Essex Land Girls

by Dee Gordon

  At Epping Parish Church, Corporal William Clark married Muriel Wood. The bride and groom passed under an archway of hoes and rakes held aloft by WLA girls forming a guard of honour. The WLA bride is employed by Mr Soper at Harlow.

  The Essex Newsman of 10 July 1943 has yet another story of a ‘GI bride’, headed ‘Bradwell-on-Sea – Bells for Land Girl Bride’:

  When Land Girl Miss Violet Thurgood, of Council Cottages, was married at the Parish Church on Saturday to Flight Sergeant R.D. Ratcliffe from Saskatchewan, the church bells were rung, and friends of the bride formed a guard of honour.

  Many of the interviewees featured in these pages met their husbands while employed as Land Girls. Joyce Theobald, for instance, met her husband on one of the farms around Braxted Park (the Great Braxted area) where she was a tractor driver. They married in 1947 and she stayed in Essex for the rest of her married life. Winnie Bell declared that she ‘married the farmer’s son’ (in 1948) and author Ken Smith, writing about Canewdon, tells of Eve Wharam, sent by the WLA all the way from Huddersfield to Scotts Hall Farm (1941–46), who ended up marrying local man Percy Perryman.

  On arriving at their billet for a job at Gray’s Farm in Wethersfield, the landlady told Winifred Daines and her friend that the farmer had two sons, and the girls liked the idea of ‘one each’! Winifred announced that ‘the first one out is mine’ but she was apparently a bit disappointed … However, with time, things changed, and she married him in 1949. The two sons were exempt from service because ‘they had to run the farm’, their father having vision problems. After their marriage, incidentally, Winifred and her husband ‘bought a bungalow in two acres’ in, of course, Wethersfield.

  The Writtle farmer who employed Gladys Pudney married her in 1947 and they moved into a house built with the help of the prisoners of war:

  Robert was the biggest chap and he could carry two radiators, one under each arm, up a ladder, a big strong chap. They were lovely fellows. Heinrich bought me an azalea plant for my wedding … they were repatriated soon after.

  When Betty Cloughton was singing for the troops at pubs around Wickham Bishops, after a hard day’s work on the land, she was joined at one point by ‘The Terlonians’, headed up by Alan Cloughton, an organ player. She sang along with the band on stage and they were married just three months later, singing together for forty years with a marriage lasting another twenty, until Alan’s death.

  One of the first farms Barbara Rix worked on was Red House Farm, Wix, and ‘the horse-man’ there became her father-in-law, in due course, when she married his son, Russell. Russell was a pilot and got hold of ‘extra rations, especially chocolate … but also chewing gum and sweets’. Barbara knew several Essex girls who married Americans that they met in the local United States Air Force (USAF) base.

  Jean Levesque met her husband when he was stationed at Bishops Stortford with the USAF and she was billeted in Mark Hall, Harlow. The owners of the pubs there ‘got to know us quite well, as we used to go there every week … I bought my wedding ring in Harlow, 22ct gold, still as good as when I married’ (she was writing in 1988 from her home in New Hampshire in the USA). After three enjoyable years in the WLA, she left in 1943 to marry.

  When Vicky Phillips was working on Wallasea Island, she met her ‘serviceman’ husband ‘while waiting for a bus’. His home was in Southend-on-Sea, not that far from where Vicky had been living pre-WLA. The couple married in 1947. Similarly, Rita Hoy spoke of meeting some of the troops at the ‘searchlight site alongside the woods [of Mr Bensusan’s estate]. We were invited out by some of the lads’, and she ‘married one of the searchlight operators’.

  One of the Land Girls who fell for ‘the boy next door’ was Mary Page. She was working at Mr Wisbey’s farm (Pebmarsh) and billeted nearby. Working on another farm, and a member of the Home Guard, the ‘boy’ next door asked her out, and that relationship ended in marriage on Christmas Day, 1943. Mary continued working with the Land Army, only leaving when she was pregnant in 1944. Also working until she was seven months pregnant, carrying sacks of potatoes, was Lillian Woodham, who met her Royal Artillery husband when he was ‘on the ack-ack guns’ near to her billet in Ockendon. They married in 1942.

