Farmers and Tradesmen
Barwicker No 19
September 1990
Agriculture in the Barwick area up to 1940 was a mixture of arable and grassland with dairy and beef cattle the principal stock. Sheep were on a much smaller scale with only one or two farms keeping small flocks of breeding ewes, usually of the Cheviot breed. A few pigs were always kept and home-cured bacon and hams were usually hanging from the farmhouse ceilings. Large White was the most common breed but sometimes crossings, with Large Black SOWS, were used to produce the popular 'blue and white' pork pigs. Milking was by hand and the dairy Shorthorn still out-numbered, by far, all other breeds, although Friesians were increasing. Store cattle were usually a mixture of Beef Shorthorn crosses with the red-roans and reds, usually with in-curving horns, dominating the 'colour schemes'. Generally cattle were horned and a polled cow usually came by chance and not by selective breeding or de-horning as is the practice today.
All kinds of farm implements were still horse-drawn: corn cut by binder and stooked to dry in the field, before carting to be stacked and thatched with wheat straw in the rickyard. Hay was cut by a two-horse reaper, turned by a one-horse swath-turner or tedder, raked into 'wind-rows' by a one-horse rake then forked into 'cocks' before carting. The American Massey-Harris and McCormick- Deering binders were the most popular harvesting machines with the British Bamlett, Ransomes, Sims and Jefferies, Bamford, Blackstone and others for tilling the soil. All the farms used single-furrow iron ploughs with a pair of horses excepting my father's preference for the wooden-framed plough made by Yates of Doncaster. Church Farm also had a difference from the rest of Barwick in those times, in the Prince tradition of 'one-string' horses. In field work the usual practice was for the reins - hempen woven strings - to be attached 'nearside' and 'offside' as a pair with the one- string horse the single string was attached to the centre of the 'bearing rein', with a steady pull and the command 'arve' indicating 'turn left', and a sharp tug to the command 'gee-off' meaning 'turn right'. For work on the public roads only double reins were legal.
Rollers, drawn by one or two horses, were also used on the land. The common roller was made of two or more cylindrical sections on a central axle. The 'Cambridge' roller, a much more effective implement, comprised a large number of cast-iron, wheel- spoked discs with blunt-toothed edges, assembled close together to form a cylindrical shape.
I know that one long established farm continues in the family to this day that is the Thorps, but I do not know if any other, which I used to know, has kept in a family line. Looking back to the 1930's I remember the holdings and names of some of the farms and families. Next door to Tborps, on tbe site where Maurice Wood's business stood, were the Braithwaites. Across the road from them was Glebe Farm and the Verity family. Rectory Farm and the Sykes family stood in Main Street where the former Police Station and other properties now stand. Mark Helm and his family had a farm, small brewery and the 'Gascoigne Arms' Public House. Their home-brewed beer was well known in the district and, at 5 pence per pint, a penny cheaper than the other pubs. They ceased production in the 1930's and the 'Gascoigne Arms' changed hands. There were the Armitages near the present day Shinns' business and they took over a small holding, below Old Pump Yard on Aberford Lane, which had been vacated by Tomlinsons about 1931. Church Farm and the Reeds bave already been described. Near the old workhouse site was the Graingers' farm and close to them the Hemingways.
Off Garforth Lane, adjoining the Parlington estate, was Throstlenest Farm off Aberford Road the Walkers had Leyfield Farm and off Potterton Lane was Mr Clayton - soon to be followed by the Austin family - at Syke House Farm. At Brickpond Farm was the Green family and near the junction of Potterton and Kiddal lanes the Dransfields had Potterton Grange Farm with land extending down to the beck. The Dransfields were formerly iron-founders in the Wakefield area and continued to manufacture small forgings such as gate fittings, dog-nails, bold-fasts, gutter brackets and other ironmongery on the farm. That must have been a useful business to fall back on in the bad weather and I remember how one heard the clanking of machinery from Potterton Lane. From an old-fashioned farmstead by Barwick Main Street and land off Rakehill Road, the Collett family ran a small agricultural business and, from a property in Elmwood Lane. Fred Lumb was a 'one horse' carter relying principally on coal by the load from Garforth to customers. Denis Armitage also had a small stock-farm in Richmondfield Lane.
The Hemingways probably bad the most prosperous business which depended on livestock, in Barwick, because their animal foodstuffs bill was low and they had their own retail shop in Leeds. They bad a useful acreage of grass bordering Rakehill Road and were primarily pork and pork-products producers, and they also kept some beef stock which subsisted largely on grazing and home- produced bay. Regularly, from hotels in Leeds, Mr Hemingway collected kitchen leftovers in the form of swill which he conveyed to Barwick in a car-drawn trailer. That was the basic, ready-made pig food which the hotels were pleased to get off their hands.
Only one helper was employed, sometimes a part-timer, but Hemingway was the only local farmer whose wife had a live-in housemaid. I remember helping the Hemingways at haymaking and other times when extra hands were needed. On one occasion he asked me to assist him in the castration of a large litter of piglets. The operation, which he performed with a safety-razor blade, was blood-less and virtually painless, but had to take into account the very strong maternal instinct of the mother of the litter. She was a huge Large White sow who had produced many litters and was not very happy at being turned out into the yard, away from the litter. Pigs are reputed to be the most intelligent of farm animals and they can also be the most obstreperous. So it was with that sow. Any little piglet will scream on being handled and more loudly so when gripped by the haunch and held upside down. Each operation took only 3 or 4 minutes then the pig was put over the half-door to join its mother in the yard.
