Dairy Farming in South Cheshire - the Past is another Countryside

SOLASTALGIA, GENRE DE VIE AND SOUTH CHESHIRE

In my previous post / article, I introduced my grandmother Sally Darlington and her family (the Kinseys and Prices of rural South Cheshire). I also promised to follow my established practice of matching the family history to the economic history of the locale and times.

Fortunately, in this case I have some fairly solid and original information to draw on.

In May 1965, I finished a mini-thesis on the agricultural economics of dairy farming in South Cheshire in the period 1930 to 1965 as a requirement for my Honours Degree in Geography at Cambridge.

The theme was the interplay between rapid changes in market access and farming techniques and the seemingly unchanging landscape ‘where time has affected little change in what has always been a carpet of grass with a very delicate pattern of arable’ (E.P. Boon ‘Land of Britain’ (1941)).

So I can tell you a pretty good story of the South Cheshire that I experienced as a boy - and that framed the working life of my stepfather Horace (born 1917) and the latter part of the life of his mother Sally (born 1877).

But if it is true that ‘you can take the boy out of the country, though you can’t take the country out of the boy’, the question remains ‘what piece of country do we see when we look back?’ The past is not just another country - it is also another countryside.

Generally, there is much more change than we are prepared to credit.

In this context, the tendency for constant adjustment within given constants (which are themselves ultimately adjustable) has continued to fascinate me.

And to give change and tradition their proper due, I’ll start back in the 16th century by drawing together and augmenting information that is available on line.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE CHESHIRE CHEESE & DAIRY INDUSTRY

Apparently Camden's ‘Brittania’ records that ‘Cheshire Cheese is more agreeable and better relished than those of other parts of the kingdom’. And the 1637 edition refers to cheese making in Cheshire as follows:

"the grasse and fodder there is of that goodness and vertue that the cheeses bee made heere in great number of a most pleasing and delicate taste, such as all England againe affordeth not the like; no, though the best dairy women otherwise and skilfullest in cheesemaking be had from hence."

The local and ready availability of salt was another factor that fostered development.

Although there are few records, it seems certain that Cheshire cheese had a long medieval history of being exported through the Port of Chester, and that it played an important part in provisioning both merchant shipping and English armies destined for North Wales, Ireland and Scotland.

1623 - First recorded instance of Cheshire cheese being shipped to London by road. This would have been pressed, aged cheese that was sufficiently hard to stand up to journeys by horse and cart to London and sufficiently cured to survive long sea journeys during which it was a staple food for English seafarers.

‘If you will have good cheese and have old
You must turn him seven times before he is cold’.

During the 17th century red clover gradually improved the nutritional value of Cheshire grasslands. It appears to have been introduced from the Netherlands. Clover can triple the amount of available nitrogen in the soil and substantially enrich pasture.

1650 - Start of the trade in Cheshire cheese to London by boat following cattle disease in Suffolk in the 1640s. Until then large amounts of Suffolk cheese went to London ordered especially by the Navy.

Port of London records show the growth in Cheshire Cheese landings from 1650. This was a full milk cheese (as originally was its Suffolk rival) but Cheshire cheese was cheaper.

As the production of Suffolk cheese declined in the wake of cattle disease, farmers there switched to making butter for the lucrative London market and made poorer tasting skimmed milk cheeses. After this period, Cheshire Cheese would have been sold at a premium to the now inferior Suffolk Cheese.

1690s - Trade with London slowed due to the loss of ships to the war with France.

1713 - Trade resumed at the end of the war and from 1739 the Navy gave precedence to Cheshire cheese. By this time London had become the major market.

1748 to 1759 Dr Samuel Johnson rents a house near to a famous old pub built in 1668. The pub ‘Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese’ still stands near Fleet Street in the City of London

In 1750 English population stood at about 5.7 million. Contrary to past experience population grew to unprecedented levels after 1750, reaching 16.6 million in 1850, and agricultural output expanded with it.

From 1750 onwards, the Industrial Revolution and the growth of the Northern mill towns and the Potteries opened new markets to Cheshire farmers. Sales into the Mersey basin increased - not just of cheese but also of milk and butter.

Between 1721 and 1835, Cheshire, Lancashire and the Midlands were laced by an interconnected network of canals:

1721 - River Weaver (canalised)
1761 - Bridgewater Canal
1772 - Chester Canal
1777 - Trent and Mersey Canal
1829 - Wardle Canal
1831 - Macclesfield Canal
1835 - Shropshire Union Canal

The canals and then the railways opened up new markets and demand for cheaper, younger cheese started to develop especially by the poorer industrial workers. The canals also allow inputs to be brought in, including fodder from outside the county.

