A FORMER Land Girl from Loughton has been honoured for her service to Britain in World War Two by having tea with the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace.

Marjorie Bird, 83, was picked from thousands of women across the country for the special ceremony, which was held to mark the anniversary of the disbandment of the Women's Land Army in 1950.

Mrs Bird, of Barfields Road, was part of a huge force of teenagers and 20-somethings who helped the war effort by working in the country's farms and fields.

The grandmother of eight said she was “stunned” to be invited along to the intimate gathering attended by a host of Royals, including the Queen, Duke of Edinburgh and the Duchess of Cornwall.

She said: “When I first got the phone call I thought it was a joke. Never in a million years when I was working in the fields back then did I expect I would end up meeting the Royal Family because of it.”

For four years in the 1940s, Mrs Bird was stationed in a hostel housing 85 land army girls in the village of Thropton in Northumberland,and worked at a variety of farms doing everything from cleaning up dung to threshing grain in the fields.

She said: “It was a wonderful time. There were times when it was very hard work but it was the making of me. When I started I was afraid of spiders but by the end of it I had really grown up.”

She added: “Buckingham Palace was wonderful. There was a spare seat on our table and I was passing along a piece of cake when I heard a voice saying 'oh that looks gorgeous'. I turned round and saw it was Princess Michael of Kent. She said she shouldn't really have any but asked me for a piece. I wasn't going to say no,” she laughed.

“During the war we were 'just' Land Girls. So it is nice to be recognised for the work we did all these years later,” she added.