Chicken hatchery worker (not actually in the Land Army):
Early Life:
Nesta was born on the 16th April 1925 on Fell Lane, Keighley. Her father was a business man running a market stall in Keighley. They moved to Riddlesden not long after Nesta was born where she went to school until the age of 10 years. Due to the depression, business was difficult so the family moved to Liverpool to be nearer to her maternal grandparents living at 122 Roseberry street in 1935. It was hoped that her father would find it easier to do business there with the support of the family.
In 1939 war was declared and it was decided that the children of Liverpool should be evacuated out of the city. Aged 14 years old Nesta and her brother David aged 9 years and sister Pat aged 6 years were marched to the Central Station in Liverpool on the 3rd September and sent to a small village near Southport. There they stood in a small group whilst the villagers looked them over. Their foster parents were a Mr and Mrs Brown who was a retired teacher. School was a half day and the weather was beautiful. They only stayed a few weeks as her sister Pat had a childhood illness and they sent a telegram home to their parents saying that they were returning home.
Nesta left school at the age of 14 years and went to work in an office as a typist. Her elder brother Albert had enlisted and joined the army. In September 1940, after an incendiary bomb hit the house across the street, Nesta’s grandmother declared that she would take the younger children to Keighley where they would be safe. Nesta and her mother remained in Liverpool to sort out the removal of their belongings back to Keighley.
Her father had rented a church manse in Highfield lane, Keighley which was large enough to take them all plus an aunt from London. Her aunt was 80 years old, a retired head mistress, and had a bedsit in one of the downstairs room. The house accommodated three generations of the family along with soldiers billeted in the town that her father invited back to the house for meals. At first Nesta got a job alongside her mother working as a sewing machinist making shirts for the navy and battledress for the army. The Martins factory was on Oakworth road and wages were good but Nesta wanted to be outside in the ‘fresh air’.
War Service:
Three years later in 1943 aged 18 years Nesta decided that she wanted to do her bit and work outside in the fresh air. She went around to local farms and whilst Fred Sharp thought she might not be strong enough to work on the farm he agreed that he would employ Nesta in the office in the morning and outside in the afternoon. Once whilst working at Fred Sharp’s Hatchery, a woman from the Land Army visited and discussed joining the Land Army officially. If Nesta registered she might be sent away from home and this was something she didn’t want to do. So Fred Sharp provided her with a uniform of dungarees, boots, aertex shirt and green jumper like the other girls and paid her an equivalent wage of £2. 17s. 6d. a week. The working day was 7.45am to 5pm with an hour lunch break. There was an alternate Sunday rota and overtime as needed. The job in the packing team involved differentiating 10 different breeds for sale, packing the chicks when they were eight weeks old, with 10 -12 chickens per box in boxes, and taking them to the station for delivery around the country. Nesta eventually was in charge of the packing team. She learnt to drive a pony and cart and collected eggs from surrounding farms in the dales for the incubators. There were some older men and about 20 other Land Army girls working on the farm, and prisoners of war (POW) came to work on the farm at the end of the war. The girls were billeted in Oakworth village and Silsden Hostel, whilst some lived at home. At Christmas time they would pluck and dress a few hens to eat.
When the war ended in 1945 on VJ Day Nesta and one of the other girls caught a train to London for the celebrations. Getting back to Bradford they missed the last train to Keighley so stayed at the home of Kitty Grey, the forewoman who was their overseer on the farm, sleeping on the floor.
The winter of 1947 was particularly harsh with snow deep on the ground and high as the top of the drystone walls staying from January to March. Nesta’s mother wanted her to stop working at the farm and to get out of her dungarees and into skirts again. So once the men started returning to the farm from the war Nesta left and her war work was over.
Later life:
After leaving the farm Nesta got an office job in Keighley but couldn’t settle and wanted something more than just typing. Living at Long Lee, she got a job at Reid’s bookshop at the bottom of Cavendish street. Later she worked for eight years, before she retired, at the reference library with Ian Dewhirst who encouraged her to write and talk about her experiences in the Land Army. Nesta wrote articles for the Dalesman Magazine, Push and Pull Magazine, Keighley News, and the Bradford Telegraph and Argus newspaper.
Nesta died on the 2nd September 2016.
Information sources:
England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915.
England and Wales, Death Index, 1989-2021 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
Ian Billingsley (1999) Girls on the Home Front, pp 100-106, Decien Publications,Salford, UK, ISBN 0 9535156 0 5
Electoral Roll 1947,1948, 1958: West Yorkshire, England, Electoral Registers 1840-1962.
The Second World War Experience Centre, 2 Cross Green,Otley, West Yorkshire,LS21 1HD: provided images and access to oral history archive of Nesta Hoyle.
Image of WLA girls – names – Irene Messan, Mary Redhough, Emma Metcalfe, Margaret Armitage, Joan Davis, Margaret Skidmore, Freda Scholes, Kitty Grey, Marie Gill.
