Jambusters (19 page)

The women decided they would have to tackle the job of breaking up the ground and preparing it for sowing themselves. After several serious setbacks, including a conflagration that nearly consumed the neighbouring hedge as well as the scrub on the allotment, they succeeded in clearing their plot of tins, bottles, bricks, stones, foxgloves, dandelions, twitch, blackberry brambles, wild horseradish and an odd assortment of junk. They met whenever the weather was fine and continued to work on their project, sowing and thinning the vegetables. Mrs Wilkinson observed the men on the neighbouring allotments looking down their noses at the WI handiwork. ‘Some remarked that it looked as though a lot of old hens had been scratching about, and others said, “more like swine rooting”. But we were convinced they were merely jealous.’

In September 1940 Mrs Wilkinson was delighted to report to
Home & Country
that they had lifted their early crop of potatoes and sold the lot, re-sowing the ground with cabbages, carrots, parsnips and swedes. ‘Our main crop we have not yet lifted, but
we have many orders for it – one of 2 cwts. The early potatoes are amazingly good. Our bill for the seed was £1, and our first few rows made £1.5s. We shall certainly have a good profit.’ She was pleased to note that the men who had jeered at the women were ‘struggling to keep their minds on their work and their eyes from straying to our superior and very healthy plants’.
⁵

Urchfont WI members in Wiltshire were equally triumphant about the half-acre plot of land they managed to acquire for WI use from the local manor house. It had been very hard work digging the ground but, to their delight, the crops they produced were magnificent. The secretary of the WI suspected it might have something to do with the fact that the land had been a pig pen for the past ten years. ‘The best sprouts in the district were the envy of all men growers. Our cabbages were weighty: we very soon sold every ten shillingsworth to the Pewsey Vale Association for resale to HM Forces. The carrots, parsnips, artichokes, leeks and onions are looking fine, and we intend to give the local hospital a good crop of potatoes.’

These gardens were no exception. Institutes took over deserted gardens all round the country, with the work being shared between members and willing helpers, such as schoolboys and evacuees. Sulgrave in Northamptonshire was running two cooperative patches side by side, one dug by their members and the other by local schoolchildren. Although WI members who sold produce were entitled to keep the profits it is striking how often these were sent off to help the war effort or to charitable organisations to help people who needed support. Baggrow and Blennerhasset in Cumbria donated the profits from their produce shows to mobile canteens while Sharnbrook WI in Bedfordshire gave their surplus funds to the WI Ambulance Fund. Members of Old Warden in Bedfordshire regularly sent vegetables to the communal dinner canteen for evacuees and troops.

Thornthwaite-cum-Braithwaite in Cumbria announced that many new gardens had been created by the summer of 1940 and that most of their local waste land that could be cultivated was now under WI control and expected to yield a good harvest of vegetables. Allotments run by local institutes became a valuable addition to gardens and were often sown with a single crop, such as carrots or potatoes, so that the yield could be shared out between members and any surplus sold. Mrs Sims dug up part of her garden in order to grow more vegetables. ‘Part of the tennis lawn was sacrificed for potatoes and a plot in the orchard was known as the Victory Bed. My parents grew all our own vegetables and fruit. We had raspberries, gooseberries, red- and blackcurrants as well as apples, plums and pears. I also remember my mother planting leeks and my brother John once pulling them all up in a fit of pique,’ Ann Tetlow remembered.

Fruit and vegetable talks and demonstrations became popular up and down the country with counties concentrating on what grew well in their soils. Shropshire focused on gardening and beekeeping while Staffordshire institutes began a drive to encourage poultry-keeping, whether in gardens, backyards or allotments. A produce guild member of Sevenhampton in Gloucestershire told her institute that she was keeping three old age pensioners, with a combined age of 244 years, supplied with fresh vegetables.

Mrs Milburn’s garden in Leicestershire was a triumph that summer. On 8 July she wrote in her diary: ‘Some thunder today and a sharp, three minute shower this morning. The garden is greatly freshened. The peas have filled out their pods, the leeks are upstanding and the cabbages are too marvellous for words – they have grown enormously in two days.’ That day Lord Woolton announced, without prior warning, that tea was to be rationed to 2 ounces per head per week and margarine and
cooking fats were also to be drawn into the rationing scheme.

