Bedfordshire Hostels
Whipsnade
Bedfordshire Women's Land Army > Bedfordshire Hostels
| Location: |
Opposite "The Chequers" pub, close to Whipsnade Zoo (next to
gamekeepers' cottages). OS Ref: TL00991775 |
| Description: | Hutment accommodating 16 land girls. |
| Opened: | 15 February 1943 |
| Closed: | c. 1944 (?) |
The Chequers pub, opposite the Whipsnade hostel 
The Gamekeepers Cottage where the land girls were served their meals. |
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More information about this hostel
- First Warden: Derry Seymour.
- First forewoman: Miss Daisy Beard.
- Just before the D-Day landings, the Land Girls awoke to find the whole of the green completely covered with troops who had arrived silently by night. It was one of countless collecting points, before the invasion of Europe.
- "You heard wolves howling through the night" Gwendoline Hounslow Morgan nee Morris (www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A5505789 for more details).
- Land girls complained that whereas the POWs were transported in covered vehicles when going out to the fields, the land girls had to sit in open lorries, even in the cold weather. As a result of a protest march they conducted, the hostel was closed down. Some girls went to Leighton Buzzard, but most to the Kensworth hostel.
'Farm Sunday' Parade, Wardown Park,Luton, June 1943
(l-r)
Mary Hickey (x)
and Daisy Beard , Forewoman,
leading the parade.
Location of Whipsnade hostel
OS 6" map 1950 Bedfordshire sheet XXXII SW
More Pictures of Whipsnade Land Girls
Stuart Antrobus Historian/Author
Page last updated: 28th February 2014