War was declared on 3^rd September 1939.

In October 1940 Romford Golf Club’s professional shop and clubhouse were requisitioned for military purposes and the Club used “The Homestead” 19 Gidea Close, overlooking Gidea Park Tennis Club, as its clubhouse. One of the tennis courts was used as a car park for members. It was reported by the secretary that a downstairs room was provided as a mixed lounge, with a dartboard for the men. Ladies were not allowed to remain in the bar, however, and the upstairs rooms would be for men only, except when meals were served. The club’s furniture, not needed at “the Homestead,” was stored in the Mews Cottages next to the entrance to the golf club. One night, incendiary bombs set fire to the roof of the Mews and the stored possessions were ruined by the water used to extinguish the blaze (the Golf Club moved back to its premises in November 1945).

In response to a request from the Civil Defence authorities, members volunteered for work to render the golf course unsuitable for the landing of enemy aircraft. This was done by digging additional bunkers, stringing wire ropes 30 to 40 feet in the air between suitably placed trees and putting other obstacles on the course. Several concrete emplacements for Bofors anti-aircraft guns were also constructed on the course, the remains of which can still be seen today.

(“The Homestead,” 19 Gidea Close, played one more role after the war as it became the home of George Patchett. George Patchett had been working in Europe on munitions when the war broke out and was spirited back to England and worked at the Sterling factory in Dagenham. He helped design a machine gun (Sterling Mark IV) which went into production in 1956 and a year later a second version, the Sterling Patchett Mark V, a silenced version of his original gun, was adopted by the British Army.)

London was, of course, the target for the German bombers, but, because of the proximity to the capital and the fact that the outer ring of barrage balloons and anti-aircraft gun defences were just to the west of the town, Romford received an undue proportion of attention from the enemy. Those bombers unable to penetrate the defensive ring around London would jettison their bombs in turning for home, many falling in and around Romford. Indeed, between the first high explosives and incendiary bombs in 1940 through to the flying bomb and rocket attacks of 1944 and early 1945, only a few hundred of the borough’s 18,000 houses escaped damage. Several hundred people lost their lives. Although there were few of the concentrated heavy attacks suffered by other areas, the constant threat of bombing in this area was probably far more stressful to the local inhabitants at the time.

At the time of the 1911 Exhibition, Sir Herbert Raphael had given land at the end of Heath Drive (now No. 10) for a new fire sub-station. This station was still in use during the Second World War.

14 Heath Drive (1911 Exhibition house by T. Millwood Wilson), on the north corner with Elm Walk, was destroyed in the bombing (on 21/10/40) and rebuilt in 1946 to the exact specification of the original house.

71 Main Road, on the corner of Heath Drive was also destroyed on 1^st November 1940 (This had been the first Romford Golf Club clubhouse from 1894 – 1898).

Our Secretary, Joyce Leicester, remembers commuting to London to work and seeing in the evening, from the unlit carriages of the train, many fires resulting from the bombing . She also recalls the sound of the anti-aircraft guns each night, which sounded as loud as the bombs, and, on her way home from the station, taking refuge in a stranger’s house to shelter from the shrapnel.

Joyce also recalls being evacuated while an unexploded bomb was defused at Gallows Corner and having RAF personnel billeted in her family home, in Upper Brentwood Road, from an RAF base at the sports field at the junction of Gallows Corner and Main Road. Her mother had a lucky escape when All Saints Church, in Squirrel’s Heath, was flattened at 11 p.m. on 10^th November 1941, her mother having been preparing refreshments for a party at the Church that afternoon.

See Joyce Leicester's War below

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Joyce Leicester (nee Burt) b.February 1922 – dec. December 2023

see History – Gidea Park and District Civic Society History – Loss of a Legend

Service in London and Egypt during WW2

Joyce was born on the 25^th February 1922.

She joined the Civil Service via examination at the end of 1938 / early in 1939 following 5 years at Brentwood County High School for Girls on Shenfield Common.  

