A PENSIONER who moved to Swindon as one of the ‘London overspills’ 60 years ago has spoken of her love for her adoptive town on the anniversary of her historic move.

Edna Mason, who will next week celebrate her 83rd birthday, moved from her residence near the Battersea Dog’s Home in London to Thornbridge Avenue near Coate Water in July 1957.

Apart from a 10 year spell living in Poole in Dorset, the mother-of-two has spent many happy years in Swindon.

The London overspill communities were groups of people who were moved from the capital after the Second World War due to housing shortages caused by Luftwaffe bombing.

Twenty-year-old Edna, who was seven-months pregnant at the time, was among the Londoners who were shepherded to Swindon in the summer of ’57 with the aim of building a new life in the South West.

Casting her memory back six decades, Edna said: “We were put on a list to go to wherever they had houses, and Swindon was our destination.”

Speaking about her feelings on first arriving at the railway town, Edna, with her London accent still audible, said: “When we arrived at the station we wondered what we had come to. It was dark and gloomy and when we arrived at our house in Thornbridge Avenue there was no pavement and there were no shops nearby – the nearest ones were at Walcot.

“I remember the greengrocer’s van and the butcher’s van would come round every now and then, but we just had to make the best of it.

“One thing that we certainly appreciated was having our own indoor toilet. In London, we had to make to with a toilet in the garden, so having one in the house was a real luxury.”

After splitting with her husband, Edna then spent 10 years in Poole in Dorset before returning to the place she now called home, only this time she found a charming little house in Haydon Wick.

Throughout the years Edna has worked at various places all across the town. The former Garrards worker said: “You mention it, I’ve worked there. In those days it was much easier to find a job. You could walk out of one and straight into another without any problems.”

The grandmother-of-two was just five-years-old when Hitler’s armies invaded Poland, so the war years are necessarily nebulous. But she does remember being huddled in air raid shelters deep underground.

“They were difficult times, but people just got on with it.”

She now spends her days going on trips with her friends at the Haydon Wick Club. Indeed, on Wednesday they will be taking in the sea air at Weston-super-Mare.

“Swindon has changed so much throughout the years,” she said. “But it will always be home to me.”