The Great British countryside -
setting for one of the most pivotal battles of the Second World War.
Churchill called it "the front line of freedom".
It was fought by the farmers of Britain.
When war broke out, the Nazis attacked British shipping,
attempting to cut off food imports.
The government turned to farmers to double homegrown food production.
The plough, really, had become a weapon of war.
If they failed, the nation could be starved into surrender.
Now archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn
and historian Ruth Goodman
are turning back the clock,
working Manor Farm in Hampshire
as it would have been during the Second World War.
By 1943, Britain was at breaking point.
In the first few months of the year, there were record losses at sea,
depleting imports more than ever.
Although the German army had been defeated at Stalingrad,
ultimate victory was not yet in sight.
After four years of war, Britain's farmers were exhausted.
So the team resort to new sources of labour...
- So we're going to need a lot more than that, aren't we? - Yep.
..scavenge crops from every scrap of wasteland...
That looks absolutely lethal.
..and find innovative ways to clothe themselves,
as resources are stretched to the limit on the Wartime Farm.
1943 saw imports of food slump to the lowest level of the war,
and the government feared a crisis.
Victory in El Alamein created access to supplies of petrol
to help the continuing offensive.
But with more ships given over to military use,
there were fewer to bring food to Britain.
At home, the government demanded
that an extra one million tonnes of cereals be produced,
but arable land was becoming tired from years of consecutive use.
There was a large excess of straw on the farm -
a by-product of all the cereal crops being grown.
Ruth's using this to make a fertiliser.
Of course, if we had a surplus of barley straw,
we could use that for animal feed,
but wheat straw really isn't much use.
So all this spare straw...
I'm just adding to the dung heap to help it rot down.
If I didn't have any dung at all, it wouldn't rot,
and we'd have to add ammonia, or lime,
or something like that to speed it up,
but with a little bit of dung, mix it all together,
eventually, you get something spreadable on the fields.
With harvest approaching, we're perhaps
paying more attention to the dung heap than we were before.
We know that as soon as that crop is in,
we've got to get this lot back out on the fields
to fertilise and to start that cycle of production all over again.
Alex and Peter have also found a use for the spare straw.
The harvest is on the horizon,
but Manor Farm has a significant rodent problem.
Before the war, rats cost British farmers
an estimated £25 million a year in damage -
eating crops and destroying buildings.
So the boys are determined to stamp them out
before the precious wheat is brought in.
But they're going to need a little help.
Now, we've got a rat-catcher in residence.
She's coming down for a week or so, serving our farms
and all the other farms in the area, so we have very chivalrously -
- Peter, haven't we? - decided to give up our room. - We have.
Billeting was at an all-time high,
with Land Girl numbers reaching a peak of almost 90,000.
So farmers needed to create accommodation
wherever and with whatever they could.
One of the things we've got a surplus of on the farm at the moment is straw,
so all of this stuff knocking round the farm, we're going to use
to build ourselves a little straw bale house to sleep in for the next week or so.
You keep counting the bales, Henry.
- Right, so I think a door here, just running down to the path. - Yep.
Straw buildings were not uncommon during the War,
and were also used to house tools, or even livestock.
Baled straw is absolutely superb for using as a construction material
because you've got really good sturdy blocks here, you know,
this is all locking in beautifully,
and its main benefit really is
that it's just so fantastic at insulation,
you know, there's no doubt about it.
This is going to keep the wind and the wet out of this sheltered area.
Just going to pop on the end, here.
Do you think it's big enough?
I think it's going to be absolutely fine, Peter.
- It's certainly long enough. - Yeah, I'll get down there.
Plently of room, there.
Hello, Henry.
- We're missing something, Peter. - I can see the sky, Alex.
Well, if we put a roof on it,
which we have to,
a couple of beds, a picture of the King, bedside table.
- Home from home. - Yeah.
By 1943, there was a real concern that stamina was running out.
Britain's farmers had already been asked to give everything,
and now they were being asked to give even more.
People had endured four years of war.
They had watched everything get worse and worse
and harder and harder.
Rationing had started out reasonably OK
and had got tighter and tighter - clothes rationing,
food rationing, petrol rationing,
everything rationing!
And while, in the early days of the War, there was, perhaps,
a sense of adrenaline with the Blitz, and so forth,
by 1943, people had been slogging for so long,
I think for many people, there was just an exhaustion, a weariness that,
"Oh, God, will it ever be over?"
Vera Lynn's song "When The Lights Go On Again"
was popular in 1943,
and encapsulated the mood of the nation.
♪ When the lights go on again... ♪
Listen to Vera Lynn. Somehow, she just had a knack, didn't she,
of summing up how everybody felt? "Wait till the lights go on again."
A sort of desperate longing for it all to be over,
for us finally to get there.
Goodness knows, we've been fighting long enough!
