The Personal Service League was the forerunner of what became in WW2 the RVS or WRVS
Devoran had its own branch in the 1930s which required the Village Hall for Fundraising. Clothes and funds were raised for distressed areas of Cornwall during the unemployment of the mid 1930s.
E.J. Turner was the Devoran School Head Teacher in the 1930s.
Blog posted by Mark Norris DVH100 Devoran Village Hall centenary, posted on 26 April 2024
TV’s Jungle Cowboy and children’s TV star of the 1950s, Ross Salmon went on to a sports reporting and TV career in the Southwest / Devon.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news_features/2004/ross_salmon.shtml
BBC Devon Obituary 2004 24 September 2014
As reported in the West Briton 25 October 1945
A mixed October 1945 clipping –
news of Alfred Sowden of Devoran who was missing presumed lost in a military plane crash just after the war ended,
alongside news of a concert fundraiser in Devoran Village Hall by St Paul’s Players for the Devoran Welcome Home Fund.
Alfred Sowden is remembered on Devoran War Memorial.
Blog post by Mark Norris DVH 100 19 April 2024
as reported in the West Briton July 26 1945 and 2 August 1945.
The funeral took place yesterday at St. John’s Church Devoran yesterday of Miss Bertha Nicholls, who died at her residence, 5 Lemon Street, Devoran on Saturday, after a long illness.
Miss Nicholls who was 57 years of age was the youngest surviving daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Henry Nicholls of Carnon Downs.
Well known and highly respected, Miss Nicholls had been caretaker of the Village Hall for many years and a member of the Devoran Women’s Institute
as reported in the local press August 4th 1938.
Plenty of her fellow W.I. members turned out for the funeral.
A new caretaker was appointed in September 1938, as reported in the local press on 22 September 1938.
“Devoran Village Hall Committee on Thursday, appointed Mrs. Melville Hitchens, as caretaker of the hall. The vacancy was caused by the death of Miss B. Nicholls. A vote of sympathy was passed with relatives of the late Mrs. B. Nicholls, the members standing in silence.” as reported in the local press on 22 September 1938.
Mrs. Melville Hitchens is probably the caretaker who kept the Village Hall clean and tidy during its many roles in the busy wartime WW2 period. Dances, lectures, gas mask distribution, jam making …
Blog post by Mark Norris as part of DVH100 Devoran Village Hall centenary, 19 April 2024
Doubled membership for Cornish Red Cross and VADs [Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses]
Western Morning News 2nd November 1938
Former WW1 Nurse or VAD, Miss M.P. Tyacke is mentioned amongst the guests of this meeting combining Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance volunteers, no doubt in preparation for future war in the months after the Munich Crisis of September 1938. The WW1 network of nurses, hospital staff and first aid volunteers was being rebuilt.
“Colonel Hood said there 128 immobile members and 27 mobile (of whom 25 were nurses and two cooks) in the county at the end of September [1938].
He needed more volunteers for national emergency, cooks, chemists, dispensers, opticians, and masseuses, as well as women who had passed nursing and first aid tests.”
“Only six detachments exist in the county – Launceston, St. Austell, Newquay, Perranporth with St. Agnes, Truro and Camborne.
Several classes now being held, however, should in time form the nucleus of new detachments. Truro [with 80] looks as if need a second city detachment.
Feock has 40 members and Devoran W.I. 20 [members] …
“In the hall were nurses, volunteers, commandants who have kept detachments intact during peacetime … I spotted … Miss Tyacke … in the audience.”
Devoran Village Hall was the site of many Red Cross training activities during wartime and postwar (organised postwar by Miss Audrey Webber?)
There was obviously an overlap of women between the Red Cross detachment and the Devoran W.I. which used (and helped found) Devoran Village Hall.
In the 1939 Register for Devoran (similar to a census), several women who were former WW1 VADs and nurses like Miss Tyacke are listed as part of the civilian nursing reserve for wartime and ARP help. Worthy of another future blog post.
Several more VAD names and Civilian Nursing Reserve women from Devoran village are mentioned in my churchyard blog post here: https://devoranwarmemorial.wordpress.com/2020/06/22/devoran-churchyard-headstones-connected-to-ww1-and-ww2/
Blog post by Mark Norris as part of DVH 100, 19 April 2024
“One young girl who attended the Christmas social of the Devoran Women’s Institute being held in the Village Hall was watching the members sedately dancing, when the doorway was suddenly filled with smiling figures attracted by the sound of the small band.
Within seconds, the ladies found themselves being whirled around the floor by their American partners in a most exciting way.
Soon the visitors were teaching the local girls the extrovert skills of jitterbugging, much to their delight.”
Viv Acton and Derek Carter, Operation Cornwall (1944, p.99)
This would be Christmas 1942 or Christmas 1943?
