Leigh Park Farm
LEIGH PARK FARM
The history of Leigh Park Farm – particularly over the last hundred years – revolves around the Bastable family. Chris Rowley, who has compiled these historical notes has had many discussions with Barbara Bastable and her son, Colin, about this era. There are also some papers by Alfred Houghton – the Hall Place Agent – which have been incorporated. Material prior to 1919 has been researched by Joyce Field.
As the history was being finalized, Barbara – aged nearly 95 – died at the end of November 2014. The church was completely full for her funeral and tributes were paid by friends and many members of the family. Some of these memories are included at the end of this history.
History prior to 1840
Leigh Park Farm was part of the Penshurst Estate, certainly in the 16th century – and almost certainly for centuries before. We know that in 1579 the Penshurst Estate had to pay for thirty six feet of the Leigh Churchyard wall in respect of the farm, then known as North Park Farm, although it lay in the Parish of Leigh[1].
We do not know any details of the early farm buildings in the 16th century – although the private Penshurst papers, kept in the Kent Archives at Maidstone (which can be seen with the permission of the De Lisle family) may contain extra information. However, the thirty six feet Churchyard payment indicates it was a largish farm for the area.
However, it has recently come to light that the farm – along with Priory Farm and other adjoining farms – was owned for a period by the Cators of Beckenham Place, probably from about 1790 until 1830. This information has come from a researcher[2]. John Barwell Cator had to acquire an Act of Parliament in 1825 to sell or lease the estates which were in a form of trust and left to him by John Cator who had died in 1806. The 1825 Act of Parliament, therefore, permitted John Barwell Cator and others to dispose of lands left to them, which included land in Leigh as well as Chiddingstone and Hever. The detail from the 1825 Act gives Chittenden farm at Chiddingstone and Hever (193 acres), Leigh Park Farm (152 acres) and Priory Farm (130 acres). This enabled the Cator heirs to purchase their Norfolk estates.
Therefore, at some point, both Leigh Park Farm and Priory Farm had been sold by the Penshurst Estate – but we know that it was back as part of the Penshurst Estate from the 1841 Tithe Apportionment which gives Lord de Lisle again as owner.
1840-1919
The next available information about the farm comes from the eight censuses 1841 to 1911[3]. We also know about the use and name of each of the individual fields in 1841 from the Tithe Apportionment (details in with Leigh Park Farm papers in LHS archive). This document says that it covers not only Leigh Park Farm but also Priory Farm. (The 1841 census says that Charlotte Wells, aged 45, was the farmer at Priory Farm where she lived with her family. In the 1851 census, the Priory farmer was John Wells, aged 30). The 1841 census shows two farmers at Leigh Park Farm, James Bellingham aged 35, and William Bellingham, aged about 25[4]. The census does not give marital status or relationships but it is possible that they were brothers or cousins. With no spouse shown as living with them, we can assume both were unmarried. There is a female servant and two farm workers also living at Leigh Park Farm. Bearing in mind that this mainly arable farm was around 270 acres, the Leigh Park Farm household looks very small, even if there were almost certainly other regular workers who lived nearby. The census ten years later, in 1851, (census details attached to Leigh Park Farm papers in LHS archive) gives James Bellingham, aged 48, born Sevenoaks, (born ca 1802/3)[5], as “head” of the household, with twelve people living at the farm and two further agricultural labourers (“Ag Lab”) also working on the farm. At this point, he and his wife, Elizabeth, have three children. His relative, William Bellingham, is no longer on the farm with him. It is likely that William died as there is an entry in Leigh burial registers of a William Bellingham having been buried in 1844, aged 36[6]. By the 1861 census the Bellinghams have eight children and Leigh Park Farm, which is now said to be only 150 acres, is employing six men and three boys. We do not know the exact length of time that the Bellingham family looked after Leigh Park Farm but it was probably around thirty years.
The 1871 census starts by being a puzzle. The “Head” of the family is shown as a sixty three year old widow – Mary Ann Rogers – who is said to be the farmer of what has become 224 acres, employing seven men and three boys. However, what seems to have happened is that her husband and her son David had taken over the farm and when the husband died, David, now aged 25 takes over the day-to-day running of the farm. He clearly does well because the Penshurst Estate kept him in place, with the 1881 census showing him as “Head” of the household and the farmer. (Both he and his mother had been born in Wadhurst where they must have lived for forty years). It looks as if the family were at Leigh Park Farm for around twenty years.
