WEST MARTON DAIRIES (1)
Posted: 17 Feb 2026, 02:55
WEST MARTON DAIRIES (1)
Written 24 January 2001.
Very few things come as a complete surprise to me these days, I suppose it’s part of growing old, but it was a real shock to me to hear at Christmas that the dairy at West Marton had closed down. I suppose the thought process I had was that this is a milk-producing area, people consume milk products so there will always be a need for a dairy. How wrong I was!
I had a close association with West Marton for over 16 years when I drove for Harrison Brothers who had the contract for picking up the milk from the farms and delivering it to the dairy. When they finished I went driving for the dairy and from 1967 to 1973 I drove a cattle wagon for Richard Drinkall who had Yew Tree farm in the village. So I have a lot of memories of the place, the people and how the village worked.
The creamery at West Marton was started by the then owners of the Gledstone Estate, the Roundells in 1900 to take in the milk from the estate and separate it into cream. Some of this was sold as cream and the rest was churned into butter. The by-products of this process were skim milk and buttermilk which were very good for pig-feeding so a piggery was built at the same time. The muck from the pigs went back onto the land round about so the estate had a very efficient and economic unit.
I don’t know a lot more about the history of the dairy until 1947 when the estate was in the hands of the family of the late Sir Amos Nelson who made his fortune at Valley Mills at Nelson and bought the Gledstone Estate from the Roundells in 1920. Gilbert Nelson went into partnership with a man who I think was an accountant from Crosshills called Scott. They set up a new company, West Marton Dairies Limited, engaged David Peacock as manager and converted the dairy to producing bottled milk. Colin Barritt, who went to work there in 1948 tells me that the first invoices had the name ‘Gilbert Dairies’ on them.
Another name comes into the picture but I’m not sure when. The Fattorini’s in Bradford were famous for two things, jewellery and ice cream. They had ensured a good supply of milk for the ice cream business by buying up farms at the back of Clitheroe and at some point, WMD bought the right to collect this milk and also Davey’s Dairy at Moorside in Bradford. Davey’s also supplied bottled milk and so WMD had a very good market for their milk stretching from Bradford across to Burnley. Round about 1960 they bought Townshends Dairy at Blackburn and further increased their sales. This period saw a lot of takeovers and consolidation in the dairy industry. I have an idea that the purchase of the Blackburn dairy was part of some deal with Express Dairies whereby they bought Davey’s at Bradford and WMD got Townshends. At the same time, in 1960, WMD itself was taken over by Associated Dairies at Leeds and this was how it stayed until 1987 when it passed to Van den Berg Foods. In October 1999 it was sold to Yieldingtree Ltd, a Midlands based company and went into receivership a year later.
Meanwhile, the piggeries had been leased to Marshall’s of Bradley and carried on rearing pigs for slaughter. The pigman was Harry Addyman who’s wife Phyllis ran the village shop.
When Associated Dairies took over WMD they carried on with the bottling for a while but then spent a lot of money converting it to a creamery and cheese factory. Several smaller firms at Barbon, Birstwith and Sedbergh were acquired and it was from the latter that we got a great asset, Fred Taylor the cheese maker who was, and still is, a master of his craft.
By the time I left the dairy and my tanker-driving job to go to Drinkalls the cheese factory was in full swing and if anyone had asked me then what its future was I’d have said indefinite. How could a modern facility producing a basic commodity fail to be a success? Enough bare facts, what about the people?
West Marton was a wonderful example of a small Yorkshire estate village. Everybody knew everyone else, there were very few secrets! At the dairy the managing director was David Peacock who lived in one of the two big houses facing the green. The other one was occupied by the Gott family who founded Gott’s Garage in the barn across the road from the village shop and later moved to Barlick. Cross corner to the barn was the Village Institute which was built by the Roundells and next door to this was the post office run by Allan Cryer and his wife Mabel (nee Southwell). Mabel’s brother Cecil and sister Cissie lived with them, Cec was gamekeeper on the estate and Cissie worked at the dairy.
