The Horse in the Furrow

by George Ewart Evans

  ‘All trades on the farm are jumbled up today, that’s how it seems to me. Since the machines they haven’t got the same organisation. Anybody on the farm can drive a tractor now, and plough a field. They go into a field with a tractor-plough and as long as they make it look black it doesn’t matter. Shut the gate on it. It will do. But that’s another matter. But look at the way they dress: nowadays everybody wants to look the same as everybody else. It’s the same in the town. You see a carpenter or a painter or any tradesman like that, he won’t wear his apron or white coat in the street if he can help it. He doesn’t want to look different. But in the old days as soon as a man came into the smithy, for instance, in the morning, the first thing he did was to put on his leather apron. I was proud of my owd leather apron; and if I had to slip outside to post a letter before starting work at the anvil I put on my apron first. At that time o’ day no man cared who saw him in his working clothes.’

  The ordinary farm-worker, however, had little scope for differentiation in dress. He was, for the most part, in the position of the old Lincolnshire (Louth area) worker who once told the writer: ‘I was earning about one-and-six a day; and I had one spare suit and one spare pair of boots—that was when I was in bed’. The horseman was in a special class among the farm-workers: he did not lose work through bad weather, and he had a number of privileges that gave him a steadier and more comfortable living. These were summarised by a Government report at the end of the last century.1 ‘Horse-keepers and stockmen usually have their cottages on the farm, which are of a much better stamp than those in the open villages; and moreover they often have good gardens attached. In addition they not infrequently get rough firing and occasionally potato-ground. Many horse-keepers are given 6d and some 1s. 0d. for a journey of over 2 miles with a wagon. Also they usually take part in the harvest.’

  Charles Bugg of Barking has filled in some of the details of the horseman’s role at harvest-time: ‘The head horseman was often Lord of the Harvest2 round about here. He took charge in the field at the cutting, and at the stacking of the corn. This was an important job at that time o’ day as the corn had to remain in the stack for some weeks until they thrashed it. The Lord walked round the top of the stack, building up the sides. He was responsible for the stack standing up straight after the corn had settled down; and no one was allowed to touch the outside of the stack except the Lord.

  ‘The stockman was rarely Lord. Like the shepherd it was not usual for him to “go in” the harvest. When the head horseman was Lord, the second horseman “stayed out” to look after the horses.’

  The 1895 Report quotes actual figures for horsemen’s wages: ‘The annual earnings of horse-keepers and cattle-men are easier to estimate because they lose no time in broken weather…. On six farms the annual earnings of horse-keepers varied from £43 or 16s. 6½d. a week to £48, or 18s. 5½d. a week. But in those cases the men paid rent from £1 14s. to £4 a year.’

  Actual Earnings of Horsekeepers

  Annual Cash Earnings Average per Week Perquisites Rent Paid for Cottage and Garden

  £36 14 3

  (Average

  of 2 men) 14s. 1½d. Oven wood; malt at harvest: value 12s. 1s. 10d. per week

  £39 13s. 10¼d. (Average of 2 men) 15s. 3d. Free Cottage and Garden

  These figures show that the horseman’s skill was recognised in his wages; and—much more than the ordinary day-man—he was able to indulge that taste for a distinctive dress which appears always to have been possessed by those whose work is in any way connected with horses.

  For work the horseman of this period wore a sleeved waist-coat with a velvet front and cantoon3 back and sleeves. This waist-coat had flap-pockets and reached down almost to the knees: it was fastened right up to the neck with horse-shoe buttons, leaving just enough space for the red-spotted muffler or wrapper to be seen underneath. The wrapper was usually a very large coloured handkerchief that was wound twice round the neck and tied at one side ‘with two ends left a-flapping’. On the legs were cord-breeches and knee-buskins. These were similar to the ordinary buskins but extended up beyond the knee: ‘They used to flap about as you walked; but they were whoolly useful in bad weather.’ On the feet were home-made boots with double tongues: ‘They were made by the village cobbler and cost fourteen shillings: they’d last about two years if you got them clumped4 at the end of the first year.’

