Essex Land Girls (8 page)

Looking good in uniform: Iris Jiggens (née Bush). (Courtesy of Janet Ouchterlonie)

Two years later, the misuse of uniform was attacked as an unnecessary expression of personality in the same publication. The writer argues that ‘red ribbons’ or a ‘red tie and fancy shoes’ added to the ‘uniform’ result in something that is not uniform at all, by definition. Uniform replacements were only provided free of charge if they were ‘worn out by fair wear and tear’ to the envy of some of the female farm workers. Extra items, such as ties, could be purchased with clothing coupons, bearing in mind the rationing prevailing at wartime, with ten extra clothing coupons available to replace work clothing.

Writtle College had supplies of second-hand uniforms for sale, but underwear (and even sanitary towels), which were available for other services, were not provided for members of the WLA. Armbands, incidentally, were ‘updated’ to represent the length of service with an extra ‘half-diamond’ for each six months’ experience, and a special one after two years’ continuous and satisfactory service.

Caring for the uniform was stressed in many issues of
The Land Girl.
An anonymous ‘Committee Member’, writing from Essex in April 1942, refers to a visit:

… to a hostel … with the Chairman of the local War Agricultural Committee, a farmer. The girls were complaining of their worn gum boots and showed them to us. In no case were they really worn – holes had been made by treading on stubs, or by side-shoots tearing them whilst hedging and ditching. Quite a number of soles were coming away from the uppers, but the farmer said he was sure this was caused by drying them against a fire. The girls on my farm, who have worked in the land for years, tell me that a pair of gum boots will last for a year at least.

Babs Newman
was proud enough of her uniform to wear it ‘to local dances’, and kept the smarter parts of the uniform for ‘walking out’, i.e. ‘brogues, breeches, jumper, hat and tie’. As for
Hilda Gentry
, she favoured ‘the “trench” coat, just like an army officer’ but was less keen on the ‘army boots’. More practical memories were detailed by
Florence Rawlings
, who remembers ‘darning my socks [or ‘stockings’] till they were nearly all darn … with dungarees that were far too big’, but she felt the uniform was generally ‘smart … so I was pleased to keep it clean’.

The arrival of her uniform was something ‘exciting’ for
Eva Parratt
, while for
Doreen Morey
, the uniform ‘arrived in dribs and drabs’, including ‘gum boots that didn’t fit [but I] had to squeeze into them … and an ankle-length mac which was much too big’.
Rita Hoy
mentioned a beret rather than a hat, to distinguish her role in the Timber Corps.

From Thorpe Bay,
Maude Hansford
trained initially at Bishops Stortford in Hertfordshire, where she remembers that uniform supplies were deficient. For starters, there were not enough gumboots, which seemed to be only available ‘for those working in the milking sheds’, meaning the girls wore ‘boys’ boots and gaiters’. Maude also recalls that the initial waterproof macs ‘had leaky seams’, although these were eventually replaced by sturdier coats. As for
Jean Watsham
, it seems that she did not, in reality, join the WLA herself, but her older sisters did, and she shared not only their work experiences but also their uniform because it meant she could sometimes get in ‘half price to a dance or cinema’.

Where hairstyles were concerned, short hair became more and more the practical option both for Land Girls and for munition workers. For those who couldn’t face the chop, film star Veronica Lake was recruited for a short propaganda film meant to popularise victory rolls, which kept the hair out of the face. The WLA manual produced in 1941, by W.E. Shewell-Cooper, even comments on the use of make-up, suggesting it was toned down to avoid being conspicuous, except for ‘parties and local village dances’ – and points out that volunteers would ‘get such a healthy colour’ that ‘rouging will not be necessary’.

Living away from home was a new experience for most of the young girls who joined the WLA. Many girls lived in billets during their time in the WLA, some in a number of different places, moving around as required, and some stayed for the duration in one location, travelling by bike or lorry to different farms, with bikes often provided by the WLA.

Around half their wage was deducted for board and lodging, although some were lucky enough to be able to travel home on a daily basis. When conscription brought in more members from 1942, the War Ag provided hostels, some requisitioned and some purpose-built. These would accommodate mobile labour gangs, and the girls were frequently paid by the War Ag and not, as previously, by the farmer.

