1900s-1945
Among the recollections held in the archive of the village's local history society are the wartime memories of David Walters, who reached out to the village’s historians all the way from New Zealand. His contribution took the form of a three-part reminiscence, setting down what he could recall of a childhood spent in the village during the Second World War. His story begins, fittingly enough, at the very start of the conflict itself.
David was born in the first month of the war, in Littlehampton on the Sussex coast. His parents' home at the time was in South London, but like many expectant mothers facing the prospect of bombing raids on the capital, his mother was sent away to the south coast for the birth. It meant that David's first days were spent well away from the dangers that London would soon endure, though his earliest years would be shaped by the war in other ways.
His father did not wait to be called up. He volunteered for service early in the war and joined the Royal Artillery. His duties included the defence of Southampton docks, a vital target that needed protecting from enemy attack. Later in the conflict his unit was posted to India, where he took part in the fighting against the Japanese. The family did not see him again until he came home on Christmas Eve, 1945 — a homecoming that must have made that Christmas one to remember.
For much of the war years, though, David was not living with his parents at all. He was brought up instead by his aunt and uncle, Hilda and Arthur Juggins, at their home on Lower Green in Leigh, Kent. The Juggins household also included their daughter Joyce, who was some eight or nine years David's senior — old enough to seem almost a grown-up to a small boy.
Arthur Juggins was a memorable character, and David's account brings him vividly to life. He was a short man, balding, and he wore spectacles with thick, bottle-bottom lenses. He had a distinctive way of walking that David likened to Charlie Chaplin, and when he spoke he did so at a tremendous pace, the words tumbling out of him. He earned his living at Mr Lakeman's bakery, which stood only about a hundred metres from the Juggins home — a convenient walk to work each morning.
Because of his poor eyesight, Arthur was rejected when he tried to join the army. His thick glasses told the recruiting authorities all they needed to know. But like many men barred from regular service, he still found a way to do his bit: he joined the Home Guard, standing ready to defend the village should the need ever arise.
There was sadness in Arthur's past as well. His first wife had died when Joyce was still only a toddler, leaving him to raise his young daughter. Hilda, as David's aunt, became the steady centre of the household. She was a regular member of the chapel congregation, and her faith was plainly part of the fabric of daily life in the Juggins home.
Next door to the Juggins family lived the Cheesemans, whose house was a bungalow. Among them was Michael Cheeseman, a boy about a year older than David — in ordinary circumstances, a natural playmate for a youngster on the green. But Aunt Hilda had other ideas. She forbade David to have anything to do with Michael, and whatever the reason behind the prohibition, her ruling was final. For a boy of David's age it must have been a puzzling and frustrating restriction, with a potential friend living just next door.
David's time in Leigh came to an end while he was still a child. The last occasion on which he saw Joyce was when he was twelve years old, and by then she was preparing for her own marriage. With that, the chapter of his Leigh childhood closed, and the years passed.
It was only decades later, from the other side of the world, that David returned to those memories in earnest. Writing to the village's historians from New Zealand, he set down his recollections in the three-part reminiscence now preserved by the Society. His account stands as a valuable record of how the war was experienced by a child in the village — the absent father serving overseas, the Home Guard uncle, the rhythms of life around Lower Green.
David was not the only member of the family to put pen to paper about Leigh. Joyce, too, wrote down her own memories, and these were published in the Leigh Parish Magazine, appearing in the October/November 2004 edition. Between them, the brother and sister by adoption — the small boy evacuated to the green and the girl who had grown up there — have left the village a double portrait of life in Leigh across the war years and beyond.
Memories like these matter to the archive. Official records tell us about units and dock defences, about enlistments and homecomings, but they rarely capture what a wartime childhood actually felt like: the uncle who walked like Chaplin and talked at a hundred miles an hour, the bakery a hundred metres down the lane, the neighbour's bungalow and the friendship that was never allowed to happen. David Walters' recollections, preserved through the kindness of a correspondent writing from New Zealand, give the village exactly that — a plain, personal window onto Leigh during the Second World War, kept safe for those who come after us.