Traeth Mawr -Painting Season, (mostly)

[ChrisN]

1 hour ago, tanatvalley said:

I can remember having sterilized milk when visiting relatives in Wolverhampton in the 50s and 60s.

 

Alan

 

Alan,

I nearly put a 'friendly supportive' reaction to this comment as I think the stuff is horrible, and it used to make my teeth feel dry when it was in tea.

[brumtb]

11 hours ago, ChrisN said:

 

Thank you.  I shall have a look through this at my leisure.  I have found out some information, including a learned paper, but the information either only deals with deliveries, not where milk was kept before the delivery, or relates to London, which is a bit different.

 

I think the last milk round on an electric float that I saw was in the mid 80s, when we lived in Dagenham.  When we moved to Brentwood we had milk delivered but it was from a van, but they delivered about 11.00 so when we got home, it was yogurt.  We soon stopped it.  Around here there are, on some steps, insulated containers for milk, although I do not remember ever seeing a delivery vehicle.

This is getting more and more interesting.

Here in Warwickshire we still have milk delivered in bottles, the milkman usually puts it on our doorstep around midnight!

Tony

[Compound2632]

Sometime in the late 70s my mum was explaining milk distribution to my brother, who would have been about four or five at the time - he's seven years younger than me. (We were staying at a hill farm that had (has) a small dairy herd; we'll be back there this August.) The last line of her recital ran "and the milkman delivers the milk to people in bottles" - which to the twisted Lea family mind was ambiguous sentence construction leading to much hilarity. So it became one of those family sayings that stick.

[corneliuslundie]

Ours is delivered from the dairy to our milkman early in the morning, about 4 am I think Peter said. But I don't know where the dairy is as the closest ones have all closed in recent years.- there used to be one the other side of Shrewsbury where the Stafford road crosses the railway.

Of course until relatively recently there were two dairies in South West Wales which sent milk to London by train, and I seem to remember that there was also milk from somewhere just east of Cardiff. This was even in early diesel days.

But that doesn't explain where our milk in Cardiff came from.

My wife remembers when she was a teenager milk in Guernsey came in Tetrapaks. I didn't realise they were around that long ago.

She also commented on the colours of milk bottle tops - silver for full cream and with red stripes for skimmed. Anyone going to reproduce that in 4 mm?

Jonathan

[Edwardian]

18 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

An unintended consequence of finding this picture was the unbidden thought that one can see why milkmen have been associated with pre or extra marital affairs.  Many of us remember milkmen, but we were well into the era where full bottles are deposited on the door step and empties collected.

 

Prior to that, in an era when the Menfolk would be away from the Homestead at work, milk deliveries involved the milkman interacting with the women of the household, be it maid or housewife, and, as here, handling their jugs!  

[ChrisN]

2 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

Ours is delivered from the dairy to our milkman early in the morning, about 4 am I think Peter said. But I don't know where the dairy is as the closest ones have all closed in recent years.- there used to be one the other side of Shrewsbury where the Stafford road crosses the railway.

Of course until relatively recently there were two dairies in South West Wales which sent milk to London by train, and I seem to remember that there was also milk from somewhere just east of Cardiff. This was even in early diesel days.

But that doesn't explain where our milk in Cardiff came from.

My wife remembers when she was a teenager milk in Guernsey came in Tetrapaks. I didn't realise they were around that long ago.

She also commented on the colours of milk bottle tops - silver for full cream and with red stripes for skimmed. Anyone going to reproduce that in 4 mm?

Jonathan

 

Jonathan,

Thank you, that is very interesting.

 

Our milk delivery was'

 

Gold top  -Rich cream milk.  (Mum called it Jersey milk, as she said it came from Jersey cows.)

Silver Top-Not so rich cream.  (I was not under the impression it was semi-skimmed.)

Red Top   -Homogenised

 

I also remember that yogurt was a new thing as a product to be advertised and sold around 1965.  ('Eden Vale Yogurt is the young idea.')

 

[ChrisN]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Sometime in the late 70s my mum was explaining milk distribution to my brother, who would have been about four or five at the time - he's seven years younger than me. (We were staying at a hill farm that had (has) a small dairy herd; we'll be back there this August.) The last line of her recital ran "and the milkman delivers the milk to people in bottles" - which to the twisted Lea family mind was ambiguous sentence construction leading to much hilarity. So it became one of those family sayings that stick.

