Carbrooke Heritage News December 2014

 

At our last Heritage meeting we had a number of new faces, which was great. We arranged to meet at Norwich Archives on 12^th November, although there weren’t many of us, we enjoyed looking through the records and discovering new things.

The whole country has been remembering those killed or maimed by World Wars 1 and 2 (mainly men). The Heritage group have been considering the effects on people, society and agriculture locally. What about the women left behind, as a child I was aware that ‘old ladies’ outnumbered ‘old men’! This could be explained by the fact that more females are born than males, and that generally men die at a younger age than women, but the obvious difference in numbers must have had other causes too. In my own family, this was illustrated by my three great aunts who lived together, the oldest lost her sweetheart during WW1 and never married, the next married at a relatively older age, to an older man, and had no children, the youngest did marry to a contemporary, and had no children either.

In Carbrooke, when we first arrived, of a small church congregation of 10-15, four of these were unmarried older ladies, the backbone of church activities at the time. During the middle decades of the 20^th century, in all parts of Britain, older unmarried women were greatly involved in community events and church functions.

These women had to face up to the fact that large numbers of two generations of their menfolk had been killed during war, and many those who returned were physically or mentally maimed by the horrors they had experienced. The women were faced with a shortage of marriageable-aged men. Many were unable to marry, others may have married older men or perhaps partners who were not suitable.

With a shortage of men, women also had to fill in, in society, and found they had to work, often taking up employment which would not previously been available to them. Women were increasingly employed in teaching and nursing, and they involved themselves in the community. It would also be interesting to discover whether a larger than average number of women became nuns at this time.

Children may have been bought up by single mothers;- war widows, by mothers widowed by an older husband, or in unhappy families of un–matched parents. Can the subtle changes in society obvious by the end of 20^th century, have their roots following the wide-scale loss of men from the population.

If you have any stories to tell of the women in your families affected directly or indirectly by 20^th century wars, please get in touch, they appear to be under reported. Some women may have been devastated by the prospect of never being able to marry. Others may have embraced the unimagined opportunities available to them.  

Our next Heritage meeting will be held on Wednesday 21^st January at 7pm in the Village Hall committee room. All welcome, we don’t have ‘members’, so just come along.