It was December, 1942. A 10-year-old Ted Barham was part of a small group of children walking through the villages near Wymondham. Ted carried a shepherd’s crook, to which his father, George Geoffrey Barham, had tied a clean and empty jam jar. He was hoping that folk would put tuppences into his jar and maybe even a threepenny bit. War or no war, Christmas carol singing was a serious enterprise.
Most of the kids with Ted were from Wymondham, but there were also some evacuee children from Gravesend. Ted remembers a six-year-old evacuee girl wrapped up warm with a balaclava and a pink coat. This young friend of Ted’s didn’t have to walk as she was pulled on a sledge through the snow.
Adults were looking after them. There was Mrs. Barneycote, a local primary school teacher, Mr. Friar, a farmer who did a lot of charity work, and Herb Bligh, who had a knack of persuading local adults to sing along with the children.
They sang outside people’s houses. They sang close to the Christmas decorations outside of the shops, and they sang in village halls. Ted recalls that they were organised with a setlist of four carols. His favourite was “Good King Wenceslas.”
The locals were very welcoming to these young travelling singers. Ted recalls, “There was a sense of togetherness at that time.” He remembers people coming out of their houses to greet the children in Bowden Terrace and Bridewell Alley, and they often had food for them, such as hot chestnuts or sometimes a roast potato.
There was an American soldier called Reggie Carrot who organised gigs in which the kids sang to the members of the U.S. armed forces who were based in the town. Reggie, who also lent a hand at a local fish shop, saw to it that the young carol singers were fed on those cold and dark nights.
The children continued to sing their carols annually to the people of Wymondham and the surrounding villages throughout the War and up to the late 1940s. Ted has happy memories of singing near the warm bonfires in the run-up to Christmas which were commonplace in those post-war days. “They were special times; it got all this meaning!”