“I remember the German bombers going over.”

- Stephanie Davies, farmer’s daughter (Rumney)

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Stephanie Davies (Nanette Hepburn)

“We cycled or walked everywhere,” says Stephanie Davies of Upper Newton Farm as she recalls life on the Levels and the disruption that war brought.

Hand milking the Davies family’s dairy herd and running a milk round without electricity (power didn’t reach these parts until the 1950s) was hard enough. But managing the little farm after it took a direct hit from a German bomb didn’t make life easier. “One cow, she was blown out of the shed by the blast! They found her wandering up the next morning with the chain still round her neck. Alive!”

The nonagenarian farmer’s daughter remembers the itinerant reen cleaners who came to stay once a year: “We’d put a bed up for them in the barn. They were very strong men and they kept the reens clean with just a spade and a fork.”

She watched army lorries bringing unexploded ordnance onto the Levels (“they must have dumped them in the mud on what we called the lynches”) and generous GIs dishing out sweets. “We always did very well for food despite the rationing, but,” she admits, “it made such a difference to the work when we finally had the electricity.”

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Life on the Levels

Life on the Levels Interview

Stephanie is the daughter of farmers from Rumney. She remembers the war and how it affected the area; her family home was bombed and they had to move out to other accommodation. She remembers the Home Guard on the seawall and many other fascinating details of this area.

“My father was an Italian prisoner of war.”

- Mike Mazzoleni, former Llanwern steel worker (Whitson)

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Mike Mazzoleni (Emma Drabble)

▶ Watch interview with Mike Mazzoleni

“My father was an Italian prisoner of war and he was brought over to Llantarnam, a large Italian POW camp, after being captured in Europe somewhere. Every day the prisoners would be allocated to certain farms in this area. And after several appearances on Court Farm here in Whitson, they decided to keep him. So he never returned to Italy. And then that’s when he met my mother at the local dance down at the Farmer’s Arms in Goldcliff, and that’s how I came to be in Whitson today.”

Mike followed in his father’s footsteps by also working at Court Farm, Whitson, as a young man: “I’ve followed in his footsteps. I loved to work. I used to work on Court Farm… we could start baling at 8 o’clock in the evening. Oh my god it was hard work. I didn’t need anything to put me to sleep in those days, I was so tired. I had a job to climb the stairs… looking back on it, we had nothing, but god, I loved it.”

“All of a sudden in the 1950s they decided to build Llanwern [steelworks] and Court Farm was compulsory purchased… the saddest day of my life because they had an auction. I had to go back in the evening to open the gates… and it was silent. No cows, no chickens, and I cried like a baby.

“Strange thing is I started working at Llanwern. My dad made a few calls to some Italian friends in Newport, and I found my way into the steelworks.”

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Life on the Levels

“It’s all changed now.”

- Gordon (and Linda) Shears, farmer (St Brides)

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Gordon and Linda Shears (Emma Drabble)

▶ Watch interview with Gordon and Linda Shears

The Second World War made a big impact on Cherry Orchard Farm at St Brides.

One day a Luftwaffe reconnaissance plane flew low over the farmhouse: “I waved at the pilot!” recalls Gordon. Another time a landmine fell, blocking the lane. Military trucks drove onto the sea wall, belching out smoke screens to shield the docks from enemy bombers while US GIs marched by, heading back to camp at Tredegar House. The spoils of war included kitchen spoons dropped in the pigswill, spent bullets from the nearby firing range, and little silk parachutes from military practise targets.

Gordon has lived at Cherry Orchard Farm since his father, injured First World War veteran William, moved here with his wife Beatrice in 1934. Gordon learned how to thatch the hay rick, work their cart horses, Blossom, Flower, Diamond and Bonnie, and how to haul a half-drowned cow out of the reen (the beast survived the ordeal).

He remembers rushing through floods on a double decker bus, watching an old man fish for eels using an umbrella as a keep net, and the business of living below sea level: “At night you could hear the sea,” remembers Linda. “It’s changed a lot.”

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Life on the Levels

Life on the Levels Interview

Gordon grew up on a farm in St Brides and reflects on farming life in the 1940s and 50s, witnessing the transition from horse to tractor power, holes in the sea wall and German planes flying overhead during the war.