An American car for English farms: Friday Ladies bring home the harvest

• 

Most of the photographs we publish here are in some way representative of a vanished way of life, but this one in particular captures a lifestyle which many today might find incomprehensible. We'd think all the women in this picture rose with the lark and were out in the fields for long hours, day after day, harvesting the hay from July to September. Now, with so many advances in agricultural machinery to reduce the need for human labour, they'd have rather more time for leisure. Still, they look happy enough here, and their driver looks every bit the archetypal bumpkin in his smock and tall hat. We have only to travel back 100 years, or perhaps not even that, to arrive at this scene, which was probably to be found in Kent or one of the other Home Counties around London, depending on whether the car's numberplate is "KE" or "XE."

We're sure we're looking at an American car, though we don't know exactly what. In truth, it looks substantially larger than such vehicles as the likes of Dodge, Chevrolet and Overland were producing in the 1920s, so we're half-inclined to suppose that this was actually quite an expensive car which was bought second-hand by a farmer at several years old and a much reduced price. The size is clearly to its advantage, as it has a lot of people and hay to carry, and the torquey engine will have been appreciated if it was ever taken out into the fields.

Thousands of the vintage cars which are now in preservation have been recovered from old farm outbuildings, and it's interesting to think that this would be how many of them spent their final days prior to abandonment and rediscovery. If only more rural folk had been equipped with cameras, some of our vehicles would doubtless have some fascinating tales to tell of country life.

Words: Zack Stiling
Photograph: Stiling Collection

Kommentar abgeben...