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Bump because I am intrigued, if only by the screaming peacock... a terrifying childhood noise.
I think this might be Stonestruck, by Helen Cresswell. I haven't read it, personally, but the publisher's description of it reads: "When Jessica is sent from London of the Blitz to the seemingly peaceful Powys Castle in Wales, she swaps the bewildering world of war for another of screaming peacocks, whispering mists, superstition, and a chain of grey-faced children searching out homesick evacuees to catch in their ghostly net."
Vios, you genius, I think that has to be it. Am ordering a copy to find out, anyway :D
Looking for a children's book I read in the UK in the early 90s. It's a fairly dark fantasy story set in Britain during WWII. The heroine is a young girl who's been evacuated to a country house. She gradually realizes there's something very strange about the place, especially the grounds at night. Turns out she's one of a long string of evacuees to have been sent there, but all the others have disappeared. Some kind of dark force traps them in the gardens (possibly specifically in a hedge maze?). She keeps hearing a peacock screaming, which has something to do with how the whole thing works. In the end, she manages to rescue them by taking a register; the act of counting them saves them from being 'lost' and brings them back into the real world. The title might have had the word 'Night' or 'Midnight' in it.