An interview with Brian.

Q: So if you want to talk a bit about growing up? 

A: <Tells dog to sit down> I was brought up on Applegarth Farm in Fryup, where my parents were tenants for 42 years. My first recollections were really a stone floor in the living room and a metal bath in front of a black fireplace. It had an oven on one side and a boiler tub on the other. You had to put water in and literally ladle it out.  

A few years later they came along and replaced the stone floor. A chap called Fred Shore did it, who is featured in the recent Revival magazine. They also put in one of the more modern fireplaces with an oven at the side, but it also had a back boiler. So, we ended up with a hot water tank, a bath and a toilet upstairs on the landing. It was a very cold room, and believe me the water cooled quickly, and you didn’t stop long getting dried. Previous to that we had a two-seater earth closet outside. 

A few years later we got Calor gas, we got the usual cooker hob, with a grill and oven. With it we also got a Calor gas light in the living room and a Calor gas iron. Not something you see nowadays, but it must have been a bit dodgy with a flame inside the iron That you could actually see!  

Q: Can you remember what everyone's thoughts were on these changes, were they welcome changes? 

A: Very welcome. If you remember at the time we had no electricity, so anything that improved life, or made life easier was a big thing. The washing machine at the time was a square tub on legs with a handle at the top, and you rotated this handle backwards and forwards to agitate the washing. It had a manual wringer with a flip tray, one way when you were wringing out the water went back into the washing tub. You flipped it the other side after rinsing and it took the cold water out. There was no dryer system as such, you just hung it out in the garden.      

About this time, I seem to remember school dinners went up, from two shillings and sixpence to two shillings and eleven pence. Which is about, what, fifteen pence for a full week nowadays? There was a lot of furore caused then!  

Q: Can you remember what your favourite meal was at school was, or were they all the same? 

A: No, the school meals were really good. I remember there was always a really good stew, and it was always very well presented. It was always cleaned up, nobody ever left anything. But we had one teacher for about 15 pupils, so it was a big change when I went to Whitby school. I only knew two pupils at the new school, and they were in different classes in school years. I have a strong recollection of waiting for the bus on a morning on the second day and I really did not want to go, because I didn’t know anybody. But left home at half past seven and got back at five past five at night for five years. I had a few farm jobs then loads of homework. We still didn’t have electricity then, for a couple of years, but then steam trains went out and we got diesels and I think it was about the same year we got mains electricity. 

In that two years all the kids at school were talking about cartoons like Seargent Bilko and things, I had never seen any of them. I felt lost, missed out. It may seem strange, but you know, that was the way of life. Then we got electricity, got a television. There wasn’t many channels then, it was black and white. But we also got, obviously, an electric iron, washing machine, fridge, and father had to have his toaster. He had never bothered with toast before, but he was adamant that he had to have a toaster.      

Anyway, we carried on and gradually went up, went through my GCE O Levels and carried on farming. Fryup school closed a couple of years after I went to Whitby school so my two sisters were transferred to Lealholm, where obviously they knew a lot more people. So, when they went on to secondary school they did have friends.   

I remember the farmhouse being very cold overall, even the new fireplace was only a small one. I remember playing cards with a family one night, after we were married. There was eight of us playing and we had a card table out and two sat at each side of the table, and after each hand you moved round to the next seats. Just to try and keep warm because those at the back got cold. 

The other thing about the house, being very cold, it had a slate roof but there was no damp-proof membrane. If you got snow in the winter the snow used to get underneath and settle on the bedroom ceilings, fine when it was cold but when it thawed all the ceilings were wet and dripping. 

Some years later when we were living in Lincolnshire, it was a cold frosty spell, my father woke up one morning to go out and feed the animals, and he left his earlobe frozen to the pillow. However, everybody survived well and we have a lot of fond memories, as you can imagine.     

I don’t know how much else I can say really, I have covered the main points. 

Q: So, obviously between school and working at the farm after school, what did you do for...was there any leisure time? 

A: Yes, I played quite a lot of Cricket, in summer obviously. In the winter I used to go hunting quite a bit. I couldn’t play Quoits and things like that because I have arthritic shoulders. So that restricted quite a lot. But a lot of things happened in the school, the parties and that were held in the school before the village hall was built. The village hall came about as a result of the agricultural show at Fryup near the school. During the war it raised funds for the Red Cross. When the war finished they decided they would carry on with the show to raise funds to build a village hall, and that’s how it came about. I was about ten years old when it was built, but it’s still well looked after and used today. 

