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Mrs Jean Mountney (nee Radway) writes:

After I finished studying art at Swindon College in 1943, I worked as a land girl at Broome Manor Farm, owned by a Mr Hill. I worked in the dairy and also had a daily milk round along Marlborough Road. I reckon I worked 50-60 hours a week. I had one half day off each week, and every other Sunday afternoon off. I was 18 or 19 when I joined the Land Army, and I took over the milk round from an older woman who did not want to do so much walking. The milk float itself was powered. You pushed up a lever, put an arm down, and walked behind it. Whenever I could, I took short cuts over garden walls to cut down the distance I had to walk. I remember one particularly icy morning when I slipped up and the bottle in my hand flew up in the air, dropped and smashed on the ground. I had to ask someone to clear the mess up, but I don’t remember anyone being cross with me.

Milk was sold in half pint, pint and quart bottles. It was rationed and some houses received less than half a pint a day. Weekly bills were little more than one shilling and a few pence. There were some kind people on the round who used to give me cups of cocoa when it was wet or cold. One lady, a builder’s wife, always gave me a drink at 11 am.

I started my milk round at 8 am every day, finishing between 12.30 and 1 pm, except for Saturdays, when I was out until about 4 pm collecting payment for the milk I had delivered during the week. I remember calling on Diana Dors’ mother, Mrs Fluck, and often Diana, then in her early teens, would come to the door and say in her elocution school voice: "Mummy isn’t in today; would you please call again on Monday." This always annoyed me because I couldn’t balance the books and I would have to stop there the following Monday and finish the round a bit late.

In the afternoons I worked in the dairy, bottling the milk - pressing on the caps by hand - or washing and sterilising milk bottles in soda water and clear water. Clean full bottles were put in the cold room, which was warmer than the dairy. In the winter ice formed on the metal table top and we had our work cut out to make sure that bottles didn’t slide off the table.

I also took milk down to the tearoom at Coate Water, the area we now call Coate Water Country Park, the estate associated with Richard Jeffries the naturalist. In summer I had to carry two quart bottles; I couldn’t use the milk float for this journey, and the bottles were really heavy.

My family lived in Upper Stratton, a village on the other side of Swindon, but I had a billet at 60 Broome Manor Lane, close to the farm, and only went home on some afternoons off. I loved the morning walk up to the farm, across the old railway line that used to go down to Southampton, and up the drive to the farm. I remember there was a nice elderly couple on the gates over the line. There was a pond on the left hand side as you went up the drive with trees round it. On summer mornings you would see the cows coming out of the milking parlour; it looked idyllic, really.

Twelve land girls worked for the farmer, Mr Hill, while I was there. At first I shared a room and a double bed with a Devonshire woman who must have been in her mid-thirties. She wrote laboriously in a notebook every evening - I suppose it was her diary - but what I remember most about her was that she used to stick her knees in my back in the double bed. I got round this by getting into the middle of the bed and moving back to my side once my companion was in, thus avoiding her knees in my back.

A bit later on I shared the room with a Lancashire girl called Ann Millington. She had worked in a St Helen’s glass factory and had the scars on her hands to prove it. She was very pretty, a blue-eyed blonde, and she could charm anyone! I was particularly pleased when she arrived because she managed to persuade our landlady, Miss Clarke, to light a fire in the lounge at weekends. She was always staying off work and Mr Hill the farmer used to come down to the house to persuade her to get up. On one occasion when she had tonsylitis I called out my doctor out for her. I daresay she charmed him too, when he called. Not only was Ann good-looking, she also had a good singing voice and she would sometimes sing to me before we went to sleep.

When the war ended in June 1945 I applied for training to become a teacher, and was accepted at a new college (Newton Park) at Bath.

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