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Chesham Stories

Iris Lloyd - Evacuation

I don't remember that it was a hardship moving from a house on a new estate in the suburbs of London to one room in a small country town flat. All that concerned my brother, Ray, and me was that we had to leave behind all our books and toys, with one exception each. I took with me my soft-bodied baby doll with china head. I forget what my brother chose.

It was September 1940, the beginning of the blitz. My father was accountant to Shipman and King, owners of the Embassy and Astoria cinemas in Chesham, among others in the home counties. They decided to evacuate to Chesham, converting the Embassy café into head office and housing the staff in adjoining flats.

I was nine, my brother younger. We had never heard of Chesham. It could have been on the dark side of the moon. We knew it was a long way from London because it took all day to get there, by tube then two steam trains.

One compensation of the move was that we were allowed to see four films weekly, free of charge. Another was that, on Sundays, we had a playground in the eerie, dark, cavernous art deco Embassy auditorium, and could climb the stairs to the usherettes' room and, if the door had been left unlocked, out on to the flat roof.

It was a shock when bombs were dropped along Germain Street ten days after we arrived. We thought that Hitler had a personal vendetta! Two little girl evacuees from a nearby house that had received a direct hit were brought into my mother. She washed off all their dust and grime, found them some pyjamas, and put them at the foot of the single bed Ray and I shared. Their brother had been taken into Mr. Harley in the sweetshop opposite the bombed house. Their mother was staying elsewhere and wept next morning when she found them safe. Their aunt had been killed.

That scare made the S & K staff decide to sleep on mattresses under the balcony at the back of the stalls for a couple of nights, the women undressing and getting into bed first, followed by the men. We learned later that the girder above us weighed about twenty tons.

I was sent to Townsend Road School and it was like stepping back a century. Instead of the recently-completed, light, airy building that I was used to, this school was as old as the teachers seemed. Instead of co-ed, it was all girls, and some of them had such funny Bucks accents!

I was very homesick at first, but soon settled in and spent a happy time there, even being voted May Queen in 1942, and we all received a good education that sent me and many from my class off to the Grammar School in Amersham.

That opened up a very happy chapter in my life, mostly because of the friends I made. We had school uniform, four competing houses in Challoner, Hampden, Milton and Penn, homework, a school song and school magazine, Alauda - just like the boarding school and Girls' Crystal stories we devoured. It was also co-ed. We went to parties, socials, youth club, dancing classes, for country walks and on 'dates' at the cinemas.

I became a St. Johns Ambulance Brigade cadet and passed exams. under the tuition of Commandant Nancy Melville, daughter of Major Melville. She drilled us like a little army on the concreted yard of Bury Farm, so that we were smartly turned out on parades through the town for the special weeks to raise funds to build Spitfires and battleships.

When we left London, our wish was to go home as soon as possible. After five and a half years, though, to have to leave my friends behind was a bitter experience - and I still miss them, though we have all matured and gone our separate ways.

I will always be grateful to Chesham for allowing us to become immersed in its life with hardly a ripple and for affording us safety and happiness during all those war years. That experience has become part of my fibre and I would not be the same person without it.

Iris Lloyd (née Cannings)
July 2007

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