by Dee Gordon
Iris Jiggens
From Stepney, Iris joined the WLA after the war (she was too young during the war years) until its demise at the end of 1950. And she left behind plenty of photographs of her years, labelled with the locations of the farms she worked on: Hawkwell, Paglesham, Hockley, Shoplands, Southminster, and ‘Stratford’s Nursery’. She obviously favoured working with horses, and kept an unusual WLA horse brass for the remainder of her life.
Iris Jiggens, née Bush (right), with beloved horses. (Courtesy of Janet Ouchterlonie)
Iris (right) working in the snow. (Courtesy of Janet Ouchterlonie)
Iris’s rare horse brass. (Courtesy of Janet Ouchterlonie; image by author)
Iris working in the mud. (Courtesy of Janet Ouchterlonie)
Gladys Pudney
Gladys found herself in a very different world to that of debutantes and royalty, her previous world as a professional dressmaker. She ‘learned to prune fruit trees’ on Mr Pudney’s farm, The Orchards, at Writtle. ‘The farm had pedigree pigs, sheep and cattle [with] a herd of black and white Essex pigs. Later they kept Landrace pigs.’ There were times when the ram used to chase her, and she:
… ran for my life into the chicken house. The cattle were beef cattle. They did not even keep one milk cow. There were no horses as they had tractors … They took newly hatched eggs up to Danbury for rearing.
One of her jobs was to ‘use a little machine to check that the eggs were fertile … Fields were planted with corn and potatoes … and there was haymaking in the meadows … they also grew tomatoes which had to be kept watered using a hand pump.’ The crop from The Orchards was dramatically affected by the presence, or otherwise, of frost, varying from bumper to abysmal. ‘In a good year, the farm lorry would leave early with benches in the back to pick up women and children from the Chignal area – as many as 80.’ The farm lorry would drive up as far as Scotland to deliver produce, and Gladys herself drove a lorry to Covent Garden.
Celia Waldman
East Ender Celia cycled every day from her billet in Wakering to Potton Island. The billet was a comfortable farmhouse with no electricity but ‘it did have a bathroom, a telephone and all the food we could eat’. The journey to the island was less comfortable, with its unmade roads and the necessity to judge the tide; if you messed this up you ‘had to row across’. She ‘learnt to drive tractors and threshers, how to milk a cow and castrate a calf’ and ‘accompanied cattle from Shoeburyness train station to the island and later to the slaughter house’.
Winnie Bell
The suntan was an attraction for Winnie when it came to the haymaking, but she also enjoyed working at Rainham Market Garden with ‘lots of girls’. On the subject of threshing, ‘I had to tie up my trousers, tie up my hair, but still got smothered and often ended up with mice in my pocket’. Working out in the rain was something she ‘got used to’ as was ‘the cold tea’ provided by her landlady for lunch to accompany jam sandwiches.
Vera Pratt
Aged 17, Vera and her friend Rose arrived at Clacton Station in the summer of 1942, excited at the prospect of working in the Land Army. They walked from the station to ‘Duchess Farm, out St Osyth way, a longer hike than suspected, especially as [our] new shoes hadn’t really been broken in’. They had to keep asking for directions. People told them: ‘It’s just around the corner … just around the corner …’ Eventually, ‘a sign saying St Osyth Dairies was reassuring, but this was just a poster’. Having found the farm and met the farmer and his wife and family, Vera found herself ‘in charge of Lassie, the sow, responsible for feeding and mucking out’. She described it as a ‘lovely life’ especially as she didn’t need to get up especially early to care for her, and for the litters that came along.
At harvest time, there were other duties for Vera, including stooking the sheaves, but she also found it relatively easy to learn to plough with an old Fordson tractor. She confessed that, ‘Once, I missed a bit and there was a whole hunk of dirt not ploughed … the next morning … the farmer said “You want the spade.” “Do I?” “Yes, you missed a lot. Do it by hand this time.” It took a while but it learnt you.’ Duchess Farm kept Vera busy throughout the war years with crops such as oats, wheat and maize, a dairy herd of twenty-five cows, and brassica to be cut to feed the cattle. Sheltering in a barn from the rain was not an option, as, when she and Rose tried this in preference to cutting the kale, the farmer told them to ‘Go out and cut it! What do you think you are? Hot-house plants?’