The 1891 census shows another new name as the farmer and ‘Head of the Household’ – a young woman, Agnes M Summers, aged twenty four, baptized at Leigh 10 Feb 1867, daughter of George and Elizabeth Summers. Her brother and sister, aged 16 and 23 respectively also live there. However, it also shows in almost the next farm, Priory Farm, that her father, George Summers, is in charge of the 300 acres. This may well mean that the two farms were combined for this period as they had seemed to be in 1841. However, as both farms were owned by the Penshurst Estate, there would have been a farm bailiff or agent in overall charge of all the farms on the estate.
The 1901 census seems to swing the other way with large numbers of “Leigh Park” and “Leigh Park Farm” workers mentioned – twenty two names in six buildings. The census enumerator has presumably added various farm cottages to the West and North West of the village. The farmer is Thomas King aged thirty one who had been born in Coulsden. (Out of the twenty two names in the six buildings only four were born in Leigh, emphasizing that labour moved round the south-east to a considerable degree).
1911 Acquisition by Hall Place Estate
In 1911 Samuel Hope Morley (the 1st Lord Hollenden), who was keen on his shooting – and very rich – decided that he needed to buy the two farms to the west of Hall Place – Leigh Park Farm and Price’s Farm – not least to help his keepers get better bags of pheasants and partridges. We are not sure whether the sale took place before or after the 1911 Census. However, a Mr Martin seems to have been the Leigh Park farmer, whether he became the tenant farmer for the Hall Place Estate or for the Penshurst Estate. He is marked as absent on the Census. But perhaps the new landlord and his agent were working out how to organize the two Hall Place extra farms at the time of the Census.
Harry Hobbs takes over Leigh Park Farm 1919-1939
From the end of the First World War, however, we do know a good deal about how Leigh Park Farm was run because in 1919, Harry Hobbs became the tenant farmer for Hall Place (see Note 1). Harry Hobbs had married Adelaide A James in 1919 and over the coming few years they had one daughter – Barbara – born on 4 January 1921 in the main farmhouse at Leigh Park Farm, two months premature when Adelaide slipped on an icy puddle. Barbara lived on the farm in one of three houses for the rest of her life. Barbara went to a school at Watts Cross and then to Tonbridge School For Girls (still in the same location today). She never liked maths but developed a lifelong love for the written word, including Shakespeare. At 15, Barbara’s mother, Adelaide, died. This meant that Barbara had to undertake much more of the household duties. Two years later in 1938 she met Roy Bastable, a young farmer from Otford, at a wedding and a romance developed, including rides on Roy’s motorbike. However, Roy had enlisted in the Territorial Army and in 1939, when War was declared, he was quickly called up. In 1942, when Roy was home on leave, he and Barbara married. (An outline family tree is with Leigh Park Farm papers in LHS archive).
However, to return to Harry Hobbs and his initial rental of the Farm. Ewart Harry Hobbs had been born in 1885 at Mells, Somerset, son of Zebedee and Elizabeth Hobbs, one of five children. Both sides of the family came from farming although in the 1901 census, Harry was shown as a Grocer’s Apprentice, However, by the 1911 census, he is shown as still living at Mells, Somerset but is listed as a farmer, still single, still living with his parents. His father is shown as a quarryman foreman, but was formerly an engine driver. The marriage of Ewart H Hobbs and Adelaide A James in 1919 was registered in Shepton Mallet.
In 1919, Harry Hobbs was thirty four years old and was an experienced dairy farmer in Somerset. However, milk prices had become so low that it was not possible to make dairy farming pay in the West Country. Hearing that milk prices in London were considerably higher, he took the tenancy of Leigh Park Farm from the Hall Place Estate and brought his herd of twenty-five to thirty cows with him in open railway wagons. “There were probably a mixture of breeds”, says his daughter, Barbara. “I can remember Jerseys, Shorthorns and Ayrshires when I was young”. At least four other farmers from the West Country also came to farms locally including the Hamlyn family at Westwood Farm between Leigh and Weald, Mr Corp at Lower Street, Mr Graham at Prices and Mr White at Wickhurst. Colin Bastable adds, “It must have been quite a job to get those cattle on to the train up to London, then down Hildenborough by another train and then to drive them down the road to Leigh, when they had to be fed and milked twice a day”. One of the major advantages of the Leigh area was the train from Hildenborough up to London and each morning the milk from the farm was loaded into the large seventeen gallon milk churns and driven up to the station on a milk float pulled by one of the farm horses. “They weren’t galvanized or anything like that. AND the previous afternoon’s milk went into them too. They were washed out when they came back but, even after the Second World War, you could see – and smell – traces of the old milk. I don’t know how the milk didn’t go off. So it was not the super hygienic system that you have to have today”, says Colin. “But I don’t remember ever hearing of any problems with the milk over those next twenty or thirty years. I guess the consumers were much more used to food that was ‘past its sell by date’ than they are today.”
