Appleton's Farm, Barkby (Thorpe?) Lane, Leicester

A Memory of Leicester.

Well, fancy that, that's awakened some memory cells!

Until the age of 11 years I was raised in a poorer housing area of Belgrave, Leicester, which was all the housing that was available after the War in 1945. We moved from there, Gresham Street, off Belgrave Road to Essex Road, Gipsy Lane, when I was 11/12 years of age. I was one of about 12 pupils at Abbey Park Road Infant and later Junior School who passed the '11 plus' examination at that time and I then went to City Boys' School, in Humberstone Gate, aged 11 years. The obvious transport to where my new school was became a pedal cycle! I needed to boost my pocket money and so like several of my fellows at City Boys, I managed to get part-time/casual work on a farm cum plant nursery, off Barkby Lane, namely 'Appletons'. They were quite happy to employ whoever they could get as farm labourers, even schoolboys at weekends and in school holidays, etc.

I had largely put it in my old memory bank until I saw the name 'Appletons Park' on your part-map of Leicester and it brought back many memories of working on that farm/nursery for a number of years as a casual labourer in my free time and school holidays. Several of my fellow pupils also worked there but after several years I was the only schoolboy who remained. I thought when I read the name on the map that it was very pleasant reminder on what would very soon afterwards become building land on the City outskirts. A local feature overtaken by a rapidly expanding city. I probably stayed with them until I started in full employ-ment when I was 16 years of age, some two or three years later possibly.

The Farm was owned and run by an aged couple, Mr. and Mrs. Appleton, both well over retirement age, who lived in the farmhouse there. There were a number of farm buildings attached to the house, but the whole place was very Victorian in it's buildings and a lot of the methods employed. They kept a small herd of bullocks, one milk cow if I remember correctly, one carthorse, and a whole family of Berringtons, the foreman, 'Lol', whose real name escapes me, and Lol's sons Dick, the driver, and Goff, a labourer. There was also Jim, a labourer, (no relation). A sign of the then recent times was an Italian labourer, a short, stocky Italian ex-prisoner-of-war named Nick, and us schoolboys now and then. I stayed for several years until I became an apprentice Compositor in a printing works, Hannibal and Son, of Thurmaston.

Appletons was a good place to work and if we did as directed we were left to get on with things. This could be my absolute favourite of all time, hay-raking! I loved the old carthorse and very often prepared his food at breakfast times. I also learned to harness him and attach him to various antique implements, one of which was the hayrake! After a field of hay had been cut and left to dry in rows it had to be turned so even the hay underneath dried too. A mechanical hayrake was then harnessed to the horse and was run up and down the field turning the rows of dried grass. This hopefully left a field of rows of dried hay waiting for the 'baler' which as the name suggests lifted the hay and baled it! I absolutely loved sitting on the horse's back and taking it down to the field, harnessing it to the rake and then sitting on the hay-rake seat, working the rake lever up and down when required, the horse on reins which the driver also worked. If the raking took several days then the horse had to be taken to and from the field where it was needed and this was also an excuse to ride it bareback, (BUT DON'T LET OLD 'BERRO' CATCH YOU RIDING IT!). It then had to be rubbed down/brushed, fed and put to grass for the night.

I was a cyclist because of where we lived, at the extreme edge of the 'bus routes, and another job the farmer and foreman entrusted me with was the roses!!! On Saturdays there would often be an 'urgent' telephone message from a very 'posh' shop near to Town Hall Square, saying that they had sold all the roses we had supplied them with that day and could we send some more!!! I would follow the foreman helping to de-thorn the extra roses they would have to cut. This was so that the delicate hands of the 'posh' shoppers did not get pricked when handling them! De-thorning roses is a delicate and painful experience!
Sending me, a cyclist, into the centre of Leicester to this shop meant that I could dodge heavy traffic and get the roses there quickly and undamaged, which I did, great bunches of roses strapped to my back often!

Pay!! I was paid the Princely sum of one shilling, four and a half pence per hour!!! Don't strain your money brain cell, it is about eight and a half new pence nowadays! If I did a full day that would amount to just under 12 shillings (remember them?) and my failing maths tells me that this would get myself and the current girlfrend into a cinema for the evening and fish and chips afterwards? I must have worked there for several years but when I became an apprentice printer I was also required to work for them more or less exclusively and so stopped my farm job. I was sorry about this but also moved firstly to Birstall and then to Worcestershire, thus my Leicester days ended.

Thanks to the one who thought to name the old Appleton's Farm area as 'Appleton's Park' and awaken these memories. I have been back to the railway bridge which crosses/crossed? the small road to where the farm was and was faced with housing? No farm? I am now 83 years of age and have been retired from my main occupation in life for about 40 years. I finished as Police Inspector in Worcestershire with 25 years service.

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