Judith Walker on Farmstead

My father he had a cart horse named Prince, no tractor when I first was small. We didn’t even have electricity in the farmhouse. That was about ’52, ’53 we had that fitted I think.

Each Monday morning my mother did the family wash and we had, downstairs, sort of like a back scullery, we used to call it the back house and they had a boiler which, well, my father used to fill the boiler up with water. It had a wooden top across to keep the water hot as it heated and he had to light a fire underneath it.

We had a very old stone sink, there were no washing machines and my mother had an old wringer which we used to turn and my father used to feed the cattle swedes and things, or turnips and we used to turn a handle and grind those down and flake them I suppose you’d call them now.