Wartime Bartlow – Memories of Catriona Ogilvy
Professor Robert McCance (Mac) was an eminent research scientist at the University of Cambridge from 1938 until his death in 1993. His experimental work made a significant contribution to the war effort. He and his family lived at The Dower House in Bartlow throughout WW2. His daughter, Catriona Ogilvy, who was aged 12 at the outbreak of war continues to live in the village and shares her memories of Bartlow in Wartime………………
I was enjoying a very happy childhood with my family in Dulwich when my father was invited to move his research team from Kings College Hospital up to Cambridge to take up his post as Reader of Medicine. My mother, having been a medical student at Cambridge and knowing how claustrophobic academia could be, was adamant she did not wish to live too near the University. Bartlow was chosen for its station so that she could take the train up to London to visit friends, the theatre, galleries etc. Little did she know that within weeks of buying The Dower House war would be declared and jolly trips to London would be a thing of the past for her.
We took a short holiday in Norfolk before moving in but war was declared while we were away and by the time we got back to our new home evacuees had already been billeted on us. Ma Morgan and her three little boys had arrived from London’s East End and were to stay with us for two and a half years. Other people’s evacuees went home but ours didn’t show any sign of leaving. I can remember Mrs. Morgan sitting on the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette with her legs dangling while my mother and grandmother took care of her boys. As war continued more and more people left London and joined us in Bartlow. We were already a family of four and Granny plus the three evacuees when my mother’s friend, a musician called Eva, moved in bringing her sister, Mrs. Constance Willoughby who taught eurhythmics, and Mrs. Willoughby’s cat! My friend Val and her parents, “Uncle Philip” and “Auntie Grace”, came to stay plus their dog. People were very keen to get out of London if they could and the Dower House began to fill up. My brother Colin’s friend, Ken Ogilvy, would spend school holidays with us too – dear reader, I married him (but much later).
Two local girls, Peggy and Joan Dockerill (from what is now 7 Camps Road), helped my mother in the house and also lived in. When the air raid siren sounded and we all took to the cellar it was quite a crush. One night down there Peggy and Joan were sleeping on a Li-Lo when Ken thought it would be hilarious to pull out the stopper and let it down. Shrieks and giggles all round! There was no air raid siren in the Village, just an air raid warden, Fred Dockerill, who had to cycle around blowing short blasts on his whistle to alert the villagers to the danger. He was supposed to cycle around again giving one long blast to signal the “all clear” but he was often so puffed out cycling up the hill that he didn’t have the breath for one long blast and we rarely got the “all clear” up at The Dower House.
I was away at school during term time and didn’t enjoy it one bit – “happiest days of your life” – I didn’t think so! I would count the days until I could come home to Bartlow for the holidays but when I did things were changing. Soldiers had taken over Bartlow Park, first the Queens Own Bays followed by the Royal Engineers (the latter only left when they were sent to France immediately following the D-Day landings). The Old School (now Chetwynd House) had become a YMCA canteen for the soldiers and my mother was running it with help from one of the other village ladies. The soldiers really appreciated the Canteen and I still have many letters they wrote to my mother after they moved on. She was coming back to the Dower House one dark night with all the takings when she suddenly heard a man very close to her – she heard his loud cough. She froze but then realised it was a sheep. She was always escorted home after that.
The Dower House had changed too. It had been repainted in camouflage colours when it was suspected that German pilots were using the white chimney to navigate their way. At one stage German bombers were coming over every night on their way to or coming back from bombing London in the Blitz. Several bombs were dropped in and around the village as bombers unloaded the last of their payload on their way back to Europe after a bombing mission. Two cottages in Tin Alley were destroyed.
As well as organising the somewhat eclectic band of residents at The Dower House and running the Canteen, my mother also sold War Savings Bonds around the village and I used to help her when I was at home. I got to know a lot of people in the village in this way. Most people worked on Lord de Ramsey’s estate which was being managed by John Talbot from The Old Hall. (My mother was not that keen on the Talbots who she thought had a rather high opinion of themselves). All the Turners, the Ives, the Richardsons, the Dockerills, the Plumbs and the Mynotts were farm workers and their families. Those who didn’t work for de Ramsey worked for Tom Fairey at Little Barham Hall - tractor drivers, farm labourers, herdsmen, dairy men and shepherds. The exceptions were Mr. and Mrs. Morley who ran the Post Office and General Store at what is now Dean Lodge (she was popular but he was grumpy), Mr. and Mrs. May who ran the Three Hills pub (very popular with the soldiers), Mr. Sturgeon the stationmaster and Fred Bird, a builder. I wish I could remember the name of the Vicar but I can’t. He made a comment about the weather once and forever after I have thought of him as The Reverend Muggy Winters.
My mother was also called upon from time to time to swell the numbers in the audience of the concert parties that were put on by the Army at Bartlow Park to try to keep the soldiers entertained. She took me with her sometimes but I can only remember a rather feeble conjuror. I got the impression that any of them who admitted to being able to do a “turn” was expected to oblige. I don’t know what the troops thought of it but I wasn’t impressed.
When the war was finally over, our band of visitors gradually dispersed although our friends Val and Ken stayed when they could. We four spent a lot of our spare time dancing to music on a wind up gramophone in the drawing room at The Dower House. Everything was “make do and mend” and I remember attending a ball at Ken’s college in Cambridge after he was demobbed. My dress was made of parachute silk but I had to wear my school coat over it which may have lessened the glamour of the ensemble. My mother was asked to plant an oak tree on the playing field to commemorate the end of the war. (An oak tree still stands there but I have to be honest and say that it is a replacement as the original failed to thrive).
The village gratefully settled into peacetime but things were never quite the same. The soldiers had gone but so had the two cottages that had been bombed. Men who had been made Special Constables or Air Raid Wardens gave up their duties but also their status. Bartlow Park had been left in a bit of a mess by the Army but Fred Bird and his builders were commissioned to put it back to rights. It was let to a Rev. Marriott of Westminster whose London home had been bombed. The family had yet to move in although their belongings including the grand piano had arrived. Poor old Rev. Marriott didn’t have much luck as one very snowy night in the harsh winter following the war I was looking out of my bedroom window at The Dower House when I saw smoke and flames across the road at Bartlow Park. My mother phoned the fire brigade who had to come from Linton. All the shopkeepers and tradesmen that made up the fire crew came rushing up to Bartlow, but it was so bitterly cold that their hoses froze solid. I watched as the first floor collapsed and enormous flames shot up into the sky like in the film “Rebecca”. The house was destroyed before they could extinguish the fire. Afterwards my mother invited the heroes in for hot drinks and to use our telephone but when they left we found one of them had left a cigarette burning by the phone – a second conflagration was narrowly averted.
Bartlow House
School House
Dower House