Records Service

Harvesting the Past

Project Updates Archive

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Harvesting The Past - Update - June 2009 By Julia Letts, Oral History Producer If you haven’t yet heard about ‘Harvesting the Past’, then read on. In May we launched this unique recording project at the Chantry High School. Our aim is to record the memories of lots of older people in the community, especially their experiences of growing up and farming in the 30s, 40s and 50s. These recordings will be saved for posterity at the Worcestershire Record Office. But they will also be used by a local playwright, John Townsend, to create a community play which will be staged at the Chantry next April.

The cast of the Chantry School with their headteacher Steve Jowett at the launch of Harvesting The Past

We are now well into the recording phase of the project, and over the past few weeks, I have had the privilege of meeting some extraordinary people from Martley, Clifton and the Teme Valley, many of them in their 90s but with clear and vivid memories. Amongst many other things I have learnt how to make ‘proper’ hay ricks, how to find a curlew’s nest, how to hunt for eels, pick hops, balance at the top of a 30 foot ladder, harness a cart horse, salt a pig, and make butter in an old sweet jar.

Farmer feeding a foal c1950s

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One lady, born in 1919, told me how as a young girl she used to ride to Worcester to collect cows or horses from the train, and then herd or lead them back to the farm through the city streets and country lanes. Another, born the same year, remembers finishing her day’s work in the fields pulling beat and then cycling 10 miles – two to a bike - to dances in the nearest village hall.

Bert Bradley Bert Bradley, currently Chairman of Clifton’s Parish Council, recalled his school days in Martley. The class room had high windows so you couldn’t see who was coming into the village, but you could tell who it was by the sound of their vehicle. The most welcoming sound was that of the Elderado man. “He came from Worcester with the icecream box on his bike, and he would try to get to Martley at lunch time or when you were coming out of school. I think he had a uniform and a peak cap. To keep the ice cream cool... he had a block of solid ice with something in there. You could put a little bit of this stuff on your hand but if you left it, it would burn, not like a burn mark but like a nicotine mark – the stuff that they used to keep the thing cold.” Bert also remembers the circus coming to Martley and rushing to the field by the Crown to get first glimpse of the animals. The elephants, he recalls, gorged themselves on apples from the surrounding orchards. These few examples are just the tip of the iceberg. I have recorded about 20 hours of material so far, and am still looking for more. If you know of anyone who really ought to be recorded, or you yourself have memories stretching back to the 30s, 40s or 50s, then please get in touch. We would particularly like to hear from anyone who was a midwife or district nurse in the area, anyone who sang or played in a band touring the village halls, anyone who was a prisoner of war and stayed on, or anyone who worked for an agricultural committee during the war.

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Harvesting The Past - Update - July 2009 By Julia Letts, Project Coordinator. If you have been following the progress of this project, I’m pleased to report that June has been a very busy month. I have had the privilege of interviewing more than a dozen fascinating people, four of whom were in their nineties and whose memories stretched back as far as the 1920s and in one case, the First World War. It has given me a real insight into the communities and farms around Martley and the Teme Valley, how the Estates operated before they were broken up, the plight of tenant farmers in the late twenties and early thirties, and how everything changed with the coming of the Second World War. “I think farming has become quite a lonely occupation” says David Powell, who still lives in a bungalow on the farm in Rochford where he grew up. “When I was going to school, there were sixteen men working at the Bank Farm - I often wonder what the heck my father put them to do! They all had different roles... one gentlemen, more or less all he did for 11 months of the year was hedge trimming by hand. He had a straight arm – he’d got a shell in his arm – but boy, his hedge bill would cut. The Bank Farm was noted for its good hedges because he kept them small and nice. He was an exceptional man”. As more and more of the labour force went off to war, and the demands for food production got greater, farmers relied on help from the Women’s Land Army and the German and Italian Prisoners of War, based at camps and hostels in Clifton and Tenbury. David Powell befriended a young German man called Reinhold Mullecker who cycled out to the Powell’s farm every day from Tenbury. David has vivid memories of Reinhold fearlessly scaling the perry trees and digging holes by hand for the hop poles. David still treasures the violin and toys that Reinhold carved him in the 1940s, and all these years later, the two of them are still in touch.

