´óÏó´«Ã½

Life in the Land Army - Northamptonshire

I joined the Land Army as soon as war began as when I was 17 I’d studied at the Moulton College of Agriculture in Northamptonshire, so I was well equipped for the Land Army. I went to Moulton when I was 17 in 1934 for 18 months, whilst there I learnt a lot about agriculture, had a good social life and met my future husband!

On joining the Land Army I had to attend 2 hostels for training, one in Rockingham and the other in Denton. After this training I was posted to a large country house in Burton Latimer. The owner of the house and her daughter moved over the road to live in a cottage whilst the Land Army girls moved in for the duration. The house was converted to become the residential accommodation for 25 — 30 Land Army girls who came mainly from London and Yorkshire. Some of the Londoners had never been to the countryside before. There was a warden and maids who looked after the domestic side of life the house - the laundry, cooking, cleaning etc.

My role was to organise the workload of the girls, by liasing with the farmers in the area who needed extra help on the land, with the men at war the farmers needed all the help they could get to enable them to produce food. I had my own bed sitting room and office; I loved my room and particularly remember a beautiful tapestry chair.

The local farmers would ring in and ask for a certain number of girls and describe the work they would be required to do, it was my job to allocate the girls making sure they would be able to carry out the work and that they would get on with the farmer. There were some situations where there were personality clashes and I had to take the girls away from the farm and put someone else in their place, this didn’t happen too often. If the farm was between 3 — 5 miles from the hostel the girls had to cycle to the farm if it was any further away then I had to take them in a utility vehicle and then collect them later in the day.

There were a number of Italian Prisoners of War in the area, I remember one camp in Lubenham, many of the prisoners worked on the farms alongside the Land Army girls. The girls were mainly required to help with harvesting; gathering sugar beet etc and the POWs did the heavier work. We had combine harvesters but unlike the sophisticated machines used these days the old combines produced sheaves that needed to be stacked in stooks ready to be gathered up for the threshing machine, which would then extract the grains; wheat, barley and oats.

In the evenings there were lots of opportunities for recreation — the Americans from the Air Force bases sent trucks from nearby Grafton Underwood, Polbrook, Molesworth, Chelveston, Poddington, Denethorpe, etc to collect the girls for their parties and dances, this was all a bit hectic but good fun. My only duty in the evenings was to make sure all the girls were on the transport ready to go back to the hostel after an evening out, I only remember one occasion when a girl kept us waiting for a very long time — we didn’t ask where she’d been!

The Americans had no shortage of food and drink as they had supplies flown from home, this made for wonderful times. We had live bands playing which were really professional; we would have lots of fun dancing I particularly remember Jitterbugging!

This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Diana Wilkinson of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester and has been added to the site with Mrs Hakewill’s permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.