by Linda Lear
Their employment relationship soon settled into an easy pattern. Early each year Beatrix wrote to engage Joseph, telling him the date that the tups (rams) had been put to the ewes so he could calculate the roughly five months’ time until the start of lambing. In early April she would write again confirming the date she needed him, telling him which dog was working and which was not, and enclosing a postal order to cover half his transportation costs. Beatrix knew that Joseph was a ‘diamond in the rough’, and valued his friendship as well as his knowledge.23
The first spring that Beatrix owned Troutbeck, Moscrop worked alongside Hislop and another shepherd, Ted Wood, who was in charge of grazing. When Tom Storey became head shepherd in 1927, Joseph came again for lambing. When lambing was over, John Mackereth announced that he was retiring after eleven years as manager of Hill Top Farm. Mackereth’s primary interest had been in cattle breeding. During his tenure Beatrix had increased her Galloway herd, bred some fine calves, and made money on meat, milk and butter. Beginning around 1919, Beatrix and Mackereth entered some of her Herdwick sheep at the regional sheep shows held every year in August and September. But Hill Top sheep had not had much success in the judging. Mackereth’s retirement presented Beatrix with an opportunity to expand her breeding programme at Hill Top.24
In June 1927 Beatrix drove out to Troutbeck Park to have another talk with Tom Storey. ‘I want to ask you something Storey.’ ‘Oh, aye?’ ‘Will you come and work for me and manage Hill Top, Sawrey?’ ‘I want to show Herdwick sheep, and I’ve heard you’ve done a bit.’ So, after consulting his wife, Tom and his family moved to Near Sawrey. It was always Tom’s considered opinion that to make money Hill Top Farm should not have had any Herdwick sheep, but rather cross-bred sheep for the better meat and wool markets. In fact, the Sawrey countryside was really too soft for the wiry, small-hoofed breed, but as Tom recalled, ‘it was her love was Herdwick sheep’. Beatrix proudly entered the new smit mark for her sheep stock at Hill Top in the Herdwick Flock Book. It was the letter ‘H’ for Heelis.25
Since the sheep exhibition season was soon upon them, Tom came over to the Castle Farm to look over her sheep there. As he later recalled, even he was surprised when he recognized a ram there called ‘Cowie’ that he had picked out at the big Eskdale show when it was a lamb. ‘Cowie’ had gone on to win at Eskdale four years in a row. He must have been in a group of sheep Beatrix bought from John Gregg. Storey was enormously pleased with his luck in rediscovering that prize ram. But it was typical of his remarkable ability to remember individual animals. Later, with Beatrix in tow, he picked out a few lambs to enter at the local Hawkshead show. Two of them won a first prize. Storey recalled Beatrix’s delight: ‘She was as proud as a dog with two tails as the saying goes. It was the first time she’d won a first prize. I said I was glad for that and I hoped we’d win a few more.’ Tom began a breeding programme at Hill Top that by 1930 was one of the most successful in the area.26
Beatrix and her new farm manager developed a mutual respect for one another over the years which went beyond that normally accorded by employer to employee or by farm owner to manager. Storey was unusual in that he apparently had no trouble working for a female employer. This is not to say he did not have a certain male chauvinism, but he respected her. Beatrix rarely gave him a direct order, confident in Tom’s knowledge of livestock and their needs, as well as in his ability to manage the planting and harvesting of fodder crops. She often worked, getting in the harvest along with the other hands, but when she did, she took orders from him. Storey was quick to learn how ‘Mrs Heelis’ liked things done. Habits were established early and continued with little change. Early every morning when Tom brought fresh milk over to Castle Cottage he found Beatrix up and ready for the day. If something special was required, they discussed it then.