  Frank Whynes, (born 1891) of Stowmarket, a tailor who once travelled round the villages in that area, has described the horseman’s dress in detail:

  ‘I had to make the sleeved weskit according to the customer’s order. Nearly all of them had a hare-pocket on the inside, on the left. If you were wearing one of these weskits you could double up an owd hare and place it inside and button up; and no one knew anything about it. Some men had this pocket extended right round the back of the weskit. If they wanted the pocket lengthened in this way, I then had to fix eight buttons to fasten the top of the pocket to the lining of the weskit: if I didn’t do this, when the pocket were full it would sag below the bottom of the weskit and give the game away. Occasionally a man asked me to sew in a gun-loop high up on the left side of the weskit—inside of course. This loop held the barrel of the gun while the butt rested on the bottom of the hare-pocket. With a gun loop and one of those pockets, the owd horseman could walk about as though he were a-taking his leisure and had no concern but to get a proper draw on his owd clay-pipe’.

  For walking out and for Sundays he had a cord jacket and cord trousers. But the trousers were no ordinary trousers: they were whole-falls, that is, trousers with a flap that let down in front like a sailor’s. They were also bell-bottomed, with a sixteen inch knee and a twenty-two inch bottom. The outside of the trouser-leg was trimmed with steel-faced horse-shoe buttons. Some of the more dress-conscious horsemen ordered a special kind of trimming on the leg—an inlet or gusset of black velvet, running from the bottom of the trousers, on the outside, and tapering to a point somewhere near the knee. Four or five horse-shoe buttons were sewn to this gusset as an extra decoration.

  The jacket had flap-pockets; and fancy stitching on the jacket was usual. ‘They’d have what we called a vandyck back and sleeves—a fancy stitch something like waves—on the shoulders and the cuffs. Some of them wanted pint-pots worked in fancy stitch on the back, or maybe a horse’s head or even a fox-head. The owd horseman knew what he wanted; and it weren’t no use a-tryin’ to tell him what to have. Those owd country-bo’s had wunnerful good clothes: do you know that? They went in for warmth. They’d have their breeches and leggin’s lined with flannelette—lined with swansdown, they used to say—or fluffy calico. The cloth for their suits was cord (corduroy), as I’ve told you; but sometimes they went in for a suit of heavy tweed—staple tweed it was called; and at that time they made it as hard as a board. It were wunnerful stuff. It never wore up. It lasted them fourteen or fifteen years. The cost? Well, about fifty year ago a suit of staple tweed cost £3 10s. Now today … but aside from the cost I couldn’t make a suit like that today: I couldn’t get the material. Breeches and leggings cost 17s. 6d.

  ‘They dressed warm and comfortable, a style of their own. A big silver chain across the front of the weskit, and a big owd tarnip watch at the end of it. On the head they wore a hard hat with a high crown, or a billy cock with a pheasant’s or woodcock’s feather tucked into the band at the side. We sometimes made an overcoat for one of those owd country-bo’s—a head horseman, for instance. This was always a melton overcoat. Melton is a thick, very tightly woven woollen cloth. The weave is so tight, wet will never get through it. Here’s a piece of real owd melton, the owd stuff. I keep it specially to remind me what it was like. Feel it. And feel this. Here’s a piece of what they make and call melton today. They still call it melton; but look at the difference: the heart has gone right out of the cloth. The owd stuff wouldn’t wear up. You could hand the overcoat over to your son when you’d finished with it; and he could hand it over to his son.

  ‘
And look at this piece of material here—a piece of glissade. Have you ever slid your arm into the sleeve of a real well-made owd overcoat? Your arm will slide in the sleeve with no effort at all, no pushing and tugging and looking for your hand to come out of the cuff. The owd coat just glides on. There it is; there’s the secret. We lined the sleeves with glissade. You can’t get the stuff today. The owd horsemen had glissade sleeves in their melton overcoats; and here’s a button from one of them. I keep it about just to remind myself: here it is, thick mother o’ pearl, as big as half-a-crown. Those owd bo’s knew the best, and they’d have it. Some on ’em from out Brettenham way used to say to me: “None o’ they owd tin buttons for me this time, Frank. I want the boon buttons—boon buttons right through!” Although those owd horsemen didn’t have high wages they lived cheap, rent free and a piece of land for growing potatoes; and they also had free faggots for kindling.’