  When Dorothea Strange and her runaway tractor were chased down Hambro Hill in Rayleigh by a farm worker who leapt on board to help, his heroic act obviously captured her heart. James, who trained WLA girls and was in the Home Guard, became Dorothea’s husband in 1948. It was another farmhand ‘in charge of mechanics’ who stole Ellen Brown’s heart on the farm she was assigned to in Galleywood, Chelmsford. They married in February 1946 at the same time as she left the WLA.

  The romance between Vera Osborne and her husband, serving in Burma, began as a penfriendship at the instigation of his sister, another Land Girl, Lilian. They married in 1949. (This meant that Lilian eventually became aunt to Vera’s daughter Jan, and Maude – or Pips – a lifelong WLA friend of Vera and Lilian, became Jan’s godmother!)

  Edna Green wrote her own romantic tale of love found sitting on the back of a shire horse while working for Graveleys Farm, Hartford End (near Chelmsford), in 1947:

  The day that changed my life was the day that I was to take old Blossom to be shod at the smithy’s. She was … a true gentle giant. Sitting astride her broad back … with my collie, Bob, running alongside, what could be more perfect, plodding slowly along the country lane, when I saw coming towards me a brown lorry, owned by the local brewery. As it slowed to let me pass I saw, sitting at the wheel, a dark-haired young man, smiling broadly, almost daring me to dismount for he knew that if I did, I wouldn’t be able to get up again. I wasn’t amused and I felt cross, but I managed to stay mounted, and Blossom plodded on once again, thankfully. Little did I know then that two years later that same young man would be my husband. Recently demobbed from the Royal Marines, he was young, tanned and amazingly handsome. I became so proud to be at his side, as I was, constantly. We met up again a week later, in the local pub, and he bought me lemonade. After that second meeting, we were rarely apart. He taught me the names of the wild flowers, the crops in the fields, the wild animals … I felt I had found my Prince Charming … summer evenings would find us walking the meadows with his terrier, Nell. We would stay as still as mice as we looked in awe at the kingfishers with their bright coloured plumage plunging into the flowing river. We would pick plump blackberries and feed each other and, in the spring, we would sit by the river on a bank of yellow primroses. When autumn brought forth the hazelnuts, somehow he always knew which hedge held the greatest amount of nut boughs, and whilst Nell chased the rabbits from the deepest ditches, we feasted on the sweet fresh fruit of blackberries, and often we carried home our bounty of freshly gathered mushrooms … We did stay together constantly for two years, before we married in 1949 … before my twentieth birthday. [Her husband continued to work as a drayman for the brewery.]

  Edna Green (née Mead) in centre of back row with East End friends. (Courtesy of the Braintree District Museum Trust)

  Prisoners of war, too, became involved with Land Girls, in spite of the difficult circumstances and the hostility it could generate. One girl and the German she met when they were working at a farm at Theydon Garnon, near Epping (George H.) celebrated their diamond wedding in 2008. The headquarters of the WLA did try and point out the ‘dangers’ of being too friendly when working with prisoners of war, however, citing the ‘world of difference between courteous behaviour and foolish over-friendliness’ in their guidance notes.

  Back to Work

  There was some opportunity post-war to train in domestic skills at a centre in Suffolk, but this was rather limited compared to training opportunities offered to other ex-service women. Land Girls who had taken proficiency tests and been awarded the appropriate certificate and badge (in tractor driving, pest control, glasshouse work, poultry husbandry, dairy work, etc.), could produce these as evidence of their ability when seeking work in farms or gardens, the qualification being similar to th
e modern NVQ. Author, gardener and WLA representative Vita Sackville-West’s 1944 book about the WLA addressed its final chapter to ‘Suggested Post War Careers for Women’, at a time when women had finally realised that they were no longer chained to the kitchen sink. She listed not only work in agriculture but in the professions, social services, public health, industry, offices and shops, and with young children, or in domestic economy such as dietetics.

  After leaving the WLA in 1946, Winifred Daines worked in Braintree for the Courtauld’s factory, and Iris Shead returned to her work as a shirt maker in Upminster. Similarly, Dorothy Jennings, after her discharge for medical reasons, went back to working in the pharmacy in East London, and Maude Hansford returned to her pre-war work as a shorthand typist.

