27th June 1940

School will be closed tomorrow, when 200 evacuees are to be received from Southampton. The Babies' Room will accommodate some of the Infants in future, as the evacuees will be absorbed into the local schools instead of working as separate units.

21st June 1940

From today until next term at least, the nursery class will cease to exist, the County Education Committee having decided that the presence in school of tiny children of 3 & 4 gives rise to too much anxiety for Teachers and might cause serious complications in an emergency.
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254 panes of glass have been strapped with brown paper (by the staff) - the remaining 180 cannot be reached. All pictures have been removed from the walls to prevent damage from flying glass splinters.

20th June 1940

Attendance dropped this morning, the children having spent a disturbed night. The first air raid in this district took place - the siren sounding just after midnight. The all-clear signal went at 3.15am - there were no casualties locally.

16th June 1943

Siren 11.25 - 11.35am. A new child - Jacqueline A. - screamed - to the great suprise of the other children.

9th June 1943

A low flying plane passed over the school at a terrific speed - the children ducked into the shelters.

8th June 1945

The London County Council evacuees (those with homes) are returning to London on Sunday.

6th June 1945

School dinners were served from the school canteen for the first time today. 49 children stayed. The food is brought down fom the canteen (Mixed School garden) in containers. There is n o real accommodation for meal in this building [the Infants School, where Reception Class is now] and no proper staff. It was a wet day so there was no beak. Children have to sit at their lesson tables for their meal and if weather is bad, just continue sitting. Several were sick, having had no exercise exercise since drinking milk at 10.30. The staff (teaching) had no meal - there was no time as many of the Babies have to be fed. 1 Nursery Helper has been obtained ... Behavious & manners were very good - a short lecture on the subject having been given beforehand.

6th June 1944

Invasion of Europe by the Allies began. Landings were made on the beaches near Deauville & Cherbourg areas. Masses of aircraft are passing over - all day & night.

These were the D-Day Landings, when thousands of ships landed 150,000 soldiers along a 30-mile stretch of the Normandy coast in what is known as Operation Overlord.

6th June 1940

Captain Dean, local ARP head, called to examine and report on the shelter trenches and the school building. He approved of the trenches and discussed difficulties arrising from the fact that the massesof older children from the mixed school have to cross the path of the infants, thereby providing a very real danger. The actual school building he considers to be extremely dangerous, having only one exit from a bottlenecked room. He especially urged that strapping should be done to the windows immediately - as it is impossible to keep the children away from them. Should an air raid warning become necessary, Capt Dean promised to send the 'yellow'(stand by) signal, in order to give a little more time for evacuation to the trenches. There being no telephone in the school, Miss Pond at Everest was asked to take the message and transmit it to school if electric bells could be installed in each department.
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Children from both departments went to the trenches at a given signal - the time taken being about 3 minutes. Should enemy planes be in the neighbourhood, less than 5 minutes warning could be given, Capt dean stated.

The ARP were the Air Raid Patrol wardens. ARP wardens or air-raid wardens had to patrol the streets during blackout, to ensure that no light was visible to German bombers. Windows were 'strapped' to stop glass from shattering into the room.

Swanage First School's trenches were on the site of Queen's Mead, on the other side of Queen's Road.