Pat Hewitt: Evacuated from Belgium
Margaret Wakefield
May 2017
When reading Mark Cogswell’s Memories of an Evacuee Child in your summer Issue, I recognised the name at the top of Mark’s school report list. Patricia Hewitt ( now Kenshole) is my cousin and was living in Box in 1941 with our grandmother, Beatrice Annie Lambert. Patricia, then known as Pat, was evacuated from Belgium with her mother, Kathleen (nee Lambert) in 1940 in a boat intended for only women and children. Her father Reginald Hewitt, unable to travel at the same time, left his car with the army who brought it to England and it spent the rest of the war in Box Garage.
Patricia says that the only memory she has of Box School is the outside lavatories ! Though she does remember being friendly with Maureen May, Edwina Brunt and Mary Goulstone. She also recalls being expected to take another evacuee under her wing. He was, as she remembers, a thin little Londoner called David who had been billeted , inappropriately, she thought, with her elderly, childless great-aunt and great-uncle, Mill and Jack Norkett at Townsend.
Patricia moved from Box School in 1943 to join her cousin, Jane, at a school in Warminster. After the war the family returned to Belgium. Patricia continued to pay regular visits to Box over the years and even lived briefly in Ashley when her husband was working in Bath before she eventually settled in the Cotswolds.
Margaret Wakefield
May 2017
When reading Mark Cogswell’s Memories of an Evacuee Child in your summer Issue, I recognised the name at the top of Mark’s school report list. Patricia Hewitt ( now Kenshole) is my cousin and was living in Box in 1941 with our grandmother, Beatrice Annie Lambert. Patricia, then known as Pat, was evacuated from Belgium with her mother, Kathleen (nee Lambert) in 1940 in a boat intended for only women and children. Her father Reginald Hewitt, unable to travel at the same time, left his car with the army who brought it to England and it spent the rest of the war in Box Garage.
Patricia says that the only memory she has of Box School is the outside lavatories ! Though she does remember being friendly with Maureen May, Edwina Brunt and Mary Goulstone. She also recalls being expected to take another evacuee under her wing. He was, as she remembers, a thin little Londoner called David who had been billeted , inappropriately, she thought, with her elderly, childless great-aunt and great-uncle, Mill and Jack Norkett at Townsend.
Patricia moved from Box School in 1943 to join her cousin, Jane, at a school in Warminster. After the war the family returned to Belgium. Patricia continued to pay regular visits to Box over the years and even lived briefly in Ashley when her husband was working in Bath before she eventually settled in the Cotswolds.
