The Wartime Diary of Anne McEntegart                      

June 1943 - February 1945

What is this book about?

Anne McEntegart wanted to support the War Effort. Her Royal Air Force officer husband was working abroad and her only child was in Canada, evacuated for safety. Aged thirty-eight, Anne left London, and her life as the wife of an officer, to work on the land and deliver milk for Walter Gossling at New Park Farm, just outside the village of Brockenhurst, in the New Forest.

Though not an official member of the Women's Land Army, Anne milked cows and stacked corn alongside the land girls on the farm.

Engagingly detailing the brim-full days of farm life during the build-up to the D-Day and after, this book celebrates the people and places - not to mention a wayward pony - which made up the wartime Brockenhurst community.

The Milk Lady at New Park Farm is a World War Two diary of farmwork, friendship and fulfilment among the ponies and corn sheaves of the New Forest.

The diary is illustrated throughout with photos from the time, some artwork by Anne McEntegart, as well as milk notes kept by the Milk Lady. Black and white illustrations by Evelyn Dunbar have also been used to support the diary text. Evelyn Dunbar was the only salaried British woman war artist during World War Two, employed by the War Artworks Advisory Committee. Her detailed work gives an authentic record of the work women did during the war, especially the land girls.

The Dunbar illustrations used in this diary are from A Book of Farmcraft by Michael Greenhill (author) and Evelyn Dunbar (illustrator), published in 1942 and designed to help the novice working on the land, and A Farm Dictionary by Derek H. Chapman (compiler) and Evelyn Dunbar (illustrator) published later, in 1953.

          Anne on one of the milk carts.