Listen to the track:

🎶 Wembury 1921

A traditional English folk ballad about Wembury in the 1921 census, the first since the ending of the  First World War. Farming continues at places like Thorn and Langdon Court while long-standing families such as Milden, Algate and Knight keep working the land. But the village feels the absence of young men lost in the war, including Archie Walke, Edgar Giles, the Blackmore brothers and George Woodley. The song reflects how the community quietly carries on, sowing fields and tending farms while remembering those who never returned. This is the last in a series of songs based from 1841 to 1921 - at least for now...

Verse 1
At Thorn the gates still creaked at dawn
The plough went out across the lawn
The furrows ran where they had run
Long before the war was won

Verse 2
At Langdon Court the hands still came
To tend the fields that fed the name
While Milden, Algate, Knight and Cole
Kept the rhythm of the soil

Chorus
And the land still breathed by wind and tide
Though the village felt the empty side
Where voices once had filled the day
And now were carried far away

Verse 3
The Almshouses kept their quiet light
Where neighbours watched the falling night
And mothers spoke the names they knew
Of sons who would not wander through

Verse 4
Walke and Giles from Wembury side
The Blackmore boys who never replied
And Woodley’s name the churchyard knew
Where spring still breaks the Devon dew

Bridge
Yet fields were sown and cattle fed
Though many chairs stood cold instead
The village bent but did not fall
The old names held the parish wall

Chorus
And the land still breathed by wind and tide
Though the village felt the empty side
Yet plough and seed and turning year
Said Wembury still was standing here

Outro
From Thorn to Wood, from field to shore
The lanes remembered what came before
And though the world had changed its way
The soil still called the folk to stay