So What Was The Evacuation?
Planning for evacuation began within a few years of the end of the First World War. It was not, as is widely believed, a knee-jerk reaction made by the British government as the bombs began to fall on London.
The evacuees came from all social classes, not as many people still believe, only from inner city slums.
Billeting was compulsory. Local authorities in the designated reception areas were required to conduct house-by-house surveys to establish how many evacuees could be accommodated. As a result, people of all social classes were legally required to accept evacuees. It has been wrongly assumed that people in reception areas were in the middle of upper classes.
Another assumption was that most evacuees were verminous,badly behaved, would only eat fish and chips, had never before seen green fields, did not know that milk came from cows and hated the countryside. In reality, only a minority fitted that description the majority came from good homes and had loving parents.
It was widely imagined that most evacuees’ homes were sub-standard and lacked modern facilities, compared with rural housing. On the contrary, country housing was, in many cases, lacking basic facilities, such as piped water, flush lavatories, gas or electricity.
The Evacuees Reunion Association is proud to announce Maurice Blik ATC PPRBS FRSA as the artist chosen to create this memorial. His maquette (scale model) of the monument is shown here.
For the story of the development of the National Memorial project, please follow the site links.
The Evacuees Reunion Association. Registered Charity No. 1073507.
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