Annie Murray, author
Scrapbook
Evacuated to South Wales
Brian Holtham’s home address was 72 Cato Street, Vauxhall, but by September 4th 1942, when he was only five years old, he and his brothers had swapped their one Birmingham address for three different ones in Abergavenny.
Pictured right: Brian Holtham 2010
Those first hot, bewildering few hours after they had arrived, Brian recalls that he and one of his brothers were locked in a bedroom all afternoon with a bucket in the middle of the floor, while their first ‘host’ decided they couldn’t cope with these two evacuees. Fortunately, Brian was then sent to a kindly couple with grown-up children, a Mr and Mrs Jones, at 29 Caepen-y-Dre, Abergavenny.
The first major movement of children out of British cities in 1939-40 was followed by other, smaller evacuations. We know now that the main bombing of Birmingham took place between August 1940 and April 1941, but no one then knew when it was going to end. Brian says that one of a number of factors which influenced his parents to send him away was the flattening of St. Ann’s RC church in Vauxhall, very close to his home, on the night of April 21st 1941.
Brian’s kindly hosts took him specially to a photographers and had this calendar made to send to his parents, Christmas 1942. Click on the image to enlarge.
Unlike the tragic and traumatic experiences of many evacuees, Brian’s two year stay in Abergavenny is a time of which he has strong and positive memories and which he says has marked his life. He attended school and was well fed and kindly treated. The Jones’s even had a real bathroom!
Returning to Birmingham in 1944 was a tough experience – he did not want to leave Wales. Gone were the green fields and the sight of the Blorenge, the mountain which looms over Abergavenny.
‘Even though I was only there for two years,’ Brian says, ‘I still feel even now as if Abergavenny is my home.’
It has been a kind of place of pilgrimage for him. On one visit Brian climbed the Blorenge and picked some sprigs of heather to take home with him – for luck.