I was contacted this week by John Cannell who had read a previous blog post on here about Bureside house at Wroxham. John kindly sent me an extract from his personal journal recalling his memories of staying at Bureside during the Second World War, having been evacuated from London.
John became one of an estimated four million people who were evacuated out of the cities and towns between 1939 and 1945. Codenamed Operation Pied Piper, the mass evacuation of school aged children, pregnant women and mothers with children under five, was unprecedented in scale. Evacuation plans had been formulated by the British government during the inter-war years and the mass relocation began on the 1st of September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, two days before the formal declaration of war by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Over the next three days, an estimated 1.5 million people were moved to the relative safety of the British countryside. Although not compulsory, the Ministry of Health ran a huge public information campaign encouraging parents to send their children away, a decision which must have been absolutely heart wrenching. Most evacuees were billeted in private homes, as was the case with John and his family who were moved to Wroxham. He wrote:
A brother, Graham, was born on April 4th 1944. We had not intended to join the evacuation, but Graham had whooping cough and the doctor said he wouldn’t be responsible for him surviving the damp conditions in the cellar or the air raid shelter and shortly afterwards we, including our mother, were evacuated to a place called Wroxham, near Norwich. We were picked out as being the most respectable looking family out of a pretty bad bunch and were taken to stay with a Lady Hastings in what seemed to me to be an enormous mansion named Bureside. We were housed in an attic and mixed mostly with the servants. Graham slept in a drawer!
We had a good time there but one episode stands out more than any other. That was an adventure that must have caused people a lot of worry.
The gardener kept a lovely vegetable garden at the front of the house, with rows of neat plants – including what I now know were onions gone to seed.
Derek and I were chasing each other about this garden when suddenly I was horrified to see that we had broken one of these plants – and even more horrified to find that the gardener had seen us do it! He yelled at us and we ran for our lives. I ran up to the attic and hid under the bed.
I remember someone coming in to look for me and as they looked under the bed I wriggled round and hid behind the chair. When they went to look behind the chair I wriggled back under the bed. Having searched the house, they then went to look outside.
There was a river (the River Bure) running across the bottom of the garden and I found out afterwards that they thought I might have drowned in it. The police, local search-light crews and all sorts of other people were out looking, and my fear and determination to stay out of sight increased when looking out of the window I saw Derek being taken away by the local policeman. To prison, I assumed – actually of course just to help in the search.
I don’t remember how I was found, but I do remember being a bit embarrassed at all the fuss and being made to apologise to various people.
Other memories include my introduction to Rupert the Bear during school story time, visits to Mundesley for a rare look at the sea and sand, and a taste of still warm goat’s milk which I thought was revolting.
We went back to London later, in time for the V2 rockets, though not being able to see them meant that they made little impression on me. The V2 was the world’s first long range ballistic missile, comprising a warhead of about 2,000 pounds on top of a rocket motor and guidance system. They were about as inaccurate as the V1 but caused quite a bit of damage if they did land in an occupied area. The frightening thing was that because they flew several times faster than the speed of sound there was no warning of their arrival and no chance of intercepting them.
Wednesday 3 August 1988
We went to Wroxham today and after a bit of a search found Bureside where Mum, Derek, Graham and I were evacuated during the war. A Mr and Mrs Clarke live there now, an old and pleasant couple who let us walk round the grounds. It bought back a lot of faint memories.
Apparently Lady Hastings died in about 1955 and the house lay empty for 5 years until the Clarkes bought it. It was filthy black from the fumes from oil stoves and in a generally poor state, but they did it up quite well. The vegetable garden and the lavender patch have been grassed over but the rest looks much the same as I remember it, except that the well has been covered over and mains water laid on.
My thanks to John for getting in contact and for allowing me to share his memories on here. You can read the original article about Bureside here: https://www.broadlandmemories.co.uk/blog/2019/01/bureside-house-wroxham/
