H.J.

“H. J.” knew Morecambe when the trams on the front were horse-drawn, and he retired to this area over a quarter of a century ago. But his origins and main career were in farming in Lincolnshire. He recalls in this first article aspects of his childhood and family and village life and of farming in the Fens in the early part of this century.

“I was born in Sempringham Fen in 1903 and baptised at Sempringham Priory. My father was a farmer and moved to Rippingale at that period. My parents were happy, hard-working people, and my father was a churchwarden for many years. When he was first married, he had a mill and baking business at Pymore in Cambridgeshire. Before going out with the bread he would fill the mill with corn and leave the brake on. If the wind got up. my mother could let the brake off and the mill would start grinding. He said that as he went on his round it made him very happy to look across the flat fields and see the old mill going. When working for a Mr Pocklington near Sleaford at the turn of the century. he had to go to Boston to fetch the five-ton “cross” on which the sails of Heckington mill turned. His two-horse cart was bogged to the axles in mud, but he hired another horse with the shilling he always carried. The cross had to be lifted inside the tower by block and tackle and father had to climb the tower and fix the sails. Heckington remains the only eight-sailed mill in the country This was one of the stories we children made father tell over and over, in the candle-light; there wasn’t much reading then.

I went to school when I was three, leaving at twelve. At seven I had whooping cough, and remember the doctor arriving in his carriage and horses, and his top bat, from Billingborough, five miles off. The milk had to be delivered before school, and my father bought me a four-guinea cycle when I was ten. We three boys also had to fetch the cattle after school from a mile away. It was a communal field; and, when turned out, the cows found their own way to their farms.

The school yard was gravel, and there weren’t any rubber balls then. The schoolmistress would make us a stocking ball filled with bits of stuff, and we would kick it to pieces quite soon. We had two or three outings a year. The Sunday school went to Skegness by train. The village school drove in farmers’ wagons over to Grimsthorpe Castle for tea, a riding school and sports. We had another holiday when the horses and hounds came by train to hunt the fox; our schoolmaster liked riding, and so we got that day off, too.

In 1913, I and others were posted outside the school to give warning of the approach of B. C. Hooks flying over in his aeroplane, a thing none of us had seen. Next year, at the start of the war, we ran the best part of a mile to see the strange sight of a convoy of army lorries. In the middle of the war, after an air-raid alarm at a dance, we saw the first Zeppelin brought down over Boston.

In 1915, I left school and worked on my father’s farm, under the head waggoner’s orders. We learnt ploughing, harrowing, drilling and, later, stacking and thatching. Those were happy days, particularly when working with the horses. Ploughing was very, very pleasant. I had kept up my sport and had a professional offer when I was eighteen, but I wanted to farm.

As I grew up. I took to carrying a gun, and to poaching: a rabbit-netting party was great fun. I was courting a farmer’s daughter at the time, and a neighbour was seeing another of the girls. Meeting at the gate one night, we thought we saw a pheasant in a tree; so we shot. it with my friend’s gun. Then we found it was the farm’s bantie cockerel, and threw it over the wall. One of the girls afterwards said. a fox had got their bantie cockerel; but we never let on.

When I was still a boy we had to go and tempt the pigs on to the stubble, a miserable job that had to be done after harvest. My mother’s turkeys – she had about sixty – had to be driven from the farmhouse up to the field to feed on the stubble as well. At Christmas, they were to be sold, and mother used to kill them all. Then all the men had to stay at home and pull the birds. That was a rotten job, too, but we’d nit to do else at that time.

Our pigs were about 35 stones, with good wide backs and quite a bit of fat; they were fed on barley meal. After the killing, the pigs were left to drain – and the smell of blood upset the horses when they came in, and they would quickly crowd into their stable. The pig was left all night on the ‘cratch’, a narrow table about five feet long. The bristles were, scraped off with a sharp instrument which looked like a candle-holder. Then the chines were cut; the large ones, after salting, were kept a year or two and then stuffed.

The salting troughs were wooden, about 5ft x 3.5ft and lined with pitch. The flitches were salted and turned weekly for a month. The hams were first rubbed with brown sugar and a little saltpetre round the knuckle. After a month, they were hung on the bacon hooks which were in all kitchens in those days. They dripped a bit of salt for a week and were then dry: it was often a year or two before they were eaten. My mother cut the small chittings ready for sausage skins, soaking them in salt, water, turning them inside out and scraping them with the side of a wooden spoon. The lard was obtained by cutting the fat into chip-sized pieces and rendering it down. (It was a treat to eat the scraps on toast). The red meat was minced for sausages, and the white meat was made into pork pies and taken down to the bakers for baking. There would be about twenty of them: they were delicious. Then, apart from the haslet (oddments wrapped in the “apron”) and brawn (boned, stewed and put in basins), there were the “fries”. These were odd bits of pork meat, with liver, heart and kidneys. We children used to take the fries round to the elderly people – and we’d get a penny each, which supplemented our weekly pocket money of a penny.