The presence of brickworks along the canals makes bricks readily available for the enlargement and new construction of farm buildings and the development of farmhouse dairies (with the rear of the houses and the dairies being essentially merged). The larger farmhouses also help to secure live-in dairymaids to assist with cheese-making.

Cheeses rise gradually from 20 lbs to 40 lbs and then 60 lbs in weight as transport improved and new presses are brought into play. The bigger cheeses produced under conditions more akin to factory rather than craft production require larger amounts of milk – this in turn favoured larger farms.

1800 – In the period from 1800, efforts to improve Cheshire pastures were intensified – often linked to the enclosure of common land.

Stock-proof hawthorn hedges were planted and regularly re-laid and trimmed. Ditches were dug and maintained along the boundary hedges and field drains were put in place, oftentimes preceded by the corrugation of the fields into higher strips (bawks) edged with dips or ‘reens’ that crossed the contours.

Where deposits of marl occurred, this was mined and spread to reduce soil acidity. At the same time, many of these marling holes became farm pits from which stock could be watered. Pits were also dug near farmsteads to assist in ‘swilling out’ the shippons and to provide water for stall-fed stock during the winter.

1823 - Cheshire cheese production estimated at 10,000 tonnes a year.

1840s - Alternative markets for milk produced in Cheshire continued to develop (milk and butter to the industrial areas) and production of Cheshire cheese was pushed back to the south of the county. London remained an important market - especially for aged Cheshire cheese.

Younger, fresher, crumbly cheese that required shorter storage—similar to the Cheshire cheese of today—began to gain popularity towards the end of the 19th century, particularly in the industrial areas in the North and the Midlands. It was a cheaper cheese to make as it required less storage.

Such cheeses tended to be marketed in Stockport and Nantwich-Crewe that were astride the major lines of rail access to the industrial towns of South Lancashire.

1845 – 1880 The era of massive, planned estate consolidation by the major aristocratic landowners in Cheshire who between themselves owned over 400 km2 of dairy land (with 287 km2 being owned by the 4 largest) – see my previous post on the Tollemache’s.

The power of the landowners overturned many traditional practices and brought in a highly structured and competitive system of production. Many second and younger sons were pushed out of farming. Although the successful farming families had some perceived rights to pass on tenancies to elder sons, the system was ultimately competitive and land agents introduced tenders and unilateral rent reviews for tenancies.

Professor Mark Overton sees this as a major factor in the continued adjustment of English agriculture to new conditions and challenges:

“The key probably lies in the way the English workforce was organised and employed. The development of agrarian capitalism in England, with those involved in agriculture divided into landowners, capitalist tenant farmers and labourers, saw the development of better farm management and more efficiency in using the workforce”.

1865-66 - During the Rinderpest Cattle Plague several Cheshire clergymen claimed that the plague was divine punishment for the sins of the people, the first being the making of cheese on a Sunday. Landowners then gave prizes for the best cheese "made without Sunday labour". As a result Monday's cheese was often asserted to be the best as the milk had stood over the weekend.

At the same time, liquid milk production expanded. From the late 1860's to the end of the 19th century the population of Lancashire increased by roughly 50 per cent. And per capita milk consumption increased by 25 per cent, while overall demand, is estimated to have risen by almost 90 per cent. This was due in no small degree to the growing popularity of tea drunk in the traditional manner with milk and sugar, by even the poorest mill and mining families.

All in all, milk prices stayed remarkably stable except during the depression of 1883-6 and the hard years of the early 1890's while cheese prices fluctuated more widely. The relative profitability of milk production became even more apparent during the I890's when the prices of butter and cheese fell markedly in industrial areas (partly due to growing imports).

The shift to liquid-milk production was strengthened by two further factors. First, a marked fall in rail transport costs took place. Second, the cost of concentrates -oats, maize, oilcake - fell by some 40 per cent, while savings were made on labour costs by reducing the numbers of paid workers (including live-in cheese maids) and increasing the amount of family labour.

Not surprisingly the amount of liquid milk produced and sold in Lancashire increased by over 50 per cent. This was drawn from an ever widening hinterland with rail access being a major determinant of the switch from cheese to liquid milk production. South West Cheshire being the most remote from direct access to major urban markets remained a bastion of traditional cheese production into the 20th century.

Organised agricultural education was introduced in Cheshire in 1890 with the formation of an Agricultural Instruction Committee comprised of forward-looking landowners and farmers. This committee founded a teaching centre on a dairy farm at Worleston.

