Dorothy Houldcroft (b.1907)

I was about 18 (1925) and of course in those days I only used to see him at church - we were both church goers and at the family dances, you know, the parish hall, cos we were both keen on dancing. We didn't really go out together till I was about 20. Then we got serious, went on holiday, that's when we got the letter from his father to say he'd bought us a farm. Of course we didn't realise what it was like - it was about 128 acres. We didn't get married until the farm was ready to go into - 1930.

When I saw it of course my heart sank a little bit, but I thought, well, you know what is...love is blind isn't it? So I took it on. This is why I'd never let my parents know, not even Sam, what a shock it was to me, because I never had to do anything, I'd never cooked, I didn't know much about flowers - we had no garden, at home it was all business premises, a big yard, we'd got horses and stables there and everything. So of course it was all new to me and it was a bit of a shock I can tell you. But still, I was determined to make a go of it, which I did and I can do most things now.

It was all fields and it was all pasture land. There was no ploughed land until the war came. We came into the farm with 49 cows which his father had bought for him and a few poultry and he'd got his own horse. Sam was a rider and we'd got a dog, Jumbo, and that was about all when we started. I had to look after the poultry and I was terrified of them, I really was, especially the cockerel who used to sidle up to you and they'd got spurs - they could really hurt you. We had to work hard - we used to get up at five in the morning and we should be asleep by nine o'clock, The lamp would all flare up, we'd forget to turn the wick down. It was all candles you see, and pitch darkness. I'd had lighting at home, I never put a light on in my bedroom, the lamps outside all lit it up, but there I was in total darkness with candles and lamps, so it was a bit traumatic actually for me.

(In 1930) It was a very bad time, really bad. There had been the miner's strike and you know...we've been to town with only 5p in my pocket...it was a shilling in those days, and we used to often have to walk over to my mother's because we couldn't afford petrol for the motorbike, and it's a long way.