Things like this that give you a little sort of lift, you know?
I think they must have been deeply important by 1943.
♪ ..All over
♪ The world. ♪
So, we've got our walls up,
but there's been a slight change of plan.
We were halfway through the roof
when we thought, actually, we're doing ourselves a disservice
if we don't include, as an extra architectural feature,
a window, which I've managed to salvage.
That looks really good! Let's have a proper look.
A bit of cosmetics.
That looks good. It looks made to measure.
Excellent, right, let's get this roof on.
While Peter builds the roof's wooden frame,
Alex turns his mind to the best material for wartime thatching.
I'm just hand-pulling nettles, here,
because it's going to be one of the plants that we use for our thatch.
Perfect time of year to pull them, as well,
because they've got all their energy in the plant,
so the plant's very strong and the root is weak,
so when you give it a tug,
what happens is that it just comes away at the root.
Every time you throw that up, Alex,
I get a constant shower of mud coming down on me!
The thing with nettles is, they can sting
but if you get stuck into them, show them who's boss,
they tend not to hurt as much.
Now, I'm using what's called a gad
to secure the thatch to the roof.
A gad is a thin strip of wood.
The nettles rest on the batons of the roof
and the gad lies on top of them, pinning them into place.
You know, in the early 20th century, there were still thatchers
who were very much using this style of thatch,
so it wouldn't be entirely alien to Second World War farmers.
- Turning into a semi-permanent building, isn't it? - It is, yeah.
This thing could last a very, very long time.
With the house complete, the boys can move in.
It's very, very cosy, Alex.
Henry!
That is extremely comfortable.
It's summer on the farm,
and there is an important job for the boys - making hay.
The team have dairy cows to feed.
Imports of cattle feed were low,
but milk production remained a priority.
The government saw it as vital for the nation's health,
and at least 1.3 billion gallons were required in 1943.
Before the War, the cows would have been fed through the winter on hay,
but Britain's acreage of meadowland had been hugely reduced.
I suppose all the pasture land is being turned over to arable,
but still grass around, and this is a prime example - a churchyard.
This is a great hay crop, isn't it?
In desperation, farmers had begun turning to every spare scrap of land
to find grass to make hay, from verges, to orchards,
and now churchyards.
Well, it's a tricky piece of land, it's not flat,
- there's gravestones everywhere. - Yeah.
We're going to have to think of some way of taking it down, aren't we?
But it's just, the weather hasn't been on our side, recently, has it?
No, it's not. I mean, to be honest, this is just...
..still a bit too wet to cut now.
So we're going to have to leave this for a couple of days
- and just hope we get some sun and some wind... - Yep.
..and then come back!
BARKING Sounds like Henry's
upset about something. Let's go and find out what.
It's probably the pigeons and the rats.
While the team wait to bring in the hay,
Alex wants to deal with Manor Farm's rodent problem.
With the wheat harvest only a few months away,
this is a major threat to their essential crop.
During the War,
it was estimated that rat damage to foodstuffs
cost Britain £60 million a year, more than twice pre-War levels,
destroying over two million tonnes of food.
This represented hundreds of cargo ships' worth of imports,
and was a huge blow to the war effort.
- Hello, Angela. - Hello. - Nice to meet you.
So members of the Women's Land Army were trained
as specialist rat-catchers by County Committees,
and moved from farm to farm in coordinated assaults.
Professional pest control agent Angela Chettle
has arrived on the farm to help Alex tackle the rat problem.
Ooh, we have got a bit of an infestation here, haven't we?
Look at this!
I mean, if you have a rummage, you don't need to look far, do you?
Ooh, look! There's definite rat droppings.
- We've got common rat, yeah? - Definitely.
And, obviously, you've got a food source as well, so...
we're supplying everything they need within this shed.
- Shelter, food. - Everything, water.
So what we've got to do here, Angela,
is turn this into an anti-rat zone.
Well, first of all,
we've got to look where they're obviously accessing,
- which is here. They've gnawed in here. - Yep.
Rats have to gnaw,
because of their teeth - they never stop growing.
It's not because they like to gnaw, they have to.
- They keep knawing? - That's why they damage buildings so much.
Angela has spotted yet more evidence of the problem.
Look how dark it is here!
So this is their feet, just running up and down these boards?
And their bellies are touching it. Look, can you see?
We call it smearing. That's what we call it.
The smearing is worsened by the fact that rats have no bladders,
so urinate continuously
on their surroundings.
- But that is telling us where the rats are coming from? - Exactly.
Alex and Angela are going to lay some bait boxes.
- We could probably get one of the tubes underneath the shed. - Yeah.
The bait box consists of a tube which the rat can crawl down,
and a glass jar full of food at the end.
So what we're doing here, then, is we're pre-baiting.
