Called to Serve and Protect

By John Bown

How does a farm boy brought up on an isolated farm with no electricity, or running water supply, leaving school at fifteen with no academic qualifications, have a successful career in the police force and become an overseas police adviser? John describes his motivation to serve and protect, and takes you through his police career, including when he climbed the headstock of a disused colliery to talk down a disturbed teenager, had a convicted killer hold a knife to his throat, and took a loaded shotgun out of the hands of an aggressive teenager. He enumerates his progression through the ranks and describes an occasion when he refused to obey an order from his Chief Constable, which probably cost him a promotion.

Post-retirement, he worked for a private security company involved in the escorting of prisoners to courts and prisons and describes having to spend three days in the witness box at an inquest into the death of a prisoner in transit to prison. As an overseas police adviser sitting in a restaurant in Addis Ababa with his wife, a colleague and his wife, John saw a hand grenade come to a standstill just inches away from his legs and he expected to die, but miraculously survived.

Flown back to the UK for treatment he had his moments of fame, appearing on TV news and on the Big Breakfast show on Channel 4. Attending a presentation function at the Café Royal, he sat next to Lois Maxwell, the original Miss Moneypenny and the lady on whom her character was based.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jul 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781035808472

John Bown

John Bown was brought up on a small holding on the hills of Derbyshire, where life was tough, but happy. As a teenager he came to a personal faith which informed his future life. His calling was to be a policeman which he undertook for thirty years retiring in the rank of superintendent. He recalls, humorous and frightening incidents during his police career, and identifies critical elements in his development as a police officer. He takes you on a journey through Ethiopia, Jamaica, Nigeria, and South Sudan as he describes his work as an overseas police adviser.

Book preview

About the Author

John Bown was brought up on a small holding on the hills of Derbyshire, where life was tough, but happy. As a teenager he came to a personal faith which informed his future life. His calling was to be a policeman which he undertook for thirty years retiring in the rank of superintendent. He recalls, humorous and frightening incidents during his police career, and identifies critical elements in his development as a police officer. He takes you on a journey through Ethiopia, Jamaica, Nigeria, and South Sudan as he describes his work as an overseas police adviser.

Dedication

Dedicated to my late mother-in-law, Barbara Self, who died far too young but had a profound influence on me and my life, as well as giving me her lovely daughter Margaret as my wife.

Copyright Information ©

John Bown 2023

The right of John Bown to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035808465 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035808472 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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E14 5AA

This book is the autobiography of the author covering the period from his birth in 1943 to 2022. Family and friends are referred to by their first names only and have given their permission to be mentioned. Work colleagues and contacts are identified by a randomly selected letter so as not to reveal their identity.

Part1

The Beginnings

Home and Family

My ancestors on my father’s (Bown) side have lived around Ashover, for more than three hundred years and before that were in Matlock. A brief examination of their occupations over those years revealed most of the male members of the family were either farmers or worked in quarries. On my mother’s side (Dronfield) they similarly resided around Ashover (Stone Edge) during the same period and nearly all of them found employment on the land or in the quarries. On both sides of the family, you can find an occasional example of a family member who was a publican, but there is no history of public service. How was it then that I ended up being in the employment of the Derbyshire Constabulary from January 1960 to November 1992 and then continued working alongside the police at home and abroad until 2014 when I finally retired at the age of seventy.

At the age of fifteen, I made the most critical decision of my life when I made my own personal commitment to follow Christ and that has informed everything I have done since. It was that decision that led me to apply to become a police cadet in 1960.

In the rural area where I lived, there was not much choice for entertainment. Our isolated farm was about two miles away from the nearest bus stop to either Matlock or Chesterfield and the timing of the last bus home meant that if you wanted to go to the evening cinema session you had to leave before the end of the main film to catch the bus. Before I could make up my own mind about what I wanted to do with my time, my mother had insisted that along with my brother we were regular visitors to the local chapel. This involved going to Sunday School in the morning along with the other kids, living down Hungerhill Lane and then returning for the evening service along with mother. Dad had already died when I was just four years old.

