Well here we are just bumping nicely into a new year, so it’s an opportune moment to take a bit of a look back at what we did in 2024 as The Suffolk Women's Land Army Memorial Trust.
We managed to pack a lot in last year with the highest amount of event attended with the display that we’ve ever done!
We had a show, event or something land army related every weekend from the last May Bank Holiday where we kicked off what we thought was going to be a six week plan at Mid Suffolk Light Railway and ended up completing our last outing in the second weekend of September at the Haddenham Steam Rally; in between we managed to do 3 more steam rallies, 4 living history events, our first Trust fundraising event and of course the beautiful wedding of our own Trustee Vick Abbott!
We met some wonderful people along the way; we found new land girls to add to our roll of honour and of course the highlight for us was being able to present the Suffolk Certificates of Gratitude to our three VIPs WLA veterans Paddy Reid, Iris Bird and Peggy Worsely who attended our Fundraising event at Saxham Hall in June.
We started to make plans for exciting collaborative work with the Food Museum which will be seen in 2029; our partnership with this fantastic rural life museum will see a major exhibition and associated living history experiences centred around Women's role in agriculture taking shape over the next 4 years, so watch this space!
We have created some fabulous content on our website and social media platforms with Sue and Holly creating some wonderful blogs and articles about slices of land army life in Suffolk.
Our records have grown too through the amazing work that our Lead Researcher Sue Dring has undertaken throughout the year relentlessly tracking down and following up leads that we stumble across or ar given and our roll call of Women's names now sits at around the 1800 mark which is so very satisfying to know!……yet still there are more out there so the search goes on.
Of course the year highlights for me personally also include being invited to attend the RBL’s Remembrance Service in London and to make and lay the wreath for the WLA at the Cenotaph, that’s a snapshot that’s going to live in my memory always.
We’ve had some amazing support from great friends who have helped us out at shows and events along the way so on behalf of fellow trustees Sue Dring, Holly Brega, Vicky Abbott and myself Nicky Reynolds we would like to offer a heartfelt thank you to all those many lovely people who have stepped up, mucked in, contributed to and turned out to help us deliver an amazing year of Suffolk Womens Land Army and in particular Julia Eversden, Michelle Alana, Owen Thompson, Bunty Bowring, Lisa Marie Edwards, Pauline Aa, Fiona Benson, Taff Gillingham, Cherish Watton-Colbrook and Carrie Page who have been constant sources of inspiration and fantastic support.
So, what’s on the cards for 2025?
As many of you that are involved in similar projects and ventures will know, stuff doesn’t happen by itself. Everything we do takes time, thought, planning and effort. The incredible resources and records we have built up over the last 4 years have taken all of that; and they all also take all of those features to maintain and keep healthy.
Our Trust aims are to create a permanent and lasting memorial to the WLA in Suffolk and for us this takes 3 forms; the creation of a physical memorial that’s a tangible tribute to the women that served, the building of a digital Roll of a Honour that is accessible globally and the provision of an educational resource pack for every primary school in Suffolk that teaches our future generations about the importance of the WLA’s part in Social History.
Well, this year is going to see us taking a different path than that tread over the past few years to concentrate on the foundations of our cause and so work on completing our charitable status application begins in more detail as well as stocktaking and health checking our resources and our focus for the year will be working towards the achieving the first of our three aims in launching the educational resource pack.
This means our touring display essentially gets time off so we get the opportunity to work on refining our deliverables; we will still attend local events such as the Aviation Museum weekend in Kesgrave, the Suffolk Military Show and there’s got to be a steam rally sneaked in somewhere just to get our steam smoke fix, but rest assured although we will be taking a rest from public displays we will be very busy behind the scenes creating all kinds of wonderful content for our cause ad you will see the fruits of our labours as they develop
You will also see us creating something special to celebrate Womens History Month in March, so planning for this kicks off right away!
So it remains on me to wish you all a very happy new year with good wishes for health, wealth and happiness and let’s see what marvellous things we can achieve in 2025
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