The Horse in the Furrow

by George Ewart Evans

  GEORGE EWART EVANS

  THE HORSE IN THE FURROW

  Illustrated by

  C. F. TUNNICLIFFE

  TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE WORKED THE SUFFOLK LAND, ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO HAVE HELPED IN THE MAKING OF THIS BOOK

  Acknowledgments

  The author thanks all those who have so generously helped by giving much of the information contained in this book. In addition to those mentioned in the text he is grateful to Messrs H. H. Dawson and C. W. H. Cullingford of Ransome, Sims and Jefferies: F. E. Thirtle of James Smyth Ltd of Peasenhall; Philip J. Butler, E. Duncan Lofts, W. H. Thurlow and James Wilson.

  He makes grateful acknowledgment to the Ipswich Borough Libraries (Reference Section) and Ipswich Borough Record Office for the facilities given him for research; and he wishes to thank the staff, especially Miss M. Maynard and Mr J. M. Collinson, for their help. He is also grateful to the Suffolk Agricultural Association for allowing him to consult their records. He owes a great debt to the Suffolk Horse Society and its Secretary, Mr Raymond Keer. Mr Keer gave a great deal of his time to the author’s questions and kindly read that section of the manuscript dealing with the Suffolk horse. Whatever inaccuracies now remain in this section are the author’s sole responsibility.

  The author thanks all those who kindly lent photographs, and he makes grateful acknowledgement to Mrs. Barbara Woodhouse, Mr D. C. Horton and Mr Thomas Davidson for permission to quote from their works. He also thanks Mr Morley Kennerley for his real encouragement at all stages in the preparation of the manuscript, and Mr G. E. Fussell who read the proofs. Finally, he thanks his wife for being an occasional listener to his ruminations while he was gathering material for the book.

  Y mae, fodd bynnag, reswm arall dros ymdrin yn fanwl a’r creaduriaid amyneddgar y bu’r ddynoliaeth mor ddyledus iddynt, sef y sicrwydd y derfydd am anifeiliaid gwedd cyn bo hir iawn. Trist gan wladwr sylweddoli hyn.

  There is, however, another reason for a detailed study of these patient creatures in whose debt we all remain: the certainty that the plough teams will come to an end in the very near future—a sobering thought for the countryman.

  Ffransis Payne,

  Yr Aradr Gymreig

  (The Welsh Plough)

  1954.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  ABBREVIATIONS

  INTRODUCTION

  I. THE HORSEMAN

  1. The Horseman’s Day

  2. In the Field

  3. The Horseman’s Year

  4. Some of the Ploughs

  5. Outside Jobs

  6. The Horseman’s Dress

  II. THE FARMER

  7. Arthur Biddell

  8. Arthur Biddell’s Day Books

  9. Arthur Biddell’s Work Books

  10. Methods of Cultivation

  III. THE HORSE

  11. Historical Sketch of the Suffolk Horse

  12. Herman Biddell and Volume One

  13. Herman Biddell and the Oral Tradition

  14. The Suffolk Horse Society

  15. The Blacksmith

  16. The Harness Maker

  17. Additional Horse Gear

  18. Horse Brasses and Other Ornaments

  IV. FOLKLORE CONNECTED WITH THE HORSE

  19. Care of the Horse

  20. Management: The Whisperers

  21. The Society of Horsemen or Ploughmen

  22. The Search for the Horseman’s Word

  23. The Frog’s Bone

  24. Additional Folklore Linked with the Horse

  CONCLUSION

  SELECTED WRITTEN SOURCES

  INDEX

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Abbreviations

  used for those sources most frequently cited

  G.V.A.C.S.: A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Suffolk: Arthur Young: London, Third Edition, 1804.

  E.V.C.: The English Village Community: Frederic Seebohm: Longmans, Green, 1884.

  E.F.P.P.: English Farming Past and Present: Lord Ernle: Longmans, 1922.

  B.O.H.: The Book of the Horse: edited by Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald: Nicholson and Watson, 1946.

