Home Front
The Legacy Team members have recorded their (very different) experiences of living in Britain during World War 2. Click on the photographs below for each account.
Food was rationed, please click here to see an example of a food ration for one adult
Maisie
Schoolgirl, aged 12 when the war started. Living in Manchester, Maisie remembers the Manchester bombing in 1941
Sheila
Schoolgirl, aged 9, living in Morecambe which escaped bombing raids and was where evacuated children were sent.
Freda
Schoolgirl, aged 7, living in south-east England under the flight path of German bombers heading to London.
Margaret
Schoolgirl, aged 11, living in Manchester. Margaret was evacuated for a short period of time before spending the rest of the war back home in Manchester.
Robyn
Schoolgirl, aged 6, living in south-east London. Robyn was evacuated to various places in the UK before returning to live back home in London.
Eleanor
Born in 1940 and living in Glasgow, Eleanor has very vivid memories of being a young child in the bombing of Glasgow.
Graham
Schoolboy aged 6, living in Birmingham, whose grandparents had a holiday cottage in Castleton and he went to live there with his younger brother and mother until the family returned to Birmingham in 1943
Reg
Reg was 4 years old when War was declared. He lived in Erdington near Birmingham throughout the war.
Arthur
Jean W
In September 1939 I was nearly 5 years old and I lived in Collyhurst, Manchester. We were quite poor.
Jean
Jean was 5 years old when the war started, living in Portsmouth. As a naval port it was a target for attacks and Jean was evacuated to Broadchalke, near Salisbury for the rest of the war, with Mr and Mrs Jay, where she became part of their family
Yvonne
Yvonne was 3 years old when the war started, living in Hazel Grove, Stockport. Yvonne’s memories were positive although she had her own experience of lock down when she was being treated in hospital for 13 months.
Dorothy
Dorothy was born in London on 13th March 1925 in London, near to where her father (who was a Chief Refrigerating Engineer shipping bananas and meat) would dock his ship from Southern America. Dorothy’s family moved to Glasgow for the same reason, and then to Cumbria.
Sydney
Sydney was nearly four when war broke out in 1939 and one of his first memories of the war is walking to the railway station with his mother, father and younger brother to wave his father goodbye as he went to war.