, pulled on a rope to go backwards and forwards]. All these had to be paid for, so we learned very early in life that all these attractions and the roundabouts in Spanish City [an early leisure centre in Whitley Bay, opened in 1910 as a smaller version of Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach] were for visitors only, not for us locals. As a birthday treat, we were given pennies to have a donkey ride.
Summers have always been brief on the north-east coast so beach traders had to find other ways of making a living. The pierrots played in the pantomimes at the Newcastle theatres, but August Bank Holiday was carnival time when two male pierrots were crowned king and queen and rode in an open-topped vehicle decorated with paper flowers, streamers and balloons. The carnival parade was competitive, children decorated their cycles and wore fancy dress. The merchants who had horses groomed their charges and decorated the harnesses with ribbons and paper flowers, vying with each other to win prizes. The carnival parade marched right through Whitley Bay to the Links. There were jazz and pipe bands. After dark, there was a confetti battle – great fun when the boys put handfuls of confetti down the girls’ necks. It was all harmless fun in those carefree days before war broke out.
Alice Reynolds’s school holiday in Plumpton, a village ten miles from her home in Brighton, stood out in memory.
Kitty and little Alice took the train to Plumpton.
The fish train was in and to combat the smell of fish, we had some eau de cologne-soaked hankies to hold to our noses. I expect the strong smell made Kit feel very queasy.
We arrived at Plumpton at 9pm. It was dusk and an hour past my bedtime (my mum was a great stickler for an 8pm retirement). As we walked up the main street, I could smell a beautiful perfume: it was night-scented stock [a hardy annual with pretty pastel flowers that release scent at night], my first introduction to those flowers.
Kitty’s family, the Graingers, lived in a cottage in a secluded laneway.
Kit’s mum was quiet and kind and I was able to do as I pleased, which made a change from the upheaval of home. One day, Kit’s father took me to Wivelsfield to pick some sphagnum moss – this was to help someone with a child who was wetting the bed. As the moss is very absorbent, it helps keep the bedclothes dry. It was a very long way to walk but it was so interesting because Mr Grainger was able to tell me the names of the flowers and butterflies we saw along the walk.
Another time, Kit’s brother Jim took me to pick crab apples to make crab-apple jelly. He shook the tree and little apples rattled down on my head. I cried. Jim laughed, but he was a kind young man and let me carry the basket home.
One day, wandering around, Alice came across a barn with dark green doors left ajar.
I was curious so pushed the door open wider and slipped inside. Two men were in there with a sheep that had been slaughtered and they were in the process of ‘dressing it out’ as my mother would have called it (in other words, gutting and cleaning it and dividing up the carcass). I was fascinated. There was heart, lungs and the stomach – full of grass – and all the other offal from the animal. The men gave me the sweetbread for my tea and when I gave it to Mrs Grainger to cook, she asked me where I had got it. When I explained what I had seen, everyone was aghast. At first, they felt I should not have seen a sight like that. Then they were amused at the way I had been so interested in what had been going on.
After a glorious, peaceful and free holiday, my mother and sister arrived to take me home. I cried bitterly, but of course, I had to go!
Peter Pitt’s childhood seaside holidays with his parents in the 1930s were carefully organised.
When we went on holiday, our luggage preceded us. We had a trunk more than three feet long, into which my mother would pack clothes for the three of us to cover all weather eventualities.
Locked and tied with a rope, the trun
k would then await the luggage carrier, Carter Patterson. They could be contacted at local shops or if you displayed a card with the letters CP in your front window, a passing van would call to collect. The next time you saw your trunk was at your boarding house. Occasionally, things would go wrong. On one holiday, we arrived at the boarding house on Saturday to find that the trunk hadn’t come. My father was irate and went back to the railway station to complain. It was delivered on the Monday and at last we were able to change our clothes.
Holiday destinations for the family were Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, Cliftonville in Kent and many South Coast resorts.
