Stocken Farm with Dick & Hilda West
From Lacey Green History
continued from 1934-1948 Stocken Farm with landlord Ernest Smith and tenants Dick& Hilda West
click Stocken Farm with R M West & Son for the next set of records
Stocken Farm was bought by Dick & Hilda West in 1948.
They were encouraged to buy, by Harry Floyd, who was the grandson of William Saunders and been brought up in the house. He had his own Floyds Farm but had been lodging with Dick and Hilda. He lent them money, telling them it was an opportunity they must not miss
Dick, who had never borrowed in his life, bolstered by terrific faith from wife and Harry, took courage and set out to make 190 acres their own. As in 1934 every penny had to be made to count.
TO BUY OR NOT TO BUY? In 1948 Dick and Hilda West had the opportunity to buy Stocken Farm. Dick, now 37, who had never borrowed in his life, bolstered by terrific faith from his wife and insistent advice from a friend, took courage, took a mortgage from the friend, and set out to make the 190 acres of Stocken Farm their own. As in 1934, every penny had to be made to count.
Mr. West’s Wessex sow still rears ten each litter Mr. R. M. West’s run of successes in Bucks litter competitions—he has won the Dewar Cup four times—can be directly traced to an in-pig Wessex sow he purchased five years ago.
This sow, Hardwick Alice 24th, was bred by Mr. J. F. Florey, Witney, and sold as an in-pig gilt to Messrs. A. & W. Smith of the Kingsgrove herd at Wantage. Entered by them at a Reading collective sale at four years of age, she was a bargain for Mr. West at 30gns.
Five days later she farrowed at Mr. West’s Stocken Farm, Lacey Green, with a litter of 21, went down with milk fever but still managed to rear ten good pigs.
Alice 24th has now had 182 pigs in her last ten litters and has reared 111 of them herself.
All the gilts at Stocken farm are descended from her. 2nd in the recent competition the average number of pigs weaned was 10.23 with a weight at 56 days of 36.79lbs.
The stock boar is from Mr. Tom Gollin’s Moulsoe herd at Newport Pagnell and a youngster for the gilts was recently bought from the Chalfont Colony’s Skippings herd.
Mr. Dick West told our correspondent that he had, at first, intended to go in for pigs in a commercial way, but Alice 24th’s outstanding performance made him decide to register them (prefix Enstock). From selling weaners at eight weeks old he has turned to the in-pig gilt market, with gilts selling at Messrs Thimbleby and Shorland’s breeding sales to an average of 44gns.
Pigs are only part of the picture at Stocken Farm. Mr. West, of Wiltshire farming stock, took over the tenancy of 160 acres in 1934, and today owns 249 acres. The farm carries a mixed dairy herd of 80 head, which are being graded-up by using Ayrshire bulls, with some of the Shorthorns being put to Hereford bulls.
The store sheep trade is also catered for with a flock of 63 Scotch Halfbreds, including a few Mashams, crossed with a Suffolk ram. This year’s crop was 100 lambs.
Hardwick Alice 24th has been in Mr. R. M. West’s Enstock herd at Lacey Green, Bucks, for five years. During that time she has reared 111 pigs with the tenth litter she has had at Stocken Farm. This litter of ten was 390lbs. when weighed, under the Bucks Pig Litter Recording rules, at eight weeks of age on May 21.
In 1954, their son John had tossed up between Chemistry and Farming, and decided on farming, much to his parents’ relief. After a year’s ‘practical’ at home, he enrolled at Harper Adams Agricultural Collage, in Shropshire, coming back to the farm in1957, having been awarded the medal for the second best student for that intake. He had been given a grant to go there, which helped with the finance. Very few students had a car, certainly not John and it was usual for him to hitch lifts to travel. They sat final exams in Leeds. Shropshire was good way from home to hitch, Leeds even further.
1955. Letter dated 21st June 1955, SP 80 SW 5/80.
Re. Stocken Farmhouse, Main Road, Lacey Green
Preservation order. Keep as follows :-
House. Late C17-early C18, altered c. 1840, extended to rear C19 and C20. Whitewashed render over brick, C20 tile roof, tall central brick chimney. 2 storeys and attic, 3 bays of 4-pane sash windows. Central lobby entry in whitewashed porch with shallow gable, slate roof and flush-panelled door in surround of minimal pilasters and entablature. Paired barred wooden attic casements in gables. Small C20 brick extension set back to right. Rear has narrow gabled staircase bay to centre, gabled projection to left, and C20 single storey extension with flat roof.