My mother was not particularly demonstrative about her Christian faith, but it was very real to her, and I grew up with the belief that there was a God who I could talk to when I found myself in a sticky situation. We only had two bedrooms at the farmhouse where we lived, and I shared one with my mother (being the baby of the family and often poorly as a child). My brother Sam shared the other bedroom with our half-brother Ernest who was twenty-one when I was born. I slept in a single bed and my mother slept in a very old-fashioned bed with an iron frame and a feather filled mattress. If I were awake when she came to bed, I would see her kneel at the bedside to say her prayers and always her three sons were included in those prayers.

We were not a wealthy family as evidenced by the fact that my mother never paid income tax and my brother, and I were on free school meals. My father had been the part owner and farmer of a larger (for those days) farm of approximately one hundred and fifty acres at the time he married my mother. He had been successful in his farming along with his father and had moved from being a tenant at the farm to purchasing it along with his father. My mother already had a son when she married my father. At the tender age of nineteen, a member of a keen chapel going family and living in a rural area, she found herself pregnant.

She occasionally talked about this, and I remember one occasion when she told how she felt deeply depressed about her life and could not see the way forward. One night in her bedroom she had a vision of an angel, who appeared in shining white robes and spoke to her personally telling her that from that night onwards she would be able to cope and to bring up her son. My half brother, Ernest was born in 1921, so when I was born in 1943, he was already an adult, which given what happened later was a great blessing for my mother, my brother Sam and myself.

Like all the other males in his family, my father developed a debilitating heart decease soon after I was born, and it became clear that his health was such that he needed to reduce his workload if he were to survive and see his sons growing up. A decision was made to sell the big farm and move to a smaller one of just thirty acres. In the same year that we moved to the smaller farm, when I was four years old, my father died. I have a vivid recollection of seeing the doctor coming out of the downstairs room where my father was in bed and explaining that my father had died. It is a great sadness to me that I have no personal recollections of my father. As I grew up, I heard lots of stories about my dad most of them focussed on his temper. We had an old-fashioned wireless which ran off a wet accumulator battery, that had to be recharged after a month or so. It was enclosed in a wooden cabinet with a cloth covered loudspeaker at the front.

The cloth covering had a hole in the middle and I remember asking my mum how it had been made. Her answer was quite revealing because she said that I was partly to blame! She then explained that one day when he was looking after me and trying to listen to the wireless at the same time, having failed to shut up my noise, he shut up the noise of the wireless by putting his foot through it! I remember another story about him tripping up over a cast iron wheel from some farm machinery that had been left lying in his way, and him losing his temper and kicking the wheel so hard that he smashed the cast iron rim. I often wondered what it did to his toes.

I have only one or two recollections of living on the big farm, that we left in 1948 and one of those was quite painful. My eldest brother had some hens housed in a shed in the croft in front of the farmhouse and it was my job to let them out in the morning. The problem was that they included a cockerel who was a nasty piece of work. He loved to jump on my head and peck my face, so I had to quickly pull up the trap door that allowed the fowls out and then run as fast as my little legs could carry me back to the house. I remember another time when with my brother Sam we raided the pea row in the field alongside the road, filling our pockets and then leaving a trail of empty peapods along the road and into the farmyard.

As I grew up, I became familiar with the poaching expeditions of my dad, granddad, and great grandad. These mainly took place over the Chatsworth Estate. My great grandfather had been a most notorious poacher and had experienced many a fight to resist arrest by the gamekeepers. The big farm ran alongside the boundary of the Chatsworth Estate. On dad’s side the area was cultivated, whereas the area on the Chatsworth side was a grouse moor. The Duke of Devonshire, through his agent sought to persuade my dad to sell him the shooting rights for our farm, but dad was not having that. Whenever the estate had a grouse shoot, my dad would sit himself under the boundary wall, and knock down, quite legally any game that ventured over his field. I started my shooting at the age of eleven with a double barrelled .410 shotgun and I confess to having done a fair bit of poaching myself, it clearly ran in the blood.

