Counrtry Life in the 1940's

Inspired by Duff Hart-Davis and his book on rural life in the war I’m writing about my boyhood memories from a little later. I don’t remember much of the war as I was only 2 and a half when it ended. However we lived in the middle of the country and I observed country life close up as I grew a little older.

My first ambition was to be a farmer. At a young age that mainly meant I wanted to be a tractor driver. To me the Fordson Major in gleaming blue was incredibly glamorous. Bill who lived next door drove one and occasionally brought it home at lunch time. A working tool it has lost its gleam but was still an object of awe. The boy next door, Johnny, and I would stand around the edge of fields just to watch the tractors at work. Around then I have a photo of Johnny and myself on an older Ford. The older had large flat mudguards easy to sit on and the photo has Johnny on the mudguard and I’m sitting in the drivers seat

In the north of Warwickshire the life in our village revolved around farming. The main alternative employment was coal mining . The farms were mixed arable and livestock. The arable land was mainly wheat ( plus a little barley )with some potatoes and a small area to mangolds( for cattle feed )

The rural year began in late autumn with winter wheat sewing. The land would be ploughed, have manure spread on it ( by towed muckspreaders ) then harrowed to a fairly fine tilth and then sown. Winter time was mainly tending livestock and doing all the out of season jobs like hedge cutting. In those days hedge cutting and laying was a laborious manual job but producing stock proof hedges which lasted for many years. This was very different to the annual motorised trimming seen today.

In spring some pasture was set aside for mowing grass. We were strictly forbidden to go on these fields although generally we had the run of pastureland but on cultivated arable we had to go around the field edges. The grass would be mown in June, turned using a hay rake and hopefully dried in long summer days. Making silage was only introduced in the early 50’s.

Wheat harvesting from late August was a multi stage process. First the crop was cut with the mower probably a reaper/binder producing sheaves ie. bundles of a few hundred stalks of wheat. These would then be stacked in wigwam like stooks with 3 sheaves leaning against 3 opposite producing an open arrangement for drying. Rain during drying was a problem. On small fields with older reapers the edges were cut with scythes. Often the field was cut in a circle and as the uncut area grew smaller workers with shotguns stood ready to kill rabbits escaping from the uncut area: not only was this great sport it added to limited diets. Then the great day of threshing after drying for a few days. The threshing machine was powered by a wide flat belt from a tractors powered take off point ( a powered drum about a foot in diameter at the side of the engine). The threshing engine was a large, awkward piece of equipment ( maybe 20 feet long and 10 tall ). I recall the gate and gate posts had to be removed to gain access to a field adjacent to our house.

The stooks would be gathered in and often taken to the threshing machine( sometimes vice versa ) on carefully piled trailers. There the sheaves, bound by string ( binder twine ) would be elevated to the top of the thresher where a farm worker would cut the string and scatter the wheat stalks into the threshers maw. Out would come corn in a stream and straw in another. The corn went into sacks for transporting to a granary while the straw would be compacted often into bales bound also with binder twine.

After the field had been cut there were still the odd ear of corn on the ground. The gleaner might search and gather these in. We kept poultry and mother used to glean near our house knowing the hens would be delighted by the corn. From the wartime Dig for Victory campaign the growing of fruit and vegetables was still common as food rationing continued. A field on the outskirts of the village had been subdivided into allotments so that more land was available. Unfortunately for us the allotment was on the far side of the village and my father would tie a few tools to his crossbar and cycle there. As his health worsened maintaining the allotment was too much and like many others in the village we abandoned it in the early 50’s as food became more plentiful.

A combined harvester was being introduced. I remember it was a source of wonder when I saw the first in 1948. This cut and threshed in one step leaving a trail of straw to be picked up by a baler. It is unusual nowadays for the corn to be handled in bulk into a trailer following alongside the combine.

Then towards the end of September the potatoes were harvested.  The rows were turned out using rotating tines and pickers with buckets would collect them from the ground into sacks  or possibly into potato camps( covered straw and earth piles for winter storage ). My first ever paid job was potato picking. Although I had half an adult stretch it was hard, back breaking work. The break sitting on the upturned bucket between rows was all too short. The pickers were allowed a bucket full of large baking potatoes to take home at the end of the day.

Village life was almost feudal in its structure. A local landowner rented land to the farmers- it was sometimes the case the farmer owned the land he farmed.  A landowning farmer ranked above a tenant farmer. On the farm the hierarchy was the skilled workers at the top such as the cowman who looked after the herd and dairy with the agricultural labourers at the bottom. Ranking with the farmers were the professionals in the village, the clergyman and slightly lower the teachers. In the village near where I lived  practically everyone was either a coal miner or worked on the land. In  our case the local landowner who owned many thousand acres was only seen on ceremonial occasions such as tree planting. She did however give money to the village school for a Christmas present for every child.

Quotidian living

Although it is slightly boring I find I’m fairly settled into a routine. I’ve found I didn’t set out to find a routine but it has gradually evolved,. Although it is the way I spend many days I think I have enough variety in various ways to ensure I’m still fairly flexible.

So in a typical day I wake when it’s light. Like many older people I don’t sleep that well and it is not unusual to wake early and read for a while. Anyway we usually get a cup of tea, I read for a bit and we may listen to the Classic FM news. Our bedside radio is permanently tuned to Classic FM which is our preferred radio station.

After getting up my first  task on going downstairs is to rake out the ashes, make the fire and bring in the coal and wood. Between about October and April we have a fire almost every day lighting it in late afternoon. Only then do I have breakfast. I’m quite ready to miss breakfast which annoys Annette. I usually have periods of enthusiasm for particular things, at present cereal and dried fruit. The dried fruit includes cut up dried apricots as part of my effort to boost my potassium level. Low potassium has been a persistent issue for a few years so much so that I was told on one occasion that I should go to hospital A&E immediately.