The first Land Girl ‘settlement’ in Essex was at Cranham, visited by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr R.S. Hudson) in the summer of 1941, and reported in the
Essex Chronicle
on 11 July: ‘The girls, about twenty of them, are happy and contented … Most of them are town girls, and they have acclimatised themselves to the new conditions.’ By April 1942, a report in
The Land Girl
mentions ‘eight barrack hostels, one hutment, and eight house hostels’ in Essex, with a December 1943 reference to ‘33 hostels and three more due to open over the next six weeks’.

One of the larger, livelier hostels was in Church Road, Thundersley, near St Peter’s church.
Iris Jiggens
often spoke fondly of the ‘lively hostel in Thundersley run by Mrs Hodgson’ where she lived with dozens of other Land Girls. This hostel is where
Betty Cloak
from Leigh was billeted, and where Emma Shaw, from nearby Kenneth Road, worked as a cook; both remembered by descendants still in the area.
Joyce Willsher
also mentions the Thundersley hostel in her accounts of her Land Army days, and Eva Parratt wrote that this hostel had ‘wooden bunks … I remember my bunk split down the middle’.

Betty Cloak (née Ryan) at the hostel in Thundersley. (Courtesy of Ray Sinclair)

Aged just 16,
Jean Levesque
(who eventually settled in the United States) wrote of arriving at Mark Hall in Harlow:

A beautiful driveway leading to the house … turned over for the Land Army [with] a great many huge rooms [and] a great many girls … We had bunk beds, 14 girls to a room [and] I was right near the windows [with] a lovely view of the countryside. It was beautiful. There was a large room for entertaining … we were always well chaperoned and had to be in by 10 p.m. I recall a huge room where we lined up for our meals, which were very good. Outside in the lovely estate, we used to have walks and picnics …

Others wrote of the huge pond and great marble fireplaces in what was (in 1943) the largest hostel in Essex. On the opening day in September, Mrs Solly-Flood, the organising secretary for Essex, greeted the girls on their arrival, following their march from Harlow Station. She gave a speech emphasising their role in the community, and met the warden and the ‘head girl’. Even the Bishop of Chelmsford managed to fit in a visit to the hostel, such was its standing.

The first assignment for
Connie Robinson
was in Boreham, which ‘seemed miles away’ from her home in Chadwell Heath. She had to:

… get a train, then a bike ride to my billet with a young couple and their little girl; he was a horseman. The very first day, they gave me corned beef fritters, and I was ill with a tummy bug as a result. Everyone spoke broad Essex, and on my first morning, the foreman greeted me with ‘Morning, together …’

Which, Connie recalled, left her completely baffled.

Hilda Gentry
preferred the hostel, in an old rectory near Chelmsford, to the isolation of ‘private lodgings’. She lived there with twenty girls and remembers the ‘oil lamps and the cess pits’. No main drainage meant that facilities were ‘very crude … and I had to go home once when I needed fumigating’. The hostel had a cook, Betty, and a supervisor, Miss Villiers, and Hilda ‘had to sign in by 10 p.m. unless you had a late pass’.

One of the Land Girls featured in
All Muck, Now Medals
was Gladys Sirs, who was sent to a dairy farm in Leaden Roding. Her parents accompanied her on the train, stopping off at Chelmsford, and the farmer’s family gave them a ‘royal welcome … country hospitality at its very best … quickly made to feel like one of the family … My parents were invited to visit … to see me and have a report on my progress caring for a mixed herd of Friesians and dairy shorthorns.’

Ramsden Bellhouse Farm was the destination for
Florence Rawlings
. Although from the East End, she was not fazed by the thought of working with the bulls that were bred there for showing. From home, she took a train to Wickford and then ‘cycled for three miles’ to stay with the farmer, Mr Thorn(e) and his family.

It was a happy experience for
Mary Page
, when she moved from Northamptonshire to Pebmarsh. She had ‘a lovely billet next door to Mr Wisbey’s farm’ with her ‘own room with a lovely family’.