  Changing direction, however, were such as Lynette Vince who went to work as a mess room orderly in a local hospital, and Joyce Willsher who found a job at Shoebury Barracks, emptying trucks. It seems Iris Jiggens acquired a taste for service life, because she joined the WRAC and served from 1950–52, acquiring a driving licence and rifle shooting skills in the process.

  Iris Jiggens (right) and pal in off-duty mode outside the Anne Boleyn pub in Rochford. (Courtesy of Janet Ouchterlonie)

  John Threadgold of Miller’s Farm in Great Wakering had a fascinating tale to tell when asked about Land Girls in 2014 (talking to researcher John Street). From 1942 onwards, the farm had the help of Joan Culham, a Land Girl from Southend-on-Sea. Joan, a teenager, was apparently over 6ft tall and wore a corn dolly favour in her lapel (not part of the official uniform) which was apparently worn by agricultural labourers at hiring fairs to show they were available for work – shades of Thomas Hardy! (See p. 120.) She stayed on until she married Eric Matthews, a marine, and she opened a greengrocer’s shop in Wakering High Street – so some relevance in her choice of shop.

  Some girls continued in farm work, however. Iris Richardson was one of these, because she had enjoyed the work in Essex and on larger farms in Buckinghamshire. She remembers men returning from the war to work the land once again and the many soldiers who were still billeted at the end of the war in Warwick Drive in Rayleigh, not far from her family home. After the war, she was interested to note that a farm she had worked on, Butler’s at Shopland, upgraded from horses to tractors. Ivy Cardy also continued in farm work, and Vera Pratt stayed in the St Osyth area, where the WLA had kept her busy until 1946, because she had been offered work by a farmer she met at the local pub. He ‘had a herd of Friesians but was failing the milk hygiene tests’ and asked Vera to ‘help get things back on track’. Although Vera eventually left farming, she stayed on in the area.

  The Pros …

  The camaraderie mentioned by so many of the Land Girls was a very positive experience and helped offset the homesickness experienced by many. Sharing cigarettes and clothes was common, and many girls made lifelong friends, especially those in hostels. Some, like Babs Newman, kept in touch by letter with some of the Americans they met at the Stansted dances. Others, like Iris Richardson and Maude Hansford, stayed in touch with many of the WLA girls they met, who were from as far afield as Yorkshire and Portsmouth.

  Many mentioned the diverse range of girls they would not have met otherwise – court dressmakers, ballet dancers, solicitors, shop girls, office workers, florists, domestics – the whole spectrum. The social mix did occasionally cause a problem, and Dorothy Jennings wrote in her diary of 8 December 1943 that ‘we had two new girls come this evening. I don’t think I’m going to like them. They are a bit la-di-da.’

  There were some small perks the girls appreciated. Dorothy Jennings was able to take parsnips and daffodils home to her granddad in East London at the end of her working week, and others were able to enjoy similar small treats. Elsie Haysman recalls being given a huge Christmas tree from one of the farms she worked on in south Essex, and having a real struggle getting it on to the bus home to Ashingdon, where it was much appreciated by the evacuees her mother had taken in.

  The public did seem supportive of the Land Army, and the cheers they received at the Victory Parade in London in 1946 (where they marched along with other services) must have been a morale boost. However, public support was not always enough.

  … and Cons

  Sometimes described as the ‘Cinderella of the Services’, many WLA Girls did not feel they were appreciated by their employers, or by the government. Lynette Vince spoke of being ‘treated as just a joke to start with, but in the end [we] were valued’. Some had mixed reactions, like Doreen Morey who said that ‘some farmers expected a lot of work and were not very nice. Others were very kind, perhaps letting you have free time if a machine broke down, instead of finding you another – worse – job while waiting for it to be fixed.’

  A recording of Jack Bishop’s experiences on a farm at Easthorpe reveals that the girls ‘never had a chance … Londoners [who] didn’t know the right end of a tool from the other’ and thought of the Land Army as a soft option.

  The ‘Cinderella’ experience was emphasised by Winifred Daines in particular, who spoke of ‘one girl feeling faint and needing water when queueing at the YMCA in Braintree. But soldiers and sailors were there and were served first, so she had to wait.’ She also felt that some farmers’ wives were a bit jealous, and this may have been understandable. As for the cold, damp lorries used for their transport, these were often ‘used for carting sugar beet, then hosed out ready to pick the Land Girls up. Often the floor of the lorry would be part frozen.’

