'Don't Delay - Enrol Today' (eBook)

The Women's Land Army in Hampshire

John K. Lander (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
150 Seiten
The History Press (Verlag)
978-1-80399-752-0 (ISBN)

Infos

The employment of female labour on farms during two world wars was essential to replace thousands of men who relinquished agricultural jobs to join the armed forces. 'Land girls', the majority of them from urban districts, maintained supplies of grain, horticultural products and livestock, succeeding in overcoming substantial reductions in food imports caused by disruptive enemy action to the pattern of shipping trade. Hampshire played a major part in the national selection, training and placing of land girls on farms. They undertook hard, physical work in all weathers for many hours a day, often a long way from home. It is generally agreed that Women's Land Army members received inadequate recognition for their valuable contributions. Seventy-five years after the final disbandment of the Women's Land Army, this book intends to correct that deficiency and shed light on its invaluable work.

JOHN K. LANDER has written over 30 books, booklets and specialist papers on social history and nonconformist church subjects. He had a successful career as a Corporate Finance Director before enrolling as a mature student with the Open University, gaining a 2.1 BA Honours degree in 1995, and a PhD in 2000. One reviewer has said, 'Lander is a banker by profession and a social historian by natural inclination'.

Textauszug

3

Hampshire’s Responses to Labour Shortages on Farms up to 1916

In early 1915, elected members of Hampshire County Council approved the introduction of formal instruction of women and girls to meet a variety of farming needs. Indeed, it may have been the first county authority to do so. The Council’s Sparsholt Farm School Special Sub-Committee noted in March 1915 that the government chose ‘this school … where experiments might be made as to the efficiency and value of women’s labour on farms’.1 And five months later, Rowland Prothero, a Hampshire MP and later to be President of the Board of Agriculture, noted that the county was ‘more favourable to the employment of women’ and, particularly, provided ‘longer training for women than in other parts of the country’.2

The senior Hampshire County Council officer who led the project to train women and girls for farm work was David Thomas Cowan, Hampshire’s Director of Education. Born in Edinburgh, he trained as a science and art lecturer, taught at Beccles, and later became secretary to East Suffolk’s Technical Education Committee. He moved to Hampshire in 1895 to become the county’s Director of Technical Education and was promoted to the Director of Education post in 1903, a position he held until well beyond normal retirement age. Cowan devised the curriculum to provide four weeks of training, and it was said that to him ‘belongs the credit of having formulated the scheme and for having, by patience and perseverance, brought it to the point of consummation’.3 He retired in 1927 after a distinguished career spanning thirty-two years serving Hampshire’s education services, and continued to live in Winchester until his death in 1936, aged 77.

Cowan had returned from the long-delayed government sponsored Agricultural Education Conference, and immediately tasked other council officials to encourage applications from girls who might be prepared to work on farms. In the meantime, he began planning the four-week training programme to be rolled out at Sparsholt’s Farm School. Without central government guidance, he determined what aspects, relevant to Hampshire’s farms, were to be taught, and how much effective instruction could be given in four weeks. To best serve the commonest range of local farming activities, the initial curriculum comprised caring for cattle, pigs and poultry, and the growing of horticultural products, notably, potatoes, cabbages and swedes. Cowan recognised that the various farming seasons would require different course programmes. In addition to outdoor farm-related teaching, recruits were to receive instruction in domestic duties, including the preparation of meals for staff, laundry work, and even mending socks. To maximise the chances of successful outcomes, and to achieve a low final drop-out rate, Cowan insisted that recruits made satisfactory progress in the first two weeks before being allowed to complete the instruction.

The Hampshire Farm School had moved its operations to Sparsholt barely a month after the war began. Although it had been realised in 1910 that Lower Mill Farm, Old Basing, had become too small to cater for the increasing demand for well-trained farm workers, two years elapsed considering many possible farm acquisitions before 251 acres of land and buildings at Westley Farm, on the outskirts of Sparsholt village, much nearer the county’s centre, were purchased by Hampshire County Council4 for £5,100. A further two years passed before the legal formalities were completed, new equipment was bought and installed, premises were adapted for training purposes, and the taxing transfer of existing animals and machinery took place. Most staff moved to Sparsholt, 25 miles from Old Basing, being persuaded to adjust their working and domestic lives to a different environment. Having done so, and after continuing for a short time to teach a wide variety of topics, mainly to boys, they were required to start instructing a different and narrower curriculum, almost entirely to girls and women, eight months later.

