MORE childhood memories of Broome Hall, Coldharbour, have been sent to Yesteryear, following our two recent features on life at the old property decades ago.
We have now received a letter from Michael Dobson, of Ravensden, Bedford.
He writes: "Following on from the previous articles by Geoff Inwood, who was a childhood playmate of mine, and Sydney Attrill, who was a playmate of my sister, Ann, I thought perhaps my memories could continue the story into the years of the Second World War.
"Both Ann, born in 1927, and I, born in the Rose Hill Nursing Home, Dorking, in 1931, lived at Broome Hall, in an estate house adjacent to the Home Farm. There were three other tenanted farms within the bounds of the estate. "After Sir John Piggott-Brown, the heir to the estate, was killed in the Western Desert, North Africa, on Christmas Day 1942, the lineage ceased and in 1946 the whole estate was divided into "lots" and sold off piecemeal.
"This meant that most of the estate workers, including ourselves, were obliged to move out of their tied houses.
"Sydney's memories are very much in accord with mine and there is no doubt we experienced an idyllic childhood. She mentions swimming in the lake and the photograph [on this page] shows her on the left, Ann in bathing cap next, my father, and then myself (just!).
"As she noted, my father was the chauffeur and the second photograph shows him with some of his charges by the front door of Broome Hall.
"All three cars were Vauxhalls. The second "chauffeur" was Freddy Saunders, who lived in Coldharbour and could be called upon to drive when necessary. "Interestingly, employment on the estate was such that a number of workers were able to afford their own cars, something which was not common in those days.
"My father and Sydney's father each had an Austin 7. The head gardener and the groom both had Morris 8s.
"When the war came along, Lady Piggott-Brown moved to her family home near Quainton, in Buckinghamshire. Broome Hall therefore became empty and a large part of it, together with other estate accommodation, was requisitioned for use by the Army.
"Indeed, a large room in our house was used for storage, with two soldiers living in. I suspect that not many soldiers were woken up with a cup of tea each morning, served by my mother!
"To provide additional accommodation, five pre-fabricated Army-style huts were erected on the extensive 'pleasure grounds' and because the soldiers were dispersed over a wide area, control was by bugle. The result was that the civilian population learned to live by 'reveille', 'come to the cook house door', and 'lights out'.
Army units resident at Broome Hall were, chronologically, the Canadian Saskatoon Light Infantry, two Battalions of Sherwood Foresters in succession and a number of units in succession of the Royal Army Service Corps, with tank transporting vehicles, for which many of the estate roads were, and remain, concreted.
"As far as enemy action was concerned, Sydney mentioned going down into the cellars of Broome Hall. This was at the beginning of the night blitz in the autumn of 1940 and a number of the estate workers and families did this on a few occasions. However, it was soon realised that if the Hall were to be hit, we would probably survive the bomb but would be fatally entombed in the cellars, or drowned through bursting of the central heating boilers and the water systems.
"So sheltering in the cellars lasted only a night or two. It was also realised that the likelihood of being hit by a bomb was pretty remote although, rather than face the London barrage, the enemy airmen did tend to scatter their bombs indiscriminately over Surrey and then hurry home.
"The nearest we had were four bombs spread over a couple of fields about half-a-mile away. So, during the remainder of the blitz, the nightly practice was to go to bed fairly early, then when the air raid siren sounded, usually between 10 and 11pm, get up and watch the grand 'firework display' of the London barrage.
"This spectacle was accompanied by the drone of the German bombers overhead, the woof-woof of the anti-aircraft guns and the 'c-rrump' of exploding bombs.
"When things quietened down we would return to bed, probably about 1 to 2am. This lasted for several months over the winter of 1940-41. It was during this period that Geoff Inwood and I, playing in the woods close to his home, found an unexploded incendiary bomb, and then another, and then another and finally about 50.
A cap could be unscrewed to get to the incendiary material inside and, on pouring it out, we found it impossible to light. Closer examination proved the material to be sand, showing that the bombs had been sabotaged by the German 'forced-labour' workforce.
"Like Sydney, Ann went to the Dorking County School in 1938, from South Holmwood Primary School. She changed from Coldharbour because she would have been the only girl there!
"I started at the County School in 1942, from Coldharbour School.
"No longer having a job on the estate, dad was drafted into a factory which, throughout the war, made 40mm Bofors gun shells in the converted premises of Dorking Motor Company.
"The nearest we came to injury by enemy action was in 1944 when we watched a "doodlebug" – the German V1 flying bomb – fly across, heading straight for Leith Hill tower, missing both the tower and the top of the hill by only a few feet and crashing into the trees beyond, where it exploded.
"Although a mile or so away, the blast dislodged a tile from the roof of our house and as it fell, it grazed my mother's shoulder – three inches further to the left and it could have been fatal.
"I am probably the only person who knows where to find that bomb's crater and it may be the only Second World War bomb crater still to be seen."