We're getting the rats familiar with this place as a feeding place,
and then we sweep in and replace all of the food with poison,
- and we get them in a good clean hit. - Definitely.
It's going to take a while because rats are neophobic.
They don't like new objects, at all.
One pair of rats can produce almost 900 offspring a year -
capable of consuming nine tonnes of wheat.
Now we need some big bricks to weigh it down
because we've got the chickens roaming around the yard here.
Well, that's superb!
So they're the kind of baiting stations
that I need to be setting up.
Now, once they are taking the grain,
- it's a case of then filling it up with poison. - Definitely. - Excellent.
Alex and Peter need to take advantage
of the clear weather to get going with the crucial task of making hay.
Peter has found an Allen Scythe,
a mechanical scythe specifically designed to tackle unusual terrain.
Its motto, "Wherever a man can walk, an Allen can cut."
Invented in the 1930s, a new model appeared in 1943,
and farmers could lease them
from the Ministry of Agriculture.
The main thing, Peter, is not to hit any of the headstones.
- Good luck. - Let's give it a go!
ENGINE FAILS
ENGINE STARTS
Bit noisier than a hand scythe, though, isn't it?
The Allen Scythe cuts the grass using a large-toothed cutting blade,
which slides back and forth against a knife bed
to give a scissor-like action.
This is the boss, basically. This thing is in charge.
It pulls you forwards.
When it's cutting, it's happy,
but then as soon as it comes out of the grass, you're fighting.
To get a successful hay crop requires dry conditions,
so keeping an eye on the weather was essential.
But this posed a problem for wartime farmers.
The government banned weather forecasts,
for fear they could provide critical information to enemy bombers.
For five years, the British public were not officially informed
if it was going to rain or shine.
We're going to use the old haymaker's art
of rushing out here when we see the storm clouds looming
and cocking the hay up.
We're going to be fighting our own mini-battle, here in the churchyard.
But I have to say, if we get this hay in,
it will provide an extra bit of nutrition
for some of the livestock on the farm.
It's summer on the farm,
and the team's preparations for the harvest months are going well.
This was especially important in the crisis year of 1943,
when increasing productivity was vital.
And the rat problem is being tackled.
They're definitely taking that. Look, it's almost all gone!
Time for some poison, then.
I did wonder where that vase had gone.
The dairy cows are helping Ruth's dung heap to grow.
Alex and Peter are weeding the wheat field.
This will let a bit more light in at this critical period of growth
and that light, obviously,
is going to do the wheat a lot of favours.
But the jobs are mounting up
and it's clear they could use some help.
In 1942, there was a huge shortage of manpower on farms,
and by 1943, the Minister of Agriculture
anticipated that an extra 20,000 workers would be needed
if Britain was to feed itself.
How many children have we got?
20 or 30. Something like that.
The Ministry of Labour proposed that children be released from school
to help farmers at the most critical times of the year.
These children would form harvest camps,
living in tents and working on the land by day.
The team have applied for a camp to come and assist on the farm.
It's one thing, isn't it, to work outdoors all day
if you know you're going home to a nice hot bath at the end of it?
- Yeah. - But to have to do that and be living under canvas is a whole new...
a whole different thing.
Some people might call it character building.
Character building.
Well, when you read kids' accounts of what it was like,
you know, there was obviously two sorts of farmers, locally -
those who supported the kids in the harvest camps and those who didn't.
Right, and what type of farmers do you think we are, then, Peter?
I think the fact that we're stood here in the rain,
erecting tents for these children,
rather than making them do them themselves,
we're the type who are going to look after them,
give them a good time, and hopefully get the best out of them.
Normally, recruits were required to be over 14,
but in special circumstances,
younger children could also take part.
Almost 70,000 children worked in harvest camps in 1943.
Without them,
producing food to feed the nation would have been almost impossible.
- How many have we got? - Looks about 20 of them. - Hello!
You come for our harvest camp?
One job the harvest camps were involved in was new to farmers -
collecting herbs for the pharmaceutical industry.
At the start of the War, 90% of medicines
were derived from plants, mainly sourced abroad.
With imports cut off, and drugs urgently needed,
pharmaceutical companies turned to home-grown herbs.
Don't just pick the top. You want the whole plant, all right?
In conjunction with Kew Gardens,
the government drew up a list of essential plants
needed for drug production
and paid the British public to collect them.
This was an ideal job for children.
Medical herbalist Linda Harrold has come to lend her expertise.
So this was quite a commercial thing.
We're not talking about herbalism,
we're talking about mainstream medicine,
pharmaceutical companies using these things as their raw materials
and producing synthesised drugs from them.
- That is it. - So when you see pictures of people in the wartime
with the aspirin, the little white pill,
which was the painkiller of the day,
it's not synthesised,
they were collecting vast quantities of meadowsweet
- and white willow bark to make aspirin. - Absolutely.
