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During the war, my father was a conscientious objector on religious and pacifist grounds, because he was a Quaker. He wrote a letter, (I still have that letter) and went to a Tribunal to put forward a case for not fighting. He was directed to go and work for the War Agricultural — the WARAG. He worked on the land, on the Mendips. He had his own tractor and farm implements and he contracted to do land preparation for food. He also did work for the Webbington Estate, and the Tiarks Estate in Loxton, near Axbridge.

My father had been to Quaker School at Saffron Walden, and later had trained at Writtle Agricultural College, Chelmsford, so agriculture was natural thing for him to do. He also had farming cousins at Castle Coombe, where he spent some time after his mother died. He was a shy, retiring person, and an absolute gentleman, and commanded a lot of respect.
I don’t think he had any rude remarks from people during the war, because of the large Quaker community where he worked and worshipped in Winscombe.

My father’s father-in-law, Leonard Armfield, a Quaker, was also a conscientious objector in the First World War, on the same grounds. I think he worked in timber. He had been working in the family hotel which, in the 1800s, had been a Temperance hotel, but this had been requisitioned by the army and he had to do something else. Grandfather Leonard worked later on as a stone merchant, and supplied stone for the Bristol Aeroplane Company (Filton) runways, probably before the war.

My uncle, Stuart Armfield, was also a conscientious objector and worked on the land, on the Mendips, with my father, and he went on to be an acknowledged tempera painter. He had been a set designer at Elstree but left when asked to work on war propaganda films. In the 1960s the United Nations accepted a picture depicting Racial Harmony to hang on the wall in the United Nations building; I’ve seen it. There’s also a picture of his, I think in the War Museum, of a tank in a lane.

My husband’s godfather was involved in the manufacture of the Mulberry Harbours. He was a pre-cast concrete specialist, and the war set him up, actually. He got an OBE, I think, for being President of the International Pre-stressed Concrete Association.

A cousin of my mother’s (not on the Quaker side) worked on the Enigma machines. She worked at Stanhope and she was in the WRNS.

I think it is said there were about twenty thousand conscientious objectors during the war. A lot of Quakers in WW1 went into the Friends Ambulance Unit, and the same in WW2, though I’m not sure what it was called then. During the war some went to prison. These were the pacifists, who refused to do any alternative job, and some found difficulty in finding good work after the war.

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