We all moved into the small two bedroomed house on 1st April 1950 - I was 5 and Penny 3.
Dad noted in his diary, “it was hardly the time of year to commence a farming year”. He had several years experience of working on farms and market gardens immediately after the war and knew that he hadn’t had the usual winter preparation time on the holding and crops he had taken over. However, he was pleased to take over a rented smallholding with security of tenure and good prospects for his family – incomes were good in the early days for tenants with an aptitude for the long hours involved and a wife and children to help. The holding was 4.5 acres of which 3 acres were taken up with blackcurrants contracted for Ribena blackcurrant juice made in the Forest of Dean. There was also the landlord's 70' x 20' glasshouse and a wooden piggery with 6 pens. In the early days we grew almost every outdoor salad and vegetable crop as well as chickens, capons and pigs and we certainly remember: -helping with cutting lettuces at first light and how cold we were as kids and how soon the chilblains appeared -the celery rash as we harvested and washed that crop -side-shooting tomatoes and picking them in the heat of a greenhouse when we arrived home from school -feeding hens, collecting eggs and mucking out the pigs -and the almost never-ending watering of all crops on the light sandy soil. Dad had been a clerk in several businesses in Liverpool before the war and he kept records of his progress as a market gardener showing how the family finances improved year by year: -1952 – profit £862 – 7000 tomatoes yielded 9 tons of fruit -1953 – profit £881 (the estate average was £710) – 10 tons of tomatoes, 5 sows -1956 – net worth £2664 -1957 - profit £1200 including a large acreage of blackcurrants at Sandyway farmed jointly with 3 other tenants. Daily life was simple with infrequent trips to Newent and Gloucester. Milk was delivered daily in bottles, bread weekly by small horse-drawn delivery cart and groceries weekly from the Newent Co-op wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. With each delivery, a 2nd Co-op book was collected with the list of next week’s requisites. In the early days we had no fridge or washing machine and only a simple calor gas cooker. There was no TV, no records and only BBC radio for evening entertainment for the adults. We were however one of the very few estate families with a car – a 1931 Austin 7 – which was used to take us on days out to historic sites, the theatre and to visit family in Liverpool, Rhyl and Birmingham.
During the 9 years that the we lived here, the blackcurrants had gone by late 1957, and several Dutch light greenhouses ('structures') were added so that more lettuce, tomatoes and chrysanthemums could be grown indoors. Dad kept records showing the relative profitability of the various crops in relation to the labour input so that the number of outdoor crops was much reduced. Dad represented the tenants on the committee of the National Association of LSA Tenants (NALSAT), both locally and in nationally.
In 1957, sadly Mum died of cancer and in 1959 we moved to No 57 Three Ashes Lane so that Dad was not continuously reminded of much happier days. Geoff Wood - Bath - Oct 2014 Click on the photos below to enlarge them and use the arrows to scroll through.