A Year on a Mechanised Farm in Norfolk

Ploughing and sowing, baling and hoeing. Norfolk farmers produce food for a nation at war, aided by the latest farm machinery, but not altogether replacing the horse or labourer.

1940 in Sedgeford, Norfolk on Wethered Manor Farm, they are using mechanised equipment to farm the land. With a country at war, and a blockade around our shores, food production at home was of paramount importance. With East Anglia’s flat and featureless landscape, Norfolk farmers were relied upon to produce for a nation. And as labour was short because many farm workers had been enlisted, mechanised equipment was essential to produce on such a large-scale.

William Newcombe-Baker farmed at Burnham Thorpe and Sedgeford. The lorry seen in the film belonged to the Fakenham firm of Dewing & Kersey, Flour Millers. The town where the men fill the car with petrol may be Fakenham which is about 8 miles form Burnham Thorpe. The sugar beet factory is most likely to be Wissington or King's Lynn.