My father bought me a farm when I was twenty-two, in the 1920s. It was a bad time. We didn’t lose money, but it was quite a few years before we made much. I had two cows. One was a hard milker, the other was easy, but kicked the bucket over when you’d finished. That’s where I think I got the rest of my education. For, as I sat there milking these cows and looking at a whitewashed wall, I got to thinking I wasn’t very clever if I was going to do that all my life. So, I got someone in to do the milking and spent more time in the office. This farm was in Rippingale, and I rented another four miles away in Hawthorpe (which the owner sold to me after a row about draining). By the 1950s I was farming 1000 acres, and also managing 1500 acres for a friend who was in a nursing home with T. B. for a year.

In the days when horses provided most of the power on the farm, and workers provided the skills in ploughing, harrowing and harvesting, everything was done in rhythm. I feel it was much more interesting than today when so much is mechanical. But there were some important machines at the beginning of the century. One was the cultivating machine or steam plough. This consisted of an engine at either end of the field, and a plough dragged up and down by a wire, which could be a quarter of a mile in total length. There was generally a pond in each field, and it was the waggoner’s job to see the engines were supplied they let off a whistle that could be heard for miles when they needed water. The plough would start in the early hours and run continuously till dark, even to ten or eleven o’clock. There was a team of four, one man for each engine, and one for the plough, the fourth was a relief driver and cook. They lived in their own caravan.

The other big steam-driven engine was the thrashing machine. It would take an hour to set it up and get the drum level. The wagoner had to be up at half past four to open the ash-box and load the coal, so that the machine would have a sufficient head of steam by the time the men came at half past six. A team of two ran the machine, and eight to ten men were needed for the other work. A dam was built in the dyke to hold the water, and the boys of the farm were allowed to miss school to carry the water. Thrashing was often done in winter, and it was very cold. This was in the days before wellingtons, and our legs were always wet. When a farm in the village was thrashing, it would get all the boys running back from school to kill mice and rats; this was good fun. Later on, I had a thrashing team of my own, and did contract work.

The men who came to help the thrashing team each had his own job to do. Thrashing was tedious work, and the least liked part was working at the end with the chaff or pulse: this was filthy. The more popular part was weighing and carrying the sacks of corn, even though the wheat was in sacks weighing eighteen stone, that is, over two hundred weight; we just accepted the weight. There was a contrivance for getting the sack onto the shoulders – the hard part. This was a wooden platform which raised the sack by a hand-wheel and chain. We would thrash and shift as much as 50-60 quarters a day, a quarter being two sacks.

The experience came in useful when I went on a cruise to Tenerife on the Fred Olsen line. People who’d been before said I’d be sea-sick, but it was the others who were ill in the Bay of Biscay. My father had told me about carrying the eighteen stone sacks on to barges at Boston. The only way to carry them was to go with the boat, he found that if you fought against the boat, you’d lose the sacks. So with the boat – if you fought against it, you’d be sea-sick. Or perhaps I was just lucky.

Steam-rollers were other early machines I remember because they were built in Grantham and displayed their horse trade-mark. The first tractor I saw was at Gillingate Station in about 1915: it was an American ‘Titan’. It collected a large crowd of farmers returning from Sleaford Market, who found many ways of saying that the farmer who’d bought it was barmy, tractors would never replace horses. This tractor happened to be put on to plough first a sixteen acre field near us. After ploughing half the acreage it broke down and was left in the middle of the field for two years. Then it was towed away, repaired and used for sawing wood. (I recall also, from early days, that when the Kirkstone Pass Inn near Ambleside gave up using horses, beer and supplies were brought up by a Foden steam wagon.)

I have been thinking more about being at school. There were about eight of us in each class, but each teacher had three classes in the room – the Infants (three to five year olds), then those from six to ten years, plus a few odd ones in Class 7 at the top. (I was in Class 7 when I left at twelve.) You went up by merit and some never got beyond Class 3. Each room had a fireplace near the master’s desk and the only ways to get in the front, near the fire, were by being a monitor or by misbehaving. Most children had a tin in their pocket and, if the master went out of the room, there was a mad rush to get some cinders in the tin. I didn’t live more than a quarter of a mile from the school, but some had to walk (no buses or bicycles) a good three miles from the Fens. We often rolled our hoops or trundles up the road to school; if one got broken, the blacksmith would pop it in the forge till it was red-hot, and join the break.

Three of the schoolmasters remain in my mind. The first was an older man, and he retired when I had been in the school about five years. It was a church school, and his pay was low. He was engaged to teach and play the organ in the church on Sundays.