1955. John West was friendly with a number of girls in his teens. There was one he recognised but hadn’t really met when he came across her by the pig pens at High Wycombe Agricultural Show in 1955. She was waiting for her father, whose pig pens she was leaning up against. He engaged her in a friendly ‘chat’ !!
He was on holiday from college eighteen months later, when she turned up at Princes Risborough Young Farmers’ Club. It has a reputation as a marriage bureau! In 1961 John West married Joan Gillingwater (in September after harvest and before drilling!!)
1955 STUDENT FOR A YEAR AT STOCKEN FARM by Alistair Fagge.
It was a warm summer evening at the beginning of September, when I started what was to be a long and sometimes painful road to the world of work. My parents dropped me off at Stocken Farm, in the Chiltern Hills, where I was to spend a year living in and working on the farm, prior to going to agricultural collage. I was instructed to walk round to Church Lane where the rest of the farm staff were harvesting some of the wheat crop. The binder was spewing out sheaves that needed ‘stooking’ (propping up together). I was wearing my shirt with the sleeves rolled up, but it didn’t take long for me to unroll my sleeves and button them up, due to the abrasive ears rubbing my skin. Monotony soon became apparent after two or three circuits of stooking the field.
My boss, Mr R M West, known as Dick West had employed two students before me. One, his son and only child, John, who had worked for a year after leaving High Wycombe Grammar School, before going to Harper Adams Agricultural Collage in Shropshire. My main difficulty in the first few days was to understand what Mr. West was talking about. He had a broad Bucks accent, totally different from an Essex accent that I had been brought up with. The first student’s name was Tony Sear. He later became a corn trader.
I never slept well during my 12 months at the farm for fear of being late for milking.
My alarm went off at 5.30am, In my room in the attic. Mr. West and I had a cup of tea and a piece of cake before venturing out to start the day’s work. During the spring and summer months my first job before starting milking was to open the stable door, put some oats in the manger, go to the covered yard door leading to the horse pasture and let in the shire horse for his corn, keeping well out of the way to avoid getting knocked over. The Shire horse was very useful at corn harvest, when we were loading sheaves onto trailers and carts. The correct command and he would move up the rows of stooks without anyone needing to jump on the cart. He was also very useful when it came to muck carting and heaps had to left in rows up the field.
The milking for a beginner took a bit of getting used to.
First of all you had to recognise if it was a milker or was dry. Also how long to leave the unit on each cow. There were three ‘bucket units’. Each cow’s milk was weighed and recorded, morning and evening, once a week. The records would come back showing the total milk yield of each cow for that lactation, normally 305 days. Replacements would be reared from the highest milkers.
The milk was tipped into another bucket with a lid on to prevent splashing from any animal that lifted its tail up. This no doubt happened frequently when I started for the cows know instinctively if humans are nervous. ....Alf Ayres was the full time cowman. He must have been nearing retirement age, but he was never late for morning milking. He would ‘strip’ by hand-milking those cows that hadn’t been completely milked out by the bucket unit. Alf’s language was a choice of swear words which the cows must have got used to, but didn’t go down well with Mr. West if he happened to be nearby. Alf fed the calves with colostrum milk (milk from newly calved cows) for the first 4 days, before using milk powder and water until they were weaned at 5 or 6 weeks. The higher yielding cows were mated to the Ayrshire bull whose pen was near the farmhouse back door.
Gerald Bedford was also a full time employee. Always cheerful and helpful. I owe him a great debt of gratitude for the skills he taught me. He would arrive in the morning just as I was finishing milking the 30 mainly Ayrshire cows, while he cleaned out the shippon (cowshed) with a wheelbarrow.
It was my job to wash the milking utensils after milking, rinsing in cold water before scrubbing in hot water in two washing-up tubs. Another monotonous job I didn’t enjoy. The milk was collected in churns which were labelled then put on the churn stand for the milk lorry to collect. This was all very labour intensive and became out of date with the advent of milking parlours.