The sow's grunts and screams of disapproval soon changed to an onslaught on the door, which was strong but not designed to with- stand a battering ram. So long as there was one pig left out of her sight she was going to get through that barrier to the people who were causing her agony. We had many an anxious glance at the door, as it shuddered under the blows, and when I caught the last of the litter it squealed louder than any. It was too much for the sow. The operation was half finished and the screaming, battering cacophony at its height when the door gave way, smashed apart and brushed aside like cardboard while I stood still holding the pig. I did not hold him for long for the angry sow gave no time for me to think. I dropped the pig down on her up-turned snout, causing a moment's diversion, while I left the shed as quickly as she had entered it. Hemingway, with his razor blade, had moved to the corner of the sty away from the piglet so was ignored. So the final part of the operation had to wait for another day.
A thing which astonished and disgusted me, in Hemingway's swill-collecting operations, was to see how many pieces of fine hotel cutlery were thrown there from the kitchen. And then it was hand-finished products of Sheffield, not the mass-produced, stainless steel from Korea which we see today!
In those difficult days when villages had limited access to the city, Barwick was fairly well-off for most family needs. There was Fred Lumb, the Postmaster, in a charming cottage shop in The Boyle, who sold groceries, stationery and a miscellany which included films and a developing service. On the opposite side of the road Ernest Addy, whose slaughterhouse was in Aberford, had a small butcher's shop, and went out to kill pigs on the farm when requested.
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| The Boyle (pre. 1914) |
Facing the chapel, Mr and Mrs Burgoyne ran their home bakery shop but sold the business in the early thirties to Threlfalls, who were new to the Village. And round the corner from them, facing the maypole, was the Patrick family, who came originally from Micklefield. They were general grocers and corn-chandlers with a shop run by a son, Herbert, and Mr Patrick senior who once told me, 'Good mayt (meat) needs noa sauce!' So much for sales technique, for I was buying sauce from him at the time. David Patrick, the elder son, who worked elsewhere, had such a large, muscular body that he could not get a guarantee on a standard commercial cycle so had one made with reinforced forks.
At the corner, now occupied by Shinns, old Mr Walker - called 'Uncle Jim' in the village - had a tiny sweet shop in a cottage which had a stone staircase and was said to be about 400 years old. Next door to him were the Village draper, milliner and haberdashers, Mr and Mrs Speak. Farther up the street was the butcher's shop of the Hewitts, with yard and abbatoir behind, and at 56 Main Street, opposite Rectory farm, the small general shop of Mrs Bramley. That old house, no. 56, which has been recently renovated, is whereMrs Alva Prince, Mrs Bramley's daughter, was born 78 years ago and recently, most reluctantly, vacated by her. After the closure ofMrs Bramley's shop, a small corner shop was opened by Mrs Annie Dickenson a few doors lower down the street.
Barwick also had an ironmonger and general hardware merchant in Mr George Law, whose shop was next to the churchyard, on Aberford Lane, almost facing the old Chapel Lane. The village cobbler was Mr Allen, who lived in The Boyle but had his wooden workshop in Scholes. Weekly he collected and returned footwear to the customers in a draw-string black bag.
The first fish and chip shop I remember in the village was a small, wooden construction on Mark Helm's land, near to the entrance to the old cricket field, by Elmwood Lane. It belonged to Mr and Mrs William Crosland who lived nearby. When they closed, the Wall family opened a fish shop off Main Street, almost opposite Rectory Farm, which is no longer in business.
George Cooper, who lived next door to the Bramleys, had a retail milk round in the village and called on his customers by bicycle and box-type sidecar. He was the most melodious whistler whose arrival could be anticipated by the customer when he was still half a street away. From his house in Main Street, Mr Hannam sold newspapers and magazines which were delivered by 'pocket- money' boys. The Sunday papers were taken by bicycle over a wide radius - as far as Becca - from the village. On week-days Mr Hannam sold wet fish from a cycle carrier-basket, after an early morning bus ride to collect supplies from Leeds Market.
Until the beginning of the 1930's the farmers had relied on the old smithy adjacent to the Thorp farm for their blacksmith's work. Old Mr. Collet had retired and Harold Evans, a newcomer to the village, became the local blacksmith setting up his forge first of all behind the former 'William IV' public house and later in the Reed family buildings when Fred Reed died. Harold was one of the old, hard-working breed, short and spare in build, but muscled as one would expect to see in a blacksmith. His moustache was 30 years behind the times; luxuriant and looking so out of date in the largely clean-shaven styles of the 1930's.
He said his most difficult and distasteful job was in collecting debts from some of his clients. On one occasion when he went for outstanding payment to an isolated farm on a dark winter evening, the debtor, who lived alone, refused to pay and became very obstructive. He said that no-one had seen Harold arrive at the farm and made a sinister inference, with a shotgun standing in the corner of the kitchen, that he could disappear.
I knew that farmer but shall not name him! I also remember Mr and Mrs Evans commissioned me to paint a portrait of their Spaniel bitch for which I was paid sixteen shillings.
WILLIAM PRINCE