By 1914, it had become increasingly clear that the Worleston Dairy Institute could no longer meet the demand. Meanwhile, a College of Agriculture had been established at Holmes Chapel in 1895 and this was affiliated to Manchester University. It was then felt that one centre should be found to accommodate all agricultural education in Cheshire.

In 1919, Reaseheath Hall, near Nantwich came on the market and with the aid of a Government grant, the estate was purchased by the County Council for an enlarged agricultural training centre – this became a centre of excellence and good practice – though it was often spoken of in derogatory terms by traditional farming families.

1900 - The move to younger, fresher, crumbly cheese that required shorter storage - similar to the Cheshire cheese we know today - continued. The cheese was sold every week during the grass growing season rather than the once or twice a year sale that typified cheese marketing in earlier years.

This shift resulted in a decline in the volumes of cheese sold into London. But the main markets at Whitchurch, Chester and Nantwich were increasingly used to sell traditional cheeses - primarily into markets in the North West. My grandparents were claimed to have actually made Lancashire Cheese (even milder and more crumbly than the new Cheshires).

1927 - The Cheshire Cheese Federation was formed to control standards and grade cheese on farms. It was they who set the standards for how good Cheshire Cheese should be made and graded. Most of the Cheshire being made was still being produced on farms.

1939 - The Second World War resulted in the end of cheese production on farm and was only re-started at the end of rationing in 1953 by the Milk Marketing Board. In the intervening post war years, imported cheese was freely available "off ration" and helped to create a market for such cheese at the expense of traditional British varieties.

1960 onwards - Milk production and cheese production grew strongly in the UK and the range of cheese available increased considerably. Crumbly cheeses like Cheshire became less fashionable as they did not lend themselves to the new pre-packing requirements of the supermarkets - traditional crumbly cheeses simply did not pack well.

Faced with such competition, Cheshire sales gradually declined from their peak of around 40,000 in 1960 to about one sixth of that level today. Today, three Cheshire makers account for the greater part of the Cheshire cheese made in the North West.

THE AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY OF CHESHIRE 1930 TO 1965

I will now turn over to some of the comments made and findings drawn in my 1965 Mini-thesis.

Although South Cheshire still held a traditional focus on cheese production in 1930, it was already very much part of the world economy. It was known for its high stocking rates but these were only partly explained by the quality of its grass. It also depended heavily on ‘concentrates’ (including maize from Canada, beans from Argentina, and waste from cotton and palm oil processing in West Africa) to boost milk production.

Around 1930, there were about 1,000 regular farm-house cheese makers operating in the Cheshire Cheese area (this consists of Cheshire, North Shropshire, North Staffordshire and the lowlands of Flint and Denbighshire). Production at that time was about 20,000 tons.

The cheese economy of this era depended heavily imported cattle feed. A Manchester University survey of 17 farms gives an average expenditure on feed of £16 per cow, consisting of £8.8 on purchased concentrates, £4.5 on home grown hay and root crops and £2.7 per cow on grazing.

Four factors supported this production model:

1. Bought in feed (supported by Imperial trade preferences) was readily and relatively cheaply available
2. The extra feed increased milk yields and extended lactations smoothing the application of labour and extending cash flows – and it was particularly important to smaller farms in boosting scale in cheese-making
3. Heifers could be imported in large numbers from Ireland and Wales, allowing Cheshire farmers to maximize the benefits of Spring calving – and avoid the need to grass feed young stock
4. As the final output was cheese rather than milk, efficiencies in craft manufacturing were just as important as efficiencies in pasture usage.

But the Great Depression forced down commodity prices such that ‘cheese was 4 pence a pound on Nantwich market and unemployed labourer would walk 3 miles out of town to meet farmers to hold the horses bridle while the cheese was unloaded, for 6 pence’.

Despite the heavy reliance on imported feed, milk yields were low. The stock consisted almost exclusively of Dairy Shorthorns with an average yield of around 600 gallons per cow and low butterfat content.

Not that cow performance was the whole issue: ‘it was the aim of every rising farmer to increase the number of cows on his farm, his proudest boast that he kept more than his predecessor, his most earnest desire to get a farm where he could keep more cows – his very standing in the neighbourhood seemed to depend on the size of his herd’.

However, the cheese industry collapsed rapidly as the decade wore on. By 1939, the number of farmhouse cheese-makers had dropped to 250 and output was around 2,500 tons, partly offset by increased factory production. These trends exacerbated the shortage of essential live-in cheese maids and skilled labour became harder to find.

