Extracts from
reminiscences of Stuart (Aubrey)
Brenchley as an evacuee in Cowling,
Yorkshire
Added to
Cowlingweb: July 2007 - Thank you to:
Karen Holden (Stuarts Daughter)
Brighton in the War
As we
lived close to the
seafront, Mum and Dad
decided that my sister
Marian and I should be
evacuated when St
Margaret’s School got
the chance of moving to
Yorkshire, and so I
moved from Brighton in
March 1940 and didn’t
return until December
1944.
Evacuation
I seem to
remember that Marian and
I were given small
haversacks to carry our
bits and pieces of
clothing and toys, as
well as our gas masks,
the only items of
luggage allowed. We were
taken to Brighton
Station where there were
hundreds of us, aged
from four to ten or
eleven. It was a long
train, twelve or more
carriages, pulled by a
steam engine.
The journey took all
day, with many stops and
starts. Can you imagine
Marian, a four-year-old,
repeatedly wanting to
know if we were there
yet? We ended the day
being bedded down in
timber, hutted,
barracks-type places.
The next day each group
of children was loaded
onto buses and dispersed
to various parts of West
Yorkshire. My school
group had a bus ride
ending outside a strange
corrugated iron chapel
in a village of stone
houses where the people
spoke in a strange
language, or so it
seemed.
Mum and Dad had told me
that we should stay
together, however all
the other children had
been collected by
various couples, but no
one wanted an
eight-year-old boy and
his four-year-old
sister.
Then another couple with
a little boy came in and
said that they would
like to give me a home
but couldn’t take
Marian. So, for the next
two and a half years, I
lived with Ronald and
Nellie Duckworth and
their son, also called
Stuart, in a
semi-detached house
called Craiglands. The
village is called
Cowling, which is
approximately half way
between Keighley in
Yorkshire and Colne in
Lancashire. Cowling is
just on the Yorkshire
side of the border. |
| With
Marian at Craiglands |
 |
|
Craiglands |
 |
The village was known
as a mill village, having six or more
weaving mills. All the buildings, apart
from a few council houses, were built
from sandstone that looked rather grim
and forbidding from outside, but were
really lovely inside. Craiglands was on
the very edge of the village, the rear
of the house looking out on a huge crag
and the edge of the Keighley moors.
Once I got used to the broad Yorkshire
accent I found Cowling an exciting place
with streams (called ‘becks’) to fish
in, rocks and trees to climb and, in the
winter, loads of snow to play in.
The Duckworths were staunch Methodists,
so Sundays were rather busy with church
in the morning, Sunday school in the
afternoon and church in the evening. The
Methodist Church, a very large building
at the top of the village, was the
social centre, with all sorts of
activities going on, including ‘magic
lantern’ shows (slide shows) and youth
clubs. The church and grounds have since
become a housing estate.
The village school was about a mile from
the Duckworths in an area to the west
called Ickornshaw. All the children
walked to and from school in all
weathers, a total of four miles a day,
from the main village.
My teacher was called Miss Maxfield, and
she taught us in virtually all subjects,
a typical village school of the
Thirties. The head teacher was a Mr
Laycock, the brother of Mr Laycock who
lived next door to the Duckworths.
One winter the village decided to
organise an evening’s entertainment to
raise funds for one or other of the
wartime charities, and Miss Maxfield
decided that our class should put on a
country dancing display. Us lads took a
lot of persuading, but joined in, and I
think the result was a great success.
The village hall was very full, with
standing room only.
The school was situated next to the C of
E church, although we didn’t have any
connection, as most of the villagers
were Methodists. As far as I can
remember, the school only had two
classrooms, a large playground where the
boys made a super slide whenever it
snowed, and the pupils’ toilets were
outside.
To get to the school we walked up
through the village, past the main
Chapel, round a corner called North End,
where the north wind really blew in the
winter, cold enough to freeze your ears
off! We then went down a hill, past a
sweetshop that, due to rationing, had no
sweets, across a beck with stone walls,
which us boys used to walk on above the
stream. We must have been mad, since
after any rain the stream was a boiling
cauldron!
Alongside this beck was a mill, probably
one of the first in the village, and
could have been powered by a water
wheel. At the side of the mill was a
largish pond, on which we used to skate,
using our iron-shod clogs.
