Stuart Antrobus
Bedfordshire Women's Land Army Home
Stuart Antrobus is a history graduate and part-time adult education tutor. He
has taught for the Workers Education Association (WEA) and for Bedford
Retirement Education Centre. He specialises in English social history of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries and has written a number of articles for both local and national historical
magazines. He is best known in Bedfordshire and its surrounding counties for his
illustrated talks on a range of topics including Nineteenth Century Elementary
Schools, the History of Public Libraries, Lady Denman and the Rise of the
Women's Institutes, Life in Bedfordshire During the First World War and Life on
the Home Front During the Second World War.
His interest in the Women's Land Army arose out his research into life on the Home Front during the Second World War.
From 2001 to 2004 he was employed on the Heritage Lottery-funded oral history project in Bedfordshire, "Changing Landscapes, Changing Lives" and is oral history consultant to Moggerhanger Park. Other research work has included both documentary and oral history research for Bedfordshire County Council on their industrial heritage sites at Stevington Windmill and Bromham Mill, Bedford.
As well as extensive research in the major national and local archives on the Women's Land Army in the 1940s, Stuart has conducted a personal oral history project, talking to scores of former land girls. Through these and a number of reminiscence sessions in Bedford with both private farm and "War Ag" - employed former Land Girls in Bedfordshire, he has gained a unique insight into their lives and conditions. Through donations of photographs and other documents, he has built up a broad-ranging archive which he has used to illustrate and inform this Internet publication.
Well over 180 women who were Bedfordshire land girls have completed questionnaires. Through research in the Imperial War Museum archives plus "The Land Girl" magazine, local newspapers and personal photo albums, he has "recovered" the maiden names of over 3,400 land girls who served in the county between 1 June 1939 and 30 November 1950. Eighteen detailed, tape-recorded interviews by Stuart with former Bedfordshire Land Girls have been deposited in the Sound Archive of the Imperial War Museum.
His research is on-going and if you can help to fill in gaps and provide further information on Bedfordshire Women's Land Army, please respond by using the interactive email facility below. He is also available to give talks to interested groups.
His definitive history of the Women's Land Army in Bedfordshire is published as "We wouldn't have missed it for the world".
E-mail: stuart.antrobus@bedscc.gov.uk
or write to Stuart Antrobus, c/o Bedford Central Library, Harpur Street, Bedford, MK40 1PG
or leave a brief telephone message and your number, for Stuart Antrobus, via
Bedford Central Reference Library: Tel. 01234 270 102
Page last updated: 18th September 2008
