| | home | search | back | |
helmdon.com®
|
|
home > history resources > articles > reminiscences > jim watson |
|
Oral Reminiscences - Jim Watson |
|||
| Helmdon records show the Watson family going back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. It has been said, although I have no real evidence, that we came down from Scotland as cattle drovers and some stayed here. I would like to think that in some way we were connected with the infamous Rob Roy McGregor. As farmers, we have mostly been cattlemen but, I hasten to add, have never done any rustling. My father, Luke Watson, was born in 1873 to John and Betsy Watson. He was one of eight children. Grandfather John was, for the most part of his life, head carter to the Barford family at Falcutt House. It was said he never earned more than 10 shillings a week in his life, and he and Betsy brought up their family on this. I have heard it said that a dish of potatoes and one herring was a meal for all of them. Granny Betsy’s maiden name was Needle and there were two brothers. One lived at Radmore Cottage in the fields near Wappenham. The other went to Rotherham and prospered in the steel works and had a large family. My father Luke went to the local school and left at the age of eleven. He went to work at the Helmdon bakehouse in Church Street for a Mr Osborne. I have heard him say that he used to get up at 2 o’clock in the morning, walk from the top of the village, up the fields to the bakehouse, help bake the bread, and then spend the day delivering with a horse and cart around Helmdon, Greatworth, Whitfield and Crowfield. Over the years he saved up £200 and when Mr Osborne decided to retire, he bought the baking business. He married Polly James, and there was one daughter, Mary. Polly died when Mary was five years old. My father subsequently married Lily Baldwin, who taught at Helmdon Village School, the daughter of James, the village blacksmith at Whitfield and Hannah Baldwin. I was born on March 31st 1911, just missing being an April fool, or so I am told. Another year later another son was born, John. Sadly at the age of two he was tragically scalded to death in a vat of boiling water at the bakehouse. In 1914, after the loss of little John, my father decided to sell the baking business and went into farming. He bought Grange Farm, Helmdon, from a Mr Stopps, and we moved up to there. One of my recollections of that was, at the tender age of three, riding on a wagonload of furniture with Bert Branson and seeing people running out down the village shouting out that war had been declared. Phil was born at the Grange in 1915. In 1916 the Fairbrother estate came up for sale. This consisted of Home Farm, Helmdon, right down to Weston Brook, part of Alithorne and Wigsons Farm. Luke bought the whole lot, price I think around £8,000. I had happy days at Wigsons Farm, and in 1919 we moved down to Home Farm. I remember, as a ten year old, the ploughing in Astwell ground. We cut hay with an old mower and a pair of horses. Then a gang would turn it with forks, possibly two or three times. When it was ready, weather permitting, we would load it with long pitchforks on to the horse drawn wagons and build it into large ricks. At an early age I learned the art of thatching and that became one of my best achievements. I thatched most of the ricks. Corn threshing was a very laborious job. Gilbert Lawrence did most of it with his threshing box and steam engine. It took at least a gang of ten people. In the early days my job was carting water and coal for that greedy old engine. In later years I carried those 2¼ cwt sacks of wheat quite a distance down to the barn. No wonder my legs never grew. After about five minutes Luke would say: “Come on chaps, it will soon be night. I don’t begrudge you the tea, but I do grudge the time to eat it.” Just typical of Luke. I remember when we first went to Home Farm, there was an old circular horse gearing in the front yard. The “horse” went round and round and the shafting drove antiquated machinery in the adjoining barn. There were lots of shafting and belts driving grinding mill, root pulper and chaff cutter. It all worked but we never used it. We bought a 5hp Petter engine and new machines. We had a herd of about 30 shorthorn cows, which we milked by hand. In winter by lantern light we took the milk in 17 gallon churns in a horse and float to catch the 7.30am train at Helmdon Great Central station. This meant starting milking at 5.30am. All the local farmers did the same and it was like a Roman chariot race every morning. The late ones were galloping up the road, sometimes, as the train came along blowing its whistle. We kept a flock of ewes and lambed them in Fricknels yard, about