Days of Pride - First World War - Part Three : War on the home front
The type room in Mc Corquodale's Wolverton

By the middle of 1915 the effects of War were being felt on the Home front. In Wolverton, the London & North Western Railway carriage works was geared to the war effort. Men were producing wooden transport wagons to carry supplies and armaments to the front line and building ambulance trains to carry the wounded. The loss of the young male labour force meant that many young women were employed on the shop floor, repairing shell cases.

Wartime shortages were already having an effect on the cost of living. When McCorquodale’s, Wolverton’s other main employer, awarded a 2/- (10p) war bonus selectively to office staff, it was not surprising that the rest of the mainly female force, objected, as Mabel Brown remembers


The Wolverton Express reported the event in great detail


Jack Rowledge recalls girls on strike from McCorquodale's visiting the homes of those who were still working

The Wolverton Express continued to detail the negotiations to settle the dispute and the actions of the strikers

The girls returned to work on Tuesday 1st June on the promise that the question of the bonus would be settled.
By the afternoon they were out again, claiming that some girls were given different work to that which they’d been doing before the dispute. After more negotiations and meetings the girls returned to work on Thursday 3rd June, 2 weeks after they’d been locked out. Theirs wasn’t a total victory - the girls eventually only got 1/3d (6½p) extra - but the foundations of trade unionism were established and the women had made themselves heard. There were however criticisms of their actions - from soldiers serving in France whose letters were published in the Wolverton Express.

These letters from the front highlighted the tension that existed between those at home and the soldiers whose dreams of excitement and adventure had been realised but in a much more horrible way than they could ever have imagined. In hindsight this letter from a Wolverton man comparing their service to that of the soldiers’ shows the lack of realisation of what was happening away from home.

Queuing to view the ambulance train at Wolverton Works on March 25th 1916


An interior view of an ambulance train






Wounded being loaded on to ambulance train





Ambulance train - exterior view





Children in the snow in Caledonian Road New Bradwell in 1916

This lack of understanding was also encountered by soldiers returning from the Front, as Sid Carroll recalls

It was not surprising that many people at home didn’t understand what was going on, for many soldiers coming home on leave did not talk about their experiences. Alice Gear’s cousin Alf Meacham used to live with her family.


Although they may not have really understood what was going on in the trenches of France and. elsewhere the people of Wolverton and New Bradwell tried to do their bit for the war effort. Nellie Abbey organised a concert party to entertain the troops.

Viva Chappill's mother helped look after wounded soldiers

Lily Dytham (nee Wildman) was at school and the she and her fellow pupils were asked to send eggs to the wounded soldiers and they wrote their names and addresses on them. Later they received letters of thanks from these soldiers

Local people also helped with food supplies including blackberry collection (as the extract from the Wolverton Express reveals and tending allotments as part of school lessons, as James Cox remembers.

The women and girls of their town used their knitting and sewing skills to help the war effort too. The Wolverton Wesleyan Work Party, registered number 1905, for supplying garments for the wounded, was formed on June 24th 1915, following an urgent appeal from the St. John Ambulance Association for garments for wounded soldiers and sailors. It was recommended that a Red Cross Work Party be formed. They decided to order 50 yards of flannelette from London according to the pattern sent by the Association, also to order from Mr. Sharp 2 dozen yards of red flannel, 6 reels of cotton, 9 reels of silks, pins and. needles, 1 lb. of wool and ¼ lb. of knitting cotton. On September 21st the first parcel was sent off containing 12 pillowcases, 8 bed-jackets, 6 flannel nightshirts, 7 flannel day shirts, 2 suits of pyjamas, 5 pairs of day socks, 4 pairs of bed socks and 5 calico nightshirts - a total of 45 articles.

Meanwhile, in the Railway Works, the workers were doing their bit, as the Wolverton Express revealed.


Many, many years after the open day to view the ambulance train referred to in the Wolverton Express article, a poem was found when clearing the house of a deceased railway worker in the town. Signed 'Watcher 1916' the poem clearly illustrates one aspect of the class distinction that existed then between the foremen and the workmen in the Railway Works.

Not all young men rushed headlong to serve their country. Others were more reluctant to join up and when conscription was introduced there were local tribunals that sat to consider appeals against being conscripted. The Wolverton Express carried regular reports of these, including this report of a tribunal that considered the case of someone who claimed to be a conscientious objector.

Wolverton had given homes to several families of Belgian refugees and lavished care on them. Marjorie Cook was a child at the time and remembers the treatment they got. She recalls an incident in the summer of 1916, which followed a winter of severe blizzards when trees and telegraph poles had been blown over.

There had been early hostility to Germans but that dissipated as the war went on. A German family of jewellers in Wolverton had their shop window broken, and another trader hastily posted a notice in his window to say that his name was Swiss and not German. But as the war dragged on, so the doubts grew, nobody saw any glory in the war any more. The loss of loved ones of course was the greatest hardship that any family at home could suffer, but everybody felt the affects of food shortages. Official rationing was not introduced until near the end of the war, but unofficial rationing had been in force for some time before that as May Brooks remembers.

Alice Gear (Marjorie's sister) remembers the kind of food that they used to enjoy in those days - food that would not be greeted with the same enthusiasm by our tastes today.


Whilst people in Wolverton and New Bradwell were tucking into their home-grown vegetables and pluck pie or rabbit or sheep's head stew, their sons and fathers at the front were just dreaming of these delicacies. Just what life was like for them you can see in the next section A Soldier's Life