Northumbrian milking machine tales: Old Alf’s contraption

Byres, hemmels, shippons and mistles - milking machine tales

By Jack Dent (2005)

I knew an old engineer in Leyburn when I was an apprentice during the war, and used to go into his workshop to get bits and pieces made, as parts were very scarce in those dark days. Old Alf could just about make anything – he had to.

One day he was fettling something and as I was waiting for it (as lads do), I was nosing about in his back shop and I found a two cylinder Jowett 8hp car which had been butchered and reformed as a mowing machine. It had a car front end and a pair of cast mower wheels and a cutter bar at the back. Alf told me he had made eight of these machines from scrap cars.

He had made them to order for local farmers between the horse and tractor age. But Alf was getting older and tractors were coming in so the secret of his “motor mower contraption” was lost.

After the war there appeared on the market another wonderful contraption called the “Motorcart”. This had a flat cart body with two rear wheels and at the front it had one huge tractor wheel. The chassis came up in a fork to a pivot on top of this wheel, and a 5 hp Petter engine was mounted on the side. It only had one forward gear and a reverse, and was steered by a tiller bar by the driver who stood on a platform in front of the cart body. The luxury of the seat was not part of the package.

Norman Harrison had one, and every morning he drove about a mile from Harmby to Leyburn to bring his milk cans to the Express Dairy. The top speed was something less than walking speed and I can vouch for this, for at the time I was an apprentice at the L.N.E.R. workshops next door to the Express Dairy. Norman had the machine for about 15 years and used it every day. He said the body fell to bits before the engine gave out – that’s the machine’s body and not Norman’s!

Northumbrian milking machine tales: Aye man, it's gannin' all the way to fifteen!

Byres, hemmels, shippons and mistles - milking machine tales
by Jack Dent (2005)

I installed a milking machine near my home for a very nice old chap and he was pleased at first, but then complained that it didn’t milk as well as his neighbour’s new machine. The neighbour’s was an Alfa-Laval and I found out that this neighbour was telling him that his machine worked better because his clock read 15, and the Simplex only 13.

The fact was that the different vacuum readings were due to the different pulsator requirements, but I thought I wouldn’t get very far trying to explain this to the old man. So I took a screwdriver to the back of the clock when the old lad wasn’t around and made it read two inches of mercury higher.
Photo: advertisement from the late 1930s for Alfa Laval equipment.

He was delighted and I was especially pleased when his neighbour told him that he thought the Simplex was a bit better milking machine.

One day I was fitting a small machine in a Dales byre and while fitting the vacuum line overhead, the farmer’s son came in and asked me if there would be any vibration in the pipe.

Picture: Widely used bucket type of milking plant, operating from a fixed overhead vacuum line. From Kenneth Russell (1969) The Principles of Dairy Farming.

His father was with him and then later on that afternoon, the old man came back into the byre. I was standing on the milking cracket fixing a tap and the old man walloped me across the backside and said “Thooed better leave a hole in yan end”. I asked him what for, and his reply was “te let viberashum oot”.

Northumbrian milking machine tales: Modern Contraptions and Young Upstarts

Byres, hemmels, shippons and mistles - milking machine tales
by Jack Dent (2005)

When I was fitting, I installed a weird contraption on a farm just outside Hexham; it was called a Runway Parlour and was very successful. First I suspended a runway track around the cowshed, and from it I suspended a cradle which supported a standard 10-gallon milk churn. The churn had a flat lid with a pulsator and inlet spigots. The vacuum pipe was also mounted on the runway and the cows were milked through the back legs.

Nothing new in that you may say, but remember this was 1953 and the milk was taken in a metal churn to the dairy and cooled with rotary turbo coolers which was a very efficient system.

I worked on a farm in the East Riding of Yorkshire and it was not a happy place as there was continual conflict between the farmer and his three sons. The lads had threatened to go on strike if he didn’t get a milking machine, and he was much against such newfangled things as he couldn’t see how they could be as clean as hand milking. All the time I was working there he kept coming into the cowshed and telling me that if it didn’t work right, I could take the damned thing away as it was going to be most uncomfortable for the cows.

However, I completed the installation, which was quite a big one for 40 cows. We milked for the first time on a Wednesday night and everything went off smoothly. I think that the cows were pleased that the old man was not there creating the bad atmosphere that constantly accompanied him.

