Fox Hunting and the Point-to-Points

GOLDEN YEARS OF THE ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY

I feel compelled to add a little to my earlier posts on the history of dairy farming in South Cheshire.

First, I think that I need to explain a little more about the role of the aristocracy and the integral part that its members played in the area's social and economic development in the 19th century. And second, this provides a context for understanding the importance of fox hunting and horses in local culture.

As Mark Overton explains, the 19th century was like no other in that Malthusian constraints on population growth fortunately failed. Thanks to the Industrial Revolution (and the accompanying intensification of international trade), England faced an unprecedented and continuous increase in demand for agricultural commodities:

“In 1750 English population stood at about 5.7 million. It had probably reached this level before, in the Roman period, then around 1300, and again in 1650. But at each of these periods the population ceased to grow, essentially because agriculture could not respond to the pressure of feeding extra people [within a closed system].

Contrary to expectation, however, population grew to unprecedented levels after 1750, reaching 16.6 million in 1850, and agricultural output expanded with it”.

These developments also constituted a enormous opportunity for landowners. Whereas in the past rents had tended to stabilize and then fall on a cyclical basis, from 1750 or so onwards they tended upwards as product markets firmed, accompanied by increasing innovation and specialization.

As I have mentioned previously, some 400 km2 of Cheshire was held by aristocratic landlords in the mid-1800s, with 287 km2 (71,000 acres) being held by the four largest. This meant that as rents increased from say £1 13s 4d per acre in 1840 to £2 per acre 1870, the four largest landowners received an additional £47,000 per year (worth nearly £4 million per year in today’s money).

This extra cash funded the construction of extensive Gothic Castles and Jacobethan Great Houses, and the enjoyment of lavish lifestyles. However, the recipients also funded farm consolidation and farm house and building reconstruction, which reinforced the adoption of innovations and larger scale production by their tenant farmers.

From the fortunate larger farmer’s point of view, this was no bad thing. As cattle became relatively more expensive and cheese-making more demanding, it was sensible for all to ensure that costs should be shared between those who provided the capital in the form of land and those who provided the capital in the form of cattle (and who also bore the operating costs).

The New Zealand ‘Share Milking’ system is very different in form but has a similar underlying logic.

So there were two upshots from a social stance. The aristocracy had plenty of money and leisure – and they had created a relatively powerful class of large holding tenant farmers. And what kept both classes together in no small measure was the interest that emerged, and that they then both shared, in fox hunting and horse racing.

We have some interesting insights into the emergence of these trends in the form of a poem or ballad called ‘Farmer Dobbin’ written by Rowland Eyles Egerton-Warburton in 1853.

I have taken the liberty of straightening it out a bit and changing the surname references to the locals (Dobbin not being a Cheshire name). A shortened version is given below. Almost certainly, it was first recited in the Swan Inn in Tarporley, Cheshire around 1850.

FARMER DUTTON

‘Owd man, it’s well-nigh milking time, wherever hast thee bin
There’s slutch upon they coat, I fear, and blood upon thy chin?’
‘I’ve been to see the gentlefolk of Cheshire ride a run
Owd wench! I’ve been a-hunting and I’ve seen some rattling fun.

Our owd mare was at the smithy, when the huntsman he trots through
With Black Bill still hammering, the last nail in her shoe.
The woods lay weam and close, and so jovial seemed the day
Says I, “Owd mare, we’ll take a fling and see them go away”.

And what a power of gentlefolk did I set eyes upon
A reining in their hunters, all blood horses every one.

I seed that great commander in the saddle, Captain White
And the pack that thronged around him was indeed a gradely sight
The dogs looked smooth as satin, and himself as hard as nails,
And he gives the swells a caution not to ride upon their tails.

Says he “Young men of Manchester and Liverpool, come near,
I’ve just a word, a warning word, to whisper in your ear
When starting from the cover side, you see bold Reynolds burst
We cannot have no hunting if you gentlemen go first”.

Tom Rance has a single eye, worth many another’s two
He held his cap above his yed to show he had a view;
Tom’s voice was like the owd raven’s when he skriked ‘Tally-ho!’
For when the fox had seen Tom’s face, he thought it time to go.

Eh my! A pretty jingle then went ringing through the sky
Hounds Victory and Villager began the merry cry
Then every mouth was open from the owd’un to the pup
And all the pack together took the swelling chorus up.

Eh my! A pretty skouver then was kicked up in the vale
They skimmed across the running brook, they topped the post and rails
The did’na stop for razor cop - but played at touch and go -
And them as missed their footing there, lay doubled up below.

I seed the hounds a-crossing Farmer Fearnall’s boundary line
Whose daughter plays the piano and drinks white sherry wine
Gold rings upon her fingers and silk stockings on her feet
Says I “It won’t do him no harm to ride across his wheat!”

So tightly holding on by the yed, I hits the owd mare a whop
And ‘oo plumps into the wheat field going neck and crop
And when ‘oo floundered out on it, I catched another spin
And Missus that’s the occasion of the blood upon my chin.

I never risked another hap but kept the lane and then
In twenty minutes time, they turned on me again
The fox was finely daggled and the hounds were out of breath
When they killed him in the open and owd Dutton seed the death.

Now Missus, since the markets be doing moderate well
I’ve welly made my mind up to buy a nag myself
For to keep a farmer’s spirits up when things be getting low
There’s nothing like fox-hunting and rattling ‘Tally-ho!’

[adapted from ‘Farmer Dobbin’ by Rowland Eyles Egerton-Warburton, 1853]

COMMENT

The original is much longer and is marred for modern readers by its deliberately antique spelling and comedy turn dialect.

It was clearly written to entertain the members of the Tarporley (Cheshire) Hunt Club by providing a parody of the argot spoken by the farmers that they met on their estates – and a good deal of the poem consists of catalogue or ‘Who’s Who’ of the important members of the Hunt and local high society.

However, there are some interesting social insights to be drawn here.

In the first place, it is notable that the farmer is now welcome enough on the hunt and that by the 1850s he felt that things were going well enough to buy himself a ‘hunter’ (i.e. part thoroughbred horse).

Secondly, there is mention of the ‘young men of Manchester and Liverpool’ whose wealthy merchant and mill-owner fathers were happy to see hunting so that they could rub shoulders with the establishment – and maybe make a match with the daughters of the nobility.

Third, there is some attempt to mock the wealthy independent farm owner whose daughter ‘plays the piano and drinks white sherry wine’ (in the original the Farmer is called Farmer Flare-up). Obviously, not being beholden like the tenants he would very much resent the Hunt crossing his land.

One has to doubt though whether Farmer Dutton / Dobbin would capriciously ride across his neighbour’s wheat – this seems much more the sort of thing that the aristocratic or parvenu huntsmen would do.

And it is sobering to reflect on how new and synthetic Cheshire's fox hunting culture really is. As we will see later, the original Hunt Club that was founded in 1762 in Tarporley started off with hare coursing. It was only prosperity, farm consolidation and the widespread introduction and proper maintenance of hawthorn hedges that made fox hunting viable.

For all the social nuances, my Darlington family was totally enamoured with fox hunting and point-to-point / steeple chase horse racing – which of course went very much hand in hand. Point to point horses got a lot of their training in full cry, and riding to hounds was equally a way of testing a rider’s mettle.

I have therefore dropped in a photo of my grandfather Herbert Darlington’s pride and joy – Catherine the Great - who was a successful race horse and brood mare – and who, as we were never allowed to forget was half-sister to Russian Hero who won the Grand National in 1949!