Q: So, as well as Cricket, obviously these days there’s a lot of spare time maybe for children after homework and playing sports. Was there, when you were growing up do you remember what you were most looking forward to, or what your thoughts about the future were? 

A: I didn’t like school, and I think all through school I expected to be farming. But I’m not a livestock person, I am more of a machine person, and it just didn’t work out. The situation of not being able to carry on the tenancy and all that. It didn’t see a long-term future for me. So, I just went to work elsewhere and after one or two bit jobs I had thirteen years in the steel works at Scunthorpe. With having a few O Levels I managed to get into the quality control department and had a good job there. But with ten thousand others, I was made redundant. Fortunately, I picked my redundancy cheque up at one o’clock on the Saturday and I started work at a farm, a large farm, on the Monday and I worked there for 23 years before coming back up to this area. 

Q: What in your opinion is the best job to have on a farm?  

A: It depends on the individual person. If you like livestock, that’s fine, otherwise nowadays it’s machinery. To have somebody that does both, like you have on a small farm, it’s very difficult. Thats why you’ve got so much more work done now by contractors. You know, because basically you can’t afford, or it’s not worth having machinery stood for 50 weeks of the year like that. But obviously when you want contractors, you can’t always get them, so you have to take these things into account. But if you look over the road, up the valley, there’s two big dairy farms. One is fully automated, the cows milk themselves basically, they just go in and out to get milked and fed. Totally automated, but that’s the way it is. I am all in favour of it, because some of the jobs they used to have when I was a child, an awful lot of manual work. Hay time, manure spreading, harvest, it was hard graft. 

Q: Do you remember when you were at school, working on the farm as well, what the job you least looked forward to was? 

A: Least of all? Yes, I think muck spreading. 

Q: Because it was all by hand? 

A: Yes, but not so much spreading it on the fields but because all the buildings on that farm were built years before, and you had to clean them out manually, with a fork, then chuck the manure into a heap, and that was left there for a while. Then, initially, you had a horse with a cart on the back and you put it in the cart, and you took it to the field. You had a long, sort of big spined rake, and you parked up, dragged a bit off the back. Moved the horse on, dragged a bit off the back. Then you went round a bit later on spreading it out.  

Q: Very manual then! 

A: It was. I remember once when we were working in the yard, my mother and my wife, maybe the kids, and we were just having a bit of a tea break, while we were loading this. By the time, then we had a muck spreader and tractor loader. But we were in there and we were just sat, and it was a lovely sun shining day, and it really did smell, but an insurance man happened to come round at the time, you could see his nose when he come through the archway, at us drinking tea. But this, you just got on and did it. You know, it wasn’t a penalty or anything like that, it was just part of living.  

You always think, there’s a lot of instances you can pick out, and one of the things I always remember was my granddad. They were having trouble with badgers and foxes getting lambs. Well, the badger had been accounted for, the fox because they liked hunting he wasn’t too bothered about. But my grandad was explaining things to us one day and he says, “while there’s young lambs about, the foxes won’t bother them or kill them” but he says “as soon as they stop having lambs, the foxes will start killing them”.  For the simple reason all the time they are having them, there’s loads of lovely fresh after birth on the fields. So why would a fox try to get a lamb when it might get attacked by the mother. It’s one of these things you don’t think about, but it’s err.. 

Q: I suppose, yes unless you are close to the animals sort of thing, and you are seeing that sort of thing daily. 

A: I remember one particular badger, me grandparents had that badger, and they kept the skin, and it was a hearth rug for years. But what happens when a badger gets old, he gets kicked out of the colony if you like, and has to go fend for himself. And that’s when they will start taking young lambs and things like that. Otherwise, they won’t bother them, because they can all feed off together. But once, they used to call them a rogue badger at the time, but I do remember this skin on the hearth rug. 

Q: Distinctive! 