Next morning we milked again and that was the end of my tutelage. I was gathering up my tools ready to depart when he stormed into the cowshed waving a letter. He was waving his stick at me too and I thought I was about to be attacked. He shouted – “I bloody told you, so take the bugger out of here, and give me my money back”.

I finally got him to tell me what the problem was and he said – “Look at this letter from the dairy. My milk has failed the test, and in over 40 years I have never had any milk sent back. It’s a damned disgrace. I knew it would happen, but I let them bloody lads take me into it, and now look what’s happened!”

But my reaction was one of great relief and I’m afraid, and I didn’t endear myself to the old boy as I burst out laughing – the result I’m sure of the relief! I had great pleasure in pointing out to the old chap that the milk, which had been extracted by machine, was still on the milk stand waiting for the lorry to pick it up!

I thought the old bloke was going to have a fit. He was absolutely stunned and turned around and went across the yard muttering about modern contraptions and young upstarts.

Northumbrian milking machine tales: The revolution from hand milking to machines

Byres, hemmels, shippons and mistles - milking machine tales

by Jack Dent (2005)

Forty-five years doesn’t seem long as you live it, but nowadays I get some queer looks from young ones when I mention what went on in the past. This was brought home to me during my last few months working for Simplex. I was moving on after twenty odd years as I had reached the dizzy heights of “Northern Sales Manager”.

Image: an advert for Simplex milking equipment from Farm Mechanisation magazine, August 1966 kindly supplied by Tom Clancy, retired milking machine installer, Hamilton NZ.

 

The Simplex bucket unit used on North Tyne farms

I had to fill in for one of my reps and went up into the Whitby Dales to follow up an enquiry. The farmer was a nice young fellow and I sold him a small milking machine. As I was leaving he said –‘Oh do you have a son working for Simplex”? I said that I didn’t and asked why he wanted to know.

He replied – “When I was a little lad at home a man called Jack Dent put our milking machine in, and he stayed with us and he used to play football with us, eeh we had a grand time”. I looked closer at him and asked if he had lived at Waupley New Inn farm, and he said “Yes I did’! He couldn’t believe it when I told him that I was the same Jack Dent he’d known as a boy. In his mind he imagined that I had stayed the same age even though he had grown into a man.

I don’t think I put in the first milking parlour in the North of England, although I might well have been among the first. But I quite definitely sold the first New Zealand style “herringbone” type parlour in the North. This was to a man at Low Mowthorpe near Malton, and was on the next farm to MAF Experimental Husbandry Farm; it caused a great stir in the district.

Modern New Zealand herringbone

I sold a good many from that one, and I subsequently found that my competitors were taking their prospects to see it, and telling them that their’s was more advanced than ours. I suppose this was fair game as I had taken John Rowbottom down to the Farmer’s Weekly farm at Tring in Hertfordshire to see a Gascoigne herringbone. That was the only herringbone in the country at the time and mine was next.

I shudder to tell you the teething troubles we had with that machine and I just about lived on that farm for weeks. One night I was there and my fitter (Derek) was sorting things out. We couldn’t get something to work right and we decided he would stay the night to keep the thing going.

By this time, Derek was very popular as he was a brilliant piano player after the style of Russ Conway and the Rowbottom girls were all in love with him. They were delighted he was going to stay the night. It was 60 miles from his home and he said to one of these young ladies who was looking forward to hearing him play, “I’ll just nip home for my pyjamas.” “Oh please don’t be long” she said, “I have to go to bed soon.”

The well-cared-for old byre at Greenhaugh on the end of the house

Northumbrian milking machine tales: Getting the cuws used to being machine milked.

Byres, hemmels, shippons and mistles - milking machine tales
by Jack Dent (2005)

After a milking machine was installed, I had to spend sometime showing the farmers how to use and clean it. On one farm I was doing an installation for one of the nicest farmers I have ever worked for. His greatest pleasure was to go to Leyburn market every Friday to meet his friends and discuss the state of the stock trade, and he always wore a smart blue suit and a pristine white shirt.

The night we were to use the machine for the first time, it happened to be a Friday night, so Charlie duly arrived back from Leyburn and looked into the byre to see how I was getting on. I told him I was ready to demonstrate the machine working, and if he could get changed, I would instruct him in its use.

He said he would appreciate if I did the milking that night and he would just watch. He added that he hadn’t missed a milking for over 40 years, and was looking forward to watching someone else milk his cows.

