Life on the land

I would like to comment on two of the above pics – a horse-drawn wagon on left; three females and a dog on the right.

The wagon being loaded looks very like one we had when we lived at Redcroft – ironwork, wheel sizes, quarter lock recess. If so it came from South Hall and was presumably photographed there. We were given it in the late sixties or the seventies and wheeled it up the road to Redcroft with myself and helpers, including children, in as straight a line as possible. One could do that sort of thing in those days! We repainted it in roughly the same colours and it sat outside the front of Redcroft during the summers, admired by all visitors including the children who went to my wife Rosemary’s Playgroup (that’s another story). It was hand-wheeled down to Watershed Farm (as it became later) part of Rosemary’s father’s Lunts Farm where it lived in an asbestos Nissen hut in the winter. That is until the wheels started touching the bodywork and we could no longer get it under cover. It must have been the early 1990s when we finally sold it to Mick Young who restored it. A major rebuild, keeping the ironwork but only the front board and the roller bar at the rear of the woodwork. It had originally been built by Lodge and Smith of Ballards Gore, vouched by the eye-shaped cartouche painted on the front board.

The other photo shows three workers and a dog. This was taken by Rosemary (nee Boardman) in the field between Cupola House and Shop Row (visible over the tractor). The dog was the Boardmans’ Rip. The ladies were Daisy Sharp (left) and Winnie Keeble (of Hove To) on the right. The girl is not known. Pic taken probably in the late 1940s.

I’m sure Rosemary (particularly, as a Paglesham native) and I can add more comment. Peter Thorogood whose photo archive is huge lived with his mother Maisie down the road from us in New Cottages. They moved to Rochford after we left the village in 1994.