or, more correctly, I should have called this post: 'The house in my dreams'. Bolton Hall Farm.
Looking back, it feels like Bolton Hall was the centre of the universe, as I knew it, and it was a huge part of my life until I was about 15 years of age. My formative years, you would say, and what memories were formed then and there I will try to capture here and now.
When you are a child you don't question things. You accept things as they are, and with a child's knee-high perspective you complain that you've not got what so and so has to play with, that you want to go to someone else's house, you wish you could do such and such. Ah, me. If only I'd known then the riches we had, which we took for granted, disregarded and squandered, as children are want to do.
Bolton Hall Farm, Copster Green, was the home of my paternal grandparents, and a place where I, and my siblings, spent much of the weekends, school holidays and after school sometimes as well. It was a huge building, dating back to the 1650's and was a working farm in decline as I was growing up. I'm not sure how many acres of land there were, but there was hay-making, cow-milking, sheep grazing and horses sometimes as well.
Whilst obviously being a building of historical importance, its significance to me was the warmth and love of my grandparents, Grandad and Nanny. So although I must have been aware that the Farm was different to the houses of my friends and their families, I thought nothing of it, as for me the Farm meant family and family meant love. Not that 'love' back then in the late 1960s, and 1970s was demonstrative or verbal, but it was warm, welcoming, smiling, and hands-on in a 'yes, you can' sort of way.
'Nanny, can I make a pie too?' 'Yes, you can, here's some pastry, here's a tin, and here's some newspaper to fill it with'. I remember making pies for my dollies with my Nanny, using her 'sad ends' of the pastry, and then, when my dollies had finished their tea, throwing it to the hens so it didn't get wasted.
'Grandad, I'm tired, can I ride on Buttercup?' 'Yes, you can, here, I'll lift you onto her back, hold on tight' said Grandad, as I rode the cow down the hill to the shippon ready for milking.
The Farm was a place where stories grew into legends, and the legends lived forever in the telling at family gatherings, where I would sit, and listen gog-eyed, before sleep overtook me. Grandad had a knack for story-telling, and I can still picture the 'little Froggie', 'Aunty Aggie' and the adventures they had with the wolf, and the feast that always featured at the end of the tale, when Grandad would say '...and they had chips, and chops, and sausages..' and we would chime in with our favourite foods, imagining the spread, and how good it would taste.
I remember churning the cream in the big butter churner - a circular wooden tub/barrel with a tendency to rock if you hadn't got the legs in a stable place, and a wooden lid and wooden paddles inside which churned as you turned the handle, the rhythmic thudump as the cream sloshed round inside, slowly turning into a golden globules, then blobbing together as the whey was drained off and finally hurrah, you'd made butter.
Here's a link to a butter churner which is the type I remember using...
The time Nanny mistook the soap flakes for salt, and my best friend JP and I worked hard on the butter churning, and were so proud of our efforts, and used the butter pats, and then the taste of it on the home-made bread, the unfamiliar soapy bubbles in our mouths, and all the work for nothing, but the telling of the story, and the story becoming legend... like the legend of Grandad being so thirsty when he came in from haymaking one time and drank the bleach by the sink instead of lemonade, and lived (obviously) to tell the tale!
Anything was possible with a big stick in your hand, and it was usually all hands on deck when the cows were being brought in for milking, or the young heifers and bullocks were being let out to pasture for the first time in the spring.
The thrill of climbing in the hay which was stored in the big barn above the shippon where the cows over-wintered and were brought in for milking. The fear in your heart when your foot went through the old and dangerous floor of the barn, because a telling off was certain, and it could have been worse, and the place was old and cobwebby, and old and dusty, and old and ancient, so old they say that Oliver Cromwell stayed there on one of his campaigns, but I've heard it said that he stayed everywhere, and that's surely not possible, is it?
The secret places in the barn where the cat had her kittens which we found by listening to the mewing. The special wonder of helping to wean the calves from their mothers udders, by encouraging them to suck the warm milk in the bucket from your fingers, so they thought they were getting the teat. Their huge eyes, and beautiful eyelashes, and curly hair on the top of their head between their ears. The way their ears flicked when you scratched their heads.
And Grandad wanted to 'fatten you up', so he'd give us boiled eggs which he'd put in the kettle while it boiled to make the pot of tea, so they hadn't really been boiled at all, and the white was still runny, but the soldiers dipped in tasted of salt and golden yellows and couldn't have been better, and when my Mum collected us she was cross because he'd fed us and it spoiled our appetite for our supper at home.
Grandad cooled his tea by sloshing it onto the saucer, and back into the cup before drinking it. He sometimes tied newspaper round his legs below the knee to keep the mud off his trousers, and his trousers were often held up with bale twine. There was an outside privy which was a wooden board with two round holes one bigger than the other (use your imagination) where you sat and once your business was done, it went down the chimney like chute and onto the field be washed away with the rain. I won't describe what it was like in the summer - best avoided.
We ended up living at the Farm for a year around 1980. The winter's night my best friend came to collect me to go to Guides, and she ran down to the front door in the pitch dark, straight into the closed oak studded door, head first onto a stud, and she had two black eyes to school for a week thereafter, and she's still my best friend. Legend.
I googled to find a photo of the Farm as it is now...
So, there you have it. The house IN my dreams...
Sweet dreams y'all.
