The family from Colwyn Bay who took in 11 evacuees during the Second World War

Jun 17 2010 by Mari Jones, North Wales Weekly News

The family from Colwyn Bay who took in 11 evacuees during the Second World War

A FORMER evacuee to Colwyn Bay recently made a nostalgic trip to the area, which became his home during the Second World War.

Jim Robinson told local historian Graham Roberts his story when they recently met in St Andrew’s Church.

Jim told him his time in Colwyn Bay was some of the happiest of his life, and is eternally grateful to the extraordinary family who took him in.

In 1939 James Robinson was the managing director of the Manchester textile firm Messrs Mather & Platt and he lived with his wife Ruth and five grown up children at The Croft, a large house which still exists, on the corner of Brackley Avenue and Oak Drive, in Colwyn Bay.

At the beginning of the war hundreds of children were evacuated to Colwyn Bay from Liverpool and arrived at the Rhos-on-Sea golf course where it was arranged they would be chosen and collected by local residents.

Jim, his brother Bob and sister Mary and their next door neighbours, Theresa and Jim Quinn were left until the end, no one having claimed them, until Helen Robinson looked at them and said, “Hello, you lot had better come home with me.” When the five of them arrived at The Croft, Tommy’s mother, Mrs Robinson, was waiting on the door step; she looked at Jim and said “What is your name?” He was 12 years old at the time and replied, “Jim”. “No”, she said, “What is your real name?” and he said “Robinson”. “Well”, she responded, “that’s my name too”. She put her arm around his shoulder and said “Let’s all go inside.”

There were in fact 11 evacuees in the house - the three Robinsons, the two Quinns, Olive Green who was the niece of The Croft’s cook, and five children of the Sandford family, Margaret and Dorothy who were five-year-old twins, their sisters Joyce and Betty and brother Ronald. One of Mr and Mrs Robinson’s daughters, Kathleen, had become a surgeon and gynaecologist in London and had delivered the Sandford twins and when the war began she had persuaded her parents that all the children needed to get away to somewhere safe.

Jim and his siblings came from a slum area of Liverpool and Jim talked of the kindness of the Robinsons in feeding and clothing 11 evacuees. Jim recalls Mr Robinson buying him models to make, encouraging Mary to play the piano, encouraging him to join the 2nd Colwyn Bay Scouts.

The couple treated all 11 evacuees plus the cook, their children to see the film the Wizard of Oz at the Arcadia Theatre.

Jim was taken up Snowdon and to this day he can remember seeing the red glow in the sky as his home town of Liverpool burned after a German bombing raid and yet curiously as a twelve-year-old boy he never recalls feeling concerned for the welfare of his parents.

The three Sandford children were Catholics. Mary, who was four in 1939 was sent to the Convent school, and Ronald went to St Joseph’s school, but Jim went with eleven other children to a make-shift school in the Co-op shop in Sea View Road where a Catholic teacher imported from London taught them. His teacher, Mr Balmer, asked Jim why he always ran home, Jim remembers replying:“Because I love it there, sir”.

When Jim was 16 years old he got a job in W S Wood’s department store on Station Road, where he was paid 10 shillings a week for the first year and £1 a week for the second year. Mr Wood told him he was a very fortunate boy because when he was an apprentice he received 2 shillings 6 pence per week.

In 1945 when it was time for the children to return to their families, Mrs Robinson asked Jim if he would like to continue to live at The Croft and not to go back to Liverpool. Jim felt that he would be out of place in Mr and Mrs Robinson’s world and did not want to be an encumbrance so reluctantly decided to return to the small terraced house in Liverpool with the outside toilet. Mrs Robinson may have made her invitation because her only son, James Cliff Edmeston Robinson, aged 25, had been shot down over the English Channel during the Battle of Britain, and had never been seen again. Jim still vividly recalls seeing him go off to war dressed very smartly in his blue RAF uniform. Mrs Robinson paid for the lovely stained glass window at the back of St Andrew’s Church, which depicts a scene on the Sea of Galilee, in her son’s memory.

Jim, now 82 years old, acknowledges arriving at The Croft in 1939 was the making of him and coloured and influenced the rest of his life. He has always tried to do what is right for the simple reason that he never wanted to bring his association with James and Ruth Robinson into disrepute. He never wanted them to think ill of him.

With thanks to Graham Roberts.