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I have lived in Adderley all my life except for the first nine months. Father worked as herdsman at Church Farm. Mother used to sell our eggs at Market Drayton market and sold butter for a friend.
When I left school at first I was at home looking after mother as she was not well. Then the Hon. Mrs Corbett the ‘squires’ wife asked if I would work at Poole House which I did for five years.
When war broke out I joined the Land Army. My first work was in horticulture in the gardens at ‘The Dairy’ now Copes. I was there two years when they found they were overstaffed and I moved to Mr Clare’s at Hawksmoor and stayed there for fifty years! I was working in the dairy, cleaning the milking machines and helping with general farm jobs. They grew sugar beet and I helped with the pulling and topping. They stopped making butter when the war started. There were three land girls working there and so we took turns with time off. Every third weekend we had from Saturday lunchtime until Tuesday morning off. I used to go to Congleton to stay with my uncle and aunt.
When the bomb fell at Roycrofts I was asleep in bed at Poole House but I didn’t hear a thing. Apart from that we only heard the planes go over. We did have a Home Guard and my brother was in it. (I was the youngest of one boy and three girls but the eldest girl died as a baby.
We had two boy evacuees staying with mother. She liked having them. There were officers at the Hall and Nissen huts for the soldiers. There were dances and whistdrives held in the village Hall by the present bowling green. My parents were very strict and wouldn’t let me go to these events. There was no proper shop in Adderley, the Post Office only sold sweets. There were some lovely trees, horse chestnut for the boys to gather conkers and nearby was a sweet chestnut which the girls used to collect. The ground was thick with leaves. They have gone now. The main road was narrower then. The house I lived in was in the row with the present post Office but it was declared unsafe and demolished.
At the end of the war there was a tea party and games in the village hall and everyone came from all around.

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