The next one was young. He was very good, and a sportsman, playing football and cricket. I remember (as children do) that he once came to see an aunt of mine who was visiting us, and he gave me twopence to go to bed. In 1914, naturally, he went into the army.

The one after him was rather peculiar, and we felt very sorry for him. He talked to himself, and had a drink problem, and I think he left quite soon.

Nobody stayed away from school because of a cold; and at home nobody bothered much either. We were just given a dose of rhubarb and sweet nitre. In any case we had a dose of Epsom salts every Saturday morning, except that on every fourth Saturday it was brimstone and treacle. Sprains were treated by mother rubbing with a mixture of white oils that she would make up herself. It was also used for the horses.

It seems strange now how seldom we were ill, seeing that we were wet through most days during winter, having no rubber boots or mackintoshes. Our boots were sturdy boots of leather, with two rows of nails round the rim of the sole and four down the centre. We left them by the fire at night, and it was a struggle to get them on in the morning. I remember too, that when we started school again after the harvest, in which all the boys had been working, we would have on new corduroy breeches, and the smell was awful, especially from the very dark brown corduroy.

I never remember any of us ever thinking of breaking anything or doing any damage. But we did go birds-nesting always leaving some eggs in the nest, (water hens eggs and wild ducks’ eggs were delicious.) Also, we knew which of the orchards were the best for early pears or plums; and at harvest time we would go into neighbouring orchards and pinch apples. I had an idea that if I was on the look-out for anyone coming, it was not stealing!

Much of what I have been looking back on applies to the broad arable lands of East Anglia rather than to the stock-farming of the north-west. But there are many aspects of farming and country life in the earlier part of the century which were common to both.

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 13 1990 and Issue 14 1990

By Basil Clarke and Joan Clarke

Old local directories show that, from the mid-nineteenth to the beginning of this century, Yealand Conyers had a resident doctor. Most are merely names, but about two of them something is known. In 1855 a Dr John Walling M.D. was listed. His wife, Mary, left £2000 in 1877 to local charities to commemorate her husband’s connection with the parishes of Warton, Carnforth, Silverdale and Arnside ‘wherein for many years he had practised as a physician’.

His tombstone in Warton churchyard shows that he was a son of John and Ellen Walling of Bradshawe Gate, Silverdale, and that he died suddenly in Preston in 1871 ‘while engaged in the active and benevolent discharge of his duties’. Oddly enough, after 1855 his name does not appear again in the directories¹ so that it is not clear from what base he ‘practised as a physician’.

More is known about Dr James Matthews, the next doctor known to have been practising in Yealand Conyers, particularly because of the happy accident that his ‘Day Book’ for 1868 has survived. It is in the possession of Colonel B. North [Ed now deceased], who very kindly allowed it to be examined.

James Matthews first appeared in the Medical Directory in 1870. It is known that he studied at Guy’s Hospital and qualified in 1862. In 1869 he also acquired a physician’s qualification from Dublin (LKQCP). The six years between first qualifying and surfacing as a general practitioner in Yealand Conyers are unexplained, as are his origins. During the time he was resident in Yealand Conyers, two boys of the name of Matthews from the village were pupils at Burton Boys School; they may have been his sons.

Apart from his local general practice, James Matthews was also surgeon to the Carnforth Iron Company and he was, too, the Medical Officer of the Lancaster Union, and Public Vaccinator. He acted as medical referee more than once in 1868 for the Provincial Insurance Company. The Briton Medical Assurance Company retained him, too.

He was also qualified to act as a certifying surgeon. A certificate given under the factories act and signed by him is reproduced here.

It is from the records of Messrs Shepherd and Co., successors to the Waithmans at Holme Mills. It was kindly supplied by Mrs K. Hayhurst. It is dated 1875, three years after the passing of the Education Act of 1872. There were so many loopholes in the act that it was still possible for children, certified as here to be eight years old, to work in factories quite legally. (It was said that the children from the Mills, when they did attend school, did not do well and were unruly to handle.)

He is not known to have had a partner, but the Day Book records that he called other local doctors in on particular cases, as when Dr. Whitehead of Manchester was consulted over Mrs Gillow of Leighton Hall. She was a chronic case, visited almost dally by Matthews. He also wrote on her behalf to Sir William Jenner in London, a leading physician of the time; and in the spring of 1868 he accompanied Mrs. Glllow down to Clifton, where she stayed for a period, probably to try the effects of treatment at the spas of the area.

The practice and the patients

James Matthews’ Day Book covers the period from 1 January 1868 to 6 January 1869 (with two pages of miscellaneous notes, like the mole-catcher’s address). It gives the addresses and the names of patients, except for one simply entered as ‘Man from Warton’. Children, however, are only occasionally given a name instead of ‘child’ or ‘grandchild’ or ‘niece’. The addresses are sometimes exact, more usually just the name of the village or of the house. Not all the houses are now identifiable.

