PETER HARDWILL, IN BLACKDOWN, TALKING TO COLIN BOWDITCH ON 2ND NOVEMBER, 2021 ABOUT HIS LIFE IN BLACKDOWN AND WEST DORSET
TRANSCRIBED BY SALLY WAKEFIELD NOVEMBER 2021
CB Peter, would you like to say a little bit about your young life?
PH Yes, certainly. Well, my whole life has ben spent here at Blackdown. I was born on the 4th March, 1943 so when I get asked my date of birth, 4, 3, 4, 3 is all I need to say, and brought up on a small farm that my grandfather and father had arrived at in 1931/33, that sort of period, and rented from the Goble family who owned farms around this area.
It was a small dairy farm. There were lots of them about. They weren’t really proper farms; they had dairy and a little old cottage and they were a starter farm really for people. My grandfather, having worked at Tidworth in his earlier years, then he moved to a small farm at Trull and from Trull he came here. I remember, my earliest memories, 1947 the cold winter and, of course, in those days no electricity, no telephone, no anything and the old fashioned farming of cows in cow stalls.
We had a water pipe that came from our spring up in the field above the farm, it froze solid, and a land drain that emptied into a ditch close to the farmhouse. My mother used to go and draw water for everything in the house that was needed. Eating, drinking, whatever was needed, washing and so on, and to keep all the cattle that were in and around the farmyard at that time.
And I, being a young lad of 4 or 5 tended to be a bit of a nuisance so I had to look out to my younger sister, Alice, who was 14 months younger than me. But I was given the job of trying to cut up some sticks from a heap of wood down in the orchard and every so often I’d lose the saw in amongst the sticks and my father would get quite irritated about this. It’s quite extraordinary in this day and age that that sort of thing happened.
So that was my earliest memories but the farm was a typical small dairy farm and it was quite amazing that we grew everything for cattle. They had a very mixed diet. I mean in this day and age they just feed off grass or silage but we used to grow some mangolds and grow some kale and mainly hay, and we also grew a few potatoes – more than we needed – on the farm and we’d cut a field of corn and then harvest that corn and, if it was wheat (every so often it’d be wheat) and if we did wheat, the local thresher would come in. I can never remember the thresher coming in with a steam engine, it always had a Marshall Engine pulling the thresher and when we had the reed maker, about every 3 or 4 years, that had an Oliver Tractor to pull it into the farm and go threshing.
I’ve got a picture of myself on the tractor cutting corn. I was about 8, 9 or 10, that sort of age, on a Fordson Standard and my grandfather was 77, 78 and 79. We did it 3 years in a row and we would cut the corn in the old fashioned ricks and then the thresher would come in the winter and we would harvest this corn and, if it was wheat, we’d make some reed and that would be sold locally for people that was house thatching and so on. I remember making – my father and grandfather – building hayricks and my grandfather would cut rushes. This farm was so wet it was unbelievable. Half the farm was covered in rushes or ferns and he would cut rushes to thatch our own hayricks because he didn’t want to use best quality reed that he could sell for household uses. There was always so much work around the farm to do of helping my grandparents in those days and my parents because everything was manual so we did that. And that happened up until I had to start this thing called school.
CB So where was your first school then?
PH So, school. I went to Marshwood. I don’t really know the history of Blackdown School but Blackdown had a school, it’s still there, and it closed just before the war and then it reopened. Apparently, during the war it reopened for some reason, you know obviously to with the war, but closed shortly afterwards. And so I went to Marshwood School and I used to walk the quarter of a mile up to the main road, the main Crewkerne/Lyme Regis road that runs though here which, in the particulars of this house I now live in which is right beside that road, it was described as, this house, was described as a cottage on the main London to Lyme Regis Road. So a very important road. I’ll come back to that later. And I’d catch a bus – or a taxi, it wasn’t a bus. It was a taxi or one of those things that look like a Morris 1000 but larger and they were sort of bigger versions. Austin 18 taxis or something like that. And we would go different routes to collect the kids. When you went back in September the driver would say we’re going ‘so and so’ today and so you went the route that the taxi took you and you tended then to know the people on that route better than any others. And I remember on one occasion this taxi used to go out to Coles Cross which is a little hamlet the other side of Blackdown and we would turn left and go up under Pilsdon Hill and then down through Pilsdon and we’d pick up people through Pilsdon and then on back up through Marshwood in that direction.
CB And how many children were in the school then?
PH I can’t remember, it wasn’t a tremendously big coach but you could put a lot of kids into…….. 10 or a dozen I suppose, that sort of thing, and we certainly did the main road run. I can remember one ocasion because before the road at Racedown – that they widened in the ’50s – that road used to run right down to a farm entrance on the corner and around. I can remember dropping off the Grinter children there . But the two memories I have of going to school via Pilsdon was that a chap called Bob Rabbetts who I knew very well in later life, and know his family well, he drove this bus for a period of time and I remember we met an Austin 7 on a sharp bend and we hit the thing. It was a bit like a bat hitting a cricket ball, it bounced into the ditch and all the kids got out and lifted it back on the road with great smiles and laughter and everyone went on their way quite happily.