Mr west fed the pigs being reared whle we were milking
There were a mix of breeds, Wessex Saddleback, Large White and Landrace, a recent import from Denmark. Dry meal was tipped in a tub, then mixed with water by stirring with a large wooden ‘spoon’. It was bucketed into the feed troughs with a cacophony to waken the dead in the village churchyard. The Wessex Saddleback sows were crossed with Large White or Landrace to produce piglets with hybrid vigour (faster growing than pure breeds). These sows were kept outside with straw huts in a field down a track. It was my responsibility to look after them. They were contained by electric fencing in paddocks. In cold winter the plastic water pipes would freeze up which was a big problem........................................ The household, besides Mr. West and his wife Hilda, who was a very kind motherly lady, consisted of their only son John, who went to agricultural college a few weeks after I arrived,
also Fred Crook, known as Grandad Crook, Mrs West’s father, and Harry Floyd, a long-time lodger. Grandad had been married twice. I found out a lot later, that just before she died, his second wife, Hilda’s stepmother, had advised her, not to have her father living with her. She obviously ignored this advice and put up with her rascal father. Harry, a bachelor, had originally stayed because he was very ill, and Hilda had felt sorry for him, and looked after him too well for him to leave. So there were six in the house when John was back for holidays, five most of the time.
By the end of milking I was starving. Luckily Hilda was used to youth’s appetites and a huge fried breakfast was on hand with variations, including tomatoes from John’s greenhouse, and mushroom from the horse pasture, which grew in September, the real ‘McCoy’, not the cultivated ones. The boss loved his fat bacon, and couldn’t get enough of it. In those days, with the amount of physical work involved, you needed all the calories you could consume. I don’t recall Grandad and Harry being present at breakfast, but they would be around for the midday meal.
Granddad had his own lifestyle, which he kept pretty much to himself. He went to the dog races at Mount Royal, every week and I think he played snooker somewhere. He was 85 at that time. I’m not sure what Harry got up to, other than hand-milking his few cows, on a small holding (Floyds Farm) he had just off the Main Road in the village. He got me hand-milking them on one occasion and I remembering lowering the churn into the well/tank to keep the milk cool overnight.
The Wests liked to have visitors on a Sunday afternoon and entertained them in the ‘sitting room’ that wasn’t used on a daily basis. One of the families was a Jewish Couple from Hampstead, London. They had come to England before the advent of WW2. I was treated as part of the family on these visits, which was very kind of them. The eccentric bachelor David, who was Mr West’s brother, would turn up, out of the blue. He farmed at West Wycombe, and I think came to seek his brothers advice. Another of their friends, Andrew & Doris Oliver, lived in Church Lane. I found out years later, that he had been involved in the beautiful woodwork in the fitting-out of the Canberra liner, which I was on, as a passenger, on its maiden voyage to New Zealand.
I learnt a tremendous lot that year, which was to stand me in good stead for the future. I was so lucky to have stayed and worked with such a warm and hospitable lot of people. I have kept in touch with these, my friends, ever since.
There was a flock of half-bred ewes, put to a Suffolk ram. Some beef cattle, mainly Hereford Crosses, were kept and fattened. I learned to assist lambing, if there were complications. We had a rota to keep an eye on the ewes overnight, to avoid unnecessary losses. They were kept in pens under one of the barns, both before and after lambing, until the lambs were properly feeding from their mother. They were then let into a pasture nearby. The ewes were each fed a whole mangold every day, which had been stored in a covered clamp. The mangolds were grown in part of a field. We hoed out between the rows, and singled out the plants, leaving about 12 inches between. They were harvested when they were 8–10 inches in diameter, pulling them by hand, 7 rows at a time, into heaps, which were then carted to the clamp.
Summer, and we harvested red clover, a heavy green crop, loaded it on a trailer and took it to be dried at The Grass Dryer, Woodway farmers' co-operative unit, half way down Woodway. This was managed by a German, whose name I think was Fritz. It came back in pellet form, as a protein feed for some of the livestock.
There were always fences to repair. The chestnut paling fences put up by the War Department, when they commandeered part of the farm for an airfield in WW2, were in constant need of repair. The sheep loved to push through any gaps they could find. Gerald and I went several times to Bledlow Ridge, a few miles away, to pick up loads of timber suitable for fencing posts. These were cut into suitable lengths and sharpened to a point one end, using a circular saw, driven by a tractor pulley and belt. We used a heavy metal tube called a ‘drive all’ to bang them into the ground – a job needing a lot of energy. We also fetched and re-erected ex war dept. sheds, to house chickens in ‘deep litter’. A new enterprise for the farm.
