This scan is the cover image of the named book and author, initially published in 1991 there were five reprints in the first decade of the 21st century. On page 84 the photo is reproduced again, with the following text ‘break time for no fewer than 15 harvesters in a wheat field in the Thames valley. The horses are wearing shaft harness, which means that carting has started. The boys task will be to lead the horses between the stooks as they are gathered up. The young man with the gun, probably the farmer’s son, will shoot rabbits escaping from the stooks. Hobnail boots are still being worn, making this almost certainly a pre-war photo’.
This got me thinking about the school summer holidays just underway in 2025. As a child I remember the six weeks as being called ‘harvest holidays’, this in a rural area. This term related to the fact that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries many children just didn’t attend school in August and September because their families wanted them to help with the corn harvest, so the six weeks were really a giving-in to that fact. Indeed, I helped with the harvest as a teenager, as a tractor driver, no horses by then.
The term ‘summer holidays’ reflects the fact that very few children today help with the harvest and that people cling to the idea that August is high summer.
(to be continued).