By George Hayter, as featured in the Basingstoke Gazette
Grateful residents of a village near Basingstoke marked the anniversary of VE Day by gathering to hear an old air raid siren.
The crowd, at North Waltham, clapped and cheered when the wooden handle of the high-volume warning machine was wound into deafening action.
The historic device lay forgotten for decades until it was found a few years ago in a loft in the village.
Mike Robinson, the community leader who demonstrated the siren for the crowd, said the portable device, not much bigger than a toaster, was found mounted on its metal stand in a wooden crate in the attic of what had been the village police house.
“The discovery was made when the late Richard Tanner, our village historian, bought the house,” Mike explained. “Then it sat in Richard’s garage.
“After he passed away, his wife Linda wanted to know what to do with it and I picked it up to keep it for the village.”
Before the siren was activated, spectators at the event, by the village pond, were treated to nostalgic World War II recorded music.
The siren, designed to warn the whole village of imminent enemy bombing raids, turned out to be less deafening than many in the crowd expected.
Despite Mike giving repeated forceful turns of the siren handle, few spectators had to cover their ears.
The crowd had been urged to stand back, and one or two villagers had arrived armed with ear defenders.
A possible explanation for the surprisingly bearable volume is that 80 years ago the village was a fraction of the size that it is today, so less volume would have been needed.
Although tiny then, North Waltham was vulnerable to night bombing raids because a field next to the village was designed to attract enemy bombers. Richard Tanner’s 2012 local history book North Waltham explains that the field was a decoy and was illuminated at night to resemble railway works.
North Waltham was home to several children evacuated from their family homes in cities in order to reduce the danger to them. On the VE anniversary day, cottages where wartime child evacuees were housed surrounded the modern-day adults and children gathered to hear the siren.