Another of my jobs was to grind the corn, using the hammer-mill; belt driven by one of the tractors, which had to be lined up very precisely to avoid the belt slipping. A very dusty job which made me sneeze and wheeze. The ground grain was bagged off, and later mixed with proteins and minerals for different types of stock.
Spring came and the need to sow seed for cereals and other crops. Ploughing had been done in the autumn, the land left to weather in the winter. Now harrowing and rolling, all monotonous jobs. No tractor cabs, radios, or ear phones in those days, so singing helped to pass the time. At drilling, it was my job to warn when the seed hoppers needed refilling. I had to hang on to the drill for dear life, as there were harrows dragged behind it.
The sheaves of corn from harvest had been brought to the farm and stored in stacks in the yard, and some put in a hangar left by the war department after WW2. A contractor was booked to thresh out the grain. He came twice, first with a traction engine, the second time with a Marshall tractor, with a large fly wheel. Both were connected to the thresher by a long drive belt, which was also connected to another belt that drove the wire-tying baler, for the resulting straw. The sheaves were thrown to the person feeding the drum, who cut and retained their strings. The threshed wheat was bagged up in 2 cwt. sacks, and lifted with a hoist to be taken on a trailer to the granary next to the farm-house, near the bull pen. These were carried on the back, up a short flight of steps, into the granary. I had one of the dirtiest jobs on the farm, bagging the chaff into large bags, dust flying everywhere.
‘Paddy' was the expert sheaf thrower, from the stack down to the drum feeder. He lived with his ‘Little Woman’ in a caravan, in the corner of Hillocks Field, just off Kiln Lane. When work commenced he would spit on his hands and never stop throwing the sheaves until a break was called. At lunchtime you wouldn’t see him for dust as he made his way to The Crown, opposite the church. Whether he downed ten pints, as rumoured, during the lunch hour, nobody could verify, but he was back at the end of lunch break, apparently sober, to carry on his sheaf throwing until the end of the session. It was imperative to pull ones socks over your trousers to stop the mice crawling up your legs when working round the stacks
My employment conditions were to live as family. Pay was £1 a week and one Sunday off every three weeks. My working week must have consisted somewhere between 70 and 100 hours. More often than not I spent my Sunday off in bed until lunch time, from extreme exhaustion. Some students had to pay farmers for learning from them. As I got better at the work my wages went up to £4 a week. One week I received an extra £2, because the pigs I had been responsible for rearing, had a very good weight. Mr West took me to Reading Market, to see them sold. He had a Vauxhall car and towed a trailer with the weaners in. They sold very well.
One of the lighter moments of the day was ‘Workers’ Playtime on the radio, a variety show with current showbiz characters, performing for a lunchtime audience in large works canteens. A welcome change from talking ‘shop’ or reading the ‘Farmer & Stockbreeder’ magazine. Sometimes I would nod off on the living room sofa and had to be nudged when it was time to get back to work. The 3 o'clock tea provided a good break, before all the routine work of the morning, had to be done again in the late afternoon.
We had a break mid- afternoon, with ‘tea’ back at the farm house, before milking. This, like all the meals was a welcome break and necessary to replenish ones energy The cows went out to graze after each milking in spring and summer, and included strip grazing kale behind an electric fence in autumn. The cows were also given hay in the yards during the winter. After an evening meal, the day’s work still wasn’t finished. On light evenings I didn’t find it a problem, but in winter I did find it tiring to go out and help each night, chopping up mangolds with a root cutter and mixing them with chaff plus other ingredients, for the beef cattle rations.
My room in the attic was adequate, except in winter when it was extremely cold. I was usually in bed by 9 pm, come the 5.30 am rising time I would often fall over, as my legs were numb with cold. The protective clothing we wore was hessian sacks. Round the shoulders and middle, which became coated in mud, when working in the fields in wet weather. The ‘boss’ wore one when stirring up the meal and water for the pigs. One of the problems in the house was the lack of hot water. The AGA in the kitchen provided a nice warm atmosphere in the mornings but very little hot water to have a bath. There is nothing worse than a bath of tepid water in the middle of winter.
Certain companies had waste which they sold to farmers. There were heaps of it under cover. The pigs were delighted to have this variation to their diet. But some was still wrapped in silver foil, and whole wrapped Mars bars and similar, provided an outlet for hungry appetites like John’s and mine!
