Colin Capon on Milk

Yes, they were, they were milked by hand on the old three legged milking stool they’d sit.

I think two on average, Trev might bear me out on this, I think probably a quarter of an hour, 10 minutes to milk a cow and on average about four an hour I reckon so at Beresfield there were always two milking and sometimes three and then we’d take the milk into the so called dairy in those days and it was only cooled by water that ran … you know we did have mains in those days.

I don’t know what happened before they had mains water but the … milk you’d tip it up on this cooler thing.

The cooler was like a surface cooler, the milk ran down the outside and the water would flow through the middle and you’d have to lift it up into what they called the ‘D’ pan at the top and you could regulate the flow of milk with a little tap and if it wasn’t coming cool enough, you’d shut it down a bit so that it went slower and a better chance for cooling.

And then of course it was canned up in the old milk churns and we used to take ours to Newport in a van, I can remember that. And then years later, I think the creameries probably got fed up didn’t they with everybody who turned up with vans and lorries and everything else and so they then spent … put the emphasis on the lorries then coming round to collect it.

I think it worked better for them. As they got more mechanised, they didn’t want all these vans and lorries and handcarts and things with a couple of churns, they’d rather have a lorry load in and they could mechanise the unloading then, didn’t they?

But it was, yes, I can remember that clearly.