An interview with John Cheshire at his home in Blithbury, 6 October 2000, conducted by Sylvia Leech.
John Cheshire, now 68, was born at Hadley End, Yoxall. After 12 months the family moved to a cottage near his grandfather’s farm at Wood Lane Farm, Yoxall. His grandfather was Jack Roobottom and his mother was Emmy. His father was a mining blacksmith, working for Cannock & Rugeley Colliery at the blacksmith yard at Rawnsley, but his heart was really in farming. The family moved to Westfields Farm, Armitage (where there was an observation post during the War) and his father helped in his spare time after the days’ work or at weekends.
In August 1944 they moved to Avondale Cottage in Hill Ridware. John’s father still cycled to his job as a blacksmith. He took over Avondale Farm in March 1949. The landladies were Mrs Phillips and Miss Jones, who lived in Avondale House. It had previously been farmed by Mr Jones and then by John’s Uncle Fred, before his father took over. John started hand milking cows with his Uncle Fred when he was about 12, and he would bike over from Armitage. When John’s father took over the farm they had 20 acres and started with 10 cows, mainly shorthorns but also one Welsh Black, one South Devon, a crossbred Hereford/Shorthorn and two Ayrshires. When artificial insemination came in he went over gradually to Friesians. John’s father always milked by hand as he did not trust milking machines.
The Derry’s lived at Juxta House and Mr Derry was the undertaker, as well as a wheelwright and a carpenter. Mr Derry had a portrait of Joshua Meynell, which was given to his father as his Christmas box. He had been agent for the Meynells in Hill Ridware. When Lucy Derry packed up farming, John’s father got Derry’s Moors and the two fields by the house where the village hall now stands (one of them was called Buckhams Yard). In Lucy Derry’s old yard there is a milk churn hoist, which John’s father and Fred Derry made. She had many old estate maps from her father and grandfather, both agents for the estate.
Basil Spink, whose brother Gordon later kept the Royal Oak, was a friend of John’s. Their father worked at the potbank firing the bottle kilns and John remembers going with Basil to take him his lunch.
John remembers the South Staffs. Hunt, whose kennels were in Longdon. When he lived in Armitage, he and his friend, Frank Lewis, would run with the hounds and would get two shillings for opening the gates and taking the top rails down. Frank would give John sixpence and keep one and sixpence for himself. When the hunt met in Hill Ridware they generally gathered in Wade Lane.
Before the Froggatt family came to Hill Ridware, they farmed at what is now called Princes Farm (formerly Echills) on the Kings Bromley Road. There was an old character in Handsacre called Elijah Rushton and old Billy Froggatt (Senior) shot him up the behind because he was pinching his ducks!
John went to school in Armitage and then Rugeley Secondary Modern, now Aelfgar. He went to work at 14 for Mr Bebb at Bentley Hall Farm. He had always expected that he would start work for Mr Wilf Johnson at Church Farm, but unfortunately he moved to Whittington just before John started work. Mr Bebb had one tractor, but mainly the work was with horses. Mr Bebb’s son was killed on a motorbike at Bentley Brook, when he was in his 20s. John stayed at Bentley Hall Farm for 11 months until he was offered a better job with Mr Hugo Froggatt at Pear Tree Farm, Morrey. He cycled to work each day from Hill Ridware. He left Froggatts in 1954 and went into the Army.
At that time, Jack Woolley farmed at Quintons Orchard. There were five pits there and five pits just below on Mr Derry’s land. Wild daffodils grew there. John used to walk the footpath from Hill Ridware to Quintons Orchard to help with the thrashing at Woodhouse Farm. He was the chaff lad, which meant getting an old bran bag out and raking the chaff into it and then hauling it up to the loft. It was mixed with the mangolds, swedes and molasses as cattle feed. It was dirty and scratchy work! The men would carry 2 cwt sacks up into the loft. Old Mr Froggatt boasted that he could do it when he was in his 70s and he did, but he was in bed for two or three days afterwards!
The winter of 1946-47, when John was working for Mr Bebb, was very bad. In order to get to work he had to walk on top of the hedges. Joe Dawson, a contractor, had an International Crawler with a blade on it and he used it to open the road from Blithbury to Hill Ridware, so that the milk could get through. When the snow thawed, the river flooded badly. The water went right through the old tollgate and the people had to live upstairs. The water also came right up to Fuzzy Lane. Mr Stocker, who had a lumber yard at Rake End, had an old truck that he used to haul people through the flood in Hill Ridware. It also flooded up through Osier Bed Lane onto the King Bromley Road. There was an old man who lived in a shack beside the river down Osier Bed Lane and the flood washed his house away. His name was Herbert Dawkin, but he was always called Judy Dawkin, and he was a Boer War veteran. He used to roam around Armitage with an old pram that he could collect old junk in. After the floods, he dried himself out, rebuilt his shack and lived there for many more years.