She first worked at Berkeley Square in a department responsible for the administration of Civil Service examinations.   However, after a short period, and just before the outbreak of war, Joyce was transferred to the Ministry of Information.   Apparently, the transfer was at very short notice.

Joyce then worked in the Ministry at Senate House which lies between Russell Square and Malet St. W.C.1.  She was impressed by the size and grandeur of Senate House with its marbled floors and grand staircases.  On the ground floor there was a large Press Room accommodating many newspaper representatives.   Joyce remembers sometimes seeing the head of the Ministry, Sir Walter Monkton, and also various well known visitors including notably the King and Queen and the two Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret.   Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt the President of the United States, was another famous visitor whom Joyce saw.

After the outbreak of war Joyce carried on working in the Ministry.    She travelled every day into central London by train between Gidea Park and Liverpool Street Station and then by tube.   The tube station that Joyce used to get to Senate House was Russell Square.   She recalls travelling to and from Gidea Park into London and working all through the Blitz.   Joyce remembers on a couple of occasions during an air raid  knocking on the front door of any house in Upper Brentwood Road near where she lived and that she happened to be passing in order to gain shelter from the bombs and shrapnel in the street.   She also recalls going by bus to the West End and seeing the John Lewis building and others badly damaged by the overnight bombing.

Staff at the Ministry were invited to volunteer to stay overnight at Senate House in order to provide a fire watch service.  Joyce was trained how to use a stirrup pump to put out any incendiary bombs that might land on the roof.   She and her colleagues were on duty overnight on two hour shifts.  At the end of each shift Joyce would have to wake up those members of staff who were due to take over.   Sometimes people were impossible or difficult to wake up !   Joyce never actually had to use a stirrup pump in earnest.   Her periods on duty were spent in a room within Senate House waiting for telephone instructions to go up onto the roof.   Fortunately, this never happened while Joyce was on watch.   Joyce remembers that sometimes during her off duty periods she helped make camouflage netting.

One of Joyce’s jobs in the Ministry was to deal with the despatch of D Notices (Defence).   These would typically inform members of the Press about the scheduled movements of well known figures including the Royal family.   The Press could use the information provided to them in the D Notice but were not allowed to publish it until the persons in question were safely out of the area.   To do so was a serious criminal offence.   Joyce remembers that one of her superiors in the Ministry, Anthony Greenwood, son of Arthur Greenwood MP,  helped her to deal with the D Notices and in order to catch the evening post would sometimes fold bundles of letters and place them in envelopes.

Another job was to collate communications coming into the Ministry from overseas including Moscow and, on occasions, Kiev.

In 1942/1943 Joyce’s only sibling, a brother two years younger than her, joined a local volunteer RAF group and applied to join the RAF to train as a pilot.  The waiting list was long and after waiting many months he agreed in early 1944 to enlist as a navigator.

In 1943 Joyce responded to requests for civil servants in the Ministry of Information to volunteer to transfer to the Ministry’s Cairo Office for 3 years.   Joyce volunteered and was seconded to Cairo together with two friendly working associates.  Joyce was 21 years old.   Her male boss thought she was too young to go to Cairo but her slightly more mature lady friends assured him that they would look after her.

It was then late 1943.  Joyce and her Ministry colleagues were told that they were to travel by ship on a convoy to Egypt. Before sailing Joyce was given a written ‘Escape Kit‘ from the Ministry of War Transport.

Joyce and her two friends joined their ship at Greenock on the Clyde having travelled up by train from Euston where her brother, Roy, had seen her off.   Joyce was understandably nervous at the prospect of leaving her family and sailing to Egypt but felt better as soon as she joined up on the train with her various girl friends from the Ministry who had also volunteered to go to Cairo.   It was a small merchant ship with 12 cabins for passengers.   The cabins had been designed for two persons but this had been increased in war time to four bunks per cabin.   The ship remained at the dockside in Greenock for three days before sailing in convoy.   Joyce recalls that the food on board even while still at the quayside was plentiful compared to the wartime rations then generally prevailing in England.   Joyce recalls that, on the ship, she and her friends together with some other ladies were sat at table with the Captain at the head and the Ship’s Engineer at the other end.