There is a saying Poacher turned gamekeeper which applied in my case because at one stage in my police career I caught many poachers on the Chatsworth Estate. My son also had shooting in his blood to the extent that he became a gamekeeper as his full-time employment.

My family did have some contacts with the local policeman who lived in the nearby village of Ashover. During the Second World War my mother provided a bit of a café for soldiers who were being taught to drive before joining active service. They were based in Chesterfield and used the roads close to our farm for driving practice and then eventually to qualify to drive the heavy army lorries. By providing this service mother managed to get extra tea coffee and sugar on her ration book. The local policeman was also in the habit of dropping in for a cuppa, but on one occasion he chose a very, bad time to arrive. My father was a licensed slaughter man, and his services were regularly required to kill pigs and either cut them up for use as pork, or cure them to become bacon, ham, or shoulder. The number of pigs a farmer slaughtered was regulated by the Ministry of Agriculture and War, however for a variety of reasons was sometimes exceeded, not least where a pig was in danger of dying but otherwise suitable to be eaten and intervention by killing was the only way to ensure that the farmer got something back for his efforts. It was not just formal farms where pigs were reared for this purpose, many people kept a pig in a garden and reared it for their own consumption, but for which they must have a licence.

At that time the village policeman patrolled in an Austin Devon saloon car. Ashover is one of the largest parishes in the country and was therefore one of the first where a mechanised beat was designated. One day he drove into the farmyard just after my father had killed a pig which had not been licensed for slaughter and the carcase was then being prepared to be butchered. This first action after the killing of the animal required copious amounts of hot water to be pored over it so that animal’s hairs could be scraped away. Imagine the scene, my mother is making shuttle runs from the kitchen to the farm building from which a steady flow of steam was emerging, when up pulls the police car.

The bobby quickly surveyed the scene and opening the car window greeted mother saying, Morning Lillian, have I chosen a bad time to come?

To which mother responded, Ey lad it’s not the best of times, perhaps tha’d like to come back in a couple of weeks. When he did come back and enjoy my mother’s tea, on returning to his car he found a nice piece of pork on the passenger seat. All strictly illegal, and if there was any suspicion of it being done for commercial advantage, my father would not have got away with it.

Living in a remote farmhouse meant that my upbringing differed greatly from anything experienced today. We did not have electricity, so that meant lighting was from paraffin lamps in the living room, and candles elsewhere. We did have paraffin fuelled pressure lanterns to use outside in the winter, carrying them around and then hanging them up in any building we occupied at the time.

We fetched our water from a well across a field and about a hundred yards from the house. Water was heated in the black-lead coated fireplace, with a copper at one side of the fire hole and the oven at the other side. So, no taps, no running water, no bathroom, no central heating, and no flushing toilet. We had an earth toilet situated behind the farmhouse and getting to it required a walk through the garden and into a small croft. It was a double seater so you could have company if you wished. That never did happen for me, and I do not recall any couple ever going there together. The toilet was at the end of a building that housed the pigsty which meant that you could blame the pigs for the bad smell.

In our living room we had a quarry tile floor some of which was covered by homemade pegged rugs. My mother made these using used sacks as the backing material into which were pegged scraps of material recycled from worn out clothing. We also had a front room, which we only opened on high days and holidays. In the early years at Walton Lees Farm, all the cooking was done on the black leaded fireplace. Down some steps from the living room was our kitchen, just a small space with a sink and some cupboards, later we invested in a Calor Gas cooker fuelled by bottled gas which was delivered by a local businessman. Having a wash before going to school involved bringing about two pints of hot water from the boiler part of the kitchen grange, poring it into a washing up bowl, metal before plastic came along where you washed your face and hands and if necessary, your legs. Going back into the living room you would be inspected by mother to ensure there were no tide marks on your neck. Baths were undertaken once a week on Saturday evenings in front of the fire in a large tin bath. The entire family of four used the same water so last one in was not sure whether they came out cleaner or dirtier.

