The Women's Land Army in WWII - Part Three

Josie Rowland-Jones (nee McKenna) met her husband during the war and was married in 1949.  She found it hard to settle despite the friendly people around her.  Her husband worked the land - erecting and repairing fences during the war, and most certainly would not have been happy moving to Liverpool to be near to Josie’s family.  After the war he worked on construction projects – locally at Nant y Moch, sea defences at Tywyn and Borth before moving on to become a porter/security officer in the National Library of Wales until his retirement twenty five years later. Josie worked in catering at the University whilst raising three children and caring for her in-laws until their deaths in the 1960’s. Her daughter Liz remembers growing up in Aberystwyth, where she attended St. Padarn’s Convent school, and of visiting the town with her mum.  There seems to have been a very special bond between Josie and any former Land Army companions that she met.  Happy days remembered it seems!  

 

Olwen and her colleagues enjoying a break

 

Olwen Jones also met her husband during the war. He was from Penrhyncoch and had a farming background, having a small-holding with sheep, and was also in the Home Guard.  He eventually became a porter in the University.  The numerous pictures we have of Olwen’s Land Army Days were only found after the deaths of Olwen and her husband. Apparently Olwen didn’t talk about her work during the war, but did talk a great deal about the friends she had made.  One of these friends eventually made her wedding cake.  Olwen had been a driver during the war, alongside her work on the land, and eventually became a housewife and ambulance driver in later civilian life.  Olwen was in the Land Army from July 1942 to October 1950.

 

Olwen and her delivery truck

 

After the war the hostel in Bow Street was used for civilian housing whilst the new housing estates were being built.  Liz remembers driving past it with her Mum whilst still a child and being told that her Mum had lived there  during the war.  Liz explained that she thought it looked a bleak and unwelcoming place to spend time or live in! 

 

Rita, Nancy and Lilian outside the hostel

 

The lessons we can take from the experiences of the Land Army girls seems to be we that we should make the most of what we have.  The girls had very little in the way of home comforts, entertainment, or leisure time but yet most seemed to have happy memories of those times.  They were “doing their bit” to help the war effort, and mostly seemed proud to be engaged in it. The girls seemed to have made their own fun from whatever they could obtain. 

 

Tea time!

One of the legacies of the Land Army also seems to be that Lady Denman, a strong feminist, brought attention to the fact that Land Army girls had worked tremendously hard during the war and their efforts should have been treated as all other services.  In 1945, Lady Denman wrote to the Minister of Agriculture, R.S Hudson, resigning her position as Honorary Director of the Women’s Land Army in protest at the decision to exclude members of the WLA from Government capital grants to assist in restarting business enterprises.  Women’s roles must have come into question after the war possibly leading to the swinging '60’s and beyond.

 

Olwen's discharge certificate and letter

 

I would like to thank Liz and Brian Ashton and Meinir Davies for agreeing to talk to me via Zoom and to Kate Sullivan for sending me the video of this meeting. 

Thanks to Steven Evans and Meinir Davies for all the superb pictures and to Brian Ashton for scanning them all for me to use in my research.

Blog by Kath Phillips

The Women's Land Army in WWII - Part Two

In 1940 Young women were recruited from across England and Wales to help with the war effort.  They were given choices of occupation such as munitions, office work, meteorology, nursing or working the land. For many working the land seemed to be the best option – indeed it was a chance for new experiences away from home, and so the Land Army flourished once again.

 

Women's Land Army at Birchgrove, Aberystwyth

Training for the work was minimal (between four and six weeks) and so girls had basically to learn ‘on the job’, which must have seemed overwhelming for some, like those recruited from cities such as Liverpool and Birmingham and who had no farm experience at all. For the farms around Aberystwyth, the YWCA Hostel in Bow Street was taken over as a Hostel for the Land Army recruits who were then ferried out to do their farm work.
 

Harvesting by hand

The girls based at  Bow Street looked after animals, ploughed the fields, dug up potatoes, harvested the crops, killed the rats, dug and hoed for 48 hours a week in winter and 50 in the summer. As there was not enough machinery to go round, they often had to work with old fashioned equipment such as horse drawn hand ploughs and to harvest crops by hand. Olwen Jones, who we met in last week's blog, also drove the truck to deliver or collect goods where needed. Generally farmers were kind to the girls, though some were doubtless far more generous than others.   