As passengers on the ship Joyce and her friends were given no information about the forthcoming journey.   The convoy headed out into the Atlantic.  The Mediterranean had been closed to convoys and Joyce and her companions were expecting that the convoy would sail South and then via the Cape of Good Hope and the Gulf of Aden.   By the position of the sun the convoy seemed to be heading westwards across the Atlantic.   However, the convoy suddenly, and much to the surprise of Joyce and her companions, turned Eastwards and headed towards Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean.   By this time the Allies had defeated the Axis powers in North Africa and Sicily and a decision must have been taken for the convoy to sail direct to Egypt through the Mediterranean.    Joyce learned that her convoy was the first one heading for Egypt and then on to India to take the direct and much shorter route through the Mediterranean.

Although the Axis powers had been defeated in North Africa the threat to the convoy from submarines and from planes based in Europe was very real.   As a result the convoy sailed very close to the North African shoreline.    Joyce recalls that after dark the ships escorting the convoy would launch depth charges to ward off any submarines that might have been preparing to attack the convoy.   She remembers the noise of the depth charges exploding.   Even though Joyce and her companions realised that the depth charges were being launched as a precautionary, defensive tactic they found the experience alarming.

When near to Alexandria the convoy did come under heavy aerial attack one evening at dusk.   It was late in the evening and quite dark.  Joyce recalls that she and her friends were very frightened by the experience.   Joyce and her friends stood at an open doorway where they could see the ship’s crew firing guns at the planes.  Joyce remembers that some of the crew firing the guns were the same members of the crew who served the meals at the Captain’s table.    The remainder of the voyage was peaceful.

Joyce and her friends had expected to be disembarked at Port Said but in the event the ship proceeded to Suez.   Joyce recalls sitting on the deck of the ship at the bow while they went through the Suez Canal and on to Suez.  She remembers the impression that the sights of the desert – all the sand and the camels – made upon her and thinking to herself that she had travelled far from home and was in a truly foreign and distant land.   They disembarked at night and were escorted on to a three-ton truck of the British Army for the journey into Cairo.   They sat on benches arranged in rows in the back of the truck.

They were taken to the National Hotel in Cairo in time for dinner.   After a night’s sleep and breakfast they were taken to a newly built block of apartments which had been requisitioned by the British Government.   The building had been converted into single en suite rooms.  The building served as a hostel and Joyce and her friends were the first occupants of the building.   Joyce found the accommodation very comfortable with good rooms, meals and a piano lounge.  

Joyce and her friends lived in the hostel for about a year and then five of them found a flat in the centre of Cairo, together with a Mahmoud to cook, shop and clean.   The flat was only a short distance from the office and within easy reach of fashion shops, tea rooms and the NAAFI where they could purchase tinned foods, cigarettes and alcohol.

Joyce’s working day would typically be to travel in the morning by the ‘bus’ (in reality a British Army truck) from her hostel to the office in the middle of Cairo.   At lunchtime she would either go back by the bus to the hostel or to the Gezira Sporting Club (which was – and still is – situated on an island in the Nile in the Zamelek district of Cairo).   The Club was used by officers of the British Army and by British civilians working or living in Cairo.    It had extensive sporting and recreational facilities.   Joyce and one of her friends had squash lessons at the Club.   Joyce returned to the office for two hours in the evening.

As a young and quite junior Civil Servant, Joyce spent much of her time reorganising filing systems.   She was promoted to be an establishment administrator.

Joyce’s life in Egypt was obviously a great adventure.   She seems to have fully embraced the wartime ethos of working hard but also taking every opportunity of enjoying life whether by travelling or socially.  

She travelled as much as she could often using her social contacts in the Army to provide the necessary transport.    Most of her trips outside Egypt were with one of her colleagues in the Ministry that she had travelled out with.   They would phone British Army HQ or sometimes the local transport HQ or otherwise use their social contacts to find out if there were any seats available on vehicles travelling to places they wanted to visit.   Among other expeditions she mentions having been to, was what was then British Mandated Palestine and also, on one occasion, to Beirut.  She can recall going into Palestine through the Rafah crossing.  She also recalls travelling to Tel Aviv, to Haifa and to Jordan.  Journeys across the Sinai Desert were ‘interesting’ in terms of finding appropriate places to stop for a necessary comfort break.    

