South Yorkshire Times, 20 September 1941
Old Denaby’s Young Evacuees
“The best little school in England”, is how eight year old David Butler, evacuated from a N.E. town to Old Denaby, describes the village school which he and his sister Maureen have attended since last autumn, along with five other evacuees; Doreen Richardson, Ann and Shirley Griffiths, Mavis Merrin and five-year-old Peter Jones.
Mavis who is evacuated to the home of her grandmother Mrs. Cotton, was recently successful in gaining a County Minor Scholarship, and her education will be continued at Mexborough Secondary School, where she started last week, for the duration of the war. She will then be transferred to a Secondary School in her home county.
The children are all very happy and with the exception of young Peter, not one of them would want to leave such peaceful surroundings and return home to where as one of them said “the bombs might drop any night”.
Mrs. Jones, Peter’s mother, who is also evacuated to Old Denaby along with her two sisters told a reporter that the reason Peter wants to return home is because his father who is a shipbuilder, is still there, Before they were evacuated the whole family slept in their Anderson Shelter every night, with the result that none of the children was fit, and Peter was taken to hospital with pneumonia. What subsequently made Mrs. Jones decide to leave was when fire bombs dropped in the next street.
The headmistress of the village school Mrs. F. E. Hinton, said that when the children first came they were very nervous. Through the generosity and hospitality of the villagers, however, they are now restored to normal health.
The two other sisters lost nearly all their possessions in the “blitzes”. The husbands of both are serving in the Forces one in the Navy and one in the Army. A bomb which exploded near to their houses demolished them.
Before the sisters left visits were paid to the bombed quarter of the town by the King and Queen and the Prime Minister who marvelled at the courage and endurance of the people.
The gratitude shown by these women and children should be ample reward for the people who have taken them in at a time when they were most in need of it. Mrs. Jones said that they could never reciprocate the kindness which has been shown them in the village.