In the individual entries there is usually a note of medicines prescribed (these are discussed below). Diagnoses are not given, except in so far as they are deducible from the prescriptions or a note about lancing a finger or fixing a splint, or the like. Matthews used a scatter of medical Latin terms to indicate such things as a home visit (iter), a surgery visit (visus), a birth (partus puellae/pueri), morning or evening time (mane, vespere), or a death (mortua est).

The surgery at Dykes Lane, Yealand Conyers, has been altered but is sufficiently recognisable. It was a separate one-storey building with two rooms – a waiting room and a doctor’s room. The waiting room gave on to Dykes Lane, and a lamp at the entrance behind a sheet of red glass (still there) indicated when the surgery was open. (The entrance door has been blocked up. )

It is not recorded in the Day Book what the arrangements for preparing medicines were, but it can be assumed, till other evidence turns up, that he was chiefly his own pharmacist. The supply of medicines was a regular part of a practitioner’s income, and there was a long economic rivalry between medical practitioners and pharmacists, especially in towns. By 1879 there was a ‘chemist and druggist’ in both Milnthorpe and Carnforth, but neither would have been easy to reach in those days. It was probably the expectation that village patients collected their medicines from the surgery as still happens in Carnforth practices.

The practice was centred on Yealand Conyers, but covered patients in an area of about four miles radius. Warton, Silverdale and Burton with Holme were substantial parts. Borwick and Priest Hutton and Carnforth were visited; Matthews’ duties as vaccinator and medical officer of the Lancaster Union took him to Carnforth anyway. Occasional patients at Beetham or Over Kellet were seen – and there was even one from Howgill, Sedbergh, though not visited at home.

Medical treatment was on a payment basis, though there were health insurance schemes, and some of Matthews’ numbering of patients names may be related to these. The large estates had different (often adjacent) account numbers for the family and the estate people, But Matthews’ practice covered the social range, as his regular use of the conventions of the time over naming shows. There are Esquires, distinguished from Misters and from those who did not qualify for either, and the distinctions are maintained in entries. Certainly the estates and the Esquires paid for more visits, but were not exclusively cultivated. Miss Ford of Morecambe Lodge, for example, required frequent visits, but later she called at the surgery instead.

The Day Book does not indicate the schedule of charges, and there are only individual items of cash payment, as for an inhaler (6 shillings) or for ‘Whitehead’s (ring) pessary, modified’ at 12 shillings and eightpence. Sometimes an entry has ‘dr’ against it, perhaps recording some lagging over the bill. One entry is overwritten with ’Pauper’. Later in the year he had a lot of dealings with Burton House School (Mrs Nutter) and with one or two of the teachers. There was possibly an epidemic of flu or the like in the village in October, and Dr Matthews was seeing up to eight or nine girls on a visit: each entry was recorded as a visit, it has to be admitted, the parents presumably getting the bills. (Mrs. Nutter may have been more anxious than usual that year; she had recently lost a child of her own).

Matthews was punctilious in serious cases, and would call two or three times a day when necessary. He evidently accepted that he was permanently on call, regardless of ‘unsocial’ hours. Thus, at Warton he was delivering one baby at 1 a.m. and then another in the village at 3.15 a.m. Still, human impatience could show through; once, called out for a journey of several miles late at night, he recorded ‘Iter (journey) and botheration! 10.30 p.m.’ Saturdays, at least, tended to have a lighter load, but Sunday was not a day off.

Matthews attended births regularly, one or two or more a month, but simply recorded the fact, and the sex of the child, though there were follow-up visits where necessary. There is no comment on antenatal care or any specific mention of a midwife. During the year only one infant death related to child-birth occurred among the births recorded. Matthews did once meet another practitioner in Burton to consider the case, of an infant at the King’s Arms who died in convulsions during the night, but this was not a new-born child.

The Doctoring

The medical profession was radically tidied by the Medical Act of 1858; that was four years before James Matthews qualified. It is widely considered that the new era of ‘modern medicine’ was being established during the 1860s. Doctors of today may well recognise the work of the 1860s and after with a sense of more familiarity than is possible with that of earlier practitioners. On the practical side, the use of Laennec’s stethoscope was increasingly understood, the clinical thermometer, which allowed exact assessment of the degree of ‘fever’, was coming in. Medical theory was also in a progressive phase. Lister’s antisepsis; the experimental medicine of’ Claude Bernard, which linked physiology and medicine; pathology, optics, dentistry were all developing.

