Author Archives: Joyce Huddleston

Reports of Club meetings in 2019-2020 published online

After each speaker meeting a short report is produced for submission to the local parish magazine, Radley News, and to circulate to members in the monthly Club newsletter. The reports for September 2019 to March 2020 have now been published on the Club website. Unfortunately the COVID-19 crisis has meant that the meetings planned for April to July 2020 had to be cancelled.

Read the reports

Second set of WW2 memories published

The May set of this series of short accounts of war experiences of people with connections to Radley and life on the home front in the village are now available.

The first account is that of a German lady, Lorre Stebbings, who married an English soldier after the war and later was a worshipper at Radley Church for many years.

The second is the wartime story of Doug Rawlinson, a long-time resident of Radley and member of Radley History Club who died in March. His account covers his time as an evacuee from London and his time in the Navy from 1944 to 1947.

Finally we have a story from the home front – tales from Radley Women’s Institute during the war.

WW2 memories – first accounts available

The first three in a series of short accounts of the war experiences of Radley people and life on the home front in the village are now available. More will be published each month

Learn more about the project and read about evacuees in Radley in the war and the wartime tales of Bill Small and Charles Lockett. Bill was a private in the 4th Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (a Territorial unit), and Charles a squadron leader in the RAF. Both were captured by the Germans in northern France in May 1940 and spent the rest of the war as POWs.

Photograph of Bill Small taken in 1938 in his Terretorial Army uniform
Bill Small in uniform, 1938
Photograph of Charles Lockett in his RAF uniform
Charles Lockett in uniform