On another occasion we picked up the Gillingham boys from, I think it was, Hackeridge Farm or, if not Hackeridge it was acros the road from Hackeridge Farm. And on one Autumn day we came back and Arthur Gillingham, their father, was making cider in the farmyard. Of course he spoke to our driver Bob and said ‘Do you want a taste?’ They just produced some cider and of course Bob was out of the truck, and so was the rest of the kids, to sample this cider. So that’s the two memories I have. Other than that it was just a trip each day.
CB And so, how long were you up there at Marshwood School?
[00:08:38]
PW Marshwood School. I went to it at 5 and stayed there until 11. Mrs. Hedgeman was the Headmistress, Mr. Follett was her Deputy and the other master Mrs. Stevens, along with a number of helpers. She was the wife of the local baker’s roundsman who delivered bread around the village. Roy Lang had a bakery and Mr. Stevens delivered bread down and around the Marshwood Vale and so on and his wife worked in the school kitchen cooking the food on site. Excellent. I never had a bad lunch. People talked about school lunches but I never had a bad lunch and different people helped Mrs. Stevens from time to time that you got to know. Mrs. Moor and Mrs. Dalton.
CB Do you think you had a good education there? 5 to 11?
PW Excellent. Excellent education. I went through a period of school there and, of course, as we came through, up through the school, we were looking towards Eleven Plus. We didn’t really get any pressure on looking towards the Eleven Plus. This EP thing was coming up and effectively, as far as I was concerned, we had a day off to go and take our EP. There were a group of us that went off and took EP. Some of them more concerned than me but I went to Beaminster and took my EP which is a story in itself…………….. The Marshwood kids always went to Lyme Regis and, so, after 11 you went on to Lyme Regis but obviously where I lived in Blackdown, Beaminster came into contention and that came into contention because my mother had been to Beaminster Grammar School. She won a Scholarship.
She was the eldest of the Bugler family, farmers at Bettiscombe. My father had met my mother obviously at local social functions or whatever and they married in ’42. She’d been educated at Beaminster Grammar and apparently won a Scholarship there but my grandfather was very keen on education and I think I’m correct in saying he paid for his other daughters to go to Beaminster afterwards and they had a high regard for it. My mother was so keen on me leaving school and coming home and working on the farm because of the need of extra labour on the farm and a labourer for that type of small farm was difficult. As we’ve heard many times about cheap labour, family labour on the farm. She couldn’t wait. But Beaminster Grammar School was, to the best of my knowledge, nobody’s told me different, the only Grammar School in Dorset to teach agriculture to O Level standard. And so she was keen for me to go to Beaminster and she looked into this well in advance because obviously this was approved before I took my Eleven Plus because I had to go to Beaminster to take the EP.
It was the first time I’d met kids from Drimpton and Broadwindsor which was our Parish really extensively by going in that direction because I’d always gone to Marshwood. There was 2 of us who passed our Eleven Plus that year and I went to Beaminster, the only one who went to Beaminster. What finally apparently satisfied it was that to catch the bus to go to Lyme you had to cycle to Birdsmoorgate which was 2 miles and was all up hill and to cycle to catch the bus to Beaminster which was just down to Horn Ash which was 1 mile of downhill. My mother didn’t worry how long it took me to get home, it was the speed in the morning of getting there. So I went to Beaminster Grammar School. But as far as I was concerned I was very happy with my Marshwood School primary education and I’ve never heard anybody critical of it or, for that matter, anybody say that ‘It’s a pity you didn’t have a better education Peter.’ Everybody seemed to be quite happy.
CB That’s perfect, yes. So during your teenage years then, some of which of course was connected to Beaminster, what, in your spare time, was it all back on the farm or did you join other sort of clubs or play football for teams, or what?
PH Yes. I don’t want to miss out the bit about the Grammar School at Beaminster. Are you going to talk about that later or do you want to talk about that now?
CB Yes, now, that’s ideal.
PH Well, for some uncanny reason I had an interest in engineering. I can understand where it came from. My mother had 2 brothers who both served through the war so they’d been in war service and that showed. One of them who was my Godfather was an engineer so he had really very little interest in farming and was, down that side for the family, and my grandfather, on the farm here, had a wagon that was signwritten which I found quite amusing. He’d come from Somerset where it was a pretty regular thing to do and they had a signwritten wagon which I always seemed to……………. This wagon was regarded as a very high quality wagon and my grandfather Bugler, he produced for me a little wheelbarrow. My mother obviously had in mind that I would be better if I could push something as well as carry it and so I was given this little wheelbarrow for my 3rd or 4th birthday which was signwritten. So I was very proud of this little thing and when I went on holiday………. in school years you went on holiday with your relatives…….. I went to Bettiscombe where my grandparents and my mother’s younger sister Edna, and enjoyed every minute of it. And my Godfather had made a little old cart that I played for hours on as opposed to really being out on the farm. My other uncle wasn’t used to having children around and didn’t seem to ……………. I didn’t seem to be encouraging, I seemed to be more encouraged in that direction. And everything lead to an engineering leaning. I think at home my grandfather fed the calves but if there was any mending or repairing to do I seemed to be given the job and enjoyed it.
