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This story was submitted to the People’s War site, by Nancy Waterfall, Learning Officer at the National Trust at Sutton Hoo, on behalf of Pat Davies and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was at Sutton Hoo from ’46 — 48, as Land Army girls had to sign on for 2 years. It was the first time I had been away from home. I had the choice of the ATS,
WAAFS and the Land Army, but I didn’t fancy either of the first two. About 100 girls were billeted in the house, and we were organised into gangs of about a dozen with a gang-leader. My gangleader was a girl called Ivy who married a Sutton chap. There were 10 girls in my dormitory, which faced over the river and we slept in bunk beds. We had to wash our clothes in the bathroom washbasins, and then they went down to the kitchen to dry on wooden racks in the kitchen. Different rooms had different bathrooms, and we were allowed to have 2 baths per week. However, we used to get back early, put the plug in and run the water, so we could sneak extra baths.

Mrs Jones was the warden and she was strict. There were 12 girls from London, as I was, and I often got on the train to Liverpool Street and went home after lunch on Saturdays. On Sundays I had to be back by 10pm, during the week in by 10.30pm and by 11pm on Fridays.

I very much enjoyed the life — planting and harvesting potatoes, thrashing and hedging were some of the tasks I had to do. We were picked up each morning and driven to the different farms where we worked. We left at 7am and arrived back at about 5pm, with half an hour for lunch. At weekends we worked until1pm. One of the men who drove us still lives in Melton.

The house was rather out of the way, so we were very happy to go to dances at Bentwaters and Debach Airfields. We took a shortcut to get down to Wilford Bridge. There was a Butler’s Pantry and a sitting room that was kept locked, with blackout curtains over the windows, the same as one of the upstairs rooms, and we were not allowed to go in

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