The Horse in the Furrow

by George Ewart Evans

  ‘The agreement between the farmers and the hired harvesters is made on Whitson Monday. Harvest Gloves of 7d. a pair are still presented.’

  The Sorrel Horse, the inn on the main Ipswich-Norwich road, was a well-known baiting house for horse-traffic from the farms. Arthur Gooding (born 1887) spent most of his life there: his father and grandfather were landlords there before him. He recalled that it was a popular stopping place for the farm wagons: ‘The horsemen used to have journey-money, and they called in to have a pint. Some on ’em would stop all day and hev a skinful. They didn’t hev much money, but it went a long way in those days. You could get a pint o’ beer, an ounce of tobacco and a box of matches—and you’d still get some change out of a tanner. We’d hev the horses here for the night; but these were not farm-horses o’ course. It cost a tanner for stabling and a tanner for bait. It was all horses along this road at that time o’ day. On a market-day you’d see scores of ’em going into Ipswich: I recall a man from Diss, by the name of Middleditch. He’d take a lot of horses into the sales: eight or nine of ’em in a string, tied head to tail.’

  As well as being the winning post for the informal trotting races from Ipswich, The Sorrel Horse was also the finish for the organised road trotting contests: ‘They’d start from Thwaite Buck’s Head, about twelve miles away, and finish up at The Horse. The stake was around about £10. I recollect two men—Jack Ruffles and Tom Ford—trotting from Stonham Tap to The Horse. The stake: the winner took both horses.’

  The village carriers from the outlying villages north of Ipswich also used to call at The Sorrel Horse. At that time most of the bigger villages had a man who ran a carrier’s business, either full time, or in conjunction with another business. He took goods and passengers into the town in his wagon and brought out supplies to the village shop, or to families who had given him a direct order. Clifford Race, who was brought up in the village of Stonham Aspal, recalled the carrier for that village: ‘He had a two-horse wagon with a hood on it. He left Stonham at nine in the morning—Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays—and got to Ipswich at noon. He left the town at four in the afternoon. In between, the carrier used to chase round Ipswich with a long list of things that people had asked him to get for them. You paid him tuppence—quite a bit o’ money at that time o’ day—but he’d go all over the town to get what you wanted. He came back to the village at about eight in the evening: the journey back took longer because he’d got more calls to make. This carrier—he were called Bridges—took passengers, too: a shilling return to Ipswich. You sat on a kind o’ form, and you’d find your feet resting on anything from hens to a side o’ bacon. The horse-carrier’s business finished just after the 1914–18 war. A man named Ling put his bonus (war-gratuity) into buying a motor-lorry; and he set up a carrier’s business. Bridges gave up his horses; and another man took over. He didn’t last for long though; and the motor soon had all the business. A real good carrier was a great benefit to a village; but the trouble with some on ’em was they couldn’t pass a pub.’

  In the days of the old horse-traffic, the high-road seems to have had a quality that, to a great extent, it has since lost. A man with any self-respect would not be seen driving a horse on it unless he himself, the horse and the trap or wagon were looking at their best. Even if the sky threatened to fall or the bottom to drop out of the farm, one had to look well on the high-road. And there was great rivalry between head horsemen on neighbouring farms to see who had the best turn-out. Two horsemen, each from nearby farms, sometimes met in a village inn. One mentioned casually during the course of the evening that he was taking a team of horses up to market the following day. ‘That’s funny,’ the other commented, ‘I’m taking a team to Ipswich myself.’ They both left earlier than their usual time, and rose very early the next morning, between two and three o’clock; and they both spent a couple of hours polishing the harness and grooming and braiding the horses. Each was determined to make sure that his turn-out would be at least as good as his neighbours’. One head horseman kept a set of harness of his own at home in his cottage; and on the occasions when he took a light horse and trap from the farm into market, he made sure the night before that both horse and harness kept up his reputation for having one of the best turn-outs on the Norwich road.