The osier beds were located down past Osier Bed Cottage and also on the island in the river. A Mr Croxall (Cyril Croxall’s uncle) used to cut them. The osiers were used for thatch pegs and for thatching. Hugo and Billy Froggatt (Junior) had the Trent meadows at Kings Bromley, down by Yoxall Bridge and John would help cut the willows there. They were used for thatch pegs and splitting up for fencing rails. The willows were chopped down to 6-8 feet high and would sprout up again.
Lots of things were delivered by bus in those days, including his mum’s chickens! When John first moved to Hill Ridware, the only shop was Mrs West’s at the blacksmiths – she sold sweets and a few odd things. The shop opposite the Chad had closed. Mrs Woodvine had the post office on the corner of Wade Lane. All staples were bought in Rugeley – either carried home in bags or delivered by the shop.
John remembers the blacksmith shop at Hill Ridware. They used to go and pump the bellows for Mr Horace West. When there weren’t so many horses to be shod, Mr West went to work at Edward Johns, the potbank, as a smith. At the Hill Ridware shop they also had petrol pumps and he made ice cream.
When John was growing up the job opportunities for young lads were farming, mining, the tannery at Rugeley and the potbank. But the last two were hard to get, as it was mainly families.
For entertainment John and his friends would go cycling, or go to the pictures in Rugeley (the Plaza) or Lichfield (the Regal) and, once they were 18, they went drinking, playing darts, etc. They drank at the Royal Oak or the Chadwick Arms. There was also a youth club in the village. Mrs Ravenscroft, who lived at the Old Hall, Mavesyn Ridware, was the leader and they met in the old school. In the summer they would play football and cricket at Mr Ravenscroft’s. The Ravenscrofts were the owners of Ravenscroft Dairies in Birmingham.
Mrs Godwin, a widow, lived in the Old Rectory, Mavesyn Ridware. She used to take lodgers in. John used to go with her nephew, Derek Brown, to the house and he remembers the row of bells hanging along the wall where the people used to ring for the servants.
John learned to swim in the river at Mill Meadows. Mr Samuels of Armitage, who had been a PTI instructor in the First World War, taught them. He remembers seeing a few sandstones and foundations of the mill, but it was very dilapidated. On the river there lots of water hens and no end of water rats. The used to go fishing with bent pins and catch minnows. There was water in the mill stream at that time. Mr Ravenscroft had it dug out so that his son could have a boat on it.
John remembers an old character named Major Bates who lived up in The Yard (properly called Border Square), Rake End. He was the local poacher. He used to get drunk and lie down on the footpath.
John stayed in the army for three years and then came out because his father’s health was failing. When he married they lived at Hints, but they then got a council house in Blithbury and he went to work for Mrs Bebb. Mr Bebb had died by then and the farm was run by Frank Arthur. Things went downhill and Mrs Bebb sold up and John went to work for Tony Bennett at Woodhouse Farm.
The milk was collected by Sunleys, who were based down at the old Ralph Gee garage in Rugeley, later Richards’ Garage on the Wolseley Road. Later the Milk Marketing Board collected the milk with their churn wagons. It was when John was working for Tony Bennet at Woodhouse Farm, in the mid-1960s, that they went over to tankers. Initially they bought and sold cattle at Rugeley Market, where Mr Brown Senior, followed by Mr Brown Junior, were the auctioneers. Jack Billman’s cattle lorries of Handsacre transported the cattle.
John’s wife, Jill, came to Hill Ridware when her father came to work at Geoff Parrott’s at Mavesyn Ridware. They were given one of the new council houses opposite the school, some of which had been allocated for agricultural workers. Jill became friends with John’s sister Pat and that was how they got to know one another, but it was years later, after she had been all over the country as a nanny, that they married. Her first job was with John Woolley and his wife at Quintons Orchard, and then she worked for the doctor at Yoxall. She used to see John cycling to work at Morrey as she cycled to Yoxall. She wanted to get married at Canwell, because she grew up and went to school there. By a coincidence, the rectors of Canwell (Mr Powell) and Mavesyn (Mr Rogers) were friends, so they had the two vicars marry them. When John was about to enter the church Dewi Rogers said to him, ‘well, John, it’s your last chance to run now if you want to!’ Dewi Rogers and his wife helped them out in the winter of 1962-3, when they got frozen up with a small baby. Mrs Rogers did all their washing for them.
The bungalow on the bad bend across from the Oak, now boarded up, was formerly a house called The Cottage. It was owned by old Mr Webster, the builder. His two sons, Harry and Cyril, lived there. They took the top storey off and made it into a bungalow. Mr Webster built many of the council houses in Hill Ridware and many houses in Armitage.
John Cheshire eventually left farming and went to work for the Highways Department of Staffordshire County Council as a maintenance and reconstruction foreman.