From Somerset to Norfolk
Preface
William Kidner (1842-1932) and his wife Jessie Matilda (née Clatworthy) farmed Fennington Farm near Cothelstone, on the western edge of the Quantocks. Roger Kidner (1886-1971) was twenty-one years old when his father moved from Somerset to Norfolk. The following extract, from a book Roger was writing, was printed in the Norfolk Young Farmers' Year Book 1965-67.
From Somerset to Norfolk
by Roger W. Kidner
In
the autumn of 1906, Abbots Farm, a 617 acre farm at Stoke Holy Cross, some
5 miles from Norwich, came up for letting. How did this come to our knowledge
in Somerset before those in Norfolk seemed aware of it? But so it was, and
my father eventually hired this farm from his home near Taunton for my eldest
brother, Marcus, who was married with two children and who had been managing
an uncle's farm, but was wanting to start on his own.
But then fate began to take a hand in re-arranging our future. My mother died
that year, my brother Alfred was back from 3 years in Canada, and I had just
finished a year at Harper Adams [agricultural college in Shropshire], so it
was decided to let Marcus carry on the old farm in Somerset while the rest
of us adventured into Norfolk farming. Plans were made accordingly, and as
Michaelmas day in Somerset was September 29th, and in Norfolk October 11th,
the rest of us decided to train to Oxford, and then proceed from there by
road the rest of the way. My brother Alfred had gone on ahead with his hunter
to attend the Michaelmas sales to buy the necessary horses and implements
with which to make a start.
Travel at that time was mostly confined to rail or horses, as the motor car
was in its infancy, and so on the advice of a more travelled uncle, we booked
our "first night at the Randolph Hotel. This turned out to be about the most
luxurious hotel in Oxford! As the next stopping place was to be the Swan Hotel
at Bedford, 56 miles away, we arranged to make an early start.
Hotels had stables and cobble stone yards in those days - not garages - and
the fun began when, after an early breakfast, we assembled on the cobble stone
yard. The two horses, fresh and excited at their unusual surroundings and
strange voices of the ostlers, began prancing about, and soon every window
facing the yard opened to see whatever this unusual scene was about.
But off we went. My father and two sisters, Grace and Madge, drove in the
trap. I rode the hunter mare. My young brother, Tom, rode his bicycle, and
the spaniel trotted along beside. Just imagine today a dog trotting 150 miles
from Oxford to Norwich, or even surviving a mile of it. We took the rest of
the journey in easy stages - from Bedford to Cambridge the next day - Cambridge
to The White Hart, Newmarket on the Sunday - Newmarket to Attleborough on
the 10th October, and so to Abbots Farm on the 11th.
From the luxurious Randolph at Oxford we descended to the opposite extreme
for our last night - this was to have been the Royal Hotel at Attleborough
but when we arrived the proprietress had died and was awaiting burial so the
Hotel was closed and we were recommended to try the Station Hotel. By the
noise that went on well into the night the main source of income was obviously
the bar. My sisters were assured that the sheets were well-aired as someone
had slept in them the night before. However they wrapped their heads in a
towel! All was well and we survived.
Most of our things had been packed in a large pantechnicon and put on rail
at Taunton, and our married sister was there to see to the unpacking when
we arrived. And so what was to prove a further 60 years' adventure of farming
at Stoke had begun.
The outgoing tenant, Robert King, had farmed Abbots Farm for 9 years, Youngman
for 11 years, and Jerry Seago, a relative of the artist Edward Seago, for
30 years before that, and he it was who had made great improvements - draining
the land - enlarging the fields, etc. He was often held up to us as a shining
example of how things should be done, as our Somerset ways were not Norfolk
ways and we were constantly being shown the 'proper' way.
