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In 1348, Edward the Third appointed agents to buy wool in Craven. They ‘took from Walter Bateman of Setle four stones of wool of the price of 9s 9d., and from

Alan Tollere of Setill four stones of wool of the price 9s 9d’.

Patent Rolls 12 June 1348.

Alec and Robert Towler are breeding sheep and selling wool in Langcliffe today.

Farming

Alec keeps five hundred breeding sheep, plus lambs and twenty five breeding cows, plus calves. The sheep are Swaledales and the cattle Hereford Cross Cows. It’s hard work, it’s not a nine-to-five job, but it’s interesting. The younger generations of the family are preparing to follow on.

This is the broad outline of his farming year:

Walling and fencing all the year round – weather permitting

Feeding cattle and sheep December to May

Lambing in April and May, calving in May and June

Making silage, dosing and hay in June and July

Dosing and shearing in August

Selling some lambs in September and October

Selling calves in October and November

Put rams to sheep and dose and dip in November

I get up at seven to eight o’clock, have my breakfast, feed the dog, help Dad feed the hens and go down to the buildings . We feed the cows on The Heights. We feed the cows first then the sheep. I’ve got thirty four sheep. I do them on the quad bike. I help Dad with his sheep. He called one sheep Carla; it had curly horns. I do the East End sheep and the top of Big close. We have dinner at twelve o’clock. After dinner we do walling and mending fences. Mum works inside and makes the dinner. She looks after Philip who is one and a half. He sleeps half the morning. My brother Andrew is six – he comes with us sometimes.

I have a friend, Jack, who lives on a farm and my Grandad lives at Limestone Farm. I like the farm because it has big buildings to play in and space for football. I like playing on the quad bike and riding my own motor bike – the engine’s 80cc – down the track. The track to the farm is one and a half miles long.

I’m not allowed battery toys or remote controlled toys. We are not on mains electricity. The windmill generates electricity and we have a generator and heavy batteries.

Haytime and lambing are best. We mow the grass and make silo bales and put them in our building. Aunties and uncles and friends from around come and help. I like it afterwards when we all have a big meal – feeding the workers! Just before haymaking, we get everything out to check it. I get to look inside the machines. It’s nice and sunny and I like seeing all the tractors working at once.

Before lambing, we get all the bits and build pens. I can use my new penknife to cut the string. We have one pen each with one sheep and its lambs in it. I like carting sheep in the trailer with the motorbike. If the new born lambs are really poorly we put them on a bag in the bottom of the oven – it’s only cool andleave the door open. It warms them up.

It’s boring when it’s wet. I don’t like it much when it snows. It’s fun for a bit but there’s drifts. There’s really more snow up here.It stops you getting out and going to Karate – but it’s O K if I miss school!

I think my favourite things are haymaking and feeding the sheep on my bike. I want to be a farmer – on this farm. I want my friend Jack to help.

Married ten and a half years to Stephen, I moved to Middle House nine years ago. It’s totally different to living in a village; it’s very isolated and quite lonely at times with no next door neighbours to talk to. It’s lovely at Middle House when the weather’s nice. The winters haven’t been too bad in the last nine years but I always have a spare box of food for emergencies just in case we are snowed in for a few days. We still have no mains electricity at Middle House. We have a generator, battery electricity and a wind turbine. This means we can now have things like a fridge and microwave ,which wasn’t the case a few years ago when there was just the generator and candles.

Living with a husband and three boys, I am a bit outnumbered and don’t often get to do ‘girly things’, like wearing a skirt ; and I can’t remember when I last wore high heel shoes. No, I’m afraid for the last nine years, it’s been jeans and wellies or ‘muck clothes’ as we call them.

Farming is not a nine to five job, which has both good and bad points. It means, on the good side, that we are fairly flexible and as long as animals are fed and ,‘nothing’s taking any fault’ as Stephen puts it, we can have a few hours off. On the bad side, we can never just ‘take off’ and go away for a night or two without making a lot of arrangements for the farm animals to be fed and looked after. Lambing time is the hardest time, for the children especially, as there is simply no leisure time at all. It’s an early start and we’re out till dark most nights and lots of losing our tempers in between. We usually manage a holiday around the beginning of June to give the kids a bit of fun and then, usually, it’s straight back to haytime , siloing and clipping!

Jackie Towler.

Edith Carr describes one of the many tasks that had to be done by hand sixty years ago.

"At Capon Hall we had 70 cows. Most of the milk, I made into butter. I put it into slate troughs. You had a skillet to scrape the cream off the top and into a pot.You let the other milk go through a hole and you fed that to the calves and pigs. I had an ‘end over end’ churn. It made twenty eight pounds of butter. Sometimes I had to churn twice in a day – it took some doing. You had to get your cream to a certain temperature. If the cream was cold, it wouldn’t ‘turn’. I set it to warm by the fire. While that was doing, you had to see to the scalding of your churn with lots of boiling water. You scalded your butter bowl and all your pats and all your slates. When the cream got nicely warm, you put it in your churn. If you were lucky it took about twenty five minutes. Sometimes, if it were cold, you could go on and on – it wouldn’t turn! You’d put a bit of boiling water in and then churn it the opposite way and then it might ‘gather’. Then it starts "bump,bump, bump" this big lump of butter. Then you let your buttermilk out of the churn. Then you have to wash the churn with three lots of water and turn the churn, letting the buttermilk out. Once again you scald your big board and immediately throw cold water on it to stop the butter sticking. You start working it and turning it this way and that. All the buttermilk squeezes out and you can make the butter up into pounds. We sold our butter at Settle,it used to be one shilling and threepence a pound. It was really good!"