All these improvements, however, diffused slowly. Probably few country practitioners were making use of many of them at the time under consideration. James Matthews appears to have been an active and conscientious doctor, yet there is no clear indication in the Day Book that his procedures were very advanced. Examination of the patient, in the modern, sense, was not apparently practised routinely, since such examinations were specially recorded, e.g., ‘examination of ears’, ‘examination of chest’.

On the other hand, his range of practical procedures was wide. He records in his Day Book dealing with cut fingers, setting fractures, bandaging wounds, lancing abscesses, syringing ears. Quite a number of tooth extractions were undertaken, too, implying there was no local dentist. In August 1868 he amputated the left arm of William Barnes after an industrial accident at the Wigan Coal and Iron Company at New England, for £3. The outcome is not known, but the patient survived at least long enough to receive a-post-operative visit.

The Medicines

Changes in therapeutics came later than the changes in theory and diagnosis. Almost all Matthews’ prescriptions would have been accepted as perfectly correct treatment up to the time of the Second World War, and indeed almost all of these appear in the 1949 British Pharmaceutical Codex. It is only since then that the enormous range of new drugs has made his therapeutic armamentarium seem so small and relatively ineffective.

Nevertheless, many of the drugs that he used were in fact helpful. There is also the first signs of a chemical industry. Though most of the prescriptions were for mixtures to be made up in a dispensary, a few were already standard mixtures e.g. Parrish’s Food, paregoric, sal volatile, chlorodyne.

A doctor nowadays would not make such free use of opium, but there were few other sedatives and no other pain-killers. Even aspirin was not known till the very end of the century. Matthews used opium in modest doses generally, and it was probably less freely employed than the equally powerful sedatives (barbiturates, tranquillisers, etc.) prescribed nowadays.

He used some laxatives (aloes, jalap, scammony) which were much fiercer in their action than would be acceptable now. He was not alone in this. The idea that getting rid of some ‘toxin’ in the body was highly desirable is a very ancient belief and one which dies hard among patients even today.

He very frequently prescribed cough mixtures. Probably none of the ingredients, except opium, were very efficient, but they are still to be found in current patent cough medicines, as well as in the simpler mixtures prescribed by general practitioners. He used colchicum (autumn crocus), a specific still used in gout. He prescribed iron. He used sulphur ointment (the only treatment then for scabies). He used bismuth, magnesium carbonate and soda bicarbonate to ease indigestion. All were rational treatments.

Some of Matthews’ prescriptions do not have an easy rationale to modern eyes – antimony, hydrocyanic acid, belladonna, camphor, quinine (not for malaria) and digitalis (not for heart disease). Nevertheless, they should not be dismissed as mere placebos. All the drugs given above were listed by a famous contemporary of Matthews as ‘febrifuges’, or drugs to deal with fever. Now that so many infections can be directly controlled by antibiotics we have forgotten the crying need for any preparations which would lessen the discomfort and danger of high fever.

There was, in January 1869, a prescription for champagne which invites speculation; the patient appeared to have been treated for digestive disorders, and if they had been chronic, he may chiefly have needed cheering up by then. The fact that the condition had not cleared up may, of course, indicate some internal complaint beyond the scope of the medical art of the day to recognise or treat. Who can say that the prescription was not helpful?

Matthews is last mentioned in a local directory in 1885. His last entry in the Medical Directory was in 1889, when he was still given as of Yealand Conyers. It is not known if he died or retired then. Yealand Conyers was not, however, left without, a doctor. In 1885 there was a Dr Edwin Brownlow, in 1898 Dr Atkinson, and in 1906 Dr Fullerton. Not to forget that, the vicar, the Rev. Joseph Mitchell, M.D., MRCP, MRCS, was also an experienced doctor, though he no longer practised.

[Ed Their oldest surviving son, John, was born in 1801. He trained as a doctor at Guy’s and St. Thomas, London. He qualified MRCS and LSA in 1830, and obtained his M.D. in Edinburgh in 1851. In 1831 he married Mary Proctor, daughter of the Vicar of Hornby. 

Dr Walling lived in Yealand Conyers, in premises ‘adjoining’ Beechfield. In 1855 we know that he was the resident Doctor. But he didn’t stay in the village long. In 1857 an auction sale was held (Furniture, effects, garden tools and an excellent iron framed mangle with a fly wheel) on the occasion of his leaving the neighbourhood. He was also presented with a very fine clock by the Gillow family. On the death of Mrs Walling her effects were sold and the Gillows purchased the clock. It can still be admired at Leighton Hall. 

He went to live in Stephenson Terrace, Preston. He was an Honorary Medical officer at Preston Dispensary, and later at the Infirmary. His practice in Preston ‘was almost devoted to charitable objects, rarely accepting a fee. He was a firm adherent of Total Abstinence.’ He died suddenly in his seventieth year in his own home.

