Castle Aching

[Buhar]

I do think the woman directing the ship into its berth could do to be a little less vague and the one on the camping chair isn't helping at all.

Alan

[Schooner]

Not to worry @Buhar, with linesmen like that there'll be a queue of vessels for that berth, all ready to do the handsomest bit of parking!

 

 

Edited June 10, 2023 by Schooner
...they'll probably get alongside the dock alright an' all...

[Hroth]

I wonder what the stack of biscuit boxes are there for. Returns?

The ship also appears to be approaching the quay at quite a lick!

 

[Pacific231G]

17 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

We're going to take over your country for the benefit of Britain but in return we've given you several crates of biscuits. You're lucky you got landed with us though rather than the King of the Belgians.

I wonder though why one of the women appears to be holding an American flag?

[Schooner]

Even by Victorian standards it'd be a bit remiss to signify The Americas without acknowledging the bolshy bit in the middle!

[Compound2632]

Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont (1858-1934) was Queen Regent of the Netherlands from the death of her husband, William III, King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg, in 1890 until their daughter Wilhelmina reached the age of twenty-one in 1898. Therefore my poster is Victorian rather than Edwardian. The Muchaesque poster mentions a 1900 Grand Prix in addition to that of 1878, so is more appropriate to Castle Aching's period.

 

Alphonse Mucha himself did do biscuit advertising but not for Huntley & Palmers:

 

Edited June 10, 2023 by Compound2632

[TT-Pete]

vue, LU et approuvée

 

[Edwardian]

Other produce ...

 

Since ChrisN has raised the question of local milk distribution in his Treath-Mawr (1895) topic, perhaps I might re-post my contribution so that we might consider the matter in the context of rural Norfolk in 1905.

 

The context of ChrisN's discussion is that he has a rather nice Dart Castings or similar horse-drawn milk cart kit. I had one of these on my childhood layout, but that was set in the 1930s and it seems to me that the choice is between something like this, or, depicting delivery straight from the farm. The answer may depend upon where we are looking, Castle Aching, Achingham or Birchoverham Market.

 

The question is really about how milk was distributed in a small town in a rural district in, say, the 1890s-1900s period, the question of a local dairy having been raised in the Treath-Mawr  topic. 

 

In defence of the milk cart, while I have seen examples going forward in time past my original period of interest (the 1930s), these designs do go back much further judging from this milkman's moustache. Here this London example is estimated to date from 1905- 1910:

 

 

Indeed, by c.1890, the 'milk float' already seems to be a well-established vehicle type: Gail Thornton - Dairy

 

While I think more research is needed on the prevalence of this vehicle and how large a town might need to be before one was likely to be seen, the focus of the issue should probably shift to what sort of town premises, if any, were engaged in rural milk distribution. 

 

So, here is what I posted on ChrisN's topic:

 

I do wonder about the prevalence of dairies in rural districts as early as the 1890s.

 

It may be, and I am theorising here, that milk production and local distribution remained literally a cottage industry in rural places. 

 

Consider Wensleydale.

 

Or, how the railway nearly killed Wensleydale cheese before reinventing it.

 

 

In 1856 the railway got as far as Leyburn, a market town at the foot of the dale, but this was insufficient access for the upper dale farms and, so, most of the milk produced in the area was still converted into butter and cheese with only a little milk retained for local use; you could not get any volume of milk to market before it spoilt. 

 

In 1878, the railway made it up dale, and everything changed. 

 

In the end, the cities' demand for milk caused production to go almost wholly over to it. Fortunately someone realised in time that the eponymous cheese might also appeal to a wider market and the railways could be used to reach it. It's only thanks to the ability to transport the cheese by rail that you've even heard of it, let alone eaten it, otherwise it might have remained a purely local cheese or have died out entirely. 

 

What information might be pertinent here?

 

Well, I think that by 1895, a rural district with access to the railway would produce milk for export to towns and cities. 

 

This would probably not involve a local dairy.

 

For instance, we know that Wensleydale milk was sent directly from the farms to the towns, via the railway. In other words it went in churns or cans straight from the back of the farmer's cart onto the train and away. In 1894 Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Hull and Leeds were thus supplied. By 1899, the dale was also supplying Bradford, Halifax, other West Riding towns and the large milk depot at Finsbury Park for London. 