The arrangement with some of the boarding houses where we stayed was for the boarders – us – to supply the fish and meat of the main meal of the day. At one establishment, the same hard rock cakes seemed to be dished up at every meal. We used to joke about them for years afterwards.
We spent two holidays at a boarding house in Dundonald Drive, Leigh-on-Sea, where my parents became quite friendly with the landlady, Mrs Long. Sometimes she’d come down to the beach with us with her son, Paul, who was around my age.
On the journey from Dundonald Drive to the beach we had to pass Chalkwell station, where outside on the pavement was a street photographer. He had one of those old wooden movie cameras on a tripod and turned a handle to take a photograph. My parents bought a picture of us walking along the road from him, but he still filmed us every time we passed him.
Every seaside resort had a bandstand. My parents loved to sit and listen to the military bands but as far as I was concerned, we were using up good beach time!
After our holiday was over, clothes, buckets and spades were packed away in the trunk and we travelled home by train. A few days later, the trunk would be delivered to our doorstep.
Londoner Eva Merrill’s pre-war family holidays at the seaside were also carefully planned by her father:
He would pay in a weekly sum to a holiday fund. Each June, he would draw out his year’s savings, plus a small amount of interest, and we went away for two weeks holiday to the sea. This was an adventure indeed. One year we went to Margate and the next, the Isle of Wight. For some reason these holidays were always alternated, year about.
When we went to Margate we went by the Orange Coach Service – ‘charabancs’ they were called. We would pick this coach up in Green Lanes [North London] and invariably, nearly always missed it. Last-minute hitches always occurred and we’d be chasing down the road, suitcases, spades and buckets in hand, usually arriving just as the coach was about to take off without us. Once settled on the coach, having got our breath back, the holiday had begun.
At this point Father always put a large white handkerchief, knotted at all four corners, on his head. It looked rather peculiar but somehow this was part of his holiday gear and signalled the start of the holiday. He wore an open-necked shirt and grey flannels with a sports jacket. For a day or so he appeared somewhat awkward in this casual wear and I am sure he missed his formal suit, collar and tie. We had new summer dresses Mother had made, she also had some new hand-made dresses and we all had new hand-knitted cardigans. One always travelled in ‘best’ clothes in the 1930s and these travelling outfits were always carefully thought out.
On arrival at Margate, we went to our boarding house, the same one every year. We had full board, which meant we were very well looked after. We were given a very filling breakfast, at midday a large cooked dinner was provided, ‘high tea’ as it was termed arrived at 6pm and we always had a supper snack before going to bed. There were usually about three or four other families staying at the same time and we all sat down together to these meals. We loved Margate, the sands were so beautiful and the weather always seemed kind to us.
The Isle of Wight was also a favourite place. Here again, we stayed at a boarding house with full board. Each Wednesday during the summer months they used to hold competitions and races on the pier. The pier concert hall was packed on these days with well-known comedians and other stars appearing. The audience were encouraged to participate with singing and dancing while the children were organised into various races on the pier.
One Wednesday, they held a laughing competition to find out the holidaymaker with the most infectious laugh. For some reason my mother went up onto the stage along with crowds of other contestants – a most uncharacteristic move on her part for she was usually fairly quiet and somewhat shy. The comedian of the week took them one by one and set them laughing and there was simply no contest! Mother’s laugh rang out and, before long, she had the whole audience laughing along with her.
We clapped and cheered. Mother was photographed with the comedian and received a handsome prize. I had won a running race. So, the family came away that Wednesday feeling very pleased with themselves.
The next Wednesday, we went back to try our luck again. A different comedian but he also decided to have a laughing competition, so up again went Mother and repeated the performance. Another photo and another prize, we felt really proud of her.
Simple pleasures in those days, but how we enjoyed ourselves!
For so many, the outbreak of war came while they were in the midst of their annual summer holiday. Doris Jenner, nicknamed ‘Jiffi’, and her sister had set off on holiday just a week before war broke out.