 

Using the threshing machine

Mary Bott was a Welsh Land Girl who said she had “never worked so hard in all my life” She also told of her fingers being marked and cut and long hours of work from 5.30 a.m. until 7.00p.m.  Mary had porridge to start the day for whilst the farmer had a full cooked breakfast. However the girls from the Bow Street Hostel do seem to have been welcomed and there certainly seems to have been fantastic camaraderie amongst them.*

 

Olwen and two companions shovelling snow at the hostel

 

Digging potatoes, Jean Roache third left

The girls worked the land at Penparcau, Crosswood, Birchgrove, Trawscoed, Tynclawdd and Nanteos. Nanteos seems to have been a ‘hub’ for the Land Army girls: 

'Before the war , an underground boiler heated all the greenhouse which grew peaches, figs, artichokes and asparagus, as well as all the other usual vegetables. At the outbreak of the Second World War, with the help of the Land Army Girls, two front fields of Nanteos were turned into crop fields of cabbage, cauliflowers, Brussel sprouts, lettuces, and potatoes. One year during the war, the whole country suffered with a plague of caterpillars destroying all crops. Mr Newman (a gardener at Nanteos) came up with a solution - sheep dip - which cleared all the caterpillars. He sold onions under the clock tower at Aberystwyth and made £100 in one day. He also sold to many other needy places as far as Birmingham.' **

Olwen and other land girls pulling linseed at Nanteos, 1942

 

At the time of the Second World War, the owner of Nanteos was Margaret Powell. Her only son and heir William, was killed in action in Buvignies, France on 6 November 1918, five days before the armistice ended WWI, aged just 19yrs.  Margaret’s husband Edward died in 1930 so Margaret was left with the task of managing the estate. She seems to have been a remarkable woman – well known around Aberystwyth and certainly very welcoming of the Land Army to her lands to help the war effort for herself and staff as well as further afield. 

 

Margaret Powell and Land Army girls  Gay, Lilian, Naomi, Mary, Nancy and Olwen Jones (Back right)

Blog by Kath Phillips

Photographs by kind permission of Liz Ashton, Meinir Jones Davies and Steven Evans.

* From: WWVA interview with Mary Bott (www.faceoook.com/bbcradiowales/videos/318567829405359/) See also https://westwalesveteransarchive.com/mary-bott/

** From Janet Joel’s book ‘Nanteos’ (1996)

The Women's Land Army in WWII - Part One

The Women’s Land Army (WLA) was first established in January 1917 by Lady Denman to help increase the amount of food grown in Britain; it was wound up in 1919. In 1938 Lady Denman was approached by the Ministry of Agriculture to re-form the Land Army and so it was re-established just before the start of WWII in 1939. Lady Denman had also helped to found the W.I. and had encouraged rural women to become involved in their local community by growing and preserving food. She encouraged WIs to support the WLA and said “The prejudice against a woman attempting to do a man’s work dies hard”.  

 

Lady Denman from womenslandarmy.co.uk

She also said “The Land Army fights in the fields. It is in the fields of Britain that the most critical battle of the present war may well be fought and won”. At its peak in 1943 over 80,000 women worked as ‘Land Girls’, coming from a wide range of backgrounds including towns and cities as well as the countryside.

 

 

Lady Denman was instrumental in ensuring that the Land Army uniform was practical and would make the women feel proud to wear it as they worked the land for their country.

 

Images from womenslandarmy.co.uk

 

I recently held a Zoom meeting with the daughters of two Land Army Girls, based in Bow Street just north of Aberystywth. They were very happy to share as much information as they could but both regretted not having asked more questions whilst their mothers were still alive.  Their mums' names are Mary Josephine McKenna, (1925-1995) known as Josie (Married David Rowland Jones and mother to Liz Ashton)  and Elizabeth Olwen Jones, (1922-1986) known as Olwen (Married Olwen Jones and mother to Meinir Jones Davies).

 

Josie (second left) and Olwen (fourth left)

 

Liz said that her mum Josie was brought up in Liverpool in quite a large family having two sisters and a brother, but was not very 'street wise' at the age of about 18.  Before the war, Josie had worked at Jacobs biscuit factory in Liverpool, she had spent some time in service and briefly a foot messenger during the raids in Liverpool. She and her family thought that she would be happier working on the land in Wales as her way of serving her country proudly. 

Liz thought her mother would have been very happy with the uniform, as it was very practical and during the war none of the girls would have had much of a wardrobe. Liz also said that coming to join the Land Army was probably an eye opener for her mum, Josie. Meinir said that her mum, Olwen, was from Llanilar, close to Aberystwyth, but she chose to stay in the Bow Street hostel. She was very enthusiastic about serving as a Land Army Girl. 

 

Women's Land Army Hostel at Bow Street, Aberystwyth 

Speaking about conditions in the hostel, Meinir and Liz thought that after a long hard day on a farm the women would be looking forward to a hot bath.   However, this didn’t always happen, though a hot meal would have been provided (I think the hostel caretakers cooked – possibly featured in the last picture below, without uniform).  The hostel looks cold but there would have been stories of their day to report and the camaraderie between the girls must have been helpful.  Their hours of work were so long that socialising outside of the hostel was a special event.

 

Another view of the Bow Street Hostel

 

For entertainment, Liz told us the story of her dad who lived in Bont Goch would think nothing of cycling to Bow Street Hostel meet Josie, take a bus or train into Aberystwyth to see a film and visit the Mayflower Café, and of course the reverse trip back afterwards. They also visited the Black Lion in Bow Street.

 

Outside the Bow St Hostel. Note the YWCA plaque, ie, the Women’s Land Army plaque

 

Blog by Kath Phillips

Photographs by kind permission of Liz Ashton and Meinir Jones Davies 

Sources:  

nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides-womens-land-army

womenslandarmy.co.uk