half a mile away, walking down later at night and early morning with a lantern. We also kept pigs. Out of curiosity I once went in to an old large white sow, which had little pigs. She fastened her teeth in the calf of my leg. A very painful experience! The main enterprise was cattle grazing. We took grass keeping wherever we could and bought cattle to fatten on to be sold at Banbury, Brackley and Moreton Pinkney markets. The cattle for Banbury market were loaded on cattle wagons at Helmdon SMJ station. During and after the war, the ministry bought all the cattle for slaughter. There was a certification center at Brackley market. The cattle were certified there and were then driven down to the Gasworks weight bridge, weighed individually, then loaded on to wagons at the old station to be sent to the abattoirs. Together with the Humphreys, we were the main suppliers of cattle doing about thirty or forty each per week. We bought cattle off local farms at a price per head and sold them at a price per hundredweight according to their grade. Some showed a profit whilst others lost. Going back to 1917, we had on demonstration an American Titan tractor and plough. It was a single cylinder. We tried it in Crosspath. It went downhill, but coming back up the hill it reared up and almost tipped over backwards. Disappointed, we sent it back to the firm and for years continued with horses. From 1920 up to the Second World War there was not much mechanization. The only fertilizer was basic slag, of which we bought five tons at a time and spread it by hand from buckets. 1926-30 was a very difficult period for farming. Milk prices almost halved and stock prices fell every week. We did eventually have a Fordson with spade lug wheels, which we used for pulling the adapted horse mower and the binder. Right up to the war we were using a binder for the corn. We had plenty of labour. Quite a few young lads left school and came on to the farm – to name a few of them, Bill Bazeley, Ray Routledge, Bill Routledge and later, Trevor Pitts. War came, and we were forced to plough up a lot of our grassland. After the war we restored most of the arable back to grass with expensive leys. The milking carried on. Tony Smith joined us and he helped Vera Burt, who had come to us during the war as a land girl to assist with the milking. He used to ride round College Farm on a BSA 500 at about 100mph. Nora Howe (Sis) came to us to be a companion help for mother. She was with us a number of years until she married Frank Newman. Frank was Ben Humphrey’s chauffeur and general factotum for many years. When Sis left, her younger sister Olive came to take her place. Olive and I were married on September 29th 1945. We had a very happy wedding considering the post-war shortages and restrictions. Olive was very kind and helpful to mother and also, I think, had some influence on the old Boss. He would listen to her, when he would not to us. Olive did all that was needed in the house, but she took every opportunity to come out on the farm, tractor driving, cattle driving, etc.
Our son Richard (Will) was born here, and later on, our daughter, Susan. After all the hassle of my father’s public work [ed note: Luke Watson was a JP, parish and district and county councillor, a president of the Northants Baptist Union and also chairman of the Northants Farmers’ Union], I vowed I would never go in for that kind of thing. I was on the Parish Council for a number of years. I was governor of the two Brackley schools. This was interesting as it gave me an insight into the administration involved in education. I was a bit nervous when I had to thank Lady Hesketh at one prize giving. I was for over thirty years treasurer of the Weston and Helmdon group of Baptist churches. There were six local village churches in the group. Looking at some old cash records, I see that in 1934 I paid the Rev Heading for his monthly stipend the princely sum of £12.10s. We had a whip round and bought him a bicycle for £10.7s. 6d. The Quarries In 1919, soon after we moved to Home Farm, the Brackley and District Council asked if they could open up the old quarry on the Weston Road. They needed the stone to widen all the local roads. It was agreed that they should provide the labour and they were to have a royalty of a shilling a cubic yard. Work started. There was a lot of topsoil to be moved first, but when they got down to the rock face, they started blasting twice a week. It was quite a dangerous operation. They blew a hooter and stopped all the traffic on the Weston Road. It was quite frightening. Some of the smaller stones hit the roofs at Home Farm and others went near houses. I recall one incident. One poor old dairy cow sustained