Margaret & Betty
Margaret and Betty were 6 and 9 years old when war started in September 1939 and they lived at 133 High Street Shoeburyness. During air raids, their Dad, who was a Policeman, used to have to go out and look for incendiary bombs to try and prevent fires.
The area was heavily fortified and Margaret remembers skating between concrete tank traps, while Betty recalls seeing Shoeburyness High School (which was then called Caulfield Road School) with sandbags around it, as it was acting as an Ambulance station and Air Raid Precautions (ARP) station. Remnants of local anti tank defences can still be seen embedded in the road surface at Clievedon Road and Walton Road along Thorpe Bay seafront.
As sisters, Betty and Margaret remember playing down at East Beach one day, when an enemy plane swooped down and fired its machine gun at them!
Margaret and Betty remember the day their school friends were evacuated from Hinguar Street School on 2nd June 1940. Margaret remembers wishing she could go with them as they boarded the train with their gas masks over their shoulders, though she didn’t realise they weren’t coming home that night!
Photos: Evacuees in Montgomeryshire by Geoff Charles, used under licence / Hinguar Street School by R Walters
Margaret was 6 when war started
Betty’s classmates Ernie and Derek tragically lost their lives when they went beyond the safe area into the coastal defences. They remember how moving it was singing one of the boys’ favourite hymns There Is A Green Hill Far Away at the memorial assembly at school.
Sisters Margaret (left) and Betty recall many local shops from the war years such as Schofield and Martin, a small but high class establishment, who had shops in Alexandra Street and Leigh-on-Sea, as well as ten others across Essex. The chain was purchased by John Lewis Partnership at the end of 1944.
Betty was 9 when war started in 1939
As sisters, Margaret & Betty remember playing down at East Beach one day when an enemy plane swooped down and fired its machine gun at them!