PIG, PUBS, and PEOPLE : CHAPTER 6
FARMS & FARMING
In common with farmers throughout the country, those in East Haddon are worried about the present state of the rural economy and their prospects for the future. The memories of village residents over the past hundred years are most often connected with farms and farming.
The Cooper family were part of a tradition of farming stretching back hundreds of years. They are direct descendants of the Clarkes, who farmed in East Haddon as early as 1620, and possibly before that date. The farm inherited by Jock Cooper’s father in 1913 consisted of 300 acres, and included all of what is now the Spencer’s farm. Jock’s father, who signed up for war service a year later, was recalled to East Haddon to run the farm, because agriculture was a priority to provide food for the nation. At that time, he had pedigree shorthorn cattle and sheep, as well as arable land. He sold the farm in 1927, with the agricultural depression looming, and moved into poultry and apple-growing.
The poultry farm (Picture)bred Rhode Island Reds, the hens for egg-laying and the cockerels to improve future generations. This provided a living for the family, and they were able to enter egg-laying competitions both in this country and in the USA, and won many awards. Apparently, photographing the successful birds was not easy: they would not stand still and pose for the camera! In the end, the problem was overcome by holding them by the legs, and slowly turning them round, putting their heads down on a white line. They then remained motionless and the pictures could be taken.
The Cooper’s orchard contained mainly Bramley cooking apples, which were planted with the help of several villagers. The apples were sold to wholesalers in Northampton and a few retailers locally. Each September, pickers were recruited from surrounding villages as well as from East Haddon itself. Weekdays saw 30 to 40 people harvesting the crop, and at weekends as many as 70 or 80. Their wages may not have been huge, but they were allowed as many apples as they could carry to take home with them. Fred Moore used to go to the orchards each year to help pick the apples: “They were huge apples. My uncle, Albert Barford, used to prune the trees and look after them.”
In the late 1970s, with better gas storage methods, the Cooper’s orchards were not able to compete commercially, and they decided to open them up as “pick your own” for the general public. An empty bag was sold at the gate to each person, who could then fill it and take it home. Unsurprisingly, some people also filled their clothes with apples, and some even had them under their caps! This method of buying apples was very popular, and cars were parked from Brook Hill as far down as the Washbrook and one year a field belonging to the Spencer’s farm was used as a car park. The Coopers also grew Coxes eating apples.
Paul Capell’s family kept pigs, and it was a fine art deciding which pigs to buy:
We never used to keep big pigs, only 14-score pigs at the most [a score = 20lbs] because if you got a birthday pig you got too much fat and no meat. You always chose your own pigs, ones that were nice and square. You never accepted one already bagged. It was usually a runt. So, never buy “a pig in a poke”. A poke is a hat, a poke is also a sack and we used to go anywhere to get eight-week-old pigs. We used to go to North Lodge at Holdenby and fetch them back and we used to go to South Lodge at Philip Smith’s. We also used to go to Vanderplanks’ on the gated road between Long Buckby and West Haddon to fetch pigs and also to Nobottle and anywhere to fetch them in a sack on a bike.
The Spencers began farming in East Haddon in 1940, taking over Home Farm (originally built in 1665) which was in a very dilapidated state. The shell of the building was constructed of sandstone, but some of the walls were of the original wattle and daub. Inside, there were exposed beams and an inglenook fireplace with the fire laid directly on the floor. The house had stone floors and a well below one of the rooms. There was a baking oven in one wall, and there was a cool pantry to keep food in. Unfortunately, it was also damp, and when the Spencers first arrived it was infested with rats, fleas, cockroaches and mice. In 1960, with the beams showing signs of decay and the roof beginning to sag, it was decided to demolish the old buildings and build a new farmhouse.
During the war, the Spencers practised mixed forming, producing potatoes to feed the nation, as well as rearing pigs and sheep and keeping a dairy herd. The newborn piglets and lambs were often brought into the house to be kept warm by the inglenook fireplace, because there was no other means of warmth for them. One night, the couple arrived home to find that not only had the piglets been warmed up successfully, they had also gone to sleep in the armchairs! Much of the farm was arable land, on which was grown corn and root crops such as swede, mangel and beet to feed the animals.
