The Normandy Landings 1944 

     During the late winter of 1943 and early spring of 1944,the estate took on a transformation.

The time was approaching for the D-Day operation and the whole of South West England was being flooded with soldiers and war machines on a massive scale. 

     The whole of the wooded and grass areas  to the north of Cricket House (towards and following the A30 road) was completely taken over by men  of the USA 29th. Infantry Division.  The whole area was a tent camp and well camouflaged by the wooded sections.  

     A few days before D-Day the 29th.started to move towards pick up ports in the South West and South. At that time all the roads into Winsham were, for days, saturated with men, vehicles and equipment moving to take their place on the boats waiting in all the ports and small harbours.  

     The mention of the 29th Infantry Division is because of its decimation on landing. They were the first attackers on Omaha Beach, Normandy at 07.00 on 6th. June 1944.Sadly,by 12 noon of the same day almost all of the Division had been killed or washed out to sea by the incoming tide. Most had only been soldiers for a few months.

Photograph of Percy Trott's  home at top of High Street

     Well before the start of World War II,  the fresh water supply to the top half of High Street, Back Street,  Phillips Farm, and the cottages on Chalkway Lane came from a spring at the top of the junction of Broadenham Lane. The clue is the name of the large house on the left of the road , still known as Springhead.

The spring water was funnelled down to a small brick reservoir opposite the farm entrance to Stuckeys Farm from there it was piped into  an open brick tank shown near Percy Trott's home  in  High Street and also to a stand pipe next to the thatched cottage (Butlers) in Back Street. To obtain water from the open tank one had to dip it out with buckets ( I remember it well, I lived  just around the corner in Back Street !). Halfway up our garden at Cobblestone Cottage, we had a very deep well with a hand pump, but the water was unfit  to use for domestic purposes. 

There were no utilities at all at the top of Back Street or Fore Street. My home, for example, had no electricity, water supply or sewer system. None of this was available to us until well after World War II.  All waste water from these houses was taken by French drains down to an area in the first field on the right, Coxes Close, where it dispersed over a large area of the lower field.

Our toilet was the well known " Brick ------" and ours was located right at the top of our kitchen garden -I can I leave the rest to your imagination  !! A French Drain is something from the past; the system was to dig out a trench about 12inches deep, then fill it with small stones. The turf  was then put back on. You then  have a good drainage system, providing it  runs  downhill,  taking water waste away.

Something for the Kids

The amusing thing I remember about that time was the main games (apart from football) that us kids played . One was spinning tops, out on the road. The 'top' consisted of a small two inch high wooden item sharpened into a point with a boot stud at the point. The whip , a length of string, was wrapped around the top. The top was then placed on the road surface and the wound whip pulled sharply and, with luck off the top would spin. You kept it going by continued whipping  !

 The second time consumer and diversion was the iron hoop For a shilling, Fred Churchill would blacksmith a hoop in small gauge round iron. With this, he forged an iron rod with a hook at one end; the hook fitted onto the hoop. By pushing on the hook, off one went. Races took place with us children, up Back Street  into High Street down Fore Street into the square and back up to the finish ! Remember that at this time we had few motor vehicles.

During World War II any boy over the age of twelve ( providing that a farmer could use him) was granted 10 days a year from school to help on the land. I had a blue coloured card and Joe Phillips signed it as and when.

The Strong Arm of the Law

 In the picture, 'Tiny' Weaver  the Village policeman  is  sitting on his cycle outside Mr. Warren's butchers shop which is visible with a white frontage.

 Tiny Weaver took over the Winsham beat from a PC Redaway--there was no Police Station then as such and they both resided as lodgers in Mrs. Courtney's Farm across the road. The first Police Station was across the road from Winsham Shop, but that closed in the mid 1920s. After that the village had to wait another twenty years before a new facility was built.  This was  located on the edge of the Chard Road at Bakersfield. Joe Burton was the first officer to occupy the new station. Joe was a respected boxer and he boxed on the same program as Freddie Mills, later to become the World Light Heavyweight Champion (1948-50) - in 1945 at the hangar in Denning's Works in Chard  (and I was there with my Dad )!

 Tiny Weaver was the first officer in Somerset Police to be issued mechanical transport .  How many remember the Indian motor cycle ? It was a massive machine with a hand change gear stick  and coloured maroon. (I still have a photograph of one.)

 When I joined Somerset Police Tiny Weaver was the officer in charge of the Bishops Lydiard Beat. and Joe Burton was a sergeant in the Information Room at Headquarters, Taunton.

 Winsham Characters

  I grew up knowing all the Butler family well--Molly and Betty were  twins and  very smart lovely girls, serving in the WAAF during the war. Joyce was next in line and she is still up and running. Freda was next down the line and Eric the youngest. They were always very happy and had a lot of fun. Eric was a few months younger than me but we grew together as a great partnership as you will discover later in these reminiscences.