David Powell with the violin and toy made for him in 1946 by POW Reinhold Mullecker The war also brought Gladys Hoskins to this area. She became a land girl in 1942. Based in Tenbury, she walked and later cycled to farms all over the area, doing everything from mucking out pig sheds, to cabbage planting and fruit picking.

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“I remember one day we were doing beans. Golly, that was a filthy job. We were stooking these beans and we were filthy black. Suddenly a man’s face peered over the hedge and he said ‘Would any of you girls like a cup of tea?’ – there was a little cottage we didn’t know down in the hollow. Oh yes we would! He said ‘You’ll have to come over one at a time’ and he put a ladder against the hedge! Their names were Mr and Mrs Smith and we made friends with them.”

Gladys Hoskins in her Women’s Land Army uniform in 1942 This is something that has come across in all of the interviews I’ve done to date: the friendships formed, the camaraderie and sense of community. I met one lady from the Black Country, Sheila Smith, on the farm in Shelsey Beauchamp where she and her family had come every year at hop picking time. “It was absolutely beautiful here. I was a babby in arms when I first came, and as time ran on, I took notice of things and remember more. I was 21 when I finished. We never wanted to go back home, never at all.” Sheila still visits every year and once took a coach party of former pickers back to Church House Farm. Whilst I am still collecting all this information, and continuing to interview people all over the area, ‘Harvesting the Past’ is about to embark on its next stage. In early July I’ll be going into the Chantry High School to teach a group of students how to use recording equipment and make their own interviews. The following week it’ll be their turn to do the interviewing. We will be inviting a number of local people along who are willing to be quizzed by the pupils.

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Harvesting the Past - Update - August 2009 By Julia Letts - Project Coordinator As the autumn approaches, we are moving into the second stage of this exciting project in West Worcestershire. Many thanks to those of you who have been reading these updates - your support and wonderful contributions have been most welcome. I would now like to appeal to even more people so please read on... there are lots of ways you can get involved. The aim of this project is to create an archive of farming and countryside stories for the Worcestershire Record Office, and to create a community play based on people’s memories and experiences. I have now completed 20 interviews, and have recorded about 50 hours of material. It has been a privilege to drive around such a beautiful area interviewing such welcoming and knowledgeable people, five of whom were well over 90. * The next stage of the project is to share some of their amazing stories with the rest of the community and wider county. All the recordings have now been transcribed, each running to between 30 and 60 pages of A4! These transcripts have now been delivered to the project’s playwright, local man John Townsend. During August and early September he will be turning the many stories into a 90 minute play for the Chantry High School. When the term restarts in September, the Head of Drama there, Sue Rickman, will start to audition and cast parts in the play.

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Harvesting The Past New - Update - October 2009 By Julia Letts - Project Coordinator

Fifteen volunteers wanted! Please read on... Firstly, thank you for following the progress of our oral history project ‘Harvesting the Past’ – it has been lovely to have support and interest both from the local community and the wider County. If you’ve been following these reports, then you’ll know that the aim of the project is to record the stories and memories of people who grew up and farmed in West Worcestershire, and then find ways of sharing these stories with the community.

One of the ways of the ways of sharing some of the fantastic life-stories we’ve collected is via a community play. ‘Back Across the Fields’ has been especially written for the project by Worcestershire playwright John Townsend and will be performed at the Chantry High School next April 2010. Over the summer John had the daunting task of turning about 50 hours of recordings into a 90 minute play. It is set on a farm somewhere between Martley and Tenbury between 1942 and 1947. I think John has done an excellent job of weaving together all the recorded stories and adding some drama to create a play which is instructive, delightful and compelling. I hope you will come and watch it! The play dates are April 28th, 29th, 30th and May 1st 2010 and tickets will be on sale at the school.

Interviewees Sheila Smith, Gladys Hoskins and Bert Bradley (behind) auditioning for ‘Back Across the Fields’, while playwright John Townsend (right) looks on. In September we held auditions for the various parts in the play, and now have a cast of more than 60, including students from the Chantry, several local people including four octogenarians, and a group of May Pole dancers from Martley Primary. The play’s producer Sue Rickman, Chantry’s Head of Drama, says that rehearsals are progressing well and that she and the cast are thoroughly enjoying turning the oral history stories into drama.

