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Interview with Peter Stevenson
Peter Stevenson was born in Grantham and joined the Air League of the British Empire as well as the Air Defence Cadet Corps, The Officer’s Training Corps and the Public School’s Air Cadet Wing. He rose through the cadet ranks and embarked on…
Interview with Thomas Peter Payne. One
Thomas was born in Hemel Hempstead in 1925, one of four children and lived in a row of terraced houses with very basic sanitation. The end property was a public house with no gas or electricity, with only paraffin lamps and candles. His first…
Interview with Walter Morris
Walter Morris was born in Kettering and started employment in 1939; after a while, older workers disappeared mostly to join the Territorial Army. He enlisted in the Air Training Corps, 101 Squadron, based at RAF Grafton Underwood. Walter reported to…
Interview with Roy Maddock-Lyon
Roy Maddock-Lyon was born in Cheshire and when his school was evacuated at the start of the war he began an engineering apprenticeship. He was a part of the Queen’s Messengers, a relief organisation that travelled to bombed cities to take emergency…
Interview with Dennis Kirk. Two
Dennis Kirk was born in Barkston 1920, and lived on a farm near Plungar. He recalls when the war started, the War Executive Committee told farmers what to produce; he also talks about the Land Army. Being in a reserved occupation, he joined the Home…
Interview with Sybil Green
Sybil was born in Bracebridge near Lincoln, she went to Bracebridge School then left at fourteen to work first at a Co-op store and then at and electric shop. Sybil talks about civilian life in wartime, her family working at Foster Quinns, fire…
Interview with Joan Watson
Joan Watson went to Bracebridge School and then worked at Ruddock’s of Lincoln as a printer. Joan discusses evacuees, the bombing war, home font (local men doing fire watching at work), and social life in wartime: dancing, cinema and gatherings.…
Interview with Doris Reddish
Doris Reddish attended Sleaford High School followed by commercial college. She worked at Moore, Cooper and Burkett’s in Market Rasen until she joined the Royal Observer Corps. She trained for aircraft recognition in Lincoln then served as a table…
Interview with Joan Ray
Joan Ray was born in Doncaster on the 11th March 1925. She suffered problems with her eyes in her early life and tells of the impact it had, including problems with reading and writing. She spent time in domestic service working at Hesley Hall in…
Interview with Rosemary Lapham
Rosemary Lapham is the daughter of Roy Chadwick CBE, the designer of the Manchester and Lancaster aircraft. She tells her father’s story. Her father was born in 1893 and when he left school at the age of fourteen he became a draughtsman at…
Interview with Heather Hindley
Heather Hindley was a young girl living in Nottingham and attending private school when war was declared. She discusses air raids, sleeping in her grandparents’ shelter and rationing. She talks about the experience of moving to the countryside at…