  S.H.S.B.: The Suffolk Horse Stud Book: Volume One: by Herman Biddell: Cupiss, Diss, 1880.

  Y.A.G.: Yr Aradr Gymreig (The Welsh Plough): Ffransis Payne: University of Wales Press, 1954.

  A.O.S.: The Agriculture of Suffolk: Wm & Hugh Raynbird: 1849.

  A.F.C.H.: Ask the Fellows who Cut the Hay: George Ewart Evans: Faber and Faber, 1956.

  Introduction

  The purpose of this book is to record the history of the farming associated with the horse in a part of East Anglia. Although he has by no means ceased to be used on the farms of Suffolk, the era when the horse was the pivot of the corn-husbandry of this area has come to an end; and the generation of horsemen or ploughmen who best remember the full ‘horse-regime’ has gone from the land. Many of the farmers who were brought up on, and practised, the old system of farming for the greater part of their lives have also retired or are near retiring age. The book has been attempted at this particular time—so near to the passing of the horse as the main power on the farm—chiefly in order to take down first-hand information from the men who knew the old regime in its most complete form, before the changes of the last fifty years had begun to revolutionise agriculture. The farm, especially in Suffolk, revolved round the horse; and the care and attention which the old type of farmer and his men bestowed on his horses and on their breeding was a recognition of their importance. Good horses: good farm, was more than a saying: it pointed to the mainspring of a system of husbandry—the four-course—that had its home in the Eastern Counties.

  Much of the material set down here has been collected from farmers and farm-workers whose evidence has been checked and correlated with documents and records of Suffolk farming methods during the past two hundred years. I had no hesitation in seeking agricultural history from the working farmer in Suffolk. As Sir Frank Stenton,1 the authority on the mediaeval manor, has confessed: a farmer of the old school is able to give immeasurable help to the student who is attempting to interpret some of the problems of manorial farming. When the period studied is nearer the present day, the farmer is naturally able to give much greater assistance still.

  During the preparation and writing of this book I found the Suffolk farmer an invaluable help, both in supplementing and expounding the written sources. For the farmer in this county is usually in the direct line of a very long tradition: not only has farming been the whole of his life but it has been the life of his family for the past two hundred years. Often when studying records of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries I came up against little problems that could not be solved by reference to any known book or document: I sought the help of the older generation of farmer and in nearly every instance I got what I was looking for. I discovered that not only did their farming knowledge extend over the period covered by their own working life, but often embraced the experiences of their fathers and grandfathers, reaching back into the first half of the nineteenth century.

  Similarly, I did not hesitate to go for help and enlightenment to the old hands who had spent most of their life with the horses on the farm. It would be accurate to say of these horsemen, during the period before the First World War, that horses and farming were the whole of their lives: they had a seven-day-a-week job; they talked, lived, and almost dreamed horses; and when they did ‘go abroad’ it was either to an agricultural show or to an event that was connected either directly or indirectly with their work. I found the old horseman—wherever I met him in the county—helpful, highly intelligent within the field of his
own experience, and accurate to a degree that many people would find it difficult to credit. But when one reflects that farming was his sole interest, from the time he started as a boy of about twelve years of age—perhaps sixty years before—and that he had trained his mind to hold all the data he needed in his job, without the aid of books, or at the most with only the barest of written memoranda, it is not surprising that he was able to recount in accurate detail something he was interested in and had perhaps not seen for thirty or forty years—an early corn-drill, for example; which checked against an old catalogue showed that not one essential fact had escaped his memory.

  It seems that in this respect the old countryman has been much neglected. Indeed, he has been more patronised than respected as someone who can make a real contribution to the history of the most profound changes that have ever occurred in agriculture. The old countryman is worth getting to know for his own sake: he is worth regarding against his natural background—the pre-tractor farming and the community which it nourished. So viewed he will appear as a living social document, and his true worth and dignity will emerge. And as for being a simple country swain, as many people seem to look upon him (the yokel of the country week-enders) the saying, If you want to find a fool in the country you’ll have to bring him with you, is a good deal nearer the mark. Admittedly some of his talk is strange; but it should be remembered that it is so from long use and preference, and not from cussedness; and if he speaks a language nearer that of the First Elizabeth rather than that of the Second, it should be a matter of wonder and of interest. The old countryman has largely stood out against the town system of education2 that was imposed on the countryside by the 1870 Act and he might lack the graces of what passes for a typical twentieth century product. Yet were some of his limitations in this respect to be brought to his notice, he could ask with point: ‘Who is the truly educated man: the one who can grow onions or the man who can only spell ’em?’

  The reader will notice that ‘They don’t do it like they used to’, or ‘Times are not what they were’ is the undersong of much of the information given by many of the people I have talked to in preparing this book. But times were never what they were: men have never worked as hard, been as strong and as noble and as thick in the thews as they were a generation or two in the past. Distance in time is a powerful enchanter of the eye. Yet in these later days the older men have a greater sanction for repeating the old theme than perhaps ever before. For in their life-time they have seen, not merely the passing of a few generations, but the passing of an era. They are praisers of past time because less than any men before do they understand the age they have survived into. How can they, when so few of their superior and educated contemporaries have an inkling where the present age is tending and what it is all about?

  A word should be said about the use of the dialect in this book. I have not attempted to translate the information the old horsemen gave me into precise English: to do this would have deprived it of a good deal of its colour and would have given an altogether false impression. Moreover, there was another additional reason for keeping at least some of the dialect: this was to emphasise what has been written above, and to underline the rather obvious but apparently neglected truth that information should be judged not so much by its provenance as by its usefulness and ultimately by its accuracy. On the other hand, neither have I attempted to transcribe phonetically the true Suffolk dialect: had I done this I might possibly have won the approval of a few purists, yet at the same time added immeasurably to the general reader’s difficulties. My aim has been to give what I hope is an authentic flavour of the dialect. Wherever there was a dialect word of interest—interest in itself or in the object or process it described—it has been scrupulously kept and usually commented upon.

  One final point: the reader should not expect this book to be solely about the farm-horse in Suffolk. Even if I had the technical equipment to write what would necessarily be an exhaustive study, it is doubtful whether it would be desirable to focus it completely on the horse himself. More I think has been gained by placing the farm-horse in the social and economic setting that called him forth and made him such a use and an ornament to East Anglian farming during the last couple of centuries.

  1 Address at the inaugural conference of The British Agricultural History Society, 13th April, 1953.

  2 cf. Rural England: Sir H. Rider Haggard, Longmans 1902 pp. 542–3.

  Part One

  THE HORSEMAN

  1

  The Horseman’s Day

  The term horseman as used in Suffolk meant a farm-worker who possessed two distinct skills: one in the care and management of horses, the other in field work—the ploughing, drilling, cultivating and so on, of arable land using a team of horses that varied in number according to the nature of the task and the nature of the land under cultivation. In this second skill the horseman in other parts of the country was referred to as a ploughman; but in Suffolk this term was very rarely heard.

  The horseman was the earliest riser on the farm. He got up at 4.00 a.m.; took a bite of bread and cheese and hurried to the stables to feed the horses. For between the time when the horses had their first bait (or meal) and their turning out to plough at 6.30 a.m. two hours must elapse. This was an unalterable rule in Suffolk; and to give the Suffolk breed of horse a shorter time than this for his morning bait, was to treat him less than well, since he had no nosebag to feed from in the field; and he had nothing more to eat until he returned to the stable at 2.30 in the afternoon. It was essential, therefore, that the horse should have a good morning meal and plenty of time in which to digest it. The horseman kept the above hours throughout the spring and summer months: during the other half of the year (October to April) he turned out to plough half an hour later—7 a.m. instead of 6.30.