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We are now taking on another challenge! One of the aims of this project is to teach the youngsters about the way of life in this very rural area over the past century. The Chantry’s Head of Art, Richard Aydon, has come up with a unique way of doing this. We want about 15 people from the community to come into school for about an hour in January to talk to a small group of children about their lives. If possible, this could involve showing them old photos and may be old fashioned tools of their trade or household implements that the children may not have seen before. The children will then create a rather special piece of artwork based on what they see and hear. It will all be on display in the school in April when the play is being performed.

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Harvesting The Past New - Update - November 2009 By Julia Letts - Project Coordinator Anyone watching the progress of this project on these pages may remember that we’ve just started setting up an Art Project at the Chantry High School in Martley – just one of many spin-offs from our main oral history project. In January several older people from Martley and Clifton will try their hand at tour guiding. They will take groups of Year 7 pupils around their old haunts in the village and explain what life was like when they were 12 or 13. Hopefully this will inspire the younger generation to recreate what they’ve learnt in art lessons, specifically designing pottery tiles depicting the lives of the older residents. What a great way to learn about and celebrate village life! This idea has inspired me to dip into the Harvesting the Past Archive and select a few childhood memories from our wonderful interviewees... ‘We used to go nicking cherries up at Esenhope and the chap that was the bailiff there... he used to load the shotgun up with wheat. He’d take the pellets out and put wheat in and he’d give you a blast of that up the behind. That used to be a bit painful!’ Brian Draper

‘We used to go up into Wales and buy 3 or 4 ponies... you used to only pay about a pound each for them. They were youngsters and we used to break them in. We spent hours and hours pony riding and getting thrown off... no saddles. We used to run them round and round in a circle on a long wagon rope until they were reasonable tired and then I used to get on. Sometimes I stayed on and sometimes I didn’t’. Albert Tolley

‘We used to lie on our stomach in a punt with a Neptune’s fork and we had a box with a bit of glass in the bottom which you put in the water. So you had one hand on the little box and the other on the Neptune’s fork. It had to be a day when it was sunny and no wind. Then you could look down and see all these eels lying in the weeds. Then you had a terrific stroke with your Neptune’s fork and hoped you’d get one.’ Joan Banks

‘There was a special place, just above Ham Bridge on the right-hand side where we used to go and swim every Sunday. And there was quite a party of us, including the village policeman and grownups... and the grownups used to look after us youngsters. We had a ball... you’d swim for about ten minutes, quarter of an hour and then come out because it was cold. The river was very cold.’ Ivan Tolley

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Ivan Rimmel and friends swimming in the Teme

Our community play ‘Back Across the Fields’ is in full swing, with rehearsals on Wednesday afternoons at the Chantry. We now have a great technical team on board, who are working out the logistics of using original audio, DVD and photos in the production. Please put the play dates in your diary; they are Wed 26th, Thurs 27th, Fri 28th April and Saturday May 1st. It should be a memorable show. There will be a small touring Harvesting the Past Exhibition and I’m hoping to hear from venues which would be interested in hosting it for a week or so. The exhibition will consist of a couple of panels and a small audio post (about 3 feet high), which needs to be plugged into the mains. The material, which focuses on living and farming in West Worcestershire in the 30s to 50s, is delightful and will bring back many happy and poignant memories, particularly to the older generations. I think the exhibition would be particularly suitable for care homes, sheltered accommodation, community centres and any other venues where people gather for a chat.

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Harvesting the Past: January 2010 By Julia Letts - Project Coordinator

Reflecting on the Winter of 47 As I write this January update for the WRO’s oral history project ‘Harvesting the Past’, I am looking out of the window at a truly Alpine scene. Last night the temperature here went down to minus twelve and almost all the schools in Worcestershire have closed. Whatever the weather holds for us in the next few days and weeks, it is unlikely to match the ferocity of the winter of ’47. Almost everyone I spoke to during the interviewing stage of this project had vivid memories of these bitter months, and not all their memories were happy ones. I’ve picked a few out of the archive to share with you this month.

