Audrey, 87, remembers her Land Army days (From Witney Gazette)

Audrey, 87, remembers her Land Army days

12:16pm Thursday 4th September 2008 in Witney By David Horne

ANOTHER West Oxfordshire woman has remembered her days in the famous Land Army of the Second World War.

Audrey Tremaine, 87, lives at the Cotswold Home at Bradwell Village, near Burford.

She says she was thrilled to receive her badge and certificate from Prime Minister Gordon Brown in recognition of her service as one of the thousands of surviving members of the army of women drafted in to boost the country's wartime effort on the land.

She was at Rectory Farm, Westwell, a few miles from Burford, where there had been no milking cattle, but with the arrival of six evacuee children, milker cows were brought in to feed the growing 'family'.

One of her many jobs was to milk them, and also to make butter and clotted cream. During the war, the farm also bred rabbits, the meat going to Castle's Butchers, in Burford, while the fur went to make busby hats for the soldiers.

Miss Tremaine was born in 1921 at Upton farm, near Burford, and lived there until the death of her father in 1940. She lived and worked at Rectory Farm till 1969, and then for 12 years as matron at Burford Grammar School.

A letter from the Queen Mother, thanking her for her efforts, and her Land Army badge are in Burford's Tolsey Museum.

Miss Tremaine joins several other former Land Army women who have received the Prime Minister's badge - Joan Clark and Daphne Valters, both of Witney, as reported in the Witney Gazette on August 13.