I almost forgot to tell you, during the
first week at Cowling, the Duckworths
arranged for me to be fitted with a pair
of clogs. Everybody wore clogs in the
village – with the damp and cold weather
they were very sensible footwear. They
were made with a wooden sole and stiff
leather uppers held on to the sole with
a band of copper, and brass toecaps. The
top had a little adjustment with a
bronze buckle, and the wearing surface
was shod with a sole iron, like a
horseshoe, and a heel iron.
You could hear when the mills closed,
with the noisy clatter of everybody’s
clogs. If you kicked them on the
flagstones of the pavements you could
get some lovely sparks in the blackout!
One problem with clogs in the winter was
the way that wet snow collected and
stuck to the underside. As boys we tried
to get as much stuck on as possible so
that we ‘grew’ 6” or so taller!
Only the main road through the village
was made up, the rest were a mixture of
stone slabs or made up with builders’
rubble. One or two had cobbles, and some
of the streets were overgrown with
weeds.
Many of the streets were used by the
women to hang out their washing, which
was normally done on a Monday. There
seemed to be quite a competition as to
which woman could get her washing out
the first on a Monday morning, and there
was great pride in the cleanliness. |
| With
Mr and Mrs Duckworth in the Sixties |
 |
Mrs Duckworth was a
superb cook, especially pastries; jam
pasties, parkin and scones were my
favourites. She was also a superb
needlewoman, sewing anything up to and
including men’s and women’s suits,
women’s hats, etc. She worked part time
at one of the local mills.
Mr Duckworth was a carpenter and joiner,
where they were also the village
undertakers. He was also the Sunday
school superintendent. As all men had to
either join one of the forces or take
part in other essential services, Mr
Duckworth joined the AFS, the Auxiliary
Fire Service. However, I can’t remember
him ever being called out to a serious
fire or emergency, he just had to attend
weekly drills.
Before I was evacuated, my Mum and Dad
told me to help my foster parents in
return for them looking after me. Mrs
Duckworth asked me if I would do the
washing up, and this I did for all the
time I was with them. I wasn’t always
pleased with my task when I could look
out of the window and see my mates
playing outside.
I used to play with the local children
in the street outside, which we called
the ‘tops’. We used to play football or
cricket if we were lucky enough to have
a ball (they were in short supply). We
also played marbles and many other games
that young boys played.
For a ‘townie’ I found Cowling an
exciting and interesting place to be and
spent many happy hours exploring the
beck in the ‘bottoms’, tickling and
catching small fish, making dams, and
getting rather wet in the process. When
the better weather came, I discovered
the crag and its great rocks and, beyond
them, the moors, finding bilberries,
which are delicious.
At the chapel in the summer there were
several choral concerts in which, as
choirmaster, Mr Duckworth took a leading
part. People came from miles around. The
concerts were held in the summer so that
the blackout wasn’t a problem. However,
as it was warm, and with several hundred
people in the building, several of the
old folk up in the gallery fainted.
In the winter I remember we had magic
lantern evenings, when an old fellow
came along with old slides of Africa
with natives in their traditional dress
or undress! Afterwards we walked home in
the blackout. All lights were
prohibited, and so we could see the
stars very clearly, the Milky Way looked
amazing on a clear night, millions and
millions of stars. |
| Me on right, with
Cowling classmates, on a country walk |
 |
After a few months I
had acquired a strong Yorkshire accent,
so much so that my mother and Auntie
Hetty, who visited me in the summer, had
difficulty in understanding me!
Each summer the annual Gala, or garden
party, was held at a large country house
situated down the beck valley, halfway
to Glasburn. The party was mainly for
grown-ups, who stood around talking, but
us youngsters took part in egg and spoon
races, sack races and the like. Somehow
or other jellies and blancmanges
appeared after the Spam sandwiches.
When the summer holidays came around the
whole village shut down for ‘Wakes Week’
and most of the villagers went away for
their one and only break of the year,
travelling to such places as Blackpool,
Morecambe or Scarborough. The Duckworths
went to Scarborough and I stayed with Mr
Duckworth’s parents who lived at the
bottom of Sun Street, the street running
downhill from Craiglands. They were a
nice old couple, nearing retirement. I
was rather dismayed at night when they
tied my bedroom door shut when they came
up to bed (I had sleep walked once or
twice when I first arrived at Cowling).
I discovered that most of my pals had
gone away for the week and I soon felt
very lonely.