“We were living in Oxhall in that very severe winter of 1947 and how we survived then was really unbelievable. It started the middle of January ,and it seemed to go on and on and on, and it never seemed to end. I think there was snow about in some of the valleys in May. Absolutely unbelievable. We grew our own potatoes and our own vegetables. The potatoes were in the old hop kiln, covered over with straw and the mangels were in ‘a bury’ outside which was covered over with hedge trimmings and straw, but needless to say they certainly froze. I remember tunnelling under them to get the mangles out and the roof was actually frozen solid. Water came from the pump, in what we called the back kitchen. Every morning we had to prime the pump. Every morning I remember it was frozen. For the stock we just pumped it into a bucket and carried it. Oh, there was a pond outside, not far from the building, which was fed by a spring which fortunately didn’t freeze… it was only a very small one, but it lasted over the winter. I always said that year we had the worst snow, the worst frost, the worst gale and the worst flood I could ever remember.” Eric Delahay

“You couldn’t describe how bad that was especially when you saw the snowdrifts on some parts of this farm. They were terrible in some parts. There was a big holly hedge down in our bottom ground and when the snow went, all the tops of the holly trees were eaten by the rabbits. Yeah, about twelve foot high and the tops were ate off! So you can tell how much snow there was in places. But, you see, that was in horse and cart days… naturally. We couldn’t get about, you couldn’t do anything, you couldn’t move anything and it went on and on. That didn’t start until the end of January but it never knew when to finish. We lost a lot of lambs that year.” Bob Webb

“I didn’t get to school for eight weeks. We had the big blizzards in January and February the snow didn’t go till May… we were blocked in. There were no buses for six or seven weeks I think. It was so severe it broke the telegraph poles off - all the poles in the valley were snapped off with the weight of the ice on the lines.

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We managed. We’d got plenty of food… hay and oats and that. That was no big problem. The biggest problem was the sheep lambing outside. In those days they all lambed outside and ours started lambing in January. We used to go out at night to save what we could. But we picked up lambs in March that had been born in January… that had been frozen to the ground.We didn’t actually lose a single woolled sheep… a ewe… all through that. They were healthy enough and we took plenty of food to them. Dad couldn’t get through with the cart but he made a sledge and the Shire horses would go… with a tin sledge… to put the hay out. But the lambs, they didn’t stand a chance so we had a cartful load of dead lambs to collect up … and some of them had been there six to eight weeks under the snow when they were found.

Then we had the big floods after and that was pretty disastrous. The whole valley was full of water and the biggest floods we’ve seen here.” David Spilsbury

With all our modern amenities, I think it is hard for us to imagine what it can have been like that winter. Just reading those extracts makes me feel guilty for moaning about my boiler cutting out this morning!

No comparison with 1947... snow at The Bank Farm, Rochford in 1991

Of course memories about the winter of ’47 have been woven into our community play ‘Back Across the Fields’ which will be performed at the Chantry High on Wed 26th, Thurs 27th, Fri 28th April and Saturday May 1st. Contact the school for tickets.

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Harvesting the Past Update February ART with a difference By Julia Letts and Sue Broome

The latest development in ‘Harvesting the Past’ has been a hugely successful intergenerational Art Project. We invited a dozen guests (ranging in age from 73 to 87) to the Chantry High School to talk to groups of Year 7 pupils about their lives. The guests brought along fascinating memorabilia and photographs which they left for the children to sketch at a later date. The children - who had never had an art lesson quite like it - were absolutely fascinated by the older people, and asked some searching questions. The guests were only too pleased to pass on their memories of life in the local villages. They all said they felt proud to have taken part. Gladys Hoskins (86) was a land army girl based in Tenbury Wells. She thought it was important that children knew how life has changed. “If they don’t have grandparents of their own, who’s going to tell them what it was like so they can understand? It’s much better if they can hear it first hand from somebody who was there.” Bert Bradley (83) has farmed in Martley all his life. In his opinion it is important for children to be connected with their past. “I liked being able to tell them what it was like when I was their age, about all the vast differences, and that I lived where they now live.” He found the whole experience very worthwhile and a great privilege and feels strongly that “Face to face connection between generations should be done more often so that youngsters can relate better to older people. To get the past from the horse’s mouth, benefits both sides.” Sheila Smith (77) came hop picking from Tipton to Shelsley Beauchamp for the first 21 years of her life. She was a little nervous about whether the students would be able to understand her Black Country accent but she really enjoyed the experience. “It surprised me that they had no knowledge about hop picking and how it used to be. There are no books to get the information from so I was proud to be able to tell them what it was like in my day. It was a treat to think they were so interested. The boys in particular wanted to know about the air raids and how we lived back then. I could have talked to them all afternoon!” Sheila summed up the feeling of many of the older people who went into school. “When the youngsters look at an old person they think we don’t know anything. They don’t realize what we went through and they should know - it’s their history.” A few weeks later about 90 of the students were involved in reproducing huge two metre high posters from old photographs supplied by our guests. On several occasions while the students were working, they were overheard explaining to others how they had found out about the lives of the people in the photographs. They talked about it with genuine interest and respect. The students are also going to be making pottery tiles which will tell the stories of rural people’s lives.

