Sheelagh Lyons has bitter memories of the time she spent as an evacuee in Oxford.

“I was badly treated and used as a slave,” she says.

But the story had a happy ending when she was reunited with her mother and the family settled to enjoy life in Oxfordshire.

She was just seven when she was evacuated with her older brother Ivor and younger brother Alan from their home in West Ham, East London, on September 1, 1939, two days before war was declared.

“We were put on buses and taken to Paddington station. Our parents weren’t allowed to see us off – the authorities thought it would be too upsetting.

“None of us knew where we were going – we thought we were going to the seaside for the day.

“We had a luggage label with our name on our chests. All we were allowed to take was one change of clothes in a pillowslip, with shoes and toothbrush.

“Many children were sick on the train – their parents gave them lots of sweets and chocolates for the journey and they ate them all at once. When we reached Oxford, we were ushered to a row of temporary toilets in Becket Street.

“We had never seen ‘bucket’ toilets before and could not understand why there was no chain to pull, so we didn’t use them.”

The youngsters were taken to a hall in Albert Street, Jericho, where they were given a bag of basic groceries, then taken round the streets to be billeted with families.

Ivor, Sheelagh and Alan were among the last of their group to find homes – families were reluctant to take three children.

Ivor moved in with a family of seven in Walton Crescent – conditions were so cramped the children had to sleep four to a bed.

Meanwhile, Sheelagh and Alan were taken in by a childless couple in Nelson Street.

She recalls: “The woman was lazy and used me as a slave. She sent me out shopping in the bitter cold.

“On Sundays, they sent us to church in the morning, afternoon and evening just to get rid of us.

“If they considered we had been naughty, as punishment, we were put in the scullery with two slices of bread and lard.”

Their ordeal ended when their mother Elsie, who had run the family newsagents in East London since the death of her husband Tom from TB in 1938, lost her shop and home in the Blitz in 1941.

She came to Oxford, discovered how unhappy her children were, and rented a cottage at Longworth to reunite her family.

It was derelict, with water drawn from a well and no electricity or drainage, but it was home.

Mrs Lyons, now happily living off Woodstock Road, Oxford, tells me: “My experience as an evacuee will always be with me – I will never forget. Even today, I loathe Jericho.”

Are any other East London evacuees living in Oxford? Mrs Lyons would love to meet you. Write to Memory Lane, Oxford Mail, Osney Mead, Oxford OX2 0EJ.