The initial group of twelve female students, aged between 17 and 30, began four weeks of training on Monday, 15 April 1915. Preparation for their arrival, towards the end of the Easter holiday period, had caused a two-week delay to the start of the scheduled summer term. That first course generated a great deal of public interest. Under the headings ‘Women and Agricultural Work’, ‘Interesting Hampshire Experiment Reviewed’, ‘Partial Solution of a Difficult Problem’, one of Hampshire’s local newspapers produced a long and detailed article following completion of the initial training programme. An indication that Sparsholt may have been the first land-based institution to begin farming instruction also came from knowledge that just one of the twelve girls was a Hampshire resident. Others came from Bristol, Gloucester and Ross on Wye, while the remainder travelled from many different parts of the country. The newspaper’s reporter concluded by commenting that, ‘most of the girls have proved themselves wonderfully adaptable, and have cheerfully carried out their duties and shown themselves keen.’5

The first batch of Sparsholt’s wartime female recruits, like those who came later, had to contend with long working days and little recreational time. The Farm School’s principal, J. Duncan Davidson, decided to split the students into two groups, and after breakfast that began at 6.15 a.m., half undertook milking duties while the others made butter. Then, while some prepared the midday meal, others worked on a broad range of farm tasks: feeding calves and pigs; preparation of the ground for planting potatoes and cabbages; manure spreading; and ‘couch burning’ were examples. Lunch, then called ‘dinner’, was at 12.15 p.m., and in the afternoon, half were involved in domestic duties while the remainder had jobs on the farm or in the gardening section. After ‘tea’ and late afternoon milking, the trainees were able to play a piano provided for them in the common room or spend the evening on private study and their own interests – only until 9 p.m., though, when ‘the bedtime bell is rung’.6 They had just one half day off each week, on either Wednesday or Sunday afternoons, when leisure activities were permitted.

The social class profile of those attending Sparsholt’s early four-week courses was widely reported. They were ‘women of education – two were from a rectory’ and were ‘women of some culture’,7 and would, it was assumed, be quicker to learn and retain what was being taught. Another assessment was that they were ‘well-educated and their social position is far above that of the ordinary labouring class’.8 That Hampshire view was echoed elsewhere; the Archdeacon of Exeter claimed that ‘educated women would have little difficulty in adjusting to farm life’,9 but those from ‘labouring classes’ would struggle. However, by late 1916 it was found that women and girls from so-called ‘labouring’ households were equally adept at acquiring skills needed to work effectively on farms. After a more targeted advertisement programme, the economic background of students changed with a greater number of recruits coming from urban areas, especially London.

In the early years of the war, Sparsholt’s students were charged ‘a fee of 10/- per week to include tuition, board and lodging’,10 later raised to 12/6d. Fees were, however, abandoned in 1917 when urgency to remove inhibiting factors constraining the increase in the number of recruits was needed. Before that decision was made nationally, Hampshire’s War Agricultural Executive Committee (‘War Ag’)11 had agreed to waive fees for some candidates, including three local girls who showed promise but for whom the cost would have been too great a burden on family incomes. Over the remainder of 1915, Sparsholt successfully trained eighty women for farm work, sixty of whom stayed in Hampshire to be employed on local farms.

‘English girls learning the trade of farming to take the place of farmers who have gone off to war, Sparsholt, Hampshire, England, 26 April 1915. Here they are seen following the harrow.’ (Getty Images, serial no.167182537; Underwood Archives)

Westley Farmhouse, Sparsholt, built circa 1870. (Sparsholt College)

For Cowan’s plans to be effectively implemented, competent and dedicated staff were essential. People capable of caring for dairy herds were in particularly short supply, and the Farm School was fortunate to have attracted Mary Darrell, a highly regarded expert. Born into a Yorkshire farming family, she had worked at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, as ‘senior dairy instructress’ since about 1895. When Darrell moved to Hampshire in 1901, her principal greatly regretted her departure, and expressed his ‘highest testimony to her ability and character’.12 She served Hampshire’s education authority with immense commitment before, during and after the war, returning to Yorkshire in 1920 to farm in partnership with her sister.

Training in domestic duties, including laundry work and meal preparation, was under the direction of Margaret Broadbent. She came to Sparsholt, just as the war began, from teaching posts in Cheshire, being described as ‘cookery teacher’ in the 1911 population census. Broadbent taught students...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 7.11.2024
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Regional- / Landesgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
• Schlagworte: cinderella service • hampshire book • hampshire gift • hampshire history • Land Girls • Second World War • sparsholt college • the women's land army in hampshire • WLA • Womens Land Army • World War Two • ww2 • WWII
• ISBN-10: 1-80399-752-4 / 1803997524
• ISBN-13: 978-1-80399-752-0 / 9781803997520