26 South Hams Farming Folk
Local History BY HOLLY TRUBSHAWE Curatorial Assistant
KINGSBRIDGE COOKWORTHY MUSEUM
The New Year brings new excitement at the museum as we start to prepare the museum for the 2020 season. This year we are exploring and celebrating farming in the South Hams. In preparation for this exhibition we thought we would highlight a couple of interesting local farming stories that will feature in our new exhibition.
Hubert Snowdon: Hubert was born in 1918, his father was a tenant farmer at Langman’s Farm in West Buckland, in the parish of Thurlestone. Hubert was a farmer, artist and author and had a real passion for sharing traditional farming skills. He published two books sharing diaries and memories of his childhood on a farm and changing farming practices. I thought I would share an extract of his diary, looking at a farming
Left: Hubert Snowdon demonstrating thatching a rick in 1984
Milking class from Harry Rogers’ farm at the bottom of Duncombe Street, Kingsbridge. Group of boys dressed in white aprons and caps, with numbered armbands. Hubert Snowdon at the back right wearing a cap
year that still feels particularly relevant today. The first is taken from his book ‘Keep faith with the soil’and this extract is from his January diary looking at hedges and wildlife “It is the whole nation’s population that the farmers feed. The more human population, the less room for wildlife. There is a limit to the number of both that the earth can sustain healthily. If we feel responsible for both that means compromise.” Hubert demonstrated his many agricultural skills at shows and events across Devon including at Kingsbridge Museum before his death in 2008. The museum still holds the scale model of the hay rick he built at one of these demonstrations
Reg and Betty
Sampson’s wedding February 1947, this photo was
taken later in the photographer’s studio as he
couldn’t get to the
wedding due to the snow!
Reg and Betty Sampson: Reg and Betty Sampson farmed at Lilwell Farm in Loddiswell. Betty had a flock of hens and they also had cattle and grew a range of crops. Reg and Betty got married in January 1947, and their wedding plans had to be altered due to the heavy snowfall. Reg recalled in his book, ‘All in a lifetime’, “My best man could not come through the
snow.....after the reception there was no hope of driving away on our honeymoon so we returned to Lilwell and fed the hens!” Later on Reg and Betty diversified their farm
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