Cathryn Baker
Did some research for this gallery amongst people in Warwick on Eden.
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I saw your request on next door forum and decided to have a look to see if there was anything in Len Hall's little booklet, ‘Recollections, memories, gossip and folk law, Warwick on Eden’, he wrote many years ago and about the changes he remembers here in Warwick on Eden. Len is our oldest resident and must be in his nineties now.
Len writes ‘There was a massive bonfire to celebrate victory in WWII. The local farmers led old trees to the fire for days, by horse and tractor.’
I think most people will know that that if you look at the Chapel, beside the memorial hall the name Warwick School was over the door. When invasion was threatened in 1940 a layer of mortar was put over it to safeguard from any passing Germans knowing where they were!
As a child from a small holding Len had the job of delivering milk. One Sunday morning he was delivering milk to a lodge of Warwick Hall. Warwick on Eden was the area's HQ and in the garden was a large concrete pillar box, suppose to defend the bridge over the A69. Some soldiers came out from the lodge troops wearing German tin helmets. Len immediately thought the place had been taken over in the night. Then he heard they had Geordie accents. It had been of course a Home Guard exercise!
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I am not sure the image we have today of street parties and everyone dancing in the streets is wholly correct. I remember asking my mother about it. She clearly remembered the day war was declared at nine years old. Yet there was no street party etc where she lived or celebration that she could remember at about fourteen. Apparently, someone in their street had lost their son and she did think maybe that was why.
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Mary Beaty who was born in 1939 remembers people dancing in the street. Unfortunately, because she was so young cannot remember if it was VE or VJ day. Her dad worked on the railways and went up and down to London. He'd seen people dancing in the streets there and so when he came home Mary remembers him putting their radio on the windowsill, playing music and people dancing. She said theirs was the only house, in the street, with tape on the windows, again because her dad had seen this in London. Mary lived in Carlisle.
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I asked Thomas Beaty who built our house and was brought up in Warwick about VE Day. He remembers bunting being put up across the village. It was supplied and owned by a Captain Ferris who lived in the big white house now known as Blue Gate. Thomas born 1937, here in Warwick on Eden has slightly different memories from Len Hall. Thomas will be at least ten years younger, I guess.
He remembers the VE bonfire as being in the field opposite where the old Methodist Chapel is. Beside the memorial hall on the way up to St Leonard's. He remembers a children's party and the tables set out in front of the Methodist Chapel. They were in fancy dress. Couldn't remember what he was but his brother John was an angel or Cupid. He remembers the wings. Plus of course the bunting around the village supplied and owned by Captain Ferris. Who lived in what was then called the Brown House now called Blue Gate.
Thomas says it was to celebrate VJ day that a bonfire was lit here where we live now. Thomas remembers it because there was a horse lived here, shared by a couple of people, a cart horse. His brother Robert looked after it and before the bonfire, he took it and tied it up outside the pub. Robert was dressed as a cowboy. Went to check Dobbin was okay and found he had gone. So when he had found out who had moved it, marched into the pub and got the person to go with him and bring Dobbin back. Thomas said his brother was only ten and a half but I suppose felt responsible. Thomas says he remembers the bunting being taken down. Then one day they went to Aglionby came back to find it being put back up. This was for VJ day.
Mary and Thomas Beaty