Harry and his cowman started milking at 6 a.m. Milking by hand was a slow job and it took three hours on a bad day. Harry Hobbs had to put in some new cattle sheds (after asking permission from the Estate) but they were just cow byres, open on one side and at the ends: “You led the cows in, put the chains around their necks and got to work on your milking stool. It could be very cold in winter”, says Barbara. “And then the cow would get restless and put a foot in the milking pail. So it could be very annoying as well as cold”.
Farmers used to have two opening remarks when they met another farmer: “You got your cows out yet?” and “You got your contract yet?” The first referred to whether you had got your cows on to the pasture or whether they were still in the yards. The second referred to the contract between the farmer and his buyer in London. Leigh Park Farm had a contact for many years with the South Suburban Co-Op, before the Milk Marketing Board was started around 1932/33.
And the milking was not all that had to be done to look after the cows. Before the cows went out on to the pasture, you had to get the cows out of their cow sheds into the yard and then do the mucking out – a heavy job before tractors came on the scene much later.
Before the Second World War, as well as pasture for the dairy herd, the farm grew various other crops before the War. There were oats for the horses and two types of kale (marrow stem and thousand head for the cows in winter time. You had to cut the marrow stem kale with a bill hook which was hard work. Then there were the marigolds, again for the cows. Before machines to do the work came along, you again had to lift each marigold, cut off the leaves with one stroke and throw it into the cart alongside you – all with one movement – being VERY careful not to cut into your hand. However, even in the 1920s there was a hand-wound machine which cut the whole marigolds into strips once you had them back at the farm which was easier than it must have been for earlier generations.
Leigh Park Farm has never grown hops since 1917 when they were grubbed up – presumably to grow more food to help the war effort – although Colin did plant some much later at Bowens Farm, the farm the family owned and still owns, at Poundsbridge.
To do all this work Harry Hobbs, unusually, had four regular men in the 1920s and 1930s. Barbara remembers Mr George Wood, the cowman, who lived in one of the cottages at the end of the drive. He would do the milking twice a day Mondays to Saturdays. But on Sunday he would only milk once before putting on his suit and setting out for the Chapel in Leigh – with his wife walking in front of him. Then there was Mr Gosden, who was the carter – which meant that he looked after the horses and the work they did – the ploughing, delivering the milk, the harvesting, and so on. Barbara recalls that he chewed tobacco which ran down his moustache. He had a wife and when they eventually left, the hens seemed to lay many more eggs. Colin adds another story. “Father knew that one of the farm workers was taking some of the logs without permission. So he thought he’d teach him a lesson. He split one of the logs in the pile and put a shot gun cartridge – minus the shot – into a hole in the middle. He stuck the log back together and put it back in the pile. A few evenings later there was a huge explosion and the next day father said to the man, ‘Did you hear that explosion last night?’ ‘No’, said the man. But he stopped taking the logs”.
Then there was Mr Standen and usually another man who were GFW or General Farm Workers. (The Census always called them Ag Lab, short for Agricultural Labourer). Mr Standen had a daughter the same age as Barbara and they used to play together outside in the fields. Barbara remembers that she was told that if she dug a hole in the garden she would get to coal. “It never happened while we were doing it but the next day we’d find coal there! There was another thing the grown-ups told us. We ate a lot of rabbit in those days. There were lots of different ways of cooking it – very tasty they were, too. We were told that we could catch rabbits if we put salt on their tails. We spent hours running and running round the edge of fields with salt in our hands. But surprisingly we never actually caught up with a rabbit”. Colin adds, “even in the 1950s – before myxomatosis – you could get a reasonable price for rabbit. Some farmers could get enough to pay their annual rent”. Barbara also remembers Mrs Standen’s cakes which she made with lard. “They tasted wonderful – even better than my mother’s which were made with butter. Looking back on it, I remember that, although the two of us played together all the time, we never went to each other’s houses. There was a sort of class separation”.
