Photo: Stephens House children on VE Day

“Hostilities will end officially at one minute after midnight tonight, Tuesday 8th May ... Victory in Europe Day... Long live the cause of freedom. God save the King!” 

With those stirring words, Winston Churchill announced to a war-weary nation the unconditional surrender of the German army and the cessation of hostilities in Europe.

For the young people of Hampstead Garden Suburb, huddled round radios rather than scrolling through cell phones to consume their news, this was a landmark moment.

Alan Cohen, whose childhood wartime adventures included cycling past unexploded munitions embedded in the mud of what is now Winnington Close, was thrilled - and not just because he no longer had to ‘sleep in air raid shelters and detour round unexploded bombs’ . “The greatest event,” he wrote, “was the 8th of May, VE Day. It was a day off from school. An off the cuff public holiday.”

And what a holiday it became.

With the blackout over, curtains were flung open, lights were turned on and an atmosphere of jollity reigned. Within hours, the sound of doodlebugs, which had terrorised the capital, including great swathes of Hampstead Garden Suburb, gave way to the altogether more welcoming crack of fireworks. Flames licked the sky, but for once they weren’t from burning buildings. Rather, they were from the celebratory bonfires ignited across London.

Throughout the Suburb and beyond, children gleefully assisted in the decoration of their respective streets. The ‘Hampstead News and Golders Green Gazette’ reported: ‘Hampstead, St John’s Wood, Golders Green and Hampstead Garden Suburb vied with each other in lavish display of bunting... There have been innumerable street parties and dances, processions of people in curious costumes and bands of strolling singers.’

But it was not all unrestrained celebration. It was also a time for commemoration. For those young enough to be exempt from conscription but old enough to know the pain of losing a father or older brother to the war, the celebrations were tempered with understandable sadness. Records note that on VE Day a Thanksgiving Mass was held in St Jude’s Church which was ‘filled from end to end’.

Now, 80 years on, it’s still worth remembering the words of Lord Latham (Hampstead resident and leader of the London County Council) as reported in the ‘Gazette’ on the 17th May, 1945 : "The value of victory is what we make of it. Peace is not an end but a beginning.”

By Gaia Simpson