Dad and I walked miles at weekends trying to find somewhere to live. We couldn’t even find rooms – four children were a lot to house. In desperation Dad bought a disused railway coach and rented a piece of land at Dungeness on which to put it. He was going to transform it into a bungalow.

Moving day arrived; the furniture was to go by train. Freda and Thelma were to stay with Aunts until Mum was settled in and Dad was staying in Ashford and joining us at the weekend. Cyril and I went off with Mum on a beautiful June morning, loaded up with cases and the babies pushchair piled high with things we would need until the furniture arrived. There were only two trains a day to ungeness and I think we were the only passengers on it that day. We arrived at the tiny station to find not a soul in sight and a beach stretching for miles. Cyril and I just stared at the scene. Before us was a tall lighthouse surrounded by the keepers’ cottages, an old fort that was built for the 1914 war and to the left of that a lower lighthouse that also housed a foghorn. In between were a few converted railway coaches and a few fishermen’s cottages dotted about. Not having a clue as to where to go, Mum knocked at the lighthouse keeper’s door, asking if he knew where Mr Lusted’s bungalow was; she explained that Dad had bought a railway coach but it was going to be just like a bungalow, and had rented a plot of land. The keeper looking very puzzled said “The latest one here is on the railway siding over there”. He took us across to it and yes, it had our name on it.

Of course, it was high off the ground and there was no way we could climb into it. There we stood, in our best clothes, Mum wearing a posh hat trimmed with artificial fruits, very fashionable then, that she had worn so that it didn’t get crushed. Mr Bennett, the lighthouse keeper, left us standing there saying he would see what he could do. After a time he returned with a large wooden sleeper that he managed to prop up against the door. Mum climbed up, fitted the key in and opened the door expecting to find the compartments upholstered so that we would at least be able to make our beds up on the seats until the furniture arrived, but what a sight met our eyes. Each compartment was stripped of fabric and padding. They were just large, bare shells covered in soot and grime from the steam trains, with tin tacks sticking out everywhere. We looked in disbelief! After our lovely, spotless home we were faced with these sooty, dirty compartments.

When Mum had recovered from the shock she said “It’s no use crying, we will have to do the best we can”. We sorted out some older clothes, carefully folding the ones we had been wearing and piled them up with all our luggage beside the railway line. There was only one track. Mr Bennett was most helpful and lent us a hammer, pinchers, a bucket and several other useful things. We found a well nearby and set to work trying to get a couple of compartments reasonably clean. Sweeping soot and pulling out tacks we didn’t notice the goats who had collected around our luggage and saw them just as one goat was munching Mum’s best hat. All that was left were the fruits and the brim hanging from his mouth. *My hat!” shouted Mum, but Cyril and I just collapsed with laughter, it looked so funny. The goats had eaten quite a few things and we chased them off and stowed what was left in one of the compartments.

We were nearing teatime and Mum sent Cyril and I off to find driftwood along the shore. We came back with as much as we could carry and Mum made a hole in the beach and managed to make a fire and boiled up some water for tea. Then we scrubbed and cleaned until daylight began to fade. Having got two compartments reasonably clean we made up a bed of sorts on the floor, Mum in one and Cyril and I next door. We talked far into the night. We both felt scared. It was quite eerie for, as the light from the lighthouse revolved everything lit up and the old fortress looked dark and sinister. We felt scared too for our future.

Tired out we eventually fell asleep when suddenly we were awakened by a loud crash and we shot across the floor. Grabbing each other, our hearts pounding, we ventured to look out of the window and found Mum was doing the same. We were being shunted along the railway track. I don’t know who was most astonished, the engine driver or us. He climbed down from the engine and came and spoke to Mum who explained why we were there. “Sorry Missus”, he said, “I’ve come to load up with ballast. There is no siding here so you’ll have to come with us. I’ll uncouple you when I’ve finished.” This happened on several nights!

We seemed to be pulling tacks, scrubbing and cleaning for days. We then learned that our furniture had been sent to Scotland by mistake and was somewhere on the railway line.

Dad’s first job was to build a loo; this was a wooden structure with an Elsan chemical closet. Next he knocked out some of the partitions in the carriages, making two large rooms and one small one. Mum and Dad had the small room and the other two were a living room and bedroom which we children shared. We scraped and painted and papered until all was ready for when our furniture arrived. There was no gas or heating of any kind and so Mum built a little fire on the beach and on this she managed to boil the water and produce a meal for us. Cyril and I got up early each morning to find driftwood along the shore to keep the fire going. Mum improvised and always managed to make us a hot meal of some sort. She was just incredible!

Eventually the furniture came. It was heaven to sleep in a bed again. The floor seemed to get harder every night. Freda and Thelma joined us now so once more we were all together.

Cyril and I thought our new way of living was a great adventure, everything so different and strange. There was just one small shop, open a few hours each day, and no milkman or baker. Most people had their own goats, so Mum and Dad bought two. We named them Princess and Darky. The goats would roam anywhere and come home at night to be milked.

Dad cycled to work in Ashford each day, a distance of about twenty miles and he did this for some time, but when winter came he took lodgings in Ashford, coming home at weekends. When he arrived home on a Friday evening he would give me a penny pocket money, and I felt so lucky and so rich!

In September Cyril, Thelma and I went to our new school. It was situated by the side of the railway lines quite a long way from us and we used to walk there along the railway track. Those of us with long legs would try to jump from one sleeper to the other.

Most of the children wore “back-stays” over their shoes; these were wooden platforms with a strap across to hold them on, and one could slide over the beach with a “clipper-clopper” sound. There were only about fifty to sixty pupils in the school, all different ages. We had a Miss Willman as headmistress and a Miss Ovenden to help her. It was quite a long time before we made any new friends. Many of the children’s dads were fishermen, most of whom were related to each other. Then there were the lighthouse keeper’s children and the coastguards children. We were the odd ones out.

We had no very close neighbours. The cottages and converted railway carriages were quite a distance from each other but we had the lighthouse children not far from us and the coastguard homes a bit further away.

We gradually began to know the children; then one day a girl about my age came crying to our door. “Mum’s ill and Dad’s out on his fishing boat and I don’t know what to do”. Mum hurried back with her and helped deliver a new baby and stayed with her until the midwife arrived. After this we became friendly and quite often would find a “fry of fish” at the back door.

Schooldays were very happy; Our headmistress, Miss Wiltman, was a remarkable woman who took great pride in her school and tried to make us children proud of it too. She called it “The School Beautiful”. The lighthouse was our school emblem, with the beams of light shining out and our motto, which was proudly displayed on the wall, was “Kindness, honesty and helping to play the game”. We took this very seriously and tried to live up to it. If any child should steal or do anything wrong, the motto was turned face to the wall, and we all thought it was dreadful.

Behaving well in school was something that came naturally to most of us in those days, for we knew that if we were in trouble at school, we would be in further trouble at home once our Mum and Dad were told of our wrong doings. I always wanted to be good and behave and would have hated Miss Willman to think badly of me. Happily that never happened!

Miss Willman wrote a school song which I can still remember:

Away by the sea, where God’s air blows free,
Surrounded by beach and by stone,
Stands a quaint little school, a school that we love
And one that we are proud to own.

Chorus:

The school, the school beautiful
The school we’re proud to claim,
That teaches us through shine and shower
Always to play the game.

When school days are o’er and we’re parted once more
May we ever remember its name
And always be true to the school beautiful
And continue to play the game.

I tried desperately hard to live up to these wonderful words.

At Christmas we had a concert. All the children were involved in some way. What fun we had, rehearsing and dressing up, and then the parents came to see the show. We would be so proud of ourselves.

Life was very changed from the one we had in Ashford, and when winter came and Dad was away during the week we all missed him so much.

There is no soil at Dungeness, just shingle. We had been used to having supplies of vegetables and fruit from the allotment, but now there was nowhere to plant things, and with Dad working so far from home there was certainly no time for him to try to find somewhere to grow supplies again. Now everything had to be bought.

Weekends were spent building our home. After Dad had furnished the main room and bedrooms he built a large verandah at the front and a nice big living room at the back. This room had two windows, a kitchen range at one end and a large dresser with cupboards at the other. This all took a long time. Dad and Mum worked so hard but until this was all built Mum managed with a fire outside on the beach and a couple of oilstoves in the house. How my dear Mum managed that first winter was a miracle but she always managed to produce a meal of some sort.

When the tide was out in the evening Dad would throw out two long fishing lines and pull them in at early morning. Sometimes he caught plaice, pouting, cod, whiting or dog fish, and this was a great supplement to our diet.

After a while Mum started a little tea room, mostly for the people who came to fish from the shore. We had just begun to get a few regulars when the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch railway was built with a very nice restaurant at the station, so, of course, this finished our tearoom. Poor Mum. She must have been so disappointed. She worked so very hard for us all. All this, I think, was about 1926, when the general strike was on and times were very hard with no wages coming in.

Dad found a little job in Dungeness where they dealt in stones. There was a huge crusher where some of the stones were crushed; Blue flintstones were the most profitable. I can’t remember much about it except helping Dad, when I wasn’t at school, gathering the different types of stones. Cyril and I often got very cold and wet trying to dodge the waves to get the larger flints before the sea look them back again. These were gathered into baskets and carried up the beach to skips which were situated on a small railway line. When they were full they were pushed to the depot to be weighed. It was jolly hard work for Dad but he did it for some time, and through his hard work he became foreman of the small firm. Now he no longer needed to go to Ashford.

Mum and Dad had some good ideas between them, one of them being a flagpole which Dad rigged up and Mum would hoist the flag to let us know lunch was ready.

Sometimes money was very scarce and Mum invented all kinds of things for us to eat. One was “kettledrum”, as she called it. This was a piece of bread soaked in boiling water, with salt and pepper added. We had this to warm us up if there wasn’t enough milk, but usually we had a bowl of bread and milk.

As time went by we made many friends and Cyril spent many hours with the coastguards. When he was only 11 years old he could use Morse code. He built us a crystal wireless set with two pairs of earphones and in the evenings it was placed in Mum’s mixing bowl, to amplify the sound, and set in the centre of the table whilst we all lent towards it to try to hear. We thought this was a miracle and I admired my brother so much.

When Freda was five she joined us at school. She often grazed her knees trying to jump the sleepers like us; her little legs were not quite long enough.

When Miss Ovenden moved away we were left with just Miss Willman to teach us. I was coming up to the leaving age of 14 and had been voted “The Most Popular Girl in the School”. I remember the Head Boy trying to put my necklace prize around my neck. We were facing each other and both our faces were as red as beetroots as he struggled and struggled with the clasp. It didn’t occur to either of us that I should turn around!

Miss Willman had great plans for me and got me a job teaching the infants, with her guidance. I was paid £1 a month and was studying hard, hoping one day to become a teacher but fate was to deal me an unkind hand.

Just before my fifteenth birthday, Mum and Dad sadly told me that they had got me a job as a “between maid” in London where my cousin Alice was a cook. They said they could no longer afford to keep me and they knew that in this job I would be well fed and looked after. I would be one less for them to feed and clothe. I felt as if the bottom had fallen out of my world. I loved my Mum and Dad deeply and could hardly believe I was being sent away. It wasn’t until some years later that I realised they had done this, they thought, for my own good, and they were as heartbroken as I was. Life could be so hard.

The school children got together and bought me a large suitcase as a leaving present, but were unaware that as my clothes were so few it was mostly packed out with newspaper. Two weeks before my fifteenth birthday Mum took me to my new job. The school children and Miss Willman all stood along the railway line to wave me off. Tears stung my eyes as I waved goodbye to all my friends, my mentor, and The School Beautiful I was so unhappy to have to go away and as the train left the station the children all started singing “For she’s a jolly good fellow”. I thought my heart would break.