The 1930s
The late 1920s and early 1930s were a grim time for all farmers but Harry Hobbs managed to hold on, “although I sometimes wonder how he did it”, says Barbara. To make matters worse, as we have seen, Adelaide, Harry’s wife and Barbara’s mother had died in 1936 (aged only 41), a terrible blow to the whole family.
However, by the mid-1930s farming in general was beginning to pick up. Prices were better and farmers could buy the new machinery which was beginning to be available. The farm bought a second-hand Fordson Standard tractor. They had always had an old reciprocating mower, pulled by a horse, which cut the hay in a five foot wide strip. But now they could adopt much more modern ways – even if Harry for years used to go round the outside of each field with a scythe and then rake what he had cut into the main part of the field.
Sowing, too, became much easier. Even in the 1930s a hand pushed shandy barrow was still being used. “It only covered about eight or ten feet and would take a day to cover a field you would do nowadays in half an hour”, says Colin. And in the mid-1930s the farm got a telephone – unusual for the time. Barbara thinks it was Hildenborough 169.
When the time came to cut the wheat, Mr Hobbs had to hire in a traction engine for the threshing. Mr Lou Leigh was the contractor for years. The farmer had to provide the water and the coal but the Hobbs had relations in Somerset who could get local open-cast coal cheaply which they sent to Leigh by rail.
During harvest time extra men were needed and these were nearly always gypsies – but gypsies who came every year. And every year, they managed to let their horses get into the hay field or a haystack – just as they always did. The one Barbara and later Colin remember best was Absalom Jones – known as “Apsey”. The Jones family used to park nearly opposite Coppins Farm entrance which was, and still is, known as “Tramps Corner”. Even into the 1950s and 1960s they were still coming and Barbara remembers her husband, Roy, going along the road to their camp to have a chat and a cup of tea and she still has some of their split hazel clothes pegs with a small strip of tin to bind them together. “They have lasted better than the plastic ones”.
The gradual increase in machines meant the gradual decline in horses. When Barbara was young the farm used to have two or three horses at any one time. The names were ones used traditionally by many farmers. Barbara remembers ‘Turpin’ as a steady, hard-working, medium sized horse. “He wasn’t a shire horse or anything like that; just normal size. I was allowed to ride him and, of course, he did seem big. Then we had a horse called ‘Captain’. He was nervous and I remember as a girl I was frightened of him. And I remember two other horses we had – called ‘Blossom’ and ‘Prince’. Horses were used right until the end of the Second World War”.
Barbara also remembers the somewhat different feel in the 1920s and 1930s from today. “It was not just that the fields were smaller – although, of course, they were – but most had ponds in them for the animals to drink from. It was that there seemed to be more human contact then. Nowadays it is all paperwork and computerized. You don’t get to talk to all the people anymore. When I was a child I would never go into a field belonging to Price’s Farm or into the Hall Place Woods which the keepers were in charge of. But you still knew everyone and talked with them”.
The Second World War
In the late 1930s, Barbara had met Roy Bastable at a wedding but the start of the war delayed their courtship when Roy – who was in the Territorial Army – was called up. At this time, the country was only growing 55% of its own food. So for farmers, bread and milk became priorities – beef came a long way down. Extra unused land was ploughed, often with forceful encouragement of Government farming experts. (The Ministry of Agriculture actually took aerial photos to ensure that all possible land was being used and that there was not too much grass being retained). With Roy Bastable away in the Army and many of the farm hands also called up, the organization of the farm was left to Harry Hobbs, by now in his mid-fifties, and Barbara, only eighteen, with the help of four land girls. Barbara remembers: “I was one myself – it seemed better than going into the women’s services. We had evacuees, too – four children – all Roman Catholics – and two of their teachers. We kept in touch with one of them, Mrs Joiner, died last year (2014), over a hundred. The evacuees all used to set off together in the mornings to walk to school in the Village Hall at Leigh”.
Barbara also remembers having to drive their fairly old tractor to do the ploughing. “Even in the 1930s, when I was a teenager, I’d done a bit of ploughing. It was surprising how attractive a wiggly line can be! And I even remember getting to the far side of a field and finding myself no longer pulling the plough.” (Today, Colin has an antique ‘International Titan’ tractor from 1919 similar to the first tractor on Leigh park – and he still ploughs with it).
During the War, the authorities allowed pigs to be slaughtered on the farm. Only one could be kept for one’s own consumption – legally at least. The rest had to go to the local butcher. The pig that was kept was put into a big slate trough filled with brine. The meat seemed to keep forever.
