The Smallholding and White Cottage.
This cottage opposite the pub was occupied by Mr and Mrs
Clark. It was a small holding of about forty acres, as on all the farms
on the estate, it had some close land, and some on the meadows down the Moss
lane, and some over the railway down the Moor lane. This house had only one
main room, and a scullery, then a lean-to on the back of the house, this was
used as a dairy to cool and store the milk churns over night, until the milk
man came the following morning. Upstairs it had two bedrooms, and the
only privy was a little brick and tile loo, under a bush, down the garden
path. In this house they brought up a family of six children.
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This is the house to the smallholding in the centre of the village, the house is still there but the farm buildings, see below have been converted into a house. In this picture above, the building on the right was the wheelwrights shop and between that and the house is the roof of the two bay hay barn. The original milk churn dairy was the small lean to at the end of the house, and full milk churns would be hand rolled along the length of the house to the road side (left) for the 8.15am pickup by the milk lorry This was the cowshed to the smallholding before it was converted into a house, the sliding door in the gable end facing the road was the new dairy built when the house was parted from the farm. The wicket on the left of the black railings was put in when the bulk tank was installed so the tanker could connect his pipe to their tank. At the right hand end of the railings is the old wooden churn stand to hold the four churns that would be lifted on there for the lorry from the dairy could just roll the full churns directly onto his wagon.
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Old Harry Clark, I can only just remember, (1940's ) not a very
tall man, and quite round in his later years. He was a wheelwright by trade,
and worked in a low tin roofed shed down below the wooden pole hay barn. He was
a man who enjoyed a joke, and quite mischievous in a nice way. It was
said that when bagged fertiliser first came out, Charlie Finnimore, [of Yews
Farm] sent a new man to spread it on the meadows under the Ashes Wood. It
turned out he had spread it on one of Harry's small fields down
there. Later Mr Finnemore realised the mistake, and went round to see
Harry for recompense, only to be told very politely that he did not want it,
and that he could send the man down the following morning to pick it up again,
as he did not mind at all!.
Mrs Clark, Harry's wife, could only just get about, and
getting a very old lady, like Harry she was quite round, and had her own chair
by the fire where she could easily reach the kettle, without having to
move. In fact as a child I was amazed that when Mrs Clark was sitting
down she seemed to have no knees. Her part in the carpentry business,
over the years, was to line the coffins that Harry made, for the local people,
who were then buried in St Chad
They had six children, Henry [called Harry] the oldest,
Jim, Bill the youngest, and three daughters in between. Henry worked for the
post office as a postman, and travelled to work in a little old Austin
Henry lived with his wife Nell in the cottage next to
Cooksland Farm gate, on the other side of the lane was a small garage for his
car. Nell worked up at Cooksland House for Major Eld, and her father lived in a
small room, or lean-to, on the end of a house on the end of Smithy Lane
Jim was the tallest of the family, and when married lived
in the second house up the Coton lane [turn left at the west end of the village
second house on the right]. This had a craft, [Crofters have crafts-
small field] where he kept hens and reared a few pigs, I think it had two pig
sty's. He worked as carpenter for the estate along with Eric Kilford who
was the builder bricklayer; Eric built up Kilfords the Building firm and
employed quite a lot of men. Jim took over from his father, when his
father became too old to continue, having learned all the skills needed to
become a wheelwright, and all the traditional tools that had built up over the
years for that trade.
When the Cumbers council houses were built, in the 1950s,
Jim moved into No10, and Bill moved into No9, right opposite the farm and
workshop. By this time Jim was full time, having taken over from "The old
Chap". Jim and Bill built a new workshop, with double doors
that would lock, a great deal higher and bigger than the one the old chap
used. A complete farm wagon could be built and painted all indoors, and a
good deal lighter as well.
As I said Jim was tall, all of six foot, but I expect
that working all his earlier days in low cottages, and always ducking his head,
he carried his head slightly forward, giving him a slight hump on his
shoulders. [Not quite as tall as he should be], they all had caps on in them
days, and Jim had his pipe always in his teeth, not always lit. I think
it was St Julian tobacco, that he smoked, and I got as much pleasure, from the
smell of the smoke, as he did smoking it. You get the ambiance of a room
when you walk into it, so you did from Jim's workshop, with the smoke from his
pipe, or the new cut oak shavings, or the fresh new paint when he's finishing
off a job. His pipe spent that much time, in his teeth, that it wore his
teeth away in that one place, to the extent that he could clench his teeth
tightly, and the pipe would still hang comfortably. In normal talk, he
would talk with the pipe in place. But if some cussing was to be done, it
would be a prodding motion with the pipe in his hand. But more often than
not it was tongue in cheek cussing. [Enough about the pipe].
