During World War II, thousands of evacuees were sent to Somerset to escape air raids, with over 4,400 to Yeovil alone in 1939. While data for the entire county over the whole war is fragmented, the influx was significant and relied on local households and, in some cases, hostels to accommodate arrivals. The evacuation was part of the wider government plan that saw 1.5 million people moved from cities to safer reception areas in the UK.

 

In September 1939 Stoke saw the first wave of children arrive from Barlby Road School, North Kensington, with another group from the same school joining them in 1940. In addition several families moved to the village privately. It is difficult to imagine the clash of cultures, especially when families suddenly doubled in size and teachers from different walks of life were forced to share the school facilities.

 

Eric Hembrow, in his book ‘Winter Harvest’ gives us some lovely insight as to how the local children were affected, and how it was the major change in village life while he was growing up here:

 

“ [It] started during the afternoon, one day early in September 1939, I was among a group of children, looking on as four somewhat dilapidated coaches discharged their pathetic human cargo. As these evacuees traipsed up the slope and disappeared into the Williams Memorial Hall, we little realised how much our lives would become entwined with these bewildered children.

 

“I returned home later to find two very frightened small boys sitting in our summer house, having been deposited and told to wait, because my mother being one of the ladies on the reception committee was still at the Hall, and my father was working on the moor. I can still see them, 44 years later, sitting motionless, each with a label round his neck, their cardboard gas-mask box across their shoulders, clutching  a paper carrier bag containing a few precious posessions.

 

“It was quite obvious that they were in some discomfort, so I took them up the garden to thre earth privy. I can still remember the extressions as they stared in disbelief at the two level wooden seating arrangement and the newsprint toilet paper. Thgis disbelief was again apparent on the first bath night when a tin bath was brought into the living room and placed before the fire, and filled with water which had been heated in the copper boiler”