  William Cobbold (born 1883), who was for twenty years bailiff of a 570 acre estate at Battisford in Suffolk, has said: ‘The horseman was always regular to the minute. You could set your watch by him. He thought a lot of his horses and took a pride in looking after them. You’d rarely have to speak to a horseman for being late.’ From the time he arrived at the stables until about 5.30 the horseman was busy baiting and cleaning down the horses. This early morning activity is tightly woven into the memories of those people who were brought up on the farms before the coming of the tractor: one of them has described it thus: ‘I was born on a Suffolk farm; and when I was a boy I used to lie in bed in the early morning and listen to the quiet champing of the horses, the clink of their shoes on the cobbles of the stable, and the horsemen whistling or hissing through their teeth to soothe the horses as they brushed and curry-combed them before turning out.’

  On the Battisford estate there were twenty-four horses—eight plough-teams—with two horsemen and two mates or under-horsemen to look after them. The order of precedence of the horsemen on Suffolk farms was fixed with almost military precision; and at no time was this precedence more jealously guarded than when the teams turned out in the morning and returned to the stable after work in the afternoon. The horsemen and their mates went first in proper order with their teams of horses; and if there were more teams needed on a particular morning the remaining ones were in the charge of day-men, ordinary farm-workers, who followed on behind. The distinction between day-men and horsemen was an important one; for it meant that prior to the fixing of a minimum wage1 for farm-workers the day-men were liable to be stood-off on wet days or when the land could not be worked. The farmer sent them home, and they received no pay for the days they lost. But the horsemen were paid a fixed weekly wage, and also had certain perquisites which put them higher in the farm organisation, on the same level as the stockman or the shepherd.

  The actual feeding of the horses was important, chiefly for two reasons: the need to keep them in perfect working condition; and, in the interest of farm economy, to bait them as regularly and effectively as possible without any of the corn going to waste. How important it was may be gathered from the fo
llowing: in the Battisford estate, as in many other districts of Suffolk, the head horseman was known as the first baiter, and the second in command as the second baiter. Arthur Chaplin (born 1885), a contemporary of William Cobbold, was for many years baiter at a similar estate at Stowupland. He has described how he managed the feeding of his horses. The first baiter was in complete charge. He was responsible to the farmer for the condition of the working horses and for a proper method in feeding them.

  In the stable was a corn-hutch or bin and the baiter filled it twice a week—Mondays and Thursdays—as it was not big enough to take a full week’s ration. He drew the corn from the granary where he measured out the quantities scrupulously: he became so expert in gauging the right amount that he could apportion the ration without actually weighing it. He allowed each horse a stone of corn (oats and beans mixed) for a working day—six stones a week. Therefore, a little of each day’s ration had to be kept back to make up the Sunday feed when the horses were resting: they were allowed unlimited amounts of chaff or stover. The utensil used for actually placing the food in the manger was a baiting-sieve. This was a round sieve with a fine cane bottom, something like one type of brewing-sieve. When it was full of chaff the baiter shook it gently to ensure that all the dust fell out; for if this was inhaled by the horse it caused him discomfort and, consequently, uneasy feeding.

  At Battisford the corn consisted of beans and maize, ground up rough; and it was mixed with wheat chaff that came off the threshing drum. As it came out of the drum or threshing machine the farmer had it bagged and stored near the stable, over or alongside it, in a room or loft called the chaffin’. At this particular farm the baiters damped the chaff with water before giving it to the horses. But the methods of feeding and the kind of fodder differed considerably within the county. In the light land district—the sandlings or coastal area of East Suffolk—feeding beans to horses was a practice that was seldom held in high regard. In 1797 Arthur Young noted:2 The quantity of beans given to horses is not very considerable, and the consumption for hogs or fattening cattle is still less’; and Newton Pratt, a Trimley farmer whose family has been connected with the Suffolk horse ever since the time Young referred to, has stated: ‘This is not bean country. Our horses were fed on oats, chaff, ground up roots and stover.’ In this, the light-land farmers of Suffolk appear to agree with many of the Scottish farmers who have come into Suffolk during the last hundred or so years: the Scots considered beans were ‘too hot for horses’.