But sheep breeding and exhibiting was one area where Tom’s chauvinism was hard to disguise. Tom liked to tell of one occasion early in his tenure when he and Mrs Heelis disagreed. As he remembered it, he had been sorting out sheep in preparation for the Keswick show when he noticed that some sheep had already had their fleeces ruddled (marked with an iron-based red powder also used to dye a fleece so as to hide its imperfections), identifying them as show sheep. Storey, however, did not think highly of these particular sheep and was intending to take them back down to the intake, when Beatrix came in and asked him why he was removing them. “‘Well, she says, haven’t they been show sheep?” I told her they were no good to show and she was quite cut up about it. Well, now I didn’t let her carry on. “If you want these sheep showing, Mrs Heelis, you’d better have Mackereth back.” “I won’t show them, they’re not fit to show.” ’ At that, according to Tom, Mrs Heelis stomped off to the Hill Top kitchen where she burst in on Tom’s wife. ‘I’ll tell you what it is, Mrs Storey,’ she reportedly said, ‘your husband’s a bad tempered little devil.’ Shortly after that, Tom began to win prizes with her sheep, and Beatrix apparently never intervened again.27
Stockmen on Bertram Potter’s farm in Ancrum, who endured Beatrix’s comments during her annual visits, some of the shepherds at Troutbeck and some sheep men who competed with her at the local shows, liked to say that Mrs Heelis did not really know much about sheep. This was almost always the bravado of men uncomfortable with a woman, and an off-comer. They mistook the eccentric farmer in her dowdy Herdwick wool suit and wooden clogs, thinking her a sentimental old woman who loved sheep but did not know much about them. The normally reticent Mrs Heelis loved talking to the other sheep farmers, stockmen and breeders, indeed anyone who knew anything about sheep. She did not care ‘a two-penny bit’ what they thought of her or what they thought she knew.28
But Beatrix Heelis was an expert in judging the qualities of all sorts of animals, including Herdwicks. Like her thorough understanding of rabbits and mice, she knew the proper anatomy of the Herdwick, and of a good many other breeds of sheep and cattle as well, from years of close observation, handling and drawing. She may on occasion have confused individual sheep, but she was a shrewd judge of good body line, leg, bone type, head and wool. Little by little she earned the grudging respect of most of her fellow sheep breeders. This was not easy. Understandably, it was hard for stockmen to admit a woman to their ranks, let alone accord her any expertise. There was also turf competition between sheep breeders from Westmorland and Lancashire which affected how much credit any breeder was given. Joseph Moscrop was one of the few males who was not threatened by her participation, knowledge or strongly held opinions. He respected Beatrix as an equal in animal husbandry.29
Tom readily conceded that Beatrix excelled at drawing sheep. ‘One spring she came across and she said “Storey, the next lamb that dies, could you cut its head off for me and skin it back to the shoulder.” ’ The next day he came to find the sheep’s head pinned against a wall in the meadow and Beatrix sitting on a stone sketching it. ‘It was really a grand job when she finished it.’30
When Storey moved over to Hill Top Farm in the autumn of 1927 Beatrix hired Anthony ‘Tant’ Benson to replace him as her shepherd at Troutbeck. Benson was a local man who had worked at the Park as a boy. At their interview, he asked her what wage he would receive, telling her he had been getting 25s. a week. Mrs Heelis once again offered him double. ‘Tant’ was happy to come back. He and his family first lived in the village, as Storey had. But when the smaller shepherd’s house was ready, the Bensons moved into that. ‘She kept us in coal. She fed five or six dogs. So that wage was as good as 60s.,’ Benson remembered. He stayed as shepherd at Troutbeck for fifteen years, but during all those years Mrs Heelis never paid him his wages directly. Instead, when she came to the Park every two weeks with the wages, she went directly into the Benson cottage and left the money with Benson’s wife. Beatrix believed strongly that the money should go to the family.31
Even for the most experienced farm managers and sheep breeders there was an inherent unpredictability to hill-country sheep farming. Changeable weather and the sca
rcity of good pasture could play havoc, even with the best of care. A severe snowstorm and freezing temperatures under a bright moon always made Beatrix anxious for her sheep. Although she was quick to adopt the latest remedies against disease, she also respected many of the traditional ways. What saved sheep after a big snowfall on a low-lying farm like Hill Top, where hay and ash were available, was impossible to do for a large fell flock at Troutbeck. Beatrix honoured the old custom of having some ‘crop’ ash and holly growing near the farmhouses and urged her tenants to do likewise. Both could be cut and given to the sheep in severe winters.
