Career paths for my fictional, young, non-academic gent in the 1920s/30s

[fictitiousfoibles]

I'm trying to flesh out one of the characters in my novel and am really stuck on a career path for him. Anyone up for taking part in a creative brainstorm?

He's grown up in on an English country estate owned by his mother's family (old money though, again, I haven't decided on how they made their fortunes). Mother lost her brother in WW1, inherited the house and lives their with her husband and their two children. This character is due to inherit it in time but is a dreamy non-academic, non-corporate type - what sort of job would his parents have nudged him into? Ideally it would be a reserved occupation so that his mother (traumatised by loss of brother) can justify his not joining up.

All ideas gratefully received!

The obvious answer would be learning to manage the estate, I think? Especially if it has a farm/farms or forestry.

Thanks for your answer. I wondered about that but I don't think it's quite large enough to warrant a full-time manager. I suppose I could make it larger! Or maybe I'm fussing about nothing and work would have been created for him there whether it was necessary or not.

The male equivalent of a governess? I think families used to employ young men to look after/teach their sons and prepare them for school entrance exams etc.

Or budding author/poet/painter?

A large farm estate definitely needed managing in those days, it's pre-agricultural machinery for one thing. Lots of people were needed to run one.

Or agricultural college perhaps

Could he have some sort of minor disability which would fail an army medical?

Lots of helpful input here - thanks.

Bit more on the estate: It doesn't involve farms or farming but has - it's a medieval convent that has evolved and changed over the years and been turned into a residential manor house with lodge, barn, coach house etc. I'm thinking (arbitrarily)10-15 acres of land. I guess I need to know more about these properties to understand where people got the money to employ all the people maintaining the place. Marrying wealthy spouses? Investments?

Good idea but I do want him ultimately to sign up, I just want his mother to try to prevent it or at least for him to have a viable reason not to.

Funeral related, mortuary assistant equivalent?

Civil service/BBC? Wasn't always the preserve of the academic, more the "right" types.

Slightly hopeless sons often went to teach for a year or two at a minor prep school.

That could potentially work

Vicar. Then he can eventually enlist as a chaplain.

How about a vicar? That was a reserved occupation but most of them ended up going anyway.

Snap!

My first thought was the clergy. Or possibly something like a solicitor's clerk.

Teacher? PE teacher?
Something in the engineering realm? Looks like a lot of the railway jobs were reserved occupations.

Some minor department in which he does a diligent but dull job would have been just the thing for that sort of man in the 20s/30s. Could also pivot into the Ministry of War during WW2 which keeps him at home.

Second sons, and first sons who did not go into the family business either by succession or preference, would go into the military or the City.
Particularly for the non-academic ones, stockbroking was a repository for young men who didn’t go to university then. And most didn’t unless they were bright enough to go to Oxbridge.
In the city it was about who you knew, rather than what you knew. (Especially if you went to public school. ) Still was until fairly recently.

I'm thinking (arbitrarily)10-15 acres of land.

10-14 acres of land is little more than a small holding. You're not talking anything like landed gentry with an estate that size. You're talking hundreds if not thousands of acres.

If you want them to be 'old money' the money pretty much has to come from land - agriculture, rents from tenant farmers and exploitation of any minerals on the land - coal, iron etc. In the 19th century they might have invested in railways, and possibly in land in Canada or Australia.

You say 1920s/1930s - what is his year of birth exactly?
If you're talking about him serving in WW2, his mother would not need to 'justify' him not joining up - you were either conscripted or you weren't. If you were conscripted, you could be sent to work in the mines - the 'Bevin Boys'.
If he has had a scientific or technical education, he would be sent into something in that field.
If he's a Classicist, he might be set to codebreaking at Bletchley - that might suit your purposes quite well, because nobody would know what he was doing.

Have you read much popular literature of the period? I mean people who were writing at the time, not books written later about the period. You can pick up quite a lot of social history that way.

Needs more land than that, more like 80 - 100 acres. Tenant farmers can be using some of it.

Re income - partly from the estate, mostly from what in genteel circles was called 'independent means'. Probably from shares & investments in the City. One of those City firms might offer the young man a menial pen-pushing job.

Surveyor's assistant in a mining or railway company? Surveying was a skilled job, but to train could be via via. He could also get fired for being too dreamy forcing him to enlist

Love the idea of this. I don't think it's what he'll actually do but I am v tempted to work it in as an avenue they explore for him because the village church, and vicar feature elsewhere in the story

Railway or postal worker - ticket office or postmaster/assistant?

Or he could do a Gerald Brennan/Laurie Lee/George Orwell and go wandering around Spain, he sounds like the type who'd join the International Brigades the Spanish Civil War from 1936.

I was going to say the same thing.

If they are old money with an estate it would be more than 15 acres. I worked on a farm on the outskirts of London and it had a normal farm cottage with 700 acres!

If they were old money landed gentry then I’m not sure if they would work at all. Are they landed gentry who have fallen on hard times?

Maybe if they are poor posh folk maybe he decided that he’s really into cars/engineering because engineering was often reserved occupation.