THE CHESHIRE HUNT AS IT IS NOW

“Welcome to the online home of the Cheshire Hounds and the Cheshire Hunt Supporters Club.

The Cheshire Hunt was founded in 1763. The area hunted encompassed the whole of Cheshire. This vast area was subsequently divided between the Cheshire and the South Cheshire Hunts in 1877, and the two portions were then reunited in 1907. This separation occurred again from 1931 until 1946.

The country now hunted is about twenty five square miles with the main centres around Tarporley and Nantwich, with Chester, Kelsall, Whitchurch and Malpas at its boundaries.

The Hunt meets on a Tuesday and Saturday at 11am from November until mid March, with a bye day being held once a fortnight on a Thursday at 12noon.

Cheshire is predominantly a dairy county with miles of grass, fenced by hedges and ditches.

The Hunt uniform is a scarlet coat with hunt buttons. A green collar is worn by Hunt Staff, Masters, and by invitation of the Tarporley Hunt Club.

The kennels are situated in the North of the country. Thirty five couple of hounds are kept and the pack will vary from either a bitch or a mixed pack depending on the meet. Hounds are bred for speed and endurance, and many miles will be covered in a day’s activities”.

THE TARPORLEY HUNT CLUB [from Wikipedia]

‘The Tarporley Hunt Club is a hunt club which meets at Tarporley in Cheshire, England. Founded in 1762, it is the oldest surviving such society in England, and possibly the oldest in the world. Its members' exploits were immortalised in the Hunting Songs of Rowland Egerton-Warburton. The club also organised the Tarporley Races, a horse racing meeting, from 1776 until 1939. The club's patron is Charles, Prince of Wales.

At first the club organised hare coursing, but its focus had already begun to switch to fox hunting within the first few years. Membership was limited to twenty in 1764, expanded to twenty-five in 1769 and later to forty.] The club's headquarters soon became the Swan Hotel, which dates from 1769. In the founding set of rules, members were required to drink "three collar bumpers" after both dinner and supper, and, in the event of marriage, to present each club member with a pair of buckskin breeches.

The club used the first pack of foxhounds in Cheshire, whose master was John Smith-Barry, son of the fourth Earl of Barrymore, of Marbury Hall. Among the hounds was the famed Blue Cap, which had beaten the hound owned by Hugo Meynell, founder of the Quorn Hunt, in a race held in 1762. After Barry's death in 1784, the hunt used a pack kept by Sir Peter Warburton of Arley Hall, which later became known as the Cheshire Hounds.

Members of the Egerton, Cholmondeley, Grosvenor and other prominent local families joined not long after the club's foundation. Among the many early members who were important in county or national affairs were Sir Philip Egerton of Oulton Park; Richard Grosvenor, first Earl Grosvenor, of Eaton Hall; Field Marshal Stapleton Cotton, first Viscount Combermere, of Combermere Abbey; Thomas Cholmondeley of Vale Royal; and his son, also Thomas Cholmondeley, first Baron Delamere.

Rowland Egerton-Warburton, president in 1838 and later one of the club's few honorary members, was known as the club's poet laureate. He immortalised some of its members' exploits in his Hunting Songs, and also wrote a history of the club to accompany an edition of the verses.

George Wilbraham, one of the club's original founders, purchased an estate in Delamere Forest including Crabtree Green, which had been used as racecourse since the mid-17th century. In 1776, the club held a sweepstake there with seven runners, and the contest became an annual event.

In the 1800s, the Tarporley Races became a permanent fixture in the Racing Calendar. Originally, only horses owned or nominated by members could enter, but in 1805 or 1809, a silver cup was awarded for a "farmers' race". The members' race was ridden in hunting costume.

THE MODERN LOCAL POINT TO POINT RACE

As the website explains for the 2010 season:

“The Cheshire Hunt Point to Point will take place on Sunday 18 April 2010 at Alpraham, Nr Tarporley. The first race starts at two o’clock, although many visitors choose to arrive early to set up for lunch - candelabras and full dining sets have appeared in previous years!

There will be seven races and a parade of hounds later in the day. Those with a weakness for the odd flutter will be well-served by onsite bookmakers....

Various catering outlets, trade stands and amusements for the children will be available around the site, and there's every reason to make a day of it.

2010 will mark the fiftieth year of racing at this particular course at Alpraham and a celebration lunch will take place to mark the occasion. The lunch will be held adjacent to the paddock and tables will be retained all day so that guests can enjoy the racing from the comfort of their chairs.

A champagne reception will be held prior to lunch, and afternoon tea is included to ensure that a memorable day is had by all. Full details of how to obtain tickets can be downloaded here.

Admission – car parking costs £20, £30 or £35 for reserved forward parking. Tickets for the celebratory lunch cost £50 in addition to car parking charges.

Further details will be published as the event draws near.....”

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.

Sally Darlington & the Kinseys of Burwardsley, Cheshire

A STRONG WOMAN WITH A BIT OF SIDE

My grandmother, Cheshire farmer’s wife Sarah ‘Sally’ Darlington, was a daunting, formidable but ultimately good-hearted lady who jousted and sparred with my mother. My mother was sometimes driven to fury at the things that were said – and in turn she gave as good as she got.

Of course, there is a very long tradition of strong women in the North West of England.

Cartimandua was the prototype. As mentioned by Tacitus in AD 51, she ruled the Brigantes of the North West with a succession of weaker husbands and consorts. Of "illustrious birth", she seems to have inherited her power by right rather than through marriage.

She handed the resistance leader Caratacus over to the Romans in chains, secured great wealth from the Romans, and then divorced her husband and married his young squire. Having seized her ex-husband’s brother as a hostage and fought off attempts to tame her, she was involved in further wars, treacherously playing off the local male leaders against the Romans.

Eventually she retired to the family hill fort to terrorize her sons and daughter in laws.

The tradition has also been illustrated repeatedly on the TV Soap Opera ‘Coronation Street’ with characters like Ena Sharples, Elsie Tanner, Annie Walker and Blanche Hunt - and laconically mocked under their breath by comedians from the North West:

"My mother-in-law said 'one day I will dance on your grave'. I said 'I hope you do, I will be buried at sea.'" [Les Dawson]

"My mother-in-law fell down a wishing well, I was amazed, I never knew they worked." [Les Dawson]

"I haven't spoken to my mother-in-law for eighteen months. I don't like to interrupt her." [Ken Dodd]

"A police recruit is asked during an exam, "What would you do if you had to arrest your own mother-in-law?" He replies, "I'd call for backup." [Bernard Manning]

"My mother-in-law has come round to our house at Christmas seven years running. This year we're having a change. We're going to let her in." [Les Dawson].

I still feel guilty making these kinds of associations – perhaps I will be called to account in my dreams tonight.

Both my mother and my grandmother had strong ideas about things and Sally liked ruling the roost with her three boys George, Horace and Richard. She intimidated them and Horace was 32 years old when he broke away. His younger brother Dick took even longer to fly the coop. And the boys’ father Herbert Darlington benefited of course from their ‘labours of love’ on the family farm Hoolgrave Manor, Church Minshull.

I still have very immediate memories of Hoolgrave Manor as it was in the period 1949 – 1955. With oil lamps as the only form of lighting and no external source of entertainment like TV, there was a tribal sense of hunkering down in the dark winter evenings by the open range fire in what seemed to me to be a vast farm kitchen, overshadowed by bacon curing among the rafters.

