Local Voices From The Past
(Archive ref: DDX2310 . Now available on the Digital Archive)
When looking at firsthand accounts from the past, it is the voices of the rich, or those living in the urban centres, that dominate. This gives the impression there was not much to say historically about rural life; but that is not the case. In the 20th century, the East Riding of Yorkshire experienced significant technological and cultural shifts that reshaped its landscape and way of life. From the introduction of farming equipment such as tractors and combine harvesters, which revolutionized agriculture and replaced traditional horse drawn methods, to advancements in the home, such as the introduction of electricity and indoor plumbing. No facet of life was left untouched. The expansion of railways and the proliferation of cars, also opened the world up, making travel accessible for a greater amount of people. These changes completely transformed the way of life for many rural communities; many who had not seen substantial change for centuries.
Between June 1999 and June 2000, Stefan Ramsden, working for the East Riding of Yorkshire Museums Service at the time, conducted an oral history project, in association with the Heritage Lottery funded redevelopment of Skidby Mill. The aim of the project was to create a repository of memories to bring to light the lives of rural people and enrich the collections at Skidby Mill. Over 60 interviews were conducted with residents of the East Riding of Yorkshire, focusing on their memories of life and work in the countryside during the first half of the 20th century. Interviewees were primarily sourced through newspaper appeals, outreach to local societies, and presentations to community groups.
The interviews were recorded on minidiscs, a now-obsolete digital storage format prevalent in the early 1990s, primarily used for recording and playing audio on small, rewritable discs encased in plastic cartridges. They faded in popularity with the rise of MP3 players and other digital formats but were a good choice for the project at the time due to their playback features. The project also collected older recordings on audio cassettes, which were donated by the public to the East Riding Museums Service for the project. A few more minidisc recordings were created in 2007-2008 by Skidby Mill volunteer coordinator Fiona Jenkinson and her team.
In October 2019, the minidiscs were sent to Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums, where they were digitised by their specialist team. In 2021 East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s Document Processing team completed transcripts for the digitised recordings.
Now, East Riding Archives are pleased to present the addition of Skidby Mill Oral History Project Records to their online preservation and access platform, Preservica. The interviews have been uploaded for anyone to listen to in their entirety. These recordings serve as a valuable resource for historians of agricultural and rural life, while offering compelling insights for local residents into the East Riding’s past, a landscape both familiar and markedly different from the present day.
Discover the history of Martinmas, held annually on November 23rd, a key rural event where farm workers secured jobs and negotiated wages for the year ahead. In this collection you can hear from former hired lads, such as Harry Refford. Born in Driffield, in 1901, speaking on negotiating his annual wages during one particular Martinmas [Archive Ref DDX2310/2/37/1]:
“But it wan’t until Martinmas which was then the starting and the finishing time on a farm. Martinmas, November 23rd, you finish on your own farm and was paid your yearly payment less what you had subbed during the year. Of course in those days the top Farm Hand hired, if you were lucky you got twenty pound for the year. …
But it came to my turn, he says “now Harry” in a most sub-dubious way, “now Harry and how much do you want?” I says “six pound please”. “Oh” he said, “six pound?” “No”, he said “five pound ten shilling”. Blahh, he’d got it all worked out a year ago. I said “Why, you promised me six pound if I was a good lad” and I said “I have been a good”. “Aye” he said, “well just wait a minute”. Labour was scare, getting scarer and scacer, the war, all the lads were going. He says “are you stopping and staying on again for another year with me?” I said “well I was thinking of it would be nice to have a change”. “Mm” he says. He said “you’re not being a good lad”. I must have sat back and he says “I promised you six pound if you’re a good lad and you’ll only be a good lad if you stop again”. What could I do? …So he gave me my six pound, six pound.”
Contrasting with stories of old are the stories of modernisation. One interview with Heather Pritchett, born in Great Hatfield in 1927, has her speaking about when the first telephone came to her village [Archive ref DDX2310/2/36/1]:
“It was a great day for the whole village because not long after that, again in the mid 1930’s and just before the war, most of the villages, ours had, we got a telephone. …This was put on the Village Green in the centre of the village. … So I remember it was quite fun to go and seemed as though I would use pennies to ring someone up in another village or something, but there weren’t many people had phones at all, it was only the people that were comparatively well off that had phones or cars really.”
Change wasn’t exciting for all, some, like Bob Leveridge, born in Skidby, in 1928, who still preferred the old ways of working [Archive Ref DDX2310/2/29/1]:
“I used two horses, I’ve ploughed this field up and been up and down it no end of times doing it. I tell you what, a tractor was a cold thing. You kept a lot of walking with horses but a tractor you were just sat there. By sometimes you used to be frozen.”
There are also gripping tales from wartime in this collection. Fred Dowson, born in Kelk, in 1917, speaking about witnessing the bombing of Driffield Aerodrome in 1940 [Archive ref: DDX2310/2/1/3]:
“Nineteen forty, yes, same year as when the German’s bombed Driffield Aerodrome and it was, I think it was on the 10th of August, and we’d all, there was three of us, had all got binding you know, bindering barley and saw these, all these planes come out of the clouds and straight down onto Driffield Aerodrome and bomb it. We saw it all it was, I mean we wasn’t very far away from it as the crow flies…
And the Foreman of the farm, by, he turned frightened. And he run across to us and he says, “Get those horses loosed out.” He says, “And get to the farm as soon as you can.” He said, “The Germans are here and they’ve taken over.” And he said, “We’ll be captured.” By, we weren’t frightened but by Jove he was, was this farm Foreman, he thought they were here, he thought we’d had it.”
The Women’s Land Army were also hard at work during WW2. You can listen to an interview with Dorothy Taylor and Joyce Colbeck, two women who served in the Land Army. Below, Dorothy speaks about working with prisoners of war. [Archive ref: DDX2310/2/45/1]:
“At Rudston, near Bridlington there was prisoners of war were kept there and they used to come out about eight at a time, especially at harvest time. We worked with them at Easton Farm at Boynton, and they were all very nice people except one, and you weren’t allowed even to look at him and the Sergeant stayed with him the whole of the time, but the others were quite free to work along with us. But until nineteen forty six we were not allowed to talk to them, and in nineteen forty six we were.
When I was at Mr Mansfield, we just had the one man work for us and he was extremely nice. Again, we weren’t allowed to talk to him, Mr Mansfield could talk with him but when the time came that he could talk to us all he wanted to know how big his babies would be. He had left them at six months old and eighteen months old and they were two boys and he kept coming and saying, “How big my boys now?” And he would lift his hand and make the height go up, asking you what his children would be like, he was dying to get back to them. He had been taken in as a Hitler Youth at fifteen, he got married at eighteen thinking he would get out of the Hitler Youth, he could see things weren’t right. Now all he wanted to do was get back to his wife and children who he hadn’t heard from for a long time. “
You can hear all these interviews and so much more by browsing the collection on our open digital archive. From more tales from hired lads, female domestic servants, farmers, and windmill workers, to significant annual events like Martinmas hiring fairs and Friendly Society Feasts. Listen to personal narratives which illuminate historic moments, such as how for many, the end of World War I was signalled by ships’ horns across Sunk Island, and other wartime events such as the Luftwaffe bombing of RAF Driffield and the Blitz on Hull. Learn how the Great Depression impacted the agricultural economy, and how tractors led to the decline of horse-powered farming. All presented from the people who lived through it all with humour, gumption and skill.
Start exploring this collection for yourself here .
by Olivia Northrop
Archives Assistant
Archives blog 