We were intrigued by a newspaper article from June 1965 which tells the strange story of Noel Tostevin, who came to Eccles in 1940 as a child refugee from the Channel Islands.
We already know Belgian children fled to the UK in 1915, staying in Salford, Eccles, and Irlam – at that time still a rather rural area.
But the odd thing is, in June 1940 the area was a mass of factories, so why send child refugees here into potential danger?
The nearby Salford Docks and Trafford Park were being evacuated to greener pastures such was the bombing threat posed by the German Luftwaffe.
Only a few months later Salford and Eccles would suffer from enemy bombing with lots of fatalities, 192 killed and 181 people being seriously injured.
At the end of June 1940, German troops occupied Guernsey, a few days later the occupation extended to Jersey and the remaining Channel Islands.
The refugees came from Guernsey and consisted of almost 700 people, 611 children and 69 adults. The Eccles Journal reported they travelled non-stop for 24 hours after landing in Southampton.
Noel Tostevin recalls that the children had heard of Manchester but not Eccles – mainly because to make money young people would stick red labels on boxes of daffodils, tomatoes and grapes bound for Smithfield market in Manchester.
“We had waited for days for the evacuation and until a boat arrived to take us to safety we had no idea were we were going”, said Noel.
“We arrived at Weymouth and were met by the Mayor and treated to fish and chips before being put onto a train, the first that any of us had ever seen.
“We soon fell asleep and awoke in the early hours of the morning, we spotted a black and white cow and burst out laughing as we had only seen the Guernsey golden cows before.
“We then saw lots and lots of real chimneys and knew that we were in a big city.”
The refugees stayed for three weeks in Eccles in what Noel described as being a in a “cramped Eccles hall, sleeping on camp beds”.
Sadly he doesn’t remember much more and so we don’t find out where the hall was or where the other refugees stayed in Eccles.
Finally we learn that Noel R. Tostevin actually met and married a girl from Eccles whom he met in the South of England many years later.