Today, the children are looking for goosegrass.
You've got loads. What was this used for, the goosegrass?
The goosegrass, cleavers,
that was used very much for treating infections.
It's very good. It works on the lymphatic system,
and obviously, at that time, lots more people were ill,
lots more infections, but that's a really, really brilliant one.
Yeah. And you've got loads of it.
I'm really pleased to see loads and loads of it.
But we're going to need a lot more than that, aren't we?
SHE LAUGHS
That's the good thing about child labour,
you could just send them off!
I wish I had that energy!
They were so important during this time.
They picked so many herbs,
it was incredible what they actually achieved.
By 1944, the children of Britain
were collecting up to 4,000 tonnes of plants a year.
The hay has been drying in the churchyard
and Peter is also making use of the harvest camp children
to help him gather it up.
Now, watch your points!
We've had a really good spell of weather,
but I feel that the rain's coming on and we've got to get this hay cocked
because, otherwise, it will ruin, it will go black in the ground.
So the idea is to build it up into piles,
and the bigger the piles as possible,
with a very small surface area, just means that when the rain comes,
it will basically run off and it will affect very little hay.
Let's get some more!
We've roped in a bit of help,
and, well, it's mayhem.
Mind those spikes!
To avoid exploitation, the Ministry of Agriculture
introduced a minimum wage of six pence an hour for under-16s.
We've got nine kids here. They're all very enthusiastic.
They've all been armed with a pitchfork.
Each pitchfork has at least two spikes.
All kids have, at the moment, at least two eyes.
Catering for the children was often done by the farmer's wife.
Today, Ruth is doing the cooking.
Government advice was quite determined
that despite the difficult conditions,
despite the shortness of rations,
that the children should be well-fed,
that they should be getting a nutritious, balanced diet.
But doing that on next to nothing is not easy.
The sorts of rations that were available to those out in a tent,
feeding children, day in, day out,
two hot meals and packed lunches,
were very thin, indeed.
Local people were encouraged to donate supplies of foods
such as fruit, vegetables, and rabbit, to the camps,
but these were far from abundant.
The government issued a number of leaflets,
in an attempt to help people who had to do this.
It was all sorts of advice, from how to set up your field kitchen,
to how to store the food outdoors in these sorts of conditions,
through to recipes and menu planning.
They even advised how thick to slice the bread for the sandwiches.
So this recipe is a salmon loaf, and this comes from
one of the government leaflets -
Carried Meals, Snacks And Sandwiches.
The amounts here are either a small recipe for four
or, scaled up, for 100 people at a time.
Ruth has made a white sauce,
which she adds to the mashed potatoes,
before stirring in some tinned salmon.
Fresh fish was in real short supply during the War.
I mean, if you think about it, pretty much everybody
who had made their livings on the sea before the War
got called up one way or another,
either into the Merchant Navy or into the Royal Navy,
in a large number of cases,
and huge amounts of British waters
were out of bounds to those few fishermen who were left.
So tinned salmon, coming in from Canada,
was one of the very few forms of fish available to most people
in wartime Britain.
Tinned salmon was so popular in Britain
that we became the biggest market for both US
and Canadian exports.
Right, all mixed in.
Now, this gets steamed.
This just sits
on top of there and steams,
or boils, whatever you want to call it,
in a sort of bain-marie,
for an hour and a half.
With all the challenges faced in 1943,
the help provided by child labour was vital to farmers.
That's a doorstep-and-a-half!
Children often worked an eight-hour day, so dinner was well-earned.
Righto, then.
You can take yourselves a sandwich.
And we'll get you some hot chocolate in a minute.
Makes you hungry, doesn't it, all this hard work out in the cold?
Who's next? Come and get yourself a sandwich.
So, what are they like?
- Yummy. - Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
You like them? Nice and filling, aren't they?
- Keep you going. - The best sandwiches.
As a reward for their hard work,
the government advised camp organisers
to put on evening activities for the children.
Folk musician John Kirkpatrick
has come along to provide some entertainment.
♪ On the farm
♪ Every Friday
♪ On the farm
♪ It's rabbit pie day... ♪
Run Rabbit Run was written shortly after war was declared
and was an instant hit.
♪ ..I get up early and sing this little song
♪ Run, rabbit. Run, rabbit Run! Run! Run!
♪ Run, rabbit. Run, rabbit Run! Run! Run...! ♪
To poke fun at the Nazis, singers Flanagan and Allen
soon changed the lyrics.
♪ ..Run, Adolf. Run, Adolf Run! Run! Run! ♪
THEY APPLAUD AND CHEER Well done, everyone!
Herbs were not the only medicinal product to be found on farms.
Honey could be used to dress wounds, due to its antiseptic properties,
and helped reduce scarring.