  But the old horsemen also liked to have a respectable farm-wagon or tumbril for the horses to pull when they went on to the high-road; and when the wagon or tumbril was freshly painted they were very proud indeed. Some of this general pleasure in seeing, or driving in, a respectable vehicle on the high-road is expressed in the apocryphal story that once circulated in the Stonham Aspal district: A tumbril, used regularly by an old farm-worker, was freshly decorated. He was so proud of it that, when he drove it from the coach-builder’s yard, he stopped the horse at the side of the road and got down to see how he looked in it from the ground. At the present time not a horse is to be seen on most days along the stretch of the North-Ipswich road just mentioned. The long tradition of horse-traffic is now almost completely broken: the blacksmiths are all dying out; the harness-makers and the old ‘horse’ tailors are almost as rare; and the posting and baiting houses along the road are now hardly distinguishable from ordinary pubs. The road bears few signs or little visible evidence—except perhaps here and there a mounting-block or a tethering-post with its ring—of the colourful community that once bowled along it; and even these are gradually being removed.6 We may get an inkling of the length of this tradition by taking a brief look at a series of records discovered in the city of Norwich. They are The Journals of John Dernell and John Boys, two carters at The Lathes, a fifty acre estate on the north side of the city. The estate was managed as a home-farm of St Giles’s Hospital, a religious body; and the date of John Dernell’s diary is 1417, the fifth year of the reign of Henry V. But its purpose was not dissimilar to that of the Ransome’s stable diary already quoted.

  The carters, in addition to doing jobs about the farm, went on outside jobs for which they were hired by various towns-people. In September of the above year John Dernell made the journey from Norwich to Ipswich. He completed the double journey—about ninety miles—and his business in four days; and spent at least one night on the road. His business was to bring home iron. But here is the full entry:7

  (6th September)

  Die Lune proximo ante Festum Nativitatis beate Marie, Dies Martis yo carte to Ȝepeswych warde price xiijs. iiijd. Dies Mercurii, Dies Jovis, comyng homwarde with vj Osmonde Barell price iijs. Dies Veneris rest all day. Dies sabbati ij plowes goyng all day.

  Summa receptorum xvjs. iiijd.

  For costis to Ȝepeswych and homwarde viijs vijd. ob. Item v comb draf ij buschels price xjd. Item in hors brede xijd. Item a payr of trayce of vti di price viijd. Item a payr selys iijd. Item yo dyzghtyng of yo traice & yo selys ijd. Item hopyng of a payr carte nawes ijd. Item ijti flok jd. ob. Item my wage xiiijd. Item Clerk jd. Summa expensarum xiijs jd. Et debit iijs. iijd.

  And below in a clearer form:

  Monday before the Nativity of the Blessed Mary; Tuesday, the cart to Ipswich. Price 13s. 4d. Wednesday and Thursday, coming homeward with six barrels of iron. Price 3s. Friday, rest all day. Saturday, two ploughs going all day. Total of receipts: 16s. 4d.

  Expenses to Ipswich and homeward: 8s. 7½d. Item five combs two bushels of draf (the refuse of grain) 11d. Item for horse fodder: 12d. Item a pair of traces weighing 5½ lbs.: price 8d. Item a pair of sales (seals or hames): 3d. Item for making ready the traces and sales: 2d. Item the banding of a pair of cart naves 2d. Item two lbs. of coarse wool 1½d. Item my wage 14d. Item Clerk 1d.

  Total expenses: 13s. 1d. Still owing (has in hand) 3s. 3d.

  We can infer from a later entry in the Engrossed Roll of the estate for what purposes the iron was used. The entry occurs under Expenses of Ploughs and Carts:8

  In iron & steel bought, with the fixing them upon the shares, coulters, & equipment of 2 ploughs at the Lathes this year (1428–9): 17s. 9d.

