Ursula Adler, collected by Hope Valley u3a
‘A grand piker’ - being a Junior Landgirl
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When our family moved to Edinburgh in 1938, my sister and I were enrolled at an Edinburgh day school, where we stayed until war broke out. We were promised by our parents that we would never go to a boarding school - we hated the idea. Then fate took over and our school was evacuated to a large country house in Galashiels and feeling very let down, we had to try to settle into this strange way of life. At first, there were air raid warnings at night and we all had to go down to the cellar and try to sleep on blankets until the ‘all clear’. Finding from experience that the droning waves of aircraft were aiming for the docks rather than the fields, the school gave up this practice and we stayed in our dormitories. ( I was 10 and my sister was 15). |
My parents and their friends wondered what to do with their youngsters during the holidays, as both Edinburgh and Glasgow were targets for bombing and the German High Command were not likely to pay much attention to Scottish school holidays. So, when a few families were offered the use of a huge house (actually a border castle) in Cumberland we accepted gladly and my mother was put in charge of the arrangements. The first time we went there was the summer before war broke out. I remember hearing Chamberlain's speech and wondering why the adults were so upset - I thought it was quite exciting.
We didn't know how to occupy ourselves during the long days in the seemingly deserted countryside but soon settled into a routine of walking, reading, card games, painting and more walking. This got a bit boring, so we offered our services to the nearest local farmer, to help with the haymaking. He was not very forthcoming, unwillingly letting us rake up a few wisps of hay. This wasn't good enough, so we gladly agreed to go to a more remote farm, which was three to four miles away, across a brook and up a steep hill. Apparently, they couldn't get landgirls because of the long haul to and from Brampton where the nearest dances were held.
What times! The sheep-farmer tenant was in his late seventies I guess, and the son would be 50-ish and unmarried. There was also a housekeeper who did all the cooking and cleaning as well as butter-churning, looking after the hens and so on. After our hard day's labour in the fields she produced a marvellous tea laid out (with a tablecloth) on the grass. There were often five or six teenagers and two or three local helpers at the height of the haymaking season. Never mind raking up wisps of hay, we were involved with every stage of the haymaking – driving the horse-rake to make bundles along the rows of cut hay, then when these had dried we helped to gather the bundles into large heaps to make the pikes. Out came the pitchforks, and a pike was soon quickly and skilfully constructed.
A pike was about six feet high and weighed (l believe) at least half a ton. Being the smallest I was detailed to tread the top down to make it more compact. A rope was then wound around a stone and shoved into the side of the pike, then over the top and the same was done with the other end, to secure the top from being blown away. I remember the farmer saying, 'Aye, she's a grand piker, the nipper!'
The next thing, perhaps a week later, was to gather the pikes into the barn, using a bogey cart which was tipped up against the pike. A chain was put round the pike and the heavy work of winding it onto the bogey began. One of the horses would slowly plod to the barn, pulling the bogey. Here old Mr Wilson would fork it neatly onto the great upper shelf. Meanwhile, the other horse would be patiently waiting while the next pike was being prepared. Talk about labour-intensive! When the weather looked unsettled, all this activity was done at great speed.
As a reward, we were sometimes allowed to ride the carthorses bareback around the field at the end of the day, or learn to milk the cows (those patient black Galloways), or feed the calves, or churn the butter.
Back to our ‘castle' then, where there was a meal waiting followed by a huge washing-up. My mother would sometimes have a phase of reading to us by lamplight, while the girls had to reinforce their lisle stocking heels with neat darning stitches, to make them last longer. At bedtime, we had to take a candle upstairs, and it could be scary if it blew out! The adults didn't seem to be at all concerned though.
Occasionally my sister was allowed to go out on one of the ponies for the whole day with the farmer, to round up the sheep on the Bewcastle fells.
When there was no help required at the farm, we continued to go for long walks, mainly on the roads, I suppose in case we got lost or met a German parachutist. On the way back, to encourage us to forget our tiredness we used to shout marching songs like John Brown's Body and Marching through Georgia. My sister and her friend used often to pass the time sitting in the deep window seats of the library reading old bound volumes of Punch, thus becoming experts on Disraeli and Gladstone, which may or may not have come in useful later. Other activities were table tennis, billiards or as a treat we were allowed into a room where we could play squash. Once a stray German bomber dropped his load of bombs in the fields round about the house, luckily after heavy rain, and little damage was done, although the incident had a sobering effect.
Later on, when the risk of bombing in Clydeside and the Edinburgh docks was over, we were able to stay with our parents during the holidays, and this little window into farming and country life was closed. The Wilsons replaced the horses with a tractor, a combine harvester was shared amongst the hill farmers, and the next-door farm became a rocket range (Spadeadam).