Meals on Wheels
Snow has forced us to take a small break from our Calverley New Town Series this week. To cheer everyone up I thought I would regale you with a small story about how good things can come from the horrid snow conditions we have this week. Well first a nice picture and then a story.
Snow covered grasses in Dunorlan Park.
Back in the post-war year of 1947, Britain was being crushed by the frosty hands of Mother Nature as ice and snow covered the whole country. I'm sure trains ran though, but that's another story. After the war the country was left exhausted and the coal and electricity crisis, in which the commodity was rationed, made conditions very harsh. The bitter winter conditions lasted from January until March and it got so bad that men had to use pneumatic drills to clear the roads of compacted ice.
At this time the Assembly Hall was being used as an emergency care station to look after those who could not heat their homes or cook a hot meal. A story goes that one poor old lady was attempting to boil an egg in a tin saucepan over an oil lamp but resigned after twenty minutes.
A young Miss Leonora Hayne from Langton Green was serving in the Red Cross and Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) at this time and, upon hearing these sad stories, remembered seeing the wives of miners in Wales collecting hot meals and delivering them to the elderly residents stranded up in the frozen hills. This gave her an idea, could she do the same to help those stuck inside their cold homes in Tunbridge Wells?
The ladies of the WVS delivering their meals on wheels.
Miss Hayne gathered together a few local ladies from the Women's Voluntary Service, who were already used to feeding the masses in emergency conditions, and began ordering food from the British Restaurant in Calverley Grounds. They then would drive the food around to those in need. The food was also declared off-ration which meant that it wouldn't be counted against your points in your ration books. Two meals a week were served at a cost of a shilling, or about £1.50 in today's money.
This was the very first service of its kind in the whole country and was very quickly adopted country-wide. The service still runs today and is called Meals-on-Wheels. Wikipedia states that the service was invented in Hemel Hempstead of the same year. Sorry Hertfordshire, but Tunbridge Wells invented Meals-on-Wheels.
Please give a thought to some of your elderly neighbours and pop around to see if any need anything.
