On VE Day, 8 May 1945, 80 years ago the town was decorated and there were many street parties.  On the Thanksgiving Sunday there was a great parade down the Market Place and Hart Street past us here to the Parish Church for a service of thanksgiving and back again. Hundreds of people took part, parading in the uniforms of their volunteer organisations for the last time.  A local cameraman with colour film – very rare for those days – made a film which you can see on the Imperial War Museum website here: https://film.iwmcollections.org.uk/record/28641.

The most obvious and direct effect of the war on Henley was the many local men who never came back. Most of their names are on the war memorial on the front of the Town Hall. Some Henley men fighting in the Oxs and Bucks Light Infantry were captured defending the beaches of Dunkirk and taken prisoner for the duration of the war. Whether as POWs or fighting men, it was often a traumatic experience and returning to Henley after the war, it took time to adapt.

By 1945 farming had altogether changed. Mechanisation had come in, and horses had disappeared. Big estates were broken up, and the corn merchants and abattoirs in Henley  had all closed as result of food rationing.

The army camps which had sprung up to house army units, on Dry Lees and the Wheatsheaf Field for example, were occupied by ‘squatters’, often soldiers returning from the war for whom no housing was available. The Council took the over the Nissen huts and supplied services to them, and in due course built new housing to replace them, starting in 1946 with a small estate of pre-fabs just beyond the limits of the old town up Greys Road. Very soon Henley had more than doubled in size compared to before the war.

It took some time for Henley to recover from the war – perhaps into the mid-1950s when wartime rationing finally ended. By then, Henley was a very different place to what it had been at the start of the Second World War.

We hope very much that you have enjoyed your tour this afternoon.  Thank you for taking part!