In the winter, the only place where there was any real warmth was in front of the open fire. Going upstairs was like walking into a refrigerator. It was not unusual to wake up in the morning and not be able to see anything through the window because of a layer of ice on the inside of the glass. We did not have much in terms of possessions or creature comforts, but it was a loving environment, and we were not conscious of going short of anything.

For some reason unknown to me I was usually the last person to get into the bath, by which time the water was far from clean, and mother had a way of dealing with any of the implications of bathing in dirty water, she added a disinfectant with the brand name Izal. This used to make the water go a milky colour, but that was not the only impact it had on a small boy, the worst being that it used to make the end of my penis sting like hell, and I would cry out, My tail hurts!

One Saturday evening there was a knock at the door just after the bathing had been completed but the full bath was still located in front of the open fireplace. Mother was a bit shocked to find a local character at the door, who was well known for getting drunk and then doing strange things, and although he was in a state of drunkenness, given that he had been a friend of my father, she invited him in. He sat down in a rickety chair which was alongside the tin bath and started to dose off. Sam and I were desperately keen that he should fall asleep and then drop into the bath and were whispering what we would do if that happened. Whilst we were longing for him to fall asleep mother was working hard to keep him awake. Eventually he recovered enough energy and sobriety, to get up and go back to his pony and trap in our yard and make his way home.

Life on a farm involved the farmers kids undertaking farm work and coming home from school I would quickly change into my play/work clothes. There were always tasks to be undertaken which varied according to the season of the year. In the winter months, it was mainly carrying buckets of water from the well to the cattle, or for the house. In the summer, we would help harvest the hay and other crops. This was before the introduction of bailers, so the hay was gathered loose and stored in stacks ready for the winter. We did most of the work by hand, but a contractor or neighbour would cut the grass using a tractor and mower and we would use wooden rakes to turn the grass and prepare it to collect.

Sometimes we borrowed a large black workhorse called ‘Jack.’ He was a lovely gentle giant of an animal and even as a relatively small child of ten or eleven years I was able to handle him. I remember well, loosening him from the headstall in the stable and letting him out into the farmyard where I would stand on an empty forty-gallon oil drum to saddle him up ready for work. All you had to do was call his name and he would walk over and wait for you to put on his collar and the other harness required for whatever you were doing.

In the spring, I remember using Jack with a cart to carry manure (muck to us) from the farmyard to the fields, where I would get into the cart and throw the contents out in small heaps ready to be spread by hand later. When a small heap of manure was in place I would simply say Ger on (Go) to Jack and off he would walk in a straight line until I said Woe (Stop) and the entire process could be repeated.

One of his little foibles was that he did not like getting his feet wet and one day an old relative who used to come and help us on the farm was using Jack to pull a roller over a recently sown corn field. Returning to the farm he took a shortcut across the field which involved crossing a very, small stream. Jack jumped the stream and pulled the shafts out of the roller, leaving the rolling mechanism behind!

Some of the time we also had a pony that was borrowed from the same neighbour, but horse riding was never my thing. It is strange to me now that I seem to remember enjoying working with Jack but found no real pleasure in riding the pony. I continue to have that same preference for looking at the heavy working horses when visiting agricultural shows.

We would also grow oats and wheat which we used as food for the livestock. This would be stored in stacks in sheaves ready for the threshing machine later in the year. Threshing days were highlights of the year. The day before the event contractor would arrive with all the machinery. A huge threshing machine (called a drum), and a large stationary bailer pulled by a tractor. My favourite threshing tractor was a Field Marshall which as kids we called a ‘Popper Tractor’ because it had a single cylinder engine which made a popping sound.

Threshing day involved a lot of workers; the contractor would often supply someone located on the top of the drum, feeding the sheaves of corn into the machine and at least one other located on the ground supervising the machinery. Neighbouring farmers would support each other on threshing days because the demand for labour would exceed that normally available from employers or family. There would be one or two people on the stack throwing the sheaves onto the top of the thrashing drum. As ‘kids’ we would often help-out on the stack throwing sheaves from the distant parts of the stack to the man who was feeding them onto the machine. Another one or two farmers would be located at the bailer carrying the large and very heavy bails of straw into a stack and others would be located at the rear end of the threshing machine where the grain would come out of chutes into sacks which they carried to wherever the grain was to be stored.

