Extract from an interview with Lena Church, October 2025 (by Grahame Lacey) - part 2
… I tell you what I do remember, and this came under the Royal British Legion before they were royal, I think. And there was always the British Legion in the village. And mostly for Skittles.
But they would have wine and cheese evenings, which were really great fun. And half of us would go home and be sick, drunk.
They were in the village hall. Always a social club there next to the hall.
I served on the village hall committee for a while. So the hall had always been used for social activities. And then there was a sort of the adjacent, a bigger kitchen area and storage area or something like that.
The basic village hall was much like it is now, except that you didn't have that right-hand door in the passage to come in. You had the billiard room and there was a card room.
And next to the billiard room where that passageway comes through, there was a card room. And that was on the right as you came in the door and you would be coming through the ladies' toilets now coming through. So things got moved there.
And then, of course, they put the social club and Skittle Alley on the back.
And the hall was extended. The St John Ambulance took it over at one point and they extended it and then by two windows or one window either side, the length of the main room. Then it went back to being Clutton Village Hall. And I think they extended it again to incorporate the stage.
Well, and if you forget about the kitchen being in the corner, and the window that's in the kitchen, If you look at that from the outside, you would have window - emergency door - window.
Well, I was going to say about we had fun at Youth Club because we used to take our concerts. We used to do concerts at the chapel.
At the Methodist Chapel?
Yeah, in the school room at the back. So that acted as a youth club. What period was that?
1946/47. Yeah, there was table tennis, but I spent a lot of time playing table tennis in the village hall when it was the miners' welfare and it wasn't used. But we would go in, somebody had a key and we would play table tennis. And some of the, mightn't be about four or five of us there, but it was good. There was, and the billiard room was there. But we would take our concert to Cambrook House to entertain the old people who were in Cambrook House [Eastcourt Road, Temple Cloud].
Just struck me just something else. During the war, The menfolk, there weren't so many menfolk. And well, you were getting involved. I mean, you were a bit young, but were you aware of the womenfolk, the younger womenfolk in the village, getting involved with farming and doing all those things? I remember there being Land girls here.
And I remember people being called up. My sister was just old enough to register but she didn't get called.
I remember the air raids on Bristol. You could hear the explosions. We could hear the aircraft going over it because it was, that's one of ours. You could tell about the engine noise.
And were there any stray bombs that went off in the area? Where were they?
Over that way (Stowey direction). That's just in those fields. This is at all Stowey.
Three fields over and then two fields over further again. There were craters. We used to go and look for shrapnel.
Yeah, but nothing close to the village, but my dad dug a shelter.
I remember my mum pushing me under the stairs once. Some, I don't know what it was, something we were screaming down. It could have been a shell casing or something. I don't know. Anyway, it was. And she pushed me in and stuck her head in. Because when you saw the buildings that had been damaged with bombs, the staircases were always still there.
There's a bit of logic there.
But I had, she wasn't my aunt, she was my cousin's aunt on the other side of her family. And she went to St Nicholas Church (Bristol) for Evensong. Right. That's the one over Bristol Bridge.
And the raid started while they were in church. So they all went down into the crypt and they stayed there all night. And it was a big raid and the next morning she lived in St Werburg's. She picked her way home over the hose pipes at all the rubble to go home…..
Thank you Lena for sharing some of your memories from Clutton and WWII times.
For more recollections from Lena Church - Click here