Now I went to Beaminster. I’d never heard of the place. We’d always gone to Crewkerne. I went to Beaminster at 11 and joined in everything. And joining in everything meant that I did agriculture. It was decided that I should do agriculture. I passed agriculture at O Level standard, taught me by Arthur Graveson who lived at time up in Stoke Road and mathematics I was taught by Miss Peters. Miss Peters and Arthur Graveson had both taught my mother. Both of them had taught my mother as quite young teachers and taught me as more elderly teachers and that was the 2 subjects I passed. I think that the rest, it wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in them or wasn’t able to do them, I think when I got home I didn’t spend as much time on homework as perhaps I should have done. But mathematics I was interested in. I alwas topped it at primary school and I continued that, and the agriculture was obviously interesting.
But the rest of the school did physics and chemistry and so I had some spare spaces and at the time there were 2 units up by Holy Trinity Church in Beaminsrer which were County Council operated and one was for girls, for needlework and cookery, and the other was for the boys, for woodwork and engineering. And the Grammar School boys used to up there for woodwork but nothing else and the Headmaster, Major Porter, suggested that in spare lessons I had I could go up and join whoever was working up there that day to do a bit of engineering which he said would come useful in my farming needs. And it was absolutely brilliant. I loved every minute of it and that was another leaning down the route of engineering and when I, even I think before I went to Beaminster, when I was at Marshwood, a nearby farm got sold and it was a run down old farmhouse and the new people that came there, a Major Rawlings and his wife, came there and had the farmhouse completely refurbished and I used to run down from the school bus and see how they were getting on. I had an interest in building and what was happening to this farmhouse more than I did in having run home to see what was going on at home. I used to skip down there at about 4.30 for a quarter of an hour / half an hour before the builders went home It was just a short delay and I still know the family that were the builders there and they often remind me of me scooting down there.
[00:18:39]
Going back to Beaminster it was a complete surprise. To go to Beaminster from a Primary School, Marshwood, was a total complete surprise and consequently this engineering side of me developed. It developed at home with things to do but was encouraged in Beaminster and, consequently, I made the best of it.
Beaminster was a sizeable town and we used to get an hour and a half for school lunch which we had at the Red Lion Mrs. Page used to cook and produce school lunches at the Red Lion. A fairly formal occasion. One of the Prefects would sit at the end of the table and supposedly whip us youngsters into shape but there was a good half an hour before lunch started that was free for you and I made the best use of that time. They tormented me about it that I used to save my pocket money up to buy tools as opposed to buying sweets because, at home, my pocket money came from the fact that we had a bunch of hens laying eggs that had to be fed in the morning and I used to get up and feed the hens in the morning and I was given 4 hens as payment and any eggs that the hens laid I could sell and take the proceeds of which at times of the year were more beneficial than given two bob (2 Shillings). There were times in the year when the hens didn’t lay you were made to survive out of your savings so you had to bear this in mind all the time.
But I used to go to Beaminster and Mr. Colborne, the shop was called Colsons because Mr. Colborne had 3 sons, but I’d go in there and see Mr. Colborne himself who was quite an elderly man at that time, and he’d advise me what tools to buy and I’d save up and buy various tools. And built up quite a collection as I was going through school and I then said to him that I wanted a bench drill so as I could drill sizeable holes through metal and so on. And he showed me one in a catalogue which was an extortionate price, I mean you just couldn’t…………… and one day he said to me ‘There’s a gentleman in the town has got one of these drills and he’s only used it for wood so it’s had no wear. And he’s retiring and he’s prepared to sell the drill for £3. Would you be interested?’ Cor, interested? And he said ‘Well I’ll arrange when we go and see him’ and he took me down to see this man and I purchased my drill. And the next thing I wanted was a heavy duty vice but the problem I had when I’d saved up the money for the heavy duty vice was that I couldn’t get the thing home, it was too heavy to carry on the school bus and get the thing home.
And I said to Mr. Colborne that this was a problem and he said ‘No problem at all, Peter, if you’ve saved the money, you part with the money and I’ll deliver it free.’ And I mean, free in those days was not a word you heard very often no like you do today with everything and to have this thing delivered free, I couldn’t believe. Basically the next day i got home from school and father said there was a present for me and there was my vice. I shot into Mr. Colborne the next day to thank him and said ‘My goodness, I just can’t believe it. How did you………….?’ And he said ‘My son runs the Post Office.’ So he’d obviously put it in the back of the post van and delivered it. But he was a great favourite to go in there for tools and by that time I was repairing the farm machinery so I’d go into Buglers – they were in the middle of the town at the time – and Reg Newton was in there in the stores. And I’d go in there to see Reg and he’d advise me on what I needed when I told him a machine was broken down. Supply me with the bits and pieces. Father had an account there so that dealt with that.
I remember going in there one summer’s day and Reg said ‘Cor aren’t I glad to see you. It’s nearly lunchtime. I’m bloody hungry today, the morning’s dragged a bit, I’m really pleased to see you, it’ll be lunchtime.’ And I bought something from him and I walked back up to the school with it because it was too heavy to carry down to the Red Lion and dumped it at school. And on the way back down – they’d just built the new fire station which was up Hogshill Road – the fire siren went off and as I got to Buglers Corner Reg came out – he was a fireman – on his bike going for all he was worth. And I said ‘Going home to lunch then, Reg?’ Knowing full well that he wasn’t going to get anything for perhaps 6 or 7 hours. And it was just coincidence that he came out and I said that.
