Chapter 12: Post-war London

Emily was with me, and we went to Blackheath to see our new home. The Vicarage was in a shocking state, the ground floor having been given over for parish activities, and filled with dreadful old furniture. It was an occasion for depression and tears. of course everything in England was shabby after the war, and the church was no exception. But the people we met were nice, and I am sure we were right to go.

Back in Dublin there was a farewell by the Committee, who gave us a lovely dinner service (on which we had to pay a lot of duty) and an album with signatures including the two archbishops. We stayed a night with Granny Wynne in Dun Laoghaire, to which she had moved, and set off on the evening of November 19th. Our furniture had gone in two enormous containers by sea to London. Sophie came with us to stay three months till we got settled, and Anna, Aunt Irene's faithful retainer, also journeyed with us to help, and to go on to see relations. So as to have a quiet Sunday we stayed the weekend in lodgings at Rhyl, and went to London on the Monday. David and I stayed at the C.U.M., the rest of the family at the Eltons.

So we were back in England. It was a battered England to which we returned, and food was still rationed. We had been happy in Ireland. Our children spoke with Irish accents. We left behind very many good friends. It was hard on Emily, leaving her mother.

One dear friend, Mrs. Wilkin, helped Emily through the years, and we keep in touch still.

The house situation was really ghastly. We had one living room upstairs which, when we arrived, had no grate in the fireplace. The whole house was bitterly cold. When it was all used as a vicarage, with probably two maids in attendance, it may have been quite a gracious house and garden. The garden was still a joy, and, even in its wilder parts, a happy playground for the children. The youth club had the free run of the garden, and the downstairs part of the house was used by Sunday School and other groups. In the state it was all in, it was not an ideal place to set up home again.

It turned out too that the stipend was not all it should be. I had been told it was £600 p.a. but that did not reckon with £84 rates I had to pay. When I was presented with a bill for rates during the interregnum that really did seem to be the last straw. We had used the last of my savings to pay for the move: I think the bill from the remover was over £150, a lot of money in those days. No one enquired if we were able to manage, and I do not know how we got by, but we did. I remember that a refund from the Dublin electricity people seemed like manna from heaven, though it was a mere £1 - 10. All this changed later, and the people became very friendly. They were never really anything else, but just a bit thoughtless. We got to know and love many of them very much indeed.

Emily had found a real niche running the Women's Guild and the Mothers' Union. She also found good friends among some of the older parishioners, notably Mrs. Weatherhead, who with her late husband had spent years in Uganda, and who was a sister of our well-loved Archbishop Barton of Dublin. She would come into the kitchen, collect the socks off the line, and return them beautifully darned! In England of course, unlike Ireland, a maid was unheard of.