• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Swansea Museum

  • English
    • Cymraeg (Welsh)
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Home
  • Visit Swansea Museum
    • Boats and ships on display
    • Swansea Museum Collections Centre
    • Tramshed
    • Staff Contacts
    • Friends of Swansea Museum
    • Join our mailing list
  • Our collection
    • Art UK
    • Egyptian artefacts
    • Transport
    • Nautical objects
    • Finds from Swansea and Neath
    • War time Swansea
    • Donating an item to Swansea Museum
  • Swansea – a brief history
    • Archaeology
    • Industry
    • The Sea
    • Mumbles Train
    • World War Two
    • Old houses and places
  • What’s on
    • Exhibitions
    • Events
    • Past exhibitions
  • Museum shop
  • Learning
    • School Visits
    • Community Outreach
  • Blog
You are here: Home / Swansea – a brief history / World War Two / Children in wartime

Children in wartime

For many children, the war years must have seemed like a huge if confusing adventure, for others it was a time of misery.

Adults and children alike were expected to carry their gas masks at all times. Babies had special cradle-like respirators. Children from those cities most at risk of being bombed were evacuated to safer places, such as rural Wales, where providing a billet for an evacuee was compulsory.

Many children from Chatham in Kent (where the Naval Dockyards were situated) were evacuated to Pontardawe in the Swansea Valley.  Some parents displayed their patriotism and support for the war effort by dressing their children in miniature military uniforms. Victory in Europe Day (8 May 1945), Victory in Japan Day (15 August 1945) and Victory Day (8 June 1946) gave communities the opportunity to enjoy street parties and parades.

Find out more…

Discover more about Swansea’s history… Swansea – a brief history

Primary Sidebar

Search

Back on Track

Tramshed is now open
Wednesdays & Saturdays from 11am to 4pm.

Find out more

Blog

  • `The Record’
  • YMCA Jubilee Campaign Poster 1919
  • Board Game, to raise awareness of issues facing Young Carers
  • Prisoner of War Diary
  • Swansea Blitz Photograph
 

In ‘Swansea – A photographer’s Dream’ Colin Riddle’s pictures of Swansea in the 1960s represent images of a lost age.

 

Though much of what he photographed still exists for the keen historian to seek out, much has also disappeared.

     

Buy your copy

Tweets by swanseamuseum

Footer

Connect with Us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

City and County of Swansea

Return to top of page

Copyright © 2022 · Swansea Museum, City and County of Swansea

  • enEnglish
  • cyCymraeg (Welsh)