Barbara Fisher
Barbara wrote of her six and a half years’ service in Essex (1943–49) as having been ‘a wonderful life’ although acknowledging that ‘no doubt distance of time has lent enchantment to my memories, the skylarks singing and the hares playing taking precedence over wet cold days cleaning machinery in a draughty barn or cutting kale covered with ice and snow on a bleak winter morning’. She also referred to Land Girls shedding tears when ‘parting from a beloved cow sent to market for one reason or another’:
Tinker and Blossom, a Clydesdale gelding and mare were very much a part of my life for several years. I remember … the joy of working with them, the challenge of using a horse hoe between rows of mangolds [sic] and kale seedlings, or bumping along on a hay rake for hours on end …
In those days milking machines were a modern invention and a three legged stool and bucket were more usual … [and] the Fordson tractor we had was a very simple design, no cabs to sit in or self starters … waterproofs to keep us dry and a starting handle to get us going.
Vera Osborne
Apart from reminiscences passed on to her daughter Jan (see Chapter Six), Vera also spoke, aged 79, to Tom King of the Evening Echo (Southend) about her life in the Land Army. The article focused on her experiences as ‘a stock-girl at Great Totham, looking after the goats, Berry, Blackberry, Bramble and Blanco’. Goat keeping was her favourite occupation and she recalls a time she had to take one of the goats, in heat, to ‘a tryst with a neighbouring billy’ travelling with her in a small car. She ‘couldn’t get the stench off [her] clothes for weeks’. On the other hand, her least favourite occupations ‘were ditch-clearance and swede-bashing in the depths of winter on Wallasea Island’ with threshing a close runner-up. This ‘was a filthy job. You came away from those machines covered in black.’ She was picked up each morning from ‘a hostel at Thundersley [the site now occupied by a school], usually in a caterer’s lorry … still wet from the market. We had to sit on sacks.’
Reported Stories
Margaret and Mary Titterington
These were twins, who received their arm bands for four years’ continuous service in the WLA, reported in the Essex Newman of 30 November 1943. They lived at Althorne, near Southminster, and apparently it was difficult to tell them apart, other than by Mary’s spectacles. Brought up on their father’s farm, Margaret’s studies for her ‘Diploma in Agriculture at the East Anglian Institute of Agriculture’ came to an end at the outbreak of war when she became more hands on. Both girls worked on dairy farms in the area, with Mary working as a ‘milk recorder, measuring the differences in the yield of various herds’ which meant she visited different farms – mainly in the Ongar area – ‘on behalf of the Milk Marketing Board, to record the weights of milk from each cow’. Because of the nature of her work, Mary progressed beyond a bicycle to a car.
Joan Holloway and Mary Davies
While on the subject of cows … the district representative for Essex (H. Vickers) wrote in the March 1943 issue of The Land Girl about these two local girls. They were from London and had arrived in Essex two years before, ‘not knowing one end of a cow from the other … today Mary has charge of 25 Friesian cows, one bull and several calves and heifers, her favourite being named The Queen of the Herd’. As for Joan, she had the experience ‘of being picked up by one jealous cow and thrown on to the back of another. This cow would sleep, and snore, during milking but at the same time did not seem to like Joan making a fuss of any other cows.’
/> Diana Thake
This Land Girl worked at Woodredon Farm (Waltham Abbey). Owned by Sir Fowell Buxton, it ‘produced milk, potatoes and corn, with the milk being taken to Kensington six days a week by the estate chauffeur …’ As well as food production, the estate had a herd of around fifty cattle:
We got used to the hard work and had plenty of laughs … we ploughed and rolled the land, reaped, hoed, hedged and ditched, tossed the hay, pitched, stacked and stooked the sheaves of corn, in the wind and rain. There were tractors but a lot of the work was done with horse and cart … we would take it in turn to ride the horse home after raking … there was one period during the war when we tried to milk the cows three times a day, but it didn’t last long. It was too much for the cows.