 

Stephen,

My mum met my dad after his first wife died. and he had two children.  They married and she came from rural North Hertfordshire to two downstairs rooms of a slum in Tottenham.  My brother and sister had been brought up in Tottenham.  On a visit back to her relatives taking her new family with her, she showed them the cow shed, and said, "We get our milk from these cows.  My brother replied, "We don't get our milk from dirty old cows, we get it from nice clean bottles!"

[corneliuslundie]

Yes, I remember gold top. Presumably my wife's family didn't buy it. Mind you, neither did mine. Just normal silver top.

I vaguely remember cardboard tops but it is an extremely vague memory and I can't remember where or when.

Jonathan

[Talltim]

6 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

My wife remembers when she was a teenager milk in Guernsey came in Tetrapaks. I didn't realise they were around that long ago.

 

Jonathan

Tretrapaks (the tetrahedral ones) started being used in France in 1954. Tetra Briks didn't come until 1964

[Donw]

When living in Caversham as a boy there used to be a small dairy round the corner from us. I believe it was largely distributing bottled milk  by the late 50s. Mind you if we ran out at the weekend I would be sent up the farm with  a suitable bottle or jug and it would be ladled out from a churn still warm.

Looking back to the Water tank at Dogelley that one was the GWR tank the Cambrian had a different one  the other side of the bridge it is shown on a photo some pages before. So I reckon in 1895 you wouldn't have a GWR one at Traeth Mawr. 

 

Don  

[brumtb]

I found this today in my records, I believe it dates to the late 20s.  I'm not sure of the health implications!

 

Tony

 

[kitpw]

On 14/06/2023 at 19:53, ChrisN said:

I have found out some information, including a learned paper, but the information either only deals with deliveries, not where milk was kept before the delivery, or relates to London, which is a bit different.

I learned from reading "The English Dairy Industry 1860 to 1930" (David Taylor:The Agricultural History Review, Vol. 22, No. 2 (1974), pp. 153-159) [actually on the JSTOR site] that the Lawrence Cooler was shown at the Cardiff Royal Show in 1872 (getting closer to Traeth Mawr).  The article says that "better refridgeration enabled the potential benefit of the railway sytem to be realized (sic) by the dairy farmer" and that the cheapness and efficiency of refridgeration caused its widespread adoption within a decade (presumably of the Cardiff show date). 

 

I had not appreciated how much effort went into the regulation of  liquid milk production (as opposed to cheese etc) which in the second half of the C19th was identified as the cause of outbreaks of disease (typhoid particularly) throughout the UK.  JSTOR had another article "Milking Science for its Worth: The Reform of the British Milk Trade in the Late Nineteenth Century" which describes these efforts. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3098/ah.2015.089.2.263?read-now=1&seq=22#page_scan_tab_contents) takes you to the article but a sign-in is required and the text cannot be copied and pasted.

 

After all that, the old tv jingle "have-a-pint-of-milk-a-day" may be advisable.

 

 

[ChrisN]

48 minutes ago, Donw said:

When living in Caversham as a boy there used to be a small dairy round the corner from us. I believe it was largely distributing bottled milk  by the late 50s. Mind you if we ran out at the weekend I would be sent up the farm with  a suitable bottle or jug and it would be ladled out from a churn still warm.

Looking back to the Water tank at Dogelley that one was the GWR tank the Cambrian had a different one  the other side of the bridge it is shown on a photo some pages before. So I reckon in 1895 you wouldn't have a GWR one at Traeth Mawr. 

 

Don  

 

Don,

Thank you.  Warm milk, ummm.

 

The images that I referred to are both pre grouping.  The first, the postcard of Barmouth, a second one of Barmouth.  There is one of Penmaenpool which I cannot find at the moment but was only to show the workings.  The photo at Dolgelley is obviously a GWR one, and it has an arm, but the others only have a tube, so I think I can say it is Cambrian

[ChrisN]

1 hour ago, brumtb said:

I found this today in my records, I believe it dates to the late 20s.  I'm not sure of the health implications!

 

Tony

 

 

Tony,

Thank you for this, very interesting.

[ChrisN]

13 minutes ago, kitpw said:

I learned from reading "The English Dairy Industry 1860 to 1930" (David Taylor:The Agricultural History Review, Vol. 22, No. 2 (1974), pp. 153-159) [actually on the JSTOR site] that the Lawrence Cooler was shown at the Cardiff Royal Show in 1872 (getting closer to Traeth Mawr).  The article says that "better refridgeration enabled the potential benefit of the railway sytem to be realized (sic) by the dairy farmer" and that the cheapness and efficiency of refridgeration caused its widespread adoption within a decade (presumably of the Cardiff show date). 

