Voices from the past report on the changes in rural life

The East Riding Archives have published digital images of people working on the land in the first half of the 20th century.

More than 60 voices tell their stories about the Hull Blitz, how tractors led to the decline of horse farming and the impact of the Great Depression on the agricultural economy.

The first-hand accounts were all collected as part of the Skidby Mill Oral History Project, conducted in 1999 and 2000.

The recordings were preserved by the East Riding Archives team and uploaded to the project website.

The voices include that of Bob Leveridge, who was born in Skidby in 1928.

He didn’t like the “new” tractors.

“I used two horses, I plowed the field and walked up and down countless times,” he said in the recording.

“I tell you what, a tractor was a cold thing. With horses you had to walk a lot, but on a tractor you just sat there. Sometimes you were frozen.”

Heather Pritchett, who was born in Great Hatfield in 1927, remembered the day the village got its first telephone box.

“It was placed in the village square in the center of the village,” she said.

“I remember it was quite fun going there and it seemed like with a few pennies I could call someone in another village or something, but there weren’t many people who even had a telephone.”

The footage includes farmers, domestic servants and windmill workers in a time of much change.

Olivia Northrop of the project said the advances of this era had completely changed the way many rural communities lived.

Ms Northrop said: “These recorded memories are all presented by the people who lived through it all with humour, courage and skill.”

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