"Lend a hand with the potato harvest" by Eileen Evans, Post-1943

Catalogue ref: INF 3/101

The image depicts workers, in an oversized basket, collecting the potato harvest, with the slogan ‘Lend a hand with the potato harvest at a farming holiday camp'. The artist was probably Eileen Evans, who produced a very similar design with the slogan ‘Lend a Hand on the Land'. In May 1943 Advertiser's Weekly mentions that 'Lend a Hand on the Land' is to form the basis of a new window display.

The ‘Lend a Hand on the Land' campaign looked to attract urbanites to use their holidays to work in rural areas. It first went national in 1945, and ran into the post-war years, even running in conjunction with the ‘Holidays at Home' campaign. People ‘discovered that farm work was a dignified, and notably cheap, way of taking a holiday in wartime', continuing a long-term trend, where the industrial workforce would help with the annual harvest. Hop picking in Kent was still an annual event for many East-end Londoners until well after the Second World War.