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Margaret
Price |
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Margaret was born
in 1912 and has lived in West Bridgford for all her life. Her mother's
family farmed at Keyworth where she visited the farm until 1928. |
| The Shaw Family: My mother's maiden name was Shaw. Her grandfather William Shaw was born in Wysall in 1796 and he spent his early manhood in Normanton-on-the-Wolds as a labourer. Though I was always told that he had been a jockey with the Barry family at Tollerton Hall, which was maybe how he collected the money to become a tenant farmer in Keyworth. William was married twice and he had twelve children. My grandfather Edward born in 1834 was the first to be born in Keyworth. The farmhouse is now 36 Main Street, that is the house which is set well back from the road by the side of Brook View Drive. The psuedo Georgian houses on the other side of Brook View Drive are on the site of the stables of the Shaw farm and the next farm. Edward, my grandfather, was the only one of William's sons who stayed on the farm and in 1876 at the age of forty-two he married Mary Hebb aged twenty-five. The Hebbs were farmers who lived next door to Shaws farm on the church side of Shaws. Edward and Mary had six children of whom three died in infancy... The surviving children were Uncle Harry, my mother Winifred born in 1882 and Aunt Margaret. |
Shaws Farm (now 36 Main Street, Keyworth)
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The Shaw Family |
The Farm: The landlords were Smiths, bankers of Nottingham. Tthey acquired the farm when the land was enclosed in the late eighteenth century. The Shaws were tenants until the end of World War I when the farm was put up for sale. Grandfather had been born there and he wanted to die there, so he insisted on buying at the grossly inflated prices immediately at the end of the war. Grandfather did die there in 1920 leaving Uncle Harry to carry on with a heavy mortgage. They carried on as before until 1927 when the Government bought in regulations requiring greater hygiene in the production of milk. They'd never kept any accounts. Uncle Harry was no accounts man. They'd no idea how their money was going and they found they had no money with which to bring the cowsheds up-to-date to comply with the new regulations, so they were forced to sell. I believe it was very difficult to sell a farm in those days and they were lucky that in 1928 Sam Holbrook, a family friend who lived in Normanton, bought the farm. He put in a tenant, but later the farm was sold to the Plowright family, and they farmed until after World War II, when they sold the house, the farmyards and some of the fields for building and built a new farmhouse down Bunny Lane. |
| Foxhounds:
Keyworth was on the edge of the Quorn Hunt territory. This was in the days
of distemper, when there were no antibiotics. There was always the fear
that distemper would strike at the hounds, and the infection would sweep
through the kennels, and they would lose a lot of the dogs. So as soon as
the puppies had been weaned, they were sent out to friendly farmers throughout
the territory. The Shaws always had a puppy, sometimes two. They stayed
at the farms until the end of the hunting season when they were collected
and absorbed into the packs. There were two packs, a bitch pack and a dog
pack. There were occasions when we had one of the bitches and she'd start
bringing boyfriends home so she had to be sent back to the kennels rather
early. Now in the summer the hunt would exercise the dogs by walking them
to farms where a puppy or more puppies were being walked. This was the phrase
that was used; you walked a puppy, which meant that you looked after it
for the duration of its time away from the pack.
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The Quorn Hunt visiting
Shaws Farm,
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Aunt
Magaret & Uncle Harry |
I was there once or twice when the hunt came. Whether they notified the farm that they were coming - because there were no telephones, you'd have to do it by postcard - which would risk if it happened to be raining. Perhaps they sent a card saying, next week on a fine day we'll come over - or whether they knew that they normally came at a certain time during the summer, but Uncle Harry and Aunt Margaret, of course was always at the house - but Uncle Harry always seemed to be there as well. I remember Uncle Harry and Aunt Margaret carrying trays of drinks to the men on horseback, and remember feeling that the huntsmen up on their horses were slightly supercilious. Now whether this was just because they were up there and we were down below or because they were smartly dressed in their hunting gear and Uncle and Aunt Margaret were in their working togs, I don't know... |
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Hay Havest: It was cut by a machine and then left lying and when it was dry, and this of course depended very much on the weather, but when it was dry it was raked into rows by a horse-rake and there was a leaver whereby you pulled up the rake every so often and left the hay in rows. On one occasion, again probably when I was about fourteen, Uncle Harry started the rows and then I carried on using the horse-rake and continuing the rows. Then eventually the rows were gathered, put onto a wagon and driven up to the stackyard where they haystack was built. Corn Harvest: It was a binder, which bound the sheaves - and there were these spilt bound sheaves lying all over - and they had to be gathered up by the farmhands and put into stooks with the ear head uppermost and about eight or ten sheaves would make one stook and they were left there to dry, and you hoped it would be dry weather. And then these sheaves were piled on to wagons, taken into the farmyard by horse and wagon, and the stacks of sheaves were built, one stack for wheat, another for barley, another for oats. |
The Stackyard at Shaws Farm |
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Updated 25/04/04
Published by Sandra Ford August 2001 Email: sandrafordwolds@yahoo.co.uk
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Full
transcripts and audio recordings of the interviews are available
through the Nottinghamshire County Libraries and the Nottingham City Libraries. |
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