CB What age were you then?
[00:23:51]
PH When did they celebrate the fire station being open? I was 12, 13, might have been 14, that sort of age.
CB So you were repairing farm equipment at that young age?
PH Oh yes, an early age. That’s right. Well then the other interesting character, at least to me, it might not be to anyone else, was Ken Hurford who started his business as a television engineer, opened a little shop. Next door to Buglers, a little shop next door and his father would be behind the counter. Very elderly man, behind the counter, and I spoke to an organisation in Beaminster on one occasion and they stopped me and said that wasn’t his father because his father worked for Pines. He worked for Pines, Mr. Hurford, etc. Well I said, it was his father and you can take issue with me but I’m not going to change my story. And apparently he worked for Pines until he retired and Ken Hurford then opened his shop and he then spent time in his shop just looking out to the counter because Ken was out repairing or in the workshop and he just spent his time there in his retiring years.
And I went in to tell him that electricity was coming through our villages and I think that was in ’55, would have been ’55 or ’56. So I would have been 12 or 13, and he took out the smallest slip of paper and showed me how electricity worked. That these two cables came up and they went through a light and if you put them one way you had the same light with the next bulb and the next bulb, if you put them a different route you halved the light. And so on. But he drew this little drawing and if you put a switch in on the way then that cut the supply off and this is how electricity worked. And he showed me some cable at 3d a yard, that’s old 3 penny a yard (meaning unclear) and our cowstall ran at right angles to the lounge in the house, only a matter of 3 or 4 yards away, and I took a cable. The electrician said he could wire up a light in every room in the house in the Autumn ready for the Winter but he couldn’t do the farm buildings until the next year because everybody wanted him doing their jobs. And it wasn’t a case of electricians coming from miles away, your local electrician did it all and so I plugged this plug into the plug in the lounge and took it into the cowstall. Now in the cowstall we had a Tilley Lantern which every so often you had to pump the thing, or an ordinary paraffin lantern which on a windy night would blow out every five minutes and you had to relight it. So the lighting in the cowstall was pretty minimal and I put in 3 bulbs up there and I switched these 3 bulbs on when I’d completed the operation and my grandfather who, if you’d shown him the lights in Blackpool he wouldn’t have been happier because it lit the whole place up and he could not believe – it was ‘What time do they go out?’ and questions like that. He just could not believe it. And I mean it lit the cowstall up brilliantly for milking from there on. Then, of course, the following Summer it got wired properly but that was old Mr. Hurford, Stanley’s grandfather, who explained that to me. So he was a great help.
Mr. Cross I knew from a distance who ran the milk factory because our milk went to Beaminster. Dried milk products, so that would go to Beaminster and he lived down at the milk factory.
CB So your milk went to the milk factory and that was then……………………. produced, dried milk?
PH That’s right. Well it produced dried milk when they wanted to. The Milk Marketing board ran milk right throughout the country, not like it is now, so the lorry came round and picked up everybody’s milk. Well now somebody goes, because the government tangle with it, you get 6 lorries picking up 6 different farms but the milk lorry came round and picked up everybody’s churns and went back to Beaminster. I didn’t know of Beaminster until I went there for school and I didn’t know at that age why ours went to Beaminster but, of course, we were in Dorset. The boundary is just down the road. I always said I could throw a stone into Somerset, fire a shot into Devon and there was a milk factory at Crewkerne but of course that was a different county.
Everything here, we’re right on the edge. We’ve got a Somerset phone number because we’re the last line out on the Taunton exchange, but the farmer down the road’s got a Bournemouth number, no a Broadwindsor number, which came under Bournemouth and one in the other direction’s got an Exeter number coming under Exeter. The same applies with cathedrals. We’re in Salisbury, go one church that way and you’ve got Bath & Wells, one church that way you’ve got the Exeter area and you’ve got the Devon, Dorset, Somerset boundary and everything gets muddled between the 3.
CB So the milk factory was producing……………….. processing as fresh milk or turning it into dried milk?
PH Oh dried milk. They were called DMP (Dried Milk Products) part of a bigger group I think one of the names now continues down at the milk factory from a number of names that were around at that time. But basically, if the Milk Marketing Board could sell the milk liquid that’s what they wanted to do. That was their maximum earnings. When you got into May, and milk was more generous, farmers let their cows out on the fresh grass and the milk levels went up and people’s consumption of milk probably dropped a little bit after the winter. There would be a surplus and then the Milk Board would produce whatever they could and a lot of farmers around here were offered a contract to make cheese. Streatfield Hood down at Denhay Farms made cheese and the Commander told me that he didn’t know anything about cheese; they were just offered it by the Milk Board and he thought it was a good idea so they made cheese and Aplin & Barrett made cheese at Crewkerne. They had 2 farms there that they owned making cheese in a big way and when they sold that out in about the ’60s, the farmer that bought it didn’t know anything about cheese but obviously the returns were such that he kept the cheese going. As far as dried milk products were concerned when they’d stocked up with cheese and stocked up with everything else then they turned it into dried milk products. They sold it back to farms as a calf food so you could actually get a sack of calf food from the lorry driver in the morning and I did hear the odd incidence over my upbringing of a farmer who tried to put water with the calf milk and send it back but that was an odd occasion that happened. But obviously a lot of dried milk would go to overseas countries, baby food and so on, but we could always tell in the spring if the milk was going liquid the lorries would go into Beaminster and really turn it over and then you’d see what we lads thought was massive lorries and the old Wincanton Transport, big blue Atkinson or Albion lorries with the Gardner engine would chug up through the town with a full load of bulk milk and head off to London or wherever.
