Below is Margaret’s Smith’s written history of her recollection of living in Egglescliffe. You can follow what she says in her oral history by clicking the above and sitting back and enjoying what she says.
Margaret Smith interviewed by Brenda Henderson on 13thJanuary 2017.
I didn’t live in the village originally. I met my husband at University and we were married in 1968 and I came to live here following my marriage. My husband, Johnnie, was the son of the farmer at Manor Farm and we have lived in what is in fact a wing of the Manor House all my married life.
The village has changed quite a bit. When we were first married there was a shop and a Post Office on the Village Green. Many people had previously worked on the farm so my husband especially knew most people around the Village Green. That has changed considerably now because the properties have been sold, the cottages have been extended in many cases and a whole new set of people have come to live here. We know quite a lot of them still, and that’s rather nice.
There is a traditional village pub, the Pot and Glass, which has been there for as long as I or my husband remembers. We also have, in our village, a very lovely 11thcentury church. Our daughter was married in this church and that was very interesting because it was the first Catholic nuptial mass to be celebrated in the church since the dissolution of the monasteries. So in that way it made village history. Following the service the wedding party walked across the Village Green in traditional village wedding style and the reception was in the Manor Farm. That was a very happy occasion and a great joy to ourselves.
Talking about the Farm specifically there is a tied cottage, Rose Cottage, where my early recollections are of a family, Luke and Jane Marshall. Luke worked on the farm for fifty years and they were very fondly thought of by the family, as were their children. They had two sons and a daughter, and the daughter used to work for my mother-in-law. She is still alive to this day and we are in touch with her. She came as a nursemaid to look after Johnnie when he was born, so that is a very good family connection. And it’s rather nice we keep in touch with her daughter as well.
The rest of the village has changed quite a lot too. [Some of] the buildings on the farm are probably in need of repair, a lot of them, and we hope that that will come about in the near future [centred around the restoration of the “Old Hall].Many of the older cottages [opposite the farm] were connected with the farm, many names spring to mind, and my husband would remember many of the people with great affection. Their families have since left but we had a visit recently from the son of one of those people who worked on the farm and helped in the house and he comes regularly at Christmas to catch up. He is always interested in our children.
We have four children and one of our sons has come back [home] and is carrying on the farming tradition, which is a great joy to ourselves, as I think it would be to my parents-in-law. There are many generations of the Smith family who have farmed in Egglescliffe and so it is really a good thing that one of our three sons has come back to look after the farm.
The farm is bordered by the River Tees along its length, from Yarm Bridge all the way to Eaglescliffe golf course and it is bordered by the village on the other side. We are in the farm house at the furthermost point of the village, surrounded by the fields. It is a cul-de-sac and tucked away quite nicely and many people don’t know of its existence. We have horses, but they are for pleasure, really, now. Farming methods have changed, of course. Mechanisation has brought great changes. When my husband was a boy there would be as many as twelve people working on the farm, whereas nowadays, with machines – tractors and various other implements – they really only have seasonal help when it is necessary. So apart from my husband and our son, who has taken over most of the work, there is no regular employee. There used to be dairy farming, but that stopped long ago before I was married. When tuberculin testing came in it was not considered to be viable, I think. We have beef cattle and crops of wheat, barley, oil seed rape, beans and various crops. We have to adapt with the times.
Along with the changing methods of farming I think that the role of the farmer’s wife has also changed. Today in busy times – harvest time, hay time – the farmer has to work very long hours. The farmer’s wife, therefore, has to be flexible with mealtimes, often eating late into the night after a busy, busy day’s work. That becomes acceptable because it is the only way to get the work done.
Additional information added on 19thOctober 2017 by Margaret Smith in conversation with Ian Reynolds.
Unlike my mother-in-law, I was able to persue my career as a teacher, albeit on a part time basis but nonetheless enjoyable and it fitted in with school hours and holidays. My mother-in-law was a more traditional farmer’s wife. In busy harvest times she would provide meals for the seasonal workers. This would include a cooked meal for the threshing team and, interestingly, for farm workers who were employed at the Hirings in Yarm High Street, one of the labourer’s conditions was that they were not given salmon more than three times a week!
The family would be served in the dining room with a cooked meal at lunch time. There were live-in maids helping in all aspects of running a busy farming household. A seamstress would repair worn out farm clothes to extend their working life. Someone was employed to iron and a gardener to work outdoors. Thus, in her lifetime my mother-in-law saw many changes. We had many long and interesting talks together about our lives as a “Farmer’s wife”.