 

By 1905 the trade justified a farmers' co-operative having a bottling plant constructed by the NER line at Northallerton. Northallerton is where the line up Wensleydale met the ECML, so it is located for the mainline railway serving, inter alia, London and is not local to the milk production.

 

The first commercial dairy in the dale dates from 1911 and was due to the revival of cheese and other non-milk dairy produce. The lease, at Redmire station, described "a dairy or creamery preparing, manufacturing, selling and storing milk, butter, cream, eggs and cheese and such other farm products ..." . 

 

Meanwhile, back in the 1890s ....

 

Sir Robert Henry Rew, the British agricultural statistician who was, from 1890, Secretary of the Central Chamber of Agriculture, wrote in 1892 that:

 

Every traveller by rail has noted the outward and visible signs of the expansion of this trade in the battalions of cans ... which daily come and go along all the country lines of the railway.

 

So, from the tail gate of a farmer's tumbril to a railway platform to a railway van to a town milk depot.

 

My conclusion is that, if local dairies did not come into being to facilitate the long-distance supply of milk via rail, it seems most unlikely that they would exist to facilitate local distribution, which, therefore, I assume was taken more or less from the nearest cow, be it a farm herd or cows kept in towns. Pre-refrigeration (the ability to store for any length of time) or absent the need to process the milk (i.e. pasteurisation or bottling), what would you even need a local dairy for? Rather, the only necessary infrastructure would seem to be the farm's milking parlour and, perhaps, the town shop out of which the milk would be sold, but in the absence of refrigeration, a very proximate daily supply was necessary, so significant storage or processing facilities would simply not be useful and milk selling would not go via a dairy as such. 

 

It seems to me most likely that for any country town in the 1890s, like Treath-Mawr, the town milk supply would come from the farms on its outskirts. Only larger towns and cities having had town herds, which would have declined in the face of incoming milk via rail. In a rural district, the small town supply would probably have carried on much as it did pre-railway. The milk may have come in via a shop, or perhaps straight from the nearby farms.  

 

 

[WFPettigrew]

47 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Well, I think that by 1895, a rural district with access to the railway would produce milk for export to towns and cities. 

 

There is more evidence of the "exporting" of milk from rural areas in a fascinating book I stumbed across in the reserve collection of my local (Cumbria) library service: "Westmorland Agriculture 1800-1900” by Frank W Garnett MRCVS (Titus Wilson Kendal 1912).  (The particular book has stamps going back to the 1940s, and the sheet inside the front cover for date stamps goes back as far as 1966!!!)

 

This very well researched book by a local vet noted that in a typical village in Westmorland, 59% of the farmland was given over to pasture, such was the dominance of livestock farming, with sheep outnumbering cattle by about 5 or 6 to 1.   By 1900 the vastly dominant cattle breed in the county was the shorthorn, aka the dairy shorthorn (with otherwise only a few upland (belted) Galloways and one herd of pedigree Jerseys).   So the shorthorns were certainly producing milk rather than just beef. 

 

The book states that by 1890 there was a healthy traffic of milk in churns being sent to markets in Manchester, Liverpool and even London by train.  Interestingly, as the milk had to be cooled first to help it travel better/stay fresh longer, the book states that this was only done from farms which had access to running water.  

 

There was an attempt to open a butter factory in Barbon in 1886 (on the LNWR between Low Gill and Ingleton) but it closed within a year or two because of a fall in the price of butter and didn't reopen.  The LNWR was said to be taking 185 tons of butter from stations in Westmorland in 1891 - which is 3.5 tons a week, so indicative of a cottage industry from some farmhouses.  

 

The only other observation I would make is that all of this predates pasteurisation which I would suggest would have been the big driver to have a dairy selling to every home in rural as well as urban areas.  Before the Great War, and before the turn of the century, I think you are spot on James that milk from local farms that wasn't being sold off to the cities would be sold direct to customers - or taken in churns to the village stores and so sold to the local populace. 

