Mr Michael Garrod

I was Born in Thuxton, May 1939, 4 months before the start of World War Two. My father was a farmer, he and my mother moved to Thuxton in 1933 when they got married, before then my mother was a school teacher but she had to give that up when she got married, as only single ladies were allowed to be school teachers. I was the eldest of 3, the other two coming along at 4-year intervals. The house had no electricity, running water or telephone and we had a privy (toilet) at the bottom of the garden.

Most of my early years were dictated by World War Two, when the war came, we had things like total blackouts, we had gas masks; my gas mask being a small baby was totally encompassing me, it was something they put a small child in front, inside, they would zip them in and had bellows on the outside which the parents were supposed to keep pumping, to keep the child alive. Goodness knows what happened if the parents died, I suppose the child just suffocated.

Everyone seemed to be in uniform, my father was in the Home Guard. We lived quite near Thuxton station so there were trains all the time, all the time. - every 20 minutes. The Dereham and Wymondham line was double tracked then.

In 1942 the Yanks came, our American cousins. Shipdham airfield opened and about 3000 young Americans descended upon the sleepy villages in mid Norfolk, a bit of a culture change I suppose. Many of them came on the Queen Mary to Liverpool, then they came by train and ended up in Thuxton. They marched off to Shipdham airfield. So, most of the life then was dictated by the fact that there were aeroplanes in the sky all the time. We had an evacuee boy called Geoff Levett who came from Kent, Bexleyheath in 1940 when they thought London was going to get bombed. He stayed for about 6 months and then he went home again. He came back in 1942 when the blitz really went to town and they were doing the Baedeker raids on market towns all over the country. After the war I went to stay with the family in Bexleyheath, which was a bit of an adventure because I was only 5 or 6yrs old and my mother put me on the train at Thuxton station with a label in my button hole. I sat in the guard van and ended up at Bexley Heath, goodness knows how, obviously someone took care of me. I had a week there and the high spot of the week was that they had a flushing toilet. Wow, what a life. Mrs Levett put me on the train again and I got back to Thuxton station and I walked home. I spent a lot of time sitting on Thuxton station as a small child, ‘bludging’ (‘bludge’, means to scrounge) sweets from the American servicemen because obviously sweets were on ration and we were only allowed a quarter pound a week and sweets were pretty boring, mostly sherbet lemons. But they had chewing gum! Also, during the war my mother had a sister who lived in Canada and she used to send us food parcels with exotic things in them like Hershey Bars and peanut butter, which I love peanut butter, even today.

Then in 1944 I started school at Garvestone and used to walk with a gang of kids from Thuxton and then we moved Garvestone to Manor Farm. We had a bit of a year because I went to school from Thuxton in the morning and my mother said “ well when you come home tonight if we are not here we have moved to Garvestone” and I said “all right “ she said “you will find us” and I said “yeah fair enough.“ So I walked home from school to Thuxton and low and behold they weren’t there, so I walked across the fields back to Garvestone and she said “Oh you found us then” and I said “yeah you can’t lose me that easily.”

We used to get the odd V1 doodlebug that used to miss London or Norwich or anywhere else that it was aimed at and used to hurtle over the countryside, it was alright if the engine was going, if the engine stopped you could be in a bit of trouble. I can remember one night hiding under the kitchen table because one was above us and the engine cut out, it crashed on a farm house in Whinburgh. That was about the end of the war, we were really disappointed when the war ended and the Americans went because things were a bit boring then because everything was still on ration although the blackouts finished but even things like coal, clothes and furniture were on ration. It was a bit of a dull old time but then we had had a dull old time so it wasn’t too bad. In 1944 a liberator bomber from North Pickenham crashed up on the Mattishall Road at Garvestone and I can remember my mother and I walking up there seeing this parachute hanging in a tree, all the 10 crew were killed and unfortunately 2 firemen from the base at Shipdham who went to see if they could put the fire out also died. Later on, in 2012 we did some fund raising and we unveiled a memorial on the open space behind the village hall at Garvestone to commemorate the crash. We had quite a few dignitaries from the American Services and the American Embassy in London attend the opening. Some of the families of the deceased came over from America. That was a very emotional day for everyone concerned. I didn’t realise when I kicked this off of what I was getting myself into. The idea at the beginning was to have a stone to remember these young men and leave it at that, not realising they all had families in the States who some of them didn’t even know how their relatives had died. The memorial is still there today and we are still in contact with some of the relatives.

