Mrs Ward remained involved in Bradfield WI, occasionally as president, and the family went on farming at Copyhold Farm until Mr and Mrs Ward retired in 1976. After leaving school her daughter Dorcas went to Girton College, Cambridge to study History. When she left university she became a housing manager in London and ended up doing policy work. During the 1960s she worked for three years in Hong Kong. ‘I missed the Beatles and the Swinging Sixties!’ she said. She retired to Frilsham, not far from Bradfield, and contributed to a book published as a tribute to a local woman called Felicity Palmer, who was described as a ‘farmer, natural historian and scholar’. In 2011 she published a history of Bradfield Village.
Mrs Sims remained as active as ever, taking on a variety of voluntary jobs and sitting on committees, including the WI, right up to when she died in 1996 at the age of ninety-two. Her daughter Ann studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as a student in her twenties, having spent a few years working as a farm pupil and a secretary. She joined Bradfield WI in 1966 and held most offices on the committee over the years. She remained an active member until her death in May 2013. She said of the WI: ‘it has been part of my life since I was a child. If you scratch my skin you’ll see I’m WI through and through.’
Ruth Toosey lived at the White House almost until the end of her life. Her husband, a major in the army, was killed in Normandy in 1944. She became one of nearly 250,000 war widows who were left to bring up their families on their own after the Second World War. The WI provided continuity and a shared understanding in those circumstances. I remember her as a great character with a deep laugh and a wonderful twinkle in her eye. Her daughter, Caroline, had four sons and now lives in Nantwich in Cheshire.
Gwen Bark gave birth to a baby daughter, Mary, in 1946, at which point she resigned from the committee of Tarporley WI in Cheshire though she continued to be a member for another twenty years. She joined her husband as a partner in the GP practice once the children were all at school. She always wore a tweed suit when working, Mary remembered, and was much loved and respected. She died in 1968 at the age of fifty-five.
After the war Sybil Norcott married Les, a tenant farmer like her father. Her wedding present from her parents were two ingilt pigs and not long afterwards they had twenty-four piglets. Sybil took her exams in butchery via a grant given by the WI. The qualification for butchery was examined in Dolgellau and before she could teach she had to pass the test for pig curing. As petrol was still rationed she had to take her wares in a suitcase on the train. ‘It was incredibly heavy. I lugged this great big suitcase across the platform and when people asked me what I had in there I told them books. But in fact I had a ham, picnic ham, cut from the shoulder, a side of bacon all cured with saltpetre and honey, and fresh sausages.’ She passed her examination and returned to Cheshire with a lighter suitcase. She became ever more active within the WI, benefiting from any number of courses on offer, including public speaking. ‘Les was marvellous. He never begrudged me going to the WI. On the contrary he encouraged it. He had his own interests. He was a great bowler and used to coach the young farmers’ cricket team.’ In 1976 Sybil became a TV star, featuring as a guest cook on Yorkshire Television’s Farmhouse Kitchen. Could she have done all this without the WI? Unlikely. The WI had the structure to nurture her talent and the outlet for her to exploit that talent and put it to good use. From a wild country girl who liked nothing better than to dig her patch with her special spade and watch the barn owl rearing her owlets, she blossomed into an expert on the WI’s national stage. She said, in summing up her seventy years in the WI (and counting): ‘If I had not been in the WI I would not have demonstrated for the NFWI at Earls Court. I would not have met the Queen three times and done a demonstration for her. I would never have done all this without the WI.’
Edith Jones continued to be a member of Smethcote WI. She and Jack retired to Church Stretton in 1947 and she remained an active member of the community. Her great-niece Chris recalled that she
always made a bit of time to improve herself. She encouraged me to read and my brother and I were both great readers, probably as a result of her enthusiasm. She was always game to have a go at anything. The WI was an abiding interest and even when her husband was slipping away in 1958 she made sure that her cakes were delivered to the WI meeting before going into hospital to see him. As she got older and was less active my mother would go down to her cottage to help in the garden and would invariably find Edith sitting on the porch, chatting to passersby. When she had a hip operation she had to come and stay with us at the farm to recuperate. One morning my mother heard a terrible crash at the bottom of the stairs and rushed to the hall to see Edith coming downstairs on her bottom having thrown her crutches down first. She had no intention of asking anyone to help her. She was a great character.