It was always a big joke when Jim and his wife Minnie,
went on holiday for a week to the seaside with friends. Minnie would have Jim
move all the furniture, to dust and polish, "even behind the bl----
wardrobes had to be cobwebbed" he went on, in case someone had to look in,
while they were away. Minnie was a big friend of my mothers, and was very proud
of her new house, number 10 The Cumbers. She was also keen on her flowers
garden, and front lawn. Jim had to do the lawn mowing and dug and planted the
veg patch. His comment to these jobs was "Why didn't they build the B
motorway across my front lawn, or at least tarmac it" he went on, "I
could sweep it off and paint it green each spring and save all this work."
Bill, the youngest of the family, looked after the
cows. Up until the 1950s they were hand milked, and then they had their first
milking machine. Then followed a few years later with a bulk milk tank,
they stopped picking milk up in churns shortly after that. Bill had 14 cows
that was the maximum that the sheds would hold. They were well looked
after, and heavy milkers, and nearly always turned out for the night onto the
craft opposite the Holly Bush Pub. During the day they went down through
the ford, to the banky field at the end of Moor lane, or the field at the top
of the road bank on the right. At the ford the cows came from all
directions, Village Farm cows came down the bank to the ford the up the Moor
lane, Church Farm cows went down the same way as Bills. On the village
green, Green Farm cows would be going out, and also Yews Farm cows went across
the green to the Moss Lane
On a few occasions Bill would have to encourage his cows
to move across the path of another herd, or sometimes meet another herd head
on. He always had a long nut stick, and always on his bike when on the
road with the cows, and when a problem like this came up, he would get off his
bike, and gently tap his cows on through the opposing "team ".
He rarely lost any or picked any extra up, the cows knowing there own fields or
sheds.
In his younger days Bill was in the village cricket team,
often he was wicket keeper, then when in batting he would hit and run, and
really liven the proceedings up, scoring some very quick runs, or getting
himself or his colleague run out. The cricket square was in the middle of the
present village football field. It was a football field then as
well. During the week the cricket square was fenced off, and Bills cows
would graze round it. Always a joker he would examine a persons
ploughing, to see if it was strait. If it was one of us younger ones, and it
was crooked, he would be relentless in telling anyone who would listen, as to
how many dead rabbits he had picked up. Telling them how they had broken
their necks, running round the bends in the furrows. Another wease he had
was when someone had spent a day working hard at cleaning or sweeping up, he
would say "That looks better, which have you done ?", then
watch for the reaction, then laugh.
Only a small man, he had a job to reach the floor when
astride his bike, and with his Woodbine lit, and his nut stick across his
handle bars, set off promptly at three fifteen to fetch the cows in. As long as
everyone else was at the regular time, the herds would not clash.
They had a little grey Fergy tractor, which was used to cart the muck out to the field in
winter, and in the summer, they would mow the meadows for hay. Then when
they wanted timber for carpentry, they would be off down to Henry Venables
timber yard on the tractor, sometimes for wide elm boards, still with the bark
edges, for trailer floors, or oak for making gates, or timber for making a
coffin.
If anyone died in the village, Jim and Bill would be called. I remember one occasion when Bill was
not available, Jim called my brother and I to help him lay out a neighbour who
had died that morning. The first thing we were asked to do was to lift
the pantry door off its hinges, and put it on the table. Then we helped lift
the deceased onto the door to lay her out, this was a normal procedure as there
is not much room in a lot of cottages, and pantry door or scullery door had
hinges like a gate, and could easily be lifted off. When Jim was walking
off down the village, with a long notched stick in his hand, we knew he was off
to measure a body for the coffin. People did not have long measuring
tapes, as we have now, so a long measuring stick was used. [Carpenters usually
had a wooden two foot rule]. If you are a person living in one of the
Seighford cottages, you may never realise what your old pantry door had been
used for, besides blocking a hole in the wall.
After having got the measurements required from the body,
Jim would proceed to make the coffin. This would take all afternoon, and
he would work into the evening to get the job done. On occasions Eric
Bennion would call with his car, to transport the coffin to the deceased's
house, discreetly covered with a blanket. His car had a large carrier
rack on the back the right size. I heard a story about Eric, carting a
coffin about on the back of his car, when food rationing was on. There
were strict restrictions enforced by the police, usually by the local bobby on
a bike based at Great Bridgeford the next village. Eric, Jim and
Bill had to move a pig that had just been killed at one of their houses,
to someone who wanted it, but shouldn't have it because of rationing. So
the obvious way was in a coffin, covered up on the back of Eric's car, and at
night. I believe they passed the police but were never suspected.
Of coarse all the men of working age at that time, were
in the "Home Guard" based in Great Bridgeford village hall. No
end of contraband food exchange hands without a ration book in sight, not all
of them worked on farms or were farmers.
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