It's still used in medicine today.
But it was also an excellent sugar substitute.
By 1943, the rationing system was really starting to bite
and morale was suffering.
People were having to do without all of the foodstuffs
they'd really enjoyed before the War, and top of that list was sugar.
So, to boost morale, here on our wartime farm,
I'm going to see if I can't get myself a few jars of honey
by the end of the summer.
Alex is looking for a special type of bramble,
which grows up through bushes, creating a long stem.
I've got a very old-fashioned way of making honey
and this bramble is going to help me in that process.
Alex is also making use of the surplus straw on the farm
to create a skep, a traditional basket beehive.
To stitch it together, he will be using the bramble.
It needs to be carefully split open
and the insides removed to form a strip,
which is both flexible and strong.
The bramble stem is threaded through the holes in a wooden ring
to create a cage for the straw to sit in.
OK, so, the idea is, is that is going to thread in here.
And there we go, that's the start.
Right, we're getting to the end of the wooden wheel,
so we're going to have to start now
stitching into the straw and into the previous bind.
A hollowed-out and sharpened turkey bone
helps thread the cane through the straw.
He will keep adding layers until the basket is complete.
Ruth is processing the herbs she picked with the harvest camp.
Pharmaceutical companies would pay good money for the herbs -
a handy supplement to the farm's income -
but only if the plants were properly dried and packaged
to preserve their active ingredients.
Up to 80% of the herb's weight is lost during drying -
that's how much water you need to drive off.
And, of course, to do that effectively,
the air needs to get all the way around the herbs.
You don't want anywhere where things are against each other
and moisture can get trapped, because if you do, rot will set in.
And that includes turning things regularly.
Another day or two, and they'll be ready to be packed up.
The ideal temperature for drying herbs is around 35 degrees Celsius.
On a damp day like today, then this comes into play - the stove,
which is just turning out
a little gentle heat, I don't want too much. I don't want to cook anything in here
I just want to maintain warm airflow through the whole space.
This shed's beautifully ventilated, so the air in here,
as all this moisture comes off the herbs,
the damp is driven up by the heat and can make its way out.
So, the first things I do when I get them back
is to, sort of, go through the herbs and pick them clean,
because the pharmaceutical companies will only buy top quality.
This is sage, of course.
Pharmaceutical companies would only pay five pence a pound
for dried sage.
I've got a lot of it, so it's worth my doing.
Foxglove, however, that was much more lucrative.
All the seed that I'm drying out,
that retailed for seven and six a pound.
That's a lot more than five pence.
And even the leaves were one shilling and threepence.
Foxglove was so valuable
because of its ability to lower blood pressure,
but it must be handled with care, as it's extremely poisonous.
And when I've finished here, the last job I will have to do
as I leave the shed is to block up all the windows,
to keep the light out,
because sunlight, UV light,
helps to decay the essential ingredients in the plants,
so they don't only need it warm, they also need it dark.
Alex's skep is complete.
During the War, a colony of honey bees
could be purchased for around £3,
but beekeeping expert Mike Holloway has brought one along for free.
- Hello, Mike. - Hello, Alex.
I apologise for my lack of mobility.
- I've turned my ankle over. - Oh, dear. Oh, dear.
- Thanks ever so much for coming down. Great to see you. - And you.
Now, first thing's first, obviously, is the skep inspection.
So, tell me what you think of that.
You can be honest, Mike, I don't mind.
I think you've done a proper job, there, Alex.
Unlike with a wooden hive containing removable frames,
Alex won't be able to inspect the bees' progress,
but as it's made from surplus materials,
the skep is a good, cheap, and disposable wartime alternative.
Now, the other thing I've made, as well,
is a sort of top compartment,
because my understanding of this
is that we can get the queen and the brood in here,
and her young in here,
- but we can deprive her access to this top area. - Indeed.
But the workers can still get in there and produce comb and honey.
What we'll have to do is put a grill across there,
with spaces in large enough for workers to get through,
- but too small for the queen to get through. - Great. OK.
Mike has already prepared a straw and nettle shelter for the skep.
Talk me through the process. You've brought a colony here.
It was a swarm that we picked up yesterday.
And I've actually got the queen,
got her in a little cage here.
- She's in there, then? - Indeed, she is.
What is that? A sort of old-school hair curler?
Is that one of your hair curlers, Mike?
I wish!
We just put this on to make sure we don't get any stings round the...
We don't want a sting to the face.
And we'll make sure the queen goes into your skep
and all the other bees will follow.
Mike's swarm contains around 10,000 bees.
He introduces a few into Alex's skep,
before placing it in the shelter.
Put that down for a moment.
Now, we don't want them all coming out the top, do we?
So, I'll put this on the top,
that should keep them interested, in there.
So, we'll just shake those out onto there.
