Wrington at War 1939-45 by Mark Bullen

At a meeting in October 1940 the Parish Council discussed their request for a public air-raid shelter. They inspected a number of cellars in Broad Street and that belonging to Mr. Sullivan (of Cambridge House) was found suitable and approved. As the addition of a brick partition and additional support at a cost of £20 would greatly improve the shelter, a recommendation to that effect was made to the County Council.

Unfortunately, the keenness of Wrington’s inhabitants to enrol as ARP wardens led to a shortage of vital equipment. In May 1941, things came to a head and the village Women’s Institute “decided to remedy this in no uncertain fashion” and collected over £12 from a whist drive to provide steel helmets.

Those of us who have watched Dads’ Army on television are very familiar with the phrase “Put that light out”. It is true to say that one of the most hated aspects of the war was the blackout, with its constant need for vigilance in keeping all windows covered at all times during the hours of darkness. Car lights were reduced to mere slits. Road accidents, and pedestrian fatalities, increased dramatically as people floundered in the dark streets in their attempts not to collide with things - particularly moving vehicles! In fact, later that year, Somerset Rural Community Council reported that they were very concerned about the number of child road accidents, caused by the lack of street lighting in the evenings.

On winter Sundays, All Saints' Church was required to move its services forward to the afternoons, it being quite impossible to black out the large windows.

By November the papers were reporting that considerable dissatisfaction was being expressed that nothing had been done in the village to whiten danger points. In the blackout the electric light standards proved a particular menace to the public. Eventually Councils had to resort to painting the curb stones and other potential hazards white in an effort to reduce the many injuries.

Although the blackout was a necessary evil, there were so many infringements of the regulations that, in an attempt to explain the reasons for its importance to the general public, the government published a lengthy article in January 1941:

“ Your sitting-room light is seen at ten thousand feet. Despite the fact that this country is now entering its second winter of war, large numbers of convictions are still being recorded for offences against black-out regulations, indicating either carelessness or ignorance of what is required. We all know now how irksome are the black-out regulations and, before dealing with the suggestions for improving matters in our own homes, it may help to know a few details as to why these regulations are regarded by the government as an essential part of our war, of our civil defence organisation.

The black-out is maintained primarily to protect targets of national importance and to save the lives of civilians. To achieve this it must be sufficiently complete to prevent accurate navigation, aimed bombing or to make unaimed bombing a totally haphazard affair. The general application of the scheme is to cut down lighting in large towns so that the outline is obscured to such an extent that it cannot be recognised. In other words, so that small towns look like villages and villages disappear entirely, or look like single cottages. Lights on roads and railways are also reduced to deprive enemy aircraft of navigational aids.”

Some people had advocated a lighting system which could be extinguished instantly on receipt of a warning. However, they had failed to realise that one of the main obstacles to such a scheme was that more than fifty per cent of the country’s street lighting was powered by gas, which did not lend itself to such a measure.

The Ministry of Home Security’s policy was to produce a complete black-out as a basis and then, whenever possible, to grant relaxations, which were decided upon by trial from the air.

The normal peacetime lighting of a town could be seen by the pilot of an aircraft more than twenty miles away. Pre-war experiments had shown that adequate wartime amenity lighting was visible at 10,000 feet ten miles away. Lighting which was of value to pedestrians could be seen at 2,000 feet from one mile, while motor car lights, improperly screened, had been seen at 10,000 feet from seven or eight miles. Even a small pocket torch, carelessly used and raised above the horizontal, could give away position to aircraft 6,000 feet up at a distance of three miles and the ordinary sitting room light was visible at 10,000 feet some four or five miles away.

So perhaps Dad’s Army’s Mr. Hodges wasn’t such a bad chap after all!

Pam Board recalls living with the blackout only too well..

“ One of things that sticks in my mind is the blackout. Every night we used to have blackout material on boards that we used to put right into the window. You daren’t have a speck of light. There were special constables and they were devils.”

Wrington certainly had its fair share of blackout miscreants and one of the “devils” who seems to have delighted in the restrictions placed by the blackout was Special Constable William Sparey, who was both very vigilant and successful in catching villagers breaking the regulations. A newspaper report of May 24 1941 stated that a new resident, Mr. Walter Barber of Glen Cairn, High Street, had been prosecuted and pleaded not guilty when charged with failing to screen the lights of his house.

In this case, Sparey stated that he had been on duty in the High Street on April 25 at 11.10 pm. with two other Special Constables. He saw a light across the defendant’s lawn but when he knocked on the door the light went out. He saw Mr. Barber and asked him to go upstairs to put the light on again so that he could see for himself., which he did. Barber admitted the black-out was not good enough and said he would have seen it too. He went on to tell the magistrates that he usually put the light out when he went to answer the door and had no idea he was infringing the law. When the magistrate asked the Special Constable if he had ever made any previous complaints about the lights from the house, he replied that he had, though Barber flatly denied it.

In his defence, Barber explained that he had only been in the house since the end of March and contended that the black-out fitting was in perfect order. Not only that, he assured the magistrates that the same fitting had been there since the start of the war and he had personally put it up each evening. Despite this, he did accept that there might have been a little subdued light showing down on the lawn.

He was found not guilty of showing a naked light, but of showing a light that was visible outside the building and was fined five shillings plus 7/6 witness expenses.

On July 12 Sparey struck again, when Cyril Jones of the Manor House, High Street, was fined for failing to screen a light. The constable had been on duty just after midnight in the High Street and saw a bright light showing from a small window at the rear of the house. He went round the building and found the light showing from a window to which there was no black-out of any description. Sparey said that as he received no reply when he knocked at the door, he entered the room, switched off the light and took the bulb away. He returned it the following morning when the defendant told him he had been at home the previous evening but was unaware that a light had been showing. He was fined ten shillings and ordered to pay seven shillings witness expenses.

One final example concerns yet another High Street resident, Ellen Hilda Flint, a domestic servant of the Haydens, Wrington, who was fined £1 for failing to screen lights. P.C. Cooper of Redhill (Sparey must have been off duty for a change!) said that he was on duty on December 12 in the High Street and saw a “very brilliant light” (which turned out to be an unscreened 60 watt bulb) showing from the back of the Haydens. He saw the defendant, who admitted she was responsible.