A picture is worth a thousand words, and these photographs illustrate just a few of the many changes that have occurred at Mersley Farm between the post-war period and the present day.

Photograph taken: 1958Photograph taken: 2025

In the photograph taken in 1958, Island farmers gathered around cattle auction pens in Mersley farmyard. Note the farmers are wearing trench coats from demobilisation 1946-47. In the background is The Nag Stable, which is now part of the restaurant. The anchor cross plates, seen on the wall in the photograph, can still be seen inside the restaurant today.

Photograph: 1952

Photograph: 2025

May Barton, family matriarch at Mersley Farm, is pictured in the photograph taken in 1952. May Barton ran Mersley Farm and the lime kiln on Mersley Down, after her husband Edgar’s death in 1940. She was redoubtable and a force to be reckoned with. Behind her is The Nag Stable, with the farm granary on her right. In the recent photograph, another redoubtable force, Jenny Boswell, stands with the entrance to the farmhouse and the restaurant behind her.

Photograph taken: 1950

Photograph taken: 2025

The earlier photograph shows May Barton, with Manfred Kessler, of the Schaeffler Ball-bearing Company. Visits to island farms by wealthy Germans in the 1950s were not uncommon. They or their relations had often been prisoners of war, working on local farms. Highly competent farm workers in their native Prussia, they worked hard and formed close friendships with island families. Colin and Jenny Boswell stand at the same spot in 2025, 75 years later.