At
Ivy Cardy
’s first billet in Clacton, she was not provided with a lunch and she ‘had to take her shoes off in the house [and] couldn’t use the kitchen to make a drink’, but the second was friendlier and she was treated as part of the family. The main rule there was that she and the other Land Girls had to ‘clean their shoes’. She preferred being billeted in the town to being on a farm, with hotels being utilised along the seafront – a ‘lively area’.

Braintree District Museum has an interesting account donated by ‘Joyce’ regarding her arrival, post-1942, at Coggeshall House, which had taken on a temporary role as a WLA Hostel:

It is a large, beautiful Georgian house, three reception rooms, a very large kitchen, a couple of utility rooms, six plus bedrooms, two bathrooms. As you walked in the heavy wooden front door, the first thing you noticed was the well-polished parquet floor and beautiful double entry stairway. About thirty WLA girls and domestic staff lived here. Ann and I arrived midday by train and taxi. The warden, Mrs Settle, showed us to our room and we waited until the girls arrived back from the fields. Everyone was very friendly and I immediately felt at home.

Interestingly, historian Stan Haines feels that the ‘Matron’ here was remembered ‘as a bit of a martinet’.

No sooner had Leyton girl
Ellen Brown
signed up, than she was called into the office at Writtle where there was a farmer ‘desperate for a Land Girl’ and told ‘he will train you’. So she ‘went home, packed, and got a train to Chelmsford where I was met at the station and supplied with a bike… I lived with a widow and her daughter’ 1 mile from the farmer – Charles – at Wood Farm, who was undeterred by the fact that ‘I had never been on a farm before …’ Her first reaction was to telephone her dad and tell him she wanted to go home, but he, to her surprise, told her to give it a chance, which she did, and was pleased she stuck with it.

Gladys Pudney
was billeted with a Mr and Mrs Lang in St John’s Road, Writtle. She described Mrs Lang as a ‘dear little country woman with pink cheeks … Mr Lang was a Scot’. To get to work Gladys used her own bicycle and took a packed lunch provided by Mrs Lang.

Similarly,
Barbara Rix
cycled to Red House Farm every day from the ‘little cottage’ where she was billeted in Wix with an ‘old couple who treated me like a daughter … I had to take the candle upstairs and had to wash in the bedroom with frozen water in a jug’.

Two girls who had no time to settle in were
Lynette Vince
and her sister. They travelled to a billet in Wivenhoe and were sent straight out to a farm ‘just in time for milking’. They ‘were given a bucket and stool each … [and] my sister said “Are you going to show us how to do it?” I had never even seen a cow!’ They did not like this billet, where Lynette’s long hair was blamed for jamming the carpet sweeper, and she turned up on her mum’s doorstep in Wanstead and wrote a letter about her unhappiness with ‘a landlady who was dreadful to us’ and was moved to Peldon. This was a hostel ‘built for prisoners of war with one big dormitory’, and
Eva Parratt
wrote of it as housing about forty girls in double bunks with ‘no sheets, just blankets’. Lynette was ‘moved again to a lovely old house called Orleans near the coast at Mersea with about seventy girls … here there was a lovely old Norwegian cook, Mrs Valentine … always cheese sandwiches for lunch but always a wonderful meal on our return …’ Transport from the billet was provided either by ‘lorry or coach’.

Some were lucky enough to be able to live at home. Amongst these was
Joan Carpenter
from Boreham who spent her WLA years working at nearby New Hall, a former Tudor hunting lodge with a 4-acre garden full of vegetables and fruit. The location seems to have been the luck of the draw.
Elsie Haysman
‘stayed at home’ in Ashingdon Hill for the duration, getting around on her WLA bicycle which she had ‘customised red, white and blue’ to ‘prevent it being stolen’. These Land Army issue bicycles were otherwise painted black with heavy frames, and not easy to pedal in rigid boots. The
Suffolk Review
of autumn 2004 features Kathleen Kellock, who ‘stayed living with her parents in Wickham Bishops and cycled to work on two farms, joined by nine other Land Girls, three local and six living in a hostel in Great Totham’.