Threshing days were noisy, dusty, and lively and quite different from the quiet days which were the norm and to that extent I enjoyed them. There was a distinctive noise made by the machinery which took the form of a medium pitched humming noise, but this would increase each time a sheaf of corn was placed into the threshing drum. However, being a serious hay fever sufferer right from my early days, the dust played havoc with me, and I would spend most of the day sneezing much to the amusement of the farmers! There were other risks to health on threshing days, rats and mice would have moved into the corn stacks and I have seen occasions when a mouse or rat has dropped inside a farmer’s shirt. Jack Russell dogs were an essential element of these days as they quickly disposed of the rats and mice. The machinery also involved some risk and on one occasion one of my uncles lost a finger when he accidentally got it trapped in a drive belt.

My mother would be extremely busy cooking food for all the workers and often the status of the farmer was judged by the quality of the food presented on ‘threshing days.’ There was always a piece of beef so large that it only just fitted into our coal fired range oven. The roast beef would be accompanied by enormous amounts of potatoes and other vegetables. Hot puddings were an essential ingredient to conclude the threshing day dinner, steamed treacle sponge being my favourite.

Growing Up

I attended the local school in the village of Ashover from the age of five to fifteen. My school days were happy days without being the happiest days of my life. I was never set any homework; I was never caned or subjected to any other form of corporal punishment and was never aware of feeling under any pressure or stress whilst there.

I was usually within the top half dozen in my class in all subjects undertaken and I represented the school in football, cricket, and athletics, distinguishing myself in the latter by winning the half mile in the South Peak Schools sports event during my final year in school. Whilst I appreciate the importance of academic achievement, I do feel sorry for today’s kids when they are subject to such parental pressure to achieve beyond what they are naturally capable of.

Ashover School during the years I attended included infants, juniors, and seniors. Short of passing the 11+ or 13+ examinations, you remained at the same school from five to fifteen years of age, which is what I did. My teachers were surprised when I did not pass the 11+ examination because being one of the top pupils, they expected me to do well. On reflection I had been at home suffering from asthma leading up to the date of the examination and was probably not at my best. Conversely, two years later I was successful in passing the transfer examination, but still missed out on Grammar School because our school had five of us pass the examination that year, but only three places were available, all of them going to children who already had siblings at the school. Reflecting on all of that, what happened turned out to my advantage, my mother would have struggled financially to send me to Grammar school, and lack of academic achievement did not hinder my later police career.

I do remember that I could read before I started school and that I achieved this without any assistance from anyone else. I have distinct recollections of discovering new words even prior to five years when I started school.

Walton Lees Farm where we lived was located on Hungerhill Lane, where there was a small community of us. At Hungerhill Farm lived one family, Charlie (mother’s cousin), his wife Lilly and their children, Bessie, Eva, and Ernest. At Glendale Farm lived Bob and Alice and their children Robert and Malcolm plus nephew Leon. This created quite a community of kids and when going to school, we would all make our way to the top of the lane and wait for the school bus to Ashover.

On the opposite side of the Darley Dale Road but at the junction with our lane was an old chapel, which had been turned into domestic accommodation and housed my mother’s sister Ethel. She and her late husband had brought up fourteen children. Given that my Aunt Ethel was the oldest of my mother’s siblings and my mother the youngest, then by the time I was attending school all their children that still survived were grown up and most had left home.

Two of the boys, Ronnie and Brian had lost their lives in WW2, and they had lost a couple in childhood, but the remainder were still alive. Only the oldest, Abraham remained at home along with the youngest girl Brenda, both of whom had not yet married. It is difficult to imagine how my aunty managed to bring up all those children in a building that had received little adaptation. The heating system comprised a large pop-bellied solid fuel boiler which had been there during the church days. The building was open to the roof and rooms were demarked by wooden partitions up to the height of around seven feet. Uncle Abraham had worked in stone quarries all his working life and had died at quite a young age the effect of the stone dust that was part of his everyday working environment.

