Interview
with Jeffreyand Pat Parrans,
Wednesday 2 March 2000
Interview
with Jeffrey
and Pat Parrans,
Wednesday 2 March 2000
1 How Newhall was bombed
2 World War Two pigs
| Hilary | Can you tell me anything about the bomb that dropped on Newhall? |
| Jeffrey | My grandmother and grandfather lived in Newhall all their lives. And they lived in Orchard Street. But my grandmother, she had a stroke, and she was bed-ridden for years. But we always visited my grandmother from Castle Gresley, nearly always had to walk it as well. And what I can remember about this particular week I think I had to come over to Tunnicliffe’s to get the eggs; she used to have four a month, or something like that. I came over and there’d been an air raid the night before. And when I got over my grandfather said to me “We had a near miss last night, son.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Hear the aeroplanes coming over?” I said, “Yes, we did” because they’d got a particular hum to them and we’d heard aircraft coming over, but never thought any more about it. And he said, “I’ll tell you something. I was going down to the lavatory.” Which was across the road.: He’d got an allotment, and it was down there, a few yards away. And he said, “This German came over, and I heard this whining of a bomb.” And the toilets, lots of people’s hadn’t got all the roof tiles on, you know. And he said (how true it was I don’t know, I mean because I wasn’t very old), “And as I sat on the toilet I looked through and I could see some glow,” it must have been the engines of the aircraft, “and I heard this whine, it was getting stronger and stronger, and all of a sudden you heard the explosion.” And it was just at the top end of Orchard Street and I think it went just down the side of a house and it made a darn great crater, and I think there were cows in this field. And from what I can remember they say it killed a cow. But he said, “I want to show you what a hole it made”. And he took me up and he showed me this crater and it was something like 20-30 foot across. |
| Hilary | Yes that was in Dan Brearley’s field, wasn’t it? |
| Jeffrey | If you say so. |
| Hilary | My Dad was an ARP warden and he later told me about it. |
| Jeffrey | But I can’t remember what year it was. I would have thought it was 1942 or 3,
because that’s when they had the bombing campaign. I would be 9 or 10 at the time.
This one that dropped on Newhall, I would have thought he had been on a mission to
Rolls-Royce at Derby and he was on his way back and he would pull his release to see if
he’d got any bombs left in the bomb bay. And I reckon that dropped out then: they
don’t normally drop a single bomb. The only other one we had was a land mine at Baker
Street in Swadlincote. Did you know about that? That killed two or three people. My father was exempt from going in the forces; he worked at BTR and made all the rubber parts for aircraft. He would do his shift in the day, and then at night he had to go as the fire watch on the roof all night. So what sleep they got was only an hour or two. If he was on nights he tended to get some sleep, but if he was on days he didn’t as he was on duty almost 24 hours. We were very deprived in the war. When I hear them talk today about you must eat this and you must eat that, I wonder how we lived, because the only thing we got was when they killed a pig. We used to watch the pig being killed, and scraped and cut up. And because we’d given the remnants of our food, the only thing we had to offer to anyone was potato peelings because we ate everything else that came into the house, we would possibly get from them brawn or chitterling. I think they were the only two things, and I think we may get a basin of lard for our donation of peelings towards the pig. But my wife’s parents were different because they kept pigs, and they were allowed to have their own pig, but they did exactly the same with distribution to their friends. They kept one, and so many had to go to the Ministry, and they had their own bacon. And when I first met my wife the last piece of ham we had for our wedding. |
| Hilary | My grandparents clubbed together to have a pig, and I remember vaguely the big tub that people used to tip their peelings into. One day our pig got out and was found sleeping on a neighbour’s hearthrug. |
Want a map of Newhall as it used to be? Small scale map to print OR Large scale map to view on screen
I talked to Pat and Jeffrey for more than half an hour: if you want to know what else we talked about click on one of these topics:-
5,6 The Newhall Wakes / Works trips by train
7 More hardships of World War Two
8 Newhall Football Clubs and Pat's Sunday outings