There were some 20 men and boys working on the 600 acres, and a stable for
12 working horses, and a riding stable for five. Although I seem to have outlived
all of the original workers, Jimmy Frost has been with us for 58 years, Ben
Hardesty 54 years, and Stephen Whiting and Reggie Garrod 50 years. Wages were
13s. a week for labourers, and 15s. for horsemen, cowmen or bullock men, with
the head horseman, Dan Calver, getting an extra shilling. This was for a 60-hour
week, 6.30 a.m. to 6p.m. in summer, including Saturday afternoon, and a 70-hour
week for the Sunday workers with 2d. an hour overtime! Yet they were always
eager to put in overtime!
The men worked the half day till 11.30a.m. and then a two hour break for the
horses dinner time, and also on most Bank Holidays, Good Friday, Easter Monday
and Boxing Day - while everyone turned up on Christmas morning to help the
horsemen and stockmen. August Bank Holiday was also worked if harvest had
started.
Father kept careful accounts, even in those days, and in spite of the low
wages, which had been at this level for I don't know how many years (and remained
so until March 1915 when they were raised by 2s. a week to 15s.), and our
total wage bill for the first year 1907/8 on 617 acres was only £566, while
rent, rates and taxes were a further £544, yet our balance sheet showed a
loss of £449!
We then managed to show a small profit each year until 1911, the drought year,
but it wasn't until Michaelmas 1913 that we levelled off the score. This proved
the last of the seven lean years, and the next seven years were prosperous
ones.
In 1913 an adjoining farm of 420 acres came on the market which had been run
more as a convenience by a large sheep dealer, Sam Warnes, and was pretty
foul with couch, poppies, wild radish, and a lot more besides. This was bought
by my cousin, Norman Kidner, who married my eldest sister, K, and who was
in charge of the Thrapston Ironstone Works in Northamptonshire - the price
£13 an acre. This he rented to us for 15s. an acre. No-one ever had a better
landlord, for he helped us a lot with his big business outlook on life, and
encouraged wise spending on improvements.
The corn harvest at that time played a very important part in the farming
year, and provided the return on money spent all the rest of the year. The
harvest was usually let to the men on the basis of its being a month's work,
and after the bargaining of what should be included in the harvest and the
price was completed, a hiring shilling was given for the year ahead. I suppose
this was a relic of the old hiring fairs which took place even in my grand-father's
days.
On the evening of the day the harvest was completed the men all turned up
in their Sunday best for the harvest supper set out in the corn barn. This
consisted of hot roast beef, pork or mutton and plenty of gravy, which the
farm house had prepared. Funnily enough, it was the excellence of the gravy
that was most commented on. There was plenty of help with maids in the farm
house in those days.
After the supper there were songs from some of the men - usually the same
singers each year, with much appreciated repetitions of old favourites from
previous harvest homes. Sometimes these were augmented by a professional entertainer.
I remember one of these - Harry Haylett, who highly amused the company. I
noticed one of the men, however, looking very glum during the show, although
his wife was thoroughly enjoying it, and when I asked him how he had enjoyed
Harry Haylett - he replied, "Why it was nothing but lies he was saying"! Rectitude
was rather a strong point with him.
When the men were on a continuous job, such as hedging or ditching, away from
the farm buildings where we arranged the jobs each morning, they used to ask
if they should follow on next day instead of first coming to the farm. I remember
one wag bringing the house down after a supper by saying, "Can I follow on
here in the morning Master?"
On the Saturday of the week harvest finished the best waggon on each farm
was cleaned up and the men and their families all set off to Norwich with
the harvest money in their pockets to replenish their wardrobe, etc., for
the coming year. This was a Saturday the shop keepers of Norwich looked forward
to.
The barley acreage was mostly undersown with clover, or clover and rye grass
seed for hay the next year under the Norfolk four course shift. Most or the
barley was mown with scythes when we first came to Norfolk, for the brewers
objected to the use of the binder because of the different colours in the
grain-just as they objected later when combines came into use. The swathes
of mown barley had to be turned once or twice with forks, and finally laid
three rows into one for hand loading. This was not an easy job to handle with
the 2-tine forks and loose barley - either to pitch or load. We had been used
to binding barley in Somerset, and even as a boy I remember on very dry summers
(we did get them occasionally even at Taunton!) turning the sheaves on the
ground to get the dews on the other side to mellow the grain.