When bees are swarming, their honey stomachs are full,
making it difficult for them to sting.
In the hands of experts, they are safe to work with,
which is why Alex and Mike aren't wearing gloves.
Bees naturally tend to crawl upwards,
so the sheet is placed at a gradient.
Now, we're hoping that they find that entrance, yeah?
The queen is released near the edge of the skep...
Pop her out, there she goes.
..and the bees will follow her scent inside.
It's almost as if someone's put a call out, and all of a sudden,
they are racing up that sheet to get into that skep.
- That's amazing, Mike. - Isn't it fascinating?
That is absolutely wonderful to watch.
- It's like water running uphill, isn't it? - It is.
If you notice,
there are some bees that have got their tails in the air,
- like that one, there. - Yep, yep.
All around the periphery of the slope.
They are actually fanning an attractant pheromone,
which is bringing down these bees that are flying to go into the skep
and join the queen.
It is a happy sound, isn't it, that you can hear, these bees?
- This is a happy sound, yeah? - Yes, indeed.
In May 1943,
the British people received a much-needed morale boost.
RAF Squadron No 617,
better known as the Dambusters, had destroyed
two major German dams,
and there was a surge of public interest in RAF bombers.
In desperate need of funds,
the government seized on this enthusiasm
by launching the Wings For Victory fundraising scheme.
The scheme encouraged people to do yet more for the war effort,
by saving money in government bonds.
It is quite a difficult moment, isn't it?
You know, this sort of, being on the defensive
for so long, seeing ourselves as the victims here,
and then suddenly, we're getting to the point where,
"No, no. We're going to become the aggressors."
And at the end of the day,
the Germans have been pouring bombs on British cities
but how did British people feel about then doing the very same
to German women and children?
It is always this dilemma with any form of aggression, isn't it?
The Wings For Victory scheme relied on local fundraising drives.
Well, I obviously don't think we should set about raising funds
to buy bombs to bomb people,
but I do think we should have some kind of party
to reflect some of these fundraising activities.
The team are organising a Wings For Victory fundraising dance.
Even with a war on, women still wanted to look good,
and Ruth is after a new dress.
At the outbreak of war, Britain was one of the leading
textile manufacturers in the world.
But it relied on raw materials from abroad,
and these soon became scarce.
Clothes rationing started in 1941 and the Board Of Trade
introduced a scheme of "utility fashion"
where the government regulated the cloth, price, quality,
and even style of the clothes being produced.
Many women started creating their own clothes.
Ruth wants to make a new dress
and she's found a novel source of fabric.
We've all heard of parachute silk dresses,
but that's not the only source of fabric
that people turned to.
This is quite an ingenious one.
Look, I've got a flour sack.
They have to be made of cloth, one way or another.
The manufacturers had cottoned on
that if they made it in an attractive sort of material,
people would buy their brand, rather than somebody else's brand.
So you get this sort of thing. It's amazing, isn't it?
This is a flour sack.
So the whole of this advertising stuff can just peel straight off.
I think it's only held on with flour and water paste.
There's a little bit here that says,
"To remove paper band, soak in water."
They knew that that's what people were going to do.
So this is my cunning plan for my summer dress -
a couple of flour sacks.
Alex's bees will take some weeks to start producing honey.
He wants to prepare some as a thank you to the children
from the harvest camp,
so Mike has lent him a comb from one of his hives.
These cells on this frame are used by the worker bees
to store surplus honey, and what they do is, they then cap it over with wax
so that they can come back to it and feed throughout the winter.
To extract the honey, the comb is scraped out of the frame.
Now, I think those little kids at our dance
are just going to be so grateful for this stuff.
They're going to love it.
The next step is to pound the comb, breaking down the wax and honey.
It's quite a workout, this.
Right, I think that is now pounded enough.
It's certainly a lot finer grain than this stuff here.
So that is now ready to go into the muslin sheet.
So I just lay this sheet over this bowl.
Now, the theory is that the honey is that much finer grained
than the wax, so it will pour through
the weave of this muslin sheet,
and already, actually, you can see we've got some coming through.
During the War, the price of honey was regulated
and it could only be sold
for around two shillings and six pence per pound.
About £4 in today's money.
I think we've got the right temperature in the room to do this.
Of course, I'd love to have been sat outside doing this,
catching the last few rays of sunshine,
but I would have had every bee in the county
breathing down my neck.
Not only is our house bombproof - it's also beeproof.
As the War progressed and the pressure on imports
became even greater,
clothes rationing grew ever tighter.
In 1941, a year's worth of coupons
would have purchased a whole new outfit,
but by 1943, the clothing allowance had almost halved.
As a way of getting round the shortages,
women formed communal sewing pools.
Ruth's enlisted the help of Jean Haynes,
to turn her flour sack into a new dress for the fundraising dance.