  Frank Whynes first helped his father with his business of making clothes for country people about fifty years ago. He cycled eighteen to twenty miles every evening after tea, getting orders from the farm-workers. It was no use his going earlier in the day as the men were at work and unable to break off to discuss anything with him. The usual place of meeting was the village inn: he booked a room and measured up his customers there. He delivered the suit when he next came round that way: there was about a month’s interval between his visits to a particular village. His customers were not too fastidious, and rarely demanded a fitting. ‘Only one man I recollect had a fitting. He were owd Bob Steed, the bell-ringer from Buxhall—dead and gone now these many years.’

  Robert Overton (born 1895) worked as a horseman at Baylham Hall. The dress in the Baylham district was slightly different from that already described: the sleeved waistcoat had a cord front, and the back was made of drabbet. The leggings were of cord with buttons up the side. At a slightly earlier period, as Arthur Chaplin has recalled, the leggings had steels at the side as a fastening. For walking out and for Sundays the most notable article of dress was a long, tailor-made, black velvet jacket with short revers, and five or six buttons. Robert Overton has kept the last velvet jacket he had made; and the cloth is as hard and as durable as a board, seeming to confirm the claim that ‘the real owd stuff niver wore up’.

  Harry Mason (born 1874) of Coddenham, was a shepherd for all his working life, but his father, Joyce Mason, was a horseman; and he recalls the dress of an earlier period. There does not appear to be any great variation from the above except that the horsemen sometimes wore elijahs or lanigens (straps below the knee) instead of leggings. They also wore sealskin caps, and sometimes billycocks. A billycock was a high hat with its crown tapering slightly to its rounded top. It was made of soft felt. ‘It were just the thing for wet weather. You put the verge of your billycock down and it would hang round you like an umbrella. The horseman often put a peacock’s feather in the side.’

  Confirmation for this popularity of elijahs among horsemen comes from a farmer who was continually being asked by his workmen to supply new top-latches. A top-latch is the leather thong that binds together the top ends of the hames or seals on the horse-collar. When he asked what happened to the old ones, the usual explanation was: ‘It got lorst,’ or, ‘It bruk’. Therefore he made up his mind to find out what really became of the top-latches. After some unobtrusive investigation he discovered that his horsemen were adapting them to two uses: first as elijahs; then again as straps to tie up their beever-baskets. These were the small, box-like baskets, made of wicker, they used for carrying their beevers or bait, which was wrapped up neatly inside in a linen-bag, often referred to as a nose-bag. One end of the leather-thong was threaded through the two metal eyes that pierced the lid, thus securely fixing it on the basket. A small loop was made at the other end of the thong, and after thrusting a thumb through this loop the worker carried the basket slung over his shoulder.

  One old farm-worker has explained that they used ’lijahs to keep the bottom of the trousers from dragging in the mud, and he added: ‘We were a middling clean lot on that particular farm. Everybody shaved twice a week—on Sunday and on Wednesday night, ready for Thursday. And it was clean boots on Monday morning. If anyone came with dirty boots on a Monday, he heard some pretty straight remarks, and he’d be sure to put a better foot forward the next week’.

  But Arthur Pluck (born 1888), a clothier from Stowmarket has given a complementary account of the dress of the horsemen and farm-workers at the beginning of this century. His father was also a clothier in the same town; and just before the autumn or spring sales he sent him, as a lad of sixteen or seventeen, out into the villages:

  ‘He used to tell me: “Now you’ve made a good breakfast; you can’t get any more food into you, so you can take these round”. And he gave me a huge pile of sale-bills to distribute round the villages. “You needn’t come back here till dark: there’ll be a good meal waiting for you then. Here’s sixpence for you to get yourself something at mid-day.” Those were the days when a bicycle was a luxury, so I had to do my round on shanks’s pony.