The conversation ranged over the offspring, weddings and funerals of the local farming families; farm sales and tenancies; auction prices for stock; milk and cheese prices; harvest prospects: fox hunting; point-to-point and steeple chase horse breeding and racing; and the follies and foibles of the local aristocracy.

Family history and genealogy provided the essential information for judging whether individuals were ‘oreet’ (i.e. alright or suitable). Sue and I, being orphans, were never quite sure that we measured up.

For all that, Sally sometimes Sally framed a lovely smile to light her deep set eyes and I felt very privileged to visit her in hospital with my father when she grew frail.

Sally was born Sarah Price Kinsey and I will now tell something of her story, with some comments on the social changes that her family experienced in the 19th century. The account can also linked to my next post which provides a brief review of the history of dairy farming in South Cheshire and summarizes the findings of some research that I did as a student back in 1965 on the agricultural economy that Sally’s sons faced.

THE KINSEYS AND PRICES OF BURWARDSLEY AND TATTENHALL

Sally was born in 1877. She was christened Sarah Price Kinsey. Her father, George Kinsey (born in 1843) was a dairy farmer. In 1891, George was farming Cambridge Farm, Burwardsley (pronounced ‘Bozley’) near Tattenhall, Cheshire, and in 1881 he was farming Grindley Brook Farm, Bunbury, Cheshire.

The 1881 Census records that Grindley Brook was a farm of 65 acres and that George was employing 2 labourers (one of whom, Joseph Clutton was ‘living in’ at the farm house). There was also a girl who was a house servant and who probably assisted with milking and cheese making.

Sally’s siblings were Thomas (b 1872), Elizabeth (b 1876), Frances May (b 1879) and Ada (b 1885). All of the children took Price as their middle name.

In the 1851 Census, George is recorded as a 7 year old boy, with siblings Robert, Ellen, Ann and John. His father George Kinsey (Snr) had been born in 1816 and the family farm at Burwardsley is recorded as being 20 acres. Living with the family was Moses Ellson, ‘retired farmer’ who was the father of Sarah, George’s wife. Moses would have been born around 1781.

As for the elder George Kinsey’s father, we find no trace of him in the censuses, though it is likely that George’s mother Mary is recorded as living independently in Bunbury in the 1841 Census (having also been born around 1781).

The Price’s were an equally well-established family. Sally’s mother Mary Price was born in 1842, the daughter of James Price (b 1813) and Frances Miller (bca 1818). It seems that Mary’s mother died at a young age. In the 1861 Census, Mary (19) was living with her mother’s sister Elizabeth (b 1815), and her grandfather John Price (b 1786) who was farming 30 acres at Tattenhall, Cheshire. Elizabeth was unmarried and John was widowed. No doubt Mary was helping out with dairy tasks.

In 1861, Mary’s father James was recorded in the Census as a butcher living with his brother George (39) at the latter’s public house the Bear and Ragged Staff Inn at Tattenhall. Also living with them were unmarried sisters Mary (47) and Jane (43), together with two house servants Martha and Margaret Clarke.













Further back in 1841, James is recorded as being 28 working as a butcher but living in Tattenhall with his innkeeper father George Senior and mother Martha (born born circa 1789) and siblings Thomas, Mary, Jane, Sarah and Hannah. Almost certainly, the management of the Bear and Ragged Staff Inn was handed down from father to son.

A simple story then it seems of Cheshire farmers, butchers and innkeepers all living within a very small compass. But this summary hides rapid change in dairy farming over the period 1840 to 1890 – of which a glimpse is caught in shift from 20-30 acre farms (which in the early part of the period sustained a family and several workers) to farms of double this size and greater in the second half of the 19th century as holdings were consolidated.

Even though there is a strong sense of continuity from the various censuses, there was plenty of change afoot – change that decimated the old half-timbered farmhouses and dispossessed hundreds of poorer families.

THE TOLLEMACHE ESTATES

Both Burwardsley and Tattenhall were very much part of the area that was ‘ruled’ by the Tollemache family.

John Jervis Tollemache (born John Halliday), 1st Baron Tollemache (5 December 1805 – 9 December 1890), was the son of Admiral John Richard Delap Halliday and co-heir of Lionel Tollemache, 4th Earl of Dysart. He was elected to the House of Commons for Cheshire South in 1841, a seat he held until 1868, and then represented Cheshire West from 1868 to 1872.

John Tollemache was the largest landowner in Cheshire in the 19th Century, owning 28,651 acres (115.9 km2). His estate exceeded those of the Duke of Westminster who owned 15,138 acres (61.3 km2), Lord Crewe with 10,148 acres (41.1 km2) and Lord Cholmondeley with 16,992 acres (68.8 km2).

He was considered by his peers to be a good estate manager and British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone (who had an estate at nearby Hawarden) described him as "the greatest estate manager of his day".

Tollemache had over fifty farms and many cottages built on his Cheshire estate, at a cost of around £280,000. This formed part of a grand scheme to consolidate the estate into larger farms that were better able to develop high quality cheese making.

But the downsides of all this were also serious. In the first place, the new farm houses meant the destruction of over 50 ancient buildings – though to be fair the new buildings have proved both durable and highly attractive.

And secondly, many small farmers and small-holders were dispossessed by the consolidation process.

To counter the social upheaval that he created, he encouraged the augmented class of labourers to rent 3 acres (12,000 m2) of land to farm to supplement their income.

Apparently, his catch-phrase for this was "three acres and a cow".

As written up his admirers: ‘He was generous to his tenants and advocated improvement of their social conditions. He believed in a self-reliant labouring class and made popular the idea of his tenants having a cottage with sufficient land to keep a few animals’.

[In 1844 – 1850, Lord Tollemache built Peckforton Castle on a massive scale as a replica of a Crusader castle. Set on the ridgeline of the Peckforton Hills, it cost around £60,000 and has been described as the last serious fortified home constructed by the nobility in England.

Built around a walled courtyard with battlements and towers, the castle stands opposite the genuinely medieval Beeston Castle, and is surrounded by a dry moat. George Gilbert Scott, the Victorian architect called it "the very height of masquerading".

Uninhabited since the Second World War, the castle has been used as a film and television location, and as a venue for civil weddings and live-action fantasy role playing. For example, it featured in the opening scenes of the 1991 movie ‘Robin Hood Prince of Thieves’ starring Kevin Costner].

So it is disturbing to reflect that much of the architecture and landscape that I knew as deeply historic when I was a boy was actually rather new in its form. The Victorian-era castles with their surrounding manicured estates attempted to recreate a feudal sense of stability and continuity – masking the severe social and economic disruptions that were imposed from above by the large landowners.

It seems then that the ‘sturdy and independent yeoman farmers’ that I idealized – and idolized - when I was young were partly creatures of myth. The Kinseys and Prices really had to struggle to stay ‘oreet’ among the Middling Sort.

Having said that, there is always the story that was handed down about my grandfather Herbert Darlington being so vexed that his aristocratic landlord had not met a promise about paying for house and farm improvements when he took up a tenancy – and so bothered no doubt by his young wife’s sharp tongue on the subject – that he took his pony and trap and drove it across the garden in front of the ‘Big House’, ruining all the flower beds.

When all is said and done, faced with choosing between angering the toffs and fending off the nagging of his young wife Sally, Herbert really didn’t have any sort of choice.

