Ivydale Road School in 2016
From: Jack Holman
Hooray, at last someone has written who actually went to Ivydale Road School! So did my sister and I before we were evacuated to Hurst Green /Oxted and went to Merle Common School. I spent the last months there mending the shoes of pupils and masters/mistresses until I returned home to 41 Stuart Road in early 1941. Soon after we received a direct hit; fortunately we were in the Anderson Shelter and survived without any injury.
We were then moved to number 23 and promptly got the full blast of a doodlebug. Again we were moved – this time to Goose Green.
I had started work at Gordon & Gotch in Farringdon Street, but that’s another story. Meanwhile my sister had also now returned home, and in fact later was working in the tobacco kiosk of the Co-op in Rye Lane when a German plane machine-gunned Rye Lane – her kiosk got bullets right across the front.