Being brought up on a farm I used to do work on the farm because obviously you were free labour and I became what was commonly called then a ‘Holdge boy’ which you can actually go in the Norfolk dictionary and find out what a ‘Holdge boy’ was. I learnt how to drive a tractor when I was about 8.

Things in the village: there was Sunday school and we used to go to Sunday school and I was in the church choir, I used to sing treble in the church choir. We had a youth club in the old Garvestone village hall and I know one year we did a pantomime, I was Buttons in Cinderella and we travelled about in the back of a cattle float to other villages, we set up and performed the pantomime. We also had a sea scout troop in Garvestone, don’t ask why as we were 30 miles from the sea.

In 1950 I was fortunate enough to pass the elven plus and then went to Swaffham Grammar School, we used to leave Thuxton station at 7.15 in the morning, change at Dereham and get to Swaffham at about 9am and then the return journey, home after 5pm. The interesting thing about that journey from Dereham to Swaffham was that we all were segregated in compartments, in a non-corridor carriage and they used to lock us in at Dereham and let us out again at Swaffham, needless to say we soon made keys for the locks and unlocked the doors as soon as we left Dereham station and used to do all sorts of ‘Jolly Jameson’ things.

The Americans came back again in the late 50’s and we had a couple of American boys in my form at school, Sculthorpe then was the biggest American base in Europe, so we still had lots of aeroplanes and that was interesting, it gave me a lifetimes interest in aeroplanes. I left school in 1955 and the head master said “I suppose you are going back on the farm, are you?” and I said “No I’m not, I am fed up with it”, by the time I was 15 I had had enough of the farm. I joined the Air force as a boy apprentice and joined up in 1956, at the age of 16 and went off to Credenhill Camp, Herefordshire for the next 18 months until I passed out as a junior technician. I got posted to Royal Air Force at St Faith which is now Norwich Airport. In that time, we had the first, second and third pandemic of Asian flu, it was prevalent in 1957 and I unfortunately managed to get that, as did most of us, which turned to pneumonia and I spent 3 weeks in hospital and got sent home on sick leave. My mother was most surprised to see me as she didn’t even know I had been in hospital because nobody had told her. After St Faith I had 3 months in Nicosia in Cyprus, we took a squadron out there from St Faith. I came back to St Faith again and after a little while I got posted to Singapore, which was a bit of an eye opener, from a little old boy from the Norfolk village aged 19, it was great fun and had leaves in Hanang, fortnights in Hong Kong, which does colour your life a bit. When I got back, I got posted to Waterbeach in Cambridge, unfortunately my father died suddenly in 1963. I left the air force and had a complete career change at the age of 23 when I became a farmer.

Farming in 1963 was considerably different than farming today, it was far more about growing food and being heavily subsidised. We had capital grants for growing out hedges. Most of the politicians in power had been through two world wars and at the start of each we were very dependent on imports of food and we nearly got caught out twice, so the governments after the 2nd world war decided that we should never be in that situation again. We had grants for draining land, grubbing out hedges, putting lime on the land, acreage payments for growing crops and putting buildings up. In the last 60yrs all that sort of support has disappeared as the emphasis changed not on growing food and supporting the ecology, wildlife and thinking more about the planet in general and we are going back to importing food again. Watch this space as things might change in the next few years.

In 1963 the horses had gone from the farm, we were using tractors without cabs, so we just sat outside, regardless of the weather. You got sunburnt, frozen, wet and everything else. Tractor design has gradually improved over the years. There was a lot of fatalities over the 60’s and 70’s with tractors over turning. A lot was put into improving tractor safety; roll bars were fitted, so they did not trap the driver then they moved onto fitting them with safety cabs. Once we were in that enclosed space, we got lots of goodies like heaters and air conditioning and wirelesses to listen to. Now they have GPS, electric push button controls to change gear, move levers and to make the hydraulics system work. Modern machinery now can be monitored from a dealer and they will see something on their screen away from the farm and they will know if the tractor needs a new part. They can shut the tractor down and send a mechanic out straight away, so the driver doesn’t really know if there is a problem until the van turns up on the field to mend it. Another very good safety design. Also, robots are being developed for market garden crops. These will go off to work and return to base to have their batteries recharged. We will see what the future brings.