Her story was in the Loughton & District Historical Society Newsletter in the autumn of 2005.
Gladys Kempton and Daphne Dimmick
In August 1942, the Essex Chronicle gave an account of the ploughing up of the rough land at Nazeing Common. The cricket club ground had already been ploughed, with the pavilion serving as a tool shed. It appeared that 21-year-old Land Girl Gladys Kempton, a former knitting machinist from Westcliff-on-Sea, was the first ‘woman excavator driver in Essex, engaged in ditching work on the outskirts of the common’ for twelve hours a day. She shared a caravan with Daphne, for which they were looking for a ‘wireless set … so they could put their clock right and wouldn’t be late for work’ if someone ‘could oblige’! The girls operated giant diggers and the land was prepared for barley, wheat and root crops.
In Vita Sackville-West’s 1944 book of her experiences in the Land Army – which gave an overview of the service – she mentions Nazeing Common’s ‘rough, thistly ground, bumpy with emmet-hills and of no practical use to anybody. A 21-year-old ex-knitting machinist and a 24-year-old ex-typist, living together in a caravan, are responsible for the excavator on this particular track. Truly the war has precipitated young womanhood into some unexpected jobs.’
B.D. Fitzgerald
In the November 1944 issue of The Land Girl, ‘B.D.’ from Essex gave an insight into a day picking apples (see p.6, accessible online at www.womenslandarmy.co.uk):
‘What’s the weather like?’
‘Not raining now but “gum booty”.’
And so for a day’s apple picking attired in sou’westers and macs – a day spent wading through the mud that the tractor churns into huge puddles as it carts boxes of wet apples, tying pieces of string round your wrists to stop those icy trickles of rain up your arms, carrying boxes that seem twice as heavy because they are so damp – and an evening drying muddy clothes.
How different when the answer is ‘Glorious!’
There are huge jokes about practically nothing at all as we ride up to the orchard behind the tractor, a pleasant break for elevenses, cheerful discussions as picking buckets are filled – a day flies by as we strip the trees. The apples are exquisitely coloured: James Grieves, juicy, easily bruised, with a pale green to deep orange tint; rich red Worcesters; Monarchs, green and delicately tinted with pink; Cox’s Orange Pippins, sunrise and sunset coloured and lastly, Bramleys, which rely on taste and not appearance. Then, long before I have written all the letters and darned all the socks I should, it is time for bed.
‘M. Geraghty’ apple picking at Tiptree Fruit Farm. (Courtesy of Tiptree Museum)
Nola Bagley
In the wonderfully encyclopaedic We Wouldn’t have Missed it for the World: the Women’s Land Army in Bedfordshire 1939–1950, there is a reference to Brightlingsea girl, Nola, joining the WLA with a friend, Jean White:
They were both sent to a market garden farm at Margaretting, near Chelmsford. Their first job was to hoe, then pick out shoots from tomatoes. Tomato plants stain the hands terribly yellow which is hard to get off and their hands were soon blistered. They had so many varied jobs that they ached somewhere different every day. They found themselves using Sloan’s liniment every night and must have reeked of the stuff. Sometimes they felt they were going to die with the pain and discomfort.
Ivy Cox
This is an interesting insight into Ivy’s working day, featured in A History of Mark Hall Manor:
We worked in what they call gangs. If a farmer wanted extra help, a gang of six or maybe ten girls would go out on a lorry and do whatever was needed. Bean picking – that was nice – or lifting sugar beet. On frosty mornings, you’d pull them up. They’d been ploughed up so they were loose. We used to bang them together and they were often wet. Horrible! And ditching. I liked ditching. That was a nice job. You could see what you’d done. On wet days we were often paddling in water. Sometimes it could be falling down with rain at seven o’clock in the morning but we had to go out till eleven. If it was still raining hard then, we could go ‘home’.
Land Girls from Mark Hall in Harlow worked mainly for Mr Soper at New Hall, Mr Foulds at Dorrington Farm, Rye Hill, a potato farm on Nazeing Hill, or on the Arkwright Estate.
