With Bea's degree in Psychology, mine in Agriculture, we felt, at least in part, equipped to tackle the job! We were very young and naive! Bea went to spend some months at the Islington Medical Mission to get to know something of the people we hoped to invite for a spell in the country. A young Plymouth Brother architect was found to plan a simple timber-made hostel, and a PB builder to do the work. Many delays. The morning before our first group of guests were due, with drainage ditches only just filled in, carpenter filling our oil lamps, Master Builder mopping the kitchen floor... they had all become our friends! Hugh Redwood, author of God in the Slums, with his sincerity and wit proved just the right person to do the opening ceremony.
A lovely assortment of guests followed. Cockney mums who were great fun: an old man who seemed to have lived all his life on kippers: a party of children in the care of a rather vague woman who used to switch off her hearing aid when the children got a bit beyond her and Bea and I had to cope! For many it was a first sight of green fields and experience of the countryside.
Sadly the relationship with the couple who had come to run the Guest House became unhappy. They decided to sell up. Frantic efforts followed to buy the whole property. We had virtually no money. |
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Kindly Bank Manager came to the rescue. In due course Dr. Gibson turned up one day. He was then a Curate in charge of the Mission of St. Hilda in Camberwell. This was just what he and his helpers were looking for. Before Bea and I knew quite what was happening we found ourselves incorporated into the Mission and indeed somewhat reluctantly into the structures of the Church of England!
At a Summer Camp in 1939 Farmhouse and Hostel were filled, the Barn used as a Refectory, tents scattered around, and, for the first time, the Cart-shed became our Chapel. A few days later evacuation began and Bea went to London in the pig lorry of a neighbour to bring back a lot of the families as our part in the scheme. Before long the London mission was destroyed by a land mine.
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