The spring of 1927 was unusually wet and the sheep’s wool never entirely dried out. As a consequence, they suffered from skin sores and infections. Damp weather also brought on foot rot, a kind of decomposing horn that resulted in lameness. Hoofs had to be pared and dressed with a variety of solutions. In the 1920s farmers still disputed whether foot rot was infectious, but most took precautions against a potential parasite. Pests and infectious diseases afflicting sheep, indeed animal husbandry in general, continued to occupy Beatrix’s attention long after she had solved the immediate problem of liver fluke at Troutbeck. She waged war against ‘the fly’ or maggot-fly, to which a milking ewe was particularly vulnerable. The fly deposited maggot worms in any skin abrasion and these quickly ate away the flesh of the sheep leaving deep, painful wounds. Beatrix used standard sheep dips of carbolic acid and linseed oil, but these were labour-intensive and only effective for a short time. She also experimented with a variety of fly powders and even invented a kind of trap for the maggot-fly which she tried out on her sheep at Troutbeck. ‘I am sure it would pay to tackle the blue-bottle’, she wrote to a sheep-breeding friend, ‘instead of so much dip and supervision of suffering sheep and lambs.’32
Personnel problems involved in managing her farms were sometimes more vexing than animal pests. When Jimmy Hislop abruptly gave notice that he was leaving Troutbeck just after Christmas 1927, Beatrix had no choice but to promote young Tom Martin in his place. Much after the fact, she discovered there had been a serious case of sheep stealing at the Park which the timid Martin had not reported until it was too late either to find the sheep or to file a police report. The new dog she hoped to have ready for lambing that spring had not worked, and another she had just been given tended to ramble. She hoped Joseph could find a reliable dog before he came, but the uncertainty made her uneasy. ‘Things have “hatched” badly here this spring,’ she wrote. ‘There are seasons when things go wrong; and they just have to be lived through; like the old inscription “Good times and bad times; all times get over.” ’33
But Hislop’s departure gave Beatrix an opportunity to make a fresh start at Troutbeck and to hire a new ‘head man’. She put everyone on notice until she could find the right person. It took her the better part of a year. George Walker was a highly regarded stockman who had been managing a large farm for the Greenside (Lead) Mining Company in Ullswater. Beatrix lured him away with the promise not only of better wages, but also the opportunity to manage one of the premier farms in the district. She also interviewed his wife Lucy, as she understood the farm manager’s wife was critical to the success of any farm. But with a farm as remote as Troutbeck, she wanted to be sure the wife was not only a reliable housekeeper, but had the necessary skills and abilities to help manage the property and look after the domestic animals. The Walkers and their teenage children Robin and Mary moved into the big white Troutbeck farmhouse early in 1930. Lucy Walker proved as invaluable as George — although she often felt isolated and lonely during the long winters with a wireless that had limited reception at the bottom of the valley. Beatrix refused to allow a more powerful aerial attached to the roof of the farmhouse because it was not in keeping with the historic exterior.34
By 1928 the worldwide depression had begun to affect agriculture and food exports. Prices for wool and mutton had fallen sharply. Livestock farmers all over Britain were discouraged, and tenant farmers everywhere were having a particularly difficult time holding on to their land. Beatrix wrote to Moscrop in January 1929, hoping to persuade him to ‘resist the hiring fairs’ and come to Troutbeck again. ‘A lambing time at the Park would not be itself without Joseph,’ she told him. She had made improvements to the Park including a brick addition, new kennels, enlarged bunk rooms for the shepherds and miles of new fence. But she confessed she was tired. ‘Perhaps… it is partly “anno domini” — I am turned 62.’35
When Joseph arrived at the Park in April, he brought two new dogs since many of the dogs at the farm had died of the ‘yellows’. Beatrix was enormously relieved to have him. But like most fell farms, Troutbeck too suffered a bad season. The wind had turned cold quite suddenly and dried out much of the land, and the lambing ewes were spread out and difficult to get to. There were many tiny, underweight lambs. Even with Joseph’s tender care, and the drop or two of gin that he sometimes added to the bottle of warm milk he used to revive distressed and chilled newborns, many were lost. As Joseph later reported to his brother, ‘Mrs Heelis had the worst crop of lambs on record, but certainly the best record of calves.’36
