The Second World War (1939-45) brought great change to Stanford. Nine individuals are recorded on the war memorial in St. Denys' church as having lost their lives, and these died at sea (commemorated at Portsmouth Naval Memorial and Tower Hill Memorial) or are buried in Stanford, France, Hungary, Italy and Tunisia.
There was an active Home Guard in 1940 under Major Douglas Maitland King of Orchard House. Men and women worked the land, in reserved occupations for food production, or in the Land Army. Evacuees had arrived from London in the early phases of hostilities. Some Italian and German prisoners of war were present in and around the village, working on farms and in the Shellingford crossroads quarry. British Army personnel were billeted in and around the village, and the Institute, a wooden building erected in 1927, and used for village social activities, was requisitioned as a canteen.
Easily viewed from the road that runs through Stanford in the Vale
are these buildings, an air raid shelter and accommodation building.
Image © Peter Dorward, www.pixture.co.uk - used with permission
In autumn-winter 1941, No. 3 Elementary Flying Training School (EFTS) began operations, using de Haviland Tiger Moths, at Shellingford airfield, most of which (particularly the administration and accommodation blocks) was on Stanford parish land. There was one fatal crash of a Tiger Moth, with one of the two pilots surviving, which occurred near the RAF hospital in Cottage Road. Pre-glider flying training by the army took place in 1942-43.
One of the Tiger Moths that flew from Shellingford airfield - and still flying today with Sywell Aero Club near Northampton.
Part of the air war in the area was the death of 3 children (two of whom were evacuees) and property destruction in Hatford on 19 September 1940 by a German bomb, and the crash of a bomb-laden RAF Lancaster bomber at Lyford on 8 April 1945, causing some property damage in Stanford.
In 1946, Royal Netherlands Air Force pilots trained at Shellingford. The airfield closed formally on 31 March 1948, the site later, in about 1949-52, to perhaps as late as 1960, being used as a dormitory for Irish labourers employed by Hipperson's and Wimpey's Civil Engineering Contractors and other companies, who were bussed out to sites at AERE Harwell and the airfields at Fairford and Brize Norton, then for a while by US military personnel. Later still, the site was developed as the White Horse Business Park.
Reader Comments
Michael Salt writes:
The history of the village during the Second World War period
does not record that American troops were based in there for few
months prior to D-Day. My parents lived at that time in Bear
House - we shared with another family called Dudding I believe -
(my father was an engineer at the flying school at Shellingford).
I can well remember American troops being billeted in the stables
at the side of Bear House. One American lorry caused the sewers
outside the back garden gate to collapse. They treated me (a four
year old boy), with chocolate and chewing gum; things
unimaginably exotic at the time. They also painted a moustache on
me on one occasion at a party in the old WI (?) next to the
school, though since I was made sick by an excess of chocolate
the memory is not a pleasant one! Since we had only a cold water
pump in the kitchen and my mother cooked on a primus stove the
culture shock was dramatic.
The American visitors must have had more than a transient impact
if only because of their courting of the local girls, some of
which took place on the green metal bench under the tree just in
front of Bear House, used to keep me awake at night. The tales of
their activities in the Horse and Jockey pub which I overheard my
father recounting even at that age made an impression on me!
They certainly woke things up!
