1939-47

Dad had been in the CCF at boarding school, joined the RAF in 1940 (?), and became an officer and a pilot. He was trained in Canada, and served to assist the invasion of the Netherlands after D-day in 1944, before being invalided out; he had developed stomach ulcers, apparently exacerbated by flying planes at a significant height. While recovering in hospital, his father Horace came to tell him that he was starting an estate agency business in Wallasey, based on his own father Joseph’s business there, and to ask if he could use his name; hence “H J Boughey & Son” was formed.

After demobilisation, Dad did not join this firm, but went to work on a farm near Higher and Lower Kinnerton (one in Wales, one in England; it may be that he worked in the Cheshire part). My impression is that this was over the winter of 1945-6; he was injured by picking vegetables on the farm, and then joined his father’s business. He had met my mother informally in wartime, but became engaged to her in January 1947; they married in August 1947, and moved to a house in two flats in Wallasey Village. Their honeymoon took them to Wrexham, Montgomery and then a week in Barmouth.

Once in the estate agency business, he began to train, via correspondence course, for membership of the professional body that was later absorbed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.