5. Awake and Arise Words and Music by Rod Hall
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Dick Webb and Bet Jones were both interviewed for Living Archive MK’s Calverton Manor Farm project in 2014. Their reminiscences – along with those of the erstwhile farm owner and a fellow farm worker – comprised the radio ballad The Horse and the Tractor (available on the LAMK website) which included 13 new songs[1] inspired by them. Rod Hall’s song focuses on their life as children on a working farm.
Bet Jones (née Webb) b 1927: ‘It’s hard living only on a farm labourer’s wage…’The oldest of the eight Webb children, Bet moved with her parents to Manor Farm Cottages from Alderton Northants. When she was 14, she went into service for four years as a nanny to the two children of the Duchess of Argyle. Bet later worked at the International Stores: I was 18 months old when we moved into one of the thatched cottages on the bank at Manor Farm. It had three tiny bedrooms. We’d sleep four in a bed. Mum would put the bolster case across the length of it. It was a hard life for all of us. We just had to work well. We’d get up early in the morning and let the chickens out. We all had to make sure that the milk was clean. And if Mum was doing the washing, you had to get the wood for the copper. I went into service because I was put in there. I didn’t have no choice - you didn’t pick it. Me Mum and Dad decided. I had to go before the head policeman and Mr Weston, the farmer at Yardley, to make sure that I was all right to go in and work in the big house at Calverton. The Duchess of Argyle was a top model, a debutante. My job was looking after the two children. The parents were up in London but there was the butler there, the chef, two gardeners - Mr Pitman and another one. I was only let out for three hours on a Sunday afternoon. I never had any other time off. I’d come down and see the family and me Dad would walk back with me. I didn’t see him again for another week. Dick Webb b 1931: ‘I can plough with a tractor, furrows straight as a pin…’ Dick was born in his family’s Manor Farm Cottage and grew up there with his seven brothers and sisters. As the last of three generations to work for the Fountaine family, Dick started work at 14 and retired in 1997. I can remember them having the steam plough each end of the field and pulling the plough. Dad would have to get up at 4 o’clock in the morning to light the engines and get the steam up for when they came at 7 o’clock. You’d have one at one end and one at the other end of the field and you’d have big wire cables, and this big plough would pull it up this way, that one would pull it that way. This would be around 1938. I was ploughing with the tractor when I was 10. There was no cab on them and all there was, was a handle. I couldn’t start it so they’d to start it up, I was that small. There was only one pedal - the clutch and the brake. You pressed so far down for the clutch and the other bit for the brake. I’d have to stand with both me feet on the pedal and push on the steering wheel to push it down! The youngest child, five year-old Molly is also featured in the song - ‘I’m a good girl, a farm girl and I never complain’ – as are as many child singers as could be mustered for the choruses! [1] The Radio Ballad The Horse and the Tractor was released in 2014. In order to fit speech and music into an hour-long BBC radio programme, whole verses and sections of songs were omitted. The companion album Calverton contains the songs in their entirety: Awake and Arise | The Living Archive Band (bandcamp.com) |
Bet Webb
Bet Jones (née Webb)
Dick Webb
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