Moving on up the staircase to the second floor, facing you at the top of the stairs was a W/C and a corridor leading to the bedrooms. While most of the bedrooms had washbasins, bathrooms were limited. To the right were a few steps to a passageway, which lead to the attic rooms.
I had a bedroom on the second floor, which I shared and above me were the two attic rooms, one of which was taken by Cyril Lingwood but the other was padlocked and sealed with the 'Luce red wax seal'. I believe this room contained family possessions.
The person responsible for the day to day running of the Priory was a Mrs Millward (a widow I believe) who was officially the 'domestic manager' appointed by EKCO. She managed to maintain a friendly approach towards the mix of residents, which consisted of families, single adults and a number of us youngsters. And below are the staff she had to help her out.
The staff (as I recall) consisted of: -
Mr. And Mrs. Hughes with their young son and daughter. Mrs. Hughes was the cook helped by her daughter. Mr. Hughes also helped out in the kitchen when needed preparing the vegetables etc., he was also the general 'odd job' man and looked after the central heating boiler. Occasionally he also helped out in the dairy across the road opposite the Priory on the Swindon Road. I believe that Mr. Hughes was also a 'lay preacher' but know no further details. The Hughes lived in rooms off of the kitchen.
There were two young ladies (I can't remember their names but I think they were from Southend) who served the meals and also did general cleaning. They lived in a room at the back of the kitchen, which overlooked the Swindon Road. As I recall they were eventually sacked for entertaining Troops in their room and ended up going to work at Cowbridge.
The ladies mentioned above served us all but to get to the main dining room, the girls had to pass though our room, which meant that there was a constant backwards and forwards from the kitchen carrying meals while we were eating ours!
Bearing in mind wartime rationing and shortages, Mrs. Hughes did very well and she was a very capable cook, presenting some nice and satisfying meals – for example home made soups, Vegetable pies, Fish pies, Corned beef pies and occasionally Rabbit pie, additionally, somehow she always managed a 'sweet' of some kind.
She was helped by the fact that the Priory had a very good 'kitchen garden' as well as fruit trees, which gave us a plentiful supply of fruit and vegetables.
Off of the kitchen was a large 'walk in larder', which had a stone floor, here on the shelves around the larder were stored lots of jars of preserved fruits that had been grown in the garden (I remember amongst other produce, Pears, Plums and apples).
There was of course a 'gardener' but I can't remember his name and he did not live in at the Priory but he was a very capable gardener as evidenced by the wholesome produce we had.
With respect to the residents, I recall the following people but there were others I'm sure at various times since not all of these people were there for the whole of the duration. Note the following were all WDU people.
