Ann Spokes-Symonds' Memories of the Home Front in Oxford

Name Ann Spokes Symonds
Interview Date 29th April 2005 and 3rd June 2005
Subjects covered Blackout, Evacuation, Digging for Victory, Entertainment, Make do and Mend, Rationing, Military Presence, V.E. Day
Location Oxford, Rhodes House, Cowley, Somerville, Nuffield College,
People Included Miss Fairbank, Cecil Rhodes

This is an edited extract of a recorded interview conducted by Museum of Oxford with Mrs Ann Spokes-Symonds. It has been submitted to the People’s War website with her permission. A full version of the interview transcript and audio recording will be available at the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies.

Blackout
… they had these hostels for women, and the.. my old um.. matron at school called Miss Fairbank, she was one of the hostel managers … and one night in the war she got a visit from this particular Somerville don, classics don, who came and said that, ‘would Miss Fairbank please come out and lie down on the grass in the back of this house’ which has lawn, gardens and if she did that, it was a cold night, bit wet, if she did that, she would see that there was a little chink of light at the bottom of one of the windows that was not covered. And Miss Fairbank sort of looked up and she could hardly see it, lying on the ground, she said, ‘well she did not think that the pilots in the enemy planes could see it’ and this straight lady said, this don said ‘we have to be perfect!’ she said.

Evacuation
Some didn’t find it very easy of course, coming back. I mean the parents that they had left behind sometimes 5 or 6 years before didn’t see they didn’t relate to their parents at all. They weren’t counselled at all, the parents, they didn’t know that it would be a difficult thing, they just thought the children would come in and love them just as before, you know, come back and um… the children had left their ‘mummy’ back in in America you know. Sad really …

So I was lucky, I did did relate, I was back again with my parents. Um.. loving them as I did before, you know, but there were lots who didn’t.

Digging for Victory
Yes it was really sort of Digging For Victory they called it…
I mean I dug up the flower beds and planted vegetables. I mean this was supposed to help the war effort and it did really. It meant we didn’t have to buy vegetables you know, we were growing them ourselves. My parents didn’t have time to do that um… when they were doing the other things they needed to do so…I felt I was helping a bit…

Entertainment
... this was the writer of the American Oxonian, ‘cos there were a lot of Americans of course still in the …most of them had to go home, the writer of the Oxford Letter, that’s writing back to tell them what’s happening in Oxford, explained, um… “…Old rowing men would realise that it would take nothing less than a German submarine in the Isis to interfere with Eights Week…” It was rather a nice way of summing it up that all was sort of trying to go on as usual there …

There were dances at Rhodes House for American Servicemen. They were both Army and Air Force I think and it was great fun, I mean they were fairly regular dances you’ve got this picture here of it, which is, you know brings back the memories really. There is er.. Cecil, portrait of Cecil Rhodes, looking down on the dancers, the floor is absolutely packed. This is in the large room at Rhodes House, I think it’s called the Milner Room but I always forget which room is which. But um… some, girls are in long dresses, not everybody had a long dress in those days, towards the end of the war, and some in short and I think they very much enjoyed meeting ordinary Oxford girls. Some of us were undergraduates so there was you know plenty to talk about really and I suspect really the whole idea of these dances was to introduce American servicemen to nice girls. I say nice girls to compare with the good-time girls who waited outside the Randolph for the Americans. In those days we called them the prostitutes and they were right sort of on the corner there of Beaumont Street and um.. Magdalene Street west and one often saw them there waiting. So I rather suspect, as I say, that this was to show them that there were some nice girls as well. I met some very interesting servicemen. I, er.. I particularly I can see in this picture that there is not one black serviceman. Well, having been in America and met some some very nice black people I was rather felt that I should befriend this chap and we did actually correspond for a little while. I think they got quite home-sick some of these servicemen. They were quite young. Strangely enough his name was… I forget his first name but his last name was Black, that was his name, so I wrote to Officer Black, or whatever his.. I can’t remember now what his, or whether he was a Private or um…but I’d hoped that that would sort of help him not to be so home-sick but they were great fun and um.. course there were the um… the airbases round as well. That’s about all I can remember I’m afraid.

Make do and Mend
I have got …, a picture of my mother in one of the skirts I made out of blackout material, with um…blue and red ribbons round the bottom of it. I wanted clothes to go to dances and things, … so I made a dress… now felt was off the ration, and so I made a skirt of felt and found an old bit of material for the top so I think there was a lot of make-do-and mend in those days.

Rationing
I said about the oranges, but there were bananas now…children under, I think…I can’t remember what age, but very young children were allowed bananas, and er… I think perhaps one.. one a week or something. Well, my brother Rodney was only 17months old and a bit older after that obviously but…, and at the time we all told him he didn’t like bananas and this enabled other members of the family to have them cos they missed bananas but um… so what he didn’t know he didn’t miss!

Military Presence
Well um… the one day I remember going into Oxford and the men were marching because Cornmarket was.. you could just go through Cornmarket, there was no restrictions in Cornmarket, and um.. the the.. some soldiers were marching up and down and people were very very supportive of these soldiers sort of drilling, I don’t know quite why they were all marching down Cornmarket and people were running into Woolworth’s and getting little flags and things and um… and it um… there was there was a little bit of a story that Lady Nuffield had gone into Woolworth’s and bought the smallest flag she could to put on their Rolls or whatever it was they had but … it was quite interesting. I remember it was great excitement seeing the soldiers marching in.

V.E. Day
And then of course there was VE Day then VJ day later so it was almost a year. My sister and I um… my parents didn’t for some reason want to go into Oxford on VE night um…I think they thought it would be too noisy and what-not um…my sister and I were rather keen to go so a friend of my father’s called Ian Taylor who was a master at the High School for Boys who…the entrance was in George Street, um… but their yard looks over Bullock’s Lane and looks over what is now Nuffield College but in those days it had a lovely little row of cottages which were demolished for Nuffield College and I remember… I must have… we must have gone to other places but I remember this so well; Ian took us through the yard of the school and then from the school site you can look at this, look over the wall at this um… Bullock’s Lane and there in nearly every little garden of this, and they only had a very small front garden, were little bonfires um…to celebrate the end of War in Europe and little families and children and they were dancing round their bonfires.

War Work
At University we were supposed to do war work um…some went actually, the Principle at the college worked at Cowley in the munitions place, they …the women there found her ‘socially puzzling’ she said and they asked her what she did and she said ‘oh I…’ and they said ‘are you something to do with the University?’ and she said ‘yes I work in the office’. She happened to be Principle of the college. And they said ‘well, what do we call you?’. She was actually Honourable Eleanor Plumer, but she said ‘Just call me Nel’ so… she really got on very well… but I chose to do gardening. And you could, you could grow vegetables, you know…

Quite a lot of the um.. female dons offered right away war work. And um… one of the things they were all called down to do was to come one evening and make sandwiches at the Old Ice Rink in the Botley Road, make sandwiches for evacuees who were um about to arrive and they were they’d spend the night and everything and they had to sort of jump over the mattresses all on the floor and they made sandwiches all night. … what do you think these dons did all night? Um making sandwiches, what did they talk about… Women’s Education! And there was one don from Sommerville, a Classics don who was very very particular, … she was very particular and when they’d made all the sandwiches and they were on the plates ready, she went round lining them all up properly, cos they felt, she felt they needed to be aligned.

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