The evacuee who made Spaldwick her home
Sent away from London at the age of five, Sylvia Black arrived in Spaldwick carrying a gas mask and a label bearing her name. What began as a frightening wartime separation developed into a lifelong connection with the village. Below, recorded by Chris Hubbard, Sylvia recalls her arrival and childhood in her own words.
A five-year-old arrives in Spaldwick
In September 1940, with the Second World War little more than a year old, five-year-old Sylvia was evacuated from Acton in west London. She travelled with her older brother while their father was serving in the war. Like thousands of other children, they left home carrying a few possessions, their gas masks and labels intended to ensure that they reached the correct destination.
Sylvia later remembered arriving at Huntingdon station in a navy-blue coat, carrying her gas mask and wearing her name label. From there she was brought to Spaldwick. Her brother was billeted separately nearby, leaving the two children parted in an unfamiliar village far from their parents.
In June 2008, Sylvia told Spaldwick News that her earliest memory of her new home was standing near a pantry door and reaching for the latch because she wanted to return to her mother and father. It is a small detail, but one that captures something often lost in accounts of wartime evacuation: behind the official arrangements was a frightened five-year-old who did not yet understand why she had been sent away.
A new home with “Auntie Winn”
Sylvia was placed in the care of Winnie Woodham, always known to her as “Auntie Winn”. In her 2008 account she associated Winnie with The Gables; in her later interview she described being billeted in a cottage adjoining The George, on the part of the property subsequently used as its restaurant. Further family and property research may help reconcile those descriptions, but both accounts place Winnie at the centre of Sylvia’s new life.
The initial homesickness gradually subsided. Sylvia said that she settled well, was given books and other treats, and felt thoroughly cared for. The relationship created by evacuation did not end when the war did: Auntie Winn eventually lived with Sylvia’s own family and remained with them until her death in 1994.
Sylvia’s brother found evacuation much harder. According to Sylvia, he ran away on more than one occasion, walked to Huntingdon and managed to conceal himself on a train back to London. His repeated attempts to reach home offer a poignant counterpoint to Sylvia’s eventual attachment to Spaldwick.
Growing up as “That Evacuee”
Life in Spaldwick was very different from life in Acton. Sylvia had known gas lighting in London; her new home used candles and had an outside lavatory. There was no cinema, but the village and surrounding countryside offered freedoms and experiences she had never known.
She learned how to milk cows, made tents and played in the fields. She remembered fairs and fêtes at the old school in Berry Close, complete with swing boats and roundabouts, and dances in the Victory Hall near the corner of Royston Avenue. Children went into the cornfields at harvest, watched threshing, skated on frozen ponds and fished in the brook.
At Spaldwick School she was sometimes sent to stand behind the blackboard for passing notes, scraping chairs or other mischief. Other pupils occasionally called her “That Evacuee”. Sylvia recalled the phrase without self-pity: she said it did not trouble her greatly and she simply carried on. By then, Spaldwick felt like home.
The war remained present in village childhood. Sylvia particularly remembered American servicemen stationed nearby visiting the school with sweets and hot chocolate—small luxuries that became enduring memories.
Looking back in 2020, Sylvia said she valued the freedom children enjoyed in the village: the ability to explore fields, ponds and the brook in a way that later generations rarely could.
The Spaldwick Sylvia knew
The June 2020 edition of Spaldwick News accompanied Sylvia’s interview with three views of Spaldwick taken in the 1950s. They are taken from our Spaldwick Photography Archive. They do not show Sylvia, but they preserve the village around her during the period in which Spaldwick was becoming her permanent home. Thanks to Louise Brown of Huntingdonshire District Council for providing eight historical photographs of Spaldwick, from a 1950 advert survey undertaken by the Council.
Returning—and staying
After the war, Sylvia returned to Acton, but the move did not last. By the following summer holiday she was back in Spaldwick, and this time she remained. The village to which she had first been sent as a frightened child became the place in which she built her adult life.
She later married an RAF serviceman based at nearby Brampton, and they had a daughter in Spaldwick. Auntie Winn joined their household, completing the transformation of a wartime billeting arrangement into a lasting family relationship.
Over the decades Sylvia witnessed enormous changes. In 2008 she recalled the disappearance of the village sweet shop, cobbler, baby shop, blacksmith, two grocery shops, the old Post Office and the café. What she missed particularly was the mixing of generations. She remembered the celebrations for the Silver Jubilee in 1977 as perhaps the last great occasion on which young and old came together in that way.
Sylvia tells her story
Sylvia first recorded her story for Spaldwick News in June 2008. The resulting article, “Sylvia Black – My Memories of Spaldwick”, is especially valuable because it was written in her own voice and preserves the domestic details of evacuation alongside her memories of village childhood.
Twelve years later, as Spaldwick marked the 75th anniversary of VE Day during the coronavirus lockdown, Chris Hubbard interviewed Sylvia again. The June 2020 edition of Spaldwick News published highlights from the conversation, and the accompanying video allows Sylvia’s memories to be heard in her own voice.
Together, the two accounts tell more than the story of a child evacuated during wartime. They explain how displacement led to belonging: how an unfamiliar household became a family, and how the village chosen for Sylvia by wartime authorities became the home she chose for herself.
A story worth preserving
National histories of evacuation describe children in their hundreds of thousands. Sylvia’s memories bring that immense movement of people down to the scale of one railway platform, one gas mask, one pantry door and one child longing for home.
Her story also belongs specifically to Spaldwick. It preserves the landscape in which a wartime child could roam through cornfields, skate on ponds and fish in the brook; the vanished businesses of the High Street; and a relationship between an evacuee and her guardian that endured for more than half a century.
Most of all, it reminds us that evacuation did not always end with a return to the place from which a child had come. For Sylvia Black, Spaldwick was not simply a wartime refuge. It became home.
References and further reading
Spaldwick News — June 2008, pages 4–5. “Sylvia Black – My Memories of Spaldwick.” Sylvia’s first-person account of arriving as an evacuee, life with Winnie Woodham, wartime childhood, returning after the war and changes within the village.
Spaldwick News — June 2020, page 8. “Memories of Spaldwick as a WW2 Child Evacuee.” A later interview by Chris Hubbard, published for the 75th anniversary of VE Day.
Sylvia Black Remembers VE Day in Spaldwick (2020). Audio interview recorded by Chris Hubbard. Sylvia recalls arriving in Spaldwick and her childhood as an evacuee.
Spaldwick News archive. Every edition of the village magazine from its first year in 2008 onwards. The archive includes both articles used as the principal sources for this page.
Spaldwick in 100 Years — village timeline. The wider Spaldwick timeline provides context for wartime events, village buildings and later changes referred to in Sylvia’s memories.