8. Field Song Words: Rod Hall and Kevin Adams; Music: Rod Hall
|
Written for the radio ballad The Horse and the Tractor in 2014[1], the song focuses on reminiscences of the fields around Calverton from former residents of Calverton Manor Farm: Richard Fontaine its owner, and his farm-worker, Dick Webb.
Richard Fontaine’s grandparents owned Calverton Manor Farm from 1922 until 1950 when his father inherited it. Richard moved in when he got married in 1984 and left when he sold it in 2006: ‘Most of Calverton was pasture. Gib Ground, Middle Ground, Park’s Piece, Bushy Field, Big Meadow, and The Leys - were all permanent grassland… Gib Ground was supposedly where the gibbet was and where the man that committed the murder in the farmhouse was hanged. Back in history, Lady Bennet was murdered in Calverton Manor[2]… ‘Parks Piece is supposedly one of the best grazing fields in Buckinghamshire - it would fatten a two-year old bullock. It’s always been noted that Calverton has been ‘fattening land’. You’d buy store cattle in, fatten them and then sell them through the markets. We were still doing that, producing beef and fat lamb, the same as we were 50 years ago… There was a row of elms along Parks Piece, another in The Leys. There were a lot of elms on our land - they’ve all gone[3]… ‘Calverton’s field sizes are the same as in 1950. The only hedgerow that has gone is between The Leys and Bushey Field - run as one field now. Two more fields have been built on for the new city - Allotment Field and the Sandpit Field where in hard times my grandfather opened up a sandpit … ‘Thistly Piece and Lower Woolans have always been arable fields with a rotation over three years which would be wheat, then barley and then grass.’ Richard Fountaine Dick Webb was born in Manor Farm Cottages and grew up there with his seven brothers and sisters. He was the last of three generations to work for the Fountaine family. Dick started work at the farm when he was 14 and retired in 1997. ‘Bushy Field, up Beachampton Road, the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ field, was where the stone came from for the walls of our cottage. It wasn’t good enough for the Manor House… ‘The gypsies, the ‘Biddles’, would always stay in Bushy Field, just inside the gate. And they was really hard workers. They’d come and help us with the thrashing, pulling mangels[4], brushing sugar beet, any job… There are hardly any real gypsies about now. The real gypsies were good. They’d really look after you. They wouldn’t do you no harm. They’d help you out they would. They didn’t tell you what their remedies were but if you got something wrong with you, ‘Go up and see the Biddles, they’ll give you something’!’ Dick Webb [1] The Horse and the Tractor DVD of LAMK’s radio ballad is on DVDs and CDs | Online Shop | Living Archive ; and Field Song can be heard in full both on the website and the link on Field Song | The Living Archive Band (bandcamp.com) [2] See The Ghost of Lady Bennett by Kevin Adams on page XX below, inspired by the story of this 17th century murder [3] Dutch Elm disease has been so prevalent in Buckinghamshire that nearly all its native elms have died. [4] As in the song Sheltermore, mangels: ‘mangel-wurzel - a variety of beet… cultivated as food for cattle.’ (OED) |
Ridge and Furrow, the field behind Calverton Road looking to Passenham
Downloads... |