  ‘About the middle of the day I called in at a country pub with my sixpence. This is what I had: Two penn’orth of bread and cheese. This was made up of a half-loaf and a piece of cheese as big as your fist. And a pat of home-made butter cost another penny. They threw in five or six pickled onions, free. A penny for half a pint of beer. That was the meal; and I used to be very pleased with it; very pleased too with the tuppence change, as I reckoned I’d made tuppence on that deal.

  ‘When my father went out into the country he used to book up a room—the club room—in the village inn, book for the evening. The farm-workers came in after work and we fitted them up there. I’ve often gone into the bar on these occasions when I was a young man and been hailed by one of our customers. He’d be drinking beer out of one of the old stone pint-mugs they used to have in those days. It was the custom then as soon as you saw a friend you’d offer him some of your beer—to drink out of your own mug. It wasn’t hygienic, I know—in fact I’ve often thought about it since—but I’ve done it scores of times. It wouldn’t have done to refuse. The customer would have been greatly offended. So I’d be called on to help him finish his beer; perhaps his mug was half-full. But after we’d put the drink away between us, then my turn came. I was expected to buy a new, full pint mug for him, and naturally a pint for myself to keep him company! You couldn’t put it past those old country bo’s for artfulness!’

  ‘I didn’t stay long in the country business. Being young I wanted to go farther afield, to get into a better class of business. I put some time in with John Barker of Kensington. I lived in as an apprentice. That was an experience! I was always hungry at that time. But that’s another story. When I returned from London I came here and opened up my own business. But I remember clearly how my father conducted his business in his shop in the square at Stowmarket here about sixty years ago. On a Saturday night after the pubs closed he’d often do more business than he’d done during all the week. But he would never stay open after midnight.

  ‘Some of the old country folk used to come in twice a year, to the spring sale and the sale after harvest—when they’d been paid their harvest-money. Here is an actual sale-bill of that time. It will show you the sort of stuff they came in for:

  S. PLUCK’S 17TH ANNUAL SALE

  of

  CLOTHING HOSIERY BOOTS

  on Tuesday, April 14th, 1910

  400 Pairs Tweed Trousers from 2s. 6d.

  150 Pairs Cord Trousers from 3s. 9½d.

  10 Pairs White Cord 5s. 11d.

  ‘During the period of the sales my father kept a nine-gallon cask of beer under the counter. It was brewed for us by a local brewery—a thin beer, though very good—and we bought it at three-farthings a pint. Before one of the old country bo’s started buying my father gave him a glass of beer. And after he’d wished my father health and drunk the beer, most likely he’d place the glass down on the counter and say: “Aren’t you a-
going to wet the other eye, maaster?” So the glass was filled up the second time; and then the bargaining started. Every item he bought he paid for, as soon as it was on the counter. He wouldn’t have a bill. He wouldn’t trust a bill. Perhaps he couldn’t understand it; couldn’t add up the separate items quickly enough. Some of the labourers came into the town only very rarely in those days; and they were a bit lost and wary when they did come. They were off their home ground, so they were very careful. So he’d have a pair of trousers; and he’d pay for it and put it on one side. And he knew exactly where he was then. He’d then buy a jacket; pay for that; then a pair of boots; pay for those—and so on until he’d got what he wanted.

  ‘Not so long ago a very old man came into my shop and told me what he’d bought from my father at one of the sales nearly fifty years ago. He had a cap, muffler—a square of brightly coloured artificial silk—a shirt, vest, pants, a suit and a pair of boots and he still had some change out of his gold sovereign. And he reckoned he was well clothed. Today, a farm-worker will go on to a field with a tractor; and he’ll be wearing, like as not, flannel trousers and a pair of dancing pumps. But in those days they were dressed for the job. They kept warm. Now I remember calling on a farm-worker: I was fitting him for something, I believe. This is what he was wearing: a thick vest, long pants, cords, shirt and muffler, two ordinary waistcoats, a sleeved waistcoat, a cardigan and a jacket. That old boy worked hard enough in the field, if it was only in carrying all that stuff around with him!