Kat :)
Looking back, it feels like Bolton Hall was the centre of the universe, as I knew it, and it was a huge part of my life until I was about 15 years of age. My formative years, you would say, and what memories were formed then and there I will try to capture here and now.
When you are a child you don't question things. You accept things as they are, and with a child's knee-high perspective you complain that you've not got what so and so has to play with, that you want to go to someone else's house, you wish you could do such and such. Ah, me. If only I'd known then the riches we had, which we took for granted, disregarded and squandered, as children are want to do.
Bolton Hall Farm, Copster Green, was the home of my paternal grandparents, and a place where I, and my siblings, spent much of the weekends, school holidays and after school sometimes as well. It was a huge building, dating back to the 1650's and was a working farm in decline as I was growing up. I'm not sure how many acres of land there were, but there was hay-making, cow-milking, sheep grazing and horses sometimes as well.
Whilst obviously being a building of historical importance, its significance to me was the warmth and love of my grandparents, Grandad and Nanny. So although I must have been aware that the Farm was different to the houses of my friends and their families, I thought nothing of it, as for me the Farm meant family and family meant love. Not that 'love' back then in the late 1960s, and 1970s was demonstrative or verbal, but it was warm, welcoming, smiling, and hands-on in a 'yes, you can' sort of way.
'Nanny, can I make a pie too?' 'Yes, you can, here's some pastry, here's a tin, and here's some newspaper to fill it with'. I remember making pies for my dollies with my Nanny, using her 'sad ends' of the pastry, and then, when my dollies had finished their tea, throwing it to the hens so it didn't get wasted.
'Grandad, I'm tired, can I ride on Buttercup?' 'Yes, you can, here, I'll lift you onto her back, hold on tight' said Grandad, as I rode the cow down the hill to the shippon ready for milking.
The Farm was a place where stories grew into legends, and the legends lived forever in the telling at family gatherings, where I would sit, and listen gog-eyed, before sleep overtook me. Grandad had a knack for story-telling, and I can still picture the 'little Froggie', 'Aunty Aggie' and the adventures they had with the wolf, and the feast that always featured at the end of the tale, when Grandad would say '...and they had chips, and chops, and sausages..' and we would chime in with our favourite foods, imagining the spread, and how good it would taste.
I remember churning the cream in the big butter churner - a circular wooden tub/barrel with a tendency to rock if you hadn't got the legs in a stable place, and a wooden lid and wooden paddles inside which churned as you turned the handle, the rhythmic thudump as the cream sloshed round inside, slowly turning into a golden globules, then blobbing together as the whey was drained off and finally hurrah, you'd made butter.
Here's a link to a butter churner which is the type I remember using...
The time Nanny mistook the soap flakes for salt, and my best friend JP and I worked hard on the butter churning, and were so proud of our efforts, and used the butter pats, and then the taste of it on the home-made bread, the unfamiliar soapy bubbles in our mouths, and all the work for nothing, but the telling of the story, and the story becoming legend... like the legend of Grandad being so thirsty when he came in from haymaking one time and drank the bleach by the sink instead of lemonade, and lived (obviously) to tell the tale!
Anything was possible with a big stick in your hand, and it was usually all hands on deck when the cows were being brought in for milking, or the young heifers and bullocks were being let out to pasture for the first time in the spring.
The thrill of climbing in the hay which was stored in the big barn above the shippon where the cows over-wintered and were brought in for milking. The fear in your heart when your foot went through the old and dangerous floor of the barn, because a telling off was certain, and it could have been worse, and the place was old and cobwebby, and old and dusty, and old and ancient, so old they say that Oliver Cromwell stayed there on one of his campaigns, but I've heard it said that he stayed everywhere, and that's surely not possible, is it?
The secret places in the barn where the cat had her kittens which we found by listening to the mewing. The special wonder of helping to wean the calves from their mothers udders, by encouraging them to suck the warm milk in the bucket from your fingers, so they thought they were getting the teat. Their huge eyes, and beautiful eyelashes, and curly hair on the top of their head between their ears. The way their ears flicked when you scratched their heads.
And Grandad wanted to 'fatten you up', so he'd give us boiled eggs which he'd put in the kettle while it boiled to make the pot of tea, so they hadn't really been boiled at all, and the white was still runny, but the soldiers dipped in tasted of salt and golden yellows and couldn't have been better, and when my Mum collected us she was cross because he'd fed us and it spoiled our appetite for our supper at home.
Grandad cooled his tea by sloshing it onto the saucer, and back into the cup before drinking it. He sometimes tied newspaper round his legs below the knee to keep the mud off his trousers, and his trousers were often held up with bale twine. There was an outside privy which was a wooden board with two round holes one bigger than the other (use your imagination) where you sat and once your business was done, it went down the chimney like chute and onto the field be washed away with the rain. I won't describe what it was like in the summer - best avoided.
We ended up living at the Farm for a year around 1980. The winter's night my best friend came to collect me to go to Guides, and she ran down to the front door in the pitch dark, straight into the closed oak studded door, head first onto a stud, and she had two black eyes to school for a week thereafter, and she's still my best friend. Legend.
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| Must be early 1960s - my father and farm dogs - possibly one called Jip |
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| It says '1966' on the back of the photo - that's me in my pram - I'd be 1 year old or so |
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| 1980 - me and my baby brother, he'd be 1 year old. |
I googled to find a photo of the Farm as it is now...
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| © Copyright Mike and Kirsty Grundy and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence |
Sweet dreams y'all.
Kat :)