 

I had not appreciated how much effort went into the regulation of  liquid milk production (as opposed to cheese etc) which in the second half of the C19th was identified as the cause of outbreaks of disease (typhoid particularly) throughout the UK.  JSTOR had another article "Milking Science for its Worth: The Reform of the British Milk Trade in the Late Nineteenth Century" which describes these efforts. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3098/ah.2015.089.2.263?read-now=1&seq=22#page_scan_tab_contents) takes you to the article but a sign-in is required and the text cannot be copied and pasted.

 

After all that, the old tv jingle "have-a-pint-of-milk-a-day" may be advisable.

 

 

 

Thank you.  I think I have downloaded the first paper from the site you sent me to yesterday.  I have not read it yet but I will do.

 

JSTOR, is it possible to have a log in if you are not an academic?

 

I have checked where the 'Old Dairy' was in Barmouth, and it was not there before 1920.  I stopped looking after that.  

 

It would seem in that area it was still down to the producers to distribute and pasteurise if they could or thought it necessary.  Reading the abstract of the second paper it would seem that the drive for pasteurisation  and bottling came from the larger dairies and small farmers were resistant.  I have not come across a large dairy in the area, and the only person delivering milk probably comes from a small farm.

 

Also, if the local farmers, or an estate at Bala was supplying local needs, where was the milk in the siphons seen in some pictures going from and to?  I have seen goods notes coming up on EBay, but have seen none referring to milk.

[kitpw]

7 hours ago, ChrisN said:

JSTOR, is it possible to have a log in if you are not an academic?

It is and I do although not an academic or connected to any institution: I don't think RMweb would count. It's a very useful research resource.

 

[corneliuslundie]

Not all Siphons were used for milk. In fact some were specifically designed for other purposes, with ashphalte floors sloping towards the sides so that they would drain. Is there something else that might have come to or been moved from Traeth Mawr? Possibly fish? But we shall have to wait for John Lewis's book for the details.

Jonathan

[Nick Gough]

This is Snowball who, with the assistance of Horace the milkman, was delivering our milk until the mid/late 1960s, in South Harrow:

This was for an independent, local dairy - Hall & Sons (Dairy Farmers) Ltd, in nearby Pinner - there still being a small rural enclave in this urban part of Metroland.

[Edwardian]

I do wonder about the prevalence of dairies in rural districts as early as the 1890s.

 

It may be, and I am theorising here, that milk production and local distribution remained literally a cottage industry in rural places. 

 

Consider Wensleydale.

 

Or, how the railway nearly killed Wensleydale cheese before reinventing it.

 

 

In 1856 the railway got as far as Leyburn, a market town at the foot of the dale, but this was insufficient access for the upper dale farms and, so, most of the milk produced in the area was still converted into butter and cheese with only a little milk retained for local use; you could not get any volume of milk to market before it spoilt. 

 

In 1878, the railway made it up dale, and everything changed. 

 

In the end, the cities' demand for milk caused production to go almost wholly over to it. Fortunately someone realised in time that the eponymous cheese might also appeal to a wider market and the railways could be used to reach it. It's only thanks to the ability to transport the cheese by rail that you've even heard of it, let alone eaten it, otherwise it might have remained a purely local cheese or have died out entirely. 

 

What information might be pertinent here?

 

Well, I think that by 1895, a rural district with access to the railway would produce milk for export to towns and cities. 

 

This would probably not involve a local dairy.

 

For instance, we know that Wensleydale milk was sent directly from the farms to the towns, via the railway. In other words it went in churns or cans straight from the back of the farmer's cart onto the train and away. In 1894 Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Hull and Leeds were thus supplied. By 1899, the dale was also supplying Bradford, Halifax, other West Riding towns and the large milk depot at Finsbury Park for London. 

 

By 1905 the trade justified a farmers' co-operative having a bottling plant constructed by the NER line at Northallerton. Northallerton is where the line up Wensleydale met the ECML, so it is located for the mainline railway serving, inter alia, London and is not local to the milk production.

 

The first commercial dairy in the dale dates from 1911 and was due to the revival of cheese and other non-milk dairy produce. The lease, at Redmire station, described "a dairy or creamery preparing, manufacturing, selling and storing milk, butter, cream, eggs and cheese and such other farm products ..." . 

