102 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2019
B
allet dancers, typists and seamstresses
signed up, a third came from London
or large industrial cities, and their
contribution to Britain’s war e ort
during World War I and World War II
has been consistently overlooked.
As the 80th anniversary of the start of WWII
approaches, it is worth recalling the role of the
Women’s Land Army, whose members were known
informally as Land Girls. They brought much to
the imperilled food supply in the country at the time,
while their presence would later open up careers in
horticulture for those women who sought them.
The Women’s Land Army was a civilian group,
established in January 1917 during WWI, when
the number of men called from the fields to the
trenches of Europe had resulted in an acute shortage
of agricultural labour. When the Women’s Land
Army disbanded in 1919, it must have been hoped
that this most domestic of corps wouldn’t be needed
again, yet in 1939, just 20 years later, food supplies
Above Land Girls at work
in the fields. Thanks to
their e orts, by the end
of the war, Britain was
70% self-sucient.WOMEN’S LAND ARMY
were once again compromised and the group was
re-established in June that year. By September, the
first women had been recruited to the organisation
and in January 1940 food rationing began. The
body continued to operate long after the war had
ended, disbanding only in 1950. In all, over 200,000
mostly unmarried women signed up as Land Girls- or Lumber Jills if they belonged to the associated
Women’s Timber Corps.
The Women’s Land Army owed much of its
success to Lady Gertrude Denman, who was
appointed honorary director on the basis of her
extensive contacts. She became the first national
chairwoman of the National Federation of Women’s
Institutes in 1917, had worked for the Women’s Land
Army during WWI and was married to a diplomat.
By 1939 she was in a position to galvanise women
around the country and in rural locations especially.
Later she would o er up her own home, Balcombe
Place in West Sussex, as the headquarters of the
army. “The Land Army fights in the fields. It is in