I remember too, later on, in the exceptionally dry summer of 1921, when the
barley was very steely and there was little dew at night, Hubert Groom of
Docking, that grand old figure of 90 and still going strong, vowing he wouldn't
cart his barley until it had had a rain on it. It was six weeks before it
rained, but he made 10s. a quarter more for malting - though what the waste
was by birds, etc. in that time I didn't hear!
I remember that year using three or four watercarts full of water on a heap
of 150 sacks of barley on the barn floor and then turning the heap over. It
looked dreadful at first but the barley was so steely and dry that it soaked
up the water and then sold like hot cakes. The buyers were just not interested
in the untreated. It's not often you can sell water at the price of barley
and at the same time please the buyers. 1921 was so hot and dry that some
farmers sprayed a hose on the barley as it went up the elevator on to the
stack and were handsomely rewarded for the effort.
There was a lot more difference in price between good malting barley and that
for grinding than nowadays, and when we could buy barley for 11s. or 12s.
a coomb for grinding, we could often sell some of ours for over 20s. It was
worth doing at that difference, even if you did get fewer sacks.
I can't leave the corn harvests without mentioning that of 1912 - the flood
year. The men started harvest the last week in July. It had been a wet summer,
and I well remember by the Saturday evening, August 24th, the men were finishing
our second stack - a barley stack. The other stack was up, and thatched, and
was all right, and the barley in that one made a high price when sold. There
was rather more sheaves in the field than John Copping had bargained for,
and he made the roof exceptionally steep. "Well John", I said to him "No rain
would ever get into that stack." But the Clerk of the Weather must have been
listening, and early Monday morning it started raining hard with a North Westerly
gale, and it rained all day and night. Norwich registered 6½ inches in the
12 hours, and 7½ in the 24 hours, while 8½ inches were registered between
Norwich and Yarmouth. The water went through to the bottom, and I have never
said what Nature could or couldn't do since!
A valley, with usually a dry stream bed all summer down the middle, was a
raging torrent 50 yards wide each side, which carried the shocks of barley
and beans there away and deposited them with mud in the boundary hedges, some
of it finishing up on Shotesham Common, nearly a mile away. There were 80
Norfolk County bridges washed away, including the Lakenham bridge over the
railway and river, while the Trowse bridge over the river was partly destroyed.
The flood reached its height in Norwich by the Wednesday, when boats rowed
down Magdalen Street, the water being over the archways to the Courts, and
there were pictures in the London papers of Jack Read swimming across the
courtyard with bread for people the other side. I remember walking down to
the City Station when the floods had subsided, and all the doors of the houses
were open, and the muddy high water mark in the houses were where the picture
rails would be.
When we first came to Norfolk, the Norfolk four course shift was in full vogue,
and one of the first jobs we did was to buy a bunch of 62 Irish bullocks to
eat up the vast crop of mangolds and swedes left by the outgoing tenant, the
law or tenant's agreement being that the outgoing tenant must leave a quarter
of the arable land in roots for feeding, which the incoming tenant was to
take over.
A relation of ours, the late Tom Kidner of Halvergate Hall, and grandfather
of T. and J. Kidner of Suffolk, having been a London butcher all his life
- the one who had put us wise to Abbots Farm coming up for letting - helped
in the buying of the bullocks, which were well worth the money at £15 5s.
0d.a piece. I well remember my anxiety when the 62 bullocks were put in charge
of a little old man and a dog to deliver to Stoke Park, especially with the
hundreds of other bullocks about on the roads, but they got there alright.
There were literally thousands of bullocks, mostly Irish, and nearly all Shorthorns,
that came to Norwich each week from September to Christmas. One Irishman would
occasionally sell 1,000 head on a Saturday and without making a single note
he would know exactly where you left off the deal in the morning if you came
back in the afternoon. These cattle were all sold in bunches held up by drovers
- 10, 20 or 30 head and reached from the Bell Hotel to the end of the Shire
Hall. There were many other dealers selling cattle as well.