It was not until Tuesday 16 July that she and her husband received a telegram from the War Office to say that Alan was a prisoner of war. ‘There and then, saying “Thank God”, we embraced each other for sheer joy at the good news. Oh how delighted we were to hear at last he is alive.’

Two months later, on 7 September, Hitler launched the Blitz. The war rained down on Britain’s major cities for nine months. ‘Germans bombing London every night’, wrote Edith Jones in her little brown diary. Even for women living in villages well away from the bombing the sense of menace was ever-present. Patricia Kelly had been evacuated from Manchester to Cressbrook in Derbyshire. She said: ‘My bedroom in the cottage in Cressbrook was high in the roof and I could see the red glow in the sky when Manchester and Sheffield were being bombed during the autumn of 1940. Sheffield to the right and Manchester to the left.’ In October 1940
Home & Country
came under attack. The editorial for the month began: ‘this should perhaps more properly be headed, “From the Editor’s Dug-Out”, for it was drafted in the basement to which the staff of
Home & Country
retires when the air-raid siren goes off. The preparation and production of this number of the magazine has been carried on during a period of all-night and nightly Air Raids, and constant daytime alarms and raids.’ She added that not only had the staff had to cope in these trying circumstances but so had the printers, who had battled on for months ‘with air battles going on overhead more or less continually’.

As a result of the intensive air attacks on London during September the staff of headquarters moved to Puddephats Farm in Markyate, Hertfordshire. There were further apologies to readers of the magazine for the lack of the usual blue cover which had to be dropped since the heavy paper ‘used up nearly
one-third of the amount of paper allotted to us by the Paper Control’. Paper was controlled from the beginning of the war. Newspapers were limited to 60 per cent of their pre-war consumption of newsprint and magazines had to follow suit. Paper supply was officially limited and controlled by the Ministry of Production in 1942. Restrictions of all kinds followed in alarming succession as the bombing raids on London and other British cities intensified.

Sybil Norcott was responsible in large part for the kitchen garden at her parents’ farm outside Dunham Massey near Manchester. Her mother was disabled with multiple sclerosis and her father was occupied by farm work. ‘The farmhouse garden was no kaleidoscope or blaze of colour but a utility garden. During the war the name utility was apt. The garden was down to earth, a basic necessity but it provided luxuriant fruit and vegetables for family, friends and neighbours in a time of frugal living. We grew early peas and beans, strawberries with ruby-red jewel like fruits, Cox’s orange pippin apples and any number of other wholesome produce. No fertilisers were used, just good sweaty, currant cake coloured, rotted donkey manure, either spread or well dug in,’ she explained.

Sybil was born in Lancashire on Shakespeare’s birthday in 1928. Her father was one of thirteen children from Liverpool and her mother, who had been orphaned as a child, was from Cheshire. Sybil’s father had always wanted to farm and soon after her birth he was granted tenancy of Heath Farm in Dunham Massey. ‘At last my father achieved his childhood dream. He had a farm of his own and it was there that I spent a wonderful childhood,’ Sybil said. Although the farm was isolated she was very happy. She had a Manx cat, a dog called Peter Pup and a donkey called Tommy. She was an inquisitive little girl and very outgoing, so Peter, the farmhand, took her
under his wing and taught her a great deal about nature. ‘Peter could not agree with his extravagant daughter-in-law so he moved into an empty loose-box on the farm and converted it into a bedsit. He became the granddad I had never known.’ Peter was a keen gardener and he created a kitchen garden for Sybil’s mother, growing her soft fruit, herbs and all the vegetables she could ever want. When Sybil was old enough, Peter made her the child-sized spade which she still has, and he taught her to dig, sow and harvest. ‘I even had a little plot of my own. I called it the secret garden for it was past the poultry houses and surrounded by a tall hawthorn hedge.’ Peter retired when Sybil was still a little girl and her father took on another farmhand, an Irishman named Martin.

Like Peter, Martin was a great naturalist and he enjoyed nothing more than lying on his tummy observing the animals in the covert. He used to take Sybil with him and she watched with him as the fox cubs learned their skills while playing rough and tumble with one other. He showed her the barn owl which raised a brood in the loft over the stable and explained to her how the owl spread out the laying of her eggs so that they hatched at intervals. This meant the mother could feed the baby owlets at their individual stages of development and the oldest owlet would sit on the other eggs and keep them warm while the mother owl went out hunting.