1945 until 2000
After the end of the War, Roy Bastable returned to the farm to re-join his father-in-law and his new family. Colin had been born in 1944 and his sister, Sally, in 1947. By 1952, Roy, with the agreement of the Hall Place Estate, became a partner with Harry in the business. Barbara and Roy and their two children were now living in one of the farm cottages.
Over the next fifty years there were gradual but significant changes. The new partnership started farming more land. The farm had been around 250 acres when Harry had first arrived in 1919. In 1961 Leigh Park Farm was amalgamated with Price’s Farm after the death of the Price’s farmer, Mr Graham. The official valuation of Price’s Farm, its stock and contents was £7,500 and Colin has the documents. This meant that 400 acres were being farmed as one. At about this time, Alfred Houghton, the Hall Place agent, had proposed a single company to manage all the farms owned by Hall Place, including Home Farm, Lower Street Farm and the land around the main house as well as Prices and Leigh Park Farm. The idea was to share machinery and labour, and to be able to bulk buy. However, the proposal was turned down by the lawyer and estate agent ‘experts’. And there were also mentions by Alfred Houghton of the lack of agreement between Roy Bastable and William Dicker – the farm manager at Home Farm.
In 1966 Harry died aged 81, still working almost to the end. Roy was joined by his son, Colin, in the 1960s and the expansion continued – including taking over Home Farm after the Wanstalls left and Mr Corp’s farm on both sides of Lower Street in 1972. This meant that the Bastables were now in control of 900 acres. Another change came in the 1970s/80s. It no longer became worth making your own hay. Now you made silage which was wrapped in plastic or stored in a clamp. And the type of cattle that was wanted changed too. Beef cattle needed to be leaner with less saturated fat. So in the late 1960s and the 1970s and 1980s masses of Charolais and Charolais-cross were imported. It was fairly ironic because by the 1990s, the Government was encouraging cattle with MORE fat and they had to be fed barley and then there was a revival of Aberdeen Angus and Herefords which had been bred to be bigger. All these kinds of things showed the type of changes farmers are always having to cope with.
Colin had married Heather Day, daughter of a farmer on 20 January 1968 and between 1971 and 1984 they had five children: Wendy, Kate, Jill, David and Ruth. Harry had married again in 1942 to Hilda Francis. With his new wife, Hilda, they rented the vacant Prices Farmhouse in 1961 until Harry’s death in 1966. When Hilda moved away, Prices Farmhouse was sold by the Estate to Michael and Elizabeth Robinson and their family. (See separate notes on Prices Farmhouse).
Additionally, in the period 1970-2000 the Bastable family took over the management of a number of other farms outside the Parish. At Bowens Farm at Poundsbridge, owned by the family, daughter Kate and husband, Alastair McCutcheon have boarding kennels and Kate, not only helps to run the farm there, but has bees and looks after all the accounts and paperwork for the various farm enterprises. However, Colin and the family also manage Nash’s Farm, Well Place Farm and Salmon’s Farm for the Penshurst Estate. Juddwood Farm and its farm shop is run by daughter-in-law, Jane (Foster). Colin and Heather’s daughter, Ruth, became very involved with the new enterprises of ice cream and cheese which both won national prizes. Ruth and her husband, Simon, run Pierson Farm at 4 Winds Farm, Bidborough. And Wendy is at Leigh Park as a partner in the business – soon to be married.
When the Bastables bought Bowens Farm in 1970, there were thirteen acres of hops and, although he had not grown them before, Colin decided he would have a go. Daughter Kate remembers that one of the things that attracted Colin was the machinery. “Dad has always liked playing with machines and over the next few years he was always investing in new bits to be installed – usually on the day before the hopping began. It was sometimes a bit of a strain!” Colin continues: “It was not all that easy. In the first year we managed to burn down the main oast which didn’t do the machinery much good! And by the time we had expanded to 50 acres and got the harvesting and drying fairly organized, the bottom fell out of the hop market – mainly because of imports from America and Eastern Europe. Eventually, in 1998, we were left with a good harvest and no one to sell it to. So we just packed it all in. Nowadays, we are renting out the Bowens Farm out-buildings for light industrial use and Kate runs the boarding kennels there. The fields are given over mainly to wheat and oilseed rape.