Chain Migration from Rural Cheshire to Chester County, Pennsylvania in the 1700s

A EUREKA MOMENT IN FAMILY HISTORY RESEARCH – IN 1894

Letter to: The descendants of Dr William Darlington, West Chester, Chester County, Pennsylvania, USA

From: Thomas Darlington, ‘Glynderwyn’, Alleyn Road, West Dulwich, SE London, England

11th February 1894

‘Dear Sir

The occasion of my venturing to trouble you with this letter is briefly as follows: Whilst engaged on some researches at the British Museum a few days ago, I came across a little book entitled ‘The Sesqui-Centennial Gathering of the Clan Darlington”, which upon examination, I found to contain an account of the American branch of my own family – a connection which seems to have been broken for about 150 years.

I was a little surprised to find from the pamphlet that Dr Darlington had failed to discover Cheshire kinsmen during his visit to this country in 1851. I think that there would be very little difficulty in establishing the fact that Job Darlington of Darnhall, your ancestor, was a cousin of Richard Darlington of Aston.

I have not the exact particulars at hand but trusting to my memory for details, I believe that the Darlington of Aston of that date was named Richard, and that he was the “Cousin Richard” so frequently referred to in the letters of Job Darlington in the pamphlet.

The elder branch of the Darlingtons of Aston terminated in a female – Anne, daughter of John Darlington of Aston – who married in 1770 Henry Tomlinson of Dorfold Hall [near Nantwich, Cheshire]. The Dorfold estate then passed by another marriage into the family of Tollemache, the head of which is Lord Tollemache of Helmingham [in Norfolk].

This John Darlington had a brother, Abraham [from whom I am descended].

Both Job and Abraham are good old family names, still kept up on this side of the water – as are Richard and John. My father’s name was Richard – he had a brother John and three cousins, Abraham, Job and Richard. My grandfather was Richard – and he had an only brother, Abraham.

I should be extremely glad if this letter should lead to a renewal of relations between the two branches of the family on either side of the Atlantic. I should be only too happy to supply you with any particulars regarding your Cheshire ancestry which may be within my knowledge.

I shall look anxiously for a reply tho this letter, which is “a bow drawn at a venture”, inasmuch as I have no information as to the present whereabouts of any of my American relations.

Meantime, believe me, dear Sir,

Yours faithfully

Thomas Darlington'

In the event, it is reported that Thomas happily re-established contact between the American and English branches of the family. And Edwin L. Heydecker in his chapter ‘Our English Kith and Kin’ (in Gibert Cope’s extensive monograph “Genealogy of the Darlington Family: A record of the Descendants of Abraham Darlington of Birmingham, Chester County, Pennsylvania") writes that:

“Mr Thomas Darlington of London, England and Hafudomos, Aberystwyth, Wales attended the Bi-Centennial Gathering of the American Darlingtons in (late) 1894, bringing details of the English family gathered as a labour of love and out of respect for his Darlington lineage”.

As I have indicated previously, all of the Cheshire Darlington families appear to share a common origin, with most being descended from the Darlingtons of ‘Brookhouses’ (nowadays Brook House Farm) in the parish of Whitegate, Cheshire, traceable as far back as the baptism of Alice Darlington at Whitegate Church in 1567.

THE AMERICAN DARLINGTONS

So I will now provide a little background on the uprooting of some of the Cheshire Darlingtons and the settlement of this family in Pennsylvania.

In 1680, William Penn, a prominent and wealthy Quaker obtained a charter from King Charles II for the territory forming the present state of Pennsylvania. It was granted largely in consideration of a debt of 16,000 pounds due from the British Government to Admiral Sir William Penn [in relation to naval warfare against the Dutch]. Clearly, King Charles II also thought it would be an excellent means of ridding himself of powerful and potentially troublesome religious dissenters.

Prior to his departure for America, William Penn began to sell land to prospective English settlers, and by August 30th 1682, he had disposed of more than 500,000 acres. Among the purchasers was Thomas Rowland of Acton, Cheshire, who obtained 1,000 acres.

Thomas Rowland was also joined by John Dutton of Overton, Cheshire – and it seems that John’s wife Mary was a Darlington before marriage. Other early Cheshire settlers were John Nield and Robert Taylor (Mary Dutton married John Nield after John Dutton died around 1694).

A few years later, around 1711, two young Cheshire Lads, Abraham and John Darlington from Darnhall, Cheshire also settled in Chester County. They were nephews of John and Mary Nield and their migration was ‘influenced by inducements held out by their uncle that were not realized upon their arrival’.

On the 28th March, 1713, Job and Mary wrote a letter to their Dear Sons. In this they thanked ‘Allmighty God for preserveing you’ and prayed that ‘you will be Carefull of both soul and body for you are in a strang Country’. They were also asked to ‘presen both our Dear loves to our Dear brother John Neild and his wife our Dear Sister – and their sons unknown to us’.

Typical of the sort of admonishing that I used to receive from England as a student in Australia, the letter ends with a note that a reply should be sent either care of the Cock Inn in Nantwich, or through John Walker, merchant of Liverpool to Darnhall - and not addressed to Over near Middlewich, as in this case ‘it is sent by three posts to us and Costs Duble Price’.

Well, the Darlingtons did very well for themselves in their new country. As the family saga records:

‘As years went by and numbers grew, the fertile dales of Chester County, Pennsylvania still proved sufficiently attractive to Abraham Darlington’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to induce them to remain near their ancestral homes. A few of them went into the adjoining counties or the neighbouring city of Philadelphia, but the greater part continued to cultivate their farms in the old county.

Through the 18th Century, as the frontier of settlement slowly pushed west of the Alleghanies (sic), they remained near the eastern tide-water, and not even the mighty stream of westward travel and settlement in the first half of the 19th Century caught many of them in its rush. Most of them continued to live in Chester County – substantial, thrifty, law-abiding citizens – Friends (i.e. Quakers) by persuasion, farmers by occupation, happy and contented’.

NEW FROM HOME

Before leaving my American kin, I want to quote from what I personally feel is the most fascinating letter among those transcribed by Gilbert Cope. It is a letter from Joseph Darlington, of Darnhall, Cheshire to John and Abraham in Pennsylvania dated 3rd April 1746. It is unusual in that it makes direct reference to contemporary English politics and the effects of the Jacobite Rebellion under the Young Pretender ‘Bonny Prince Charlie’:

‘About the last of November last, we were under the most dreadful apprehensions of receiving a visit from the French and Highlanders of Scotland, to the number of nine to ten thousand, who advanced through Macclesfield and so on to Derby – raising the most exorbitant contributions, and almost ruining the country as they passed – but thanks to God, they missed us. But now they are retired to Scotland, where his Majesty’s forces are in pursuit of them’.

A reference then to the last land war in the UK in 1745-46 – wow!

And so I’m now very glad that I took time out to visit the Old Stone House in Georgetown that predates the Revolution, during interludes in visiting the World Bank in the 1980s. I also have very happy memories of hiring a car and driving down the old turnpikes in Virginia to visit Williamsburg. I didn’t know it then but I do have a real connection with the East Coast of the USA!

RURAL CHAIN MIGRATION

In reading Cope’s monograph, I was constantly amazed at the number of Cheshire farming surnames that kept popping up in the descriptions of the Chester County population. Names like Vernon, Dutton, Davenport, Dodd, Dilworth, Gleave and Minshull. This clearly illustrates the process of Chain Migration, in which founders provide platforms and springboards for continued immigration from the same location. However, I had not thought that it would have been so obvious in the case of the early English settlement of America.