Cec Southwell was a tall, gaunt man who, like his sister Cissie, never married. He could often be seen walking round the village with his shotgun under his arm. The story was that when he was young, he could catch rabbits by running after them! I remember one day Billy Harrison, the bloke I worked for, and myself were trying to get a wheel off one of the wagons and we weren’t making any headway at all. Cecil stood looking at us for a while and then he said "Tha might be turning ‘em the wrong way. Some on ‘em’s left hand thread tha knows." We knew this of course, right hand wheels were right hand thread, left hand side was left hand thread and it didn’t help to have this pointed out by the village gamekeeper! I suggested we try the opposite direction just in case, more to shut Cec up than anything else. The nuts came loose straight away, Cec said "I told thee so!" and marched off. Billy and I were livid! We decided in the end that someone had done an enlightened repair at some time by putting a left hand hub on the right hand side. Cec never forgot it, and he never let us forget it either!
There were two cottages next to the dairy, they’ve been made into one house now I think. George Parker lived in the top one and Percy Graham and his wife in the one below. George used to be the forester on the estate, the story was that one day while out doing his duties he happened upon Sir Amos and his secretary Harriet in a compromising situation. He used his head, retreated into the undergrowth and kept quiet. Sir Amos eventually married Harriet and she became Lady Nelson. When Amos died there was a codicil in his will that stated that George Parker was to have his cottage until he died, rent free and when Lady Nelson died this was repeated. George always said it was because Sir Amos knew he’d seen them but had kept quiet.
Percy Graham worked at the dairy on the bottle washers and as spare driver. He was getting on for 75 I should think at the time and was a rum old bugger. There were all sorts of tales about him but the one I like best is when they were bringing him back from hospital to die at home as he’d been diagnosed as having terminal cancer. George Horton from Barlick and his mate were on the ambulance and George told me that as they were going up East Marton Brow Percy lifted his head from the pillow and asked where they were. When George told him Percy asked them to drop him off at the Cross Keys so he could have a pint. George told him they couldn’t do that, he was dying and they had to see him home. Percy agreed to this but got a lift back with them and went for his pint. I have to report that he cheated at dominoes as well, he used to slip the ones he didn’t want into his waistcoat pockets!
Ted Lawson and Joyce worked at the dairy and in the early days they lived in a cottage over at the Kennels behind Old Gledstone. Times were hard and one night while Ted was walking home across the fields he tripped over a heap of something in the dark. He soon realised it was a heap of coke which had been used at some time in the filter beds of the Old Hall’s sewage plant but was grown over with grass. From then on he always had a bucket handy as he went home and Joyce said it did very well for them on the solid fuel range!
Colin Barritt from Kayfield and his wife Rita worked there as well. Colin was dairy manager under Bill Mills, another Barlicker and Rita worked in the office. When we swapped over to cheese making Colin had to go to Birstwith to learn the trade and then when Fred Taylor came down from Sedbergh he learned even more. I always remember that Colin got quite depressed at one stage because his starter cultures, that is the special bacteria which have to be added to the milk in order to start the cheese-making process off, weren’t doing very well. Colin was famous in the dairy for his perfect standards of hygiene and Fred pointed out that the problem was probably that Colin was being too clean! His starter had never been exposed to any infection and so was losing its resistance. Colin braced himself, relaxed his standards a bit and the starter recovered!
Wallace Neave was in charge of the garage and at one point I worked with him regularly after the bottling finished as he was short handed because his mate Tony Midgely had left to be manager at Whitewell Dairy at Accrington. Wallace was a good mechanic but was noted for his short temper. He came in one morning and was obviously not in the best of moods, after a while I got the story out of him. He lived in one of the cottages opposite the dairy and they were built back into the hillside. There was a narrow yard at the back but the gardens were almost on the same level as the bedroom window. Wallace was a keen gardener and was having trouble with the feral cats that abounded in Marton and this particular night he’d been woken up by the tom cats serenading outside his window. He’d already prepared for this by loading a couple of shotgun cartridges with peppercorns instead of lead shot. He grabbed the gun, slipped two cartridges up the breech, opened the window and let fly with both barrels. Unfortunately he’d picked the wrong cartridges up and blew most of the glass out of his greenhouse!
I’ve run out of space but there’s lots more to tell about the dairy years so I’ll leave it now but come back to the dairy next week. Don’t forget, if you want to educate me, you know where to get hold of me.
