[Archive] Farming in England, 1924 to 1982

A total of 73 volumes of manuscript material, with a large number of printed and other items loosely inserted, compiled by the East Anglian farming family of John Feetham Gill (b. 1878; Hilgay, Norfolk) and his two sons George Frederick Gill (b. 1900; Littleport, Cambridgeshire) and Ernest Ralph Gill (b. 1909; Brockley, Suffolk). In good overall condition, on lightly-aged paper. The collection gives an unrivalled opportunity to study an English agricultural family over several generations and spanning nearly sixty years in the middle of the twentieth century, as well as the impact on British farming of a turbulent period taking in the Great Depression, Second World War and Common Market, and the transition to mechanisation.BackgroundOn his 1937 letterhead the father JRG is described as ‘Potato & Vegetable Grower’ of Church Farm, Hawstead, Bury St Edmunds; ten years later he retires. As the series of diaries of his sons’ diaries begins in 1938, GFG and ERG are trading as Gill Bros. at Chapman End Farm, near Ware, Herts. By the end of that year they have given up the farm in exchange for a third share each in the firm of Gill, Pratt, & Gill, renting Boutler’s Hall Farm. By 1947 JFG has retired, and his son ERG is trading alone from Belmont House Heacham, the diaries occasionally containing entries by his wife D. V. Gill. As the years proceed, business is clearly good, with ERG purchasing a motor launch (‘Trixie’) in 1954. Throughout the 1950s the diaries reflect ERG’s diversification into property, and his increasing success as a pig breeder. The 1959 diary contains a cutting from a newspaper, carrying an advertisement for ‘Silcocks Pig Foods’, reading: ‘Mr. E. R. Gill, The Coppice, Heacham, King’s Lynn, changed to Silcocks for his Heacham herd of Landrace earlier this year. [...] This year the herd has won 15 awards at seven county and district shows, including six firsts.’ And the 1960 diary contains a newspaper cutting with a photograph of ‘MR. E. R. GILL, of Heacham, with his Landrace gilt, Heacham Bodil 21st, which won the junior gilt class [at the Long Sutton Agricultural Show].’ Inserted into the 1971 diary is a blank letterhead of the ‘Heacham Herd of Pedigree Landrace Pigs | Ernest R. Gill | Member of the British Landrace Pig Society | Recorded P.I.D.A. Part 1’. Towards the end ERG’s diary entries relate more to cleaning and repair of property, the last entry reading: ‘Sawing wood, dug border near 205. Sprayed old fruit trees & shrubs with

& odd jobs. Saw Mr. Gafney re boys hanging off fence & ringing door bell etc’.In the brief description below, the collection is divided into three parts: first, 36 volumes of business diaries, mainly by E. R. Gill; two, 15 volumes of financial accounts; and last, 22 volumes of manuscript notebooks, almost all by J. F. Gill. A large amount of material is loosely inserted, including press cuttings, receipts, government certificates, handbill notices and advertisements.The collection is in good overall condition, on lightly-aged paper and in worn bindings.ONE. 36 volumes of diaries, contained in a sequence of foolscap 8vo volumes (each – with one exception – in a ‘Boots Scribbling Diary’), dating from between 1938 and 1982 (lacking nine vols: 1941-2, 1945, 1965-70).The diary is almost exclusively devoted to the business of farming. Occasional trips to Hertford and elsewhere are noted, and another of the few exceptions is on 10 July 1938: ‘Vigers passed remark about farm being poor etc’. On 29 January 1938 the diarist records: ‘Went to London purchased suits £4 10s | Went to Hertford purchased shirts etc £1’In addition to a mass of financial information (supplementing that in Part Two, below), topics include: hedging and ditching; stockfeeding and watercarting; burning bushes; cutting down sprout stalks; watering; riddling and bagging potatoes; carting hay and water; harrowing meadows; drilling wheat; ploughing in beans; repairing broken drains; cleaning out the fowl house; blocking gaps; dismantling lorry and making tractor trailer; manure carting (also ‘carting muck’) and spreading manure; cutting clover; chopping out; loading implements onto lorry; buying rabbit traps; sprout picking; cultivating cabbage field; drilling barley; carting roots & straw to cattle; hoeing peas; setting runner beans; drilling lettuce; weeding onions. The weather is referred to, when of relevance to farming.Enclosures include receipts, invoices, press cuttings (a number from 1954 relate to a murder charge against a Mrs Ella Grundman of Needham Hall, Friday Bridge, Wisbech), advertisements, an election flier (for Labour Candidtate Fred Wise), even a Ministry of Food ‘application by an individual for a licence to slaughter a pig’. An interesting item is a letter to Gill Bros from the Hertford auctioneers Norris & Duvall, 24 November 1938, regarding an allegation that ‘the eight acres next the road’ at Chapmore End Farm were sown with ‘wheat which failed’. Accompanying the letter is a copy of a letter of the previous day’s date to Norris & Duvall from G. E. Sworder & Sons of Bishops Stortford: ‘If you are passing this Farm would you look at the fallows. The 8 acres beside the road is as green as a meadow (we thought it had been sown). [...] It is obvious that black grass and charlock etc. must have seeded heavily during the summer which we should have considered impossible if the cultivation had been done as and when recorded. [...] The wheat straw we see, now the stack is opened, is matted with thistles and down; [...] The frost blackened thistles in the stubbles are witness to what must have been cut with the crop.’ The Norris & Duvall letter carries a long manuscript draft reply, including the claim that ‘wheat was harvested off this land in 1937 & that it was down to fallow from September of that year. There are local farmers who can testify as to this. | If it is a fact that this fallow is green then we can only say that this has been brought about as a result of the early drought & belated rain causing seeds to germinate round about Michaelmas.’As the diaries begin the transition to mechanisation is well underway. The entry for 31 January 1938, for example, reads: ‘Tractor Drilling & Tractor Ploughing also Horse Ploughing’. The first entry in the first diary (1 January 1938) reads: ‘Stock Feeding & Watering | Littering Yards & Carting | Hay for Stock | Carting Turnips & Swedes | Ashwin paid rent for two weeks 12s | Paid Wren’s Hertford £2 | Paid Cundy Sudbury £10 | Cook paid for 1 Ton Swedes £2 | Went to Hertford & L’s for evening’. And on 6 January 1938: ‘Horse Ploughing small field nr Spinny after Swedes | Lifting Swedes & Turnips | Stockfeeding | Put 1 choc on little mare | Campkin Sow to Boar (run over Blue & White)’. Among the activities on 8 January the diary records ‘Shod horses’. Three months later, the entry for 8 April 1938 reads: ‘Tractor Cultivating crossways fallow near Lyles & pit field also | Raking & burning grass near Totmans | Hedging near house & Chalkleys | Stockfeeding | Purchased bay Midds [Middlesex horse auction?] £13 9s’.The effect of the Second World War is not greatly apparent. A typical entry of the period, on 1 February 1940, reads: ‘Littering yards | Throwing muck out of two places when over full | Stockfeeding and watering | Tying faggots out of hedges nr Olivers | Making bin out of old Tumbril sides | Sent 3 cwt Wheat & 3 cwt Beans to Wades for grinding | Fetched ground meal home | A shooting afternoon. Francis delivered 14 cwt Meal. | Went to Sudbury saw Oliver re growing Potatoes & taking new Pasture | Bagged up 3 cwt Beans. Purchased Milk Discs 2s 6d | Started work 6 to 5. C7 to 5’. In July of 1944 the farm acquires a Prisoner of War as worker, and on 24 July 1944 the diary records ‘POW lifting potatoes’, and on the following day ‘POW picking potatoes, building trailer’, and on 28 July the payment of £1 to ‘Soldier’. On 29 July the POW is even busier, ‘picking potatoes, harrowing, sowing cabbage dressing, building trailer’. A POW is still working on the farm in 1948, paid four guineas for ditching on 10 April. At the start of the 1947 diary the author sums up usefully, indicating his discontent: ‘Record apple yield this year | Record Frosts & Snow | Fen Floods | Fen Dry summer & autumn hardly any rain | Dad had farm sale & retired. | Labour Government controlling everything. | Potatoes rationed | First year at Heacham | Started again with Wakefield & Sons | Took over, repaired, sold Shingledene | Shortage of staff, food & clothes rationed | Electricity cuts, only petrol for essential purposes & two or three years to get a new car.’TWO. 13 volumes of accounts, mostly compiled by E. R. Gill, the earliest from 1924/5, and the latest from 1958/60. Nine of the volumes are foolscap 8vo, and the other four in 4to. Also present is the Capital & Counties Bank bank book of ‘Mr John Feetham Gill Undley Hall Lakenheath’, dating from between 1918 to 1935; 12mo, and bound in vellum. Also a 12mo notebook, probably also by J. F. Gill, carrying accounts from 1936 to 1945.Among the account books, the 1926 volume is labelled ‘E R Gill | Book Keeping & Farm a/c.’ Debits include wages to named parties, ‘Bad Debts’, ‘Implements’, ‘Poultry Milk etc consumed at House during last quarter’. A volume for 1929/30 includes a section for ‘Ernest & George Gill – Haulage’. By 1948/9 the partnership between the brothers appears to have been dissolved, with E. R. Gill titling the volume for that year ‘Accounts – Small Holdings – The Coppice, Lynn Road, Heacham, Norfolk’. Subjects in that volume include Farm Freehold; Machinery & Implements; Garden Produce; Hedges & Ditches; Trade Expenses; Walls; Wages. Also present is a volume including d etails of ‘Income Tax Year 1950-1’. The same volume gives copies of tax returns, 1951-5, including sales of eggs and poultry and ‘Furnished Lettings’. Inserted are two mimeographed typewritten sets of accounts, the first ‘in connection with Lettings of Furnished Bungalows’, and the second ‘re Small Holding, The Coppice, Lynn road, Heacham, Norfolk’. The last volume details ‘Cash transactions’ and ‘Furnished Bungalows – Rents received’ for the years 1958/60.THREE. 22 volumes of manuscript notebooks, mostly compiled by JFG. Eighteen of the volumes are 16mo or smaller, and five are in 12mo. Included are: a volume of recipes and potions; a volume titled ‘Rough Notes – Gill 1927’; a volume of National Savings Certificate numbers; a planting and ploughing diary. Loosely inserted in a notebook mainly containing religious entries (JFG was a devout Baptist), is an autograph letter of recommendation from ‘B. B. Marsh’, 21 February 1910: ‘I have pleasure in recommending Mr. John Gill as a thoroughly, trustworthy, industrious, and sober man, he was employed by me as sole manager at Brockley Hall for 13 months and left through the farm being let.’ Twelve of J. F. Gill’s diaries are present, all in 16mo, ranging from 1929 to 1960, and including the years 1941 to 1947; these contain brief entries on his farming activities.