I have added some information about two additional families – the Hollinsheads and the Sherwins below.

OTHER CHESHIRE FAMILIES IN NEARBY NEW JERSEY – HOLLINSHEAD & SHERWIN

John and Grace Hollinshead were early settlers in Burlington County, New Jersey and it appears that they too have a considerable number of descendants in the United States. Like the Darlingtons, John and Grace Hollinshead were also ‘Friends’ or Quakers.

According to ‘Some Genealogical Notes on the Hollinshead Family’ by A. M. Stackhouse, 1911 (available online):

“The Hollinshead family originated from Hollins in the township of Sutton, Chester. The heiress of Sir Hugh Hollinshead the last of the elder branch at an early period married into the family of Ravenscroft. The next line was the Hollinsheads of Cophurst whose representative was Ralph (Raphael) Holinshed, the Tudor-era historian.

The only notice of the name traceable in the Friends' Record of Cheshire is that of a Thomas Hollinshead of Overwhitley who died in 1704”.

It appears that some time in the middle of the 17th Century, one family from the Cheshire Hollinsheads moved to London, partly to be closer to other Quaker families. But they suffered further persecution there after the Restoration of the Monarchy at the end of the English Civil War.

As Stackhouse relates of one such occasion:

"Scarcely had they (the Friends) taken possession of their rooms in Devonshire House, in 1666, when the authorities seized it in the King's name, padlocked the door, and affixed the mark of the broad arrow as a sign of its being Government property.

No guard, however, was set to maintain the seizure and accordingly the Friends quietly removed the padlock and continued their meeting. But these meetings, especially after the Meeting House was built in 1678 were frequently interrupted by violence and Friends turned out of doors”. Even then, “their open air worship was disturbed by the drum-beat of soldiery as they rushed up with swords and staves and cruelly maltreated the unoffending Quakers."

John Hollinshead was a silk stocking weaver or a "silk stocking frame work knitter”. At this time, Spitalfield, London, was the centre of this industry and when the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685 the Protestant Huguenot silk weavers flocked there from France, making the place famous for the manufacture of silk goods. John and Grace would have found natural allies in the Huguenot refugees.

In 1673, John and Grace Hollinshead had a son John - and at sometime around 1680 they left England to find a new home in the West Jersey Colony that was then being promoted.

Having survived the English Civil War (1641–1651), the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, the Great Plague of London in 1665, the Great Fire of London in 1666, and intermittent severe religious persecution, John and Grace were probably ready for a change!

There is a record of a town lot being purchased by the elder John Hollinshead at "Delaware over against the tower end of Burlington Island along the creek arount it" on November 14th, 1682 - and on the same date there was a purchase of another wharf lot on Rancocas Creek. This was followed on February 6, 1682, by the purchase of a wharf lot at Burlington.

It is reported that:

"Incidents of their (the early colonists of West Jersey) wants are many, and the supplies sometimes unexpected. The family of John Hollinshead, who lived near Rankokas, being unprovided with powder and shot, were in distress, when John Hollinshead the younger, then (about 1682) a lad of 13, going through a corn field, saw a turkey, and throwing a stick to kill it, a second came in sight. He killed both and carried them home.

Soon after, at the house of Thomas Eves, he saw a buck; and telling Eves, he set his dogs, who followed it to Rankokas river, then frozen. The buck running on the ice, slid upon his side - the dogs seized it - and Hollinshead coming up with a knife, eagerly jumped upon it.

The buck rose with young John on his back, and sprung forward, his feet spreading asunder, slip'd gently down on his belly and gave Hollinshead a respite from danger and opportunity of killing him.

By these means two families were supplied with food to their great joy. These and such like instances, in a new settled country, show with the along with the distress the relief that sometimes unexpectedly attends it."

There is also an account of the accidental death of James Sherwyn who married John’s sister Rebecca Hollinshead. James was Over-seer of the Poor in Chester Township in 1718, Surveyor of Roads in 1723, and Overseer of Highways in 1729.

According to The Pennsylvania Gazette (Dr Franklin's newspaper) of July and August, 1738:

"On the 26th of July past John Ward near Anchocus going out to hunt Deer perceived something to stir in the Bushes and seeing the Bosom Part of a Man's white Shirt he thought it to be the white of a Deer's Tail, fired his Gun off and Killed one James Sherwin, his Neighbor (who was out on the same Account) on the Spot."

Some of the neighbours seem to have believed that the shooting was not accidental and their tongues wagged accordingly.

The younger John Hollinshead settled on that part of his father's plantation adjacent to the Rancocas Creek, at "Hollinshead's Dock" a short distance below the place where the public highway from Burlington to Salem crosses the creek.

He appears to have been a man of sturdy independence of character who would not submit to what he considered an injustice and who was free and outspoken in his opinions. He successfully fought a case that was brought against him at the instigation of Lord Cornbery, the Governor of New Jersey from 1703, who took it upon himself to impugn the local Quakers.

A writer in 'The Friend" apparently said of him: —

"He was a diligent attender of Meetings and exemplary therein. He was a true lover of his Friends and being well qualified for usefulness and hospitably disposed, he was very serviceable to his friends and neighbors. He departed this life in 1749 being about 75 years of age."

Although the heir to Rancocas plantation, Hugh Hollinshead appears to have declared for the United States at the breaking out of the Revolutionary War, some of the Hollinsheads joined the Loyalist forces. Anthony Hollinshead was a Lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion ‘Stryker's’ New Jersey Loyalists up to January, 1779, when he left the service.

To the victors the spoils, and on his return home Antony left with many other refugees for Nova Scotia. His name appears on the muster roll of disbanded officers, discharged and disbanded soldiers and loyalists mustered at Digby, in the Province of Nova Scotia in May 29, 1784.

POSTSCRIPT

The process of rural colonisation from Cheshire is still continuing in the 21st Century. For example, the Kinsey family - neighbouring farmers in Wettenhall, where I grew up - have bought and developed a wheat farm in Western Australia.

And the youngest son from the Shore family in Duddon settled in Southland, New Zealand in the 1980s and has become a very succesful farmer there. I visited his farm, along with my brother-in-law John Hollinshead in 1994. I was touched to see that he had inset beams into the ceiling of a corner of his weatherboard NZ farmhouse to create a 'Snug' with an open fire, where his sons could mull and drink their ale.

The Anthropology of the Indigenous English

MY BACKGROUND IN PERSPECTIVE

Pressed by Australians and New Zealanders to define my background I have been known to categorize myself as an Aboriginal or Indigenous Englishman. In the best of all possible worlds I have advised, the area that I come from should be designated as an Indigenous Reserve under the auspices of UNESCO.

Of course, Antipodeans have a very hazy view of the English class system which owes a lot to the dialogue between Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. They also have an equally hazy view of rural village life in England based on Midsomer Murders – gracious me that can’t be right, can it?

I was heartened then by an article in The Times of July 5, 2003, which puts these kinds of notions in their proper place. I have provided it below.

THE CHOLMONDELEY PEOPLE (by Carol Midgely)

In the shelter of a Gothic castle, a near-feudal world of order and duty survives. But can it keep the 21st century at bay? Here, a great estate opens its heart to Carol Midgley

‘YOU can’t miss Laundry Cottage. It’s the one with the huge Union Jack flapping outside. In a cynical age, the red, white and blue in Cliff Horne’s garden might invite ridicule, the suspicion that whoever ran up the colours was an exhibitionist.