It is always particularly pleasing to receive follow up information on any article. After reading “Two Yealand Conyers Doctors”. Mr M. L. Walling, has given this further information.

The Walling family has long been established in Silverdale. Wallings were known to be living in Dyke House in 1605. In 1706 a John Walling purchased Bradshawgate, and there continued to be Wallings there until 1893. In 1799 John Walling of Bradshawgate married Ellen Burrow. Their oldest surviving son, John, was born in 1801. He trained as a doctor at Guy’s and St. Thomas, London. He qualified MRCS and LSA in 1830, and obtained his M.D. in Edinburgh in 1851.

In 1831 he married Mary Proctor, daughter of the Vicar of Hornby. Dr Walling lived in Yealand Conyers, in premises ‘adjoining’ Beechfield, where in 1857 an auction sale was held (Furniture, effects, garden tools and an excellent iron framed mangle with a fly wheel) on the occasion of his leaving the neighbourhood.

He went to live in Stephenson Terrace, Preston. He was an Honorary Medical officer at Preston Dispensary, and later at the Infirmary. His practice in Preston ‘was almost devoted to charitable objects, rarely accepting a fee. He was a firm adherent of Total Abstinence.’ He died suddenly in his seventieth year in his own home. On the occasion of his removal to Preston he was presented with a very fine clock by the Gillow family. On the death of Mrs Walling her effects were sold and the Gillows purchased the clock, It can still be admired at Leighton Hall.

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 14 1990

1. It is always particularly pleasing to receive follow up information on any article. After reading “Two Yealand Conyers doctors”.
   
   Mr M. L. Walling, has given this further information.
   
   The Walling family has long been established in Silverdale. Wallings were known to be living in Dyke House in 1605. In 1706 a John Walling purchased Bradshawgate, and there continued to be Wallings there until 1893. In 1799 John Walling of Bradshawgate married Ellen Burrow.
   
   Their oldest surviving son, John, was born in 1801. He trained as a doctor at Guy’s and St. Thomas, London. He qualified MRCS and LSA in 1830, and obtained his M.D. in Edinburgh in 1851. In 1831 he married Mary Proctor, daughter of the Vicar of Hornby.
   
   Dr Walling lived in Yealand Conyers, in premises ‘adjoining’ Beechfield, where in 1857 an auction sale was held (Furniture, effects, garden tools and an excellent iron framed mangle with a fly wheel) on the occasion of his leaving the neighbourhood.
   
   He went to live in Stephenson Terrace, Preston. He was an Honorary Medical officer at Preston Dispensary, and later at the Infirmary. His practice in Preston ‘was almost devoted to charitable objects, rarely accepting a fee. He was a firm adherent of Total Abstinence.’ He died suddenly in his seventieth year in his own home. On the occasion of his removal to Preston he was presented with a very fine clock by the Gillow family. On the death of Mrs Walling her effects were sold and the Gillows purchased the clock. It can still be admired at Leighton Hall. ↩︎

By John Bolton

In former times Leighton Beck was of considerable economic importance, for it provided water power for Leighton Furnace (1713 to 1806), and probably also for the unique type of nineteenth century limekiln, the remains of which lie hidden in Back Wood, on private ground. (GR. 477782).

Yates’s map of 1786 shows the river following closely its present course between Leighton Beck Bridge (GR 486777) and the Kent Estuary. However, its upper reaches are depicted as describing an arc to the north east of a large area of moss, occupying what is now known as Thrang, White and Hale Mosses, before arriving at its source which is shown a little to the south of Hllderstone. This location of the source is far-more credible than that given by John Lucas in his history of Warton in which he says the source is in the vicinity of Heron Syke. There is in fact a watershed between Hllderstone and Heron Syke.

The current 1:25000 Ordnance Survey map shows the beck flowing in a south-east to north-west direction-to the north of Brackenthwaite (GR 492773) and being fed by a tributary emerging from a limestone scar almost directly north of Brackenthwaite. (The small tarn shown close to the scar is a man-made flight pond for wildfowlers.) East of Brackenthwaite the Beck is shown flowing through Thrang End Wood and connecting to the drainage system on the mosses to the south-east of the Thrang End to Hale Lane.

This part of the watercourse, on the limestone bar in Thrang End Wood is of particular interest. J. Anthony Barnes in his book All around Arnslde (Titus Wilson and Son, Kendal 1933) says of it: ‘At one point only this barrier of hills has been sawn through where Leighton Beck has in process of ages carved out for itself a pretty little ravine and drained what was once probably an enclosed lake, now Hale Moss.’ It is with some diffidence that one casts doubt on Mr. Barnes’s proposition, but nevertheless it does appear to the present writer that it was not the Beck which sawed through the limestone in Thrang End Wood, but men!

