Wartime

Were you ‘evaporated’?

We know that some children were evacuated to Hempstead during WW2. In her recorded interview of 2003, Nelly Halls recalled the mill being converted, partly as a house to accommodate some of the children and partly as a shop. We also know that Bertie Escreet, son of the former curate, was the billeting officer for the evacuees who came to the village.

Inevitably, the Drane family offered space at Box Cottage to some young evacuees, as did Carol Darkin at Brookside. And we think there were also some children living in the front cottage section of Old Quail Farm, and in what is now Dick Turpin’s Cottage (although it was not called that until much later). But we currently have no information about any of the children themselves – no books, photos or online reminiscences. If you have any family stories or knowledge about Hempstead’s young evacuees, please let us know.

Hempstead at War

“Put that light out!”

A wartime plane crash

On 12 December 1942, Squadron Leader Glyn ‘Jumbo’ Ashfield AFC DFC, aged 30, together with his Observer / Pilot Officer D.D. Beale, died when their plane crashed into a tall ash tree a few hundred yards south of Hill Farm, Hempstead. The plane, a de Haviland Mosquito NF Mark 2 night fighter, was based at Castle Camps Aerodrome.

S/L Ashfield was a highly experienced pilot and, with P/O Beale, had been responsible for the Squadron’s first ‘score’. Off duty, he was apparently famous for his ‘Winkle Water’ (answers on a postcard…..)

His daughter reports that he was a non-smoker and that the pipe in the photograph was very much a ‘fashion accessory’.

The cause of the crash is unknown but was unrelated to enemy action. It seems that David Haylock’s father Ronald, who farmed the land at the time, never spoke about what may have been a militarily sensitive matter.. David only learned the details in about 2003 after he was contacted by S/L Ashfield’s family, who wanted to see the place where their relative had died.

The Hempstead War Memorial