TWO childhood friends who were separated when they were evacuated from Liverpool during the war have been brought together again as neighbours in a Winsford care home.

Mary Worrall, 85, and Jean Such, 84, played together growing up in Kirkdale, Liverpool, before evacuations from the city put them on the same train to Winsford at the ages of eight and seven in 1939.

The pair were sent to live with different families at opposite ends of the town, Mary in Crook Lane and Jean in Swanlow Lane, but fate has brought them together on several occasions since being on that same train out of Liverpool.

They were shocked to see each on their first day working at ICI in their mid-teens, but were given different roles, and having both suffering nasty falls last year, the pair ended up being placed in neighbouring beds on the same ward in Leighton Hospital.

Mary said: “I had a fall and was in the hospital and then they brought Jean in and put her next to me. We just couldn’t believe the coincidence that since being put on the same train to Winsford in 1939, we’d be put next to each other in hospital like that.

“We hadn’t seen each other in more than 50 years since ICI. It was really good having her there, especially as she kept throwing her ice cream onto my bed for me to eat.”

Jean then moved into Over Dene Care Home in John Street and said she felt lonely a lot of the time.

But when she heard from the nurses that ‘another Liverpool girl called Mary’ was moving in, she knew it was her old friend and was keen to get her put in the empty room next to hers.

Jean said: “My kids were delighted that we were together after such a long time. They said ‘mum won’t be lonely anymore.’ I’m a lot happier with Mary here.

“Before Mary came here, there weren’t that many people to talk to, but now we sit together all the time and laugh and joke and talk about all sorts of things.”

Staff at the care home say the pair are inseparable and are delighted that the old childhood friends have been brought back together.

Louise Kettlewell, care assistant, said: “I haven’t seen anything like this in the time I’ve worked here, where two people who have such a history have been put together by chance.

“They always sit together, they go for breakfast and dinner together and you can always hear them chatting away.”