Aunt Ethel would frequently come out to talk to us as we waited for the bus often in the warm weather just wearing her long white night gown. My mother referred to Ethel’s family as the Old Chapel lot and for her special services at our chapel such as Sunday School Anniversary and Harvest Festival were judged by how many of them turned up. Quite often all those still alive would attend, which for two of the daughters involved travelling from Darlington, quite a journey. I loved it when, after the evening service some of them if not all would come to our home for supper.

Mother would have prepared a feast ready for the events. Home cured ham would have been boiled as would a mature hen or two, my mother selecting ones that were about to stop laying and had plenty of body weight. These hens were boiled not roasted so that the impact of old age was less evident and the meat tender and tasty. Although we did not have much money, we were never short of food, and it came natural for mother to share this with family and friends.

There were three busses running into Ashover School each day, all operated by a local company. We were picked up by the bus that commenced collecting children in the hamlet of Uppertown and by the time we got on the bus most of the other children were all on board. Our bus was always an old Bedford coach which had seen better days. Unlike the Alton and Slack busses, ours had the driver’s seat integral with the public part and those who got on early could sit on the front seat which was in line with the driver B. After we had joined the bus, the next pick-up was at the bottom of Belland Lane, where our cousins, Don, Patricia, and Keith joined us, their mother Nellie was one of aunt Ethels fourteen children. I remember one day when Don came and sat close to me and my brother Sam and said, I reckon you two were in trouble with your mum last night, because I heard her shouting you for about a couple of hours. Where they lived was about two miles from where my mother had been shouting but it is testimony to the volume of her voice that it could carry for that distance.

Certainly, we had no excuse for not hearing her and I cannot remember what it was that was so stimulating us that we ignored mother is beyond my memory. There have been times when I have had cause to be thankful that I inherited her voice and I have used it to good effect in a crowd control environment. The next stop was at The House under the Rock, which for generations had been one of the family homes of my mother’s family. It is so called because it is built under a rock face and has a walk-in larder which has a floor, roof and three walls consisting entirely of rock. My mother’s uncle Charlie had brought up his family there and his daughter, Nellie was in occupation, along with her husband Jack. Sometimes they had their grandson staying with them who was none too keen to go to school and had to be coached onto the bus, with us pulling him, whilst Nellie pushed him. The strange thing was that on the return journey we struggled to get him off the bus. Aunt Nellie, as we called her had a habit of blinking and twitching when she was stressed and to be honest getting her grandson on and off the bus was very funny.

My call to serve and protect took place following my decision at the age of fifteen to become a born-again Christian but, looking back over my childhood years there was some evidence of a desire to serve well before that time. August 1952 was extremely wet in Lynton and Lynmouth when those North Devon seaside resorts experienced widespread flooding and associated damage. I was nine years old at the time the youngest of four children living on adjoining farms and we decided that we would respond to an appeal made by the Mayor of Chesterfield for funds to help the people rebuild their homes. We organised our own carnival with sports, fancy dress and the like and I personally picked fresh vegetables from our field and sold them at the carnival and on the side of the main road from our wheelbarrow. I cannot remember how much we collected but we did receive a nice letter of thanks from the town’s Mayor.

The following year the flooding theme continued when many towns on the east coast experienced widespread flooding and our town Mayor again appealed for funds. We decided that January was not a good time for carnivals and with carol singing fresh in our minds after Christmas we decided to go singing from house to house and collect funds and once again received our, by now customary letter of appreciation.

Doubtless we were not the only kids to respond to those appeals but the fact that we did reflects an early indicator of a desire to help others less fortunate which has certainly influenced my desire to work in the developing world.

Both these events also indicate something about the ease with which we roamed around the countryside without any fear. I remember these times as an age of innocence when we did not have a care in the world, and I wish that we could re- create such a society for my grandchildren in the twenty first century.

However, the final incident suggests that the countryside was not entirely safe and not everyone’s intentions were honest. I am not sure exactly when the incident occurred but was probably around 1956 when I had just entered my teenage years. Along with my mate from one of the neighbouring farms, I went into Chesterfield to the cinema one Saturday evening. This involved a walk of about two miles to the nearest bus stop. The last bus back left Chesterfield at 9.25pm so we had to be sure to be on it and avoid problems at home.

When we got off the bus so did an elderly female neighbour and a man who lived close by our home in a gypsy caravan. We walked along with the former all the way to our homes, and she then continued the short distance to her home. But whilst undertaking her final few hundred yards she was accosted by the man who had also been on the bus and was raped by him. My mate and I ended up being witnesses in the prosecution case and were both interviewed by CID officers from Chesterfield. I remember being impressed by their work and it is possible that the experience helped influence my later decision to join the police.

We are told in the twenty-first century that global warming is causing weather extremes, but as I think back to my childhood, we did have extremes of weather just as much then. I have previously made references to the Lynton and Lynmouth floods and to the East Coast floods both of which occurred in the fifties and extremes were not restricted to flooding. We certainly had weather that was very much colder, and we had far more snow than we have had in the last twenty years or more. The worst winter in living memory was that of 1947 when I was just four years old and therefore have no recollection of it.

However, it was so often talked about in my home that I can tell you much about what it was like. During that winter there were four significant snows each one coming from a different wind direction and with a couple of weeks in between each snowfall. Each downfall completely blocked all the roads and lanes around where we lived. The two farms where I spent my first nineteen years were both located at around one thousand feet above sea level, which partly contributed to the volume of snow, but in 1947 the snow also fell in profusion at lower levels and road transport came to a standstill after each fall of snow.

In those days, normal levels of snow on the roads were cleared by a snowplough, pulled by a farmer’s tractor. These snow ploughs were constructed from very heavy and solid timbers in the shape of an arrow and pulled by a chain with the tractor leading. At each end of the open vee shape a council roadman would walk, operating a lever to ensure that the plough covered the intended ground. These ploughs had originally been pulled by horses, but tractors had taken over after the war years. Once the snow started to settle on the roads, these ploughs would be turned out to clear the roads. They only worked effectively if the level of snow did not exceed two feet in depth, and as a result they could not cope with the 1947 levels of snow. Each time the snow fell there were blizzard conditions and the snow drifted across the open fields completely filling the space between the walls on either side of the roads.

The only way the snow could be cleared was by engaging farmers and labourers to hand dig the snow with shovels. At the time my father had a dairy herd of cattle and after each snow it was at least two weeks before he could get the milk to market. My mother used to explain that every single churn and other clean container were filled with milk awaiting the road opening, Given the very cold environment the milk did not deteriorate as rapidly as it would have done at normal temperature. Mother was turning some of the cream and milk into butter and cheese, but there were occasions when they just had to poor the milk into the drains.

Once the roads were open travelling along them there would be a mountain of snow blocks up to sixteen or so feet high. The trouble was that each time they had opened the roads there would be another snow fall blowing the mountain of snow back into the road and requiring the process to be repeated. Apparently, the snow did not completely disappear until late spring, but there followed one of the best summers on record and all the farm crops produced heavy returns.

Winter snow made life difficult for us on the farm and as a child I hated having to go out in blizzard conditions to do tasks essential to keep our farm animals alive and in good condition. With a large bucket full of water hanging from each arm and conveying these more than one hundred yards was difficult enough at any time of the year but doing it in two or three feet of snow was an awful job. Mucking out the cattle was equally challenging because the first task was to clear a path for the wheelbarrow, which was impossible to push through snow. If you have only ever lived in a town you are unlikely to be able to envisage what it can be like at one thousand feet above sea level with heavy snow and gale force winds. The conditions are commonly referred to as a ‘white out,’ which means that you are unable to see more than a couple of feet in front of you. As children we frequently suffered from what we referred to as hot-aches, when we came into the warmth from working outside, the sudden exposure to warmth made our hands extremely painful and we would be told to hold our hands in hot water until the pain receded.

Snow, however, did have compensations and given that there were many steep hills around our farm sledging was a regular winter-time activity. All our sledges were handmade often re-using articles that were no longer required and fixing runners, underneath. Once Robert our neighbour used an upturned kitchen table complete with legs, this he pulled behind his pony and we all sat on the table, hanging on to one of the legs and squealing with delight as we were dragged around the fields. The traditional sledging was often undertaken after dark because work had to be done first when arriving home from school.

If there was a good clear moon and snow on the ground visibility was amazing due to the moonlight being reflected off the snow. Whilst it is possible that I am looking at past through rose tinted spectacles, I am sure that winters were much colder and there was much more snow in those days than today. In recent years, my grandchildren who live in the barn in our farmyard often only have a couple of occasions when they can sledge and then only for short periods before the snow disappears. In my childhood we would often sledge every night for a week or more. How we managed to avoid serious injury on those occasions I will never know given that we had no idea about having protective equipment. One year, the snow was so good and the period so long that we managed to create our own version of the ‘Cresta’ run at our neighbour’s farm.

This involved sledging down the field above the farmhouse, negotiating through the farmyard and then down the field below the farm. This required considerable talent in steering with your feet. The run was best achieved on your belly with feet hanging off the back and steering the projectile. On one occasion I misjudged the turning through the farmyard and ended with my head inside the fire hole of wood fired copper used to boil small potatoes for the pigs, fortunately the fire was not lit. I have read of sledging accidents when people have received fatal head injuries in such circumstances and looking back, I conclude that God was looking after us because he had things in store for us as we grew up.

Snow often made it difficult getting to school and when the snow was fresh on the road, we would not bother going up the lane for the bus, because the chances were that it would not appear. On other occasions our lane would be filled completely by snow from wall to wall and we would have to go over the fields to get to the school bus. Play times at school when there was snow covering the school fields would often involve huge snowball fights. This involved getting yourself into a gang and then rolling up massive snowballs with which you created your own base with walls to protect you from the enemy! There would then follow a battle between your gang and another with the aim of destroying your opponent’s home base. The brave would lead their mates into the battle and throw themselves at the opponent’s snow fort. Great fun!

Looking back on how my mother managed to earn enough income from just thirty acres of land to bring up my brother and I seems to have been something of a miracle. There is no chance that such a small farm would support a family today. Farms in those days were mixed, meaning that we had cattle, pigs, and hens, whereas today the farmers specialise to gain the benefit of scale and the farms are much bigger. We would have a sow from which each year would have a litter of pigs. Sometimes we would sell these to a local butcher for pork and sometimes for bacon, and if it were the latter, we would just keep them a bit longer. The advantage of pigs over cattle is that they mature quicker which means that you do not have to wait quite so long to get your money back.

We always had two or three milking cows and they supplied milk for our own consumption, as well as to feed the calves we had at the time. One of our tasks as children was to ‘suckle’ the calves, which was done from a bucket. When the calf was newly born it was necessary to teach it how to feed from the bucket, because by instinct the calf would want to feed directly from its mother. Going up to the calf you had to get it to start sucking your finger and then move your hand into the bucket of milk, whilst the calf was still sucking and gradually remove your finger. Eventually the calf would discover that this was the way it fed and thereafter you just held the bucket of milk in front of the calf and away it went.

Generally, the milk from one cow would feed more than one calf, so we would buy in calves mainly the surplus from dairy herds. I cannot recall that we ever kept cattle though to the age in which they would be slaughtered for beef. That would have taken between eighteen months and two years which meant that you had to wait a long time to get your money back. We would sell ours as ‘stores,’ when they would be between nine months and a year old. The farmers who bought them would fatten them up, feeding them with high protein concentrates, before selling them for beef.

The first milk that the cow supplies is quite different from what it settles down to after a couple of days. It is vitally important that the newly born calf has the first milk because it has a special content that the calf requires at that stage. My mother used to call the second milk produced after a calf had been born as ‘beestings.’ It had a yellow tint to it and a strong but not unpleasant flavour, and she would use it to make a pudding and a custard. It was always a special treat. Another treat from the new milk would be that we separated the cream and churned that into butter. We had this glass churn container into which we poured