• Frank Farr

Fond memories of wagons and nets

Eighty-eight–year-old Frank Farr is a familiar face in East Budleigh. Apart from 1939-45, when he was in the army, he has lived and worked in the village all his life. Over the years, Frank has jotted down memories of what village life was like during the past century, and over the coming months he will be writing about his recollections for your Journal:

ON farms on Sundays only the milking and feeding of cattle, horses, pigs and poultry took place.

The only time that the hay and corn were harvested was if we had what was known as a “catchey” weather.

Then farmers would lend their horses, four-wheeled wagons and men to help each other.

Today we never see fields of swede, white common turnips or mangolds. It’s all silage of grass and corn.

At one time I can remember over 30 water mills from Withycombe to Ottery St Mary. Some of these mills were over-fed and some under-fed.

A very pretty sight was to see an over-fed working mill.

In the village of East Budleigh there were three – at Washmoor, Hill Farm and Thorn Mill, which also supplied drinking water for the village known as “soft water”.

In the old days when you went into a grocery shop, your tea was weighed out in front of you; so was sugar.

Cheese was cut to the amount you required, as was bacon. Ham was cut off the bone, not like the soggy stuff we see today in plastic.

In the summer the fishermen would catch large shoals of mackerel with Seine nets. At Budleigh Salterton many were sold from the beach.

Bango Mears, who sold them, used to say when the mackerel were large: “Ah, but you don’t get so may to the dozen when they are large.”

Today one never sees a Seine net in use.

There were many families of fishermen – the Rodgers, the Mears, the Sedgmoors and several others come to mind. I also remember those who caught shellfish, lobster, crab and prawns.

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