People's Voices in a People's War: Aberystwyth 1939-1945: The Women's Land Army in WWII

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.