But outside this unassuming house set in the grounds of Cholmondeley Castle, it seems entirely appropriate — the unaffected gesture of an old-fashioned patriot.

Horne is what used to be called a retainer, someone who has devoted his working life to the needs of one family. Now retired, for 42 years he was chef to the Cholmondeleys. Before him, his father was the Cholmondeley chauffeur; his mother worked in another of the family’s great houses.

Today the Cholmondeley estate (it’s pronounced “Chumley”) is probably one of the last examples of a near-feudal way of life that most of us thought had vanished generations ago. The 450 people who live within its 7,500 acres know their proper station, and if they question it, they do so very quietly. They talk always of “her ladyship” (Lady Cholmondeley) and though they no longer doff their caps or curtsy, perhaps no one would look twice if they did.

I am there on a summer morning to discover how such an apparent anachronism survives at the start of the 21st century, to meet “her ladyship” and the people of her enclosed and ordered world.

The approach to the castle is impossibly romantic. Emerald acres strewn with orchids, daisies, buttercups. Lakes where gigantic carp roll and swirl. Gardens of magnolia, camellia, azalea and rhododendron. Cedars of Lebanon and spreading oaks among sweet chestnut, lime, beech and plane. And the castle itself — a mock Gothic pile of battlements and crenellations, sitting on top of its hill at the heart of it all.

I wrench myself from fantasies of Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel, and ring the bell on a mighty oak door. There is the tap tap of footsteps inside and I am greeted by a cheerful, businesslike woman in blouse, skirt and court shoes. This is Penny, Lady C’s assistant.

“Did you find it all right?” she asks, “It can be a bit confusing. Come in and don’t worry about the dogs.” Inside, the castle is grand and simultaneously homely — a trick pulled off with the help of Iris, a beagle-basset puppy lolloping around the hall.

In the study another dog — a lurcher named Daisy — is curled in a basket. On the wall are dozens of framed hunting scenes (Lady Cholmondeley is passionate for the chase). And there, wearing beige slacks with her leg up and resting after a recent injury, is my hostess herself.

“I’ve had a bit of a knock,” she smiles, shaking my hand. An attempt at small talk runs into immediate difficulties. She asks me where I come from and when I say Lancashire, she asks, perfectly genuinely: “Oh, do you know the Seftons?” I can’t quite bring myself to say that the nearest I’ve got to that great northern dynasty is sinking a half of lager in Liverpool’s Sefton Arms.

Lavinia Cholmondeley’s husband, George Hugh, died here in 1990 aged 70 but his people still speak lovingly of him as if he were a much-missed father. The couple’s son, David, the present Marquess, who inherited the title and the office of Lord Great Chamberlain, lives at the other family seat, Houghton Hall in Norfolk. A regular face in Tatler magazine, he is, at 43, one of the country’s most eligible bachelors.

Last year, he conducted a census of all the properties and tenants on the two estates — something last done 200 years ago by the first marquess. All were photographed individually by Garlinda Birkbeck and the results bound in three gigantic leather volumes. It is a remarkable record of a community and a way of life on the brink of the 21st century.

I have come here to interview some of these people, to discover what ordinary folk think about living with one pub, one shop, and one landlady. It is an almost inconceivable lifestyle for a visiting thirty something with a non-feudal mortgage on a London flat. Half the staff here were born on the estate and those who have lived here ten years or more are still newcomers. One farmer, asked to sum up life on the estate, thought for a moment and replied: “It’s probably the worst place in England to have an affair and get away with it.”

There is a clue to Johnnie O’Shea’s trade in the stuffed fox’s head fixed above the front door of his cottage. O’Shea, 66, was huntsman with the Cheshire, looking after the hounds. He is an enthusiastic defender of estate life. We sit with his wife, Ann, in front of a roaring fire. I am drinking tea laced liberally with whisky; Johnnie drinks his whisky straight.

“Lady Cholmondeley is a grand woman. Nobody has a bad word for her,” he says in Irish brogue. “She’s no airs and graces, you know; she’d talk to anybody the same if they were a roadsweeper or a lord. We all look out for one another here.”

“My day started at 8am to get breakfast ready and then lunch. I’d go back at 6pm to cook dinner and stay until I was no longer needed. If they were having a dinner party, it could be quite late. My claim to fame was cooking dinner for 45 people in 1986. Thirteen of those were royals. The only one missing was Diana, Princess of Wales.

“I’ve been to the State Opening of Parliament three times. His lordship (as the Lord Great Chamberlain) had to walk backwards in front of the Queen. He invited the staff to come down and watch and put us up in a hotel.

“I was here when David was born. He’s a lovely young man. I’ve had three hip operations and it was David who paid for my second. When my eldest son, Terry, got married last year he sent him a couple of cases of red wine.

“I’ve never thought of leaving the estate. We were never paid huge wages but we had free accommodation and always felt looked after. We still do. They say that people leave here only when they die. Everyone has their place, and it works.”

THE HEAD GARDENER

[Bill Brayford, 44, single].

“I was 21 when I started working in the castle grounds. I got the job through the then head gardener. There are a few gardens to look after but I think my favourite is the Temple Garden. It’s so lovely and peaceful. All the visitors seem to like it. I can’t ever have seen myself working in an office; it’s not me.

I like the gardens in all the seasons and there is always plenty to do. Lady Cholmondeley is very good with plants; she really knows her stuff. I work five days a week, 8am to 5pm, but I have never lived on the estate. I have a former council house that I’ve bought. Sometimes it’s nice to go home and get away from work for a bit.”

THE VILLAGE PUB

The Cholmondeley Arms [Clarissa Dickson Wright has stayed overnight en route to Scotland].

“This is the quintessential English pub. It serves some of the best beef in the country, and it’s all locally reared. Last night I had asparagus that came from ten miles down the road.”

The old building was formerly the primary school but was turned into a pub in the 1980s. The third marquess was a teetotal Quaker and closed all the alehouses on the estate. It was Lady Cholmondeley’s idea to open the pub to give the estate a social focal point. Johnnie O’Shea does the mowing.

Some locals whisper to me that they don’t drink here because it’s too expensive. They are more likely to go to the working men’s club, which is owned by the estate. People come primarily for the food, which appears in the Egon Ronay Good Food Guide

JEAN OAKLEY [75 years old, Shingle Cottage - born on the estate].

“I’ve never wanted to leave. My great-grandfather lived on one of the farms. My husband and I were at Fields Farm for 31 years and had three daughters. After he died in 1986 I moved to another house and then to this cottage.

“The estate is my social life. I help with the church and the gift shop at the castle. I feel privileged to have lived here so long. This is my world. There is still the feeling of friendship here. It’s also different for the younger generation. They have careers and they go to university, which we never did.

They want to go out into the wider world. But I think it’s a wonderful life. We all have a pass to the grounds, which are absolutely beautiful. My granddaughter calls it Grandma’s garden. Lady Cholmondeley is wonderful. She does meals on wheels for the elderly, taking her turn like everybody else.”

THE STEEPLE-CHASE HORSE TRAINER

[Ginger McCain and wife Beryl of Bankhouse Farm. First-class stables converted from a former dairy farm on the estate].

McCain used to train racehorses on Southport beach until the council stopped him, complaining that he was disturbing the natural habitat. He needed to find somewhere secluded, with lots of space, and found a position tucked unseen into Cholmondeley’s rolling hills.