In 1979 Hall Place Farms was formed. Alfred Houghton’s note explains what happened. It was a partnership between Roy Bastable, Colin Bastable and Lord Hollenden (Geoffrey). It consisted of 1,006 acres – 320 acres owned by the Bastables – mainly Bowens Farm. Leigh Park Farm (211) and Prices Farm (200) were leased from Hall Place. And four pieces of lands (275 acres) owned by Lord Hollenden (Lower Street Farm 180 acres; the Deer Park 36½ acres; the Rookery 38½ acres; and the Cherry Orchard 20 acres). ‘A’ profits were based on agreed uniform rentals and ‘B’ profits went 95% to the Bastables with 5% to Lord Hollenden because the Bastables provided working capital and paid for improvements.
As the acreage increased, so the Bastables were able to expand their dairy herd dramatically This in turn meant much greater investment in machinery. Starting in the 1950s, Roy and the Hamlyns at Westwood Farm (by now related by marriage) bought such things as new combine harvesters and balers which they also contracted out to other farmers. Gradually, the land they farmed themselves increased. In 1982, the Bastables bought Barden Furnace Farm (37 acres) and some Swayland farm land (17 acres). Then in 1990/91, when the Wanstalls left Home Farm, the Estate rented the 271 acres to the Bastables at £22 an acre. Roy Bastable died in 1984 but he left the whole enterprise in good hands – that of his family.
In the years immediately after the War, the government – with the support of the farming community – felt that field sizes were too small. Barbara remembers that in the 1920s and 1930s there were a good number of fields of 5-10 acres, with a largish field being 12-15 acres. In the 1950s and 1960s, many hundreds of yards of hedges were taken out. Ponds were filled in, with water for the cattle provided by underground piped water to each field. And, to cope with the large increase in the number of animals, extra farm buildings had to be erected or drastically improved. Fresh water, too, could have become a problem. Each cow consumes a hundred litres of water a day and that was becoming expensive. With over three hundred cows, this meant a new source was needed. So, in the late 1990s, Colin decided he would try to sink a bore hole. He hired a firm from Wales and in due course a very Welsh expert arrived. “He got out his divining rod things and walked around near the farm. They twitched and the expert looking pleased said, “you’ve got a bloody lake below here, boy-o” remembers Colin. “But when they put a bore hole down, the water that came out was completely cloudy – full of very fine particles of clay. My son, David, put a glass full on the window sill and few days later it was still cloudy. No use at all. So, I got out a geological map of the area and I saw that there was a band of gravel and sand at 200 feet which ran in a semi-circle from Prices Farm round by Hall Place and over towards Kennards. So I got the Welshman back and he suggested we tried again up by Prices Farm. I talked to Michael Robinson, who had fairly recently bought Prices Farm and we agreed that we would put a bore hole just outside his back yard. This all worked out and there is now a pipe 500-600 yards from Prices down to us which provides free water to our cows”.
Government regulations had a dramatic effect on what had to be done to cope with the liquid waste from what had become a herd of 340 cows. Before the War, the urine just went down into the ditches. Now the liquid had to be stored in a huge tank and then in the summer it is sprayed on to the fields, along with any water which may have been contaminated with manure or silage effluent.
All these changes had to be approved by the Hall Place Estate – the owners. However, the relationship between the Estate has changed gradually but significantly as not only the acreage increased, but as the personalities concerned changed. Barbara remembers that Roy was always scrupulous to write to the Estate and ask permission to do changes. However, when he returned after the War, he installed a WC instead of an earth closet at the farmhouse. He did not think he needed to ask about doing something like that. However, a cross letter was received from the Estate complaining about “the improvements”. The 2nd Lord Hollenden (Geoffrey) was undoubtedly interventionist; and his agent, the redoubtable Alfred Houghton has explained in the book “We Had Everything…” that he was determined to keep a close watch on all the Estate’s farmers. Colin explained that his family’s relationship with Alfred was always based on mutual respect – in spite of Alfred’s reputation for belligerence. However, it was Alfred who, some years ago, explained why at a later stage, he encouraged the Estate to enter into a “partnership” with the Bastables; it was in large part so that the Estate could claim to be farmers and obtain tax benefits.
Whatever the details in the period until Alfred’s death, Colin emphasizes that, prior to the sale of the Estate in 2016, the relationship between the two partners was always one of mutual respect. He used to meet the Estate owners, Andrew and Robin Hope-Morley, three or four times a year to report on progress and discuss changes that he wanted to make. The Estate respected the Bastable expertise and, although sometimes asked questions, it does not interfere.
