BAALHS BOOK REVIEWS

It is rare for the author of a local history book to have to start by creating his own archive, but this is what Stuart Antrobus did in writing the history of the Women’s Land Army (WLA) in Bedfordshire during, and immediately after, the Second World War.

In the absence of any systematic official records, Stuart set out to interview surviving ‘Land Girls’ (the colloquial name for WLA members) and to trace other documents in various national and local collections. The card index to the service files of 200,000 national WLA members is held by the Imperial War Museum at Duxford, Cambs, and this (with other information) enabled Stuart (and a team of helpers) to compile a fairly definitive list of all Bedfordshire Land Girls.

The WLA was formed shortly before the outbreak of war, to provide a mobile labour force of young women to replace male farm and market garden workers who would be called up to serve in the armed forces. A separate part of the WLA was the Women’s Timber Corps of about 6,000 ‘Lumber Jills’, who worked in forests and timber mills. Lady Denman, a leading figure in the Women’s Institute movement, was the driving force behind the WLA, which was not in fact an ‘army’ at all, but a civilian organisation under the Ministry of Agriculture. Owing to the need to continue intensive cultivation of the land in the years after the end of the war, the WLA survived until 1950.

WLA HQ in Bedford recruited the Land Girl volunteers (who were not subject to military discipline) and gave them uniforms (including woollen jumpers, britches and dungarees, together with short greatcoat and hat) and training. They were allocated to individual farms, or to the county ‘War Ag’, the War Agricultural Executive Committee, which had draconian powers over food production, and was therefore much resented by many farmers. These ‘gang girls’ were housed and fed in hostels provided by the county WLA, from which they were sent out to farmers according to seasonal needs. In 1943, Stuart records, there were 517 Land Girls working in Bedfordshire, who received, after paying for their billets, a minimum net wage of 22s.6d (Ł1.12 ˝ p) for a 48-hour week. We could say this equates to around Ł50 in today’s values, so it wasn’t a generous pay packet even then.

Many farmers were sceptical about the ability of girls to do men’s jobs, but these doubts were swiftly dispelled. The strength of Stuart’s book lies in the way he has woven (sometimes bizarre) personal reminiscences into the administrative history of the WLA, and interspersed the story with contemporary photographs, which give great immediacy to the printed narrative.

Apart from the list of Land Girls (already mentioned) the book includes a chronology, notes, and detailed index, making this a valuable work of reference as well as an interesting story told in a lively manner. Stuart’s initiative in contacting as many surviving Bedfordshire Land Girls as possible, and recording their personal memories, is highly commendable. Attractively designed by The Book Castle, this book is a model of how near-contemporary history should be researched, written and published.

Those who remember the Bedfordshire Magazine (the A5 size publication 'now sadly defunct' and not the more recent County Council's coloured publication of the same name) will have fond memories of Bernard West's Sketch-books. These were pen and ink drawings of Bedfordshire places (more of the north rather than the south of the County because to a busy Bedford architect it was easier to find subjects nearer home) accompanied by a brief but interesting commentary representing his interests in natural history and conservation, on which subjects he was not afraid to express his views.

From the summer of 1947 until the spring of 1998 he contributed to all but two of the quarterly volumes making him the longest and most prolific of the Magazine's contributors.

Bernard died in January 2006 and this volume of the best of his sketches and contributions was produced by the local history group of his home village, Willington (of which he was an inaugural member) as a commemorative volume.

It is edited by Gordon Vowles, also a Willington resident, and a past editor of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society. Gordon has put together a selection of Bernard's best, or perhaps most representative work, arranged alphabetically by place. Not every village in the County is represented (a friend of mine in Clapham was very indignant that his village had been omitted) but those chosen are a varied, mixed and interesting collection.

The pictures are well reproduced at their original size and the volume is well laid out in a good clear format with the commentary on one side of the page with the picture facing it on the other.

The book also contains an interesting and lively biographical sketch of Bernard West, complete with photograph, by Robin Chrystal the son of Sandy Chrystal his partner in the firm of Chrystal & West, architects. It is altogether a delightfully produced volume well worth its price of Ł12. 99.

If Bedfordshire folk were asked to name the town that best embodies the county’s motoring heritage, most would surely say, Luton. For that town has had a long association with the mass production of vehicles by GM Vauxhall/Bedford and (for a time) Commer. Yet Bedford, the county town, can also boast a worthy motoring inheritance.

This book describes the town’s association with cars and other vehicles from the earliest days of motoring to modern times. The narrative is illustrated by a host of excellent photographs and informative captions, many of them depicting unusual scenes of Bedford. The subjects range from car makers to garages and from police cars to the Bedford Motor Club. The car makers were small in scale and relatively short-lived, though their very existence will come as a surprise to many. As for the garages and motor dealers, most were family businesses. Almost all the old names have now passed into history but will be remembered by people over the age of 40!

