Memories of Eric Beech
Farmer from Brown Heath Farm
Part Two

It is thanks to the memories of Eric and his friends that I recorded in 1999, that we have so much detail of life through the last century in Christleton Parish. Eric was just a delightful man, always smiling and a good friend. I have been able to use images from the Christleton Archive to illustrate his story.

In the words of Eric Beech

In 1967 a very bad outbreak of foot and mouth disease hit the area and we lost 90 cattle. They were shot and buried on the farm. Having just started with contagious abortion in the herd we were able to make a fresh start. The Government helped us to restock with compensation, but we had also recently doubled our farm insurance. However we were without cows for several months. (The outbreak of 1927 was also very bad in this area, but strange to say the Methodists didn’t get it! ) Cattle were now loose housed and were able to lie down in home cubicles, 175 in all.

We acquired a self-unloading trailer for silage and the grass from far off fields in 1970, but the more machinery you had the more breakdowns there were. I remember John Arden starting here in 1971, and then farming where his father farmed in Plough Lane. Flail hedge cutters became popular in 1976. Hand-cutting had been such a tedious job. In those days potatoes were £4 for 56lbs, but today in (1999) we are selling for £2 for 56lbs. During the early 1980’s we fitted automatic concentrate feeders to the parlour and the cows had active collars on to activate them.

On July 7th 1982 hailstones one inch across knocked holes in our plastic roof and we had to replace it with galvanised sheets instead. However in 1985 we gave up our milking herd and went over to keeping beef cattle. We had a visit from a former Italian POW in 1986 and we celebrated his work on the farm 40 years before. He was willing to do any job. Sad to say, he’s been in a wheelchair for nine years due to a stroke.

Since giving up the milk, we’ve tried pedigree Charolais cattle and our bull took second place at Crewe Market and sold for £1280, much more than the first prize winner. We also started wintering sheep for hill farmers in 1988. About 200 animals are brought here from Dolgellau, and they seem to thrive on the grass we have in the fields. In fact, they need twice the number of trucks to take them back than they came in because they put on so much weight. We also let some of our fields for growing turf, which is happening a lot these days because of the demand.

My son Brian farms here now and he has two sons, Simon and Michael, who’ve been to Reaseheath Agricultural College. It would be good to keep the farm in the family for the years ahead.

In 1987 a ringed swallow had three broods in one of our barns but didn’t come back in 1988, having been caught up in the gales that year. I’ve occasionally seen a kingfisher on one of our ponds, and we sometimes have a tawny owl sitting in an open barn. At times a sparrowhawk screams over the fields, and frightens off all the other birds. Of course, the swans also feed on our grass when they come down the canal. I have always loved nature, but in my early days I used to shoot geese. Thousands of wild geese would come off the Mersey marshes and the Rogers family would have the first shot of them as they came over Plough Lane. Although they would rise up in the sky when someone shot at them, I managed to shoot one down once. I wouldn’t do it now of course, and prefer playing snooker. I didn’t start that until in my sixty’s, but I used to be a good tennis player in my youth. We had a tennis court on the farm and I played regularly.

I first attended school at Christleton Girls and Infant’s School, and then for a time I went to Tom Solloway at the Boys School. (now the Parish Hall) However I left Christleton School aged 12 and for a short time went to a Private School, but I left school at 14yrs and began working for my father on the farm. I was paid £5 a year plus my keep. Not much, was it?.

One of my friends was Frank Poston, and he used to deliver meat for Joe Mosford. I can remember going up to the Pit to skate in the winter, and one day we saw an Austin 7 towing skaters around the ice. I also used to swim in the Gowy in a pool near a bend at the Roman Bridges. During the last war I was needed on the farm, but I became a Captain in the Home Guard and helped to look after the village, making sure that the men in the platoon were in good order and able to put out fires, amongst other things. There were lots of characters in the village; Joe Mosford, Digger Swindley, Thomas Johnson of the Old Post Office, who retired to live at Elmfield in Plough Lane, and another Thomas Johnson was a coal merchant and lived near the Red Lion. (Now Ring o Bells) He had three teams of horse and carts and kept his animals in stables near South View. He used to work from Waverton Station where the coal was delivered by rail. I also remember the Mayers Family; William, who owned the Smithy in Little Heath Road, and Stanley, who ran the garage opposite the Trooper Inn. There were old fashioned pumps there then and he was so slow in selling the petrol that it used to run back into the pump instead of into the car.

I also remember Frank Fleet, the Blacksmith, who took over from his father Jim, who had been there since the 1930’s. He appeared on a Radio programme once, singing Under the Spreading Chesnut Tree, which to him meant the tree at the entrance to the secondary school, that came down in a gale about ten years ago. Mrs Fleet used to teach at the Infants School. I’ve always attended the Methodist Chapel, in fact I was Christened there. I used to go three times on a Sunday with my father and mother. We children would sometimes sit at the front and be talked to by the Minister. Other times we stayed out at Sunday School. There used to be so many children that there were seven or eight teachers. Sadly, we don’t even have a Sunday School now. One of the first superintendents I remember was Joseph Ryder, a gardener at the big house in Vicar’s Cross where the Rugby Club is now, and another was a really nice chap called Willis, who had been a local farmer.