 

Meanwhile, back in the 1890s ....

 

Sir Robert Henry Rew, the British agricultural statistician who was, from 1890, Secretary of the Central Chamber of Agriculture, wrote in 1892 that:

 

Every traveller by rail has noted the outward and visible signs of the expansion of this trade in the battalions of cans ... which daily come and go along all the country lines of the railway.

 

So, from the tail gate of a farmer's tumbril to a railway platform to a railway van to a town milk depot.

 

My conclusion is that, if local dairies did not come into being to facilitate the long-distance supply of milk via rail, it seems most unlikely that they would exist to facilitate local distribution, which, therefore, I assume was taken more or less from the nearest cow, be it a farm herd or cows kept in towns. Pre-refrigeration (the ability to store for any length of time) or absent the need to process the milk (i.e. pasteurisation or bottling), what would you even need a local dairy for? Rather, the only necessary infrastructure would seem to be the farm's milking parlour and, perhaps, the town shop out of which the milk would be sold, but in the absence of refrigeration, a very proximate daily supply was necessary, so significant storage or processing facilities would simply not be useful and milk selling would not go via a dairy as such. 

 

It seems to me most likely that for any country town in the 1890s, like Treath-Mawr, the town milk supply would come from the farms on its outskirts. Only larger towns and cities having had town herds, which would have declined in the face of incoming milk via rail. In a rural district, the small town supply would probably have carried on much as it did pre-railway. The milk may have come in via a shop, or perhaps straight from the nearby farms.  

 

Edited June 16, 2023 by Edwardian
spelling

[ChrisN]

3 hours ago, kitpw said:

It is and I do although not an academic or connected to any institution: I don't think RMweb would count. It's a very useful research resource.

 

 

Kit, thank you.

 

I may get myself an account, although I have spent my entire career just reading abstracts and then if I thought that they might be relevant to what I was doing, I would read the introduction and conclusion.  Very seldom did I read the whole article unless we were wanting to do something similar.

[ChrisN]

2 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

Not all Siphons were used for milk. In fact some were specifically designed for other purposes, with ashphalte floors sloping towards the sides so that they would drain. Is there something else that might have come to or been moved from Traeth Mawr? Possibly fish? But we shall have to wait for John Lewis's book for the details.

Jonathan

 

Jonathan,

This is very interesting.  There will certainly be siphons full of milk at Traeth Mawr as I have filled both of mine, well, lined the sides, with milk churns.

 

As I lok at the photos of siphons on the Cambrian I wonder whether that actually they are the Cambrian equivalent.. We ait for the book with expectancy.

[corneliuslundie]

Yes, the Cambrian had several milk vans, some similar to GWR Siphons, But the dates I have are:

No. 14 Milk & Poultry Van, built 1901

No. 19 ditto built 1904

No. 26 ditto built 1914

No. 114 Milk Van built 1900

No. 215 ditto built 1914

No. 322 Milk & Poultry Van built 1907

So not much help for 1895, though that list is of what was extant in 1922.

I suspect that the original No. 14 was an1860 Third and No. 19 may have been similar; the original No. 26 was certainly a Third. And the original No. 114 would have been built in 1873 or thereabouts.

I asked at our church coffee morning but the resident historians could not give much useful information except that Central Dairy in Newtown had a bottling plant from 1937. One person had memories of going to the farm with a jug.

Jonathan

[ChrisN]

3 hours ago, Nick Gough said:

This is Snowball who, with the assistance of Horace the milkman, was delivering our milk until the mid/late 1960s, in South Harrow:

This was for an independent, local dairy - Hall & Sons (Dairy Farmers) Ltd, in nearby Pinner - there still being a small rural enclave in this urban part of Metroland.

 

Great picture Nick,

 

Is that you on the horse?  I thought you had a beard.

[ChrisN]

6 hours ago, Edwardian said:

I do wonder about the prevalence of dairies in rural districts as early as the 1890s.

 

It may be, and I am theorising here, that milk production and local distribution remained literally a cottage industry in rural places. 

 

Consider Wensleydale.

 

Or, how the railway nearly killed Wensleydale cheese before reinventing it.

 

 

In 1856 the railway got as far as Leyburn, a market town at the foot of the dale, but this was insufficient access for the upper dale farms and, so, most of the milk produced in the area was still converted into butter and cheese with only a little milk retained for local use; you could not get any volume of milk to market before it spoilt. 