Farming used to be a major form of employment in East Haddon, but things have changed considerably with the introduction of more machinery. As Mrs Spencer pointed out, today, with a farm covering twice the acreage compared with when they first started, they only employ one man, whereas during the war they needed two cowmen, one waggoner and a tractor driver, and they also had the services of two land-girls and two Italian prisoners-of-war. Anne Leatherland, (Picture) who grew up in what is now known as Steepleton Lodge (Picture), but it was then simply Steepleton Farm, laments the loss of the “old farming ways”: “They were very hard, but happy. Now the farm workers are largely gone from small, family farms and we are trying to farm as best we can.”
Mrs Spencer remembers some of the April Fool tricks that used to be played on unsuspecting farm workers:
When we had a new lad from London they sent him to the blacksmith to fetch an unknown piece of equipment and Maurice Ward, who was always game for a joke, sent him on to the wheelwright, Teddy Blackett, and he sent him on to the butcher, who said “try the bakehouse” – he eventually came back mystified, and all the farm workers were lined up to shout “APRIL FOOL!”
Frederick Smith’s family bought Dairy Farm from the Sawbridges in 1919. Although it was a dairy farm, they also had sheep and they owned nearly 300 acres, including some land south of the main A428. Shire horses were then still very important on farms, and the farm had two teams. Joe Cadd worked for Frederick Smith Senior, looking after the horses and breaking them: as Ann Smith reports, Joe had to be up very early in the morning to catch the horses in the field where they were kept.
Joe also worked on the Fraser’s farm (Picture), for John Chambers at Tythe Farm, and sometimes as far away as Whittlebury Park, from where he once walked all the way home. He used to ride a lot when he was breaking hunters at Holdenby, and sometimes rode over to visit his sister Alice when she was working for Captain Fitzroy at Foxhill. As Ann Smith recalls, her father-in-law continued farming during the Second World War, as a reserve occupation. Ann’s husband, also called Frederick, later took over the farm from his father, who died in 1959, aged just over 80.
Albert Barford, who came from one of the old East Haddon families, was a labourer on the Cooper’s farm in charge of carthorses. Jim Hobson helped with the milking and other jobs, such as hedge laying and ploughing with horses, for a Mr Westlake on what is now Butterfields’ farm. He started work at 7am, and often worked seven days a week. He remembers harvest time well:
We were always busy at harvest time with the sheaves because there were no combines in those days. I remember sitting in the hedge at lunchtime when the horses had their nosebags on and we would eat our packed lunch. This often consisted of the top off a cottage loaf, a lump of home-cured fat bacon – hardly a streak of lean on it – and washed down with cold tea. We do remember the Bedfordshire Clanger as well, a sort of suet roll, savoury filling at one end and jam at the other
Mrs Spencer remembered that Jack Cadman used to eat a whole loaf for his lunch at harvest time. During the time of rationing, which lasted a few weeks after the war, the beer ration used to be delivered at 7pm, and however important it was for the men to continue the harvest, they would rush to the Plough for the beer before it had all gone. Many of the farm workers cycled to the Why Not pub, and on their way back down the hill used to fall off drunk and have to walk home with their bicycles! Michael French spent some of his holidays in East Haddon during harvest time. He recalls seeing the corn being cut, from the edge of the field towards the middle, and as the remainder to be cut became smaller and smaller, the men would wait with their shotguns for wildlife to run out. (Picture)
Paul Capell used to do
A lot of work for Billy Jones... Billy kept shire horses and we used to see an old man come round with a stallion all done up with brasses and plaited up. Billy would leave a note on the gate saying “busy with the hay, try the mares in the morning!” He was up to all sorts of tricks like that.
Billy Jones (nominally the landlord of the Plough) was quite a character, and used to be seen around the village with a sheep or lamb on his motorbike, according to Ernest Poole. Paul Capell:
I remember when they used to wash the sheep down the Washbrook on the Ravensthorpe Road. This was done before the shearing. My grandfather used to stand in a barrel to wash them. They used to dam the brook up by the spinney at the bottom of the Ravensthorpe Road and it formed a small reservoir, then it used to come out of a pipe and down on the right there was a walkway down for the sheep and pens. There were many flocks waiting ready to go in.
According to Jock and Ann Cooper, Billy rented land in seven parishes, although his main farm was Tire Hill. He was a stock farmer all his life, except during the war when pastureland was ploughed up to produce crops for the war effort. When temperatures were freezing, he would often take the weak lambs home with him to warm up and it is said that he wasn’t averse to giving them a spot of whisky in their feed bottles!
Stewart Fraser’s grandfather (Picture) was originally a farm manager in Ireland, and he came to work in the same capacity for the Guthries, eventually negotiating a tenancy agreement in the late 1930s and beginning mixed farming. Stewart now farms 142 acres, but their property was larger then. Stewart’s father Charlie (Picture) used to farm the land, while his uncle, Alex, dealt with the dairy cattle. Stewart remembers the dairy farming side of the business very well:
We had no horses on the farm while I was growing up except Doll Andrews’ pony for delivering the milk. Alec worked on the farm until we stopped the milk round... When I was growing up here we always milked mechanically twice a day and the milk went to the Co-op in Northampton. It was collected in churns to start with. Before it was all sent into town I can remember filling and washing the bottles. The herd was Ayrshires to start with and it got up to 80. We used to milk at 7 in the morning and 7 at night. Doll used to deliver the milk around the village.
According to Ken Craddock, there were two other milk ladies at different times: Connie Chapman, who used to bring milk round in two buckets, and Mrs Dickens, who had a milk churn on wheels. Jim Hobson says that it was Mrs Dickens’ sister, Lily Speed, who used to take the milk round the village. George Page remembers Connie Chapman’s son Freddie driving his cows through the centre of the village to be milked in sheds on Butcher’s Lane (St Andrews Road). He also recalls milk being taken from Frederick Smith’s farm by Mrs Gardener in a pony and trap, and later the dairy collecting milk churns from the village. On Spencers’ farm, milking was done in the traditional manner, by hand, sitting on a three-legged stool.
Hunting
The now controversial sport of fox-hunting has long been an important feature of village life. The Pytchley Hunt traditionally met twice in East Haddon, once at the Hall and once in the field opposite Brook Hill, although there have been times when it didn’t meet at all in the village. It now meets at East Haddon Lodge.
Dick Cooper hunted with the Pytchley in the years immediately following the Second World War. He was paid demob money and used it to buy a horse, named Bruce after Bruce Belfrage, the BBC newsreader. Unfortunately Bruce had to be destroyed after an accident on some barbed wire. Jock was also the local wire agent for the Hunt. He remembers that before the war there had been as many as 600 horses out hunting on a Saturday, because local riders were joined by officers from the Cavalry barracks at Weedon.
Anne Leatherhead refers to the sight of the Hunt coming across her family’s land as her “happiest memories of Steepleton Farm”;
I would stand on the hill behind the house and listen for the sound of the hounds – the sight of the hounds in full cry, the Huntsman and behind him the field. It was so moving, so unforgettable. To me hunting is a tradition that is bound up in the life of the real country people.
The Joint Master of the Pytchley Foxhounds for the past 12 years, Richard Spencer (Picture), grew up in the village. He started riding from an early age and with his sister took part in gymkhanas and local horse shows. His farm was inherited from his father, who died in 1987. His mother believed that the present government, supported by urban dwellers in its aim to ban hunting doesn’t understand how the countryside has been integrated over many years. She pointed out that most of the coverts and small plantations were originally planted to support hunting and shooting. The Spencers’ farm today consists of an equestrian business, comprising a riding school and livery yard for hunters, and the only farm animals are breeding sheep – and the sheepdog to round them up.
Dick Threadgold works full-time for the Pytchley, not only following the hunt on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, but also building courses for many of the cross-country and team chase events. His other work involves building hedge jumps to make hunting easier, hanging gates, and ensuring that footpaths and bridleways are clear and in good order. His son David is also a keen huntsman, and they not only follow the foxhounds, but also the basset and mink hounds. David is whipper-in for the Northamptonshire Mink Hounds.
Stewart Fraser became interested in riding through following the hunt on his bicycle and was 26 before he started actively hunting on horseback. His earliest memory of the hunt is seeing Richard Spencer standing on a fence and the fox coming through the fence and looking at the two of them, and then the hounds following on but going in a different direction from the fox. Stewart learned to ride at a riding school that used to exist in Kingsthorpe, Northampton, where Waitrose now stands. According to Stewart, his father Charlie had no interest in hunting at all and would have banned it if he had been able. But Stewart would not have ridden at all if it hadn’t been for the hunt. He is worried about the future if fox-hunting is banned. He thinks there will be fewer foxes around, because they will be shot and trapped, and that there will be fewer horses and that Point-to-Point racing may also disappear, because there will be nobody to organise it. His livelihood depends on horses: “Nowadays we only have horses on the farm and we make more money out of them than you can out of cattle and sheep.”