Jack Butler was the father of the family.  He worked for the then Chard District Council on roadwork and the like.

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Winsham's Tar Gang maintained the roads around the parish-something that is needed in 2013!

Back Row: Ted Dunford, Harry Chubb, Jack Butler, Tom Miller, Reg Grabham, Charlie Spurdle, Ern Miller, George Morton. Front Row: Reg Spurdle, George Chubb,  Charlie Beer, Willy Webber. The horse was owned by George Bishop, but it's name is not known. One member of the team is missing from the picture above. Bert Spurdle was the Steam Roller driver for Chard Council Roads Division

He was always in the  foreground of the road tar and gritting gang, although in the picture above he is in the back row!

Pat Wheaton

Pat Wheaton was another well known character- larger than life. His presence in a crowd always stood out. But the notes in the Web Museum section showing photographs of Winsham in 1938 are not quite accurate. Ammerham Farm was never owned by Pat Wheaton or Roy Wheaton.(See below. Ed.)

Ammerham Farm was farmed before the World War II by Roy Loveridge and his father, that is the building in the foreground; down the hill turning left into the old lane was Ammerham Mill ---I believe the Mill Leat is still there. This was also a dairy farm  run by the Pattimore family.

Pat Wheaton bought the house further back towards Winsham ( not in sight) which used to be Manor Cottage. He ran his earth moving business from there and owned the fields right through to Winsham cemetery.

In the field adjacent ( behind the house ) he had a purpose built explosives store. When working on building new aerodromes, he used  gelignite for blasting tree stumps etc. Pat was a lad!

He had a business slogan on all his bulldozers etc;   " WE WILL MOVE THE EARTH FOR YOU "--they were all painted bright yellow and a soldier who was stationed in Malta during the war sent him a message, by mail I think ,saying  ---COULD HE MOVE MALTA A GOOD BIT CLOSER TO ENGLAND !!.

When Pat married his second wife she brought her father from Cornwall to Winsham and bought the adjoining cottage to our home in Back Street. He was a lovely old man and always wore an old trilby hat.

He visited Pat at Ammerham one day and Pat, in one of his merry moods took his father in laws hat and put it on the inside window sill, loaded his shot gun and blew it to pieces !  But it didn't end there - the blast blew the glass out of the window and shot went across the road and through the window of Cyril Sawyers house !!

 The second panic that I remember is when he cleared the George Hotel one night during his " I WILL MOVE THE EARTH FOR YOU " days. He was in the bar and threatened to throw a 4 ounce stick of gelignite, which he had in his pocket, into the fire! The rest one can imagine!

The Churchill Family and a war time reminiscence.

Fred the father was the blacksmith and when he retired then so did the blacksmithing !!

He had two sons and a daughter, Ned  and Charlie Churchill, and  daughter Muriel.

Charlie Churchill never took part in the blacksmith repair/ farrier business. He lived  in Church Street, near Warren's butcher shop. He worked as an engineer at Salter & Stokes butter factory and later at the United Dairies Factory where he was in charge of the workshop. Charlie was a fluent cornet player and was bandmaster to Winsham Band  during the World War II.

 Charlie had a son, Jack, and he was  really the expert in the workings of these modern radio receivers.

He worked at the Fore Street workshop and was an up to date expert in radio mechanics etc;  I have already said that he was the first person to bring television to Winsham and used Peadon's Cider House in Back Street 

( next to Ivy Cottage and which no longer exists) to bring the first TV pictures . This was via an  experiment unit that he built from scratch, I remember the day well- the first TV pictures ever to be received in Winsham.

 I remember that my Mum & Dad bought a most up-to-date Cossor radio from Ned and this was a source of great interest  to my family except me, although I remember one was the broadcast by Winston Churchill when France capitulated in the early stages of World War II-all  of us huddled around the wireless- because of the seriousness of his speech ( how many of us remember how serious the situation was?). 

Winston said----" WHAT GENERAL WEYGAND CALLED THE BATTLE OF FRANCE ,IS OVER . I EXPECT THAT THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN IS ABOUT TO BEGIN....."

 I have a vivid memory of what happened as soon as those words were said. .My  mother kept items of food that needed protection in a small wooden and gauze covered safe(our cottage remember had  no electricity and no  water supply ).  She went up to the safe, and brought down a packet of sweets which she had hidden away and said "HERE SON,HAVE THESE, BECAUSE THE GERMANS WILL BE HERE IN THE MORNING". The seriousness of what she said of course never entered my head...

Click HERE for more information about Jack Churchill and his Radio and TV initiatives.

Ned never married; he was a great trombone player in Winsham Band. He seldom did any farrier work-and was in his element with agriculture machine repairs and the then recent innovation of radio and all the related items such as large batteries and secondary electric supply, acid filled accumulators, etc.

 A Working Partnership

Eric Butler and I were great friends.