Edith died on 23 December 1980, just a few weeks short of her 97th birthday.
‘The WI was a big part of Edith’s life. When she left Smethcote and my parents took over the farm, my mother joined in her place and I too have been a member of Smethcote WI, so that there has been a family member in the Institute continually since it was formed in 1931,’ Chris said.
It is difficult for us today to imagine what situation could arise that would call for and receive such extraordinary, unselfish and cheerful devotion to duty as did the Second World War. Although there was of course some grumbling, the vast majority of women who were involved in the wartime Women’s Institutes rose to the occasion. However much the government asked of them they seemed to find the capacity to give freely and usually with humour and enthusiasm. I am constantly humbled by the thought of all that they achieved under what seem to me to be at times impossibly trying circumstances. Just keeping the household going, let alone adding a dozen extra tasks, would be trial enough, but to be cheerful through it all – that is probably the greatest achievement. And after the war was over? Well, those women had work to do. There was a country to rebuild, a college to found in order to continue to educate themselves, issues that had yet to be resolved: equal pay for equal work, analgesia for women giving birth in rural villages, piped water to every village, drains, electricity, more women police. The list was endless.
As one of their post-war chairmen, Lady Brunner, said,
The history of the movement is one of intolerance. Intolerance of burst pipes, children’s horror comics, squalid newspapers and sordid litter. So long as there is cruelty or evil to harm children and young people, as long as animals are ill-treated, as long as there are ill-designed, shoddy goods on the market; as long as there is avoidable danger and hazard for young and old, whether on the roads, or by accidents in the home, or by food poisoning; as long as country people are badly in need of amenities they should share with townspeople – and as long as we are bound by fellowship, truth and justice we can afford to be intolerant of a lot of things.5
In amongst all the post-war campaigning and the adjustment to peace and another decade of austerity the WI had one other, private, role. It had to offer healing and refuge to those women who found life in post-war Britain a trial. Many took months or years to establish a comfortable relationship with their husbands; others had to come to terms with the loss of their husbands, sons and daughters, while more still mourned the return home to the cities of their evacuee foster children of whom they had become inordinately fond during the long years of war. In post-war Britain these issues were not discussed in public and seldom mentioned in private but women were aware of them and they helped one another in numerous, simple ways. The all-woman environment of a Women’s Institute was a refuge from a different kind of existence after the war and it was one in which women, like my grandmother, could breathe. Elsie Bainbridge, who was a young widow, spoke about the difficulties she had mixing with other widows who were all much older than she was. She explained: ‘I felt very uncomfortable amongst a lot of couples so I found the WI very much easier. I got used to going to meetings and getting to know people and mixing a bit.
’ Peggy Sumner talked of how the WI helped her when she was distressed after her sister’s death. ‘Marjorie died on the Sunday and I went to the WI on the Wednesday. There was no hugging, just a hand on my arm occasionally to say “I’m thinking of you.” It was so reassuring. I always say to members who are widowed or who suffer a loss “Don’t stay at home. Come. Come.”’
I am not a member of a WI. I live in a city and thus do not qualify but my own association with the Women’s Institute began in 1982 when, as a student, I was asked to give a talk on Bristol Cathedral. Ten years later I began to lecture more regularly to WIs and by 2002 I was a registered speaker in Oxfordshire. Delivering a lecture to a local institute is always fun. I tend to arrive during the business, so that I catch the tail end of the first part of the meeting and hear what is planned in the way of days out, theatre visits, demonstrations or county meetings. After a small amount of fiddling with the equipment I give my talk on whatever subject has been requested. Initially most of my subject matter had to do with exploration (Everest and Shackleton) or men in extremis (Japanese POW camps). I sometimes wondered how this would go down with women-only gatherings. I need not have worried. There is no subject that the WI is not prepared to tackle.
