City Dwellers Adjust Themselves To Rural Life

Southland Times, Issue 24001, 16 December 1939, Page 16

City Dwellers Adjust Themselves To Rural Life

Lady Ironside, wife of General Sir Edmund “Big Bill” Ironside, Chief of the British Imperial General Staff, has been able to see her husband only five times since they returned from Gibraltar in July. Meanwhile she has kept herself nearly as busy as her husband. “We live in a little cottage in the wilds of Norfolk,” she told an interviewer at her club in London. “The village is tiny, and seven miles from the nearest station, but we have 80 mothers and children evacuated to it, and since I was appointed billeting officer, life has been a little hectic.” There are no cinemas in the village, there isn’t, even a shop. Only two buses - day run into Norwich, which is the nearest town. To keep happy 80 mothers and childdren who have been used to the excitements and amusements of a large town is no mean feat, but after talking

to Lady Ironside for ten minutes one realized that she was more than capable of tackling that job. Her cottage is also first-aid point for the Red Cross, and Lady Ironside is learning to drive an ambulance. She is on all the village committees, and has also arranged a gas course for the whole village.