CD1

(59 mins)
 

1/1

FAMILY / FORTESCUE ESTATE

Recorded at Stable Flat, Simonsbath, 29 April 1998.

Stan Curtis was born at Cloven Rocks cottage mile from Simonsbath September 4^th 1927. Parents in agriculture all their lives Mother farmer's daughter. Father had hard upbringing in large family from Dulverton.

He married and came to work on Exmoor on Fortescue Estate, largest estate, as horseman. He worked there from 1950. It was about 24,000 acres [20,000 acres, plus Badgworthy, rented from Badgworthy Land Co]. Estate contained parts of Challacombe and Brendon villages and farms bought from the Knights. Originally was part of Knight's estate. Knights came from Worcester to reclaim Exmoor, for mining, grazing. Most projects a failure. Knights were before their day. Fortescue Estate now concentrated at Castle Hill and Filleigh.

He had two sisters and a brother, SC was the eldest.One sister now invalid at Porlock with arthritis. Brother shepherding at Worcester with Holland Martin family. Youngest sister at Cutcombe. He lived at Simonsbath all life, oldest person born and bred there. [Back to top]
 

1/2

EXTON AND SIMONSBATH SCHOOLS

Listen to an audio clip from this track by clicking wma or mp3.
(Click here for information about downloading audio clips)

SC went to school in Simonsbath but started at Exton, when mother and father lived at Wick Cottage. Came home to Simonsbath, and went to school from Winstitchen because mother's parents [Jones] were farming at Gallon House. Granny took in visitors, mother helped. Only eldest sister went to Exton school. brother born 1935, then they were back in Simonsbath.

It was a long walk to Exton school [tells story of playing truant on day of doctor's or dentist's visit.] They had regular visits from doctor, dentist and health visitor to look for head lice and nits.

Still in contact with boys from Exton school, Don Rawle, a farmer, Freddy and Frank Rawle, brothers, who had a double saddle on pony, single saddle with two seats, and the Bawdens, from PO in Bridgetown. Same thing applied at Simonsbath, when they came back to Exmoor. The ponies were kept at the school. [At Exton, they were kept at Red Door Farm, opposite school.] Derek Manley, Dulverton farmer now, also rode pony. George Thorne, farming at Sandyway, used to ride a pony from Emmett's Grange. Jack Buckingham was out at Pinkery, rode bicycle.

They walked from Driver Cott, three miles each way, carrying dinner. Very often the bigger boys would eat your dinner when they went away to the toilet, out in the school yard [as the lunch bags would be hanging up nearby]. So when dinner time came you hadn't got any. No, there wasn't bullying,  but there were fights. Best man won. It was hard luck if someone ate his dinner; he'd try to get someone else's!

School empty on fox-hunting day. He didn't hunt, but it was an excuse to get out and watch hounds. Teachers accepted it.

The numbers went up to about forty at school. They were lucky with dear old teacher. It was before school meals. Mrs Walker used to cook up a meal, not regular. Veg from school garden were grown by older children. She bought the meat. Her son's now at Chewton Mendips, Brian Walker, well known artist.SC Still in touch with him. Mrs W kept her cigarettes up the leg of her drawers. She smoked in class. They had great respect for her.

He thinks it stopped being a school twenty years ago. School building has altered little. There was a tortoiseshell fire for heating. It was bought by North Somerset for Field Study Centre, then Avon. Quite a lot goes on over there, parties come most weekends. [Back to top]
 

1/3

MINEHEAD HOSPITAL / FINANCES / LODGER / FOOD FOR THE TABLE

At end of schooling SC started woodcraft [tells story about injury to foot from dropping vice.] He ended up with diseased bone, twelve months in hospital. There was no National Health Service. Being poor, the family were stuck.

There was good management at school. The educational people took no responsibility. School management kept writing letters. Then Somerset paid for a car to be hired. He still has documents for charges. His mother could go from Driver Cott, where they were living, to Minehead Hospital for about £1.20. That was twenty-three miles each way. He has bills from Mr Walker, Mrs Elsworthy at Exmoor Forest Hotel, Gordon Potter at Challacombe PO - they did car hire. In hospital for year and three days. He was twelve. It was like home to him. Nurses took him out in car, like mascot. Had three operations. Eventually they took out bone and put in silver plates. He was terribly lonely.

It was a worrying time for the family, having no money. Mother and father had a few operations, three other children to keep, no overtime. They worked all through the harvest, got small cheque at end of it.

