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J^enjoyirig "an •artKrerV-^'-'v^i 1 r e t i r e m e n t J ’L W Y C E X r ;^ I BISHOP talks to him . ! about the changes and challenges he faced


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} 2iTv:4 SVEN in the modem >,3_ surroundings of a


l3fcr.j house on a small estate ts!23in Garstang, Henry


Bainbridge looks like a farmer. He is a tall man with a weath­


er-beaten face and large hands; upright, sharp and always ready with a smile. ' He has been retired from farming for five years, having taken the practical decision to quit while he was still healthy after a close friend, another farmer, suffered a stroke, fore- . ing him out of the business.


& *•' And business is what it was, according to Henry, now 77 and still defying his age by passing the occasional eight-hour day repairing the stone walls that score the Bowland landscape that was once the backdrop to his hill farm. "People say farming is a way of life," he says. "And it is, but it


has to be a business first." This approach has been with Henry since, aged just 22, he -


^ Jook on the tenancy of Stake House Farm in Oakendough, on" =r the western edge of the Forest of


Bowland, along with his wife, Mag­ gie, then 21. It is the reason why the couple


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RETIRED: Henry Bainbridge and his wife Maggie ran their farm together for 50 years


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TOP: Henry Bainbridge on Harrisend Fell, May 1963 BELOW: Henry with a flock at the same spot this year


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gradually moved away from produc- ing sheep for their fleeces, leaving *»to pay that much and said (le d b u y ~ behind the 250 Dalesbred type that they began with in 1959 and the Masham variety of the 1960s'fand .


thern atauction'.-He ended u p p a y - f ' ting £81 eachiof them':-:*


' / •/" __"We'd never seen a Charolais~___T.i;- Y d


replacingthem with mules in.the-^iiKi^before^so we hadno.ideawhatthey ~T* early 1970s. A decade later, in:1981, . wereworth.'but 12 months laterthe they took on more land at Corrick


Farm, about three miles away by ... J ~">lwould.breed them he would b u y ^


road, and moved into breeding pure Swaledales. "In the early days wool was worth


a fortune," says Henry. "But byth_e _~^ seventies you could get £48 for a . mule and £34 for a Masham,* so we made the decision on purely eco­ nomic grounds." Later, he and Maggie ("We refer


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to what we did, not what I did; we ^ ran the farm together," he says, emphatically) took another decision*


j,.jthat proved economically sound: introducing Charolais cattle.; "We evolved into Charolais after I


bought some semen through Colo­ nel Ogden in Kirkby Lonsdale. It , wasn't easily available in the 1960s, but he must have been to France


s tand thought they were superior to anything we had here. "We produced four ,calves and


tried to sell them off for £60 apiece to another farmer, but he refused ,


them off me. We could sell them for. T £100apiece)rather-than £80 for a Hereford,"


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^sell a pure.Charolais bull for £1,500, about twice as mudras store cattle. Wh„en the couple, who met at a Calder Vale Chapel social, retired


,iil2009 they had 70 Charolais and a .. total of 2,300 sheep; including 900 ; ''breedingsheep.


' , "Farming had.to go bigger," he says.: "You couldn't make a living X N , from a small farm now, but in 1959


living with-250.sheep and 20 cattle , then. Today; 900 isn't a lot; a hill • farmer needs about 1,500 breeding sheep to make a decent living." The increasing size of farms is not


the only change Henry has seen. "One thing that has happened is the break-up of estates. Half of the


: J r fK> ‘i t ;1 Bleasdale estate has gone and j the Bamacre estate has been sold .


Stake House wouldn't, be consid- ; , ;s , off completely. It's a,shame;but ered small; anyone could make a


times have'changed," he says. , "When we started out, our landlord was Richard Silcock. He'


, was a real gentleman who wanted everyone on the estate to be a success. He believed we should ' all be looked after and if a tenant was ever ill he was always the first to ask after them; his tenants were


the happiest in the land. He was .generous - but he could probably


afford to be - arid he paid for us all to have Christmas dinner until . the 1970s." ., = .


The introduction of new farm .


. machinery has also brought changes, with fewer people employed on farms and, accord­ ing to Henry, a concurrent fall in what he describes as a spirit of co-operation. "Everybody wanted


everyone to be a success," he says.TIf anyone was ill there was no need to look for someone to help','because your neighbours


.would see you through. "You would share machin-


eiy and help one another with haymaking. Now farmers have be­ come more specialised and there are fewer people on the farm and production has gone up. "Farming's never been easy


A n f j * «.. - farmer-came back to me and said if*,?Y~«,— 2T;


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...who stjll,at the,;agev puts in eighT-houriday^ the;stone walls o_fj Bo^land^frir\^T> '.v<, >>4»i hj y>y.


of 77 ’ for young people to get into. We


. were fortunate to get a tenancy when I was 22; that's young by any standard. But I think it's harder now because the equipment is so expensive.-", ■ Back in 1959 there were sig- -


nificant financial challenges, too, however. An average farm worker might take home £8 a week in wages, while a sheep would set him back £6.


With his business head and his


ability to adapt and try new things, however, Henry-with Maggie's support - made'the farm work, not for a decade or two, but for 50 years, making it the longest single tenancy in the estate's history.. "Maggie was my biggest critic


and my biggest supporter,", he ; says


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- Henry and Maggie withrnew op-


portunities to keep active,' whether, through bird watching, helping at«^ the mum and baby group;Seeing' • more of their four grandsons or, in , Henry's case, dry stone walling.-' . - "I had a choice about whether


to give up farming," he says. "It wasn't easy, but retirement just be­ comes another chapter in life. I look


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Retirement, farfrom being a time back after five years, and I know I to slow down, has presented both made the right decision."


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FROM TOP: area in June


• Heniy Bainbridqe at Pendle; walling In the Pendle a 2013; a wall before...&nd after the hard work


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