No . 134
The Trusty Servant
Pupils , Pigs and Potatoes
The Director of Winchester College Society , Christopher Normand ( F , 76-81 ), unearths the short-lived farming scheme at the College during WWII :
A truth that became evident soon after I returned to the College is that we humble Wykehamists experience it fleetingly . Some get a second bite , albeit a remote one , as parents and can compare how life was different in the dim and distant past to how it is now . How varied a Wykehamist ’ s experience can be and yet seem normal to each one , was brought home to me when Suzanne Foster , the College Archivist , sent me a fuzzy photograph of my uncle , Alan Normand . It was copied from an album of F C Mallett ( Coll , 15-21 . Co Ro , 28-63 ) who offered tantalising glimpses of the school ’ s activities in his captions . In this case : ‘ Hoeing the winter vegetables . The vegetables repaid their trouble .’ Further investigation suggested that AR Normand ( Coll , 38-43 ) was somewhere in the Hockley valley , probably close to the modern 1 st Green . The crop is probably kale , although the plot was largely devoted to potatoes and the picture is probably from 1941 .
AR Normand ( Coll , 38-43 ) Hoeing at Hockley ?
The date is based on ARN ’ s age and the following comment from The Wykehamist of 16 th December 1941 :
‘ An attempt to grow kale between the potatoes was largely thwarted by the rabbits which had increased either in numbers , intelligence or athletic prowess since last season ’
It suggests that there would have been no kale crop post 1941 .
If this photograph was the intriguing tip of an iceberg , my own digging and harvesting of the archives exposed much more of it uncovering a story of industry and ingenuity during wartime scarcity .
Almost at the outbreak of war in 1939 the school embarked on two agricultural projects . The first and certainly the easier to operate was to provide labour for harvest and forestry camps at satellite farms around Hampshire and slightly further afield . There were usually four camps each summer ( three harvest and one forestry ) and wages negotiated by the school may not all have reached the pockets of the hard-working men : the accounts refer to how the camps contributed to the agricultural accounts . The second project was to turn available College land over to growing crops .
In both cases the assistance of the then Sparsholt Agricultural Institute was invaluable as it trained a cadre of upwards of 50 men in elementary farm work . They would be the core of the labour at the harvest camps and some would be employed driving tractors to plough the College land before planting .
Eric Lucas ( Co Ro 35-51 ) not dressed for farming
When the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries visited the school in May 1944 , he pronounced that Winchester had been the pioneer among schools in the agricultural scheme . In this , Winchester was lucky to have Eric Lucas ( Co Ro , 35-51 ) on the staff . At the outbreak of war Lucas submitted a conscientious objection to combatant service . This the Headmaster ( Spencer Leeson ( Coll , 05-11 ; Co Ro , 24-26 ; HM , 35-46 )) supported , because the College ’ s agricultural scheme was already underway . Even before Dig for Victory was instigated as a national campaign in October 1940 , the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries had held discussions in January with the Headmasters ’ Conference about growing vegetables .
The Hockley potato patch was first to be cultivated , using 1¼ acres out of 2 available . A hectic fortnight at the end of Cloister Time 1940 resulted in two plots being dug up on Kingsgate Park for vegetables , adding a further ¾ acre . The Wykehamist reported that ‘ in the autumn of 1940 a further four acres were prepared for potatoes . The additional plots were on Ridding Field ( New Field ), Doggers Close , Lavender Meads and Palmer Field . The school was lent an acre on Sleepers Hill , which was ‘ immediately sown with mustard to improve it for early potatoes . Most of
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