The women, who are now in their 80s and 90s, were welcomed by a full three-hour peal of the Abbey’s bells. A quartet from the County Music Service played in the People’s Chapel and at 2.30pm the choir processed in with Rector, Canon Sue Booys, the Diocesan Rural Officer, Canon Glyn Evans, Bishop of Dorchester, the Rt Revd Colin Fletcher and the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, Tim Stevenson.

Angela Huth, author of the novel Land Girls, spoke and Bishop Colin gave an inspiring sermon. At one point those who were not Land Girls stood up to applaud those who were.

After a roof raising rendering of ‘We plough the fields and scatter’ and the Land Girls’ Song a tea party was laid on for the women, as a thank you from Oxfordshire’s farming community. Tea, sandwiches and cake fuelled happy reminiscing.

The women told stories of hard work in all weathers and conditions and also recalled how it had been the happiest time of their lives. One of those women was Aileen Taylor, who is now 91 and lives in a residential home in Wantage. She joined the WLA in 1940 and started her service at Little Stoke Manor, Oxfordshire. There she looked after shire horses and lived in a cottage with five other girls. She says: ‘Although some of the farm hands had been drafted into the forces, there were a good number of us working in the fields. We were joined by university students after term had ended. It was a lovely summer, a very happy time.’

In 1941, after a month’s training at Shipton-under-Wychwood she began working at Ditchley Park, the home of Ronald Tree MP. She said: ‘The Churchill family would regularly come and spend a weekend at the mansion. Mr Tree would put on a film and let everyone who worked on the estate watch it. It was in this great big room which they had done up as a cinema. There would be members of the cabinet visiting and I would be sat there in my Land Girls’ uniform.’

She recalled her daily milk round, which would always end at the mansion, and how, if Churchill was around, soldiers would surround the building.

The deliveries took Mrs Taylor and her colleague Betty around Charlbury, Stonesfield and Fawler, before they would return to the dairy to wash and sterilise the empties.

They would snatch a sandwich for lunch then bottle up again to deliver milk around the estate, to the labourers’ cottages and the mansion itself. Finally they would go to the estate office, where they would read aloud to the staff every delivery they had made that day.
‘Again the empties had to be washed in deep soapy tubs at the dairy, before rinsing and sterilizing,’ said Mrs Taylor. ‘Finally we would go back to our tiny cottage on the estate, which had no electricity or indoor sanitation. We worked 13 days on and then had one day off, all through the year.’

Her service at Ditchley came to an abrupt end after a year when she and Betty decided to allow each other a Saturday off to do their Christmas shopping. They had not asked their boss, a Mr Roach, about the arrangement, knowing it would be vetoed.

‘Mr Roach disliked having to employ women after his milk man had joined the RAF,’ she said. ‘On my return I was called upon by him and given the sack. Knowing I would be home for Christmas, I was not down-hearted.’ Mrs Taylor continued to serve as a Land Girl, doing more milk rounds in Oxford and working in the vegetable garden at Headington High School for Girls.

She resigned from the WLA when her father, the Rt Revd John Taylor, became Bishop of the Isle of Man in 1943, and insisted she go with him to look after her sick mother.

But she remembers her Land Girl days very fondly. ‘I loved it. The cottage we were living in had no heating, the water was cold and you had to go down the garden path to the loo, but when you are young you don’t make a fuss. It was the first time I had lived away from home.’