 

All the best

 

Neil 

[Edwardian]

1 minute ago, WFPettigrew said:

 

There is more evidence of the "exporting" of milk from rural areas in a fascinating book I stumbed across in the reserve collection of my local (Cumbria) library service: "Westmorland Agriculture 1800-1900” by Frank W Garnett MRCVS (Titus Wilson Kendal 1912).  (The particular book has stamps going back to the 1940s, and the sheet inside the front cover for date stamps goes back as far as 1966!!!)

 

This very well researched book by a local vet noted that in a typical village in Westmorland, 59% of the farmland was given over to pasture, such was the dominance of livestock farming, with sheep outnumbering cattle by about 5 or 6 to 1.   By 1900 the vastly dominant cattle breed in the county was the shorthorn, aka the dairy shorthorn (with otherwise only a few upland (belted) Galloways and one herd of pedigree Jerseys).   So the shorthorns were certainly producing milk rather than just beef. 

 

The book states that by 1890 there was a healthy traffic of milk in churns being sent to markets in Manchester, Liverpool and even London by train.  Interestingly, as the milk had to be cooled first to help it travel better/stay fresh longer, the book states that this was only done from farms which had access to running water.  

 

There was an attempt to open a butter factory in Barbon in 1886 (on the LNWR between Low Gill and Ingleton) but it closed within a year or two because of a fall in the price of butter and didn't reopen.  The LNWR was said to be taking 185 tons of butter from stations in Westmorland in 1891 - which is 3.5 tons a week, so indicative of a cottage industry from some farmhouses.  

 

The only other observation I would make is that all of this predates pasteurisation which I would suggest would have been the big driver to have a dairy selling to every home in rural as well as urban areas.  Before the Great War, and before the turn of the century, I think you are spot on James that milk from local farms that wasn't being sold off to the cities would be sold direct to customers - or taken in churns to the village stores and so sold to the local populace. 

 

All the best

 

Neil 

 

Thank you, Neil, and upon re-reading my post I felt I might have unintentionally implied that delivery from a farm and deliveries around town with some species of milk float were mutually exclusive.

 

In the case of a small town (i.e. one that does not import milk long distance via rail, but has a local supply from neighbouring farms):

(a) I don't feel able to rule out the farmer delivering to a small shop in a town as a point for further distribution. Perhaps the farm needs to deliver other dairy produce to a shop, if so, why not also milk?

(b) Or, the milk may go straight from the milking parlour into cans or a churn on a delivery cart or float driven to town for door-to-door sales.

 

In this context I suggest that any "dairy" is likely to be the farm's own dairy, where some milk would be made into butter or cheese and presumably this sairy would have little or no function in relation to milk to be sold a milk.  

 

I like your point about cooling milk prior to rail transport, which was new to me, after all, it isn't that cool when it exits the cow, so perhaps once decanted into a churn it might be cooled with water for local deliveries as well, perhaps depending upon the season?  

 

I found this, likely a purpose built milk cart or float because the axle is cranked to allow the load to sit low, important in the case of churns or, perhaps, one big churn.  I can quite see something like this coming straight from a farm to a country town's streets. It has a farm vehicle look and the business is at "Down Barn, Fareham" rather than, as in the case of those often seen in large towns, from "So and So Dairy", though see point above about a farm dairy, and the float might be delivering farm dairy or creamery produce in addition to milk from the parlour. 

 

 

 

Also, here ...

 

 

.... a distressingly small picture captioned as "A horse-drawn milk cart belonging to W. Poupart, Dairy Farmers, Twickenham and Teddington"

 

While I am afraid the mention of Teddington together with milk cart takes me inevitably to the tragic ballad of Ernie, the milk float is that of a "dairy farmer"  QED?. 

 

Probably more research needed. 

 

 

 

 

[WFPettigrew]

28 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

I might have unintentionally implied that delivery from a farm and deliveries around town with some species of milk float were mutually exclusive.

I hadn't taken that from what you wrote - more that in rural areas it was more unlikely.  And as you say, the deliveries around a town/small village could have come direct from the farm. 

 

Which reminds me of the old gag - "eggs fresh from the milkman" - clearly a man of many talents.. 

 

 

[Edwardian]

Returning to the Gail Thornton site (so copyright hers), a number of examples. They might not be typical of what we're after as it is not always clear how big the town is they serve or how late the pictures are relative to 1905. 