  It is certainly true that there was some negative response to the Land Army Girls. Vie Milbourne was at school during the war on Foulness Island, but she lived on a farm at Great Shelford and remembers the Land Girls arriving on the lorries, and working with them after the war on Barling Hall Farm, whose crops included wheat, cabbages and onions. She didn’t feel they were ‘very good’ at their work – which included land draining – and that they ‘had no training’ although they ‘were good enough for potato picking’. She also felt that the ones she came into contact with ‘only joined for the uniform!’

  Of course, there were also sexist interpretations of the WLA – ‘Will Love Anyone, Will Lay Anywhere …’ – but this was something that all women in services had to contend with. At least these women now had a vote, a privilege not accorded to their First World War counterparts.

  Vera Osborne spoke to her local newspaper, the Evening Echo, of one Land Girl, Vi Goodbody, who ‘went for’ the foreman (at Wallasea Island) ‘with a pitchfork’ because he ‘hated Land Army girls. Nothing ever suited that foreman.’ For her, however, the worst insult came from a lady ‘at a bus-stop in Rayleigh’ when she was queueing after a dirty, mucky day’s threshing: ‘They shouldn’t let those Land Girls on the bus looking like that’ was certainly an uninformed and unkind response to someone ‘saving the nation from starvation’.

  Vicky Phillips also spoke of resentment from some of the male farmhands in Essex, who left ‘gutted rabbits, complete with innards’ for her to see, presumably in the hope of upsetting her. She pointed out that, although Land Girls were allowed to use the Women’s Voluntary Service centres, they were not allowed in the NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes) which was reserved for ‘the proper services’. Some resented being used as ‘skivvies’ by farmers’ wives during bad weather, which was not how their time was supposed to be utilised, but these were in the minority.

  The ‘elderly men’ that Connie Robinson worked with at Boreham ‘looked down on’ the Land Girls and ‘didn’t help us’ but this could have been an initial, rather than long-term, viewpoint. Although Doreen Morey described the ‘young lads’ she worked with on local farms as ‘okay’ she thought the ‘older ones were not keen on helping … they would rather laugh at you. It paid to plead stupid and they took pity on you.’

  In April 1945, 100 Land Girls in the Upminster area went on strike to protest against the government’s refusal to grant war gratuities to the WLA – and Land Girls in Suffolk also went on
strike in support. After a few days, they went back to work when assured that ‘the question’ was being considered. However, in May, those in north-west Essex formed a committee to press their claim, because nothing had yet been promised. At a meeting at Stansted, Land Girls were urged to contact their local MPs to demand support in Parliament for the inclusion of the WLA in the gratuity scheme. Fifty WLA members at Mark Hall Hostel in Harlow went on a one-day strike because they were refused a meal after returning late from leave, feeling tired and hungry.

  Internationally renowned Ilford poet Denise Levertov had dreamed of becoming a ballerina as a young girl but joined the WLA expecting to live a rural life, ‘nurtured by books’ she had read on English farming. However, she was not enamoured with her assignment ‘at a turkey farm’, which was different from the rural idyll she had imagined. She was terrified to approach the fence at feeding time with ‘thousands of screaming turkeys’ rushing at her. In a panic she hurled the feed at them, ‘practically stoning them’. She was ‘allowed to resign’ since she was still under age for female conscription, and she joined the Civil Nursing Reserve. In spite of her experiences, her first poems appear to have been written when she was a Land Girl in Essex, and at the end of the war she published a small book of her work before marrying a GI and moving to the US.

  Dorothy Jennings had also struggled with the work, and with the authorities. She was one of those who did not stay the distance. As she had so much time off with minor ailments, including toothache, coughs and colds, the Essex County Committee sent her a letter in March 1945 saying that the WLA was:

  … not permitted to retain … volunteers who have been unable to work for a period of two months or more. Owing to your prolonged absence I am therefore enclosing your formal release from the Women’s Land Army. Will you please return the whole of your uniform in a clean and laundered condition, together with your armlet, badge, gumboots and towels.