But when our bullocks came out fat in February, March and April the trade
was poor, and they only averaged about £18 5s. 0d. after eating many tons
of cotton and linseed cake, most of the hay, and nearly all the roots!
So it was only natural we turned to other ways of earning a living than those
of the majority of farmers in the arable counties of the East. Next year we
started rearing calves, buying them at the calf auctions around 50s. each,
and often competing with the veal butchers for the best looking at £5 each.
The best looking at a month old we found to our cost were not necessarily
the best proposition, for a dud bred calf suckled on its mother for a month
would look fine.
This led us a step further, and my brother and I went to a sale of Aberdeen
Angus bulls at Birmingham, and bought two young bulls. These we lent free
to two neighbouring dairy farmers, Arthur Stimpson at Arminghall, and George
Mutimer at Hapton, both of whose main interest in buying a bull was to get
their cows in calf. These were all Shorthorn cows in those days, as were at
least 70% of the dairy herds in the county, and they made an excellent cross
with the Angus.
We were to take all the calves at current market prices at a few days old
- and at one time we had over 200 of these on the farm at different ages,
and this arrangement carried on happily for several years. ·We kept about
15 Shorthorn cows or so to provide the milk for these calves, which were reared
on the bucket. We used a Shorthorn bull for our own cows, and we found that
their steer calves when fat at under or about 2 years old, would come to more
money than the higher priced per cwt. crossbreds, owing to their greater growth
rate. Here was an object lesson to be learnt, though it was not to be fully
exploited in farming practice until some 50 years later, when growth rate
and food conversion rate were to become the criterion of the day among the
progressive farmers, but then there are many more people to feed today than
there were 50 years ago, and there will be many more still in 50 years' time.
My father had made quite a name for himself in Somerset for his Devon cattle,
winning many prizes at fat stock shows, including Birmingham, Smithfield,
and at the Bath and West and other summer shows, which had left their mark
in our minds. And when I was at Harper Adams Agricultural College in 1906
they kept a Shorthorn herd there, and so it was with Shorthorns that our thoughts
turned to develop; besides they were by far the prevailing breed and I have
seen it stated that 70% of the cattle in the whole world were Shorthorns or
Shorthorn crosses at that time.
It was October 1st, 1915 that the Norfolk Branch of the National Milk Records
was formed, and we joined it at the half year, April 6th, 1916. About that
time some of we local farmers formed the Framingham Farming Club, with our
headquarters at the Framingham Gull. These included J. A. Christie, Ben and
Ned Burgess, Jimmy Hazell, George Ford, the farmer landlord of the Gull Inn,
Hugh Hotblack and myself. I don't remember who the rest were.
This was very successful, and grew into a very useful form of getting farming
information from the people who specialised in the different spheres who used
to come and open a discussion. There was no N.A.A.S. in those days. We used
to run a Framingham Show as well. I was impressed with the value of these
discussions and later I put over the proposition to Frank Rayns that we could
profitably widen our scope to County level, and the Norfolk Livestock Club
was formed.
With Dr. Rayns' intimate knowledge of who were doing the research work with
the various diseases, etc., and knew what they were talking about, and not
only that, but he knew too who could put over their knowledge well, this too
proved successful from the start, and filled a much felt want in difficult
times for farming. This was in the mid-twenties when farming was at a very
low ebb. Mr. James Alston of Uphall was our first Chairman, and Lord Hastings
our first President, and well I remember his remark at the inaugural meeting
"Thank heaven here is something our farmers are wanting to do for themselves"!
Frank Rayns did the Secretarial work and the subscription was 5s. a year.
This Club prospered, and later we again wished to widen its scope, and it
was changed into the Norfolk Agricultural Club, which now holds about five
monthly meetings during the winter with excellent attendances.