CB You didn’t ……………. your parents or grandparents, they didn’t make any butter or cheese on the farm themselves?
PH No, other than what we wanted at home.
CB So you did make enough………….
PH Yes, that’s right, my mother would…………. Before she was married and I’ve come across people who remember her making butter and cheese down in the Marshwood Vale. A group of farmers’ daughters making it.
CB Did they sell any of that. Did they ever have a surplus, did they take it to market?
PH No. The only thing that we did that we sold off the farm other than reed was corn, any corn we grew we’d sell, and of course we had chickens where we’d be selling eggs from the farm each week and potatoes. The memory of potatoes is that one particular year we grew these potatoes and we would harvest them and store them in bags and put them in an old-fashioned stone barn which basically would be pretty secure from the point of view of frost and you’d sell them fairly soon after you’d dug them.
But one particular year we had, we ploughed a fresh bit of ground that produced a lot more, we didn’t realise the ground was so good. I don’t think people realised the variation in ground. But we realised this bit of ground was much more fertile than anything else we’d seen, didn’t seem to have stones in it which most of the farm did. So we grew these potatoes and when we came to harvest them the barn was full of – we’d obviously harvested or had plans to harvest some corn. I think it could have even been a situation where perhaps it could have been that the Combine started operating so we weren’t waiting for the thresher, and we debated how to store these potatoes.
My grandfather said ‘Well we always store mangolds in a cave and they’ll freeze quickly so why can’t we do the same with potatoes?’ So we stored these potatoes in the old-fashioned cave, which you put them in a heap in the field, you’d cover it with straw or, in our case, ferns and then my father was a master at covering the ferns with earth but he laid it with a spade so it was like tiles and water ran off it. And that first year we did that. It poured with rain. We put these ferns on which were dry as a bone and the forecast was heavy rain. It was the first year I’d seen a plastic sheet. This thing came out called a plastic sheet which we put on top of silage. The first couple of years we made silage we didn’t have a plastic sheet and the silage would…………… if you put hay on top of the silage it would cook it. But we had this plastic sheet which was the saviour of your silage crop. And we had a bit of this sheet left over and we threw it over this potato thing to keep the ferns dry and then didn’t take it off and put the earth on top. That was ’62/’63 which was an unbelievably cold winter and it was so cold it snowed on Boxing Day and it stayed snowy right through until about the 2nd or 3rd week in March. And what was more important, it didn’t just stay cold it stayed frozen, solidly, morning noon and night. Highest snowfall. Terrible time. It was the only time the milk lorry couldn’t get round and all sorts of stories of the milk lorry trying to get round the area at that time and we got out in about April and nobody had any potatoes. They’d all been frosted and there was a mighty shortage of potatoes. And we said we’d go and open up this cave and see what we’d find. And everybody predicted we’d find this sort of heap of frosted potatoes but the cave hadn’t altered in its shape so we dug away in the cave. There wasn’t a single spud spoilt. Every spud was absolutely perfect and I think we made more money out of spuds then than we would make out of them now. I mean it was quite incredible. We could not believe it because you only had to say “spud” and……………………. Two fish and chip shops. By that time I’d acquired a Morris 1000 truck and all I did was whistle off with these spuds particularly to fish and chip shops supplying them.
CB You were saying, when we were talking earlier about this, that during this time you joined the Young Farmers Club?
[00:36:26]
PH Young Farmers Club came when I left school. Basically, in my youth prior to leaving school the only thing that happened was what happened in the village. I can never remember my mother or father taking me anywhere other than to visit relatives. I really never went shopping with them. My father would take me to watch cricket. He enjoyed cricket. He lived at Trull between the ages of 10 and 22 and he lived 2 miles out of Taunton. My grandfather said he’d leave a field of hay to go and watch cricket. And he went to watch cricket and when he came here we used to go once a year, when the Australian Touring side were playing Somerset, we’d go down for the opening day. If it hadn’t been for the Covid (Coronavirus Pandemic) that would have been the year 2020, would have been my 70th year of watching Somerset at Taunton. I’ve watched ever since because my father took me and I never stopped going to watch cricket.
