Ellen Turner
Born around 1921 (Eiza Cooper’s daughter)

We lived in a wagon with my Mum, Dad and brothers but then my Uncle and Dad brought some land at Wood Green and we all had places built. My Granny had a bungalow built. We got used to living in a house after a bit, we just got used to it.

It was a different time then, it was more better then it is now. You could go, do what you liked; we didn’t have to pay for water, to go to the toilet and everything, nothing like that.

My sister and me all used to work on farms; we used to pick up tatoes and all that in different places. It ain’t long ago that I finished. Thirty five years I worked there, we used to walk five miles a day to work. We used to pull spring onions, pick beans, all sorts, tatoes was our job. You could take your time, pick up what you liked, better time than what it is now.

People ain’t got it in them to work so hard these days, that’s the trouble. People these days would be lost if there wasn’t any of this money going around like there is these days.

I used to pick my sister up from Ibsley really early in the morning and that, then I lost me sister. We used to have to get there by 8.30 am but it was five miles away and leave at 3.30 pm. They use a lot of machinery these days, that’s what they do.

My youngest brother and other brother had fifteen years between them. All my children had three or four years between them. When we were travelling around our diet was much better than now. We had lots of fresh fruit and vegetables we never had to pay for no fresh fruit, I grow my own now.

My husband and I met seventy or eighty years ago in the forest somewhere and I was born in Nomansland, I had seven children my youngest one when I was forty.

Eiza Cooper with her Grandchildren including some of Ellen’s
Photo courtesy of Ellen Turner (Eiza’s daughter), Photographer Jack Loveland