 

 

This float is from the "Station Dairy" (the caption implies Reading), the premises can by seen in the background and look entirely urban, however, the legend on the wall reads "Dairymen and Cowkeepers", which begs the question, where are the cows kept (and milked)?

 

Here we have a scene apparently in Essex, quite possibly Clacton, showing the float and town shop premises of Coppins Hall Farm

 

 

Are we, then, seeing dairy farmers opening retail and distribution sites in towns?

 

Another urban shop premises, the otherwise mysterious Eureka Dairy

 

 

Here we are, quite possibly at the farm, likely somewhere in Nottinghamshire, not overly bold in terms of branding:

 

 

 

 

 

[Compound2632]

28 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

This float is from the "Station Dairy" (the caption implies Reading),

 

The caption states:

 

In 1890 W.Vincent, a specialist in building milk floats, advertised the Reading Milk Float as “very showy, the most compact cart made and very smart for the trade”. 

 

I read that as it being a milk float made in Reading by W. Vincent, rather than the photo actually being of a location in Reading.

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

The caption states:

 

In 1890 W.Vincent, a specialist in building milk floats, advertised the Reading Milk Float as “very showy, the most compact cart made and very smart for the trade”. 

 

I read that as it being a milk float made in Reading by W. Vincent, rather than the photo actually being of a location in Reading.

 

So did I, but, with coach building often a relatively local affair, I took the view that it might place it there or thereabouts. I would have said "the Reading area" if I'd thought more about it. Of course, a Reading specialist coach-builder might have reasonable coverage within a region, but Reading being the cosmopolitan centre of the universe, I naturally assumed it was needed there!

[Compound2632]

Just now, Edwardian said:

Reading being the cosmopolitan centre of the universe

 

'Tis that.

[Michael Crofts]

My collection of images, mostly purloined, includes these:

1. Undated, Cambridgeshire

 

2. Undated, unknown location - this and the preceding image show a can very unlike those usually seen on railway platforms.

 

3. Urban setting where of course the milkman's round was a well-established trade long before our period, but I can't resist including it

 

This is relevant  https://www.packagingnews.co.uk/features/comment/soapbox/history-of-the-world-in-52-packs-part-2-the-milk-bottle-29-07-2015#:~:text=The first glass milk bottles,hygiene standards in the industry.

and it says this: By 1975, 94% of milk was bottled, compared with only about four per cent by 2012. If that's right I think we can assume that a reasonable-sized town in our period would have had a cart taking one or more cans house-to-house from which the milk was dispensed, even if the cart had come from a farm's milking parlour rather than a dairy.

 

 

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Michael Crofts said:

 

Despite the caption, the photo is Edwardian, or late 1890s at the earliest. 

 

Is that a dead dog, or just sleeping?

[Michael Crofts]

18 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Despite the caption, the photo is Edwardian, or late 1890s at the earliest. 

 

Is that a dead dog, or just sleeping?

I struggle dating photos between about 1890 and 1919 unless they contain something definitely datable. It's easier when the subject is female and wealthy enough to follow fashion, but lower down the scale it's really hard because even in the best photos you can't see whether the clothes are 20 year old (or older) hand-me-downs or brand new.  Men's clothing hardly changed in that period so far as I can see. 

 

In the photo in question, we could perhaps date it better if we knew which street it is and when the houses were built. It would take 20 years for ivy to grow like that.

[Buhar]

My great-grandfather had (or tenanted) a farm and sold milk and butter from a float to the folk of Ardrossan/Saltcoats around the turn of the century.  He wasn't allowed to sell in the town so had to set up stall at the boundary. I don't know if he could make commercial deliveries.

 

There were excellent rail connections there but it was a dairy farming area so people probably had a choice about where they got their milk and butter. I presume the restriction on sales was related to competition.

 

Alan

[ChrisN]

This picture I posted on Traeth Mawr.  The man in the cart is from a local farm, and the lad comes from a nearby farm.

[Edwardian]

57 minutes ago, ChrisN said:

This picture I posted on Traeth Mawr.  The man in the cart is from a local farm, and the lad comes from a nearby farm.

 

Perfect, just what we both need, thanks

[Nearholmer]

I think I’m up with the subject at hand now, and that I can add a case example.