He doesn't know how they managed with him in hospital. His father's wage, back then, wouldn't have been £4 a week. So got lodger, old Walter Harris, who had done his time in military, then homeless. He was a good rabbiter, went on Titchcombe Plain. He'd catch meal of trout or salmon. They had no fridge. His mother cut them and put them in salt. His mother kept a bit of poultry. A lot of cottagers kept a pig, and one would give you a bit. They seemed to live well, were never hungry. [Back to top]
 

1/4

HONEYMEAD ESTATE / DAIRY /  WAR / PLOUGHING

Listen to an audio clip from this track by clicking wma or mp3.
(Click here for information about downloading audio clips)

He thinks he was luckiest man on Exmoor because when he came out of hospital Mr Perry, farm manager for Sir Robert Whaley-Cohen at Honeymead, gave him a job. They were just building up herd. He wasn't fourteen. He went to work in dairy with two girls milking. Paid £1 7s 6d a week. He paid £1 of that for lodging. He stayed eight years. When he went there, there were four men and two girls. When he left there were forty-three on payroll. Sir Robert bought anything he liked. Estate was under a thousand acres. Sir R grew a lot of potatoes. He went to a lot of shows and bought new machinery. In a lot of cases it wasn't any good on Exmoor.

SC didn't work in dairy for long because Sir R mechanised it, even had a lorry to Minehead. SC went on tractors until he went to Fortescue Estate. He did all sorts of cultivation. Sir R was first man to have power driven binder for cutting corn, most were driven by the wheels. At one time there was the War Agricultural Committee, attached to machinery side, they had thirteen tractors plus Sir R's tractors at Honeymead.

When war broke out there was only the big house and little bungalows for grooms, then he built on houses. Today most houses are let out. The farm is let. Lady Cohen still keeps big house. There were subsidies on everything because of war, even if you didn't harvest it. There was hundreds of acres of potatoes and grain, but if the season wasn't right it was no good. Taking grain to dry it was too expensive.

Sir R had a wonderful flock of Exmoor sheep, SC's wife's uncle looked after them later. They won a lot of prizes. Later the dairy died down. Possibly too many horses came on the place; hunting was drawing from it, with all the horses about. Eventually bits got let off. Now all of it's let off. But there's a good fellow farming it now. SC thinks it was a pity to plough up the big estates, although he ploughed up Honeymead Allotment because of the war, he was ignorant at the time of the damage done. There was a hundred acres of heather on Honeymead Allotment and fifty or sixty acres next door at Elsworthy Allotment. They burnt the heather first then ploughed a single furrow with a Wilmot's plough, two foot wide and 9-12 inches deep, turned over flat, drawn by a Standard Fordson's tractor. Honeymead Allotment was 13,000 feet above sea level, peaty soil, it was too wet. [Back to top]
 

1/5

FORTESCUE / HORSES / TENANTS / PAYDAY / SIZE

Listen to an audio clip by clicking wma or mp3.
(Click here for information about downloading audio clips)

SC wanted to get back to the Fortescue Estate so he approached John Purchase (the manager), who said he didn't poach [workmen] from one estate to another. He said that if SC worked somewhere else for two years he would take him on. So SC did piecework, fencing. The last twelve months he did a car hire business for Mr Watts in the village. He came back to Fortescue, driving horses; big step down after tractors. Now he 's pleased he did it because not many people have worked with all combinations of horses. He came back to Fortescue Aug. 6^th 1950. Mr Purchase gave him £4 10s a week, which was ten bob more than the rest as he came from Honeymead. Fortescue was twenty years behind everyone else doing everything with horses.

At that time his father was still working for Fortescue Estate on the Badgworthy herding. Now it belongs to Badgworthy Land Co. Father picked up £4 a week. You got paid every fortnight on Monday night at half past seven. They rushed down to get there before the shepherds, so they wouldn't be kept waiting. It wasn't clever to be going home late on a winter's night.

He was head boy on rent day when all the tenant farmers came in to little office. He cut off the ham and piece of bread. They had a jug of beer and ham sandwich as they paid rent. Horses were tied up all round.                    