This is where Red Rum, the horse which made him world famous, ended his days. Fans worldwide still send flowers and Polo mints here every year on Rummy’s birthday and on Grand National day. McCain never imagined he would end up a tenant on a private estate, but he has no regrets. “We came here 12 years ago after spending years looking for a suitable place to buy It’s a good life. If you are not careful, you forget there is a world out there.”

NEIL WILLIS - FARMER

[Neil Willis and wife, Felicity at Willey Farm, stocked with 220 dairy cows and five horses. Sons, John, 19, studying biology, and James, 21, studying land management; he may join his father on the farm].

“Our family has been here since 1898 and I’ve never lived anywhere else. It’s a good life ... we can’t complain. We all feel we have something in common on the estate — like we all have a stake in it. I read in the papers that there’s no community spirit within areas of cities but that’s not something we ever have to think about. The estate is part of the glue that holds things together.

“There’s an old-fashioned respect for her ladyship and the family. It has been earned. When times are tough they are very good to people. After one foot-and-mouth outbreak they waived the rent for six months.

“It would be nice to own your own farm but it doesn’t feel like you’re living in a rented house somehow, especially if you can hand it down to your son.”

JOHN BARNETT - FARMER

[John Barnett, 57, and wife, Olwen at Bickley Hall Farm – a dairy, sheep, arable farm. Son, Gareth, 21, studying maths at Warwick University].

“My family has farmed here for years. My grandfather, Robert, started in 1913 when the rent was £184 for six months. I still have his rent book. My father William took over from him in 1945 and he handed over to me in 1982. As a boy I went to Cholmondeley primary school, which is now a pub. I’d ride there on my bike and if I wanted I could stop at every house along the way because I knew everyone. I don’t know as many now. Once you lose a school you lose a lot of contact.

“Gareth is not interested in farming. Kids are realising there is another life out there and you can’t blame them.

“I hope it stays a close-knit community but things change. The pace of life seems to be getting faster. Everybody seems to be short of time these days.”

ROBIN LATHAM - FARMER

[Robin Latham, 66, Brook House Farm. Semi-retired. Has lived on the estate all his life. Son, Phil, 33, runs most of the farm. Ten years ago Robin organised the building of a bowling green].

“I’m very proud of that green. It’s a nice hobby and it’s good for local people to have a meeting place. We have a little bar in the clubhouse. I put £10,000 of my own money into building it, but it’s paid me back. It was a joint effort all this; we pooled local resources and skills.

Clarissa Dickson Wright wrote her name on the clubhouse wall but a few of the regulars weren’t very impressed that she’d scribbled on the clean paint! “We have a tennis court next to it now which David (Lord Cholmondeley) came and opened for us. I have to say they are excellent landlords. I have no complaints. There are plans to open a new village hall on spare land next to the green but I have my reservations. I think it is just right at the moment. Why change things?”

THE HUNTSMAN

[Johnnie O’Shea, 66, and wife, Ann, Moss Wood Cottage. On the estate 12 years. Still keeps greyhounds for coursing].

“I love the horse and I love the hound, I do. They have been my life. I have five greyhounds and two puppies and I think a lot of them. I look after them day and night. We go coursing all over the country. It’s a grand way of life and that bloody Tony Blair is a fool with all this talk of banning hunting.

My wife went down to London to take part in that women’s protest against the ban. They were all supposed to be flashing their knickers, but I told her not to bother wearing any. Ha, ha! “I’m not a Labour man, not a Labour man at all. They talk rubbish, they do.

“I mow the lawns around here. It gives me something to do. I have a drink and a natter with people. It’s a nice life. Sometimes I get asked to blow the hunting horn at weddings. Recently I was asked to go to a wedding reception at Annabel’s in London to do it. The bride and groom wrote to me later to say it was the icing on the cake for them. They said, ‘There’s no-one who can blow a horn like you’ — which was very nice of them.

“Her ladyship is a wonderful woman. She has no airs and graces. She often drops in here for a gin and tonic. Once when she came round she suddenly said: ‘Do you mind if I look upstairs?’ I said, of course, and she looked out of the window and said: ‘This is just like our house Johnnie. You can’t see another house.’

“We are so lucky. What’s the point if you can’t stop and talk to people, or listen to the birds in the morning?”

MEANWHILE IN KENYA

Thomas Cholmondeley, heir to Kenya's most famous white settler family, has been convicted of manslaughter for shooting a black poacher on his family's estate in Kenya, Soysambu.

Known as the Soysambu Conservancy since it diversified from cattle-breeding into wildlife conservation, the estate is about 19,000 hectares (48,000 acres).

There were gasps of surprise in May 2009 as Kenyan High Court Justice Muga Apondi gave his ruling after reading out a 320-page verdict on the case, although the defendant himself remained impassive.

"I find as a fact that the accused shot the deceased resulting in his death," the judge said. "However, I find that the accused did not have any malice aforethought to kill the deceased."

The incident took place in a remote corner of Cholmondeley's sprawling family farm in the Rift Valley region, acquired by his great-grandfather, the third Baron Delamere.

Cholmondeley told police at the time that Mr Robert Njoya was with three companions and a pack of dogs, and he suspected them of hunting a gazelle. He said he had shot at the dogs, killing two of them. Mr Njoya was hit by a bullet and died on the way to hospital.

In 2005 in a separate case, Cholmondeley admitted shooting Maasai ranger Samson Ole Sisina but the case was dropped owing to insufficient evidence. He said he had acted in self defence after mistaking Samson for an armed robber.

IN THE OLD DAYS

We used to get transported to Van Diemen’s Land for the same offence.

The Native Son Downunder

I have always had a soft spot for the story told by Beatrice Tunstall in her Romantic Novel ‘The Shiny Night’ (1931).

A CHESHIRE LAD WRONGED / GONE WRONG

Quite apart from anything else, The Shiny Night presents a cameo portrait of Cheshire dairy farming in the period 1840 – 1885, recounting the struggles of a farmer through such events as the 1865 – 1866 Rinderpest Epidemic.

It is told quite largely in Cheshire Dialect such that the hero, Seth Shone, having entered the cow shippons for the morning milking, and having been devastated to find that his cattle have died overnight during the outbreak, sobs to his wife that ‘t(he) kine an gone jed’’.

But the story is also interesting for its links to witchcraft – and Australia. It starts with Seth standing near Beeston Castle watching the fire on the crag and the bonfires that have been lit across the countryside to mark the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837.

Seth has recently returned to England from Van Diemen’s Land following a seven year sentence of Transportation for poaching. It is suggested that he was wrongly accused and convicted to defraud him of his rights of succession to the family farm.

Facing a hostile establishment, with the help of a friend, he establishes squatter’s rights to a cottage that he builds on the village Common. Having built it overnight and met the condition that smoke should be seen from the chimney at daybreak, he is free to keep it and graze a few young stock.

He then sets about rebuilding his fortunes and recovering the family farm. But not before cursing the three people who he believes conspired to deprive him of his freedom and farm. These include the local Squire who was the sentencing Magistrate; a rival for his betrothed; and his Derbyshire relatives who want to move down from the moors to the fat pastures of Cheshire.

The story is set in Bunbury, Cheshire (called Clock Abbot in the book) and draws on the local legend of the Image House. This house is known for the sandstone images that have been attached to the brick frontage. The images are taken to represent people who were cursed by the house’s original inhabitants, following a local dispute.

