Personal Stories: 1940 - 1949

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My full name is Stuart John Gibson and I was born actually in Halifax at the Royal Infirmary during the war in 1944 when they didn’t have home births because of the black out and various other things you know so it were a case that they had to go into hospital in them days to have their children, so my mother went there and I was born there just at the end of the war it was, in 1944 I was born. What date was that? 6th of October 1944 it were, I think the war had a year to go

Peter Thomas, I was born on the 8th of September 1941 in Halifax, Halifax General but I lived at Fairfield, Palace House Road, Fairfield on the little council estate as was then; there’s a much bigger one now on to the station, but then there were only about…sixteen houses I think then up Fairfield, sixteen council houses.

Yes, I liked Colden School. I remember the teachers – Mrs Featherstone – I didn’t particularly like her because I was always in bother, for going in the fields or something. There was just three classrooms – infants, middle and top class with a canteen. There were different age groups all together; in my class I think there would be twenty to thirty. My favourite subjects were maths, art, music.

I started off on arable farming, all the various parts of that, early morning milking – we started at quarter past four in the morning, then I ended up on a pig farm in Suffolk – that was interesting, that I enjoyed. It’s always given me a love for pigs, let’s put it that way! They’re one of my favourite animals.

It’s Pauline Ann Kilbey, but I’ve never been known, well apart when I was first at school, I’ve never been known as Pauline, always Ann.