A glimpse into Teesdale farm practices from a century ago

BY JINNY HOWLETT

Sometimes highly respected local historians give lectures or run courses so that their research can reach a wider audience.
One of these historians was the late Vera Chapman, of Darlington. Vera’s studies concentrated on Teesdale and the Tees plain.
Vera led numerous walks and wrote many booklets and books about the history of Teesdale.
However, some of her work hasn’t been published and either remains in note form or is lost.
In the 1980s, Vera Chapman ran a course in Cotherstone, which was, I think, under the auspices of the WEA.
Some of the notes from this course have come into my hands and as far as I know are unpublished.
One sheet is a record supplied by members of the course of farming practices in farms in the vicinity of Cotherstone in around 1930.
This oral history shows that farming about 90 years ago was totally different from what it is today.
These were the days before tractors when everything was much more hands on – less technical.
The whole family were involved and help from neighbours was essential especially at hay time and sheep shearing.
This intensive form of farming was only possible because farms were mostly smaller than they are today.
Baldersdale farms were usually of 20 to 30 acres with some even smaller. Since the Second World War many of the smaller farms have sold their land to neighbouring farms so there are now fewer farms with larger acreages.
That isn’t the whole story because in the 1930s there were a few much larger farms that acted as a resource for the smaller farms.
Examples that were given were West Park, in Lower Baldersdale, and Towler Hill, near Lartington.
Both these farms had just short of 200 acres. The larger farms sometimes employed one or two farmworkers and took on one or two casual workers at haytime.
Instead of tractors, small farmers used either their bare hands or a horse to farm the land.
Vera’s class was made up of people who had spent much, or all of their lives, on the farms of the locality. They had experienced farm life for themselves.
For instance, a number of them knew that there were four working horses kept at West Park in the 1930s and that many of the medium sized farms kept one or two horses.
The breed of horse favoured in the lands around Cotherstone was the Clydesdale.
Some still remained in use on many of the farms after the war and I remember sitting on top of one in about 1947.
It is one of my earliest memories and I remember that the horse was huge – or maybe that was because I was so small.
The horses were harnessed to an amazing variety of machines some with imaginative names.
Actually, farm machinery still boasts interesting names. Back in 1930, farms used grass cutters, swathe turners, scufflers, side delivery rakes and hay sweeps all for use in haymaking.
Hay was grown on meadow lands that were never ploughed – hence the large amounts of wild flowers seen in Teesdale fields.
However, it wasn’t just hay that was grown 90 years ago and most farms reserved some land for arable crops.
These crops included wheat and perhaps oats and also some vegetables such as turnips and kale for winter feed. So ploughs and harrows could also be found together with sowing ploughs, scrubbers and turnip drills and occasionally winnowing and threshing machines.
Then in order to keep these machines in good order most farms had grindstones.
Of course these machines weren’t found on all the farms. Much hay was cut by hand and scythes and sickles were seen on most farms.
And in the absence of horse rakes and scufflers, hand rakes and pitchforks could always be used.
Hay and other crops were often stacked in the field where it was harvested but farms often had carts or coups to move the crops to the farmyards.
Hay in particular was often stored in the lofts above the byres where cattle spent their winters. Sometimes lighter horses were used to pull these carts, which were also used to carry goods to market.
The hay and the winter-feed was, of course, for the animals, mainly cows and sheep.
Cows in this part of Teesdale were mainly Northern shorthorn – although their horns weren’t particularly short and were sometimes removed from the calves.
This type of cow was suited to the Teesdale climate and grass and was good for both meat and milk. Before the war, milk wasn’t collected on a big scale. It was used for making butter and cheese – usually the job of the farmer’s wife and children.
Lots of farms made cheese and for a few farms, such as West Park, it became a commercial undertaking.
Children usually churned the butter for school in the early morning.
I think the children regarded the butter making as a bit of a chore because it took a long time. Butter and cheese and eggs were sold at the market in Barnard Castle.
Not all the animals were kept on the farmland. Cotherstone and Hunderthwaite and Lartington Moors were all stinted – as they are today.
The moors are regulated pastures and farmers whose lands abut the moors have stints on the moor.
In the pre-war years these varied from about ten stints to more than 80.
Nowadays sheep are the only animals to pasture on the moor but that wasn’t the case in the 1930’s. In those days for one stint a farmer was allowed to put 1 ewe and her lambs on the moor or ten geese.
For eight stints a cow or a three-year-old beast was allowed and for 12 stints a horse could be put on the moor. For 16 stints a horse and her foal could be on the moor.
The moors must have looked very different than they do today. Some people say that just having sheep on the moors has meant that the heather has diminished but it may simply be that the climate is changing.
It isn’t only the moors that have changed. The farms are completely different from 90 years ago but life for the farmers is a bit easier.
Vera managed to show these changes by asking the members of her adult education classes to record what happened on their own farms in their childhood. It seems simple but it was remarkably successful.