When I came home to farm there were a lot of small family farms The big estates had mostly tenanted farmers, all their land was let out to tenants. In the last 60yrs this has changed completely as they have taken all their land back and they are farming it themselves with fewer staff, bigger machinery and larger fields. All in the chase to keep the cost of food down, to benefit the consumers. This farm was about 100 acres. We also had a tenanted farm at Thuxton, the tenancy was in my father’s name, so when he died, we had to give that farm up. I decided I would specialise in pigs which is a 7 day a week job. I kept pigs on the farm for 40yrs. I gradually improved the herd until Garvestone had one of the top 30% pig herds in the country. We won prizes for our pigs, we exported pigs to Europe, Russia. I had customers in Belgium and Holland. When I reached the retiring age of 65, I had told the family the pigs would go, the family never believed me. I have managed without them for over 15 years now. We now live in the building that used to be my maternity ward. I have spent the last 70 years in this building one way or another either asleep with a sow giving birth, or asleep in front of the television. We moved out of the farm house in 2005,15 years ago and my son and his family live there now. We live near each other but don’t work together.

In 1967 I met my now wife Carol in Dereham, she was a Dereham girl. We got married in 1968 in Dereham Church and Canon Plummer married us. We had our wedding reception in a restaurant in Dereham, which no longer exists now. I think it is where Specsavers is now. We had 50 guests at 10 shillings a head (50p) my father-in-law jibed a bit at paying an extra 10 shillings for the cake stand. All my mates came to the wedding but I had to come home to feed the pigs half way through, so I had to leave my new blushing bride with all the guests and I came home, fed the pigs and then went back again. We came back here and then went on honeymoon to Yorkshire to stay with a friend. We had one glorious night in Batley variety club watching Matt Monro. My son James was born in 1969 and Sarah my daughter was born in 1971. They both had their primary education at Garvestone School, like myself. Both my granddaughters have also had their education at Garvestone, so we have had three generations go through the school. Both myself and Carol went to grammar school but when you reached 5th form you were expected to get a job, it was only the very privileged that went onto 6th form and then possibly to university. We did not do that but we are very proud that both our children went to university. We worked hard to give them a good secondary education. They were the first members in our families to go to university.

As my agricultural life progressed, I joined quite a few societies. I was involved in village life, parish council, charity trustee, the church and various other things. In those days there was a very vibrant village life. We had whist drives and other things in the village hall. Remember the cold war was on in the 60’s life wasn’t all a bowl of roses but we did have a good time. I was involved in pig discussion groups and what my wife calls ‘the tractor club’ which was the farm machinery club, which was run by Eaton College. We had talks on the latest things in farm mechanisation. I still belong to the farm machinery club. In the 1970’s the village seemed to be full of young children who all went to the village school. The village children went to the village school, so all the parents met at the school gate It is different now, they whisk them off in their cars to various places. You would never see a car up at the school when our children where there. The social life of the village revolved around the school and the church and a very vibrant life it was, we always seemed to be out. We would go to parties on a Saturday night, I could go if one of the sow’s wasn’t giving birth. We gradually built the farm up over the last 60 years with the pigs and I have been involved in the arable farming partnerships with other people and still am. I think this year will be my 55th harvest. There is always something to do and years come and years go. We have good years and we have bad years but we have never gone bust, near it sometimes! I think in the 40 years with my children we have had one holiday.

After the pigs went, Carol and myself started having holidays. We have been to Paris, Canada, America twice, various parts of Europe. It is something we could not do when we had the pigs to look after. When we went to the States in 2014, we met up with some of the relatives in Washington who had come over for the memorial unveiling. We also stayed with some who lived in Navedo. It is heart-warming that the next generations of the Americans still have taken this on and still correspond with us.

We don’t have a shop now in Garvestone, when I was young, we had two shops, we had a pub, they have all gone. We do still have a primary school and a church, which is in very good condition. We do have a centre but it’s not the same as it used to be. Village life as it was has disappeared. All the shops are now in the town and everyone has use of a car. When I was at primary school there was only one car in Garvestone. The Dereham to Wymondham line goes past the farmhouse, that was a double track, which got reduced to single track with Dr Beeching’s cuts in the early 60’s and then shut all together, In the late 70’s and early 80’s the Norfolk Railway managed to get some money together and purchased the line between Wymondham and Dereham and its has been going strongly ever since. They have diesel passenger trains. I can stand in my garden and watch them go past.

Norfolk has changed immeasurably in my lifetime and it will change again. I was brought up to a constant roar of aeroplanes in the sky during the 2nd World War. It is peaceful now.