The straightness of the channel and the evenness of the walls betray the unnatural processes which created the ravine. Indeed, it would seem the natural source of Leighton Beck is the spring at the foot of the limestone scar to the north of Brackenthwaite and that the channel through Brackenthwaite fields to Thrang End Wood; like the drainage channels on the mosses beyond were all man-made to augment the inadequate water supply to Leighton Furnace. (Today the drainage of the mosses west of the A6 flows northward to the Bela, but before the trunk road was built in 1818- 1820 this area too may have drained into the Leighton Beck.) The drainage would, incidentally, affect land reclamation after the peat had been stripped from the mosses to fuel the furnace. The records of the furnace confirm both the extensive use of peat for fuel and the shortage of water to work the bellows, it being necessary on occasions for men to operate them on the treadmill principle. Thus, there was ample incentive to undertake the considerable task of cutting through the limestone bar in Thrang End Wood and to construct an extensive drainage system on the mosses beyond with a view to augmenting the flow of water to the furnace. It is worth noting that one of the main drainage ditches on the moss is identified by the Ordnance Survey as ‘Furness Runner’: a misspelling of ‘furnace’?

If these suggestions are accepted, there are only about 2 kilometres of natural river between the spring near Brackenthwaite and the northern edge of the Silverdale parish boundary, the rest of the Beck running in-artificial channels across the mosses and in Thrang End Wood.

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 14 1990

The Ordnance Survey map (1:25000 1978 edition) marks a location close to the Silverdale/Warton parish boundary (GR 474737) with the name Quaker’s Stang. The name also appears on the 6inch/mile O.S. map of 1891. At the site, on the landward side of the 1830 dyke, there is no obvious feature to account for the name.

‘Stang’ means a pole or stake. It goes back to the Old Norse, but the Oxford English Dictionary (O.E.D.) gives examples of it in common use up to the end of the nineteenth century. (It is also an obsolete, form of ‘stank’ a pool or dyke)

‘Quaker’ might refer to the quick or quaking sands nearby, but ‘quaking’ is not used elsewhere on the map for quicksands. P.H.V. Booth in Warton in the Middle Ages (Warton Village Society 1976) quotes a thirteenth century document which used the place names Quytesandpole and Quitsandpole. Quaker is not given in the OED as ever meaning a quicksand. Quaker does, of course, mean a member of the Society of Friends. Could there be a reference to some actual Quaker? Or even a joke on what was originally an unkind nickname? It would be of interest if any member of the Society could throw light on the derivation of this name.

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 14 1990

By Robin Greaves

I first visited Yealand Conyers as a small child in the early thirties, and spent holidays here every year till 1939 when we stayed on because of the war. I lived in Manchester on a main tram route, so that Yealand was a very different place from my home and made a great impression on me.

We stayed at what is now Friends Cottage. There was no water laid on, no electricity, and the road was not yet made up. Washing water came from a big rainwater tank by the side of the cottage, and drinking water from the pump up on the road. We would take big enamel jugs and, after an adult had primed the pump, my sister and I would take turns to work the handle. The water was very cold and tasted much better, we thought, than the water out of a tap in Manchester. The water jugs were kept on the floor in the larder, with net covers edged with blue glass beads.

Having a bath by the kitchen fire was much more fun than using our bathroom at home. First of all an old rag rug was placed on the hearth-rug. Then the bath was brought in from the outhouse. At first this was an oval tin bath, replaced as we got bigger by the hip bath; Hot water came from the tank in the kitchen range, cold water in buckets. To sit in a bath by the fire was a real treat and we were sorry when mains water eventually came to the village (1937, was it? ) and a bath was installed in the cold outhouse.

The lavatory was outside, in early years a chemical closet and then, when a rainwater tank was put on the roof, a flush toilet. I can still remember the fear of going out into the dark at night and the welcome warmth of the paraffin stove in there, which made patterns on the ceiling.

Oil lamps and candles provided our lighting. When dusk came there was quite a ceremony of lighting the oil lamp, and I remember the warmth and smell it gave out, as well as the light from the lovely globe.

The centre of village life was the village shop, where you not only did your shopping, but met people and heard the news as well. You pushed the door open and the bell attached to the back of the door rang loudly. I remember the oilcloth covered counter as being higher than my nose. The bacon-slicer was at one end, and a large block of yeast wrapped in muslin at the other. Behind the counter were large jars of sweets, and I remember especially the red and yellow sugar sticks. The shop carried on even long enough to see decimal coinage come in, in 1970, but closed the next year. The shop building is still there, but now it only sells ‘antiques’. [Ed this has now closed and is a private residence]

When we needed milk, my sister and I were sent down to Dyke House Farm, each swinging a can in one hand. It seemed a long way to the farm, and being town children, we were rather frightened of the cows. We would knock on the door of the dairy, have our cans filled and then carefully trudge back up the hill to the cottage.

