A Darite Boy. Down Hill Farm

It was usually around four am, and just before the breaking dawn that we’d quietly return home with our nights catch, of about ten rabbits. On a good night it was nothing unusual to bag twenty or more. The nights catch was then hung in the whitewashed granite out building attached to the end of the cottage. In this out building, every Monday, Mother washed the previous week’s dirty laundry in a cast iron coal fire boiler.

In the evening having returned from work, Father would ‘skin and gut’ the rabbits which we’d caught during the previous night. Keeping the ‘best one’ for ourselves, he’d sell the remainder to the locals at half a crown each (twelve and one half pence in today’s value). This helped subsidise his wages at the Quarry.

About two hundred feet down the lane from our house, just below the lower railway line lived Mr and Mrs Searle who occupied a smallholding known as West Darite. Mr Searle at one time worked with Father at Caradon Quarry. There it was his duty to blast with dynamite, huge slabs of granite from the steep walls of the Quarry.

A ragbag variety of trees grew in the hedgerow opposite West Darite Smallholding and formed a canopy over the lane, keeping it cool in the hot summer months, yet dank and damp in the winter. The trees were home to crows who nested high up on the boughs each year.

It was the lure of collecting and blowing a Crows egg to add to my collection of eggs that impelled me one spring evening, on the way home from school to climb up to one of the nests.
Having almost reached a nest I slipped and caught the leg of my school shorts on a branch which ripped one of the leg seams open from my thigh to the waist.
Terrified of what my Mother would say when I got home I went to seek assistance from Mrs Searle. She without ado sat for almost an hour with needle and cotton and put right the plight I had got myself into. The sewing was so neat you could not tell the trousers had been repaired. I have thought kindly of Mrs Searle ever since.

Out of the garden gate, and up the lane, past the cow shed to the top railway line, a cottage stands known as Thorn Cottage (where later I was to get myself in some serious police trouble). Past the Cottage to the top of the lane you reach the road to Darite, where instead of turning left to the village, if you turn right and go through a gate, and travel about another six hundred yards you come to what was Down Hill Farm.

Down Hill Farm was owned by brother and sister Bill and Poly G who kept a diversity of live stock including scraggy sheep, cross bred beef cattle, milking cows, ducks, chickens, and a flock of geese, together with a one eyed ill tempered gander.
The Gander was capable of causing considerable pain to a boy in short trousers with his beak if approached on his good eyed side. They also kept a score or so of horses and ponies, several of which were infested with ringworms, as I was later to discover.

On the whole, the ponies, cattle, and horses grazed the moorland on and around Caradon, and could from time to time be found eating the fresh grass growth of the hedgerows, afar a field as St Cleer, Minions, and Common Moor. There were times when they would stray the five miles or so into Liskeard, garden gates were kept securely shut when Bill’s horses or ponies were around.

Bill and Poly’s home, although somewhat dilapidated was a impressive large granite building situated on high ground overlooking the south side of Caradon Hill. Just why it was called Down Hill Farm always mystified me!. Rain water from the land around the farm ran into a sizeable indentation in the ground about five hundred yards away from the house and formed a pond, where the Ducks and Geese gathered in harmony.

The rooms inside the house were large and lofty, the main feature of the kitchen being an enormous solid oak table surrounded by a clutter of wooden chairs. The huge black cooking range was fired by peat from Bolventor Moors. Both summer and winter the fire of the oven continually glowed, and the sweet scent of smouldering peat mingled with the smell of cooking and hung invitingly in the warmness of the kitchens atmosphere. On the table, as often as not, stood an array of sweet and sour home-made chutneys and pickles, and also a part eaten cold cooked leg of mutton on a large plate. Bill and Poly were partial to a meal of cold mutton, pickles and freshly made bread.

Poly at fifty years of age had a weather beaten face and her lanky body was always busying itself with one chore or another. Poly she had a reputation for being a skilled butter and cheese maker.

On days when I had nothing better to do I would sit and churn the butter for Poly, until with aching arms I could do no more.
To make the butter Poly would half fill wooden barrel with Jersey cow’s milk adding a hand full of course salt scraped from a salt block. The backbreaking task of churning the milk and separating the whey from the fats would then begin. This was done by turning the handle and spinning the barrel for about an hour, or until the fats had set, and my chore was finished.

Butter Making Barrel

Sitting on a three legged stool in the kitchen she would remove daubs of the butter solids from the barrel, then with two wooden spatulas, begin patting the excess whey from the butter until a solid block was formed. The blocks were weighed into four ounce lots then wrapped neatly in grease proof paper.
During the course of the evening Poly would make about forty blocks of butter which were stored in a large cold pantry, ready for market day at Liskeard Market. The market was held on each and every Monday.

A spread of old farm stone buildings surrounded the farmhouse mostly in disrepair and unused for many years. Propped against the outer walls the buildings were an assortment of old cart wheels, the adjoining ground was strewn with inactive broken old farm carts and a collection of rusty agricultural implements.

Bill G, somewhat short in stature, had the appearance of being somewhat plumper than he really was.
The serviceable clothing he wore, though clean had become threadbare over the years, and the grey twill jacket he regularly wore hung loosely from his upper torso.
Baggy riding britches tucked into polished brown gaiters descended from just below his knees down to his ankles and rested upon the uppers of riding boots that over the years had been repaired many, many times.
When standing the bowing of his legs was especially obvious, and together with his splayed feet was probably the consequence of the many hours spent in the saddle on one of his nags.

The majority of Bill’s and Poly’s live stock grazed the common ground of Caradon Hill and the surrounding moorland. Cattle ‘will as a rule’ find their way back to their own farm and Horses wander far afield. When Bill was not in the saddle collecting up stray Horses and Ponies, or driving Cattle back onto the moors, then as often as not he would be found riding to East Cornwall Hounds as a follower.

To be cont..

East Cornwall Hound