They sold Salthouse Hall away because I think no one wanted it. Most people had about fifty acres apiece. There were fifteen of them, and I can remember the excitement you know, but mind you, they knew a bit what it was like because the other estate (the Manor Farm) had been split up among ordinary people. So it was a different village from most villages.
When these men all got these holdings many of them had a few cows. There’s a shed up Purdy Street called the Cow House, which is now turned into a private property, isn’t it. Well, there was ‘standing’ in there for twenty or thirty cows. There was Mr Charles Cubitt had some cows, my father had some cows, Mr Duffield had some, Mr Clifford High and another one, I forget who he was [possibly George Dew], but my father formed a milk Co-operative.
They had a dairy there, and they bought a cooler to cool the milk and they bought a float and they used to bring it to Holt. There was a milk train in those days, about half past eight, and they took turns to bring it up. My father would use a horse to bring the float up and when I was fourteen I left school and I used to do it. The float had ten gallon and seventeen gallon churns in it. You couldn’t go up Bard Hill: it was just tarred then, but it was too steep. You either went round Market Lane as they call it, and round and up, or you took the old Sandy Lane at the side of Bard Hill, and came out at the top. There was a pit over there on the other side, a plain they used to call it ‘Bard Hole’s Plain’! Of course that’s all grown up now, it was all open in those days, no trees. All heaths were man-made, they were treeless by over-stocking. Have you ever read Mary Hardy’s Diary—that’s Mrs Hardy of Letheringsett Hall? They came to Letheringsett in 1780, and she drove from Holt to Cromer and she said it was one of the most dismal rides she ever had. It was heath the whole way! That was before it was enclosed then; it was over-production—sheep really.
I always remember the milk cheque coming. The milk used to go to the United Dairies in London. Welford Premier Dairies, I still remember the name. What happened you see is they had a communal dairy. They milked their cows—it was all done by hand of course—then they measured their milk and wrote it all down in a book. They must have trusted each other! My father would collate all this and then, when the milk cheque came, he would split the money up and every month they’d have a meeting at the dairy and he’d pay them. Of course it was a big income for them really.