until April, to be followed immediately by heavy flooding. Coal was still rationed, so stocks were low, and few people could afford to have electricity laid on; most of the villagers had to rely on such firewood as they could find. Williarn Moore's family were cut off for three weeks, by which time they were almost out of food. They had eaten all their hens apart from two left to lay eggs. They shot what game they could and eventually had to resort to trapping small birds. By digging through the snow to Manor Farm they were able to obtain milk. Help came when paths were cleared into the village, partly by Italian prisoners of war held at Long Stratton. In those days shopping was a very different activity. William explains that prepackaging was minimal in the four village shops. Sugar came in hundredweight sacks, cheeses were bound in hessian and weighed 28 lb, butter was in 14 1b blocks, and biscuits were loose in 14 1b tins. Serving a customer took some time, for the grocer had to cut, weigh, price and pack each item while waiting customers enjoyed a gossip. Milk was delivered by Mr Alford, a dairy farmer from High Road Farm on the Ipswich Road. He came round daily with a horse and trap, from which fresh milk was measured to order from a metal churn. In 1945 Tasburgh Women's Institute was relaunched. The earliest surviving minutes are those of 1947, when Mrs Rosemary Hastings of Rainthorpe Hall was president, Mrs Larner, secretary and Mrs Mann, treasurer. Meetings were held monthly at Rainthorpe Hall with talks, demonstrations, competitions, flower shows and whist drives. The quality of WI cooking was such that they were praised in the press on several occasions and in 1969 won a silver rose bowl for their preserves. They formed a choir and helped the village in many ways, providing refreshments at fetes and plays, organising the poppy day collection and operating 'meals on wheels'. The WI also raised funds to pay for tables, chairs and other items at the village hall, where a plaque acknowledges their efforts. For their own enjoyment they organised outings to, what were in those days, such far-away places as Clacton, Felixstowe and Woburn. From the wartime salvage fund and from many money raising events, including the saving of pennies by the schoolchildren £562 16s 8d had, by