[00:37:36]
Prior to that at school everything you did was home in the village. The church was very important. We were in Broadwindsor Parish. Broadwindsor, Burstock, Drimpton and Blackdown and the Vicar took residence in the vicarage in Broadwindsor and he held 4 services every Sunday. He would go to 9.45 Holy Communion, 11 o’clock Matins, 3 o’clock children’s service, 6.30 evening service. They all had different so he would start his morning in one of the churches and go round the 4 and the next week they’d all move around so every week. As children we never went to the Holy Communion service – that was our week off a month – but we went to the other 3 services and you then met not only schoolmates because as soon as you got a little way towards Somerset those kids were going to Somerset schools and so you got to know them. But you met and played with your mates, mostly, particularly the children’s service in the afternoon.
I learnt to ride a bike because a good friend of mine, who was a couple of years older than me, had a bike and could ride it and I learnt to ride a bike coming home from church with him.
School things – the only time I can remember my mother visiting school was for sports day in the summer and that sort of thing but my father took me with him everywhere and it was noted that the Blackdown Village Hall had a very good Skittles League. The Malam family ran Blackdown at that time, Mr. Malam was chairman of the hall committee which was very good and very well known and……. as all the village halls were. They were popular with dances once a month that were held up there and the W.I. Mrs. Malam was President of the W.I. They had a good W.I. Still running at Blackdown. My mother was very keen on that. That was her only social nights out to go to that.
Children’s party we had there at Christmas and any other celebration. Blackdown House, Mr. & Mrs. Cullen, we went there for a big fete when the Queen…………… for the Coronation of the Queen which was ’53 and so on and so forth. And on bonfire night we used to go to the top of the hill and collect up hedge trimmings and sticks and rubbish at the top of the hill for everything and we also used to go up on the hill as soon as we had snow. And we seemed to have a bit of snow, I seem to remember that we had a bit of snow every winter, and as soon as an inch of snow came you were straight up onto that hill. We are high, where we’re sat now is 600 ft. above sea level. Only 10 miles from Lyme Regis but you’re 600 ft. above sea level and the hill, Blackdown Hill behind us, is another 150 ft. I suppose. You’d go up on there with a bit of snow and skid down over and there’d be half a dozen or 10 kids up there as soon as you had a touch of snow.
[00:40:45]
But it was always local stuff like that. Really that didn’t alter. I can’t remember………………… at Broadwindsor we had a vicar Rev. Rodder came to Broadwindsor and he encompassed everybody and everything and started Harvest Suppers at Blackdown but he used to get me, I was going to Beaminster School, and I used to sit on the bus with his son quite often. He had a couple of sons that were going to Beaminster Grammar and so I got to know them so I got more involved with Broadwindsor then. The Studley family were very popular in Broadwindsor, Len Studley and his wife. Len took part in Far From the Madding Crowd as the drunken vicar. I know all the family very well because it was a half-way stop either going to Beaminster on a bike or coming home from Beaminster on a bike. If you got wet through you could always stop at Mr. & Mrs. Studley’s. My mother and Mrs. Studley had gone to school together and knew each other well and that was a stopping point if you were wet or if you wanted a break or whatever.
Everything at school that you couldn’t catch the bus for you cycled and I found no problem in cycling to Beaminster. I used to enjoy it. So I did go to Broadwindsor a little bit, didn’t know many in Broadwindsor because most of them went to different schools, secondary schools in Beaminster and so on but I was encouraged by that vicar in particular to go to Broadwindsor so there wasn’t much happening other than happened at school. We’d stay on in the summer and winter things, we’d sometimes have something on, which I’d cycle to. But when I left school, as soon as I left school, which was 16 1/2 – my birthday’s March so I left in the July – 2 weeks after I left school a farmer from Wynsham that I hardly knew at that time, and he was probably 4 years older than me, and I realised that he was going out with a girl that I’d gone to school at Beaminster with. She’s 2 years older than me so she’d left school a couple of years before and she must have said ‘Peter Hardwill’s left school’ and he rang me up, because I didn’t know him, and said ‘Would you like to come to Crewkerne Young Farmers?’ And I knew the Young Farmers Club existed, but nothing about it, but he said he’d pick me up. And when I went to Crewkerne Young Farmers Club, the first time I went, there were only 2 members had cars but he was one of those who had a car and he took me.
Now, again, an absolute coincidence, on his farm there were 2 brothers farming, one looked out to stock, one looked out to machinery and John was particularly keen – John Jeffrey his name – he was very keen on the machinery side so he had an interest in the machinery and when in Young Farmers he was very friendly with another guy called Robin Wyatt who went on to produce the Wyedale Calf Feeder and Wyedale Plastics which is a big company now still operating. I joined Crewkerne young Farmers Club, and I went to the first meeting and didn’t think much of it, neither here nor there, and I heard these 2 speak afterwards and said ‘Good meeting tonight’ And I thought well I suppose if they think it’s a good meeting I’d better come again and see why. So I went back the second week and the Chairman said, real Devonshire chap, he said ‘We’ve got a letter from Yeovil College, they’re running a course on Agricultural engineering through the winter. They’ve got 3 places, anybody want to go?’ And these 2 were really interested in engineering, put their hands up and he said ‘Well they’ve got 3 places, anybody want to go with them?’ And John turned to me and said ‘Would you like to come with us?’ My hand went up so fast and I went with them so that was introduction to Yeovil Tech. So I went there which enhanced my engineering skills tremendously and I was able to do a lot more at home than I thought I could. I’d learnt properly how to do this and do that.