One of the early results of forming the Framingham Agricultural Club was to
form ourselves into a Shire Horse Society, and we got the then Norfolk Livestock
Officer, Mr. Crosland, to attend a meeting of the club to put us wise as to
the procedure. In due course, the Burgesses, Jimmy Hazell and myself set off
to the Peterborough Horse Repository to attend a sale of Shire stallions,
and we purchased a son of the then famous Norbury Minstrel for 350 gns. He
left some excellent sons and daughters on the farms around us. It fell to
my lot to house and travel him.
Mr. Crosland stayed with us for the night of the meeting, and he said on arrival
"I always ask to see the cows wherever I visit". As a result, he persuaded
us to go in for grading up our cows to pedigree status, and he obtained a
pedigree proved Dairy Shorthorn bull called Kelmscott Juggler 33rd, which
he got for us at 2nd grade bull beef price (beef being rationed at the time
- 1916), and he cost us £63, for he weighed a ton.
This bull proved very successful, and we were on our way to perhaps the most
interesting line of my whole farming career, viz. the building of a successful
herd of Dairy Shorthorns. In November 1923 we held our first home sale of
62 head of grading up Shorthorns, which included many of Juggler's daughters,
including Stokelycross Poppy, who made the top price of 90 gns. There had
been a dreadful slump in beef prices, and good fat cows made as little as
£11 l0s. 0d. at Irelands Auction, cows that at recent prices would have made
£110 or £120 for export to the Continent. This beef slump had turned farmers'
minds to milk production, and our sale proved an attraction to several of
these would-be starters. However, disaster seemed to be staring us in the
face when at 8 o' clock on the morning of the sale when we opened the Eastern
Daily Press, in which there were huge black headlines across the page "GENERAL
STANDSTILL FOR ALL CATTLE NORTH OF THE THAMES" owing to a drastic spread of
Foot and Mouth disease.
The telephone had only recently been installed on the farm, though we were
still number 3 on the Framingham Exchange, and Oh Boy, were we thankful for
it! Mr. Crosland was with us, and he was in constant touch with the Ministry
in London all morning. At first they insisted the sale must be cancelled,
but Crosland stuck to his guns, and insisted it just couldn't be as everyone,
including the caterers and auctioneers, were on the way. It wasn't until 1
o'clock, when Lot 1 was already in the ring, that the message came through
that permits could be granted on the following Monday. The Norwich Fat Cattle
Show, which then was third in importance to Smithfield and Birmingham was
on that week, and this weighted the scale in our favour in granting the permits
- our telephone had paid for itself in one day!!
There was also an animated rivalry going on between the auctioneers, Messrs.
Thimbleby & Shorland of Reading, and John Thornton & Co., who were at daggers
drawn. Mr. Thimbleby had a habit of bringing out his white top hat as soon
as he felt a sale was going to be a success, and when Lot 3 came into the
ring, out came this hat! The sale proved to be the best non-pedigree sale
of the year, and the 62 head averaged £57 l0s. 0d. That was money in those
days of acute depression in agriculture and I still remember the thrill of
getting a £3,000 cheque on account that night from the Auctioneers.
One buyer had signed a milk contract to start delivery on the Monday, intending
to buy at our sale, but as the first lots seemed too dear, he kept putting
off, until he ended in buying every animal on two pages of the catalogue -
10 or 11 in all. Another would-be buyer, Fred Key of Framingham, put each
lot in at 50 gns. towards the end of the sale, and never bought one.
There weren't the motor lorries about in those days for carting cattle, and
most of the away buyers had them put on rail. So we set off in the dark on
Monday morning with lanterns, and two or three men to walk them to Trowse
Station. This was nothing unusual for us however, as fat cattle walked to
market in those days and it took three or four of us with lanterns starting
off at 5.30 a.m. to manoeuvre the bullocks over Shotesham Common which wasn't
fenced off then. This wasn't easy when the cattle were black and the lanterns
dim and the Common was boggy.
This extract is from a book I am writing for our celebrations after 60
years farming in Norfolk. So if you want any more you must wait for the book!
R.W. Kidner
Stoke
Holy Cross
Norwich, 1967
Last updated on 24th December 2008