ROCKWOOD HARRIERS HUNT - SOME NEW SOME OLD.
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| When you gotta go you gotta go! |
Blacker Farm, Emley, as it was. Now the kennels. It was a working farm of about 60 acres on Lord Savile's Estate. It was a mixed farm employing two men, Charles and Bernard in the 1940s and a bit later, with one horse. cows and a bull, pigs, ducks and hens etc..
Taken about 1940, the picture below is of the enclosed cobbled yard of the farm with Frank and Beatrice Tipler, and with Bernard lurking in the background. Frank had a milk float and with the horse, delivered milk around Skelmanthorpe. The horse knew the route and stopping places. The milk was delivered using lading cans etc., from the churns at the front of the float. If householders were out there would be a nice jug waiting outside the door with an attractive beaded edged doily over the top.
Frank's round finished at The Windmill pub at the top of Busker and Highbridge Lane, at the end of Commercial Road, for a liquid lunch and the horse got its own from its nosebag. It probably found its own way back afterwards too! On and off I lived at the farm and vanity encouraged me to post a pic below of me in the stackyard.
There used to be a big dutch barn in the stackyard. Every year a traction engine came with the big threshing machine. The thresher was taken into the stackyard and the traction engine stood just inside the gateway facing it with the big broad flapping belt drive and a bunch of fellows came to help. Wonderful times even if there was a war on. The gate gives me nostalgia for when they were to retire I remember standing by that gate thinking of my times at the farm and how I would never be able to see it again. It also figures in an event when I had whooping cough. I was on the stackyard side coughing and whooping and then spat. My mother at the other side with my grandmother objected to my spitting but granny prevailed and so I was allowed to spit. I could go on but this is about the Rockwood not me.
If you look in the barn, another figure is lurking again. Is that Charles or Bernard? With this little homely set-up a decent living could be made in those days.
Most of my only photos of the Rockwood Harriers in the old days are below of Autumn 1959. I learnt to ride by following the Rockwood in the back end of the 1950s, fortunately on a seasoned hunter. I don't recall a Field Master and at that time one could take one's own line and have wonderful exhilarating fun. The field thinned out in the afternoons and that was when the riding and hunting was best.
Alf Drew was a Whip. I can't remember the name of the other one. Both very nice chaps. Alf had a horn with a reed in it as he couldn't blow a hunting horn.
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| On New House Farm land - Top Hats then too! |
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| At New House Farm, Birdsedge - owner Martin Charlesworth on left |
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| Alf Drew above Jackson Bridge |
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Bill Crecy was
Master and Huntsman of the Rockwood in my day and went on to the Badsworth
later. Another real gentleman. Also pictured above Jackson Bridge here.
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| Parading at a Show in 1959- but where I wonder? I don't remember and I don't recognise the location with that banking behind. |
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I just added this copy of
a slide from Feb 1974 because I notice the hounds have changed colour since
this era.
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Back to the modern times
Emley Moor mast in the background, all 1,084 feet of it
It doesn't show unless you click on it to enlarge, but there was a burst of hail at this point and the trees were welcome.
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