Five Ways Evacuation to Monmouth by P.R.Watkins

Part Two

Throughout the five years the pattern of life remained similar. Schoolwork took place cheifly in the afternoons when the facilities of Monmouth School were placed at our disposal. School began at 2 p.m. with roll call and assembly attended by boys, masters and lady helpers and ended between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. depending on the season and a boy's age. Physical Education, football, art, scouts, music, farm work, cadets, the Air Training Corps, Police Cadets and homework filled the mornings. Premises all over Monmouth were used, the Halls of St Mary's Parish Church, the Methodist, Congregational and Baptist Chapels, the Church of England boy's school in Priory Street as well as private houses. For a time the Congregational pews served a sdesks while boys knelt to work and the basement vestry of the Baptist chapel provided equally uncomfortable conditions. The school library was accomodated first in a cupboard in Monmouth Big School and only in 1942 moved to No. 9 Glendower Street which the school rented and where further classrooms were equipped. A Biology laboratory was improvised first in a greenhouse at Leasbrook and later in a stable on the corner of Dixton Road and Monk Street. Practical work however involved catching your own specimens whether they were flies, butterflies and frog-spawn or plants, leaves and flowers. A lasting memory for many was the Headmaster's lessons on astronomy:

"The clean country air around a relatively small country town during the time of complete blackout gave us a wonderful opportunity to study the constellations and their consituent stars. On a clear winter evening the stars not only of our galaxy, but the Milky Way could be seen in numbers which defied any count" (1)

On Sundays the School attended chapel at 10 a.m. in the Congregational church where a Chapel Committee of senior boys planned the services, Prefects read the lessons and visiting precahers addressed the school. The most memorable of these was aman who subsequently joined the staff and preached regularly, the Rev. W.T. Joseph. Shortly before the war he had left St Margaret's, Ladywood, to become Vicar of Rockfield, a tiny parish outside Monmouth towards Newport. "The Rev. Jo" as he was called by all, became one of the most familiar figures around the school: he took over much of the Divinity teaching and preached once a month "sermons which were adapted to the needs of boys and made Chrsitian faith and life relevant, challenging and inspiring". In addition he was splendid support to all, not least the ladies running the hostels, by his unfailing good cheer and ability to call forth the best in everyone. Some boys would attend other churches: the tiny Dixton church by the River Wye near Inglewood was one, whilst another boy recalls that "there were two of us who regularly cycled out to Rockfield each Sunday to ring a peal on the two bells and pump the organ during the service" (2)

At the beginning most boys, masters and lady helpers were all accomodated in billets: in substantial houses, humble cottages and isolated farms in Monmouth and the surrounding hamlets, sometimes signly but often in groups of 2, 4, or even 8. Foster parents were paid 8/6 per week for each boy by the government as a billeting allowance, a figure which even in those days can scarcely have been adequate to feed a growing boy, let alone entertain his parents on their Sunday visits as some evidently expected. There was one young boy who announced on arrival that he could only sleep at night if he had a bottle of Guinness' Stout, when he went to bed. It is not recorded whether he spent a sleepless evacuation. Despite instructions to the contrary there were some well-off parents who contributed a further £1 on their visits and occasioned thereby some degree of acrimony between foster-parents. Many billets were strikingly successful and many Old Boys still keep in touch with the foster-parents of the war years. Others were less so and one old boy is prepared to admit to having eleven billets in three months.

(1) D.E. Davies
(2) M.J.Plenderleith