I was born at Warminster Farm in 1916, my father had taken over the tenancy that year from a great uncle and I literally killed my mother the day I was born, she was rushed off to hospital the day after I was born with peritonitis and lost her life so I wasn't the most popular person in the household, and I stayed and worked on the farm, went to the local school and then on to the cathedral school at Wells, and when I was there from I was 8 till I was 15, and when I took my notice to I was going to leave, the headmaster said to me, he said why don't you stay at school and pass some exams, he said we could do with people like you in the church. I had an idea he might have been a bit fond of me. But he said what are you going to do, I said go and help on the farm. So he gave me up in the end as a bad job, and I came home and worked for my father, without wages, we never, the farmers' sons didn't get paid wages, but you always had pocket money to spend. I was going out, dad'd put his hand in his pocket and give me a pound or something like that. But I was always mad keen on horses and I had an affinity somehow with horses, whether it was driving them or working them. And most of my working life I spent, before I took over the farm on my own, I spent driving a pair of horses ploughing and that sort of thing from the age of 15, and I took over the farm from my father when I was about 23 and got married and married Eunice, we'd known each other for about two years, two and a half years. And it was a big farm, 600 acres for a kid of 23, but I was determined I was going to do the job as well as it could be done. And I was one of the first herds in Somerset to be tuberculin tested, that had just started up, and the whole thing of agriculture was just beginning to show some life from a pretty poor start, similar to what we're having now.

And I went, some of the first cattle I bought and tested were so thin that they'd been and we'd had an awful winter in 1939/40, we hadn't been out for six weeks, you couldn't get out because of ice and snow, and I went to Reading market by train, got on the milk lorry and went to Frome and the station, and there was some cattle coming off, they'd been on the rail a week from Scotland in freezing weather, and nobody wouldn't buy them and I bought the whole lot of them for ten pounds each, which when they got home my father said to me, he said they'll all bloody die, but any rate they didn't and we built up a good herd out of that, up to, one time we were milking nearly four hundred, which is a lot of work.

And out of necessity, well I bought a couple of horses and I used to drive everywhere if we wanted to go out in the evening we'd drive a horse and cart, horse and trap. And it was great fun. And that was our transport during the war and I was sitting on a horse, wherever I went I rode the horse, tied it up to the hedge, did my work and rode home.

The work side of it, we never, it was quite easy really because we could always get plenty of labour, there was quite a few older men and they were still tipping stone along the side of the road in cubes and cracking them up to make the roadways with cracked stone by hand, and I should think they could earn about perhaps a shilling a day, two bob a day, old age pensioner, but they were always willing to come in and help haymaking and that sort of thing.

And it wasn't till towards the end of the war that I really felt that I could, knew anything about it and that's what I always wanted to do and then I put this grass and grain drier in, and my bank manager said to my father, Headley he said, your young man's going a bit vast, dad said he'll get on all right, and that was that, he was my guarantor so, but we worked it 12 hours a day so those included a lot of grass, but it was a great success and we had quite a number of farm walks, entertaining other farmers and showing them round what we were doing in the evenings, just as a sort of schoolmaster, and then the local agriculture committee would send one of their trained staff to perhaps give a bit of a talk on what we were trying to do. And we always had land girls were our greatest source of labour, and they came from, we had them from the local farmer Steven Bow, where they've had a training school, and they had thirty or forty perhaps girls there at a time. Some of them from London. And they didn't know a cow from a bull, and they didn't know what they were supposed to be doing, but they'd come, ride their cycles the couple of miles and work on my farm just to get a bit more experience, and we had some real queer ones, but we had some very nice ones. They lived, we had, and they'd stay and live in. They were like sisters to Eunice. And still are, which is nice to think that the other day when they had a service in Wells Cathedral on television, they all rang up and said how nice it was to be remembered where they'd spent the happiest days of their life, which we thought, three of them to ring within half an hour of the programme ending, we thought it wasn't a bad reference of what we did.

Can you tell me about how farming was run by the government during the war?

