MEMORIES

The following is an account given to David Jardine in 1993 for the compilation of a local book and gives an account of the life of Mr Nelson Dance and his time at Finkley Manor Farm

Thatched farm

I’ve lived in this area almost 80 years. We moved away for three or four, but came back again. When we came to Finkley in 1937 there was roughly an acre of thatch on the barns and buildings, if it was laid out flat out on the ground. If it was today the cost of upkeep would be at least £10,000 a year. I gradually destroyed it as best I could, and replaced it with corrugated iron and tiles and slates; mostly corrugated iron. The thatched buildings were useless for modern farming. So we got out of them. If I had not done so, I would have had restricted buildings on my hand to this day, which we would not have been allowed to destroy.

Same day move

My father never farmed here. He farmed at Cowdown farm, Clatford, for 40 odd years, but my brothers and I had all left home, and he retired in 1942. Before 1937 I was working with him and Jean’s father for a couple or three years. Jean’s father worked at Brown Candover, Moss Farms. We moved in here the day that the brooks moved out, Norman’s father. We’d taken a bungalow for a short period, waiting to get in here, and we had to quit the bungalow on a certain day, so we had to move. It was a very sad day for the Brooks family, I think. They went down to Woodhouse Farm, as he was farming that in conjunction with this, and he owned that. This belonged to Brasenose College at that time, and had been part of Lord Portsmouth’s estate, the Wallop family, at one point, when the Brooks were here.

Horses

We had a horse or two when we first came, but not very many. We actually used motor cars to haul the harvest sheaves in – we had three motor cars and three trailers. They’d be 20-30 horsepower – better than horse. I was never horsey-minded, although I’ve driven horses on ploughs and sweeps and what have you. There was stabling here when we came for 27 horses, but there’s only three at the present moment, for the girls with riding horses. They would be Shire, and Clydesdale, and mixed breeds; my father was a great Suffolk Punch man. They gradually disappeared round the early part of the war. We used cars because there wasn’t enough money in farming to buy tractors – we could buy cars for £5 or £10, but a tractor was a lot more money, and they did the job just the same.

Livestock and arable

We had sheep here when we first came, and a small dairy, and arable farm. We used to have a sheepdog or two, and a shepherd at the time. We never had a carter, or horseman. We had cowmen, but not enough horses to have a carter. The cattle were Ayrshire, for milk, black and white, very easily digested milk; the globules are very small in the Ayrshire cow. But we’ve been driven out of them by trying to make money. The sheep we had to start with were Dorset Horns. I went out of those and went into a registered Hampshire Down flock, until we had a disaster – we had Twin Lamp Disease, and we lost a big majority of them. They were all having twin lamb, and it can become a disease, and they were too fat to lamb properly. No foot-and-mouth disease. We had pigs, and had hair syphilis in a herd of pigs, which we never reported, and just buried the lot. Some of them got over it. That was a disaster. When we first came there were cattle, sheep and pigs all together. Never chickens in any quantity. Wheat, barley, oats and for sheep a big acreage of roots, Swedes and turnips and what have you.

Machinery

Then machinery came along, and I bought a combine in 1939, the same year as the war broke out, and all my neighbours thought I was mad. It was a second-hand one, and they thought he wouldn’t last very long; he’d be out of business. But I proved them otherwise, very much so. They all had combines within ten years. We bought the first one in ’39, another one in 1940, and another in 1941. Then we gradually sold them and bought new ones, right up to this day.

Farm buildings

We’ve had to put up new building up. It was a big job to pull them down, but I’m very pleased we did it. We stripped the thatch, and kept the timber that was any good, and burnt all that was full of nails and useless in great bonfires. The new ones were more or less on the same site, but I rearranged it. That barn you can see the roof over there was the first one I put up, in about 1941; it’s lasted 50 years.

Finkley Farm House

The house was built about 200 years ago, about 1787, the date on it: the time of the French Revolution and William Pitt. When we came here it wasn’t modernised. The drainage was terrible, what there was: we destroyed the whole thing and started afresh. There are no main drains; it’s all septic tanks to this day. No electricity or gas. It was lit by oil lamps. There was an old pump with a big wheel to pump the water – the well is till there, still active, we use it but by electric of course. We’d been used to electric and the first night here, when it got dark, we wanted to switch the light on and there was no light to switch on. We had to light oil lamps and go to bed with candles. I couldn’t stick that long. I had a plant in within a month. There was a range for cooking which burnt coal. We’ve changed the rooms round a lot. This dining room used to be the kitchen. We did it with our own labour but employed a builder for certain jobs. We had a fellow of the name of Dobson who was with us for many years. He came in about four years ago and decorated one of the bathrooms upstairs, went out to the workshop and fell over dead. He was about 70. He was a great boy, a real craftsman; everything he did was done to perfection.

The Shoot

I’ve been running this shoot for over 50 years. I used to let it pre the war to a Mr Lobel of Apsley and when the war started he threw it in and I’ve carried on ever since. It used to be mainly partridges but the wild partridges gradually disappeared and we’ve reared pheasants to put in their place: we’ve been trying to preserve the partridges for many years and not had them shot but modern farming and partridges don’t go together, so we are mainly pheasants. We rear a few and Ron Holdway looks after them. His father used to work for us until he retired when he was 70 – he came here in 1938. He worked the corn dryer for us from 1940 until he retired. It was in one of the old thatched barns but that was very dangerous. He also thatched the three large barns that have now been demolished.

Artillery Point

In the war we had an Artillery battery here, about 600 troops. There were five ack-ack guns and the never fired a shot. In this big old barn the used to have ENSA come for the popular concerts – Leslie Henson came and one or two famous ones. We enjoyed it as much as they did. When there was a raid on they were always ready to fire but nothing came within range, I suppose. We didn’t have any apples in the garden when they were around! The troops used to strip everything, the cherries, the apples, the plums, the lot!

Difference in farm prices

In the first year here I sold my wheat in 1939, the second or third year in the Windsor Royal Show for 17 shillings a quarter – a quarter is four and a quarter hundred weight. I sold my barley for 15 shillings a quarter and no subsidy of any kind: my oats for 14 shillings a quarter but we still made a living. Men’s wages were about 28 shillings a week but things were a lot cheaper than they are today. Actually in 1937 there was a subsidy put on by the government, making wheat up to 45 shillings a quarter. As my father let most of his farm go derelict in the depression of the twenties and thirties, he couldn’t grow wheat at 17 shillings a quarter so he just let the land go derelict – he owned it all so it’s didn’t matter very much. He just couldn’t farm it to make a living. Today, they are offering a little subsidy on certain crops, linseed and rape I think but I don’t grow any rape. I think subsidies are wrong. There used to be subsidies on milk, on wheat, on barley and all sorts of things which have not been ended but we have to pay a subsidy to grow potatoes - £70 a hectare. We grow them for our own consumption and for the men on the farm. We grow just a few. We used to grow 70 or 80 acres of potatoes but it’s not on.