Hi,
The 10th of November 1940 was a very big day in the life of one Catford school boy. That was the date when, along with many other ten year old boys, Keith Comfort was evacuated from his childhood home and sent to a new boarding school deep in the Surrey countryside. The “Sayers Croft School” would be his home for the next five years of his life and they would prove to be some of his happiest. This week I visited the school along with Keith – only his second trip back there in nearly seventy years.
On first impressions the school seems to be rather an unusal place. About a mile and a half from the village of Ewhurst, it is buried away in the hills and surrounded by fields and forest. Now maintained as a summer camp for school children it still makes use of the prefabricated huts that Keith and his peers spent their time living in. All the familiar elements of a boys boarding school are present and correct – the great hall, houses, a dining hall and a tuck shop – but housed in the type of outbuildings that make the place seem more like Bletchley Park than a boys school.
Keith back at Stirling House.
Nevertheless a school it was. Between 1940-1945 about two hundred young boys from South London were evacuated to Sayers Croft. As the war raged on and German air raids on London increased the rural location must have seemed like a complete rural idyll in comparison. To the ten year old Keith it was a revelation. A keen birdwatcher and nature lover, the location was ideal for him and he made the most of the free time that he was allowed to explore the countryside and increase his collection of birds eggs. Other pleasures included the 4oz ration of sweets per week and Wednesday evening film showings in the Great Hall; Mickey Mouse and the Marx Brothers were typical although the “choice” tended to be influenced by whatever the older and bigger boys wanted to see.
That’s not say that it was all fun and games. Discipline was enforced and there was a martial air to the way that the school was run. Boys assembled on the parade ground at the front of the school. Every Sunday morning they would march in uniform to the nearby Church of St Peter & St Paul. Free time was generally limited to Saturday and Sunday afternoons and any misdemeanours would see it reduced, the transgressor being forced to stand in the parade ground between 1pm and 5pm on the weekend day in question. This wasn’t the only punishment of course – the following is a rather nice quote from one of the information boards at the school:
“Discipline was strict. In those days the cane was permitted and if you deserved it you got it! At morning assembly the Headmaster would expect any boys who had misbehaved to own up. If nobody came forward he was prepared to cane the whole school, starting with the front row! The guilty boy would be pushed forward by the others who were not prepared to be caned for nothing.”
The school was divided into houses and we were able to visit Stirling House where Keith spent his whole school career. Around forty boys would have stayed in the building along with their housemaster who had a separate but still small room at the front of the building. The boys slept in bunk beds and we were able to pick out the spot where Keith slept off the exertions of the day.
The modern equivalent of Keith’s bunk.
Despite living in this rural idyll the threat of war never truly went away. On one memorable occasion a Doodlebug landed in nearby Gadbridge Lane. The resulting explosion blew all the windows out at the school. Fortunately, each house had its own air raid shelter and the boys were in there at the time. Nevertheless, the risk of shattered glass hitting the boy in the top bunk is evident from the picture above and somebody at the school had a very practical solution. The bunk beds were raised on bricks and from then on the boy who had slept in the top bunk slept underneath the bottom one instead.
Whilst walking around the school the thought did occur that it looks very like a military barracks. To a German bomber it probably presented a reasonable target and it is surprising that there weren’t more incidents like the one mentioned above.
Sage advice.
Walking around the school site I was struck by the natural quiet of the location. Obviously that would have been altered by the presence of two hundred young boys but even when a party of schoolchildren arrived later in the day the quiet was still there. It must have been an incredible change from South London during the Blitz and almost a completely new life. Boys weren’t totally isolated from their parents however. Monthly parental visits took place with the parents paying £1 per person to get a subsidised coach from London.
By his own admission Keith doesn’t remember learning a great deal whilst at Sayers Croft. The standard of teaching seems to have been at best mixed and nobody mentioned anything about exams or metriculation. All Keith left with was a great deal of happy memories and not a huge amount to help him make his way in the world. The whole enterprise has that atmosphere of “mucking in” that characterises so much of home front activity during the Second World War – people pressed into doing things that there were perhaps not qualified to do and necessity being the mother of invention. In this case around two hundred boys per year were kept safe from the Luftwaffe and able to survive the war – the ultimate measure of success.
As we left the school Keith pointed out a large Willow tree near the entrance and mentioned that it had been planted by one of his peers during his time at the school. It’s difficult to think of a more eloquent illustration of the passage of time than this photograph. So much has changed in the world since Keith was at Sayers Croft School but walking around the site with him it was impossible to ignore the thought, that in some ways, so much had stayed the same.