Amid the problems, the Milk Marketing Board (set up in 1933) encouraged the production of liquid milk. This in turn led to a greater emphasis on stall fed winter production and increases in hay-making and fodder crop cultivation. However, it was generally held that ‘a farm of 80 acres is too small for a tractor’ which further encouraged the consolidation of holdings.

World War II brought even greater adjustments. In 1939, the cultivated area within twenty representative parishes rose from 5 percent to 17 percent as the government encouraged wheat production and farmers were faced with a virtual standstill in the importation of concentrates and the need therefore to grow their own supplementary feed. Importation of heifers from Ireland was also curtailed.

In consequence, the average number of cows and heifers per 100 acres fell from 49 to 40 but the farmers tended to resist reducing stock numbers as ‘no one ever thought of reducing their herds if it could be at all avoided’. This being no doubt in part due to the fact that the War brought prosperity as British consumer access to world markets was also affected.

In the period 1945 to 1955 was marked by the maintenance of cultivation (except for wheat for human consumption which was rapidly abandoned), a cutback in cow numbers, and the growth of self-sufficiency in herd replacement. This also was an era of considerable prosperity as world commodity prices were high.

At the same time, the government was keen to provide the stability and know-how that could underpin British self-sufficiency. The Agriculture Act of 1947 put in place guaranteed prices and regular price reviews and much more emphasis was placed on technical training and innovation.

Among the important innovations was the introduction of silage which partially supplanted concentrates (which were rationed until 1953). In 1944, only 4,000 tons of silage had been made in Cheshire but this rose to 110,000 tons in 1950 and 180,000 tons in 1956.

During this period silage making was very labour intensive as it required buck-raking damp mown grass to silage pits where it had to be layered by hand with 4-pronged forks. The feeding of silage was equally demanding as it involves slicing down cuts (known colloquially as ‘wadges’ or ‘kenches’) from the silage face with a peat knife and then taking them by wheel-barrow to the shippons where they were forked again into the troughs or ‘boozies’ of the cattle housed in their winter stalls or ‘tyings’.

Beyond 1955, the pace of technical change accelerated. As the yield advantages of alternative breeds of cattle became obvious to everyone the Dairy Shorthorn became a farmer’s third choice. No longer available from Ireland, few took to breeding this type of cattle.

And as the ‘Milk Act’ of 1950 intensified the payment differential for milk for Tuberculin Tested milk, there was an additional incentive to bring in new stock.

This led at first to the development of new trading links with South Western Scotland and the importation of Ayrshire heifers. Eventually though higher yielding Friesian cattle came to predominate, aided by the availability of artificial insemination.

Tractors also became relatively cheaper and more economic on smaller farms, since ‘each horse needs 3 acres of land – such that a tractor releases 6 acres for alternative use when a team is dispensed with’.

In 1944, there were only about 2,550 tractors on farms in the whole of Cheshire. By 1954, the total had grown to around 8,300. Over the same period, the number of milking machines rose more slowly from around 2,300 to over 4,000 (hindered by the slow extension of access to the national electricity grid).

On Corner Farm, which we farmed from 1949, the latter problem had been solved by the installation of a diesel engine which drove the milking machine system and stored excess electricity in a special battery house for use in the house and buildings outside milking times.

With respect to tractors and machinery, there was constant improvement and we had Fordson Major and Massey Ferguson models. The TVO (Tractor Vaporising Oil) ‘Fergie’ was always a favourite and it was the precursor of modern tractor and implement systems, using hydraulics.

No doubt here there was also a version of 'mine is bigger than your's' going on with competition over toys for the boys. The early Fordsons were particularly impressive - and gratifyingly hard to start for the uninitiated. And even small farmers claimed to need their own baler though it was only used for a few weeks a year.

One of the most marked changes in the later period was the increase in milk yields with average yields rising from around 8,000 lbs per cow per year in 1952 to around 9,500 lbs per year in 1964. This was aided by the adoption of higher yielding breeds (particularly Friesians) and the strengthening of on-farm replacement which gave farmers a pride in seeing young-stock develop into productive heifers.

The concomitant to this was a renewed commitment to concentrates as an aid to production, with an average of 25 cwt per year being fed per cow – fostered obviously by the resumption in world trade after WWII. But the range of overseas feedstuffs continued to widen, embracing locust bean (Carob tree beans) from Egypt, tapioca chips from Thailand and dry sugar beet pulp from Poland.

As kids we used to eat the locust beans from the concentrates hand-cart in the shippons – as well as the rolled / flaked maize or ‘Uveco’ that came in large hessian bags and that was used particularly for poultry.

