Charles Pearson's Memories of the Home Front in Oxford

Name Charles Pearson
Interview Date 20th April 2005
Subjects covered Childhood (games), Evacuation, Entertainment,
Location Oxford, Bury Knowles Park, Headington, St. Clements, Gloucester Green, St. Ebbe’s,
People Included

This is an edited extract of a recorded interview conducted by Museum of Oxford with Mr Charles Pearson. 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.

Childhood
… things were simple then because our toys were…well we made up our own things you see… like playing marbles. It sounds awful now but we used to play with these marbles along the gutter. Or against the wall and er… we also had on the er… milkbottles you had these cardboard milktops and we used to um.. use these for flicking up against the wall.. you could flick ‘em and the one nearest to the wall took the opponents milk tokens.. milk top. Lots of things. And a game called five stones. You had five like little square stones in colour and you used to… what you used to play five stones made up little games which was quite interesting. And of course in the conker season you used to play our conkers and another interesting fact we used to go to quite a lot of film shows and if there was a film like er… Robin Hood we all used to go and make our bow and arrows you see and er… or have our guns for war games we was all brought up on this sort of stuff but it didn’t do us any harm. No. No.

Evacuation
Yes, well I remember um… starting in London. We assembled with my mother and my sister and brother at Upton Park Station, West Ham in London and we travelled by train to Oxford because I was so young I didn’t know where I was going but, um.. we arrived in Oxford and I well remember um… er… coming off the train onto the platforms and we were assembled at the station and we had to walk in a column down to St. Ebbes to the… where they billeted people and from then on we were given billets in St. Ebbes and um…

I I can tell you one school in Headington we went to called the St. Andrew’s school, opposite the Bury Knowles Park in Headington, it’s also known as the Field School, well because of the overcrowding because of the evacuees from London and elsewhere they opened up a place called the Hollyoake Hall in Headington and er… it was a dance hall, a big dance hall and erm… the actual dance hall they made up with about one classroom at one end and one the other and the Ladies’ Powder Room was another classroom… that sort of thing but we had happy times there.

Rationing / Entertainment
Well there were shortages, but um… I mean we, we lived reasonably well through the war because we always had a square meal, we were never hungry and another interesting fact is they used to have erm… what they used to call Municipal Restaurants around the city. There used to be one in Gloucester Green. And these Municipal Restaurants, you could always tell them, they always painted red… I think they were for some reason. They had one in Headington, one in St. Clements, one in, er… Gloucester Green. That’s the three I can remember quite well. And er.. you could go in there and pay about… think it was about 9pence, in old money, in old pence for quite a good square meal which consisted of er… the main meal and a sweet and a drink maybe all for 9pence. Yeah, very good.

I can remember the shops being um…well the shops in those days, they were really nice shops they were very smart shops. Nice old family names. I could mention one or two if you would like me to…well, like Zachariah’s and their slogan was “Zach’s for Macs” it was a very high class shop in Cornmarket. Then you had The Cadina, Cadina Bakery which is, er.. just the other side of where the HMV …that used to be the Cadina or thereabouts. And you could always tell the Cadina it was a beautiful smell of bread and cakes … oh it was lovely, beautiful and they used to have, err…. people used to go in there for afternoon teas and all this sort of business, very civilized. Not us kids went in there but people did go in there for a nice afternoon tea. You had er… Lyons Corner House, that was quite nice. That was where um… just by the Lloyds bank, just on the corner of Carfax and its … that was quite nice. Yes, there were very nice places around. And also the er.. you had the er… the cinemas. Where Marks and Spencer’s is now in Queen Street, was the Electra cinema. That was one of our favourite haunts when we were teenagers. And, er… across the road was the 50schilling tailors and above that was a snooker hall, er… which is still a restaurant I believe, it’s a restaurant… so that was one of our haunts. Um… yeah.

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