  But to re
turn to the entry from the carter’s diary: there are a number of the items deserving of a note. A comb is still an East Anglian corn measure, equivalent to four bushels, or half a quarter. Draf was coarse grain, or what is now known as tailings;9 or it might possibly have been also, the grains of malt left after brewing. The purchase of a pair of traces weighing five and a half pounds brings up some interesting points. A present-day pair of traces for a farm-horse weighs seven pounds, and it is unlikely that had these traces been made of iron they would have been lighter in weight than the modern ones. It is probable they were made of some other material with iron fastenings at either end. For during this period most of the harness for horses and oxen was made of rope: straw or hay-rope. Even traces were made of this material; and horse-harness as we know it today was not generally used in country districts until comparatively recent times when the increasing use of the horse in industry and in the towns (chiefly in the nineteenth century) raised the standard of harness-making.10 Traces were also made of plaited withes—at least for the teams of oxen. Ffransis Payne11 obtained this information from a man who had worked one of the last teams of oxen in Sussex at the end of the last century. When he started work in 1893 traces made of withes and hay-rope were used by the teams of oxen at the plough. Mr Payne further quotes the practice of mid-Wales farmers who within living memory kept a holly-plantation where withes were specially grown for making traces, as well as for other uses about the farm: hazel was also favoured for the same purpose.

  It seems reasonable to infer that as the amount of money the Norwich carter spent on harness and gear during that particular week was so large, it was made of easily expendable material and that the ninety miles journey made almost complete replacements necessary. The hames are the pieces of wood or metal fastened to the collar of a draught-horse. The traces are fixed to the hames, and they have to be robust and fit well on to the collar as they take the full pull of the load. Wooden hames are still to be seen on plough-horses even today; and it is likely that the pair mentioned here were wood also. It is worth noting that they are still referred to as seals in one or two districts of Suffolk—notably in the Stowmarket area.

  Dighting12 of the hames and traces probably involved securely fixing one to the other—a job requiring much care and some skill as these two items of the harness took the full strain. The next item, was for metal hoops, made for fixing around the wooden wheel-naves or hubs to prevent them from spreading. The flock or coarse wool—a fairly frequent entry in the diary—was perhaps to stuff the horse-collars, ensuring that they would lie comfortably on the neck. But wool would not be the ideal material and would tend to mat easily as the collar absorbed the sweat, thus needing frequent replacement to prevent the horse becoming collar-proud—unduly sensitive to the collar.

  The carter’s wage of fourteen pence a week represents the wage for a seven-day week: like the modern horseman he had also to work on a Sunday, at baiting and clearing out the stable. If he had been a day-man he would have been paid a shilling only. If a feast-day happened to fall in a particular week he might be paid two pence or even threepence less; because it appears that a statute of the previous reign (Henry IV: 4, c.14) ‘enacted that not only should a labourer receive no wages on feast days, but also only half-pay on the vigils of such days when he did not work after the noon-hour’.13 But John Dernell received only thirteen pence for a full week’s work, not because of lost work through religious feasts or similar reasons, but simply because the steward who audited his accounts was a very just man. Each week he crossed out: Item Clerk 1d. For the steward evidently considered that it was the carter’s job to keep his own journal and his accounts. If he had not the skill, it was a deficiency that no one could be blamed for but himself; and he himself would have to pay to hire the Clerk who did the writing for him.

  This crossed-out penny, the last item in the week’s entry, explains the discrepancy between the sum of the separate items and the total of 13s. 1d. The total was written down by the steward, as also was the note: He owes (or has in hand) 3s. 3d. This represents the difference between the carter’s receipts—the monies paid to him by the people who hired him for the various jobs—and the expenses, including his wages, that were incurred during the week.

  The Clerk’s curious setting down of the journals, with the dates in Latin and the items in English, is not—one imagines—due to any itch to give his second language an airing. We can offer the more charitable explanation that the device was an attempt to differentiate one part of the diary from the other. As far as the carter was concerned the important part was written in English, perhaps at his own request; for though it was manifestly beyond his powers to write his own language he might well have had enough wit to recognise it. In any case he was probably not much concerned with either language, as it was written down; for commerce with people who do not read very much and who are not greatly overawed by the tyranny of the written—and especially—the printed word and its implied and often specious claim to infallibility, seems to suggest that their real attitude to a document such as this is: ‘Words—well, words is just words. But figures—figures now is different’. And the figures were clear enough to the carter, especially, no doubt, the bitter mutilated figure of one penny that the careful steward invariably denied him.

