WWII evacuee's memoirs discovered in attic

A chance discovery has unearthed the memoirs of a woman evacuated to Lincolnshire during World War Two.

Valerie Braunston lived in London during the Blitz but was sent to a pig farm in Brampton when the Germans launched their V weapons, which they hoped would win them the war.

In 2023, her son Miles Bingham was clearing his mother's attic when he found her memoirs.

However, 88-year-old Valerie had Alzheimer's disease and did not recognise her own work.

Mr Bingham, 58, said he made the discovery when his mother moved into a care home.

From under the cobwebs and dust in the loft of her house in Ludlow, Shropshire, he pulled a manuscript which had lain unseen for decades.

It told the story of Valerie's experiences in wartime north London, in a house in Bush Hill Park, and when she was evacuated to Lincolnshire in 1944, aged about 11.

"Whilst they'd survived the Blitz, they were struggling to deal with this new wave of German rockets," Mr Bingham said.

He shared an extract from the memoir, which has been published as a book called London Can Take It.

"The boom of each V1 hitting London meant I could hear the detonations. Sometimes I even felt the earth tremor. At each explosion I bit my lips until they started to split. My mother looked gaunt with worry."

Valerie was bundled on to a train and sent away to safety in the countryside. She had no idea where she was going.

She described arriving at the farm.

"To my despair, where a normal family might have had a front garden, here was a foul-smelling piggery right beside the property. I would be living with a pig man and his wife.

"I was shown to a small room and I was told to go straight to bed. I just lay there in the dark with my eyes closed, hoping I might wake up tomorrow and this was all a big mistake."

Mr Bingham recalled how his mother found an atlas of Britain at school and tried to look up where she was living.

"She'd gone from the biggest city in the northern hemisphere to a place not even marked on a map of the United Kingdom. It felt like she'd arrived at the end of the world."

Mr Bingham said his mother initially wanted to go straight back to London. She slipped little notes into her letters home asking for her mother to come and collect her.

But she loved the beautiful Lincolnshire countryside, he said.

"I remember watching in astonishment, the golden sun dipping below the distant horizon. Previously, I'd only ever arched my neck to view the sun blocked off by tall buildings."

Unfortunately, Valerie was unable to appreciate the discovery of her story.

"She was suffering from Alzheimer's, " Mr Bingham said.

"And even when I started to read extracts from her own work, she didn't recognise it at all.

"Of course, I just wish I could have discussed it with her, but she died within two weeks of going into a care home.

"What we have is something really rare and it illuminates a childhood of somebody living in London and experiencing the Blitz. It's also a fantastic story about an evacuee's experiences as well."

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