Trips inside Egypt to places like Alexandria or Suez were often made by train.

When travelling,  and at other times as necessary, Joyce would use her British passport and also the identity card issued to British civilians by British Army Headquarters.

Joyce and her colleagues would often attend dances at the Gezira Sporting Club organised for officers in the British Army.   Sometimes this involved Joyce and her friends being collected by truck and driven out to a camp in the desert.    She remembers that after having a dance with a gentleman the lady would not be allowed to sit at her partner’s table but would have to return to her lady friends’ table.   However, there were ways for making informal but effective contact with young officers so social life was not as circumscribed as might first appear to be the case.   There were very few English ladies in Cairo at that time.

One outing that Joyce recalls was when she and a girl friend arranged to visit the Pyramids with two young officers.    On that particular occasion the centre of Cairo was out of bounds for members of the Army so a weekend rendezvous had to be arranged at the Pyramids.   Joyce and her friend found that the officers had hired horses on which they were to travel around the Pyramids.   They found out that the Egyptian horsemen had been told that all four of them were able horse riders.   It was fun but Joyce was a bit wary!

On another occasion Joyce travelled by overnight train to Luxor with an Army officer friend.   They stayed at the Luxor Palace Hotel and visited the Valley of the Kings and the temple at Karnak.  Joyce was provided with a donkey on the trip to the Valley of the Kings where they were able to visit some of the tombs.   She recalls that sometimes the donkey was reluctant to move and Joyce had to dig her heels in to try to get it to walk on.

On the 24^th May 1944 Joyce attended the programme of events celebrating Empire Day held at the Gezira Club.  A religious service was followed by a fly past by the RAF, free distribution of refreshments, athletic sports events for the troops, distribution of prizes, playing of the Retreat, free concert and a dance (see copy programme attached).

Life did, however, have its downsides.   She was away from her family for the whole of her period in Egypt and could not speak to them by phone since her parents (like most people at the time) did not have a phone in the house.   Joyce also suffered a bad attack of jaundice which developed while she was returning by train from a trip to Palestine.   Two Egyptian gentlemen in Joyce’s compartment made room for her to be able to lie down on the train seat.   When she got back to Cairo she was medically examined and then at her request allowed to stay in her room at the hostel.    However, her condition deteriorated and she developed a very high temperature.     At this point she was going to be taken to the American Hospital but fortunately she began to recover and remained in the hostel to recuperate.   While she was ill with jaundice Joyce’s food was prepared for her by a young Arab boy.   On one occasion the food she was served tasted odd and upon querying it Joyce was told by the boy that as it was then Ramadan he had not been able to taste the food himself before giving it to Joyce!

Joyce remembers that on VE day while she was returning from shopping she met a young army officer whom she knew who asked her how she was going to celebrate.   Joyce had no plans so the officer bought some Drambuie and returned with Joyce to her flat where she and her friends enjoyed VE day with the officer sitting on the floor of the flat balcony overlooking the street below.

Joyce worked in the Cairo office of the Ministry of Information until nearly the end of 1946.

Joyce returned to England by boat in December 1946.   Her ship was the S.S. Ascania which sailed from Port Said.  Joyce has a menu for breakfast and luncheon on board the Ascania on the 17^th December 1946.   She had been away for more than three years.   On her return to England she was met at a London train station by her brother.   Joyce cannot remember precisely but believes that the station must have been either Waterloo or Liverpool Street.

By the time Joyce returned to England the Ministry of Information had been absorbed into the Foreign Office.     The Foreign Office wanted Joyce to work in the Hague after a short period back in the UK but after having been away for such a long time she did not want to be separated from her family so soon after returning.   In the event, Joyce was transferred to the Treasury Solicitor’s department where she worked until her retirement.