A: Yes, for years. I have been talking to a cousin this morning. His father was the oldest one, older than my father, and had a painting painted by Miss Dixon from Fryup of 1947, when they had to get milk churns away to Whitby. Because no traffic could move in the valley, the chap at the top of the valley put a big wooden sledge behind the horse and put his milk on. As he went down the valley, picking up, adding extra horses in front and extra churns on and took them to Lealholm Station to get the milk to Whitby. 

There was a picture on, I don’t know if it was Stronger Together Castleton of Facebook or something Revival maybe, of these horses actually leaving Lealholm Station, having taken their milk churns there. But apart from this painting, I don’t know and I am trying to track it down to see if I can get a photograph of it and things like that.  

Q: A painting of that event? 

A: Yes, with the horses going past, and one or two people actually riding the horses, obviously the front one and there's others walking with the sledge behind with the milk churns. I think there were about six horses in a row. 

Q: There must be some weight I suppose. 

A: Yes, 1947, the sledge would weigh ever so much as well. The sledges they had were made of thick wood, and they sloped backwards with a metal strip. Maybe a two or three inch strip on the end. When they were tilling land, to break up the clods, they used to turn these sledges over and put some weight on them and these metal strips, horses pulled them, and they crushed the clods.    

Q: Multi use. 

A: Yes, that’s right. The machinery I remember from hay timing at me fathers was all horse drawn stuff <talks to dog> that they converted to tractors and things like that. Hay turners and binders especially, because when they had the horses in front the actual linkage is quite high up, you know around the waistline of the horses. So, with the tractor linkage, it is always low down. This particular hay turner had been converted, and it had a small wheel at the front, maybe eighteen inches high, and two wheels at the back with the turners on and a seat on the back. So, as it went the wheels were driving the turners, but when you turned the corner, because it was low linkage, I was on the back and me dad was driving the tractor and he turned right, uphill. This front wheel dug in, and it shot me off the back seat, straight over the front! Fortunately, into the side of the tractor because he was turning around. These things happen. Another instance, a relative of mine was bailing a field of hay up there and set off coming downhill on one of these steeper fields and it took off. The transmission rotates one wheel forward and one wheel back on the tractor and it literally jackknifed and turned over. It was one of these little grey Ferguson tractors, but this one had a battery behind the dashboard right? A lot of them had batteries each side of the seat, now, when he turned over, there were no cabs on it, when it turned over he ended up between the seat and the mud guard, had there been batteries there he would have been crushed. He is still alive actually, he lives in Whitby.  

Q: I imagine there were a few near misses with regards to accidents? 

A: Yes, I remember going down a field with a trailer, down quite a steep bit, but it levelled out at the bottom, and it was a real heavy dew. When it’s heavy dew and you’ve got a weight behind you pushing, with not much weight on the back wheels, one wheel will go forwards and the other one will go backwards like, with the differential. I remember sitting on this tractor looking, what’s that wheel going that way, and that wheel going that way? I wasn’t very old at the time, it’s just one of these things I remember.  

I remember being stung twice by a hornet; it was a few years between times. One was right in my ear, and we were using a scythe, and the other one was between the scythe handle and the palm of my hand. I don’t remember much about the ear one, but the swelling that came on my hand, if that was like it was in my ear, it would be a... 

Q: What was the best remedy for a hornet sting? 

A: I can’t remember, I just remember this lump on my hand from it. My parents said it was definitely a hornet.  

Q: I was talking to someone else who keeps bees, and he said for wasps it is vinegar or something as it takes the sting out of it, but probably different for hornets? 

A: Yes, well you get different preparations from chemists nowadays and different things. We lived in Wooton, and there was a little bit of green out in front of the house. This is in North Lincolnshire, and it had a seat on, and trees and older people used to sit there. One Sunday dinner time a swarm of bees came and got under the seat, and we watch a couple come past, and they walked straight past. Another chap came along and sat on this seat, fortunately it was a long one and he sat at the opposite end to it. But we went over and told him it was not a good idea to sit there. Anyway, a chap across the pond where we lived knew somebody who had a lot to do with bees and phoned him up. We expected he would come along with all the gear on and that. But all he bought was a cardboard box. He put the cardboard box down and scooped the nest into it, sealed it up and took it away, without any protection. 

Q: He must have known what he was doing! 

A: He must have done, but those sorts of things you learn. Anyway, I’ve waffled on enough and I don’t know if you want anymore? 

Thanks once again for your time Brian!