D.W. Clayton 

When the Second World War started my farther was employed as a gardener/handyman by Captain Peter Bell at a house called “THE CAMP” in the village of Steeple Clayton Nr Buckingham.

Early in 1940 his employer advised him that the house was being taken over by the government for the duration of the war and he was asked to stay on as caretaker until the new occupants arrived. This turned out to be members of the W.R.N.S. who asked him to stay on and to grow as many vegetables as was possible to help feed the girls who would be staying there.We knew the girls worked in shifts being taken each day to Bletchley Park but did not know what they were doing until many years after the war was over.

The house did not have a mains water supply. It was supplied by a very ancient petrol engine pump from a well in the allotments across the road. Often this engine would not start and my father had to pump it  up by hand several times a day because the girls used rather a lot of water but the well never ran dry.

When the girls discovered that my mother did sewing and washing she was inundated with requests for her to do repairs to clothing etc but it was mainly starching their best collars because none of them liked doing that job.

A large hut was erected in the grounds as a recreation room in which they had film shows every Monday evening and my father and I were invited to go whenever we wanted to (mother could not go because she had my 3 year old brother to look after.)

In spring 1942 my pet white angora rabbit had a litter of seven white babies when some of the girls saw them they wanted them as pets. After much cajoling the officer in charge finally agreed and they went to their new home. Now when the rabbits were fully grown the officer decided that they must go in the pot, but the girls refused to eat them so my father was told to take them to the local butcher who skinned them and sold them back to the camp cookhouse as wild rabbits, so the girls ate them after all but did not know it. All those involved were sworn to secrecy otherwise there would have been a riot.

The Barn where the W.R.N.S. kept their transport has a brass plate on the roadside wall which states that Oliver Cromwell slept there the night before the battle for Hillesdon and that he stabled his horses in the village church.