Molly Brankin
When 20-year-old Molly joined the WLA in 1939, she was working on her father’s farm in Northern Ireland, but ended up in a milking shed in Essex. She was interviewed for the Essex Chronicle (1 May 1942) while milking ‘Freda the Fourth’, and the reporter described Molly as ‘dark-haired and bright-eyed … and cheerful’. Incidentally, girls who were involved in milking were usually also involved in grooming the cows with a ‘curry comb’ to remove mud and dirt, something not all cows appreciated.
Rosa Hawes
From Suffolk and with experience of working the land, Rosa also features in the 1 May issue of the Essex Chronicle. Described as ‘twenty-five, small and dark, with a sun-tanned face and bright eyes’, she had received a year’s training from a shepherd and ‘works at a farm at Maldon [since 1939] … looking after 260 sheep which had 300 lambs between them this year … so far’. She had to ‘beware of the blue fly which gets into a sheep’s wool, and that means combing through the coat of each sheep’ and had to keep a constant eye on the flock ‘to make sure none fell over and landed on their backs with their legs in the air … [because they] can’t get up of their own accord’.
Joyce Clancy
Another East Ender, Joyce asked to be released from a munitions factory to join the WLA and was billeted in Layer-de-la-Haye (near Colchester) where she shared ‘a room in the large farm house with four other girls’. She ‘drove the tractor, milked the cows’ and was ‘sometimes sent to other local farms to help with the milking’. Her story appeared in the March 2014 issue of the St Dominic’s Care Home Newsletter.
Gladys Levingbird
Gladys took on some heavy-duty work around Epping and Chigwell (see All Muck, Now Medals). ‘It was our job to move the equipment and caravan and bulldozer’ avoiding the tank-traps that had been laid. She was taught to drive a tractor and ‘had a provisional licence to take it on the road’.
Frances Ilines
Another Land Girl not afraid of heavy work; Londoner Frances also learnt to drive a tractor ‘with three days tuition’ – as well as a horse and cart – when at the Wilkins factory in Tiptree. She found herself ‘loading and carting bricks, paraffin and plumbing pipes. Some days [she] would have to cart coke from the railway track to the boss’s home, a fair journey, in a two wheeled tumbril.’ This was heavy work, leaving her ‘with a bad back’, although there were lighter duties ‘picking fruit and clearing blooms’ (reported in the Programme for the Maldon Military and Veterans Show, 2007).
A Land Girl identified as Joyce Crow at Tiptree Farm in 1942. (Courtesy of Tiptree Museum)
Eileen Burrows
Her experience working in a shoe shop in North London did not prepare Eileen for her first job as a Land Girl, ‘creosoting a 40ft chicken house’. Although she lived on a farm with no electricity at Little Totham and was ‘the only Land Girl’ in the vicinity, Eileen stayed in the WLA for eight years until 1948 (see Little Totham, the Story of a Small Village).
Grace Wiffen
An
East Ender living in Dagenham, Grace’s story is on the Rayne village website. At 16, she joined the WLA, as she wanted to do ‘something for the war effort’ rather than working in a London shipping office, and the idea of working outdoors was attractive. Her parents were not too keen, and her first billet did not work out, but one in Hay Lane, Braintree, was an improvement, and she got stuck in with hedging work in Rayne until being offered work picking Brussels sprouts at Mr McGregor’s farm in the same area. The thought of less blisters was obviously attractive, and six Land Girls began working for Mr McGregor permanently, so she moved, with the other girls, to Rayne, to save a long bike ride. Apart from the sprouts, Grace ‘helped with the sheep at lambing time, and hoed sugar beet and kale, one acre at a time’. She worked on the threshing machine ‘on the chaff’ and led the horse when hoeing, apart from January and February which meant a return to hedging.
Hilda Anslow
The July 1999 issue of the Friends of Epping Forest Newsletter includes Hilda’s story of working as a Land Girl between 1943 and 1944 ‘at Carroll’s Farm [Waltham Abbey] … where we were told by the War Agricultural Committee to remove the hedge and young trees and plough the fields and grow corn. I helped the contractors to remove the trees and then I ploughed the fields. Whilst doing so, the tractor skidded down the bank and got stuck [and] overturned,’ but with the assistance of the farmer no harm was done.