On one occasion I was asked to speak about the true story of the bridge on the River Kwai to a small institute in North Oxfordshire. An elderly lady in the front row smiled at me as I introduced the topic but the moment the first slide came up she closed her eyes and sat motionless. I carried on with the talk and at the end there were several questions. When it was all over I went to speak to her and began by saying that I hoped the subject matter had not bored her. She replied: ‘Oh no, my dear, it’s just that I couldn’t see your slides. I have been going blind for some time but I’m now completely unable to focus on anything. However, I did so want to hear your talk as my late husband was a prisoner on that railway and as he never talked about it I thought I’d learn something more about it if I came to hear you speak.’ I was deeply humbled by this and learned the important lesson that one must never assume anything when speaking to WI members.
Talking to a group at a half-yearly meeting in Cumbria was an experience of a completely different order. Five hundred women and one man, the Mayor of Kendal, were squeezed into a beautiful room in the Town Hall. At the beginning of the meeting we stood to sing ‘Jerusalem’. I had not experienced a large gathering of women singing together since I was at school and the effect of 500 women belting out the familiar words to the even more familiar tune was utterly breathtaking. I am embarrassed to admit that I had tears in my eyes, so beautiful and uplifting was that experience. Fortunately for me there was some business to attend to before I had to stand up and speak.
I want to end with a beautiful letter published by a WI member anonymously in Home & Country during the war. She reflected on what the war had meant to her and her closest WI friends:
What are the reactions of the ordinary person to these days? It is, of course, impossible to generalise, but those of our own circle are interesting. First then, our treasured possessions are no longer the same. The china on the mantelpiece, the old bits of furniture, even the house we have lived in happily for many years cease to be of real value. We know them to be unimportant, but family life, friendship, music, books: these remain our true possessions. Again the background of uncertainty seems to enhance our joy in the beauty of life; the summer morning with its long shadows, the dew-sprinkled flowers, the gentle chatter of swallows and their swooping grace. Life is more secluded, though not less full, and our occupations are changed. The hostess is cook and finds a fresh pleasure in hospitality, the artist becomes a practical gardener, and the gardener makes dug-outs. Each finds a new pride in a new achievement. Letter writing has come into its own again and we may have some enlightening records of daily life for posterity. We make the best of our next door neighbours, now that our movements are restricted, and find them pleasanter company than we had expected.
Life is simplified; we cannot look forward or make plans, so that time seems to have ceased to exist. Perhaps after the rush and tension of these last years, these days may bring us single mindedness, an acceptance of life and of death, an inward peace. And the self concern which is our torment, whether we know it or not, must find an antidote when we let our imagination stray over the human misery now in the world. The common lot of men binds us to each other and if we will, we may pluck virtue from tragedy.6
The Women’s Institute comprises some of the most remarkable women I have had the privilege to meet and I know that their wartime counterparts were equally as impressive.
NOTES
CHAPTER 1
1 Stamper, Anne, Rooms Off the Corridor, p. 16
2 Agricultural College, Guelph, December 1986
3 Goodenough, Simon, Jam and Jerusalem, p. 11
4 Walker, Collins and M. McIntyre Hood, Fifty Years of Achievement, Federated Women’s Institutes of Ontario, p. 23
5 Stamper, p. 23, quoted from Roger Fieldhouse, A History of Modern British Adult Education
6 Robertson Scott, J. W., The Story of the Women’s Institute Movement in England & Wales & Scotland, p. 19
7 ibid.