 

In 1878, the railway made it up dale, and everything changed. 

 

In the end, the cities' demand for milk caused production to go almost wholly over to it. Fortunately someone realised in time that the eponymous cheese might also appeal to a wider market and the railways could be used to reach it. It's only thanks to the ability to transport the cheese by rail that you've even heard of it, let alone eaten it, otherwise it might have remained a purely local cheese or have died out entirely. 

 

What information might be pertinent here?

 

Well, I think that by 1895, a rural district with access to the railway would produce milk for export to towns and cities. 

 

This would probably not involve a local dairy.

 

For instance, we know that Wensleydale milk was sent directly from the farms to the towns, via the railway. In other words it went in churns or cans straight from the back of the farmer's cart onto the train and away. In 1894 Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Hull and Leeds were thus supplied. By 1899, the dale was also supplying Bradford, Halifax, other West Riding towns and the large milk depot at Finsbury Park for London. 

 

By 1905 the trade justified a farmers' co-operative having a bottling plant constructed by the NER line at Northallerton. Northallerton is where the line up Wensleydale met the ECML, so it is located for the mainline railway serving, inter alia, London and is not local to the milk production.

 

The first commercial dairy in the dale dates from 1911 and was due to the revival of cheese and other non-milk dairy produce. The lease, at Redmire station, described "a dairy or creamery preparing, manufacturing, selling and storing milk, butter, cream, eggs and cheese and such other farm products ..." . 

 

Meanwhile, back in the 1890s ....

 

Sir Robert Henry Rew, the British agricultural statistician who was, from 1890, Secretary of the Central Chamber of Agriculture, wrote in 1892 that:

 

Every traveller by rail has noted the outward and visible signs of the expansion of this trade in the battalions of cans ... which daily come and go along all the country lines of the railway.

 

So, from the tail gate of a farmer's tumbril to a railway platform to a railway van to a town milk depot.

 

My conclusion is that, if local dairies did not come into being to facilitate the long-distance supply of milk via rail, it seems most unlikely that they would exist to facilitate local distribution, which, therefore, I assume was taken more or less from the nearest cow, be it a farm herd or cows kept in towns. Pre-refrigeration (the ability to store for any length of time) or absent the need to process the milk (i.e. pasteurisation or bottling), what would you even need a local dairy for? Rather, the only necessary infrastructure would seem to be the farm's milking parlour and, perhaps, the town shop out of which the milk would be sold, but in the absence of refrigeration, a very proximate daily supply was necessary, so significant storage or processing facilities would simply not be useful and milk selling would not go via a dairy as such. 

 

It seems to me most likely that for any country town in the 1890s, like Treath-Mawr, the town milk supply would come from the farms on its outskirts. Only larger towns and cities having had town herds, which would have declined in the face of incoming milk via rail. In a rural district, the small town supply would probably have carried on much as it did pre-railway. The milk may have come in via a shop, or perhaps straight from the nearby farms.  

 

 

James,

Thank you, that is very interesting.  I think the way it is going is that it was still local producers, selling what they could.  There must have been a few I would think.

 

I have found the advert for someone to sell milk in Barmouth, (third down in first column).  It came from the Rhiwlas Estate in Bala.  Probably they were producing too much milk to sell locally.

 

If you search in these papers for 'milk' then there are several adverts looking for servants, 'who can milk, (one Cow)'.  Says it all really.

Edited June 16, 2023 by ChrisN

[ChrisN]

2 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

Yes, the Cambrian had several milk vans, some similar to GWR Siphons, But the dates I have are:

No. 14 Milk & Poultry Van, built 1901

No. 19 ditto built 1904

No. 26 ditto built 1914

No. 114 Milk Van built 1900

No. 215 ditto built 1914

No. 322 Milk & Poultry Van built 1907

So not much help for 1895, though that list is of what was extant in 1922.

I suspect that the original No. 14 was an1860 Third and No. 19 may have been similar; the original No. 26 was certainly a Third. And the original No. 114 would have been built in 1873 or thereabouts.

I asked at our church coffee morning but the resident historians could not give much useful information except that Central Dairy in Newtown had a bottling plant from 1937. One person had memories of going to the farm with a jug.

Jonathan

 

Jonathan'

Thank you.  I have looked through that list but not very thoroughly.  I think the earliest image I have is supposed to be 1898.  I shall leave mine as GWR siphons.

 

The informatio on the coaches is useful, thank you.