A Policeman’s Wartime Wedding

This story is submitted by Terry Ransome a volunteer at The British Schools Museum in Hitchin.

My father and mother were married on Wednesday 10th January 1940, at St Andrew’s Church Ashingdon, Essex.

The photograph shows the reception in St Andrew’s Hall. It looks as if the decorations are still in place from Christmas, and from the sign hanging from the ceiling, the hall was used by the Girl’s Club.

The Best Man was Mr R Brett. The bridesmaids were (from left to right in the photo) Miss Edna Carver (sister of the bride), Miss Hazel Ransome, (niece of the groom), and Miss Dora Carver (sister of the bride). The bride was given away by her brother Mr Horace Carver — on right of the ‘top table’.

The wedding was only four months after the start of the war, and it seems there was no shortage of material for wedding and bridesmaids’ dresses. The reception was not a grand affair — but fully in keeping with my mother and father’s way of life. I’m often asked if the cake was cardboard, as apparently was often the case in times of strict rationing. I don’t know the answer to that.

The seating arrangement is quite formal — bride’s family on the left of the picture, groom’s on the right. No mixing and socialising here!

My father was a constable in the Essex Police, Rochford Division. He had joined in the mid 1930’s after being made redundant from a pattern-making apprenticeship at Ransome Sims and Jefferies engineering works in Ipswich — and the Ransome in that company name is no relation to our Ransome family, it seems.

As was the practice then when a policeman married, especially, I believe, a girl from the area in which he served, Dad was immediately posted away to Great Hallingbury, near Bishops Stortford. Mum and Dad set up home in the village Police House at 154 Bedlars Green, Great Hallingbury.

They often related to me and my sister Margaret the time when a doodle-bug landed and demolished the bungalow opposite that police house, and they took in the lady who lived there - Mrs Judd.

They soon found a house nearby (‘Gerald Villa’) for my Grandmother Jessie Carver and my aunts Edna and Dora Carver (the bridesmaids) to move into, and by doing so to get away from the bombing runs over the Southend area and up the Thames to London.

But, as luck and the Constabulary would have it, they were then transferred again to Fyfield near Ongar, Essex — their identity cards show they registered there, living at “The Police House” on 25th May 1944.

So, as she often recalled, Mum had to make frequent trips on her bike back to Hallingbury to see her mother — usually returning in the dark with the front lamp shielded and therefore pretty useless.

The job at Fyfield was much the same — that of the village bobby, patrolling the countryside by bicycle, with Mum left to answer the telephone and take messages from visitors and callers. Unpaid, but an expected duty at that time, war or not.

A story Dad told from that time: He had just arrived in the area and was riding around on his bike to get to know the area. Quite late in the day he called into the local US air base at Willingale, only to be arrested by the military police and held overnight. He had seen planes with white stripes on the wings. It was part of the force assembling for D-Day. They couldn’t risk him going off and talking about what he’d seen — he was after all a stranger to them, police uniform or not.

They let him go next morning once they had verified his identity with the police station.

In memoriam Thomas George Ransome 1911-1992; Eileen Denise Ransome 1919-2004

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