Patching Up the Past

Recently there has been good success in re-visiting one of St Albans' Own East End's unanswered questions: the mysterious golf course between Smallford and Hatfield.  Two recent blogs demonstrate what was discovered.

This week is the turn of a largely forgotten exchange scheme which came about at the end of the Second World War.  Raised as an idea by Mr Thomas Slade, the St Albans – Duisburg Relief Committee was launched; the reasons became clear from a Herts Advertiser article in 1948: "It is almost impossible to describe the conditions in the Ruhr.  There is nothing to compare it with ... there are still 2,000 people living in cellars beneath collapsed houses, and more than 1,800 others, including many children, still exist in public air-raid shelters ..."

Vera Robson on her return from the delegation's first visit to
Duisburg, with a presentation plate given by that city.
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

A delegation from the city visited Duisburg (population then 400,000) to assess how help might be given.  Regular shipments of clothes, blankets and food were sent.  In the other  direction small groups of children and young people arrived in St Albans for extended 3-month holidays and stayed with families, many of them in the eastern districts such as Fleetville, Beaumonts and Marshalswick.

In a further development during the 1960s and 70s an exchange scheme developed with St Albans young people visiting the homes of Duisburg families.

I was one of those young people in 1963 and 1966, and an official West German newspaper (as the country was then known) photographer took the group picture at the Duisburg Town Hall in 1966.  Among the assembled group at the Welcome ceremony were David Walker,  Peter Osborn, Michael and Barrie Gibbs, and Vera Robson.  During that year we had the interesting opportunity of watching the Football World Cup, played at Wembley, from one of many living rooms with our host families in Duisburg.  For those who need reminding, England won, and for us it was a lesson in magnanimity.

Welcome to St Albans guests in Duisburg Town Hall, 1966.

Eberhard, whose parents
welcomed me in 1966.

There will still be current or former residents of St Albans who remember these visits.  We may have found them great fun, or considered them a nervous process to encounter.  We may have learned much about our "adopted" friends and their families and an industrial city with its factory-lined river even larger than the Thames.  Almost certainly we will have learned much about ourselves.  Making some of the earliest holiday arrivals to St Albans welcome and helping them to relax in new surroundings must still be in the minds of several of us.

There is, regrettably, such a limited record of what was a generational project.  Our recollections would be a valuable resource.  Photos would enrich the experience.  If you were involved in any way, do please get in touch – saoee@me.com