Although we came to Yealand by car I can’t remember any traffic on the road, except for farm carts and the mole catcher’s pony and trap. I can’t remember when the road was surfaced with tarmac, but I still have a scar on my knee from, falling on the newly tarred and gravelled road.

Naturally, as children, we were not aware that we were seeing the end of village life as it had been for hundreds of years, and it was only recently that I realised that my early memories of Yealand were history.

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 14 1990

By Elfrida Foulds

Yealand Manor, originally the home of the Ford family, has served a number of useful purposes since it ceased to be a private house. During the Second World War it became an evacuation school, run by a group of Quakers, originally for Quaker and refugee children from Manchester and Liverpool and Western Europe.

On the outbreak of war. a flock of children arrived and next day saw the birth of Yealand Manor School, with a pooling of toys and other possessions for Nursery and Kindergarten, a pooling of books and skipping ropes and balls for “Middles”, and an orderly arrangement of copies of the Hibbert Journal (found in the building) to serve as desks, with the older children lying on their stomachs and writing “My ideas for Yealand Manor School.” A father, who was an experienced teacher and was leaving his wife and children at the Manor, devised a timetable before leaving; with modifications It lasted for the lifetime of the school.

From this rather unlikely beginning the school grew, surviving the period of the “phoney war”, until the situation became increasingly menacing and the accommodation filled up rapidly with almost eighty children up to 12 years of age. The Old School in the grounds of Yealand Meeting House was, conveniently, just down the drive and across the road and was used in addition to the Manor, housing visiting parents, three or four adult male workers and a number of boys at night. By day the Old School was used for anything from entertainment to public examinations. All these activities necessitated careful planning in wet weather to avoid the rain when it came through the holes in the roof.

Financial problems were solved as they arose. Staff worked for their keep or for pocket money; and although a modest fee was calculated, parents paid what they could afford, some of them volunteering to work in the house for a week or more from time to time to free members of staff for a well-earned holiday. Refugee children were some times supported by their ‘government in exile’, but there was at least one case of a child of mixed nationality who needed total support for sometime and for whom help was never lacking, often from unexpected sources.

The food was plain but wholesome. Friends of the school snapped up “cheap offers” in bulk to vary the diet – sometimes with results which were edible If not very appetising. Throughout the war vegetables were provided from the garden, thanks to the labours of the Manor gardener, aided by volunteers. At weekends a parent would bring films, often a Charlie Chaplin, and few who heard them will ever forget the children’s shouts of joy.

Much of the teaching equipment was already provided by Nature for teachers with the sensitivity to use it. Almost all were city children and the impact made on them by this beautiful countryside made a lasting impression. One teacher-parent conducted Natural History lessons throughout the war by teaching the children to use their eyes and ears and study the world about them.

When, fairly late in the history of the school, an H.M. Inspector came, this teacher was temporarily away, and when the H.M.I. was informed of this, but assured that he would find the children busy with their Nature Diaries, he looked at his informant with a quizzical expression. He walked into the silent classroom to find the children hard at work. Eventually he made an observation only to be overwhelmed with eager questions. It was all he could do to tear himself away. Perhaps one of the most welcome observations he made at the end of the tour was that he found no fault with the discipline in the school. Corporal punishment was, of course, strictly forbidden.

One day a letter came with an offer of help from two musicians, Arthur Percival, a violinist from the Hallé Orchestra, and his wife Winifred, a pianist. “No”, said the hard-working staff at first. However
somebody suggested that they should be invited to spend a weekend with the school and take “Evensong”, the very simple service on Sunday evenings which might take any form.

It was an enjoyable weekend. They played with the little ones, made friends with the older ones, and their Evensong was mainly expressed in music, during which not a child stirred. Of course everyone wanted them, of course the children wanted them, of course they wanted to come. Thus began a chapter during which the Children at Yealand Manor School thought of themselves as a branch of the Hallé Orchestra; then members of the children’s families and friends of the school all seemed to find ever more old musical instruments stored away in their attics and Yealand Manor School Orchestra was born. A member of one of the County Education Authorities who visited the school rose to his feet after the children had played and urged them, with tears in his eyes, to remember this opportunity for the rest of their lives, for it was unique.

Years later we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the school, not being sure how many would survive to celebrate the fiftieth. Into the meeting-house, the Old School, the Manor, and every nook and cranny of the grounds they crowded with their children, rejoicing at being together again. But perhaps one of the staff remembers best the mother and daughter who came to see her long after that. As they were leaving the mother took her hand and said simply, “Thank you for my happy childhood.”

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 14 1990