“When the Great War began in 1914 the riverside village of Bursledon was a very quiet place. The shipbuilding industry ceased when the wooden men o’war were no longer needed by the Navy and strawberry growing had become the principal occupation.

“The lanes were free of traffic except for the occasional horse-drawn vehicle. Our house in an old orchard had no gas or electricity or piped water but a deep well. We had paraffin lamps, a kitchen range which burned coal and fireplaces which consumed logs.

“We had vegetables and many kinds of fruit. The shop/post office delivered groceries, and bread, milk and meat arrived at the door. We went by train to Southampton for special purchases and clothes.

“Our doctor came four miles by pony and trap when called and a travelling chemist on a tricycle – like the later ‘Stop Me and buy one ice cream seller – had a box of remedies. He wore a bowler hat. Tuberculosis was incurable and pneumonia a killer with no drugs to treat it.

“The young men went to war and older men and some women into factories. Three of my mother’s brothers were in France; one was killed on The Somme at 21.

“My father, in the Royal Navy Air Service, was at Calshot, the seaplane base. One of our neighbours, an RAMC doctor, walked daily to Netley hospital through woods and fields but he was killed soon after going to France, leaving a young wife and three small children.

“There were many such tragedies. I remember the men in Netley hospital with their blue uniforms, some on crutches, and some with empty sleeves.

“It was a terrible war. The rector called regularly on parishioners who needed comfort as the death toll rose.”

from “Hampshire Within Living Memory”, Hampshire Federation of Women’s Institutes