War Brings Prosperity
Listen to sound files below. Please email us your stories to: castle@fermanagh.gov.uk
| An unexpected, but very welcome, side-effect of the Second World War was that it brought a new prosperity to County Fermanagh. Employment had been created in servicing the variety of air bases in the county. Shops and commerce had prospered owing to the large number of troops that had been based in Fermanagh and agricultural prices had been fixed in a way that benefited many farmers. | |
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Sound File | |
| Title: | Fermanagh Gets on its Feet |
| Speaker: | Ivy Elliot |
| Sound: |
90-20-43.mp3 |
| Description: | Well, the first time we got a cooker, a Wellstead cooker in 1950. Prosperity had come to the country during the War, funnily enough, and a little after it that this country then took off. We were under the Depression on up in to the early war years too, but then the War, even, even the War brought prosperity to this country because there were a lot of soldiers based here, and airmen down at Killadeas, and they had to be fed, and stuff had to be supplied to them, and men round the country supplied potatoes to them, and there was a lot of building going on at that time, there had to be places built for them and so forth, and men supplied sand and building material, and there were big orders from the Government y'see, for that. It really put the country on its feet. Sad for us to think of it, that it took war to do it, but that is true. Then in 1950 the country was far more prosperous too, and cattle were a good price, and people were getting a higher standard of living. Ref: 90-20-43. Interviewer: Sandra Matchett, Fermanagh County Museum. © Fermanagh County Museum. |
Sound File | |
| Title: | War Brings Prosperity |
| Speaker: | Patrick Kerrin |
| Sound: |
90-26-47.mp3 |
| Description: | Everybody would have been very poor pre-war, y'know. Money would've been hard to come by. Its buyin' power would have been good enough, but it would have been hard come by. Prices were very small for cattle, pigs, eggs, milk. I think milk was two and a half old pennies for a gallon. The year the war broke out, they sent to Elliot's shop, here in the townland, with a pound and I got a two hundred bag of yella meal and an eight stone pack of flour and I had change home from that and I don't know whether I had silver but I definitely had coppers, I know I'd change home from that. It shows the, like the buyin' strength now would be, well gee I'd say about forty pound, near enough it for the same two articles. And wages were small, everybody was sort of self-supporting, every person put in a lot of, farmers anyway, put in a lot of crop. They grew their own vegetables, potatoes, cured their own bacon, had their own fowl, that would be for eatin' purposes. There would have been very little bread bought or beef meat bought because they hadn't just got the price of it. I think the first start of the prosperity would've come when the Ministry of Food took over the control of milk and that would've been in October of forty-two, and the Ministry of Agriculture then paid for milk direct to the farmer. And to this day they have a grip on that, they never let, never released it. They have the grip on the milk and at the end of the day they control the price of milk to the housewife. That would have been the first start of prosperity, cattle started to rise in price, pigs, all but of course inflation had caught up, meal was in short supply, but it had arisen in price, wages and all went with it. Ref: 90-26-47. Interviewer: Sandra Matchett, Fermanagh County Museum. © Fermanagh County Museum. |