a hole in her ribs. We stitched her up, I painted the wound with Stockholm tar, tied a large sash around her middle and believe it or not she survived. The stone was broken up, moved by wheelbarrow and stacked in squares one yard high for measuring. Horse and cart then moved it to the various road widenings. Historical records show that in years back, the stone from the quarries on the Weston Road was used for building. It was recorded that Helmdon stone was used in Easton Neston and part of Woburn. The Helmdon platoon of the Home Guard was formed with Lieutenant Jim Jessett as leader and Captain Geoffrey Lees of Falcutt House as Company Commander. There were about thirty members and we used Helmdon Reading Room as headquarters. We were fortunate in having a former regular army sergeant major Bill Ayres to drill us and whip us into shape. He very much impressed on us the need for discipline. One of the first things we did was to fill many bottles of petrol, put them in strong wooden boxes and bury them at the five road entrances to the village. There seemed to be a real chance of a German invasion. The idea was that if, and when, German tanks came our way, we should get concealed and then dash out and fling these bottles at the backs of the advancing tanks. In hindsight, all very pitiful. Can you visualize the papers? “Helmdon guerrillas knock out six German tanks”. I sometimes wonder if we ever recovered all of these boxes. In time we were issued with uniforms and ·303 Lee Enfield rifles. One of the duties was on all night guard on Helmdon viaduct. A squad of six had two on duty at the viaduct for two hours while the other four played cards and drank coffee in the station waiting room. On duty we used our loaded rifles. Les Watson and Frank Newman were on duty one night when a German plane dropped a stick of six bombs within 200 yards of the viaduct. They came in looking like ghosts. Another night Frank Newman and I were on duty at the viaduct. It was a pitch black night. We heard footsteps coming along the old LMS line. Fearing saboteurs, I told Frank to give me covering fire. I slipped one up the spout and crept down the embankment and gave the proper “Halt, who goes there?” The footsteps came on. I had my rifle to my shoulder just ready to fire, when I suddenly realized it was old cob that belonged to Frank Woods. They all had a good laugh when we got back to base but I can assure you at the time it seemed very real. One night we were short of milk for the coffee. Frank Newman and I got a bucket, found a quiet old cow in Charlie Lawrence’s field and milked her. For a time we did an all night look-out on a wooden platform on the highest chimney at Falcutt House. That was bitterly cold. The access was up the back stairs, out of a skylight and up a ladder to the platform. It was reported that some of the members strayed into the maid’s bedroom for comfort. We had ·303 rifle shooting practice at Chacombe rifle range. Phil (Watson), Eric Humphrey and myself were chosen to shoot for C Company at the 14th Battalion competition at Brington. I shot badly but Phil did well. He came second in the individual for the whole battalion and was awarded his cross guns badge. Incidentally, we all three shot left-handed. Severe Winters I remember the great snow of April 6th 1916, when a lot of the sheep were buried and the huge telegraph poles on the Great Central railway, carrying hundreds of wires, were brought down. The snow was all gone in a few days and there was extensive flooding. During my lifetime I can remember three very severe winters when skating took place on Astwell ponds. The first was in 1929. I have reason to remember this because when playing ice hockey I had my right hand skated over. It cut the sinews at the top end of three fingers and they are still bent at an angle. 1946 was the worst. It started snowing on Boxing Day and the snow remained with us until mid-March. We had evening skating for weeks under the floodlights of two or three old cars. You had to keep the engine running to charge the battery. The local roads were all blocked, the Helmdon to Brackley road to a depth of eight feet in places. Gangs of shovellers were organised. No milk lorries got through from Buckingham for three days but Tony Smith and myself managed to get an old army four wheel drive lorry and we got the local milk to Buckingham, and brought a big load of empty churns back. Twice we left the road and took to the fields. 1963 was bad enough, but by then there were mechanical earthmovers and local farmers had front-end brackets.
from Aspects of Helmdon no 5 (2004) |
home > history resources > articles > reminiscences > jim watson |
| | home | search | back | top |
helmdon.com®
|