Wartime Ride : A Thousand Miles Through England on a Horse

by Day, James Wentworth

• ISBN13: 9781590480397
• ISBN10: 1590480392
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-10-01
• Publisher: Lightning Source Inc

Summary

It was wartime in England. London was being bombed by the Nazis. Coventry Cathedral was a smoke filled ruin and a sense of desperation gripped the island kingdom. Yet even though the Second World War was raging all around him, the English country squire J. W. Day decided the time was right for an extended horseback ride through his disaster torn country!

Table of Contents

The Start from Tolleshunt D'Arcy Hall
A Medieval Manor Farm
Decline of the Yeomanry
How 'Cheap Food' killed the Land
The Dereliction of Salcott-cum-Virley
Bargemen and Smugglers
To Saltings and the Sea
A Shooting Idyll of the Marshes
The Passing of Bulls Bars
Tom Mann, Yeoman of Virley Hall
A Squire of the Old Sort
The Man who refused Money
Smugglers and the Roman Ghost
The Drunken Skipper in the Pond
Drowned Islands
The Peldon Rose Parliament
Two Essex Characters
Ted Allen, Adder-catcher and Bull-tamer
His Battle with 'the City Gent'
When the Devil mowed a Field of Hay
How to tame a Bull
Wick Farm and Langenhoe Marsh
The Roman Temple of Fingringhoe and the Mystery of Arch Hall
Follies of 'Committee Farming'
Bill Wyatt, 'Admiral' of West Mersea
An Elizabethan Philosopher
How he lassoed a Porpoise
"The Little Owd Boy up Street" who was bombed
On London, "That Wicked Owd Hole"
On Women
At Mrs Hone's
On Drink
"Eighteen Thousand Barrels o' Beer in Me Life"
Duck-driving in the Blitz
The Harbour-master of Pin Mill and his Little Way with Germans
On Towns and how they make Monkeys of Men
Linnett, the Saxon Fowler of Bradwell-juxta-Mare
Vigil by the Roman Fort
Gossip at the Victory on Mersea Island
Poaching on Old Hall Marshes
When Bill Wyatt blacked his Face
The Shooting of Swan Mussett
"He's Still Full o' Shot"
"A Head Place for Rum 'Uns"
Salvaging an Uncle from the Mast-head with an Eel-pick
The Gunner who looked like a Hot Cross Bun
The Little Ways of Foxes
The Fox in the Owl's Nest
Reynard on a Roof
When Sir Claude de Crespigny swam for a Fox
"A Rum Old Day"
Charles James and the Ploughman
On boxing Horses
The Start by Road
To the Heckford Angel and Maldon
Maldon, the Town of Plough and Sail
Mother of English Poetry
Northey, Isle of Ghosts and Birds
Vikings and Wild Geese
At the Blue Boar, a Medieval Inn
The Seaman and the Bomb
Company at the Jolly Sailor
Old Fowling Days in the Joseph and Mary
The Three Claydons
Liquor Smugglers of Osea Island
"'Git up, hoss'," he say
The Mechanical Miracle of Fordson Estates
A Visit to Boreham House Farms
Mr Ford's Agricultural Shop Window
Lessons in Practical Farming
The Maxims of Lord Perry
Follies of Bureaucracy
Farm Wages and Income Tax
Loss of the Smack Teaser
A Morning's Fishing
Cousin Luke and his Rifle
Of Mr Lawrence Washington of Maldon
Woodham Mortimer and its Squiresses
The Windy Lands of Dengie
Will Goodchild's Prairie Farm
Marshes down to Corn
When the Devil threw a Man out of his Bed at Midnight on Wallasea Island
Old Mother Redcap on a Hurdle
Witches of the Islands
The Viking Ghost of Canvey Point
Cattle, Wild Horses, and Conscientious Objectors
A Short-sighted Horse Slaughter Policy
Wild Irish Gangs
"They lived like Hogs and fought like Dogs"
A Yeoman at Home
A Wayside Word with Charlie Brown, the King of Limehouse
The Mechanized Monsters of Hatfield
A Bit of Bread and Cheese with Jack Olding
Bulldozers which move Mountains
American Farming comes to England
What the Caterpillar Tractor can do
"The Indivisible Trinity: Landowner, Farmer, and Labourer"
Hannen Swaffer's Definition
Beak, V.C., of Malta
To Easton Lodge
A Vanished Herd of Noble Deer
Hedingham Castle and the Great Yeldham Gaol
By the Roman Road to Cambridge
Where the Godolphin Arabian lies Buried
The Shepherd's Soliloquy
"Yan, Tan, Tethera," and "One-erum, Two-erum, Cock-erum"
Pepys's Inn
Ghosts of Barnwell Priory
Joe Cannon's Cock-fight
Old Callaby's Ratting Parties
Talk at Histon Manor
On Yeomen
The Beginning and Meaning of the Term
The Tyranny of Bureaucracy
Chivers's, the Greatest Fruit Estate in Britain
Natural Manure, Sound Farming
Lord Eltisley's Farms
An Example of Good Landlordism
His Tribute to the Caterpillar Diesel Tractor
Weekly Costings on the Farm
Pigs, Poultry, and Rabbits
On Wages, Prices, Soil Fertility, E.P.T., and Death Duties
The Folly of too many Artificials
"Muck's your Man"
Post-war Peril of Land Exhaustion
"Duties on Land should be paid not on Death but on the Sale of the Estate"
Partridge-shooting at Kimbolton Castle
"The Perfect English Village"
A Home of Sport
Lord Mandeville and Frank Cowlard
The Boar which brought over [pound]1100
Madingley Hall, "A Gem of its Age"
"Capability" Brown's Landscape
Talk at the Three Horseshoes
On old Pigeon and Rabbiting Days
On Foxes and Anti-Sport Cranks
Farewell to the 'Pansies' of Cambridge
Her Value for the Future
The Last of a Primeval Fen
On "The Company of Adventurers" and the Drainage of the Fens
A Mighty Achievement
Wicken Fen
The "Fen Tigers"
Pout Hall and its Sheep-stealers
The Murder of Peacock
My Wildfowl Sanctuary and Shoot
Bitterns, Montagu's Harriers, the Great White Heron, and Black-necked Grebes
One Thousand Wildfowl a Year
Cattle Egrets and Garganey Teal
Gay Shooting Days
"Swan Mere's Ploughed Up"
A Fen Oak One Hundred and Ten Feet Long
The Prehistoric Man in the Peat
Badcock's Hut
"A Supper Mess o' Water-rats"
Village Aristocracies
"The Five Miles from Anywhere: No Hurry"
The Upware Republic
Black Shuck
Henry Cromwell at Spinney Abbey
The Tale of a Five-hundred-acre Fen Farm
Fields which blow away
Newmarket, the Town of Kings
Felix Leach, the Gamecock in Human Form
The Man from Swaffham
To Euston by Barton Mills
The Vulgarity of Elveden
The Triumph of Euston
Farming on Sandy Land
The Duke of Grafton's Experiments
An Extraordinary Object-lesson in Reclamation
Ten Sacks of Barley to the Acre
Across the Norfolk Heaths
The Merman's Grave
Singing Ghosts of Thetford
Lord Fisher's Blackcurrants and Asparagus
The Folly of gassing Rabbits
By Ring Mere and Fowl Mere
Chicken-plucking for a Bet
At Swaffham Market
The Seal which drank Beer
The Rich Land of Lincolnshire
Land of the Tractor and Potato
Thompson and Dennis
St Peter's Lodge in Marshland
The Monson Greys
Borrow's Tale of Old Shales, the Kingly Horse
A Memory of the Last Norfolk Witch
The Difficulties of the Farming Squire
How we brought the Big Grey out of Norfolk
From Lynn to Hillington
The Valley Village of Hillington
The King's Farms at Sandringham
Conservatism pays
Six Hundred and Eighty-eight and a Half Brace of Partridges in one Day
To Heacham, Home of the Hackney
Horace Callaby, a Sportsman of the Old Sort
The Heacham Harriers
The Greatest Farmer in all England
High Farming at Westacre High House
Major Birkbeck's Methods
A Ten-thousand-acre Estate
Rare Birds
Holkham, the Home of High Farming
A Forty-three-thousand-acre Estate
Lord Leicester, a John Bull Englishman
Shooting at Ninety-three
High Wind in the East
On Savage Bulls
Sam Bone, the 'Fowler of Wells-next-the-Sea
Old 'Fowling Days
The Gun in the Closet
The Earl and the Queen
When he refused to be Shaved
A Royal Duke put to Flight
Reclamation of the Holkham Marshes
Scventeen Sacks of Wheat an Acre
Pasturing Beef Cattle on Sea Lavender
Coke of Norfolk and his Work
"The Father of English Farming"
The Quaker at Holkham
Air Raid at Stiffkey
The Sporting Grocer of Holt
And so Home
Index	p. 247
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