| | by admin | | posted on 11th December 2025 in War and Peace in Lincolnshire & Quakerism in Lincolnshire | | views 101 | |
Lincolnshire's WWII pacifist farming community brought together conscientious objectors who chose to serve through farming, forging a cooperative life that left a lasting cultural legacy.
In the quiet farmland of West Lindsey, during the most violent years of the 20th century, a group of conscientious objectors created an experiment in peace. At Holton-cum-Beckering, Legsby and the surrounding hamlets, they cultivated not only crops but a new way of living, communal, principled, artistic and defiantly non-violent. These men and women, often from urban or professional backgrounds, rejected military service and instead offered their labour on the land.
What began as a wartime necessity soon became a lasting cultural legacy. Out of the huts and fields of the pacifist farming community emerged the Holton Players, an amateur dramatic group whose spirit survives today in the Broadbent Theatre at Wickenby. Their story reveals the human depth of conscientious objection and the unexpected ways peace can shape a place.
The pacifist settlement at Holton-cum-Beckering was established around 1940, when thousands of British men were coming before wartime tribunals to state their conscientious objection. Many were assigned to agricultural labour as an alternative to military service, and others joined voluntarily out of a desire to wage peace through essential food production.
Land and buildings near Holton and Legsby were acquired through public subscription, supported by prominent peace campaigners and Christian pacifists. Although diverse in background, clerks, teachers, bookbinders, journalists, socialists, humanists and Quakers, the residents shared a commitment to non-violence and cooperative living. Several, including the young Quaker Don Sutherland, were sent to the farm in lieu of imprisonment.
Daily life was hard. Most members arrived with little farming experience and had to learn the rhythms of the land from scratch. But the intention was always more than survival, as the community sought to embody a peaceful, egalitarian society amid total war.
Although the work was demanding, evenings at Holton were filled with music, poetry, debate and performance. In this atmosphere the Holton Players were born, an amateur dramatic society that soon became central to the settlement’s identity. Staging plays in barns, Nissen huts and improvised stages, they attracted audiences from across the villages.
The Players also forged links with airmen from RAF Wickenby, only a few miles away. Though bomber crews and pacifists lived opposite expressions of wartime duty, many accounts emphasise how well the two groups got on. Aircrew attended the Players’ performances, and conscientious objectors mingled socially with men whose missions exposed them to grave peril. The contrast between the farm and the airfield remains one of the deepest symbols of Lincolnshire’s wartime landscape.
Artists were also present in the community. Figures such as George Todd found inspiration in the pacifist settlement, and several later credited their time on the farm with shaping their creative outlook. Children grew up in the settlement too, some later returning to take part in plays about their parents’ lives.
After the war, the Holton Players continued performing. They converted an abandoned Nissen hut into the Country Theatre, an energetic rural arts venue that served the area until it was destroyed by fire around 1960.
In 1970, the group purchased a disused Methodist chapel in Wickenby and transformed it into a permanent theatre. It was named the Broadbent Theatre in honour of Roy Broadbent, a leading member of the Holton Players and father of the actor Jim Broadbent. Roy died shortly after the theatre opened, and the renaming became a lasting tribute to his dedication.
Today the Broadbent Theatre seats about one hundred people and hosts productions by the Lindsey Rural Players as well as visiting performers. It remains one of the few British theatres whose origin lies directly in wartime conscientious objection.
The most powerful artistic retelling of the Holton story is the documentary play Remembrance, written by Ian Sharp and subsequently renamed Conchies, it draws on interviews with surviving members of the pacifist farming community, as well as letters, diaries and recorded memories.
The play explores why men and women chose pacifism at a time of existential national threat, the hardships of agricultural labour during wartime, relationships within the community and with the surrounding villages, encounters with airmen from RAF Wickenby, and the moral and emotional costs of standing apart from military service.
Productions of Remembrance at the Broadbent Theatre have often involved the children and grandchildren of the original community, adding a powerful intergenerational connection. Post-show discussions help audiences engage with the history of conscientious objection and its relevance to present-day debates about war and conscience.
The Lincolnshire pacifist farming community is a rare example of applied pacifism, an attempt to create a peaceful society within the machinery of total war. It reminds us that conscientious objection is not only a legal stance but a way of life, practical, communal, creative and often deeply challenging.
For Lincolnshire, the story of Holton, the Holton Players and the Broadbent Theatre forms a remarkable local heritage. It stands as a testament to how ideals can take root in unexpected places, and how wartime acts of conscience can produce lasting cultural institutions.