24 January 2001.
Written 24 January 2001.
Very few things come as a complete surprise to me these days, I suppose it’s part of growing old, but it was a real shock to me to hear at Christmas that the dairy at West Marton had closed down. I suppose the thought process I had was that this is a milk-producing area, people consume milk products so there will always be a need for a dairy. How wrong I was!
I had a close association with West Marton for over 16 years when I drove for Harrison Brothers who had the contract for picking up the milk from the farms and delivering it to the dairy. When they finished I went driving for the dairy and from 1967 to 1973 I drove a cattle wagon for Richard Drinkall who had Yew Tree farm in the village. So I have a lot of memories of the place, the people and how the village worked.
The creamery at West Marton was started by the then owners of the Gledstone Estate, the Roundells in 1900 to take in the milk from the estate and separate it into cream. Some of this was sold as cream and the rest was churned into butter. The by-products of this process were skim milk and buttermilk which were very good for pig-feeding so a piggery was built at the same time. The muck from the pigs went back onto the land round about so the estate had a very efficient and economic unit.
I don’t know a lot more about the history of the dairy until 1947 when the estate was in the hands of the family of the late Sir Amos Nelson who made his fortune at Valley Mills at Nelson and bought the Gledstone Estate from the Roundells in 1920. Gilbert Nelson went into partnership with a man who I think was an accountant from Crosshills called Scott. They set up a new company, West Marton Dairies Limited, engaged David Peacock as manager and converted the dairy to producing bottled milk. Colin Barritt, who went to work there in 1948 tells me that the first invoices had the name ‘Gilbert Dairies’ on them.
Another name comes into the picture but I’m not sure when. The Fattorini’s in Bradford were famous for two things, jewellery and ice cream. They had ensured a good supply of milk for the ice cream business by buying up farms at the back of Clitheroe and at some point, WMD bought the right to collect this milk and also Davey’s Dairy at Moorside in Bradford. Davey’s also supplied bottled milk and so WMD had a very good market for their milk stretching from Bradford across to Burnley. Round about 1960 they bought Townshends Dairy at Blackburn and further increased their sales. This period saw a lot of takeovers and consolidation in the dairy industry. I have an idea that the purchase of the Blackburn dairy was part of some deal with Express Dairies whereby they bought Davey’s at Bradford and WMD got Townshends. At the same time, in 1960, WMD itself was taken over by Associated Dairies at Leeds and this was how it stayed until 1987 when it passed to Van den Berg Foods. In October 1999 it was sold to Yieldingtree Ltd, a Midlands based company and went into receivership a year later.
Meanwhile, the piggeries had been leased to Marshall’s of Bradley and carried on rearing pigs for slaughter. The pigman was Harry Addyman who’s wife Phyllis ran the village shop.
When Associated Dairies took over WMD they carried on with the bottling for a while but then spent a lot of money converting it to a creamery and cheese factory. Several smaller firms at Barbon, Birstwith and Sedbergh were acquired and it was from the latter that we got a great asset, Fred Taylor the cheese maker who was, and still is, a master of his craft.
By the time I left the dairy and my tanker-driving job to go to Drinkalls the cheese factory was in full swing and if anyone had asked me then what its future was I’d have said indefinite. How could a modern facility producing a basic commodity fail to be a success? Enough bare facts, what about the people?
West Marton was a wonderful example of a small Yorkshire estate village. Everybody knew everyone else, there were very few secrets! At the dairy the managing director was David Peacock who lived in one of the two big houses facing the green. The other one was occupied by the Gott family who founded Gott’s Garage in the barn across the road from the village shop and later moved to Barlick. Cross corner to the barn was the Village Institute which was built by the Roundells and next door to this was the post office run by Allan Cryer and his wife Mabel (nee Southwell). Mabel’s brother Cecil and sister Cissie lived with them, Cec was gamekeeper on the estate and Cissie worked at the dairy.