The Bastable Farms until 2017
By this time, the farm covered about 900 acres of which about 300 acres were grass, which was either grazed or cut for silage for feeding the dairy herd (250 acres of maize is also grown for feeding the cows). The remainder was used for growing cereals and oilseed rape. On the Penshurst Place estate, some arable and maize was farmed.
“Nowadays, we have 420 Holstein cows in the dairy herd but it always seems to be growing”, says Colin. “It was only 340 a year ago. Their average yield is about 9,700 litres each per lactation. Cows all have one calf each year and are milked twice a day. In winter the cows are housed in cubicle yards bedded with sand. Each cow knows it own place and can be quite put out of another goes to what it thinks of as its cubicle. In summer, they graze grass for some of the day and feed is supplemented as required. Our nutritionist advises us on feed content to keep cows healthy and optimize milk yields. The main feed is a blend of maize and grass silage, which we’ve grown ourselves, supplemented with soya meal, oil seed meal, home grown wheat, sugar beet pellets and vitamins. The cows we have for milking are artificially inseminated using semen selected from pedigree Holstein bulls showing the traits and strengths we wish to introduce into our herd in future generations. Our milk price has been as high as 31.5p per litre (18p/pint). It changes all the time like the weather – it’s down to about 29p now (2020. Milk used to be sold to Freshways dairy in London, but in 2014 we moved to Arla, the largest farmer-owned co-operative in Euorpe – to safeguard our future. On the beef side, we don’t go in for it massively but the male Holstein calves are sold after weaning and we use semen from Aberdeen Angus or Belgian Blue bulls when we want a heifer for beef. Nowadays, the sexed semen almost guarantees you get a heifer when you want. The cross-bred calves are sold too – usually at about twenty months to be fattened on other farms. This is mainly because we would not have enough room to house them over the winter. . Veterinary visits take place on a regular basis to ensure a high level of herd health”.
“On average we keep a cow for four or five lactations. After that their milk production decreases and they do not produce calves so well. So probably an average life for one of our cows is seven or eight years. Some of the arable land on the farm is used for growing milling wheat for bread flour production. We feed some wheat to the dairy herd and the remainder is sold through a co-operative grain store in Mereworth. The wheat is grown in rotation with a break crop. This helps reduce pests, diseases and weeds, therefore reducing pesticide use. Cultural crop rotation techniques of pest and weed control, such as disease resistant varieties, are used as well as selected chemical control. The use of crop rotations also keeps the soil in good heart and ensures optimum yields. We use maize, grass and oil seed rape as break crops. A small area of lucerne is being grown. This will be used to feed the cows as a high energy and protein feed. We also have a breeding flock of 250 head of ewes; and we buy in about 700 extra lambs each year to fatten them up – mainly with turnips – for local butchers”.
Cheese and Ice Cream
Colin also talks about the development of cheese and ice cream production, which aimed to add value and help with diversification. “We have started producing a number of cheddar type cheese and luxury ice cream from our own milk. By 2014 we had started selling some ice cream through a few local outlets and at the Juddwood Farm Shop at the top of the hill going to Bidborough, which was run by daughter-in-law, Jane.[7] However, after five years, the family found that the marketing (and the paperwork) was not something we were used to doing, so we decided to concentrate on producing top quality milk and to let others make things from it.
Conservation
“I am keen to help wildlife and the environment,” continues Colin. “We currently have two Environmental Stewardship Schemes operating which are designed to enhance habitats of farmland birds and mammals and preserve the countryside features as well as protecting hedges and waterways from chemical and fertilizers. It is fairly ironic. My father and I spent lots of times in the 1950s and 1960s removing hedges and ponds – encouraged by the government. Now they are giving us money to put them back. Between 2000-2005 we planted over a kilometre of new hedges – two kilometres in ten years. The manure and slurry are kept carefully to prevent pollution – and they are a valuable fertilizer and a useful source of nitrogen, potash and phosphate. We spread it on the fields before a wheat or maize crop. This also helps us to reduce our purchases of artificial fertilizer”.
Farm Assured or Organic Food?
“We do not produce organic food as we believe that Farm Assured produce is just as safe and wholesome; and enough can be produced for everyone. (Organic farming produces very low yields). All our produce – milk, beef, lamb and cereals are ‘Farm Assured’. This means each commodity is produced to an agreed standard. For instance: the milk ‘Farm Assured’ standard insists that the premises and animals are regularly inspected, that all the feed is fully traceable and recorded, that there are veterinary visits and drug use is recorded and all of the cattle are fully identified by ear tags and passports. Stocking intensities, housing conditions and staff training all meet laid down guidelines. With all these conditions in place, we feel that British Farm Assured produce is as safe as organic produce, and considerably better than much of the imported food. And locally produced food has none of the environmental disadvantages associated with transporting imported food”.
