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Herefordshire Lore PO Box 9, Callow, Hereford HR1 9BX Volume 1 07845 907891 Issue 1 [email protected] Spring 2006 www.herefordshirelore.org.uk 19461946 -- 20062006 MadleyMadley smallholderssmallholders WartimeWartime gardeninggardening PembridgePembridge pubpub lifelife Hereford’sHereford’s homemadehomemade carcar Home Get in touch on 07845 907891 or [email protected] Herefordshire’sFront Rosemary Lillico on food in On The Home Front the Forties and Fifties. Food rationing was Dried egg: 1/8th packet. had extra supplies from ‘the black market’ in operation from Children up to five received the same and no one asked too many questions January 1940 to 1954, I rations while 5 - 16 year olds and about where they came from. Herefordshire’swas born in 1938 and can pregnant women had one pint of milk daily Homeremember Front going shopping with and extra fruit when available. My family was very fortunate in that my mother, walking in to Hereford they lived out in Breinton and had a large from Breinton. This, then was our Everyone had a ration book and would garden. My parents did seasonal land weekly allowance (if you could get it!): have to register with a grocer, butcher and work for local farmers (I can remember Meat - 1/- to 2/1d (5p to 10p) dairy. Later on many other items of picking up cider apples by moonlight with Bacon: 4 ozs to 8 ozs grocery were in short supply and put on my father) and were sometimes paid with Cheese: 1 oz to 8 ozs rations too. The contents of the Ration milk, potatoes and other things in lieu of Fat: 1 oz to 8 ozs Book were known as Coupons or Points. wages. Eggs: 1/2 to 2. Having very few ingredients to cook with Tea: 2 ozs to 4 ozs. In 1944 those over 70 led women to invent their own, closely ‘picking cider apples by moonlight’ were given an extra ounce at Christmas. guarded recipes: cabbage pie, carrot Sugar: 8 ozs to 16ozs (plus 2lbs extra cake, no fat cake, no sugar cake. Some when available for jam making). families were so poor they couldn’t Dried milk: half a tin. afford to buy the rations and exchanged their points for eggs, vegetables or clothes. Seasonal fruit and vegetables were available but in very short supply and everyone had to queue for everything. The standing joke was: if you see a queue join it and then ask what it’s for. There was plenty of bartering and extra rations kept ‘under the counter’ for favourite customers. Some shopkeepers Don Glead on his family smallholding at Smallholders in Madley Canon Bridge. There were eleven smallholdings down and sugar, not much else. a week. at Canon Bridge, set up after the First Mother would take 30lbs of butter to She had a big Victoria Overend churn World War for returning soldiers. Each market in Hereford on the bus. and when she was expecting it was too had an average of 50 acres with one We used to handmilk, pour it straight into heavy. We’d have to churn it for her and piece of 8 - 10 acres for arable and the the separator while it was still warm. You it would churn a lot of butter. Tempers got rest pasture and orchards or frayed in the thundery weather grazing and mowing. Father because it would not churn very moved there in 1936. well. Mother would tip a gallon There’s no bridge now: it was of water in. where the religious canons She’d use ‘Scotch hands’ (a used to cross over to come to kind of butter pat). Once the Madley. We used to cross the butter was kneaded and made river to go to the Nelson pub - up she could dig her Scotch you could walk from stone to hands in and slap it on the scale stone. and it would be exactly half a There was a field by the river, pound. called Barking Field where Father had a chaff cutter and timber, cut for going down river mill, run off a stationary engine to the shipyards, was barked and his first tractor, in 1943, was for the tanning. a 1923 Fordson. When we came here there He was the first to sell milk there was Cuckoo Tom. He lived in to the Milk Marketing Board, to the saddle room and there was Cadbury’s. There was cattle and Archie John, he lived over the pigs, 5 - 6 nursing cows, cowshed. And there was Don with his brother and Blackie the pony. Hereford cross and Welsh another who lived in a chicken blacks. Friesians were just house! starting: they said they’ll never These places were mostly self-sufficient. made butter with cream when it was ripe; stick the winter, those bony Friesians! The only things we bought in were tea it would stand in bowls in the dairy, about But the milk was a cheque every month. 