Fortescue let off part of the land. When SC came in 1950 it was 24,000 acres [including Badgworthy], all the farms built up by Knights. Horsen farm, Wintershead, Warren, Pinkery, Driver, were all tenants. Head man was Mr George Smythe Richards. His son took over, he's probably around today. [Back to top]
 

1/6

LORD AND LADY FORTESCUE

He can remember several wonderful little things from the Fortescue estate, from the management side. Every other Monday Lord and Lady Fortescue, that was the fifth Earl, would come out to Simonsbath and meet up with the manager and ride round the stock. Looked at just the Exmoor bit. Groom came early with horses. Lady F was riding side-saddle. Later on SC worked for Lady F's daughter, Lady Margaret, who also rode side-saddle, although she rides astride now. He also worked for the Countess of Arran, Lady Margaret's daughter. Three generations in all. She [Countess of Arran] thinks the world of them [Stan and his wife Millie], and they do of her. Lord F would have worn a hacking jacket and breeches; Lady F was all in black with a veil. She was genuinely interested. They often came out walking in the valley above Simonsbath. SC's grandfather, Granfer Dick, would brush the paths the morning they were coming out. [tells story of lit pipe in pocket].

He would sweep great lengths of footpath because the valley [walk] ran half a mile up the valley, across a little stream and down the other side.Other side all grown over, now but still pretty walk down this side, beside the water carriage, which still feeds two hotels and all cottages on that side of the village. The rest of the water is fed by hydro ram on the Barnstaple road. [Back to top]
 

1/7

FORTESCUE / EXMOOR PARISH / ENP / OLD DAYS / DIARIES / CATTLE / SNOW

SC said that Fortescue way of farming was behind the Honeymead way, which was why they were still using horses. In 1950 they had one Standard Fordson tractor driven by Jack Buckingham. He would do the ploughing there [at Simonsbath] and all the Castle Hill Estate, also Fortescue's. The rest would have been done by horses. It was 1953 posibly before they had mowing machines. They were still loading grass by hand well into the fifties, hauling it with anything that had got wheels on, trailers, horses and carts, an ex-army ambulance. There were hayricks all over. Eventually they all went.

Fortescues didn't plough up the moorland. Quite recently they were going to plant 1,000 acres on the Chains with conifers. They even put pegs in down Barle valley. Then it was squashed. He thinks that a very good thing.

The boundary of land that Knights bought from the Royal Forest runs more or less same as the parish boundary. He gets annoyed, because he loves Exmoor, when he sees a sign in Minehead saying 'The Gateway to Exmoor'. He loves the Exmoor parish signs. Exmoor National Park [Authority] was the saviour of Exmoor. They look after everything. They have a good arrangement with the new estate owners. There's no over grazing, plant life is the same. Exmoor should stay as it is.

When he started work you weren't allowed to drink alcohol when working. Between 1950, when he started, and 1953, when he got married (in this house where he is now), he'd got working horses living underneath him. Where Boveys Cafe is now is where he used to turn all the horses in for a feed before they went to work. Back then he did jobs you wouldn't hear about today. When he started work he started a diary. He's got a box with forty-two diaries in it. He could pitch on any day and tell you what he was doing. He used to thatch ricks. No one round here does it any more. Spreading dung was another thing. You used to take it out put it in heaps then spread it with a dung fork. Thatching was done with rushes you cut with a scythe, it wasn't reeds.

Fortescues never did much with corn. They had a lot of good Cheviot sheep from Scotland, a hardy breed, not a high lambing percentage, but they lived. They had Galloway herd of cattle crossed with Hereford bull. They bred black or brown and white. They still kept forty pure bred Galloways, keeping bulls to keep them straight. As years went on housewives ruled the roost and they didn't want anything with fat on, so they brought in a white short horn bull which bred a blue roan cow. Charolais bull came on but it was a nuisance, because it was too big. Gave the cows calving problems. A Limousin bull took over. You could sell the calves, because they weren't too fat. They brought in black-faced cross Border Leicesters sheep, which worked for a while, but if the weather was bad they couldn't face the cold, because they hadn't got much wool on them. Chaps round there were saying that the snow was ridiculous last Easter, but he turned out his diary for 11^th- 13^th April 1966, when he was digging out lambs on the Titscombe herding. He remembers snow at Easter more times than they've had at Christmas. [Back to top]
 

1/8

ESTATE LAND / SAWMILL ELECTRICITY / MARRIAGE / STABLE FLAT / TRADESMEN

The only involvement he had with cattle was if there was any testing for TB or drenching. He also got involved with tractor work at Castle Hill, the other part of the Fortescue Estate. They were run jointly, they sent all their men here [Simonsbath] They had more stock here, so they needed much more feed. They were getting their dairies together at Castle Hill, and getting three crops therel. They tried two crops here [on the Exmoor estate] but it wasn't any good because it cut up the field too much. The new grass was too late, it was not quick enough to get lambs on it.

