PAT Ross has fond memories of wartime when young evacuees moved into her home.

The relationship was so strong that the two families have kept in touch ever since.

The picture, taken by her mother, Eleanor Laverty, shows local and evacuee children in their garden in Cornwallis Road, Cowley, Oxford, in 1939 or 1940.

Mrs Ross, of Bowness Avenue, in Headington, writes: “The two smallest are local children, Mary Stevenson and Audrey Dennis.

“The next two were our evacuees, Peggy and Sylvia Parslow, who arrived at our house (No 76) in September 1939 when my mother was expecting me.

“They were with us for at least four-and-a-half years.

“Indeed, the whole family – mum, dad and three children – stayed in our little house at the height of the Blitz. We remained friends with them – their mother was my Auntie Emmie.

“Their brother Bill and his wife Marjorie, visited my mother every year until she died in 1991.

“Auntie Emmie died in London a few years ago, in her 90s.

“I am still in touch with Sylvia, who lives in Lincolnshire.

“They were like sisters to me and I was heartbroken when they went back to London.

“My mother took lots of photographs with her Brownie box camera.

“How disrupted their lives were by the war.

“In Oxford, we hardly knew, as young children, that there was a war on, apart from Mickey Mouse gas masks, rationing (“don’t take too much sugar, it’s on ration”) and going to collect clothing coupons.”