On a personal note the book struck two chords with me. First, my paternal grandfather worked, for a short time, at one of the car makers, Saundersons, and, secondly, my father was employed in the 1930s by Wilson Bros & Humphreys (WB&H) in St Mary’s, Bedford. In those days, a major overhaul of a car might mean the virtual re-manufacture of certain parts, so the good garages employed skilled craftsmen with a sound knowledge of engineering principles. A little known fact about WB&H (not recorded in the book) is that they carried out development work on gearboxes. (Their adaptation of a Standard Motor Company’s four-speed gearbox, which allowed the driver to pre-select the next gear change, was featured in the technical press and demonstrated to various bodies).

Judging from several of the book’s photos, even in the 1930s and 1940s the streets of Bedford were crowded with vehicles, suggesting that the love affair with the car is not confined to the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The book is a good read for anyone interested in local history and, of course, motoring.

The architectural writer Ian Nairn (1930-83), who was born in Bedford, cruelly dismissed his birthplace as 'the most characterless county town in England.' OBM and conservation architect Victor Farrar utterly refutes this jaundiced view, by presenting a splendid celebration of Bedford's architectural heritage. Bedford may not be Bath or Cambridge or Stamford, but, as Victor shows, it still has a rich variety of historic and interesting buildings, old or not so old, even if sometimes one has to search them out or look above modern shop-fronts.

This book is based on a thesis written in 1957 while Victor was training to be an architect, and has been published by the OBM Club, following his death in 2006. Peter Boon, Paul Middleton and Richard Wildman have shown great tact and skill in amending and updating the text, without losing its original character and period feel, and in integrating the photographs into the text. The result is a seamless and attractive presentation.

An introduction by Richard Wildman pays tribute to Victor and his achievements. Bedford's architecture is then described and discussed in seven chapters, beginning with the Saxon and Medieval period and ending with the first half of the 20th century. There follows a walk around the town centre, as it was in 1957. Richard Wildman concludes with a postscript, which chronicles what has happened since 1957.

Some 85 black and white illustrations complement the text. Most are photographs, mainly taken by Victor in 1957, but supplemented by modern ones specially taken by Alan Crawley, plus a few from other sources. Those by Victor are particularly evocative and recall the Bedford of my schooldays. In some cases, buildings gone, but certainly not forgotten, are shown: the Christie Almshouses in St Loyes; the western half of the Dame Alice Street Almshouses; Sell & Willshaw's quaint fishmonger's shop in the High Street; the distinctive busts of the architects Palladio, Wren and Inigo Jones on Dust's shopfront, also in the High Street; the two Nonconformist chapels in Cauldwell Street; St John's Station; the Town and County Club, latterly the County Library, on The Embankment; the Granada Cinema in St Peter's Street; and the amazing 'Hiawatha' in Goldington Road, a Victorian villa characteristically overloaded with ornament and detail, so that it resembled a house from a Hammer horror movie. This book is also a lament for so many lost buildings, destroyed in the last 50 years.

But in the same period, there have been some outstanding successes in preserving and conserving Bedford's older buildings, and these are rightly celebrated here. In the 1970s, the Blore Facade of the old BMS was kept, to retain a very useful open area in the heart of the town. Again in the 1970s, thanks to Victor's efforts, Priory Terrace was renovated instead of being demolished. St Mary's, Holy Trinity and St Cuthbert's Churches, after being made redundant, have been put to sympathetic new uses. Most recently, the gateway to Britannia Ironworks has been retained as a distinctive feature, the rest of the factory having been demolished to make way for new housing.

Ian is to be congratulated on producing a very accessible, affordable, but also very informed addition to the histories of Bedford. No comprehensive history of Bedford has been published since Joyce Godber's "The Story of Bedford" in 1978. Ian not only provides a welcome update, but uniquely focuses on the early history of the town.

"From Saxons to Speed" is written in three parts:
• From early Saxon times to King Alfred.
• Norman Bedford.
• Late Medieval Bedford, including John Speed's town.

It also includes two very useful appendices :

• A transcription of the terrier and survey of Brickiln Farm [Brickhill Farm] c. 1750

• A brief history of Bedford street names. Did you know that Newnham Road was 'Temesse Street' in the 16th century, and 'Thames Street' through the 18th and 19th centuries ; 'Newnham Road' appears on the O.S. map of 1884. Midland Road was 'Well Street' (after the Colles Well which was situated in the road) in 1240; it was still called Well Street in the Census Return for 1861, but by 1871 was 'Midland Road'.

lan's book is a must for anyone interested in the archaeology, history and townscape of Bedford, and would provide a good accompaniment to a 'town trail'. Chapter 6 ('John Speed's Bedford) provides a vivid invocation of pre-Civil War Bedford (Speed's map was published in 1610) which is unparalleled.