8 Stamper, p. 25
9 Robertson Scott, p. 22
10 Stamper, p. 25
11 Robertson Scott, p. 6
12 ibid., p. 40
13 Home & Country, June 1946
14 Jenkins, Inez, The History of the Women’s Institute Movement of England and Wales, p. 16
15 Robertson Scott, p. 45
16 ibid., p. 46
17 Tribute in Barrow News by a friend
18 Lady Denman’s address to the 22nd AGM, 1938
19 Robertson Scott, p. 107
20 Helena Clara Deneke, Grace Hadow, p. 32
21 Robertson Scott, p. 46
22 Dictionary of National Biography, Teresa Smith
23 Goodenough, p. 29
24 Jenkins, p. 42
25 Jenkins, p. 145
26 Stamper, Anne, p. 39, quoted from Piers Dudgeon, Village Voices, p. 46
27 Stamper, p. 33
28 ibid., p. 35, from Mrs Watt and Ness Lloyd, The First Women’s Institute School booklet
29 Stamper, p. 35, from Watt and Lloyd
30 Home & Country, June 1919
CHAPTER 2
1 Andrews, Maggie, The Acceptable Face of Feminism, p. 30
2 Home & Country, April 1939
3 Sheridan, Dorothy (ed.), Wartime Women, pp. 73–4
4 Lady Denman, Home & Country, October 1939
5 Excerpts from a letter written by Lady Denman to the Ministry of Information, 5 September 1939
6 Miss Farrer to Lady Denman, 25 August 1939
7 Buckinghamshire newsletter, ‘Our Monthly Letter’, October 1939
8 Home & Country, November 1939
9 East and West Hendred WI minute books
CHAPTER 3
1 Dorset War Book, 1946
2 Mrs Constance Miles, Diaries, August 1939
3 NFWI Memorandum on Evacuation, November 1938
4 ibid.
5 Letter to The Times, 9 August 1939
6 Letter from J. M. Bush James to The Times, 12 September 1939
7 Harrisson, Tom and Charles Madge, War Begins at Home, p. 23
8 Roffey, James, A Schoolboy’s War in Sussex, p. 18
9 ibid.
10 Harrisson and Madge, p. 313
11 Roffey, p. 27
12 Home & Country, November 1939
13 Walter Elliot, printed in Home & Country, December 1939
14 Town Children Through Country Eyes: A Survey on Evacuation, 194 0, p. 3
15 ibid., p. 3
16 ibid., pp. 3–4
17 ibid., p. 4
18 ibid.
19 ibid., p. 5
20 ibid., p. 7
21 ibid., p. 9
22 ibid., p. 13
23 ibid.
24 ibid., p. 15
25 Sheridan, Dorothy (ed.), Wart
ime Women, p. 66
26 ibid., p. 67
27 Town Children, p. 18
28 ibid., p. 18
29 ibid., p. 20
30 ibid., p. 22
31 Home & Country, November 1940
CHAPTER 4
1 PRO, CAB 16/157, CID, Subcommittee on Food Supply in Time of War, FS 13, report of the Subcommittee on Rationing, 5 October 1936
2 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina, Austerity in Britain, p. 1
3 Collingham, Lizzie, The Taste of War, p. 362
4 ‘The Effects of Severe Rationing’, 18 March 1940
5 East Hendred WI minute book 1942
6 Collingham, p. 13
7 Donnelly, Peter (ed.), Mrs Milburn’s Diaries, 18 January 1941
8 Longmate, Norman, How We Lived Then, p. 379
9 Blunt, Maggie Joy, Mass Observation Diary, 18 March 1941
10 Donnelly (ed.), 7 July 1941, p. 102
11 ibid., 28 July 1942 p. 147
12 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, p. 33
13 Letter from Denbighshire Committee for the Feeding of Rural Workers, Wrexham, to Trefnant WI president, 18 May 1943
14 Miss Farrer to Assistant Secretary (Defence), 16 April 1939
15 M. M. Squance of the Petroleum Department to Miss Walker, 24 June 1940
16 Mr Mackay to Miss Farrer, 1 January 1942
17 Cox, Vera, Country Markets, A Pioneer Venture by the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, p. 22
18 ‘What the WIs Did in 1944’, in Home & Country, January 1945
19 Home & Country, June 1941
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