Country Magazine

Source: Country Magazine. Book of the B.B.C. Programme, compiled and edited by Francis Dillon (Odhams Press, London, c1950).

Most of the useful men do some sort of farm work. Ollie Knight, of Duton [Hill], near [Great] Dunmow, Essex, describes himself as a skilled farm worker:

“I can turn my hand to do anything that comes my way. I can plough with horses. I can milk if I want, and do a bit of rough carpentry, see after sheep at lambing, or take on the horsekeeper’s job if he’s called away, or the cowman’s, and I could thatch a stack or a house-roof if I wanted. Now that’s extra to the ordinary run of jobs, ditching, sowing, harvesting, but you’ll see there’s been summat for me to learn since I started scaring rooks with a clapper. I don’t want to change. I’ve had the chance, with good money offered me, and an easier job, but I’ve got my children living around me and Duton’s a rare good village, and, come to reckon it all up there’s no better work than farm work for you never get it dull. But I don’t see how a man doing our kind of work is expected to live on less than four pounds a week. He wants that, or five pounds, before he can live decent. And he wants good schools for his children and a good house. Now at Duton I’ve got a good house. We got the electric a few years back, and we could have water laid on too, but that’s sixpence extra on the rent and so long as the well keeps going we don’t want it, but I know if I was certain wages wouldn’t drop I’d like a bathroom fitted up and a run-away lav.

“We live on and for the land and most of our fathers and grandfathers did the same, and we expect to get a fair share of what we help to produce. We do get some advantages, a row of potatoes in the farmer’s field is worth three or four pounds to you, and maybe you’ll lay a hedge in your own time and get the wood for firing. But hold you hard, wages is the main thing, and if the land don’t pay the farmer, he can’t pay us. I tell you if meadows come back, then wages go down, that’s certain”.

Less fervent but no less sincere is Ralph Wightman speaking of the English countryside at Christmas:

“I believe every countryman takes pleasure in going to church at Christmas. You see, we only decorate the church three times a year. One of them is Harvest Festival which is a purely agricultural affair, you know, onions, carrots, marrows, potatoes, a sheaf of wheat by the altar, and all the rich colours and heavy scents of fulfilment. Then the Easter feast of the Church, which is really the old pagan festival of Spring, Christianized, primroses, daffodils, all the youth of the earth in delicate hue and fragrance and hope. And now Christmas, which even if it had a heathen beginning has been altered by two thousand years until it only has one meaning now, the day which gives every child an extra birthday because this is the birthday of God.

“There was a star over a village; we can see the stars in the country. Great princes brought gold and frankincense and myrrh, and God chose golden straw and the fragrance of hay. The good tidings were told to shepherds. I am glad that we still sheep on the farm where I was born.

“There is a racket of Christmas in the country just as there is in the town. Town and country have both done their best to smear Christmas with the dirtiest sort of trade. Yet Christmas is too strong for our weakness, too clean for our filth. ‘This shall go onward the same though dynasties fall.’ But to really know it you must spend Christmas in the country. We are right to decorate the church on this third country day”.

One theme keeps recurring: “Ah, but we had more fun in the old days” and it is a theme whose truth is very difficult to assess from reminiscence. Did the people get more enjoyment from the amusements they created for themselves, or is the fun transfigured by the warm glow of the past. There is no doubt in the mind of Mrs. Poole of The Red Lion, Margaretting, Essex, when she says:

“Of course, things are not what they used to be. Specially Christmas, these days. We used to be able to supply everybody with anything they wanted, in the way of a bit of Christmas cheer. But not now, I’m afraid. They all used to come in, happy and excited, on Christmas Eve, all laden up with parcels and baskets full of good things. You could feel the excitement in the very atmosphere, and see it on their faces as plain as a pikestaff. And half of ‘em would forget their stuff before the evening was over, and on Christmas morning the bar would be littered with chickens and ducks and turkeys and goodness knows what else. And then they’d have to call back to collect their Christmas dinners. Mind you, I always did think it was a dodge, so they could get a quick one in early. Oh, but it was lovely in those days. I hope it won’t be too long before they come back. Roast pork, sides of beef, turkeys, chicken, sausages - real sausages, I mean - and all the rest of it. Pigs’ trotters, now. You never see ‘em about at all now. Anybody’d think pigs don’t have legs nowadays, you never see them in the shops”.