Local boy James Harris remembers:
“With the GI’s came an unwelcome realization to the people of Devoran. Shortly after their arrival a dance was arranged in the Village Hall to make them welcome but unfortunately white and black Americans were invited which resulted in fights throughout the village in which knives were used.
This behaviour was completely alien to Devoran residents, however dances afterwards were segregated.” James Harris
https://devoranwarmemorial.wordpress.com/2016/02/24/early-memories-of-devoran-by-james-harris/
This happened in several other towns in Cornwall, notably Launceston.
Some older residents of Devoran such as Jo Sweet that I spoke to preparing for the Devoran WW2 talk said that some families were ambivalent about having Americans in the house.
Others such as the late Betty Phillips (who lived next door to Devoran Village Hall) remembers one of the coloured troops from Tullimaar camp “who was welcomed by her parents into their home where he came to practice his violin. On his return home he became a member of a symphony orchestra.”
Viv Acton and Derek Carter, Operation Cornwall (1944, p.104)
2024 is the centenary of Devoran Village Hall (April 1924) and also the 80th anniversary of D-Day 6 June 1944.
The number of veterans from D-Day is steadily and inevitably dwindling.
Like many areas of the south coast, Devoran and nearby villages had many American troops or GIs (both black and white) stationed or camped nearby. Many visited village hall dances, some were welcomed into people’s homes as guests far from home and there was even the odd romance with local girls.
Americans had access to foods that were then scarcities in rationed Britain. Without letting slip why, some of this lavish food was shared with the welcoming local population in May 1944 …
A farewell party was held in Devoran Village Hall in May 1944 as a thank you for the hospitality the men had received in the area.
Jean Nunn remembers the “wonderful food” and the room beautifully decorated with flowers from the gardens of Tregye and Killiganoon, where medical units had been stationed.
Black GI troops were also stationed at Tullimaar and Perranarworthal.
Quote / memory and information from Viv Acton and Derek Carter, Operation Cornwall (1994). There are several more recent slim paperback volumes about Cornwall or Falmouth and D-Day available from local bookshops. Maps show where some of these camps were such as Tregye.
In the recent 2023/24 A30 road dualling, a D-Day era US Army repair camp and its rubbish pits was unearthed near Chybucca, the other side of Truro.
Trebah Gardens (with its embarkation ‘hard’ concrete matting on the beach) has a small memorial to these many brave young Americans and to the British airborne forces.
Blog post by Mark Norris as part of DVH100 Devoran Village Hall centenary, 19 April 2024.
*
For my part of the display / exhibition on the 27th April afternoon, I am steadily printing off interesting and curious local press cuttings from the 1920s to 1950s and 1960s about the early years of Devoran Village Hall (or Devoran Village Club or the Institute as it was variously once called).
It is impossible to cover every event and activity that I have found searching in the Local Newspaper Archive from the many interesting fundraisers or family, village and national celebrations all using Devoran Village Hall since 1924 …
ranging from jitterbugging black and white American GIs (but not together!) to wireless concerts, whist drives, dances, billiards matches, flower shows, fur and feather pet shows, school concerts, gas mask fitting, wartime jam making, markets, W.I. talks and speakers and fancy dress carnivals …
not mentioning pantomimes and the many types of music heard here over the century from folk dance, gramophone concerts, sea shanties, ‘plantation songs’ and piano accompaniment through to dances, mouth organ orchestras, the Charleston and the Yale Blues to today’s acoustic folk concerts and theatre groups …
fundraising for a wide range of good causes beyond running the village hall or club itself Finnish and Hungarian war refugees, local hospitals, sports and social clubs, Prisoners Of War (POW),
For future use, these press cuttings have been organised by decade and placed on this page of this my Devoran War Memorial blog:
https://devoranwarmemorial.wordpress.com/devoran-village-hall-1924-to-2024-dvh-100/
For the display / exhibition on the 27th April afternoon, if you have photos or visuals or memorabilia, Ann and the Devoran Village Hall team would love to hear from you via email at dvhposters@outlook.com
I look forward to a good turnout and a good bit of chat and memories on the afternoon of Saturday 27th April 2024.
Blog posted by Mark Norris, Devoran Village Hall 100 (DVH100) on 15 April 2024
January 1943. Miss M.P. Tyacke presided, when Mrs. E.T. Dillon (Hon. Sec.) reported that the proceeds from the recent gift stall in aid of the Prisoner of War fund realised £1 6 shillings and 6d.
An M.O.I [Ministry of Information] film dealing with “incendiary bombs” followed. The attendance included members of the WVS, Red Cross detachments, Home Guard and ARP personnel.
Devoran W.I. meeting as reported in local press, January 1943
Devoran also further supported Prisoners of War through a ‘penny a week’ fund, which totalled £5, 17 shillings and 8d for April 1943, as reported in the Western Morning News on 11 May 1943.
Blog posted by Mark Norris, DVH100 on 13 April 2024
Devoran War Memorial Cornwall 