It was the last Saturday of August 1939 and a lovely summer day as we prepared for our holiday at the seaside. We loaded our luggage and a box of food into the back of Dad’s Bedford lorry, then I climbed into the cab, followed by Mum and my younger sister, who had to sit on Mum’s lap. Dad checked that the door was fastened securely, then got into the driver’s seat. At last we were ready.
We left our village and drove into Sussex. Everywhere was tranquil and beautiful as we travelled to Bishopstone, a small seaside place between Seaford and Newhaven. A relative had a chalet/bungalow there and had invited us to use it. The chalet was one of several built on concrete foundations on the beach, which had originally held army huts during the First World War. It was named ‘Lundy’ and consisted of two rooms and a verandah.
When we got there, we unloaded the lorry, had a meal on the verandah and then walked to Newhaven Quay to watch the ferry boat arrive from France and the returning holidaymakers disembark. As I watched, I dreamed of visiting Paris the following summer.
We spent a happy weekend playing on the beach, paddling and enjoying meals on the verandah. Dad had to return home on the Sunday evening as he was booked for work with his lorry for the following two days. At that time, his work was spasmodic, so he couldn’t afford to refuse any job, but he planned to rejoin us later in the week.
My sister and I continued to enjoy ourselves on the beach, sometimes playing with the dog staying at the next chalet or walking along the sea wall path with Mum to a little shop to buy ice creams.
Although Mum was aware of the threat of war, we had no wireless set or daily newspaper, so we didn’t realise how serious the situation was becoming. Each day, we expected Dad to return and when he didn’t, we wondered why. The ferry boats continued to go to France and back, although later in the week we were not permitted onto the quay to watch.
As we finished breakfast on the Saturday morning, Dad arrived. But our pleasure quickly turned to dismay when he told us that war was imminent and he had to take us home immediately. He’d been unable to join us sooner as his lorry had been requisitioned by the ARP to take extra first-aid equipment to our local clinic and deliver several hundred sandbags for protecting important buildings in our village. In retrospect, these precautions were premature for at that time our village was considered a safe area and was designated a reception centre for children being evacuated from a London school.
We packed up, tidied the chalet and reluctantly climbed into the lorry once more. The journey back was a sad one, even the countryside seemed sombre. Arriving home, we gathered around the wireless set and listened anxiously. Next morning, war was declared.
We never saw Lundy again as the chalets were demolis
hed during the war but, many years later, I sailed from Newhaven to visit Paris.
My dream belatedly came true.
EPILOGUE
THE DAY THE WAR ENDED
THERE WOULD BE TIMES OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS AND more when, to the British people, it must have seemed that the war would never end; that they would be doomed to live out their lives with rationing, blackouts, shortages of all kind, restrictive regulations, and the constant threat of sudden death. Worse, there were times, too, when it would seem that all was lost, and that the country would be occupied by the tyrannical regime it had fought to destroy, at great cost. But end it did, although nothing would ever be the same again.
Just after midnight on 8 May 1945, a huge storm accompanied by violent thunder and sheets of lightning broke out over London. Some claimed it was the worst storm since the outbreak of the Second World War. Curiously, in one of nature’s grand theatrical gestures, the May storm was virtually a re-run of the big thunderstorm that had swept the country during the night of 2 September 1939, just before war broke out.
Later that day in May, another kind of storm burst forth onto Britain’s streets. A very human explosion, if you like, of relief merged with sheer, unadulterated jubilation that the longed-for moment had finally come – ‘the day for which the British people have fought and endured five years, eight months and four days of war,’ as the Daily Mirror described it.
Here was VE Day, Victory in Europe. Two days of public holidays in celebration of victory. The build-up to the day had been a series of events which seemed hardly believable to many, since the war’s ending had been anticipated as far back as the previous summer after D-Day, 6 June 1944, which launched the Allied liberation of Western Europe.