The main theme of The Shiny Night is the unfolding of the curses – and their eventual undoing of Seth himself – but not before he has risen to prosperity and respectability, and settled the old farm successfully on his son Yedmunt (Edmund).

SETH DOWN-UNDER

Well, from the ‘facts’ we can deduce that Seth probably spent about 10 years in Australia, with seven of these at ‘his Majesty’s pleasure’ and remainder working to pay for his fare home. He would have been sentenced then around 1827, probably at around the age of 20. He was therefore born around 1807 - and was 58 when he lost his dairy stock to the rinderpest and had to start all over again.

A typical surviving record is the one referring to his ‘Shropshire Cousin’, Samuel Shone, who was one of 130 convicts transported on the ship the Sir Charles Forbes, 23 November 1824. Samuel had been sentenced for a term of 7 years at Shrewsbury Quarter Sessions. Like Seth, his ‘Place of Arrival’ was Van Diemen’s Land.

Governor Philip (1788-1792) had founded a system of convict labour in which people, whatever their crime, were employed according to their skills - as brick makers, carpenters, nurses, servants, cattlemen, shepherds and farmers.

Educated convicts were set to the relatively easy work of record-keeping for the convict administration. Women convicts were assumed to be most useful as wives and mothers, and marriage effectively freed a woman convict from her servitude.

The discipline of rural labour (for which Seth would have been well-placed) was seen to be the best chance of reform. This view was adopted by Commissioner Bigge in a series of reports for the British Government published in 1822-23. The assignment of convicts to private employers was expanded in the 1820s and 1830s, the period when most convicts were sent to the colonies, and this became the major form of employment.

In the mid-1830s only around six per cent of the convict population were 'locked up', the majority working for free settlers and the authorities around the nation.

Even so, convicts were often subject to cruelties such as leg-irons and the lash. Places like Port Arthur or Norfolk Island were well known for this.

Convicts sometimes shared deplorable conditions. One convict described the working thus:

'We have to work from 14-18 hours a day, sometimes up to our knees in cold water, 'til we are ready to sink with fatigue... The inhuman driver struck one, John Smith, with a heavy thong.'

However, good behaviour meant that convicts rarely served their full term and could qualify for a Ticket of Leave, Certificate of Freedom, Conditional Pardon or even an Absolute Pardon. This allowed convicts to earn their own living and live independently.

For the period of their sentence though, they were still subject to surveillance and the ticket could be withdrawn for misbehaviour. This sanction was found to work better in securing good behaviour then the threat of flogging.

Governor Brisbane (1821-1825) codified the regulations for eligibility. Convicts normally sentenced to seven year terms could qualify for a Ticket of Leave after four years, while those serving 14 years could expect to serve between six to eight years. 'Lifers' could qualify for their 'Ticket' after about 10 or 12 years. Those who failed to qualify for a pardon were entitled to a Certificate of Freedom on the completion of their term.

THE AUSTRALIA OF THE TIMES

The colony of Van Diemen's Land was established in its own right in 1825 and officially became known as Tasmania in 1856. In the 50 years from 1803-1853 around 75,000 convicts were transported to Tasmania. By 1835 there were over 800 convicts working in chain-gangs at the infamous Port Arthur penal station, which operated between 1830 and 1877.

Australia's first census was held in November 1828 in the colony of New South Wales. Previous government statistical reports had been taken from "musters" where inhabitants were brought together for counting. In 1828, the white population was 36,598 of whom 20,870 were free and 15,728 were convicts. 23.8% of the population were born in the colony. 24.5% were women. There were 25,248 Protestants and 11,236 Catholics. Indigenous Australians were not counted.

Of the 36,598, 638 were living in what is now Queensland. There were also 18,128 people in Tasmania.

SOME TIMELINE EVENTS

1829
April 13 - Melbourne's first post office opens.
June 18 - Official proclamation of the Swan River Colony (Western Australia)
August 12 - Mrs Helen Dance, wife of the Captain of the ship Sulphur, cuts down a tree to mark the day of the founding of the town of Perth, Western Australia.

1830
September 20 - The Port Arthur penal settlement was established.
September 23 - The Bathurst Rebellion begins outside of Bathurst, New South Wales, following the escape of a group of convicts known as the 'Ribbon Gang' under the leadership of convict-servant Ralph Entwistle. Ten of the rebels are later captured and publicly hung after being tried and found guilty of murder.
October 7 - The 'Black Line' campaign of the Black War begins in an attempt to capture all Tasmanian Aborigines. The campaign lasts 7 weeks and only succeeds in bringing two Aborigines to the authorities.
Economy in 1830 - Wool exports from Australia reach 2 million pounds.

SOME NOTES

SETH'S SURNAME

Shone (pronounced ‘shown’, as in ‘I was shown the picture’) is an interesting surname. However, it is not common in south and western Cheshire in my experience and Tunstall may have chosen it partly because it rhymes with Done (pronouced 'D-Oh-an)– a very venerable local surname (the Dones were the hereditary keepers of Delamere Forest). My only personal memory of the name is that it was held by one of the reasonably prominent amateur jockeys in the ‘Point-to-Point’ horse racing circuit in the 1955-65 period.

Shone is originally a Welsh surname. Like Jones and Johnson, it is a patronymic of John. The spelling and pronunciation though have a more Celtic ring and direct affinities with the Irish Gaelic forms Sean (John), McShane (son of John) and O’Shea (grandson of John).

Until the 15th Century, cascading patronymic naming predominated in Wales, with a person's baptismal name being linked by ap, ab (son of) to the father's baptismal name back to perhaps the seventh generation. For example, Evan son of Thomas would be known as Evan (ap) Thomas; Evan's son, John would be John (ap) Evan; John's son Rees would be Rees (ap) John; and David's son, James, would be James (ap) David.

In areas where English influence was strong, like the borders of Shropshire and Cheshire, cascading patronymics were abandoned in favour of fixed surnames at an earlier date as settlers melded into the local population and acquired property that they wished to bequeath to descendants.

Overall, the stock of Welsh surnames is very small, which is partly attributed to the reduction in the variety of baptismal names after the Protestant Reformation. The typically Welsh surnames Jones, Williams, Davies, Evans and Thomas were all found in the top ten surnames recorded in England and Wales in 2000. However, some of these names originated in England in the 14th century or earlier, long before they arose in Wales.

LANGUAGE

Seth’s conversations in The Shiny Night appear completely uninfluenced by his exile in Australia. This seems unrealistic. Almost certainly, he would have picked up and incorporated some of the emerging Australian argot.

Apparently as early as 1827 Peter Cunningham, in his book Two Years in New South Wales, reported that native-born white Australians of the time—known as "currency lads and lasses" — spoke with a distinctive accent and vocabulary, with a strong Cockney influence.

Also there were borrowings from the aboriginal languages like 'cooee', hard 'yakka' and 'bung'. The first is used as a high-pitched call, for attracting attention, which travels long distances. Cooee is also a notional distance, as in ‘if he's within cooee, we'll spot him’.

Hard yakka means hard work and the word bung means broken or pretending to be hurt. A failed piece of equipment may be described as having bunged up or as "on the bung" or "gone bung". A person pretending to be hurt is said to be "bunging it on". A hurt person could say, "I've got a bung knee".

Perhaps its worth commenting here though that 'being bunged up' is a common local description of constipation in Cheshire - and one that obviously derives from bunging or sealing a bottle.