Aviva companies in WW2 — Sun Life staff at Delrow House
This is the third in a series of blogs written to mark the anniversary of VE day by sharing the stories of Aviva companies on the home front.
The Sun Life Assurance Society put detailed plans in place to evacuate its staff in the event of war and by the Munich Crisis of September 1938 had already purchased two new divisional headquarters outside London to house staff from the head office at 63 Cornhill and other branches across London.
A Northern Divisional Centre was set up at Delrow House just outside the village of Aldenham near Watford and staff moved in on Thursday 24 August 1939.
The house itself was Elizabethan, built of stone, and covered with creepers. It had many gables which looked out over broad lawns, some of which were later ploughed up by staff and planted with potatoes. According to the staff magazine, the house had historical associations and had once been occupied by General Sir Hew Dalrymple who had preceded the Duke of Wellington as the Commander in Chief in the Peninsula. There is also a reference to one of the bedrooms having been used by an unidentified film star!
The ground floor of the house was taken over by the Staff Scheme and Registration departments who shared the largest room. According to reminiscences in the staff magazine, the Registration department had the half with French windows which were ‘much appreciated in the summer months’. Also on the ground floor was the New Business department whose staff members were captured for posterity standing outside their French windows in the photograph below.
On the first floor, which was approached by a magnificent oak staircase, the Accounts, Agency, Actuarial, Valuation, and Policy Writers’ departments set themselves up in what had been bedrooms.
At the very top of the house, in the servants’ quarters, the House Purchase department made its new home. Other departments in slightly less salubrious surroundings included the Addressograph section and part of the Investment and Share department which found themselves in the stables across the lane.
Wooden huts were built in the grounds to be used as dormitories for male staff and by the end of 1939 a dozen men were sleeping in three huts. Norman White was one of these men and later recalled the occasion in the winter of 1939 when the roof blew off one of the huts and they had to take temporary refuge in the stables.
Other residents of the wooden huts included John Edmunds, Bob Bostock, Cyril Woodcraft, R C Williams, Eric ‘George’ Gudridge, and Ron Willson.
Norman White and ‘George’ Gudridge were in charge of ‘catering’ and took the ration cards out to buy food for evening meals. According to Norman’s reminiscences they appear to have bought large quantities of tinned pilchards.
For breakfast and lunch, especially in the early days of the war, the staff from Delrow ate at the Spiders’ Web roadhouse on the Watford Bypass. It is referred to in the staff magazine as a place ‘of some former notoriety’ and seems, from my initial research, to have been known as a haunt for the criminal classes of London. The Spiders’ Web was about a half mile walk from Delrow and, according to staff reminiscences, the road to it was often flooded so the would-be diners either had to wade through the water or make a detour over a barbed wire fence and across a soggy field.
While the men colonized the wooden huts, the ladies on the staff were found accommodation in a newly built villa in Colne Way off the Watford Bypass. Sun Life eventually purchased three of these villas and it appears that later in the war one was used as accommodation for male staff when the huts were taken over for additional office space.
Margaret Hudson, one of the Colne Way ‘girls’, described life there in a poem which was published in the staff magazine.
It all sounds a little tame compared to the men whose reminiscences refer to evenings spent in the Three Compasses pub in Pegmire Lane or in hostelries further afield in Watford. According to Norman White they also entertained themselves in the evenings playing cards and shove ha’penny. Other staff evacuated to Delrow recalled solo and pontoon sessions lasting into the early hours of the morning and the fact that Francis Hogg bought a small snooker table which he left for his colleagues when he left to join the RAF. Social activities at Delrow also included football and cricket matches against staff based at Chorleywood, tennis played in the dell, and spelling bees and quizzes in the winter months.
In addition to those living in accommodation provided by the company, many members of staff rented houses nearby and moved their families to the area. For those who decided not to make the move, getting to Delrow could be problematic. Eventually an office bus was introduced which started from Upminster and did a tour of North London collecting passengers as it went. Additional lifts were provided by Dougie Mann, Ronnie Thirkell, Leslie Deft and Frank Kearnes and were fondly remembered later in the staff magazine. Thirkell apparently owned a vintage Alfa Romeo which seemed capable of holding an unlimited number of passengers and was named, after its owner, the Inner Thirkell (or Thircle) route. I imagine the journey looking something like the drawing below from the staff magazine.
Norman White was one of the staff members who lived on site during the week and went home to his family at weekends (where his wife made apple pies for him to take back for evening meals). His manager, C F ‘Jimmy’ Guest gave him a lift to the station on a Friday and would switch off the engine and coast downhill in neutral whenever he got the opportunity in order to save every drop of petrol.
According to Norman’s reminiscences, after a night on duty as an air raid warden Jimmy Guest once fell asleep at work while dictating a letter. Many other members of staff at Delrow were also involved in home guard duties or were members of the fire squad. We have a number of photographs of the fire squad trying out their equipment.
In the photograph below they are shown posing, with a rather risqué mascot, on the roof of Delrow. They are gathered in front of the corrugated look-out post where they took turns to spot enemy planes to warn their colleagues to head for the shelters.
The Delrow fire squad only saw action once during the war. According to the staff magazine, they dashed out one night when incendiary bombs fell on nearby Aldenham. Apparently, their appearance in the village only added to the general confusion of the night, as well as leaving the house unprotected. Perhaps they needed more training.