Edith Carr

Margaret Robinson remembers farming at Westside House in the late thirties and early forties.

" My parents, William and Jane Hoyle, farmed at Westside House which is about three and a half miles above Langcliffe on Malham Moor. They had two farm men and a servant girl who all lived in at the farm. Everything was done by hand, like, milking the cows and cleaning the shippons out. In the winter the cows had to be let out to the water troughs and then all tied up again. Durung a snowstorm, a track had to be cut by shovels to get to the barns. Every morning and night the milk was brought into the kitchen and separated by a machine to take the cream from the milk. Once a week the cream was made into butter and taken to Settle market along with the eggs. Mother used to pick watercress at spring in the field and tie it in bunches to be sold at the greengrocer’s in Settle. The only transport was a horse and trap. Before motorised transport, all the coal was brought from Settle by horse and cart, hard going for the horses up Cow Close out of Langcliffe. During the winter nights everyone helped to peg rag rugs for the floors – all sitting round a big frame. There was great excitement when we got a wireless – mostly to listen to the news. At Christmas, we went round to neighbouring farms by horse and trap to play cards – coming home in the early hours of the morning. On Christmas Day, the Settle and Giggleswick band used to walk round the farms playing carols. The postman left the letters in a box in the wall about a mile from the farm. If he had any letters he would he would put up a piece of tin painted white on top of the wall and someone from the farm collected them. A whistle was blown to call everyone when meals were ready as no one had a watch in those days. We did not need a lot of shopping as we had our own bacon, eggs, milk, rabbits, butter and lard. The flour was bought in ten stone bags and yeast was bought for breadmaking. We had to walk three miles to Stainforth School – starting when we were five years old".

Hope Hill, Pike Lane. Owned and worked by Jim Capstick until the early 1930’s then land rented to Lornie and Arthur Towler. Farmhouse occupied by Alec Capstick until sold as a private house.

Paley’s Farm. Originally the Paley family farm, becoming part of the Langcliffe Hall estate in the mid/late 19^th C. Rented and worked by L. and A. Towler until approximately 1950. They lived in the cottages known as Paley’s cottages behind the flagpole. Present Paley’s Farm built by Dawsons and farmed by Wm. (Billy) Towler until taken over by A.S.Towler, approximately 1980.

Mount Pleasant. Originally the Lawson family farm. Owned by the Preston family until 1980. Farmed by Ray Parker until approximately 1900, then Jim Pratt 1915-1925. Succeeeded by Edward (Ted) Robinson until 1935 when Walter Clark took over, being followed by his son John R. Clark until he ceased in 1985. This was the last dairy farm in the village.

Manor Farm. The family house was built in 1678 by Leonard Carr. The property passed from his nephew William Carr in 1747 and after various ownerships it passed to Thomas Paley, half in 1775 and the other half in 1783. After Thomas died the property passed to George, then John Green Paley, George Barber Paley, John and finally George Arthur Paley. Since about 1840 the farm was leased to tenants. In 1920 George Arthur Paley sold the farm and house to Henry Dugdale for £3250. The farm was run by Robert (Bob) Sutton 1900-1945, (who was married to Louie, Henry Dugdale’s daughter), then Norman Forster, father and son until 1962. They were followed by William Towler, then (Lord) John Towler until about 1980 when it became a private house.

Barrel Sykes Farm. In 1692 William Tailor of ‘Barrel Sikes’ is noted as entering Christ’s Colleg Cambridge on a scholarship from Gigghleswick School. Much later the farm was owned by Langcliffe Hall Estate. Alec Jackson, father and son to about 1948, then Fred Bullock to 1974. He was followed by Richard Pollard until 1983 when the land was rented off, partly to Richard Hargreaves of Horton and the house used as a private dwelling.

Cowside Farm. Owned and farmed by the Hunter family from the 19^th C to 1965 when on the death of the last farming Hunter it passed to Kenneth Robinson.

Winskill Farms. In 1591 Nicholas Darcy and Henry Billingsley sold 7 messuages and land at Winskill and Cowside in the tenure of the Foster family (five of them), Christopher Lawson, Henry Paycocke and Michael Saylebanke. The farms consisted of High, Middle and Low Winskill. At the turn of the 20^th C, High Winskill was farmed by Umph Hannam. At some point a cow caught anthrax and was eaten by the then farmer and his wife who both died and the farm was abandoned.

Lower Winskill Farm. In the middle of the 19^th C was farmed by the Twisleton family (of poetry fame). They were succeeded by Jim Lowther and the Sharpe family. When they failed it was bought along with the others by Ernest Forster of Stainforth and leased to his brother, N. Forster Senior (of Manor Farm). later a Middleton farmed here and on his leaving the land was leased off and the house used as a holiday cottage until the farm was taken in hand again by Ernest Forster’s grandson Thomas Lord.

Middle Winskill Farm. Little is known at present of this farm.

Hall Farm. Owned by Langcliffe Hall estate and now occupied by Mrs Hoggarth. Was farmed by the Jackman family around 1900 (see Middleton family).

John R. Clark, Dorothy Robinson, Doreen Welch.

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