Farming News – January 2022

by Malcolm Barker

An email from Joan Walker, who was reading a book about the history of the Women’s Land Army, asked if I was aware that my farm (Moor House) had been ‘…managed and run entirely by women’ during WWI? It was one of only two farms in the whole country (the other in Devon) to be run by women.

I remember talking to Owen Miles who farmed here until my father bought the farm in 1954. Owen told me that he lived next door at Moor Cottage during the Great War and was put in charge of the farm, which was derelict after years of neglect. He spoke about the Land Girls and how he often worked late to finish jobs begun by the girls when they got tired, but I wasn’t aware that the girls were running the farm.

When Owen moved to Moor House, he brought with him an apple tree which still grows in our garden.