Well it was run by the war agricultural committee, they called themselves. And they were supposed to be the qualified people that had been to college and they went from farm to farm suggesting how you did it and what you did and that was liaison, they used the members as myself to liaise with the local farmers. Sometimes it was quite difficult, you made yourself quite unpopular, but it was got over. The main aim was to grow more food, because the food, the stuff that was, there was a lot of stuff being sunk on the way from the States and Australia and all over, you know, so at times things were scarce, even tyres were scarce, you had to get a licence to buy a spare tyre. You had to get a licence to buy a can of, you know, 20 pound of nails or fencing wire.

So can you tell me what you were growing and who you sold it to.

We grew wheat but most of the butchering, the animals were all sent to the local slaugher house, well they were sent to the market as a collecting centre, and then sent to the local slaughter house at Pill, to be killed and dressed and then they were allocated, each village had, each slaughter house had an alligator - allocator - and he allocated, there was a village with a butcher's shop and he had fifty registered customers, he had so many pounds of meat. And perhaps if he was lucky some liver or something like that. And it was the same, and you had a little book when all, I don't know if you've ever seen the ration books, but you take the coupon out and the same with the sugar and the tea, sugar tea, and butter, cheese.

You made your own cheese didn't you.

We made our own cheese, we could make, I could make cheese, that was no problem to every three or four months to make three or four cheese, truckle cheese and we put them in the cellar, that was what we habitually done before the wartime. And so that was no trouble, we could always, if we want, some of us bartered, you know. If your grocer was short of cheese he'd say to Eunice d'you want some more jam, sugar, you'd have a few pounds of sugar and he'd keep your cheese ration. All done in, well you had to survive, you know. But really we knew nothing in the country about rationing itself, not like the town people, because there was always rabbits and I mean the men that worked in the quarries which were, there were quite a few because there were a lot of stone needed for making aerodromes and that sort of thing, and they always put a rabbit snare in the hedge going to work and they'd be unlucky if they didn't pick up a good rabbit to take home. And the quarryman would literally live on rabbit. The wife would take the two legs off and the loins for her husband to take to work for his breakfast and his dinner, and she would be left at home with what we called the corsets, the ribs and the shoulders, and mother and the kids had either a bit of a stew made of that end of the rabbit. So you didn't go short, there was no need to go short. And the country then was infested with rabbits, we were only too glad to see them caught. So we encouraged that.

And you had apples.

Yes we had apples, and they were able to keep apples, we literally kept apples nearly till apples came again. We had varieties that would keep, we've still got apples in the garage now that were picked last October, they're still perfectly sound. No we don't buy, when you've been short, farmers are always short of money, but you're always spending it on something else, you've got to provide your own trading material if you like to put it that way.

So the government were fixing the prices?

Yes, they fixed the prices, and the prices didn't vary much from the start of the war till the end. Prices didn't vary all that much, it was so much for a small calf, ten bob for the small ones, fifteen bobs for the bigger, ones slightly bigger, and the same with the sheep, and they were all paid for so much a pound, and they were all, they went to the slaughter house and all that sort of thing, but we could get extra through the thing what they called harvest ration, which we were very useful, what we didn't divide up, we divided them up, the holding for the men, as perks you might say. You know, every month, we tried to do it every month, we didn't have fridges unfortunately. We had no fridges or freezers, so perhaps on the Saturday morning when I'd get on the kitchen table and I'd divide up a pig into about ten pieces and that was the perks for that month's rations.

You were telling me that you were called up before the local panel about the fact you weren't spending anything.

We weren't spending anything, and we were spending, in the first three years we were married, we went out once. Well there was nowhere to go. We had blackout and you only had a little slit about what, an inch by, six inches by an inch, and over your car lights, to see with. It was awful and you weren't allowed to show any lights in any of the buildings, but I fell foul of the air, the fire brigade. I had ewes lambing and I had a biggish torch light and I was out searching for a ewe out in the field, I knew she was going to lamb, and not thinking of it now I was waving this light about, and on came, along from the road from Wells, you know, with lights flashing and this going and the hooter going, and that was the, not air, forget what they called them now.

ARP?

Yes, ARP, that's right. That was the ARP and they did see the reflection of this light shining, when it got about, and they did see that shining at Wells. And of course everything was supposed to be dark and there was I chasing this sheep and he came out, what are you doing, what are you doing, and oh, what they weren't going to do to me if I did it again was nobody's business. I said well I've got to find this sheep or it'll be dead, and I said I haven't got much option. But they were very fussy over that. But they did see it and they followed it out, and we had quite a lot of excitement then because when the Yanks came over, they wanted to extend Yeovilton aerodrome for when they were sent there, so they had to take stone out of the quarry adjoining the farm to extend the Yeovilton aerodrome and they wanted electricity put in. And they wanted to put up a substation in the middle of one field, and I said to hell, I said no fear, I said if you put, anybody's going to have electricity, we already had a 33,000 volt line right across the farm, I said if anybody has it I said I'm going to have it. And I rang up the church commissioners, landlords at the time, and told them what was happening, oh I'll go and see what I can do. And within 48 hours we had a ministry official there measuring up the farm for electricity. And we had electricity installed about 1943.

Up until then ...

So that they could run everything all night up at the quarry and lights galore going, really livened things up, and that made a great difference to our life, not having to fill half a dozen lanterns with paraffin, because that was the only light we had when Eunice came first, the house was draughty and you were walking upstairs in a winter night with a candle, it'd blow out and you had to hope for the best. And we kept a whole line of candle sticks by the back door for the land girls, and whoever came in took a candle and walked off with it, her candle stick, and the last one, when the last candle stick went, that was time to lock the door because you knew everybody was home. And when we had five or six extra living in, you had to have some sort of rotation that you knew you could lock the door.

Tell me about, you had prisoners of war working on the farm.

Yes there was a prisoner of war camp at Wells and when we were busy, before we had combine harvesters, there was always, getting all the corn to stook, we used to apply to them and they were quite useful for that sort of job and hoeing, cleaning the weeds out of mangles and that sort of thing.

Where were they from?

They were Italians, and some of the families still, they came back to Wells to live, they're still in Wells, several of the families came as prisoners of war. But they were good men to work, nice people. And we had an old lady on the next farm, she'd lost a son and she took air force men from all over the world, from Locking and when they'd had a bad time and perhaps been shot down, they were sent out to her, right up the end, mile up the lane, and they were sent out to her to convalesce. We had all sorts of nationalities, red Indians, I never thought I'd ever see a red Indian.

Tell me about that.

Well he had this red skin, they're totally different colour than Kyakus or whatever they call themselves, whatever tribe they come out of, but they would come, after they'd been there and had some decent food for two or three days, they'd walk across the valley, if we were stooking corn, and they'd walk across the valley and help us because they knew all about, in north America, the wheat belt there, and they'd walk across and give us a hand, stooking corn, which was quite nice and they'd often call in late afternoon they'd come up by bus to the local village from Wells, and they'd come in, wanting to know where this place was, and I'd perhaps take them up there, to --- but they were, met some very interesting characters during that, it's only because she tried to be friendly, she'd lost her own son in an accident and this was her war effort, which was very commendable. I mean you never know, people from all over, you know, all nationalities came there. But they seen the west and I think they used the Locking aerodrome, I don't know what they call it now, as a recuperation and we met quite a few of the air force people, almost all air force servicemen.

Tell me about you and horses, racing.