Oh, that's not bad, is it?
That's quite a reasonable skirt width.
We haven't got enough fabric to cut the skirt in one piece,
so we've had to do a bit of asymmetrical lines on it,
and we've got it in two.
Making a virtue of a necessity, really.
Yes, there isn't enough material to go cutting away as we want to do,
so we really have to cut tight.
Minimising fabric waste was of vital importance
and there were strict government rules
dictating the number of pockets,
seams, and even buttons garments could have.
'40s fashion was really dictated by this need for clever cutting,
for using the minimum of fabric.
It was all very, very cleverly put together.
There were darts, they were gathered.
Collars were detachable
because you could have one blouse, three collars, three outfits.
Sewing pools increased in popularity throughout the War.
They not only provided the equipment for dressmaking,
but also some much-needed expertise.
The youngsters, and particularly the young townies,
coming out into the countryside,
they just hadn't picked up those skills in quite the same way,
so it was a way of learning, as well as sharing equipment.
That's right.
Making do with what you could get.
While Ruth prepares for the fundraising dance,
Peter has urgent work to do with the hay.
It's been drying in the churchyard
and now he must bring it in before the rain comes.
He's going to take advantage of a baling machine,
something that increased in use during the War,
thanks to the Ministry Of Agriculture's
scheme of lending equipment -
and experienced operators - to farmers.
Mr Evans, how are you?
Not so bad.
Well, we've brought you some hay, and you've got a baler.
So, is this the sort of baler that would have gone round the farms?
Round different farms on contract.
- What, from the War-Ag? - War-Ag, yeah.
Farmer Maurice Evans still uses his Massey Harris 701 baler today.
It was one of the first machines that could be moved around a field
collecting hay as it went, as well as being used as a static baler.
So, these spikes here, picking up the hay, taking it in here,
and it's going up into the auger.
Can't even get the lid open,
Oh, wow. OK, right!
I wasn't expecting that.
So the hay is coming up into here, the Archimedes screw,
the auger, is pushing it this way and into that hay box.
- And, obviously, the bale comes out there, I take it? - Yeah.
The neddy pushes it down into the chamber.
- Sorry, what is this? - That's a knotter. - A knotter?
- Blimey, this looks like something out of a science-fiction movie. - Yeah.
I mean, this really is farming being dragged into the modern world.
I mean, a farmer during the Second World War...
Previously, there was ricks, weren't there?
And rick knives was a lot of work.
They used to put it in ricks
and then it got to the stage where they could sell the hay,
but they had to carry it loose,
and it would be all up the road and everything else.
So they decided then to hire a baler in,
take the loose hay out of the rick,
and bale it up and put it on a trailer,
and it would be easier for transport.
That looks absolutely lethal.
This might look like a lot of hay,
but it isn't, not after this machine is finished with it.
It's going to reduce this down to,
maybe six bales, tops.
So, it just emphasises how much easier it must have made it
for someone farming
during that period in the War,
to be able to transport the hay, to be able to..
gauge exactly how much they had,
and, of course, to be able to sell any surplus.
This is looking pretty good!
There's certainly a split there.
In fact, that is a hay bale.
That's a really good hay bale, actually.
That's one of the best hay bales I've ever seen,
because it's my hay bale.
It's the hay that I've cut in the churchyard
and baled up. That is awesome!
Beauty products were abundant in Britain during the 1930s,
but the outbreak of war
meant many of the raw ingredients
were no longer available.
Although makeup wasn't rationed,
cosmetics companies were only making a quarter of pre-war amounts.
But for women, it was important to still look their best.
With her dress finished and hair washed, Ruth and her daughter, Eve,
have called upon the services of historic make-up specialists
Sharon and Gloria
to help them get ready for the Wings For Victory dance.
We're having a bit of a look in all the women's magazines
and there's an enormous number of articles
about hair and makeup, aren't there?
"Beauty tightens the belt.
"It's our patriotic duty to cut down a bit on cosmetics,
"but you can still stay lovely!"
It's a huge issue of morale now, when we come into wartime,
that still trying to look good and look your best
is a sense of actually being defiant.
You know, you would be letting the side down if you let yourself go.
Let's have a little bit of that in there, then, Gloria.
In the absence of factory-made products,
women employed homemade methods to enhance their looks,
including using sugar water to set their hair.
Some ladies used beer, but when we spoke to our great-aunt about it,
she said, "If there was any beer around, we would have drunk it."
Beauty was seen as such a morale booster
that the Minister of Labour
made skilled hairdressers exempt from conscription.
Almost all hairstyles in the '40s required the hair to be curled,
taking inspiration from the Hollywood movie stars of the day.
So, the finger wave technique is to use your comb
and fingers to push the hair into flat S-shaped waves,
and when the hair has dried,
it does create a beautiful wave.
