I went to school when I was 5 at Drayton, and then from that school I went to Hellesdon Firside at 11 years old. I spent three years there and left at 14 years. While I was at school I did a paper round in the mornings, and I also did a small milk round […]

Farming through three generations

Starting work with the horses I was 14 when I started work. I left school on the Friday night and I started work on the Monday. That was harvest time, there were about 14 others working on the farm and the foreman, he came into the stable and he said to me “Now Ted” he […]

Gordon didn’t want to go into carpentry as a young man. He said ‘Farming is what I love and what I want to do’ and stayed on the land all his working life. The little farm at Sisland I lived in Loddon and when I came home from school, I used to get on my […]

My first employment was at the age of 10 when I used to come out of school at Banham and go down to the cider works in the autumn when the apples were being ground up to make the apple juice and the cider, and I loved to help put the apples down the chute […]

Early days on the fruit farm tells of a teenager who had his own allotment and went on to make a career in horticulture. He attended horticultural college and then took up an apprenticeship on a fruit farm in Norfolk. This was a big estate (where conditions were feudal) "it was almost as if the […]

Agriculture

Sid talks about his life on farms working with horses before, during and after the Second World War. He missed the life with them when mechanisation came in and he needed to drive a tractor. I left school when I was 14. I was only a little old tot. I lived in the council houses […]

My husband was at sea most of his life. He joined when he was fifteen; he was on a training ship. His father was in the navy, grandfather in the navy, he spent his whole life in the navy. My son he wants to put out to sea, he wants to go out there, because […]

The story recalls a childhood and working life based largely in the Breckland area around Thetford – Colveston and Mundford and the Stanford Battle Area. The contributor sent us an extract from his memoirs which he is writing for his grandchildren. His grandfather worked as a warrener in the battle area, his father at Lynford […]