We were aged about 11 years in 1940, both attending Chard Holyrood School. Together we had two small helpful businesses going from our homes.
Some of the wooded areas and open wild areas were plagued with wild rabbits and the farmers were pleased to have both Eric and myself to catch them .

We worked as a team and kept our own ferrets at home. Once a week we would ferret a chosen patch and the rabbits we caught were very much sought after by households locally.   Fresh meat was almost non existent on ration, so we sold the rabbits at a  shilling a time.  We returned later in the week to collect the skins because Charlie Wooten, who had a greengrocery  and fresh fish business in Crewkerne would drive his van down to us once a  week and pick up all the skins for a 1d each.! They were sought after  in the clothing industry at that time.

Our other money spinner which was  more important was that of mole catching. Moles on pasture land at that time were a  menace to farmers.

We ran two strings of mole traps, one mine  and the other Eric's, but we worked as team.

I can remember two farmers for whom we controlled the pests; one was Farmer Knowles, whose  farm was on the left down the hill towards Whatley Cross. The other was Herbie Wheaton --his farm was Court Farm at  the bottom of Church Street. 

When caught, and  we used to check our traps daily after school, the tail was cut off the dead mole. A penny a tail was  the going price from the farmer. We would then return home to remove the mole skin, nailing  them squarely on to large boards or the back of shed doors to allow to dry. This is the important part, we had a small contract with an animal skin merchant, who would buy them. They were then used to line the flying jackets of the pilots of the Lancaster Bombers.  All part of the war effort ! 

The Horror of War

I attended Holyrood School, Chard, after the first years at Winsham Primary. We school children were transported by bus into Chard and home at evenings each day. The journey I remember most vividly was on Friday 23rd. October 1942. At about 4pm the bus full of us scholars were journeying down the hill from Street towards Whatley Cross, where some children would be dropped off. In the field on the right as we came down the hill was a farmer ( I don't remember who) working in the field with a tractor. At the same time a German light bomber plane came over the wooded area and fired a short burst of gun fire at the farmer turned sharply and flew off in the direction of the coast. The plane was a JU 88 medium bomber. 

When we left the bus at Winsham, I turned the corner into Back Street to see my mother in the  doorway of our cottage, beckoning frantically for me to hurry. This a good place to say that my father was the cream and butter department manager of the Chard Junction factory, and my sister worked as a packer on one of the  butter wrapping machines.

My mother was in a panic and told me that the butter factory had been bombed. Quickly, I got out my bicycle  and set off to Chard Junction , some 3 miles away.

On the approach to the factory entrance is a farm with one of its wagon houses located on the left of the roadside. I stopped and looked in. I was shocked to see perhaps ten young women huddled up together. Most of them with their white overall coats covered in blood  ! My sister was with them and she had several serious cuts on her face. I remember a piece of glass still embedded in her cheek. Nearly all of the injuries to staff were caused by the shattering of the glass in the partitions that separated the workrooms.

I then cycled into the yard of the factory, and saw the devastation. There was  a body  still lying on the side of the yard. Almost at once I saw my Dad at the bottom of the yard. He hurried over  to me and hustled me away from the scene.

Four bombs were released from the JU88. Because of some fog at the time, the plane was so low that when it released the bombs they followed  a flat trajectory. One exploded in the field in front of the factory, the second hit the concrete yard and bounced through a partition into the interior butter churn room, but it had a delayed fuse and exploded when some of the workers were back in trying to establish some sort of order. The third and fourth bombs struck the concrete roof of the factory and flew over the railway line and Chard Junction Station and exploded in the football field beyond Bradford's Yard.

As for the injured, we forget the efficiency and resources of our present Emergency Services. They did not exist on anything like the same scale in those years. Aid would have to be carried out by registered first aid employees of the Company and with one ambulance perhaps in the whole district ! The injured would have eventually been transported to the nearest emergency centre by other vehicles. I would hazard a guess that the nearest one was Taunton East Reach Hospital - now closed.

My sister, Noreen, was taken eventually to hospital to remove the glass slivers were embedded in her arms and face. She was off work for a long period, about three months, I think. Part of the problem was  loss of confidence in case the same occurred again. 

My Dad, to my mind, shrugged it off as one of those things to expect in war. He did not delay in going back to work. Butter production was shut down for months. The greatest problem was the shattered glass that I mentioned earlier. All the butter making churns-there were nine of them, were made from American Cedar. These were peppered with glass particles. This was just one of many problems.

On 21 February 1951, my father was awarded the British Empire Medal for his part in the massive production of butter that supplied the armed forces during the war, and the achievement of his butter producing staff, who achieved a world butter production record of 300 tons in 24 hours.

Dennis, after being demobbed from the RAF Regiment, joined the Somerset Constabulary (now Avon & Somerset Constabulary) where he served for twenty five years. He now lives in retirement with his wife Pat, on the edge of Dartmoor.

First published March, 2013 

Dennis Summers passed away on the 22nd February, 2017