And the availability of AI (Artificial Insemination) aided small farms which could not afford to run a bull – and eventually allowed larger farms to largely dispense with their dangers. Getting the bull to stand for a veterinary examination by trapping his head with a chained yoke after he had taken some corn was no fun. And I still have a broken joint in my left thumb as a result of the farm bull brushing his head against the galvanized iron bars of his pen (with my thumb in between) when I was about 7 years old.

Friesians were also increasingly prized for the Hereford-cross calves that could be produced once the required number of replacement heifers had been bred. And these calves, together with the redundant male Friesian ‘Bobby calves’ were a major source of cash or ‘spattling brass’ and a marvellous excuse to regularly attend Beeston Auction (and the immediately adjacent ‘Beeston Castle’ pub to meet up with friends and share brown ale, scotch whiskey and anecdotes.

Despite the fact that Cheshire dairy farms had the densest stocking rates at around 28 cows per 100 acres, there was a constant drive to increase scale by either intensifying land-use or increasing farm size. On average (at 77 acres) Cheshire farms were small compared to farms elsewhere in England and three quarters of the farms in South Cheshire were below 100 acres in size in the early 1960s.

This held despite the view of the National Farmers’ Union President at this time that ‘for dairying, the family farm of 50 to 100 cows is most efficient’. But the available data shows that returns on larger farms were up to 50 percent higher than they were for smaller farms and there was constant pressure to amalgamate units.

This pressure was intensified by relative stability in the price of milk, with the expectation being that improvements in productivity would cover increases in the cost of inputs and labour.

As reported in the Nantwich Chronicle of December 5th 1964:

‘A member of the National Farmers’ Union pointed out that he had been getting about a penny per gallon less for his milk (in 1964) than he had in 1952 – yet during this same period, his rent had doubled’.

With respect to rents, the Peckforton Estate (by that time covering 31 farms) had increased its rents from £3 10s per acre in 1953 to £6 – £7 per acre in 1963. In the same period, the estimated value of the land rose from £75 to £200 per acre.

The net result was that farmers who failed to keep up with the treadmill of innovation, tended to fall behind in terms of income.

The emerging innovations included forage harvesters for silage, self-feed silage to cattle standing during the winter in yards with overnight housing in ‘cow kennels’, milking bails and tank storage, zero grazing (taking the cattle off the pasture and feeding it cut and chopped by harvesters) and the introduction of new forage crops like kale.

Of course, the pace of innovation has continued to pick up since the 1960s as ‘farmers become more scientific and the scientists become more practical ‘ [quote from Sir George Stapledon, UK Grassland Management Survey, 1935].

And as I record in my research ‘the farmers of Cheshire and Staffordshire received 1.33 million in 1963-64 in government grants for improvements in buildings and plant and the development of field crops' – not that this development received approval from the old school of farmers.

Looking again at my mini-thesis, I can see that the sentiments of the farmer’s son tended to outweigh judgments I could have made as an agricultural economist. I, like my stepfather, ended my study with something of a diatribe against government policies and the low prices set by the Milk Marketing Board.

My concluding sentence was that: ‘Government policy on foodstuffs is the greatest single factor behind the inadequate returns earned by milk producers’.

Sadly though, the reality was that we had never been among the innovators or among those who tried to increase their scale of operations.

My stepfather Horace had the fatalistic view that hard work should bring its own reward and little effort was made in labour-saving. And when he had the opportunity to take on the tenancy of Corner Farm in the late 1950s, he decided against taking the 150 acres that lay some distance along the lanes in favour of restricting the tenancy to the 65 acres that surrounded the farmhouse.

Incidentally, we milked at least 40 and sometimes more in the summer on the 65 acres. From the layout of the ‘Old Shippon’, the same farm back in the 1880s milked no more than 18.

Horace’s absolute commitment to the practical virtues of working with his hands exacerbated the heart condition that he had developed. And when the 1967 Foot and Mouth Outbreak occurred, Horace had a broken heart to nurse as well. It is a very hard thing to see the cattle that you care for shot and then bulldozed into limed pits.

Left to wander the desolate farm in the period following the Outbreak, his health deteriorated, though he must have taken some comfort from purchasing in-calf heifers for a re-start of production, as well as buying in some replacement gilts (young sows) for farrowing.

It seems that he insisted on layering fork in hand all the grass that had been brought in by buck-rake for the coming winter’s silage – and this mighty labour killed him. He became unable to mount the stairs to take to his ordinary bed upstairs and a bed was made up in one of the downstairs lounges across from the fire and the television. He died of heart failure on 4th August 1968.