In June 1940, schools from Southampton and Portsmouth were evacuated to safe areas, such as Milford, away from the effects of the Blitz bombings.74 years later we tried to get a sense of what it may have been like to have been part of Operation Pied Piper through enjoying a Living History Day.
During the morning we undertook workshops linked to the 'evacuation experience' and then in the afternoon we evacuated the children down to the village green, before moving onto the church hall to meet some local residents with first-hand experience of evacuation.
A huge thank you to Mr Hobby for organising the speakers and for being a font of knowledge about Milford during the war and many thanks to all three of the speakers, who entertained us with tales of searching for shrapnel, watching dog-fights and enjoying the freedom that the war-time countryside afforded them.
Finally, thank you to all the staff and adult helpers, whose costumes and enthusiasm helped to make the day special.
Class 9, shortly before evacuation
Class 11, ready to be evacuated
Children share the contents of their suitcases
Being evacuated to Milford Green
A last lunch together.
Don't tell them your name Pike!
Class 10 await their billets.
Waiting for the billetting officer
Eagerly awaiting our guest speakers
Captain Mainwaring introduces the guests
OUr gusets share their evacuation experiences
A closing group shot.
And once more, in authentic B&W
Top
Cookies
Unfortunately not the ones with chocolate chips.
Our cookies ensure you get the best experience on our website.
Please make your choice!
Cookies
Some cookies are necessary in order to make this website function correctly. These are set
by default and whilst you can block or delete them by changing your browser settings, some
functionality such as being able to log in to the website will not work if you do this.
The necessary cookies set on this website are as follows:
Website CMS
A 'sessionid' token is required for logging in to the website and a 'crfstoken' token is
used to prevent cross site request forgery. An 'alertDismissed' token is used to prevent
certain alerts from re-appearing if they have been dismissed.
Matomo
We use
Matomo cookies
to improve the website performance by capturing information such as browser and device
types. The data from this cookie is anonymised.
reCaptcha
Cookies are used to help distinguish between humans and bots on contact forms on this
website.
Cookie notice
A cookie is used to store your cookie preferences for this website.
Cookies that are not necessary to make the website work, but which enable additional
functionality, can also be set. By default these cookies are disabled, but you can choose to
enable them below: