WW2 Women's Land Army

Back in January this year, I wrote about being contacted by the husband of a former Land Girl based at Linslade. I'm currently reading "They Fought In The Fields: The Women's Land Army" by Nicola Tyrer, and learning more about the WLA, the tasks the girls performed and the conditions they worked in. These girls were apparently the last group of agricultural workers to learn "traditional" techniques of working the fields, before the level of mechanisation we are accustomed to today took over.

Of particular interest are the individual stories from the young women - the jobs they left, their reasons for joining and hopes for their new roles, the day-to-day life and experiences they found. Once I've finished reading the book, I'll be heading over to BBC - WW2 People's War to see what memories they have there.

If you, or other family members, were Land Girls, please share your memories - post a comment or send me an email, especially if you spent any time working in the Buckinghamshire or Bedfordshire area.

From Wing To Eternity

This post is an article for the 16th edition of the Smile For the Camera blog carnival on the topic of "Bling, ancestor Bling"

Family mementos are a bit thin on the ground from my Wing ancestors. I do have one piece that has a Wing connection though.

My great-grandfather Bill Williams, born in Wing Buckinghamshire in 1901, gave my great-grandmother a diamond cluster ring as a 40th wedding anniversary present. She hadn't fancied rubies, the traditional 40th anniversary gift, but apparently she didn't particularly fancy the oversized diamond ring she ended up with either! When this was inherited by my Nana she had it reset into a number of different pieces of jewellery. One of these was a six-stone diamond eternity ring which I, in turn, inherited when Nana died.

One day I'll continue the tradition and have this reset into a more modern style, but for now I wear the ring as is - stones given by a man from Wing and worn daily by his great-granddaughter.


What bling did your own ancestors from Wing have? Do you have any cameos, pocket watches, medals, or other personal items inherited from your Wing families, or any photos of them wearing these treasures? I'd love to see them.

August update

This month, take a trip back to the 17th century when the government was raising funds for the disturbances in Ireland. Contributors from Wing in 1642 have been extracted from the Buckinghamshire Record Society publication (with their permission) and resorted alphabetically so you can locate your ancestors easily. There are even some women listed, including Annis FOWLER and "another maid".

He's a rebel

I'm currently following the adventures of one William NEWLAND junior, who appears to be the son of the bailiff for the Cottesloe hundred - now there's something to rebel against! I've known about him for a little while but I'm going through the calendars of the quarter session records for Buckinghamshire for the 1678 to 1694 period (published by the Buckinghamshire Record Society) and slowly pulling together more information about his misdeeds.

Obviously I'll also need to research what became of him later - will he never ever be any good?

Wing War Memorial

Excellent news from modern-day Wing this week. The repair work to the War Memorial is about to begin! If you are in the area, do pop in to All Saints Church - Vic Sirett has put together a display about the men on the memorial.

LMA poor law records database update

Ancestry.co.uk has been digitizing the poor law records held by the London Metropolitan Archives. Since their first release (which I wrote about back in March), they have added some records for two more unions to the database entitled "London England Poor Law Records 1834-1940). The new unions are Greenwich and Haringey. They may also have added some individual record collections for the existing unions into the database but Ancestry aren't telling us exactly what the update consists of, so who knows.....

While tidying up my Ancestry homepage, I discovered you could use the new Quick Links feature to "rename" databases. You have the option to alter the default database name as you add it to the Quick Links area, so I have added the three databases from the LMA and renamed them to, for example "LMA Poor Law Records" *rant mode on* rather than their current generic names that don't acknowledge the source of those records at all or help you pick out the right database from the crowd.*rant mode off*

*no, rant mode on again* I've also deleted all the existing default Quick Links - rather stupidly, these all point to ancestry.com rather than ancestry.co.uk so are as good as useless if your subscription is to the UK site!*rant mode off, over and out*

July update

A while ago I posted about JK Fowler's "Echoes of Old County Life", and mentioned that his sequel to that book, "Recollections of Old Country Life", was of particular relevance to Wing. This month, excerpts from that book have been added to the webpage detailing the murder of Thomas Adams in 1837.

I won't give you any clues here but will say that I gasped out loud while reading that particular chapter in Fowler's book, and that anyone with an interest in the case (or an eye for scandal) will definitely want to read these revelations.

Here's the Adams family in question (click to enlarge):