Evacuation records

[paulmayuk]

Hi Group
Once again I find myself asking for help, this time for evacuation records. I have tried numerous sites and haven’t made any headway. My mother, Mary Richardson, said she was evacuated to Bellingham during WW2 but that is all I know. She is listed in the 1939 register with her address being in Norfolk Road, Newcastle upon Tyne. Try as I may I cannot find anything, can anyone help? TIA Paul.

[Milliepede]

I haven't heard of such records but how old would she have been? 

Did she have siblings that were evacuated with her?

[Crumblie]

I may be wrong but I do not think those sort of records exist, if they do they are most likely to be held by the local archive service. By the time of the 1939 Register my mother had already been evacuated from Leeds along with about 40,000 other children, she was sent just over 17 miles away. What I don't know is how long she was away or if her parents ever visited. A lot of children around the country either returned home by themselves or their parents collected them, if the local council found out they were sent back but eventually that stopped.

[rosie99]

If any records do exist they are likely to be restricted access as many of those evacuated would have been born late 1920's - late 30's and could still be alive

[JenB]

This doesn’t answer your specific enquiry, but you might like to look at some fascinating original documents on Genuki relating to the detailed arrangements for evacuation of children from Newcastle and Gateshead.
https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/NBL/Evacuation/intro

[arthurk]

I may be wrong but I do not think those sort of records exist, if they do they are most likely to be held by the local archive service. By the time of the 1939 Register my mother had already been evacuated from Leeds along with about 40,000 other children, she was sent just over 17 miles away. What I don't know is how long she was away or if her parents ever visited.

I don't know if this would be the contingent that your mother was in, but a history of Ilkley Grammar School ("Olicana's Children" by Peter Wood, 2009) notes that Leeds Modern School came as guests of Ilkley GS. To accommodate everyone, Leeds children were taught in the mornings and Ilkley ones in the afternoons. This continued until 1941, when the Leeds children returned home.

A number of my relatives were teachers at that time (my grandfather at Ilkley GS), and my impression from reading about those days was that often whole schools were evacuated together and education simply continued in a different place, so it's possible that school and education authority records might have something useful.

However, I think some evacuations were probably more random and haphazard: my grandparents took in a young cousin from Hull (like Leeds, a danger zone), and as far as I know this was a private family arrangement.

[JenB]

A number of my relatives were teachers at that time (my grandfather at Ilkley GS), and my impression from reading about those days was that often whole schools were evacuated together and education simply continued in a different place, so it's possible that school and education authority records might have something useful.

The extensive details in the link I gave earlier (well worth looking at) certainly indicate that the plan in Newcastle and Gateshead was that entire schools were to be evacuated together.

Part 6 shows that 450 children from Heaton Park School were to be evacuated together to Bellingham.

[arthurk]

Thanks, JenB - it certainly looks very organised. For the OP it might well help to confirm which school his mother attended, and how she would have got to Bellingham.

I noticed that the instructions were undated, as this was a plan to be put into effect at an unknown future date. As the evacuation was to be organised on a per school basis, it does suggest that any surviving records might be with the schools. Or perhaps with the local authorities that received the evacuees (as named in the documents), since presumably they had a role in finding homes for them. But I wonder if there was some kind of master list of who was where.

[Gibel]

In the late 1970s I taught in a village school in Northamptonshire. The school had not long before started a new admissions register. The previous one from the date the school opened was fascinating as some of the children could see their parents and other family members. In September 1939 there were two pages one headed Natives and the other headed Immigrants. The page headed Immigrants were the children evacuated from Coventry about 22 miles away!