Joy Townsend was six years old when war broke out in 1939 and she was evacuated to Barnard Castle. Ruth Addicott listens to her story.

WHEN the Second World War broke out in 1939 and the Government issued an order to evacuate 3.5m children, Joy Fry was one of them.

Railway men worked through the night to get trains to evacuation departure stations and bus and coach drivers did the same. By 4am the following morning, the evacuation was under way and people lined the streets, watching in silence as their children were led away. Parents were not allowed to walk with them or go into the stations. There was no opportunity to say goodbye. They had no idea where their children were going, who they would be living with or when they would return.

Although Joy’s experience was different to most, it is something she will never forget and she is hoping to encourage other people to come forward and share their memories.

Joy, now Joy Townsend, was six years old when war broke out and she had to leave her home in Lincolnshire to live with her grandparents in Barnard Castle. Unlike other children who went alone, she moved with her mother, her brother Ken and four-month-old sister, Colette.

“Many of us remember the images of young children carrying cases or bags containing a change of clothes, gas mask and their names written on luggage labels attached to their coats, but many mothers with babies or young children under five were also part of the evacuation,” says Joy. “They moved with their children to safe areas to stay with strangers and relatives in the country and I was one of those children.”

Joy was born in Barnard Castle, but grew up in a brand new council house at the RAF base in Cranwell, Lincolnshire, where her father was posted. It couldn’t have been more different to the old Victorian house her grandparents owned in Bridgegate, Barnard Castle.

“It was a beautiful three-storey house with big windows, original wooden shutters and window seats,” she says. “We had a room on the first floor which I shared with my mother, brother and sister. There was an old Victorian wardrobe, bookcase, big round table and wash stand with a bowl, but no bathroom, the toilet was in the yard.”

Joy remembers lugging buckets of coal for the fire up and down two flights of stairs, and the endless buckets of slops and water – there were no taps.

Her grandma’s sister lived in the room on the top floor and Joy shared a small bed with her brother and six-year-old cousin, Roy, who slept across their feet at the bottom. As the war went on, her aunt and uncle moved in downstairs and at one point, there were 12 people living in the house. “Things were very overcrowded, but it was a lovely atmosphere,” she says.

With everyone doing their bit for the war effort, Joy and her friend, Elsie Hay, held jumble sales and concerts in the yard.

“We’d dress up and come in lined up like the Tiller Girls and sing and dance,” she says. “We raised £15 and 11 shillings and sent it to Mrs Churchill’s Aid To Russia fund and she sent me a beautiful hand-written letter back, thanking us. I was absolutely thrilled. I’ve still got it.”

Although she never witnessed a real air raid, Joy remembers having to put on a gas mask for practice in school. “They were smelly and rubbery,” she says. “We had to file out, sit in a shelter and were given a barley sugar sweet as a treat.”

She had never experienced snow before she came to Barnard Castle and also remembers getting big sheets of cardboard, rubbing candle wax on the underside and sledging down the hills.

“During the war, we were always told to eat carrots, because we’d see in the dark,” she says. “I can remember going to the pictures on a Saturday afternoon, on the way there I’d go to the shop and buy a carrot, scrape it with my picture money and eat it in the pictures in the dark.”

Joy stayed in Barnard Castle until she married her husband Len (better known as Johnnie) in 1952 and moved to London.

Len, who is from Bethnal Green in the East End of London, was also an evacuee and was sent to a tiny village in Suffolk at the age of nine. He had a very different experience to Joy and lived with three separate families.

It is through Len that Joy became involved with the Evacuees Reunion Association and they now run the Essex and East London group. The charity has more than 2,000 members worldwide and enabled Joy to obtain a copy of the school register from Barnard Castle in 1939, listing the names of children who joined that year.

“We’d love to get more members,” she says. “Many people have met up with people from the past and a lot find they can talk to each other about things they have kept to themselves, it was such a sad time that many people have shut it out.”

While they still have family in the region, Joy and Len now live in Upminster and have three daughters, five grand-children and one great grand-daughter. They celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary in June, but Barnard Castle will always have a place in their hearts as it was at a church youth club in ‘Barney’ that they met.

“It was full of 18-year-old boys doing their National Service and the girls would go along and serve them sandwiches and cups of tea,” says Joy. “We’d have a sing-song and it ended up a bit like a dating agency.’ Was it love it first sight?

“It might have been for me, but he went out with my best friend first,” she chuckles. “I had to wait.”

• The charity is appealing to anyone who was an evacuee or has a relative or friend who was evacuated to get in touch and apply for a certificate of recognition. Visit evacuees.org.uk