I was always mad keen on horses and I bought two or three and kept during the war, I rode everywhere I could possibly ride, it was a step much quicker, I could go across country, across the farm, and just by chance I went to a horse sale and bought two or three and one of them turned out, I used to ride in gymkhanas, playing about, just for the fun of the thing, I wasn't much good at it. But you could go to a flower show in an evening, I'd ride eight or ten miles to a flower show where they had a gymkhana in the evening and play about with my friends, you know. And I had one that turned out quite well and somebody saw it and they said you want to put that in, that'll win races. And race horse trainer heard a bit, somebody told him and he turned on the doorstep one day, here I hear you got a decent horse, and I said yes, oh he said you wouldn't like to put him in training with me would you, I said well, just depends. I said how much you going to charge, whether he is any good I don't know. But he turned out to be quite decent in the end, and he was half brother to one of the best horses in England and then was the last horse to race by one of the best stallions we've ever had in the country. But it was completely by chance, it was the first horse sale after the war. And these horses were bred and of course they'd never been raced, and I went on, that was sold that one to go on --- races, we won a race near Shirley near Birmingham with this horse on the evening meeting, and we had a police escort, we won so much money the police escorted, they said the Birmingham mob would do us in as we'd had their cash, and they gave us a police escort for twenty miles to see that we were safe and they said the best thing you, when you can get to Stow on the Wold, is to put it in the bank safe, you know in the night safe at the bank.

Did racing go on during the war?

No, there was a lot of what I call gymkhana work, you know, at every flower show, just any social occasion that didn't involve going out the village, and there were plenty of people would ride ten miles to have, get together with somebody else's pony and gallop round a field, and it caused, there was a lot of amusement, a lot of fun, and nobody hadn't been out for some two or three years, when it came towards the last two or three, two years of the war, things opened up a bit and we were able to do these things. It was called flapping. And from that I progressed on and I bought a better horse and, but I never gave very much money, the most I gave was about a hundred and eighty quid, and I had horses that went on and won races, professional races, that cost only just over three figures. And one of the first I had was a horse called Three Castles and we put Lester Piggott, I'd seen Lester Piggott ride as a 12-year old boy at the races at Bath and I thought he rides a bit, if I can play him, but he was only about six stone, he could barely carry the saddle, and anyway the horse ran away with him. And I knew, I met Dick Francis, the, who turned out to be, you know, great author and he won on it, and we had a great celebrations when Dick won and I've been a fan and, well friend of Dick Francis ever since, he's a great chap.

Tell me about the end of the war. Do you remember when you heard?

I think, we didn't hear the evening when the news broke. I think we must have gone to bed, we always went, we got up early so we always went to bed early, and I think we'd all gone, you know, but somehow or other nobody put a wireless or anything like that on, and we didn't have, there was no television. And we didn't know anything about it until the next day, we heard the bells chiming, because the bells hadn't been rung for years. And it wasn't till we sort of really gathered things up, we were all going about our everyday business and not thinking much about anything but getting over the work. But we had one or two, then after the, when it was known, we all got together and all put in anything we could into the kitty, you know, home-made wine anything, and we had a little dance band in the village and we had a real old rumpus. We could get some beer, a lady at the pub could get us some beer, and I think she could get us about half a bottle of whisky but I was able to get from an old friend that had, her father had died, and left her with about half a dozen five-gallon jars of home-made wine, cider wine, parsnip wine, dandelion wine, so we put all that in a barrel with a few bottles of lemonade and, well you could either have punch or --- and believe me, we had, we really got sozzled. Just out of that. And it started off, a series of, when're you going to have another party Sid, when you going to have another party, we organised half a dozen. And in the 1960s the, somebody that had been to one of them was a Rotarian and he came to see me. Sid, he said, can we hire your barn for a barn dance and we called it a bangers and booze do.

Can you finish off by telling me about your attitude to the war and how it changed your life.

It didn't change my life because I didn't, I didn't leave the environment I was brought up in as much, except that I had a woman to sleep with. But other than that, we didn't alter, we hadn't altered our ways, we hadn't been, you know, been short of anything, we could always, we always had cider, we always had food. And we kept open house, but having the land girls I think influenced more than anything, we met people from different walks of life and that, but at the end of the war, I mean we were still rationed till the mid 50s, so it really didn't make, and the war egg didn't give up until the 50s, and that was still, that was all still running.