Horses were used for hauling hay. They had got Larkbarrow and Tom's Hill with a shepherd, and Hoaroak and Badgworthy. It was all cart work. There wasn't much fertiliser used then, just bit of nitro-chalk sown out of back of cart with saucer in each hand. It came in 1-2 hundredweight bags, super-phosphate. Now, it comes in half-hundred weight bags!

There was a separate division for woodland work down at Castle Hill with their own sawmills. Any woodland work this end, which was very small, was done from there. They did have their own saw mills here, National Park own it now. There were two or three little plantations in different valleys here. Any fallen timber would be sawn back and used for repairs, shed doors and rough carpentry.

Simonsbath mills made a lot of stakes in an old creosote tank. SC split fence stakes and pickled them. Today National Park don't recognise creosote as safe because trace of organo-phosphate in it. Sawmills back then wasn't an every day job. Two carpenters were employed there for house repairs. If it was a wet day some farm men would cut up logs, from old timber, for a job in the dry.

There's a lot of history to the mill. SC thinks it was rebuilt in 1897 because Fortescue agent thought it unsafe. They fixed a water-turbine to old Knight's mill. There's a leat goes up from the sawmills up the valley 800 metres. picks up with Lime Combe water and the Bale water across the valley and picks up river Barle. After 1952 flood, leat between river Barle and weir of two smaller rivers,was washed away. Mill was run for a while with farm tractor, but unsatisfactory. 1953 they put in 40 horsepower diesel engine. SC stopped by every week to keep it in order until National Park [Authority] took it on. Engine still there, running perfectly. He's looking forward to the project [restoring mill]. Parks people have had it all inspected and know exactly cost to get it working. In 1991, just before his retirement, National Park bought four and half thousand acres of moorland from Fortescue Estate on south side of river. They said that SC was part of deal, to look after it and keep in contact with National Park.

The National Park had already got a vast area on north side of river, because of Lord and Lady Fortescue dying within a week of one another in 1958, which brought a lot of death duties. Luckily National Parks raised money and bought Larkbarrow, and Tom's Hill. Badgworthy, adjoining, still belongs to Badgworthy Land Company. They left strip up the middle belonging to Fortescue Estate. When the four and half thousand acres were sold, the National Park had the option to buy strip up the middle, which was Simonsbath sawmills and 28 acres of water meadow, with extraordinary plant life. With help they bought it, hoping to do final phase of getting it all going again. [Back to top]
 

1/9

SAWMILL / ELECTRICITY / MARRIAGE /  STABLE FLAT / TRADESMEN

They used to have two saws [in the mill]. He was on the farm, but went back there in wet weather or if they were busy. They generated electricity on a 110 volt system, for a good  half of the village. His house had electricity when he got married in 1953 but he wasn't allowed to use three bulbs at a time, because electricity was off batteries, which had to be charged and put back again. They had 200 glass batteries. They smelt so badly because of the gas coming off them. The village had lights, but the workmen were restricted in their use. They used to light the vicarage, Simonsbath House Hotel, his house with working horses underneath, the groom's house, one above, and the farm manager's house one above that.

He met his wife, Millie, when they went to school together [tells story of Millie's mother saying it would save a lot of running about if they got married.] They had £175 to get married on. Millie was twenty-one on the 14^th August. They got married on the 15^th. They went to Taunton to buy housefull of furniture at Porters. He didn't have any say in what they bought! They bought two kitchen chairs. His brother bought two the same. They had no money left when they got home so there was no money for petrol for the motorbike for a week.

He was living with his parents at the time, at Blackpitts, where his father was a shepherd for Badgworthy. Millie was working for Exmoor Stores in Exford, where she worked for most of her working life, with Douglas Batcheleor. He was another marvellous man. During the hard winters he had a gang of men and walked with groceries 8-9 mile each way from Exford to Driver Cott. He brought tea-fish. It was hard as a piece of board. It was 18 inches long, one inch wide dried fish. You tied it to a stick in the river for two or three days to get it pliable. Butcher came from North Molton on Wednesday night, Ken Warren, with handful of pig's liver or couple of chops. Then he'd come with joint on Friday night. They could only afford £1's worth. He couldn't remember how they lived rest of week, perhaps catch a rabbit or two. They grew their own vegetables. Everyone depended on everyone else then. If you visited you took along a few cakes or something. [Back to top]