The agricultural shows that autumn, however, told a different story. When the principal sheep breeders gathered twice a year at the Keswick Tup Fair, in May and October, or at the auctions and local sheep shows held around the district, Beatrix happily joined the Herdwick men and listened to their talk. Her rounded figure, clad in her favourite Herdwick tweed suit — brown felt hat clamped to her head with a black elastic under her chin — soon became a familiar sight at the shows and around the judging pens. Beatrix found certain amusement in the fact that although she was a total abstainer from alcohol, most of the sheep breeders’ business meetings were held in pubs or taverns. She dutifully attended, but she rarely stayed for the meal afterwards, concocting some excuse to take Tom Storey off to a tearoom where she felt more comfortable.37
Beatrix won ‘a number of first prizes’ for her Herdwick ewes. ‘I think we could have gone to the “Royal”,’ she announced proudly, ‘as we beat Willie Wilson with lambs yesterday at Ennerdale, and he has held the field a many seasons as Herdwick king. It is lovely weather and our hay & bit of harvest is in, so we are enjoying the “shows” with a clean conscience…’ Beatrix’s account of her prize-winning sheep was modest. Her Herdwick ewes took all the top prizes at the big shows at Keswick, Cockermouth, Ennerdale, Loweswater and Eskdale.38
The following year, 1930, Beatrix’s sheep took top honours again. ‘We had our pretty little Baa’s at Ennerdale Show last week, and yesterday at Keswick,’ Beatrix reported enthusiastically, during glorious September weather. ‘The sheep have been very successful in the female classes; 16 first prizes, and several shows yet to come. Including Loweswater.’ All her spare time was taken up in travelling with William from one local agricultural show to another. She explained to a friend in the United States that her sheep ‘have got a lot of prizes this year, including a silver challenge cup for the best ewe in the Lake district. I hold it for a year; if I take it 3 years it becomes mine; I think next year is pretty safe, as my younger sheep was never beaten — but 3 years would be a stroke of good luck!’ Beatrix’s sheep won dozens of firsts, and her Hill Top ewes remained unbeaten for the next nine years. She took home silver tankards, salvers and teapots, but, as an abstainer, she always gave Tom the tankards. Over the next decade Beatrix’s Herdwicks won the champion cup several times. Her most famous ewe was called Water Lily. It was one of the progenitors of the prize-winning Hill Top ewes Tom Storey bred. In the Herdwick Flock Book for 1929–30 there is a photograph of Tom displaying Water Lily at one of the Cumberland shows. She was a beautiful animal and Beatrix had good reason to be proud of the line of Herdwick ewes she was establishing.39
Beatrix kept careful notes in the programme of each agricultural show, noting the top prize winners, as well as an especially good lamb, or a particularly inferior animal. As the economy declined, fewer breeders chose to exhibit at the smaller sho
ws. Even so, it was especially gratifying for Beatrix, at the age of 71, to be asked to be a co-judge at the 1937 Lowick show for all the classes of Herdwick sheep and collie dogs. ‘Dear dogs,’ she wrote to Louie Choyce afterwards. ‘I would have liked to give prizes to half a dozen instead of 3.’ But at the important Cockermouth show she had plenty of entries. She won another cup outright and two other prizes for the same ram. No activity engaged her more completely or brought her so much pleasure, although breeding and raising Galloway cattle had become a close rival. The cattle were a passion which she shared with Joseph Moscrop, whose knowledge of cattle was extensive and whose opinions she always solicited when the time came to buy another animal.40
In 1935 Beatrix’s accomplishments as a Herdwick breeder brought her unique recognition within the very male-dominated sheep-breeding community. Mrs H. B. Heelis was named president of the Keswick Agricultural Show. ‘I guess they think its time I should give some prizes as well as take some, which I am very willing to do,’ she wrote, ‘so long as I am not expected to make a speech.’ Hardwicke Rawnsley would have been proud when, at the Keswick show, where her ewes were again unbeaten, the cup was awarded to her by S. D. Stanley Dodgson of Armaside, son of one of the founders of the Herdwick Sheep Association. Two weeks later she won the challenge cup for the third time at Loweswater, earning the President’s Prize. One incident at a Hawkshead show where she had been asked to preside some years earlier always amused her: ‘We had speeches at lunch,’ she recalled, ‘… and an old jolly farmer — replying to a “toast” — likened me — the president — to the first prize cow! He said she was a lady-like animal; and one of us had neat legs, and walked well; but I think that was the cow not me, being slightly lame.’41