And the other person who was very influential was Commander Streatfield. He came into the Vale at that time and could not believe how young farmers and people were really lacking so much education. No farmer had written an invoice because they sold their product – the Milk /Dairies measured it and sent them a cheque so there was none of that to do. And he organised what turned out to be West Dorset Training and organised these groups. And I got invited to join, I mean he was a man who got to know people well, Master of Foxhounds so he hunted over their land, ‘Well, he’s got a lad so I’ll invite him’, and that sort of thing happened. And because of my education I then heard of a welding class in Beaminster that was taught by John Poole who was Bugler’s workshop foreman who I’d met to a lesser extent when I’d been going in to Buglers. So I went there and learnt to weld.
[00:46:16]
So everything I did – I can never remember being asked to go to a meeting about feeding cows or feeding calves or anything. But you know, whether that was my interest or what, but all these things ticked into place to, you know, obviously………………. in those early days and of course farming all changed.
You talked about farming changing? When I grew up, I grew up with old fashioned farming which was everything was manual and we had wagons for hauling hay and straw. I can recall loading a load of sheaves on a wagon and we were very busy at harvest time and there was forecast of rain and we wanted to get all we could in and my grandfather said to my father ‘Well you’re doing the milking.’ Because by that time we had a milking machine so we didn’t need grandfather, he said ‘Peter’s big enough to put a small load in place. We’ll go out and load a load of sheaves and you can do the milking. We’ll have a load loaded by the time you’ve finished; we’ll perhaps clear that field that night if we’re lucky before it rains.’ And we loaded this load of sheaves and I was doing pretty well, I’d seen everybody do it, until I got to the top of the laids (? unclear) you know, each end of the wagon there was a laid(?) to guide you. When I got to the top of the laid(?) I was in no-man’s-land. So I leaned over the side of the load and I said to my grandfather ‘How high do you want me to go, grandad?’ And he put his hand straight up and he said ‘You go as high as you can me son’, he said, ‘All that up there is mine’. And the number of times since that when I moved to my engineerng business and I went on to a farm and talked about a new farm building, and I’d say to the farmer ‘What height do you want it?’ The number of times when the farmer’s been in debate about how high to have it I’ve told him that story. Put his hand straight up and said ‘All that up there’s mine!’
I realised then that my father, when he was loading a load of hay I never knew a person that could work easier. He’d have that hay coming up that old hay loader and it would come in over the top of the laids(?) and he’d move it around that load so easy. Lean over the front and tell me to pull the throttle out on the tractor and go a bit faster. He’d load it and he loved loading a load high and if you talked to anybody about the early years of hauling straw, baled straw, I was notorious for going one bale higher than everybody said you should. It stems from those days.
But the early days of farming everything was manual you know. Oh dear, oh dear. We had the old thresher come in and when the thresher came in, it came in and parked up and off would come the corn into West of England sacks. Now a West of England sack weighed 4 lbs. and you’d put it on the weight – you had a West of England sack on the weights to allow for the sack, and then you filled to the weight which was I think, from memory, was 100cwt for oats, 200cwt for barley and 2 1/4 cwt for wheat and then you sewed up the top of this West of England sack and you stored it until you sold it but then you………. and if you sold your corn to a corn merchant he would return the sacks and you’d get them booked off from the hire period. The merchant would book them off when he received them. It was a good system. Really strong sack, they’d keep the seat of a Fordson Standard tractor dry for months, they were wonderful.
But I can recall the farmers used to come in and help around the village. You’d go and help your neighbours when the thresher did the visit because you needed extra men and I can recall a farmer turning up who was one of a number of brothers, turning up helping us and another farmer turning up who was always……… he was a super person but he was a gentle person. He wasn’t your big strong burly person, and his mum and dad did used to be very…………………….. make sure that he didn’t overdo it. I don’t know, he may have had something medically wrong with him but you know he was, I would describe him as a gentle person. And this big burly farmer picked up this 2 1/4 cwt. bag and carried it off to the barn and he looked round at the lighter person and said ‘Now come on why don’t you carry a bag?’ And this chap’s father was there at the time. ‘Oh, he said, you can’t expect him to carry a bag on his own like that’. And the burly chap who had several brothers said ‘Well, if there were as many of your family as we’ve got in ours he’d bloody well have to carry a bag.’ You know, because everything was manual.
And then we changed. Everything changed. I left school in ’60 and everything changed. The government were pressing for more milk and more production. We were producing something like 65, 70, 80% but they wanted more produced on the home farms. Everything was done to increase production and so farmers should come out of cowstalls, where cows were tied up individually, and have loose housing. And these things called covered yards where they just housed loose or then cubicles got brought in which was the saviour to everything and milking parlours as opposed to cowstalls. And fertiliser came into play so you put on some fertiliser on your fields and you grew more grass so you kept more cows and, as a farmer said to me, ‘Stupid game we’re in. We put on this fertiliser, we grow more grass, then we milk more cows. It’s only creating work for ourselves when we do all this but ’tis a lot more fun isn’t it, Peter?’ He gave all these stories against it but then he said ‘But it’s a lot more fun isn’t it, Peter?’ He was right really.
