Wartime letter unearthed at Sompting Abbotts School links son to his family past.

The discovery of an old letter dating from 1939 beneath floorboards at Sompting Abbotts' Preparatory School, Worthing, has connected a man to his British family during WW2.

Hand-written in fountain pen, the four-page letter lay undetected beneath floorboards of a former dormitory for almost 80 years until a workman doing repairs at the school spotted it recently.

The yellowing note is addressed to a boy called ‘Jim’, a boarder at Sompting Abbotts during World War II. Poignantly written by Jim’s mother, it is a vivid and moving description of her first experiences of the aggressions of war.

How the letter came to be beneath the floor planks is unclear. Perhaps young Jim stored it under his bed and it slipped through a crack. Perhaps it was forgotten when he and fellow pupils were hurriedly evacuated from Sompting Abbotts in 1940. Following the Surrender of France, the school building was requisitioned by the British Army.

Now, the school, intrigued by the letter’s discovery, has tracked down the identity of Jim across continents.

No surname for ‘Jim’ was included on the letter but historians used the street address to find that Jim was Donald James Macbride, born in Richmond, in 1926. They discovered that he and his parents had emigrated to Australia in 1948. There the trail ran cold. So the school contacted a Tasmanian historian to learn that sadly, Jim had died in 2003, aged 76, in Hobart. But Jim had a living relative: his son Craig, based in Melbourne.

'It was dogged detective work by the school to find me and a wonderful surprise to learn of the letter’s existence!' said Craig Macbride, 53, an IT consultant living in Melbourne. 'The letter's a palpable connection to my family history I knew nothing about.' Jim's parents were then living at the UK naval base of Harwich in 1939. In her letter, Jim’s mother tells him how she rushed to help British crewmen 'covered in black oil and shivering cold' rescued from the sea after the destroyer HMS Gipsy was hit by a mine on 21 November 1939. She recounts how she dressed two freezing young sailors using 'a pair of your shoes and a Sompting Abbotts' flannel shirt and your old flannel coat. It was a tight fit but better than nothing'.

The long descriptive letter ends on a warm note: 'Well darling, I look forward so much to hearing how the play progresses. I bet you all enjoy doing it. Heaps of love from Daddy. From your loving Mother PS Hope you got the skates safely. I sent them from the flat.' Craig's father, Jim, signed up during WW2 to serve his country aged 18, before moving to Australia in 1948 with his family. Aged 22, Jim joined the Royal Australian Engineers. From 1950 to the early 1980s, he served his adopted country and finally retired to Hobart, as a Colonel. In 1977, he received the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal.

Craig said that Jim had been 'formed by his traditional British schooling. He was a disciplined and hardworking man who encouraged me to do my best in life,' he said. 'He didn’t speak much about his life during the war in England. I think he wanted to forget it, much as I was interested in it. He did sometimes talk about air raid shelters and the panic of getting to them.' The Macbrides were among thousands of ‘Pommies’ who chose to escape British austerity after WW2. Like many, they took advantage of the £10 Assisted Passage Scheme funded by the British and Australian governments.

So what will happen to the original letter now? Craig has agreed that Sompting Abbotts Preparatory School should put on display so that its story can be shared with the pupils of today.

Sompting Abbotts Headmaster Stuart Douch said: 'We’re so happy that the story of the mysterious letter has an ending. It has really captured the children’s imagination and stimulated their interest in this important period of British history and taught them about this time in Australian history too.'

He added: 'This letter to a former boarder is an illuminating insight for today’s pupils into WW2, which they all study as part of the History curriculum in Year 6. The letter will be a wonderful teaching resource, made all the more relevant to them as Jim attended Sompting Abbotts too.'

Sompting Abbotts’ pupils display the letter that was hidden for almost 80 years. Principal Mrs Patricia Sinclair (left) and Headmaster Mr Stuart Douch

Sompting Abbotts Preparatory School, is housed in a Neo-Gothic building dating from 1856, was founded in 1921 – three years after the 1914-1918 Great War. It was a thriving boys' boarding school from 1921 until 1939 and the outbreak of WW2 when the surrender of France in 1940 forced the school’s temporary closure until 1946. The pupils were evacuated to Wales and the British Army requisitioned the house and grounds. The school became co-educational in 1998. It ceased to take boarders in 2008.

Sompting Abbotts Preparatory School is an independent day school in the south of England in the county of West Sussex, near Worthing, for girls and boys aged 2 - 13.

Tel + 44 (0) 1903 235960. Email us at office@somptingabbotts.com
Sompting Abbotts, Church Lane, West Sussex, BN15 OAZ.