Have a good week,
Steve
Seventy years later.
sbhistorygeek
boys boarding school, german air raids, sayers croft, surrey countryside, travel, vacation
Back to School
Hi,
The 10th of November 1940 was a very big day in the life of one Catford school boy. That was the date when, along with many other ten year old boys, Keith Comfort was evacuated from his childhood home and sent to a new boarding school deep in the Surrey countryside. The “Sayers Croft School” would be his home for the next five years of his life and they would prove to be some of his happiest. This week I visited the school along with Keith – only his second trip back there in nearly seventy years.
On first impressions the school seems to be rather an unusal place. About a mile and a half from the village of Ewhurst, it is buried away in the hills and surrounded by fields and forest. Now maintained as a summer camp for school children it still makes use of the prefabricated huts that Keith and his peers spent their time living in. All the familiar elements of a boys boarding school are present and correct – the great hall, houses, a dining hall and a tuck shop – but housed in the type of outbuildings that make the place seem more like Bletchley Park than a boys school.
Keith back at Stirling House.
Nevertheless a school it was. Between 1940-1945 about two hundred young boys from South London were evacuated to Sayers Croft. As the war raged on and German air raids on London increased the rural location must have seemed like a complete rural idyll in comparison. To the ten year old Keith it was a revelation. A keen birdwatcher and nature lover, the location was ideal for him and he made the most of the free time that he was allowed to explore the countryside and increase his collection of birds eggs. Other pleasures included the 4oz ration of sweets per week and Wednesday evening film showings in the Great Hall; Mickey Mouse and the Marx Brothers were typical although the “choice” tended to be influenced by whatever the older and bigger boys wanted to see.
That’s not say that it was all fun and games. Discipline was enforced and there was a martial air to the way that the school was run. Boys assembled on the parade ground at the front of the school. Every Sunday morning they would march in uniform to the nearby Church of St Peter & St Paul. Free time was generally limited to Saturday and Sunday afternoons and any misdemeanours would see it reduced, the transgressor being forced to stand in the parade ground between 1pm and 5pm on the weekend day in question. This wasn’t the only punishment of course – the following is a rather nice quote from one of the information boards at the school:
“Discipline was strict. In those days the cane was permitted and if you deserved it you got it! At morning assembly the Headmaster would expect any boys who had misbehaved to own up. If nobody came forward he was prepared to cane the whole school, starting with the front row! The guilty boy would be pushed forward by the others who were not prepared to be caned for nothing.”
The school was divided into houses and we were able to visit Stirling House where Keith spent his whole school career. Around forty boys would have stayed in the building along with their housemaster who had a separate but still small room at the front of the building. The boys slept in bunk beds and we were able to pick out the spot where Keith slept off the exertions of the day.
The modern equivalent of Keith’s bunk.
Despite living in this rural idyll the threat of war never truly went away. On one memorable occasion a Doodlebug landed in nearby Gadbridge Lane. The resulting explosion blew all the windows out at the school. Fortunately, each house had its own air raid shelter and the boys were in there at the time. Nevertheless, the risk of shattered glass hitting the boy in the top bunk is evident from the picture above and somebody at the school had a very practical solution. The bunk beds were raised on bricks and from then on the boy who had slept in the top bunk slept underneath the bottom one instead.
Whilst walking around the school the thought did occur that it looks very like a military barracks. To a German bomber it probably presented a reasonable target and it is surprising that there weren’t more incidents like the one mentioned above.
Sage advice.
Walking around the school site I was struck by the natural quiet of the location. Obviously that would have been altered by the presence of two hundred young boys but even when a party of schoolchildren arrived later in the day the quiet was still there. It must have been an incredible change from South London during the Blitz and almost a completely new life. Boys weren’t totally isolated from their parents however. Monthly parental visits took place with the parents paying £1 per person to get a subsidised coach from London.
By his own admission Keith doesn’t remember learning a great deal whilst at Sayers Croft. The standard of teaching seems to have been at best mixed and nobody mentioned anything about exams or metriculation. All Keith left with was a great deal of happy memories and not a huge amount to help him make his way in the world. The whole enterprise has that atmosphere of “mucking in” that characterises so much of home front activity during the Second World War – people pressed into doing things that there were perhaps not qualified to do and necessity being the mother of invention. In this case around two hundred boys per year were kept safe from the Luftwaffe and able to survive the war – the ultimate measure of success.
As we left the school Keith pointed out a large Willow tree near the entrance and mentioned that it had been planted by one of his peers during his time at the school. It’s difficult to think of a more eloquent illustration of the passage of time than this photograph. So much has changed in the world since Keith was at Sayers Croft School but walking around the site with him it was impossible to ignore the thought, that in some ways, so much had stayed the same.
Have a good week,
Steve
Seventy years later.
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