Depending on the weather I potter in the garden for a while. This may be odd jobs around the garden or cutting up wood for our fire. Our gardener who comes about every week does all the real work and my efforts are pretty limited. We are gradually growing less and less every year so that our vegetables will only be runner beans this year. We do grow both soft and top fruit. The top fruit is almost all apples as our efforts growing pears have not been very successful

Over coffee I ‘m reading again .As will be seen I spend a lot of time reading both magazines, where I subscribe to the Economist and New Scientist, plus books of all sorts, about 60:40 fiction and non fiction. I’m generally very interested in science and technology plus recent history ( 1900 on ). As a member of 3 book groups that provides fiction often beyond my normal boundaries.

After a light lunch I’m then on the internet. There are a number of sites I visit regularly mainly for financial news and then browsing more widely for whatever interests me at the moment. Many of my domestic records are computerised so I tend to do all the usual household paperwork while sitting at my desktop. This desktop is situated in my home office which contains also paper files in several cabinets. The office also contains most of my library. I’ve lost count of the number of volumes ; I guess 1500 or so.

My library is almost entirely non fiction. Annette is forever asking me to be more tidy and I must admit my home office is incredibly untidy partly because whenever the main house is tidied the overflow finds its way in. I am very reluctant to throw stuff away so it has accumulated over the years. She grumbles I dare not move because tidying my room is more than I can face. In one nod to cutting down I am being fairly strict with novels. With only rare exceptions I read and then donate to charity or book club colleagues.

In late afternoon I light the fire and help prepare our evening meal. I am gradually being introduced to cooking but my more usual task is preparing vegetables. Around this we are watching Pointless on TV ( mainly because I have a shot at knowing the answers unless on sport or music ) while we aim to be eating while watching the six o’clock news.

In the evening  we often watch TV- catch up has made a huge change in our viewing habits. Annette often has her laptop open unless it is something engaging; otherwise she often retires by 9 or so. I probably retire around 10 and read for a while before settling down.

Deafness has led to abandoning local groups I was part of such as parish council and village school governor and reading support.

The major break in routine is that we spend roughly a week in every month at our flat in Whitby. We usually spend some time with Martin and his family who live nearby. This visit is still enough of a novelty that it feels rather like going on holiday.

Now we are forty

This was written as youngest daughter Frances celebrates her fortieth birthday as a note on our life at the time of her birth. I can’t believe I’m the father of a forty year old. Frances is always young looking which was the subject of some angst in her late twenties when she started to take on responsible jobs. She always felt that her colleagues sometimes wondered what this sixth former was doing in their meetings.

Quite a milestone and time to record some of the circumstances surrounding the birth of a girl baby on the 7^th of April 1978. Children had been fraught even to the extent of our GP’s locum assuring us we could not have children.  However the first born arrived in 1973 followed quickly by a second in 1974.

We had loosely talked of ideally three children in courtship days but there was no great plan. We had felt we had the trick of children by 1997. We hadn’t long moved to a slightly larger house in Church Road, Bebington( No 62? ) and we were reasonably well settled. Our eldest was set to go to Stanton Road school which was nearly opposite and only a few hundred yards away.

Pregnancy was reasonably well understood as a normal part of family life and realisation that number three was on its way did not arouse any great excitement. In fact we went about our life reasonably unchanged. Annette had sold many of the baby accessories after number two and she set about buying another set again. Things like a pram were only used briefly and it was usual to find a thriving second hand trade. We were plugged in to the “mothers circle” so short lived essentials were no problem as Annette was used to trading. We had a Moses basket from the earlier babies. Philip had been kicked into action writing his long delayed thesis from work done much earlier in the seventies. This was a painful process done in shortish stints at a camping table in front of the TV. His memory was of a singer/comedienne who had a weekly show. She was notable for being extraordinarily thin.

Annette had her pregnancy outfits from previous occasions. These included a long zip up dressing gown type garment bought by Philip during no 1 pregnancy. This wasn’t fluffy but rather a thick fabric.

Showing in weekly instalments was a TV programme on an Iron Age village reconstruction. Essentially this involved a number of families living an Iron Age life for a year. They all lived together in a reconstructed round house- something which aroused some newspaper comment. It was a fascinating series and we joked about whether Annette would see the lot before the birth.

In the event the timing was perfect. On the Thursday evening just after the final episode Annette went into labour, ambulance was called and off to Clatterbridge hospital just as planned. Philip then went to bed and, now past expectant father’s nerves, slept until the next morning, waking to the news of the birth of a baby girl.

Annette reckons it was the most painful labour of all the birth’s.; she felt never again. Up all night she was exhausted in the morning. She recalls hearing a wren singing outside the window.

It is now always alleged that the elder children were served burnt sausages at breakfast. Possibly well cooked would be a better description. These children were left with a family who lived in a road nearly opposite while Philip visited the hospital if the early afternoon..

By Saturday the children were ready to visit their mother and new sister. Philip thought it would be a lovely idea if they each carried a single daffodil when they visited. This fell slightly flat as Annette recalls two rather grubby children dashing up the ward..

Eldest child Martin was very proud of his young baby sister. On starting school he insisted that she be wheeled up to school to be shown off to Mrs Edwards ,his teacher. She duly cooed although what she really thought we don’t know. Certainly we don’t recall any sibling upsets as the new baby fitted into the family. This would be partly the careful preparation with emphasis on how fortunate the children were in their baby sister and that parental love was not reduced.