Rural workers

Workman posing by a stationary engine on a cart which is powering a circular saw. Logs are piled ready for cutting. Another man stands beside a horse with a cart loaded with logs. Brushwood is stacked in large tidy blocks. The use of machinery belies the fact that this work was still hard and back-breaking.

An evocative image, looking east towards Wasdale and the Scafell Massif. There's a horse and cart in the ploughed field in the foreground, and a man with a shovel on the cart unloading manure or seaweed. There is a village in the background, yet this photograph also conjures up the of isolation and hardship of farming.

A large circular stone built windmill with a girl posing in the field in front. A horse can be seen between the barn and the front of the miller's house. There is a balcony encircling the mill above the ground floor. This was a mainstay for the rural community it served; the miller would grind and bag the farmers' produce. Many communities had multiple mills driven by wind or water.

REFERENCES

The cap and sails of Preesall Windmill were removed after a 1926 storm.

Looking south at a thatched cottage, beside the slipway at the end of Ravenglass village. 'The Old Thack' no longer exists; this image shows the thatched roof is wearing thin. Joe Farren with side whiskers, cap and stick leans on the wall, his dog beside him. On the left is his cart with his surname painted on the side. The Esk estuary is beyond. Joe, born in the mid 1860s, was a boatman and a fisherman.

Looking west from the fields at Bardsea Hall, which was demolished 1927. There are greenhouses to the right, with trees behind. In front a field of corn stooks stand ready for collection. The grain is drying in the sun after being harvested by a horse-drawn reaper binder and ‘stooked’ by hand – a far cry from today’s heavy tractors and huge black plastic silage bags.

View west along Smithybrow Lane down the hill, with Muncaster Fell in the background. A shepherd, wearing plus-fours and a cap, carrying a stick - and directing his border collie - are driving a flock of fifty or so sheep through the village. Beyond is a small house with a wooden porch and the larger house of Rock How set back from the road.

REFERENCES

This image has been used in an pre-photoshop edited version - see image E308AX.

The image shows two workmen filling in potholes in a country lane. Both wear waistcoats, shirts and flat hats. One is bending as if touching his toes, the other is squatting. They have trowels and a bucket. This looks an easy enough job, but this was just a small part of much harder work these labourers did.

One of a series of images of the first Fordson Tractor introduced in 1917 (notice the starting handle at the front) this shows the machine pulling a plough across a field of stubble. The soil was heavy; the wheels are clogged with mud. Viewed from the front, it shows the driver, possibly the proud owner, wearing a three-piece suit and a trilby hat. The location is not known, but probably in the Barrow-in-Furness area.

REFERENCES

https://www.anglo-agriparts.com/fordson-tractors-history

Two horse drawn wagons stand one in front of the other in rough grassland, next to a stack of dried peat blocks. Three men and a woman are loading the wagons with the peat. A wooden wheelbarrow is also laden with peat. Peat was cut from the mosses and dried into hard blocks to provide fuel in the countryside. It was yet another back-breaking, but essential job on the farming calendar.

Looking Southwest in Oxen Park. A blacksmith is shoeing a horse at the roadside outside the smithy, while a second man, just visible in the doorway, is looking on and possibly holding the horse’s tether. The smith is nailing the shoe and has a portable tool box at his feet. Pile of discarded horseshoes and a rolling machine are outside the smithy. Wheel rims and wheels rest against the wall opposite.

A scene in a quarry where a worker with a flat cap, and in shirt sleeves, stands on a debris-strewn ledge, some three metres above the quarry floor. Hands on hip, he is watching a colleague working, bent over a rake. To the right, large pieces of rock have fallen to the ground while the ghostly figure of a worker in a hat moves into the lower left corner of the image. A short length of narrow-gauge rail track lies behind him and a recent fall of rocks lies against the quarry face.

A smiling workman sits posed on the stones in the sunshine in a small quarry. He is wearing hobnail boots and his trousers are bound just below the knee. He has a fine array of equipment: wooden wheelbarrow, pickaxe, shovel, a couple of hammers and a crowbar.

The image shows a group of men, surrounded by rock, attempting to move a large boulder; other men look on, waiting to lend a hand if needed. The title suggests the men are trying to rescue a stuck terrier. It's a dynamic image: the strain of trying to move the rock is clear in the face of the man without a cap, and in the movement those others helping him

Looking south in Watendlath. A flock of sheep approach across the bridge followed by a man and dog. Another flock approaches from the left. Hens saunter round in the foreground.

A woman hand feeds a lamb with a bottle as four others cluster around her; she pets one of them. She wears a felt hat and clogs. A jug stands by her feet. Catalogued as Buttermere, but not verifiable.

Looking from Birks Bridge upstream along the River Duddon. On the right a man attempts to lasso a lamb from the beckside rocks, watched by a man on the opposite bank. Like the photograph of the terrier rescue, here the photographer captures one of the many small dramas that happened in a farmer's life.

A view northwest across a field close to Irton Road Station (NY138000). Women are raking in the hay whilst the men, taking a break, sit near a part-filled cart. The residences of Hazlewood, and Woodbank, and the Wesleyan Chapel can be seen across the road leading to the village. Irton Pike is prominent on the skyline.

“Watendlath's quiet nook.A farm is there, and a slated barn,And a waterfall, and a pebbly tarnAnd all the way to High LodoreThe banks of the beck are painted o'erWith red herb-willow and red loose-strife”Watlandeth was a favourite hotspot from Victorian times, inspiring Edmund Casson's poem above. Later the farmhouse pictured was used as the fictional home of Judith Paris in Sir Hugh Walpole’s Herries Saga.