Around this time I found the village
tailor, a Mr Moore. He had a shop almost
opposite the joinery shop where Mr
Duckworth worked and used to sit in the
window making up or repairing suits. He
invited me into his shop for a chat and
we got on very well. After a while, when
I guess he talked to the Duckworths, he
took me for a long walk on the moors to
a shooter’s hut where we had a picnic
lunch. He taught me how to cut, or dig,
peat and how to stack it to dry for
fuel. He also showed me and told me
about the wildlife that existed among
the heather and the bogs. We had several
such jaunts whilst I was in Cowling and
I learnt a lot from him. I imagine he
may well have been responsible for my
love of the countryside.
Winter in Cowling in the 1940’s was
rather severe, and many a morning we
would find that Mr Duckworth would have
to dig us out. The kitchen door seemed
to be a favourite place where snowdrifts
would form, from ground level to the top
of the door and beyond! I used to love
it.
Us lads used to make a super slide down
Fold Lane, the next ‘street’, which was
nice and straight and sloping down to
the main road. We made these slides
after school and couldn’t eat our tea
quickly enough to go out and continue
the fun! Unfortunately some killjoys who
lived in the lane used to come out with
hot ashes from their fires and try to
ruin ‘our slide’. We used to protest and
then repair the melted patches with
fresh snow, packing it down hard so that
it was soon as good as new and our fun
would continue.
When my first Christmas in 1940 came
around Mr Duckworth gave me a superb
toboggan, which was well used on some of
the local sloping fields. I then found,
along with several other lads, that
fields that were hard frozen and covered
with hoar frost were almost as good as
sledging on snow, until the enraged
farmer found out that we were doing to
his pastures!
The winters were very severe and, like
all young boys, we wore short trousers
and so our knees got very cold and
chapped. At one time Mrs Duckworth cut
the toes out of a pair of my socks so
that I could wear them over my knees.
The effect was very helpful until they
slipped down, like all boys’ socks.
I also found out on a Sunday afternoon,
when I was wearing my best clothes, that
you can sledge down becks when the water
is hard frozen. It’s rather bumpy
though, and I kept on falling off and
got soaked through. Mrs Duckworth was
not very happy as we were going to
chapel in the evening.
One day in the winter it rained and
froze at the same time, and I remember
walking past a small tree growing over
the wall at North End corner. It was
covered with ice, which was getting
thicker and thicker until the weight
broke the branches off, an amazing thing
to see. Everything was covered with ice,
and we were all sliding all over the
place. We children thought it great fun,
but the old people were frightened and
very upset about it, and I recall that
several old folks fell over and broke
bones.
By this time I had made a great pal with
a boy called John Bailey who was a mill
owner’s son. Mr and Mrs
Bailey were lovely people who, for some
reason, thought I was a good influence
on John. I must have had an innocent
face, because we got up to some serious
mischief during the next couple of
years.
John soon introduced me to his mill,
which was named after his grandfather,
John Hartley. The mill used jacquard
looms, which produced fine damask.
The noise in the weaving sheds was
tremendous and the weavers could
lip-read each other, because you
certainly couldn’t hear each other. The
looms were driven by belts through a
complicated continuous shaft system from
the engine room. The engine was a great
machine with a huge flywheel that was
moved by an equally great piston and
shaft with all the balance weights
whizzing around and highly polished -
quite marvellous!
The steam boiler was on the floor below
and was equally interesting, a large
Cornish boiler with two firing furnaces
that took a heck of a lot of coal to
keep going, another lovely and dirty
place!
I also found the boilerhouse and engine
room of Binns Mill, another mill behind
Mr Duckworth’s joinery shop. Perhaps
this was where I found an interest in
boilers and heating systems.
The next summer I was very lucky when I
was invited to join the Bailey family
holiday at Grange-over-Sands, a small
old-fashioned resort across the bay from
Morecambe, in the days it really was a
seaside resort, although the sea only
came in twice a day over the sand banks.
I saw some paintings of the bay whilst
there, and bought some coloured pencils
and had my first attempt at sketching
the fascinating views across the bay
from the small hotel where we stayed. At
the time I thought that Grange was a
lovely place, but if you go there now
you will find it rather dead, I’m
afraid.
Mrs Bailey was another good cook, and
whenever I called with, or for, John,
she would have some titbit to give us.
One day John and I upset her during one
of the winters when it was freezing
hard. We discovered that hot water froze
quicker than cold when we turned the hot
tap on in the garage yard at the bottom
of their drive. We just let the tap run
on to the concrete yard until it had a
lovely covering of ice to slide on. Then
we turned the tap off and enjoyed
slipping and sliding about for a while
till it got dark. When we went back up
to the house we found Mrs Bailey rather
upset at the lack of hot water for
washing up. Unfortunately John got all
the blame – he always got the blame even
when I protested that I had been equally
responsible!
Occasionally I went to the pictures with
the Baileys (the Duckworths didn’t
approve) and we went to a small cinema
at Cross Hills. All the films were in
black and white, with quite a few
breaks, but it was fun.
It’s strange looking back that I can
remember more about my time in Cowling
than any other time in my life. I guess
it was such an interesting time with new
surroundings, people and interests.
Two school friends come to mind, Jack
Thorp and Brian. They both worked on
farms when they weren’t at school, and
regularly got into trouble coming to
school with their boot clogs choked up
with manure, which, in the heated
classrooms, soon created a strong pong!
We had to change out of our clogs and
put plimsolls on when in class, as the
irons on clogs damaged the floors and
desks. They were all lined up against
the wall near the classroom fireplace,
which became a puddle when the snow on
the soles melted.
Unexpectedly, whilst at Cowling School,
we were able to learn to swim, which we
did at Glasburn swimming baths, an old
Victorian building (still there in
2000). The wall tiles were dark green,
almost the same colour as the water,
which was so green you couldn’t see the
bottom. I think this encouraged me to
learn to swim, as I was scared that I
would sink below the surface! I used to
really enjoy my swimming lessons, and
afterwards we used to call at the
next-door bakers where we bought ½d hot
bread rolls, which were delicious.
At Christmas 1940 Mr Duckworth gave his
son Stuart a Meccano set that he had
been given when he was a boy. It was a
large construction set, and we had great
fun during the winter evenings building
such things as big cranes, windmills and
the like. |
| Stuart
Duckworth |
 |
The Duckworths were
very anti-war and discouraged Stuart and
I from any warlike games or activities,
so if John Bailey and I wanted to play
soldiers we played around John’s house
or his mill.
In the spring, like most youngsters we
went collecting frogspawn in jamjars. I
found some spawn in pools up on the
moors, another method of getting my feet
wet. The clogs never suffered, but it’s
a job to hide wet socks.
In the summer we used to be a little
more adventuresome and climbed up on the
crag to Cowling Pinnacle in among, over
and under the gigantic rocks that are
there. We used to think that one of the
gaps through the rocks was somehow
manmade by ancient men and arranged to
allow the sun’s rays to shine through on
midsummer’s dawn, but never went to
check up on the theory. |
 |
|
Talking about rocks,
one huge rock we visited as family
groups is positioned about a mile or
more from the edge of the crag on the
moor, and is called ‘The Hitchen Stone’.
It is a colossal stone, about the size
of a large cubic room with a rectangular
hole like a doorway cut into one side,
very fascinating.
Mr Moore, mentioned earlier, showed me
where the peat fuel was cut from the
ground with odd-shaped spades and how it
was stacked to dry initially in little
piles and then later in large stacks
that were arranged to shed the rain and
yet remain mainly dry. We were always on
the lookout for grouse, the semi-wild
game birds that are encouraged to
inhabit the heather. They are like small
chickens, much sought-after on and after
12th September when the grouse-shooting
season starts.
Sometime in 1941 I discovered cycles,
and another school pal who had two
cycles said I could try out his older
bike. Surprisingly I soon found that I
could ride it, and was soon pedalling
all around Cowling until my pal wanted
his bike back. I remember the bike was a
‘sit up and beg’ model with lovely big
rubber handgrips on the handlebars, no
mudguards, one complete pedal and one
pedal shaft, so you had to be careful.
Another activity I enjoyed was climbing
trees. One of my favourite trees was
down in ‘the bottoms’ behind the old
wooden chippy at the bottom of the
village on the site of the old village
tip or dump. It was a lovely tree to
climb, probably a sycamore. The branches
were spaced so well that it was like
climbing up stairs. From the top I had a
super view right up towards the Pinnacle
or behind, down to the beck.
Moving on to
Secondary School
In the summer of 1943 I took my
scholarship exam, which was all very
strange because I sat it on my own in
the head teacher’s office. It was the
first exam I had ever taken and no-one
explained about time limits, which I
think influenced my results. Instead of
getting a pass, which would have allowed
me to attend the grammar school with
John and my other pals, I got a lower
grade and had to move to Doncaster where
the Brighton Intermediate School had
been evacuated. |
|