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Harvesting the Past: update April 2010 By Julia Letts Oral History Interviews Brought to Life We are now into the final furlong of the WRO’s oral history project ‘Harvesting the Past’. I am just back from the dress rehearsal of Chantry High School’s play, ‘Back Across the Fields’. The play is based on more than 20 oral history interviews which I started recording in Martley and the Teme Valley over a year ago, in May 2009. It’s wonderful to have witnessed this project go full circle. Some of my interviewees are now acting in the play, turning in fantastically moving performances as the ‘older’ versions of the main characters. Many more of my interviewees will be coming to watch, and bringing family members and friends to share in what is essentially their play, and their story.

Image of Ivan Rimmel and cast members from the play Back Across the Fields Set in the 1940s, the production follows the fortunes of a group of local people thrown together by WW2. The production includes live music by local folk singers ‘Foxtail Soup’, singing and dancing from Chantry and Martley Primary pupils, original audio from the oral history recordings and wonderful performances from the whole cast aged from 9 to 90! If you didn't make the play but are interested in listening to the audio and hearing some of the folk music, we have produced a CD of Harvesting the Past which is available from the Record Office and History Centre for £4.99. The last major event of Harvesting the Past will take place on on May 1st, from 12 to 5pm at Chantry High School. We are celebrating Martley May Fair 1940s-style. There will lots of fun and activities for every generation including: Morris Dancers, May Pole dancing, Victorian Carousel, stocks and skittles, traditional sports, 1940s sing along, Archive film, Museum on the Move, Farmers Market, Cream teas, Hog Roast, Nature Trail, Craft activities and of course, the crowning of the Martley May Queen.

I hope you have enjoyed being kept up to date with this project on these pages. The archive of Harvesting the Past will soon be transferred to the Worcestershire Record Office, and I hope you will come and listen to the wonderful interviews – or read the transcripts - for yourselves.

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Harvesting the Past Update May By Julia Letts It has been a tremendously busy, exciting and emotional time for those of us involved in the Harvesting the Past project with five performances of our community play ‘Back Across the Fields’ and a traditional May Fair, themed on the 1940s and held at the Chantry High School in Martley on Saturday May 1st. The play, created by John Townsend from the oral history recordings I made last summer in Martley, Clifton and the Teme Valley, was something special. It was a complicated production - mixing acting with live music, dance, audio, and film – and had a large mixed cast, ranging in age from 7 to 88. It was full of humour and emotion, very slick and very true to the original material. Most of all though, it really meant something to those involved and those watching it. I’d like to share with you a few words written to me by the youngsters in the cast after the final night. “It meant a great deal to us, that we were picked to be responsible for telling the tales of what really happened here 70 years back, and it’s an experience that we will never forget. We were all so happy to see that it meant so much to the elderly people that were involved and the people that came to watch it. It’s safe to say that these memories will stick with us for the rest of our lives.” We set out on this project to create an archive for the Worcestershire Record Office reflecting farming life in this area in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and to share this heritage with the younger generation and the community. We’ve gone a long way to achieving those aims... but I still see this as the beginning, not the end. If you have any further information which we could add to our farming archive, or if you would like to recommend someone for us to interview, please contact Julia Letts or the Record Office. The Harvesting the Past Archive will be available to the general public in the Record Office in a few weeks time. We also have a small display with audio that can come to venues such as day centres, community halls and schools. You may also be interested in the Harvesting the Past CD which contains 70 minutes of extracts from the interviews mixed with folk music. It is an inspiring listen. There will also be a DVD of the play which is currently being edited but will be available in the near future from the school office, the Record Office or by contacting me.

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