[00:52:46]
It all went up in production so we did that. Then of course they brought out this thing called a baler which, instead of this loose hay that we put in hay ricks and you cut out with a hay knife in the winter and played about with and took out the fields, you were putting up covered yards and keeping the cattle in and all this sort of thing, they brought out this thing called a baler which seemed to be a magic piece of kit. Now I couldn’t understand this because i was relatively young at the time and this hay loader would pick your hay up, (Gibbs in Crewkerne were founders of the…….. the Gibbs family were inventors. One of the inventors of this hay loader, and it picked this grass up and it elevated it up and threw it in over your wagon at 12 ft. high which was magic. Then they brought out this thing called a baler that chucked these things out on the ground and somebody, e.g. me, had to pick them up and put them up on the wagon and the first year we had this we put these bales on this wagon and it would carry about 50 and it was blooming hard work to put them on there. And the thing wasn’t balanced. A load of loose hay the thing would ride, the bales would slip all over the place and it was hopeless. And again because of my expertise I decided that life had to be made easier and I consequently, over the winter, made myself a bale trailer which was 18 ins. off the ground that would carry 160 – 200 bales with ease and not lift them that silly high because you started down there instead of starting all up there and you started with a layer of 20 bales not 6. And so on which I made because obviously to set this thing up I had an RSJ up the middle which I’d acquired from somewhere but when the water board went through, when the electricity people came through with a pylon line, there’s a big pylon line tghrough, thre was a Scotch Pine down at the bottom corner of the farm that they cut down. Now whether Major Boyne (? unclear) who was a great tree lover over the road at Combe Farm, whether he planted it, but there was 2 there and one of them was in the line and they cut this thing down and there was a great furore about it. It stayed there laid in the hedge for what would be 4 or 5 years and I went and collared said tree. I got to hear through Young Farmers of a guy who had a big saw bench at Crewkerne and I took it out there and he chopped said tree up and I used that to make my bale trailer. And then I could haul bales easily. And, more to the point, in Autumn when we’d virtually give up needing straw and we wanted more straw for more cows I could go off with my bale trailer and fetch straw from local farms that had a surplus, particularly over the other side of Crewkerne where there was a bit more corn land.
CB So this is yet another example of the change that came in the late ’50s and early 60s?
PH That’s right,. Hydraulics got put on to tractors and you had hydraulic ploughs as opposed to trailer ploughs and all this sort of thing. And then everybody was putting in these milking parlours. The low cost milking parlour was what was called a Milking Bail which was invented probably by A.J. Hosier up in Wiltshire. The Wiltshire farmers were so far ahead with modernising agriculture and they produced these Bails which would move out into the field and they’d move them round the field all the Summer but farmers in this part of the world used to buy one of these Bails and park it up in their yard as a milking parlour and let the cows come in and go out. The Hosier was regarded as one of the better ones and we installed a Hosier one I think in 1963/64 and so on, operated it with churns for a number of years until everything went bulk, but it all worked pretty well. But that was a big change. Good or bad, and of course instead of having cows then tied up, well running out in the field, if they were in all the winter evenings they certainly went out all day, they were stood in one place, they messed behind them in a trough area with an element of straw kicked off their bedding and didn’t seem too much trouble to handle. Once they went over to modern farming this product called slurry appeared and has been a disaster and a nightmare ever since. And I’ve often thought that if somebody could invent something that could mix with slurry to turn it into concrete, because it doesn’t matter where you go on a farm there’s a shortage of concrete, and if you could provide an additive that you could add to slurry and make it into concrete you’d make a fortune. But nobody has come up with it yet
[00:57:54]
CB When did farms start getting larger, when did farms start amalgamating? Or people buying up land and becoming larger?
PH Well I suppose the movement of traffic …… you know, in our day your tractor never went off your farm. You know, a Fordson Standard was 6 mph at flat out, they were and they weren’t licensed, and so on and so forth so I suppose it occurred when the tractor horsepowers went up. In the early ’50s they started producing diesel tractors that had better brakes and that sort of thing so they would travel further. I mean I think what happened in the early days was that farms naturally stayed the same size, what happened was that as soon as father had a son getting married he tended to buy them a farm. So small farms that came up for sale were bought as a small farm for a son to go and farm on. And then the price of land escalated, that tended to slow up a little bit and, as you say, now land all over the place is you know……………… Well, the small have gone out haven’t they? That’s what’s happened, small dairies have all disappeared. Mine disappeared because of my other interests although I kept the two going for a number of years employing a cowman and kept the two going but not as satisfactorily as it would have done if you’d been concentrating on it. And then, when there was an opportunity…………… of course it all overtook you know because the Ministry were producing all these extra farming and everybody was putting up new buildings and doubling their size of their herds and then of course there came a milk surplus. And then, so Quotas came in and a number of small farms went out and small farms have been going out since. Movement of farmers is made easier, the landrover made movement of farm things easier. Transport was obviously the thing that made it easier.
(01:00:27)
FINISHES ABRUPTLY.