I suffered from cracked fingers from having a dry skin, which were very painful. This was caused by washing the dairy utensils twice a day with strong detergents. I tried rubbing in Vaseline and putting on gloves at night, without much success. It was almost considered ‘sissy’ to wear gloves at work, which I should have done.
Saturday night at Stocken Farm was more or less sacrosanct as time to myself. I would more often than not catch the bus to High Wycombe to either go to the cinema or occasionally a visit to the local repertory theatre
We didn’t work every night in the summer months, so I had a bit of free time to do as I pleased. I borrowed a 4/10 rifle and took myself round the hedgerows to try, unsuccessfully, to bring back a prize for the pot. The land in Church Lane was rented from a retired Colonel, whose son had a pony which he hardly ever rode. So with a cow halter and a mangold I would catch it, jump on, and ride it bareback through Hampden woods on balmy summer evenings. I didn’t ask permission and would have said that I was keeping it trained to be ridden.
Gerald Bedford had started working at the farm when he was 14, he was about six years older than me. He lived in Naphill and came by motor bike. He took me occasionally to The Black Horse, one of the four pubs in the vicinity, just up the road from the farm. He drank ‘mild’ beer, which was new to me. Gerald knew the time of day without looking at a watch, by the time the buses passed the farm entrance to turn round at The Whip at the end of their run
The farm comprised 250 acres, with a small amount of rented land nearby. Besides wheat, there were barley and oats, red clover, kale and mangolds, and of course grassland for grazing, hay and silage. Some of the land furthest away from the farm buildings was very steep and difficult to cultivate. The valleys in this part of Buckinghamshire are known as ‘bottoms’ Gerald and I ploughed the very steep field that had been used to grow kale. We had two tractors and ploughs. It was only possible to plough down the slope and go back up empty.
I had come to this farm, ninety miles from home because my grand-parents had a weekend bungalow, Bulla Burra, (Aboriginal for beautiful bird; my grandmother was Australian) in Slad Lane, just out of the village. They used to come down from London by train and were met at Saunderton Station and taken up the hill, via Bradenham, by horse and cart, past the house where Disraeli’s was born and on to Lacey Green. One of my aunts, Beatrice (Peggy) Fagge click Beatrice Fagge, who had looked after my grandmother after her husband had died, continued to live there. She was a well-known character in the village. She was an ex-Oxford University Graduate who smoked a pipe! After leaving the army in the Second World War, she delivered the post in and around the village.
My parents had got to know Hans & Peggy Jourdan. Hans was the chairman of Parker Knoll Furniture of High Wycombe. They lived at Gracefield, just across from the farm. They were very kind to me and sometimes took me, on a Sunday off, to see their sons at Mill Hill School, London. Mr Jourdan drove a Jaguar and delighted at driving at 100 mph on the straight road back to Lacey Green. My pipe smoking Aunt Peg was very friendly with the Jourdans, and later moved into Church Lane, near them, to a house called ‘Froma’. When she was away, Hans Jourdan, who had a wicked sense of humour, changed the name on her front gate to ‘Fromage’
I met a very attractive young lady called Christabel Goffin, who lived with her parents at Turnip End, a small hamlet on the way to Speen, just across the farm fields. I can’t remember how it came about, but I went with her to the local ‘village hop’. Her father was a very successful scenery designer for The D’oyly Carte Company, specializing in Gilbert and Sullivan productions. The Goffins were very friendly with Edmund Rubbra, the classical Music Composer, who lived in Highwood Bottom, behind the farm.
One of the features of the village was an old windmill which was in a state of total disrepair.
In 1957 John came back home from Harper Adams. It was not long before his parents made him a partner with them in the farm business, and “R M West & Son” was born. Partners: Richard Montague West, Hilda Elsie West, & John Richard West.
1957 PROGRESS to DATE. By 1957 Dick had increased the cows to 26, his sheep to about 60 and had established a good name for commercial breeding pigs, which he sold at Reading market. They prepared a few cockerels and turkeys for Christmas and had more hens. The horses had been replaced by two tractors, their first combine harvester was recently purchased and they owned the farm, the mortgage paid off.
Now, students were coming from the collages with more professional knowledge. Machines became more specialised, but were expensive. Crop and stock breeding advanced, everything became easier and yet more difficult. Old style farming had to change – or else !