  Two items in the carter’s diary a few days before the journey to Ipswich may have had some bearing on the expedition. They are: whycorde jd and ij payr langell. Langell, it is believed, are hopples or fetters for hobbling a horse to prevent him from straying too far. We can assume that the carter spent two nights on the road; and as it was September, and not too far advanced in the year, he probably spent them sleeping in or under his cart while the two horses grazed nearby. This was a practice that was not uncommon up to the beginning of this century. Wagoners and horsemen on long journeys from home were forced to take what comfort they could; and they referred to the practice philosophically as sleeping rough. And even where they had adequate journey-money, enough to enable them to take a night’s lodging, they often preferred to sleep out and save the money for other uses.

  One known instance of this sleeping-out on a long journey has been given by a member of a family from the village of Stonham Aspal which the Norwich carter passed on his road to Ipswich. The Berry family of Stonham, and after them the Races, had a small cottage industry: the making of whitening rolls or balls from chalk taken from the nearby pits at Claydon. The whitening was used for decorating cottages, ‘indoor work’, when papering was beyond the means of most rural families. The industry was handed down in the Berry family for generations; and George Race (born 1842) married one of the daughters and learned the trade from his wife. He used to go about the countryside selling whitening at three-halfpence a roll or one stone (four rolls) for sixpence. On these expeditions George Race and his mother-in-law often spent a night away from home with their donkey and cart, sleeping on the side of the road if this were at all possible. On one occasion they went as far as Aldeburgh—a memorable visit for George Race: for though he lived into the late ’twenties of this century it was the only time he saw the sea.

  To return for two brief notes to the fifteenth century Norwich carters: The week before he left for Ipswich John Dernell got the Clerk to make this entry:14 Dies sabbati, a plow goyng tyll none, after none schod oure hors and dyzght oure harneys. This, and similar entries in the Journals, confirm that ploughing finished at mid-day even when horses had been substituted for oxen. (There were six horses on the estate to do all the farm-work and the carting). The other entry is from the Journal of John Boys, one of John Darnell’s successors. He kept an even more detailed diary, and more than once has an entry such as this:

  Item: at after (noon) moked oure hors and mendyd oure carte.15 Mucking or mucking out (the horses, cattle, etc.) is still the usual expression in East Anglia for cleaning out the stables; and, along with other instances in these diaries, illustrates what a history of long and uninterrupted usage farming words and phrases h
ave. In fact, the main impression one gets from reading through these diaries is that they are not after all—although they are five hundred years old—so alien in temper and content to the old pre-machine farming community that some of the older people in East Anglia remember so well. Yet how alien they seem to us today. Or to make the point in another way: how recently has this old farming continuity—extending back, on the present evidence, at least five hundred years—been broken in almost everything except a residual and apparently quickly disappearing vocabulary.

  1 i.e. dressed.

  2 Systema Agriculturae, 1681.

  3 H. Cecil Pawson, Robert Bakewell, Crosby Lockwood, p. 142.

  4 The inner bark of the lime tree.

  5 History of Hawstead (Suffolk), 2nd edition, p. 259.

  6 ‘Five drinking troughs for horses, now in various parts of Ipswich, are to be removed in the current year.’ East Anglian Daily Times, 30th April, 1958.

  7 Original Papers, Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society (1903), Vol. XV, Part II, p. 133.

  8 ibid., p. 159.

  9 A.F.C.H., p. 94.

  10 F. H. Hollis, ‘The Horse in Agriculture,’ B.O.H., p. 181.

  11 Y.A.G., pp. 150–1.

  12 M.E.: to make ready.

  13 Original Papers, (already cited), p. 123.

  14 Ibid., p. 132.

  15 Ibid., p. 156.

  6

  The Horseman’s Dress

  The old horseman had a traditional love of dressing in a way that was peculiar to his trade or craft. Before the First World War each worker on the farm dressed in the manner accepted for his job; and it was not difficult for the country-wise to pick out the shepherd, the stockman, the horseman and the ordinary day-man from a gathering of farm people at a show or a sale. It would not be easy to do this today, apart from the fact that few working horsemen are left. Clifford Race, a blacksmith who had also worked on farms—chiefly with horses—during the early part of his life, commented on the difference: