Recollections part1
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Recollections of Barwick-in-Elmet
by William Prince
Barwicker No. 11
Sept. 1988
Living in Wales amongst the Celts since 1976 and sometimes
speaking to the "locals" in their own language, has served to
heighten my consciousness that I am very much a Yorkshire Anglo-Saxon.
The Yorkshire Poll Tax of 1379 recorded Willelmis Prince
and, more specifically, there was christened "Thomas, the sonne of
William Prince of Barwick, on 12 August 1632".
My paternal grandmother, Emma Flowett, was born at the
"William IV" public house which used to stand opposite the Old Pump
Yard, by Aberford Road, in 1843. On her marriage to William
Prince, on St. Valentine's Day, 1866, she left Barwick and moved to
the Kippax cum Allerton area where she bore ten children of whom
my father, Arthur Prince, was number eight. She died at Owlwood
Farm, on the edge of Kippax Park, where she 'lived for about 30
years, at the age of 87. My father died in 1966 in his eighty-
second year and lies in Barwick churchyard.
We left Owlwood Farm, where I was born in 1916, and moved to
Church House Farm, Barwick, in March 1930. Moving a farming
business in those days of horse transport was a vastly different
operation from what it would' be today and one part of it still
remains clearly in my mind. Father had to take a herd of bullocks
to our new address and he gave the job to me and my younger
brothers. I was barely 14, Colin 12 and Robin 10 when we drove
the animals to their new home. The route via Brigshaw, Kippax and
Garforth was about 10 miles but, with the frequent diversions into
the open gateways, yards, fields and other enclosures we must have
traversed much more than that. Anyone who has driven cattle over
strange roads will understand the difficulties. All stock arrived
safely and the only thing we suffered was fatigue.
My new headmaster, Mr Gilbert Ashworth, immediately took an
interest in my artistic work and, at his instigation, I did some
paintings which were hung in the school. My former headmaster, Mr
R.W.Veitch, of Garforth, had inspired me to submit a poster for a
competition which was organised for all the schools of the West
Riding of Yorkshire and I won the second prize. The certificate
dated 1929 and the prize, which is a book, are still with me
Later I was awarded a "Technical Exhibition Scholarship· to attend
evening classes at Leeds Collage of Art and, to obtain my travel
expenses, I had to save every bus ticket for the journey which had,
for reasons of economy, to be taken on the "Yellow Bus Company"
with a change at Garforth. That was four bus rides to every class.
The drawing board which was bought for me in Briggate, Leeds, and
taken to all my evening classes, I am still using. It is the best
board I have and cost 5/-(25p>.
I liked Barwick school and quickly settled. We played cricket
in the playground with stumps chalked on a wall. In that summer I
remember playing against Aberford School in a field of Kr S.
Walker at Leyfield Farm, whose son, "Kickey", was our opponents'
demon bowler. As I recall, there was more danger in the pitch than
from the bowler!
I was one of the three Senior Members of the school who
comprised Standard VIII. The other two were Peggy Cooper, who
lived next door to Hewitts the butchers in Main Street, and Billy
Green, a farmer's son from Potterton. Peggy, with her long, golden
hair, was the prettiest girl in the school.
Another event in the spring of 1930 was the wedding of
Gwendolyn Sowry, daughter of J.P.Sowry, Esq., of "The Limes",
Potterton Lane, and James Longley. Mr Sowry owned a printing
company in Leeds and Mr Longley was the son of the family who
owned the bedding company of the same name. That was a popular
event with the children because the school had a day off to attend
the wedding.
We were not invited guests at the church, nor did we partake
of anything at the reception, but we had a very important part to
play in the ceremony. The school was the choir which sang "Hail
happy day, cheerful and bright etc.", a somewhat modified version
of "Here comes the bride". Mr Ashworth explained how he had
amended the line "gifts from our hands", to "gifts in her hands",
because we were not giving the bride anything. Such cosy little
manipulations of the education system were typical examples of
what happened in those days of "high patronage". Whether the choir
idea came first from the Headmaster or the Rector I never knew
but, it must be said, Mr Ashworth organized it splendidly.
As was the custom in those days, to welcome a newcomer, other
farmers in the Village gave father one day's service of a man and
a pair of horses. The work was not necessarily done on the same
day. I wonder if that welcoming, generous custom is still carried
on.
For many months in our first year the farm was occupied daily
by the workmen of William Hartley, the local builder, and Mr Stirk,
the joiner, who was employed by Henry Pullan and Sons, who owned
the saw-mills down Potterton Lane. I remember Hartley himself, the
builder, who only came to instruct and supervise. He always wore a
felt hat with the brim up at the back, almost as if he had slept in
it, and an almost constant cigarette drooping from his mouth. To
me, a fourteen year-old, Geoff Hartley, the son, looked much too
young and good looking to be a brick-layer. Sam, the other brick-
layer, who came from Seacroft, was jovial, baldish, rubicund and
looked old enough to be Geoff's grandfather. He told lots of tales
about his working life and frequently referred to someone - who
was unknown to the rest - called Spike Robson. Apparently Spike
had "wise sayings" for various intervals of time during the working
day. When he heard the clock bell, chime at the starting hour he
used to say "Oh, thou wroughting cow!" But when it struck for the
cessation of work it was "Bless thy iron tongue!" They all had to
rely on Fred Scargill who carried the bricks, dug out the
excavations and other "donkey" work, and mixed the concrete - by
hand.
I learned a lot by watching the workmen, particularly Mr Stirk
from the sawmills, who fitted new stalls, mangers and hayracks in
the stable and mistal. I suppose no one in Barwick uses the word
"mistal" nowadays or, for that matter "byre" and "shippon" for a
cow-house. Having taken woodwork at my previous school, on
strictly "purist" lines, I was also rather shocked to see the plain
saw-and-nail methods used in building joinery. The family was
"mildly" horrified to find the house infested with cockroaches,
commonly known as "black-clocks", but they were finally
exterminated when the builders' improvements were complete. I
believe Bob Hewitt's father, Walter, also did some of the internal
work in the house.
I have pleasant memories of the old house with its little
cobbled, quadrant-shaped yard before the back door, the porch where
farming boots came off and the huge Jargonelle pear tree which
covered the gable end. In that little yard was the wash-house
which also accommodated our first water closet. We had not lived
near main sewers before so had been used to the old "night-soil"
closets.
Our nearest neighbours lived in three cottages on the corner of
Potterton Lane opposite the church. Next to the farmyard in the
brick cottage, which has been re-furbished and improved, lived
Walter and Lavinia Lovett and their four children. Their rent was
2/6d. per week in 1930. The other two cottages were of stone and
probably the lowest, in height, of any two-storeyed dwellings in
the area. When I was 15, I could touch their ceilings with ease.
In the centre one lived John and Emma Walton and their children
Arthur, Richard, Harry and Mary. Their rent was, I believe, 1/9d
per week. The other stone cottage, on the corner, was occupied by
Mr and Mrs Wi1son, their daughter Florence and her husband Sidney
Lonsdale and their small son.
Those two stone cottages were of the kind one sees in the
pictures of Myles Birket Foster, tiny-windowed, low-eaved and
highly white-washed. In the early summer, their low front garden
walls were smothered in the blossoms of "snow-in-summer"
(Cerastium tomentosum) and, on baking days, Mrs Walton would
stand, on their edges against the cottage wall on a little ledge of
flagstones, her oven-cakes to cool. And how lovely was the taste
of a freshly baked oven-cake, made of a bread mix, rolled out, to
end as a round of 10 to 12 inches diameter and 1½ inches thick.
John Walton - always called "Johnnie" - was a typical handy
countryman who could do anything around a farm. Father always
employed him to thatch our hay and corn stacks. From time to time
we noted, in our hedge-rows, sturdy briar stocks onto which had
been grafted garden roses. Johnnie had done them as one of his
hobbies. He was also very skilled at "rabbiting".
Those lady neighbours of ours were frequent visitors to the
house, often to buy skimmed milk which was a very important item
in the diet of the 1930's. The eldest of the Lovett daughters,
Norah, I always remembered because of her very unusual middle name,
"Louvaine". She was so named after Louvain, one of the battle-
grounds of the 1914-18 war. The one who comes first to mind,
however, is Mrs "Florr1e" Lonsdale with whom I still have a
tangible link. She used to run a mail-order agency for Great
Universal Stores and, through her, for sixpence a week, I bought my
first set of woodworking tools. Never was money so well spent!
Since those days my collection of tools has multiplied but I still
have, in their original chest, all but two of those tools, from
G.U.S. They were made in Sheffield!
One has often heard reference to the 1930's or, "before the
war", with the inference that things were cheaper than they are
today. "You could see a show at the Leeds Empire and have a meal
for a bob!" Yes, indeed, but that has to be seen in conjunction
with the wages of the time. My chest of tools cost £1.0.0. but
that was more than half of the weekly wage paid to many a worker
with a family in 1930.
I still have my mother's account book for the sale of eggs and
butter delivered to the customer. In the winter of 1929-30 eggs
went up to 2/9d. per dozen which made our traditional English
breakfast almost a luxury meal for the average family. In the
summer the price was down to 1/- but the fact remains that eggs
today are enormously cheaper than ever before. Of course, there
was none of the nonsense of paying more for brown eggs than white.
I cannot think of one thing which is, relative to the cost of
living, more expensive than it was before the war. In fact the
case is to the contrary. For today's average weekly wage one can
buy 200 dozen grade I eggs; in 1939 probably it was no more than
40 dozen. After school hours we three younger members of the
family had to deliver milk to local customers and this was done
individually, in pint or quart cans which had lids and carrying
handles. The traditional oval-shaped milkman's four gallon can,
with its gill and pint ladles, was too heavy for us. After the
milk was delivered we had to wash all the dairy equipment with
water heated on the kitchen range. How well I remember that stone
sink resting on brick pillars in the large flag-paved kitchen.
Some of our customers were on the outer-most parts of the
village and we had many a "lark" coming back from them. Returning
from "Fieldhead Poultry Farm", Aberford Road, one dark and windy
evening, my brother Colin, who was about 12 at the time, suddenly
produced a packet of "Woodbine" cigarettes and we spent a long
time, and the expenditure of many matches, trying to get "a light"
as we crouched under the hedge.
We liked Mr and Mrs Stone who kept the beautiful Rhode Island
Red poultry and a few Large Black pigs. They created the name
"Fieldhead" which has been given to "The Drive". If I lived on that
lane I would much prefer that the old "Shoulder o' Mutton Lane" had
been kept instead of the pretentious "Fieldhead Drive". But I don't
suppose that any true Barwicker had any say in the matter.
Some of my most pleasant memories are of the times on horseback when I rode as much as possible. It was often a pleasant way
of doing a job, driving the cattle to-and-from the pastures by the
Potterton Beck riding bare-back, or even on a domestic errand, for
mother, to Mrs Bramley's little shop at 56 Main Street. We had a
lovely bay mare whose only name became "Maggie"s Foal" and she and
I were great friends. Maggie, her mother, was a Canadian mare who
was a cavalry mount in the 1914-18 war and later gave long and
faithful service in the shafts of our family milk float. Maggie
had been trained as a "pacer", a kind of horse one never sees
today. We also "boarded" a pony for the Sowrys whose grandson and
friends used to ride with saddles. None of them would accept my
challenge to ride around the field "bronco style", without saddle or
bridle, as I often did.
WILLIAM PRINCE
This is the first of a series of articles by the author on the
Barwick of the nineteen thirties - Barwick at home, at work and at
play. He has lived away from the village for the past 43 years,