 

Small town in Sussex where I grew up. Odd history, in that the town grew from next to nothing (a pub and some livery stables at an isolated crossroads, plus scattered farms, cottages and ‘big’ houses, and a quite large church which had been built in C18th to serve a very scattered population) very quickly in the 1890-1910 period, when it was promoted as an inland health resort. It took until 1905 for it to become a separate civil parish.

 

Just at this boom moment, a local farmer spots the growing demand for milk, and he gets seriously organised. Here is the farm and a trio of milk floats:

 

 

He advertises very effectively, this one from 1911.

 

He has built for him a rather splendid high street premises, I think c1905.

 

 

He even manages to make his cows into superstars.

 

 

I could go on and trace the business through to the 1960s, but since everything here is 1905, a better float picture to end with.

 

So, I think that if any of the Achingverse towns are “on the up” in 1905, it’s exactly the right moment to transition from fairly informal milk distribution, to a proper dairy business.

 

Footnote: For the first three years of my life, we lived in a flat at the top of the big, rambling house owned by the widow of one of the “& Sons” in this farming and dairy firm. She was a wonderful old lady, formerly a great rider, and mad keen on hunting, who used to take me to “ockshuns”, where we would buy old oil paintings of horses, hunt scenes etc, oodles of which hung on a great big wall in the kitchen.

 

PS: it’s suddenly struck me that that house was a bit unusual, half farmhouse design, half Edwardian villa design, in that the kitchen clearly hadn’t been designed to operate as a semi-isolated realm of cook and “staff”. It was a huge room, with a big table in the middle, and the door into it was the main door into the house, there was no pretentious “front door”, and the kitchen functioned as the centre of the place. Yet, beyond the kitchen it was all ‘villa’, rooms with big bay windows facing onto a ‘suburban’ garden. The exterior had (still has) some features in common with the building shown above, so I guess it was built at roughly the same time, by the same builder.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 16, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

19 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I think I’m up with the subject at hand now, and that I can add a case example.

 

Small town in Sussex where I grew up. Odd history, in that the town grew from next to nothing (a pub and some livery stables at an isolated crossroads, plus scattered farms, cottages and ‘big’ houses, and a quite large church which had been built in C18th to serve a very scattered population) very quickly in the 1890-1910 period, when it was promoted as an inland health resort. It took until 1905 for it to become a separate civil parish.

 

Just at this boom moment, a local farmer spots the growing demand for milk, and he gets seriously organised. Here is the farm and a trio of milk floats:

 

 

He advertises very effectively, this one from 1911.

 

He has built for him a rather splendid high street premises, I think c1905.

 

 

He even manages to make his cows into superstars.

 

 

I could go on and trace the business through to the 1960s, but since everything here is 1905, a better float picture to end with.

 

So, I think that if any of the Achingverse towns are “on the up” in 1905, it’s exactly the right moment to transition from fairly informal milk distribution, to a proper dairy business.

 

Footnote: For the first three years of my life, we lived in a flat at the top of the big, rambling house owned by the widow of one of the “& Sons” in this farming and dairy firm. She was a wonderful old lady, formerly a great rider, and mad keen on hunting, who used to take me to “ockshuns”, where we would buy old oil paintings of horses, hunt scenes etc, oodles of which hung on a great big wall in the kitchen.

 

 

 

 

 

Serious and organised cream!

[Donw]

There was a Dairy  in Reading  at the top of London Street I think there was an entrance off London Street but also access round the back probably vehicular. I went their once. This would have been some 65 years ago. I cannot remember much details. The name Tucks sounds right. My attention mainly had been on a magnificent display in tiles of cows. I would probably have forgotten all about it except that some 25 years later. I was provided some extra lines for the Brosely Tile Museum and there was a chap working on a a tile display just like it. When he said it came from a dairy in Reading I knew it was the same one.

The photo of the cart could well be the dairy at the top end of London Street the buildings up there had a creamy stone look.

 

Don

[Edwardian]

Not, I think, suitable for West Norfolk, but nonetheless I think crying out to be modelled, here we have a large town/city high street example in the form of Wrights in the Royal Borough of Chelsea. This I picked out because it shows what might be largely concealed behind an ordinary shop-front premises in the case of a town dairy.

 

 

 

Magnificent. And here's what survived to modern times: