00:00This wall is exactly the same as what it was when I was here, when I was born.
00:09When I was tall enough, I used to stand by the wall and look over so I could see where
00:15my dad, my papa, was working in the gardens.
00:19Gwen Hibbert is 97 years old and spent the first 16 years of her life here at Chartwell House
00:25where her father looked after the gardens, working for the house's best known resident, Winston Churchill.
00:32And now she's going to see the new display dedicated to her family in their former home.
00:36Gwen was born right there, inside the house, that right window, that was her mother and father's bedroom.
00:42She had to move out when she was 16 after her father passed away.
00:46She and her younger brother are in fact the last living former residents of the estate
00:50so she says it's more important than ever to make sure that her memories are kept protected.
00:56We're celebrating the chapter in which Gwen's father, Albert Hill, was the head gardener here at Chartwell.
01:03And for me, the families and the households who lived here as staff, their lives were as integral to Chartwell's
01:10life as the Churchills, just in a different way.
01:12So telling their stories for the first time is really exciting.
01:16I love having Gwen here at Chartwell. I am a big fan of Gwen. She is brilliant.
01:19And I feel very, very fortunate to have had the chance to hear her stories and her memories
01:25and then weave them into the stories we tell here at her former home.
01:29Gwen's story is intertwined with the houses and she shared stories with me of soldiers in the grounds sharing their
01:35sweets,
01:35but also hiding with bombers returning to Europe.
01:38And this particular night, I mean, my dad, he, we were sheltering right down in the big house, in the
01:48boiler room, the cellar,
01:50where all the coals and the heating went on, because it was the lowest pile.
01:56And anyway, this bomb dropped and the whole place kind of rocked.
02:02And when we came out the next morning, we were all covered in coal dust.
02:07Her brother also grew up in the garden cottage, but was too ill to come.
02:11So Gwen was joined by her other family and her husband to see what had happened to her former home,
02:16how it would change, just like the gardens her father used to care for.
02:20Finn McDermid for KMTV at Chartwell House.
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