Martin moved into Peter’s loose-box and Sybil remembered him refilling the feather mattress on his bed whenever they plucked a duck. His ways with the natural world fascinated her. ‘Martin carried a dried fox’s tongue in his pocket. He would soak it, cover it in Vaseline and bandage it on wounds. It could draw out thorns, heal a cow’s foot and even soothe a horse’s hoof after shoeing. I always thought it had magic powers. And when he had done with it he would put it back in his waistcoat pocket.’ He had
a lovely gentle sense of humour, which always delighted her. On Saturday nights he would go to the pub ‘to refresh himself well’, riding on her father’s bike. It didn’t have a bell but the mudguards rattled so loudly that her father would hear him coming back late in the evening and know he was safe. One night he was later than expected: ‘Dad asked him if he was drunk. “Nay Mester, I was just sober enough to know I was not quite drunk. Sure, it was the bike. It wouldn’t stand still while I got on it.”’

Sybil’s father harvested potatoes in the traditional way, helped by Martin. ‘Dad drove the horses, pulling the old-fashioned potato digger and Martin took charge of emptying the full hampers into the cart. The potatoes were stored at the edge of the field in hogs. Between cartloads Martin would dig a wide gully, leaving the soil in a heap on either side. The potatoes were tipped, then shaped into a triangle and covered with straw. The soil was replaced, leaving a gap at the top with the straw protruding to allow for the spuds to dry without sweating. Later the potato tops covered the whole hog to guard against the frost.’

Sybil learned so much about life and nature from the two farmhands and from her father but she also required formal education. This began at Partington Village School and then continued, from the age of eight, at Altrincham Girls Grammar School. When she was twelve her mother decided to join the WI. Sybil was too young to join the local institute, as the minimum age was fourteen, the statutory school-leaving age; however, Partington WI took girls from twelve so she and her mother joined that institute in 1940. She explained: ‘My mother wanted very much to join but the track to the village was through the woods and my mother did not want to walk that route on her own. She was afraid. So she asked me to accompany her on my bike, which of course I did and that is how I came to join Partington WI.’

The war brought relatively little change for Sybil, though the proximity of the village to Manchester meant that she was only too aware of the so-called Christmas Blitz which reached its height on the two nights of 22 and 23 December, killing 684 and wounding four times as many civilians. When she left Altrincham Grammar in 1944 she worked on the farm full time as this was considered to be proper war work. She was already experienced at most aspects of farming and had learnt to drive a tractor at seven so she slipped easily into the role. Her mother, who had become thoroughly involved in Partington WI, was not able to work outdoors. ‘My mother never complained about her condition, she was so brave, and she took on all manner of voluntary work during the war. The WI is not just an institution, it is a way of life and one that my mother embraced. So from an early age, when Mum was laid up, I did a lot in the house as well as working outside.’ Sybil was perhaps unusual in that she had so much responsibility for home production at such a young age but she was certainly not alone. Peggy and Majorie Sumner down the road in Hale turned their back garden into a vegetable patch, though Peggy admitted she did not have green fingers and the only line of peas she ever grew to maturity provided but one serving. She was nevertheless a good knitter and she managed to combine that successfully with her civilian ambulance work.

One of the most useful propaganda tools the government had in encouraging people to grow their own food and to make their excess produce available was via the BBC Home Service. The weekly fifteen-minute gardening programme was fronted by Mr Middleton, who had been broadcasting to the nation’s gardeners since 1931.

Cecil Henry Middleton was born in 1886 in Northamptonshire. His father, John Robert Middleton, was the head gardener to Sir George Sitwell, so that the young Mr Middleton grew up
with the Sitwell children, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell. At the age of fifteen he began to work on the Sitwell estate but by seventeen he had left Northamptonshire and moved to London, becoming a student gardener at Kew. During the First World War he worked in the horticultural division of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries and was involved in food production, later going on to join Surrey County Council as a horticultural instructor. He had also had a spell working in the seed trade, so that by the time the war came he had experience of many aspects of food production as well as gardening. Although a modest man he was proud of the gardening tradition and resented the portrayal of gardeners as ‘funny old men with battered hats and old moth-eaten trousers, and with whiskers and very little intelligence’. He was the complete opposite of the caricature, being neat and bespectacled but with a warm and engaging manner.