Ruth's hairstyle requires flat pin curls at the front,
which will add definition,
and larger barrel curls at the back for volume.
I feel really weird like this.
- Do I look weird? - Yes!
Glamour in the making, glamour in the making!
Female munitions workers also had a special allowance
of high-end makeup to wear in the factories,
raising their spirits, as they laboured in often grimey conditions.
For a period that was very austere, it's still very glamorous
so a cream rouge just to give a bit of a flush.
You get them starting to use mascaras.
They came in a little block, and a brush, and you mix it with water,
or a bit of spit, and brush it on.
And this was something which started off
as a little pack of product
for men to use on their beards and moustaches.
So from men's vanity came a product which women could use.
- Isn't that fantastic? - Blimey!
Oh, God!
Wait till you get the lippy on!
The hay baling is going well,
but to maximise efficiency,
it's vital that Peter gets it finished
while he still has access to the baler.
When I said that we'd get six bales out of this load,
I didn't actually think we'd get six bales, but we have.
I mean, you could probably get three times this amount on a trailer.
So, that means you can use less fuel in your tractor.
It's just so beneficial, having these bales,
but we've got hay all over this farm.
We need to get it in, we need to get it baled.
So I'm going to get another load,
It's going to take me into the evening,
so I don't think I'm going to make this dance tonight.
America had entered the War in December 1941,
following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
From 1942, US troops poured into Britain,
including more than 130,000 African-American servicemen.
They brought with them a new phenomenon - the Jive.
Occasions like this provided an escape
from the drudgery of everyday life,
as well as raising money for the government's
Wings For Victory national savings scheme.
Whoa!
You've certainly scrubbed up!
This is the new dress, is it? There may be a war on,
but some people can still turn out well, can't they?
Yeah, yeah, but you haven't noticed the shoes, look!
Ah, that's the sign of a good hardworking farm girl.
- Wow! - It's great, isn't it? - You can tell the Americans are in town.
Joseph Sewell is an expert in Jive and Swing dancing.
It's an infectious dance. You can't find a dancer dancing
that's not smiling. It's just impossible.
It's such a vibrant form of dance, isn't it?
What is it officially called?
The dance that we're doing is called Lindy Hop.
It's an African-American dance.
When you had the black GIs coming across
and brought the real-deal Lindy Hop,
that's when it really started to take off.
It must have made such an enormous impact
in village halls up and down the country.
I guess the white dancers would have danced something a little more subdued.
Once the GIs got out there, chucking the ladies around,
it would have blown people's socks off,
but it would have made everyone feel good who was watching.
There is one thing here
that wouldn't have happened during the War,
and that's black and white GIs being in the same dance.
The Americans brought with them not only their dance,
but also their social attitudes, their segregation,
that we weren't used to here.
Yes. The white GIs would not tolerate being in the same building as the black GIs.
African-American troops
frequently came over in advance of the white GIs
and had established themselves in local communities.
When white GIs arrived and tried to impose segregation,
they often met a stony response from the British people.
Do you think we could have a go, show us how to do it?
Absolutely, two fine ladies like yourselves!
Ladies, get ready for the time of your life.
- Sorry. - You're doing well.
The Lindy Hop was developed by mixing
established dances like the Breakaway and the Charleston,
becoming popular at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem.
This new style spread like wildfire.
SHE SCREAMS
APPLAUSE
That was fantastic, Joseph!
Tuck into that and tell me what you think.
The children from the harvest camp have also come along
to the Jive and have had some bread and honey
as a farewell treat.
One of the main reasons for these sorts of events in the first place
was to raise money for the war effort, wasn't it?
National savings certificates -
a system whereby ordinary people,
instead of putting their money in the bank, gave it to the government.
Nearly four million pounds at their prices,
which, you know, when you think of what that means today,
it's just vast.
How would we have done it without the savings
of ordinary British people? It made it possible for us to win.
Hopefully, while we're all here,
Peter will finish baling that hay.
That's a must-do job.
Yeah. And the children, haven't they been
an enormous help? They've just done loads.
You know, it's been great to have them around.
I sort of feel like we've genuinely boosted morale, here on the farm.
But, of course, it's all to play for in the next couple of months.
It's make-or-break season,
we've got to bring in a wartime harvest
and it's not going to be easy.
Despite another year of hardship at home,
farmers' efforts in the fields would not go unrewarded.
1943 would see Britain's biggest acreage of crops,
not just in the Second World War, but in the history of the country.
Not quite got my sea legs yet!
Next time,
- the team find new methods of communication... - Look at that!
He's fast, isn't he?
..bring in a vital harvest...
..and preparations for D-Day come to Manor Farm.
Find out more about how Britain fed
itself during the Second World War,
with The Open University's free brochure
and online interactive challenges.
Follow the links
to The Open University.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd