Homeless in England

Once back in the UK, the little family needed a home. The houses in Midlothian had been sold. Arthur’s poor health and precarious financial situation meant that Scotland was not an option. So they rented, moving a couple of times until Lady Mary’s in-laws from her first marriage to Lt Commander John Codrington (killed in action in 1921) came to the rescue, providing a farmhouse in a Devon village, where they lived for the next five years.

The girls could keep ponies, and attended Les Oiseaux, a convent school that had been evacuated from Westgate-on-Sea to Shropshire.  Summer holidays on Exmoor enabled them to get away from the troops that were quartered in the stables at Awliscombe, while Arthur joined the East Devon Defence network, scanning the night skies for bomber raids. An evacuee family came to stay, and may be  included in the photo below. Liz is the younger child.

As the older child, Euphan found herself running the house, cleaning and managing the ration books. Lady Mary had no housekeeping skills, and must somehow have retained a cook during the War, as no one in the family knew how to.