Old Hall Farm

A Memory of Hulme Walfield.

As a schoolboy aged 11 of Kings School, Macclesfield I acquired a summer holiday job at Old Hall Farm, run at the time by farmer Robert Young and his wife Madge. As a consequence I spent weekends and holidays there for the next 2 or 3 years. I learned to drive the tractor of which he was very proud, a David Brown 990 Cropmaster Diesel, usually driven by Patrick Joseph O´Donoghue or Tresler Sandbach who lived not far away at the council houses.
It was a great time for a young lad. There were cows, pedigree Ayrshires, from which Robert Young sold TT attested milk around the Congleton area, there were Guinea fowl and chickens, there was the corn harvest in the golden summers of the 50`s. The smells of cow muck, Stockholm tar and silage, the sounds of farming, the peaceful countryside of that era are memories never to be forgotten. Robert Young wanted to adopt me at one point, which upset my own parents; I learned that the Youngs had lost their own son Brian at an early age. My family and I lived in Giantswood Lane at this time in the Lower Heath area, but now all has changed. How sad that Old Hall is no longer a farm, but that seems to be the trend of "progress."

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