The Sale of the Hall Place Estate
In 2015, after the death of Lady Sonja, the widow of Gordon, 3rd Lord Hollenden – there was no one from the Hope Morley family who wished to live permanently at Hall Place, although her son, the Hon. Robin Hope-Morley, visited it regularly. The brothers, Andrew and Robin, who headed the Estate, decided to sell the house and gardens; and, separately, the farm land. The Bastable family were given first refusal and in early 2016, the Bastables bought 700 acres (Leigh Park/Prices Farm; Home Farm and the farm land around Lower Street meaning that the Bastable family now actually own a thousand acres in Leigh and Penshurst, as well as farming a further 850 acres rented from Lord De L’Isle on the Penshurst estate.
Compiled by Chris Rowley and Joyce Field (June 2020)
Sources:
Lawrence Biddle’s “Leigh in Kent”
Censuses 1841-1911
1841 Tithe Apportionment (copy with Leigh Park Farm documents in LHS Archive)
Detail of 1825 Act of Parliament – via Malvin Mitchell (email correspondence 2018)
POSTSCRIPT: BARBARA BASTABLE – IN MEMORIAM
At the service of thanksgiving for Barbara’ life, many stories about her were told: “She lived a good life but a hard one”. She not only was an active part of the farm enterprise for around seventy years – doing all the accounts for many of those years; but she participated in local village life to a huge extent. She held every position within the Women’s Institute. She regularly attended the Historical Society meetings and even in her last year, provided, with Colin, a memorable talk about her farming life. She was a very long-term participant in the Village Produce Association, winning numerous prizes over the years. She loved St Mary’s and helped it for many years. She was always walking – she knew every corner of the farmland – and found over 70 wildflowers there. Her cake making was legendary – all generations of the family attest to that – and she also produced home-made wines. She attended courses on painting, pottery, embroidery and many other things and loved doing all these crafts and became thoroughly proficient at yoga – even though she was no longer young. And as well as all these activities, she also started a boarding kennels – first at Leigh Park Farm, and later at Bowen’s Farm. In her later years, she finished the Telegraph crossword every day and felt that an evening glass of sherry was good for her – and others. Even as she grew old she was an inspiration to her family and everyone who knew her – gracious and kind; witty and knowledgeable; active in the most positive of ways. In many ways a typical hard-working farmer’s wife but in many other ways just a marvellous person.
Additional notes as July 2020:
In early July 2020 Colin Bastable – having been aiming to expand the dairy herd still further – bought fifty heifers from East Germany – near Dresden. He had to get them from East Germany because there has never been TB there. Other farmers have done so and say they settle down well.
Heather Bastable (nee Day) also comes from a farming family. Her grandfather was also a shrewd businessman who, in the early 1930s, when many farmers were going bust, bought up a good number of them.
[1] Lawrence Biddle’s Leigh In Kent 1550-1900.
[2] Contacted by Malvin Mitchell May-July 2018 who was researching Cator family of Beckenham Place.
[3] Full details in Leigh Park Farm papers in LHS archivee
[4] 1841 census rules round down ages. So James Bellingham aged 35 would be between 35 and 39 so born between 1802-1806; likewise for William Bellingham given as 25: he would be between 25 and 29, so born between 1812-1816.
[5] There is a James Bellingham born 25.12.1802 at Sevenoaks, the son of James and Ann Bellingham.
[6] The actual Death Certificate would give a relationship with the informant of the death and help determine his relationship with James Bellingham (although, of course, we do not know if James would have been the informant). The Bellingham name is common in Sevenoaks, Shipbourne and around the area. This death would give a birth of about 1808: There is a William Bellingham born 19.12.1806 at Sevenoaks son of James and Ann Bellingham; a William Bellingham baptized 4 August 1811 at Sevenoaks the son of George and Mercy Bellingham; and a William Bellingham baptized 30.7.1808 at Shipbourne, the son of Jeremiah and Lucy Bellingham, although in 1851 census he appears to be at Hartfield). The 1841 census is no help as it only indicates that William was born between 1812-1816.
[7] By 2015 the cheese and ice creams had won prizes.