A Memoir of Service in the Women's Land Army 1939-46
One of my proudest moments that I offer here in this Land Girls memoir was nearly 70 years ago when as a young girl I was presented to HM Queen Elizabeth for my services in the Women’s Land Army (WLA). Why, because I had volunteered as a “Land Girl” at the outbreak of World War II in 1939, did well, and served until 1946.Continue Reading
Childhood is the happiest time of your life the saying goes. Sadly, not for me.
To understand why the years between 1939 and 1946, after childhood, were the happiest of my early life it is necessary to understanding my motives in volunteering for the Women’s Land Army (WLA), where I was happy. And it is also necessary to know something of my parents and home life. For my parents were ill matched, leading to marital discord and unhappy children. How they met I do not know – and it is for the imagination, but meet they did and married in World War I before father volunteered, and went to France to serve in the British Army.Continue Reading
So as I faced the prospect of being sixteen and leaving school, the deficiencies of my home became more apparent and the imperative to get away from it become more pressing. The question was what to do about it. The answer came in the months before the outbreak of war in 1939.Continue Reading
At the Lancashire College of Agriculture, the basic course for training Land Girls was only two weeks, and did little more than deal with the very basics of farming – this is a horse, this is a spade. It was offered for free in response to wartime needs. I needed more than this to be an effective Land Girl as someone who knew nothing about farming, being a city resident. Fortunately for me, the College also offered a fuller and longer course that covered farm management, animal husbandry, growing crops and all in between for those pursuing a career in agriculture, but this course had a fee. The problem was that I had no money to pay it, nor did my father and mother have any to spare. I saw my plans to contribute to the war effort as a Land Girl dashed for lack of the funds to get the education that I needed.Continue Reading
Once the training was complete, I returned home and hated it more than ever. For I had tasted the delights of independence, lived in surroundings I felt at home in, spent time with a bunch of lively girls from many different walks of life, learned a great deal about a subject I had known nothing about before, worked hard physically, and after all the years of my childhood when I seemed to be ill a lot of the time was very fit. Doctor Smillie was right; for as he foresaw the WLA would be the making of me. I am as grateful to him as I was to uncle John for ensuring I had this opportunity.Continue Reading
This episode I recall with little pleasure.
Having sorted out things at home, and as matters got no better in future years in dealing with them I always thought of myself as the juggler spinning plates, I went off to Holt Hall Farm. It was on the easterly outskirts of Liverpool at Gateacre, and for its day quite large, carrying a dairy herd of over 50 milking cows supplying milk locally. Holt Farm also had pasture and arable land of a considerable acreage. There were no dogs, sheep, pigs or hens.Continue Reading
Leaving my wheelbarrow behind me with much regret – and it was heavy wooden barrows similar to that shown at the end of chapter 6 that I had used countless times to muck out shippons, stalls, stables and sties, I returned to Ramilies Road, Liverpool with a heavy heart, but full of determination to make the best of it. I had to get my parents back on their feet, and see to the needs of young brother John. Then I had to look to myself, I needed to work on my life after being a Land Girl.Continue Reading
As you can see from my story here, many Land Girls from cities served faithfully in agricultural environments to the betterment of themselves, the country as a whole, and the individual agricultural employer. Like me, many quit at the end of the war to return to their previous lives. No help was provided to these Land Girls returning to the cities, a state of affairs that infuriated Lady Denham our head found so much that she resigned in 1945.Continue Reading
The Bowland Fells are in north east Lancashire butting the Pennines and the Yorkshire Dales to the east. Marshaw was at the westerly extremity. They are areas of isolated, desolate, diverse and unspoiled high heather peat bog and moor laid on gritstone, often cloud covered and rising to nearly 1600’, with sharp cut steeply falling cloughs in the fell sides, deep valleys, small rivers and winding becks in their bottoms, a habitat for rare birds. Continue Reading