Cec Southwell was a tall, gaunt man who, like his sister Cissie, never married. He could often be seen walking round the village with his shotgun under his arm. The story was that when he was young, he could catch rabbits by running after them! I remember one day Billy Harrison, the bloke I worked for, and myself were trying to get a wheel off one of the wagons and we weren’t making any headway at all. Cecil stood looking at us for a while and then he said "Tha might be turning ‘em the wrong way. Some on ‘em’s left hand thread tha knows." We knew this of course, right hand wheels were right hand thread, left hand side was left hand thread and it didn’t help to have this pointed out by the village gamekeeper! I suggested we try the opposite direction just in case, more to shut Cec up than anything else. The nuts came loose straight away, Cec said "I told thee so!" and marched off. Billy and I were livid! We decided in the end that someone had done an enlightened repair at some time by putting a left hand hub on the right hand side. Cec never forgot it, and he never let us forget it either!
There were two cottages next to the dairy, they’ve been made into one house now I think. George Parker lived in the top one and Percy Graham and his wife in the one below. George used to be the forester on the estate, the story was that one day while out doing his duties he happened upon Sir Amos and his secretary Harriet in a compromising situation. He used his head, retreated into the undergrowth and kept quiet. Sir Amos eventually married Harriet and she became Lady Nelson. When Amos died there was a codicil in his will that stated that George Parker was to have his cottage until he died, rent free and when Lady Nelson died this was repeated. George always said it was because Sir Amos knew he’d seen them but had kept quiet.
Percy Graham worked at the dairy on the bottle washers and as spare driver. He was getting on for 75 I should think at the time and was a rum old bugger. There were all sorts of tales about him but the one I like best is when they were bringing him back from hospital to die at home as he’d been diagnosed as having terminal cancer. George Horton from Barlick and his mate were on the ambulance and George told me that as they were going up East Marton Brow Percy lifted his head from the pillow and asked where they were. When George told him Percy asked them to drop him off at the Cross Keys so he could have a pint. George told him they couldn’t do that, he was dying and they had to see him home. Percy agreed to this but got a lift back with them and went for his pint. I have to report that he cheated at dominoes as well, he used to slip the ones he didn’t want into his waistcoat pockets!
Ted Lawson and Joyce worked at the dairy and in the early days they lived in a cottage over at the Kennels behind Old Gledstone. Times were hard and one night while Ted was walking home across the fields he tripped over a heap of something in the dark. He soon realised it was a heap of coke which had been used at some time in the filter beds of the Old Hall’s sewage plant but was grown over with grass. From then on he always had a bucket handy as he went home and Joyce said it did very well for them on the solid fuel range!
Colin Barritt from Kayfield and his wife Rita worked there as well. Colin was dairy manager under Bill Mills, another Barlicker and Rita worked in the office. When we swapped over to cheese making Colin had to go to Birstwith to learn the trade and then when Fred Taylor came down from Sedbergh he learned even more. I always remember that Colin got quite depressed at one stage because his starter cultures, that is the special bacteria which have to be added to the milk in order to start the cheese-making process off, weren’t doing very well. Colin was famous in the dairy for his perfect standards of hygiene and Fred pointed out that the problem was probably that Colin was being too clean! His starter had never been exposed to any infection and so was losing its resistance. Colin braced himself, relaxed his standards a bit and the starter recovered!
Wallace Neave was in charge of the garage and at one point I worked with him regularly after the bottling finished as he was short handed because his mate Tony Midgely had left to be manager at Whitewell Dairy at Accrington. Wallace was a good mechanic but was noted for his short temper. He came in one morning and was obviously not in the best of moods, after a while I got the story out of him. He lived in one of the cottages opposite the dairy and they were built back into the hillside. There was a narrow yard at the back but the gardens were almost on the same level as the bedroom window. Wallace was a keen gardener and was having trouble with the feral cats that abounded in Marton and this particular night he’d been woken up by the tom cats serenading outside his window. He’d already prepared for this by loading a couple of shotgun cartridges with peppercorns instead of lead shot. He grabbed the gun, slipped two cartridges up the breech, opened the window and let fly with both barrels. Unfortunately he’d picked the wrong cartridges up and blew most of the glass out of his greenhouse!
I’ve run out of space but there’s lots more to tell about the dairy years so I’ll leave it now but come back to the dairy next week. Don’t forget, if you want to educate me, you know where to get hold of me.
24 January 2001.