2 Get in touch - call us on 07845 907891... Gardening in Wartime Bill Dean on potatoes, rations and ammunition. Bill Dean, of Walnut Tree Avenue, astonished to see the generous rations Hereford was in the Reserved given out to a black American brigade, Occupation at the outset of war, working the 92nd. “They even had fridges. a ten-hour day as a gardener at They were so different to our lot: while Amersham in Buckinghamshire. the British army only gave you “We had a half hour for breakfast at 8.00 ammunition if you needed it, the a.m. and used to bring our own and Americans had all sorts of guns and cook it ourselves. At 10.30 we had half ammunition - and they would fire away hour for a smoke because gardeners at anything.” couldn’t smoke on the job. The owner Definitely not a case of ‘Praise the Lord was very generous with his cigarettes, and Save the Ammunition’. but I didn’t smoke so he used to give me When war finished Bill returned to the chocolate instead. house he’d worked as a gardener. It had “On Saturdays we worked 7.00 to 1.00 been turned into a nursing home and and after that, in the summer, went to she was on the staff of assistant matron play village cricket. Elizabeth Grace Thomas from “The tools were so different then: no Kinnersley. She was to be his future Flymo or strimmer! Imagine how we wife. used to do it all before with a hook and clippers. “Since it was wartime we had to dig up the owner’s lawns for potatoes. We planted Fresh Fish Aran Pilot as early; Majestic was an old Colin Jones of Little Dewchurch, favourite while King remembers the fruit and vegetable Edward was a soft horse and cart which used to come potato that the slugs round Putson, Hereford. like. But it was a "We had friends in the Merchant Navy good one for in Fishguard. Once a month they would mashing.” send us a box of fresh fish which we In 1941 Bill joined up used to deliver around to our with the Anti-aircraft neighbours." Guns sailing out His family used to grow quite a lot of around the vegetables in the garden: and he still Mediterranean on the does today. City Of Glasgow Being wartime they had war workers, The late Elizabeth Thomas, above, picnicking with husband (rations were “a bit mostly munitions workers at Bill came from Lower Ailey Farm, below, in Kinnersley. After rough”) before Rotherwas, billeted on them including the war the couple worked in Cookham, Berkshire. “I transferring to the one Miss Jones, daughter of the remember the painter Stanley Spencer coming round the Mauritania at Durban Staunton-on-Wye postmistress. village with his pram filled with his paints.” when rations When it was his turn to go out and improved and make a living he joined Greenlands in included exotics like Hereford as a cabinetmaker and oranges and undertaker in 1953. "If I had to go out chocolate. to Bromyard or Monmouth on a job I At one point they would go out on my bike. There was survived on tinned no other way of getting around." rations, which were something of a mystery. “The tins Front cover photograph: came from a ship Thomas Pitt, right, with fellow crew sunk at Tobruk. member while training as a radio They’d recovered the operator at RAF Madley. Tom was tins but none had any engaged to local Hereford girl, Joan labels so you never Hiles. But sadly he was killed when knew what you were the Halifax bomber in which he was getting.” radio operator and rear gunner When, eventually, he crashed in Nottingham returning reached Sicily he was from a bombing raid over Germany. ...or email us at [email protected] 3 Kitty Latham recalls her battle to Life of a Land Girl join the Women’s Land Army As Britain prepared Farm at Kineton, Warwickshire. So that send a tractor and a dray to College for war Kitty was that. I went round with the different Estate in Hereford to get the mothers Latham's efforts to join Herefordshire’s workmen, watching the jobs they'd done and all the kids to come out and work. the Women's Land Army and my prime job was to milk and do odd "When it was time for coming home all Homewere Front frustrated at every turn. jobs round the fields so the men could be these kids disappeared and then they'd come "In back to 1938 I where the wanted to tractor join the Land would be Army but my waiting.

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