“Fair enough” I said and proceeded to start milking. Charlie stood at the back of the byre which is not very wide in small Dales byres. There was the “standing” where the cow stood which was as long as the cow, then the two-foot wide muck “grip” behind the cow, then if you were lucky, there was about three feet of “back walk” before the wall. Charlie stood there revelling in the fact that he wasn’t having to milk for the first time and he had divested himself of his jacket and tie and just stood there, the epitome of contentment.

Photo: Cowshed with milk pipeline direct to the dairy. Source: Kenneth Russell (1969) The Principles of Dairy Farming.

Now milking for the first time was never the easiest of tasks. I was strange to the cows, and the machine was a new experience to them. In those early days a cow would fetch a lot more money if an auctioneer could declare that “she was used to being machine milked”.

Well of course the inevitable happened. As I was putting the unit on the heifer, she coughed and poor old Charlie was directly in the line of fire. It was a bullseye, right dead centre on Charlie’s pristine best white shirt. I waited for the explosion but he looked at the mess and casually remarked – “I don’t suppose that would have happened if I’d been milking”.

He then departed leaving me to finish the job.

Northumbrian milking machine tales: Traps for young players

Byres, hemmels, shippons and mistles - milking machine tales
by Jack Dent (2005)


I started for the Simplex Milking Machine Company in February 1952 and was designated a “Service Inspector” which meant visiting farms over a wide area fitting new milking machines. At that time most of the herds were between 10 and 20 cows and farmers were making a decent living from those numbers.

I stayed on the farm for about three days while installing the machines; some were good and some I couldn’t get away from fast enough. Some are still friends with half a century on. I also met some “canny lasses”!

As to the buildings themselves, they varied quite a lot from Northumberland byres, Yorkshire Dales “hemmels”, West Yorkshire “shippons” and East Yorkshire “mistles” while up in the hills they were usually called “cow’ouses”!

On the low better land, buildings were nearly always brick and were easy to knock holes though their walls, except if they were on big estates when they were built with “engineering bricks” and were a day’s work getting a two-inch hole through for the vacuum pipe. These bricks were of Victorian origin and through some process in their firing ended up being extremely hard.

The stone walls in buildings up the Dales were a very different matter. It wasn’t simply a case of taking stones out to make the hole for the pipe. Oh no, after a few near disasters I learned to weigh up the enemy, i.e. the wall, and it’s structure built by cunning old masons centuries before. Each stone carried the weight of its neighbours and if I pulled one out, there was likely to be a rumble and I’d end up in a lot of dust (from the lime plaster before cement was invented) and with no wall.

I only had this happen to me once and I didn’t do it. I was being “helped” by one of those farmers who knew everything there was to know about everything, and when I told him not to be too enthusiastic about removing stones from the wall, he told me that the wall had stood for hundreds of years and would be standing long after I had gone. He wasn’t quite accurate! When I heard the first slight rumble, I was gone, and the wall didn’t stand long after my departure. It came down around the farmer and he was left standing on a stepladder with a new view of his farm from his byre.

So the best advice for getting a vacuum pipe through a stone wall was that of hedgehogs making love – the job needs to be done very carefully.

Once I was fitting a new machine away up in Wensleydale and I was working on my own as all the farm staff were in the hayfield. It was about half past two on a nice summer’s day – ideal for haymaking.

I was standing on a three-legged milking cracket (stool), and carefully taking out small stones form inside the wall, when without any warning, one of the throughstones (large flat stones that tie the wall together) slipped and fell sideways trapping my wrist. My arm was at full stretch and I could not move it in any direction.

The cracket, (as crackets were prone to be), was very precarious and any movement on my part was likely to topple the blessed thing and I would have been left suspended by my wrist. I spent a very uncomfortable afternoon stuck in the hole until the men came in from the hayfield. In the way of what usually happens when someone else’s discomfort is witnessed, it was several seconds before they perceived the danger I was in, and were able to stop laughing and release me.

Milking machine fitting - double byre job

Farming in the North Pennine Dales
By Eric Wilson

Now back over the river Tees and up to the fringes of the Durham pit district, another day and another milking machine installation. This one was different in that it had two byres separated by a walkway. No problem we thought – a little bit of piping high enough to walk under would easily connect the two buildings and supply vacuum to each.

We disagreed with the ideas of the farmer who wanted the pipe to go underground. He said they got some very hard frosts and didn’t want any bother in the middle of the winter. We thought that he didn’t understand it was a vacuum pipe, and there was nothing to freeze! If it was put underground, it would create a low point in the line which could collect condensation, and which unless drained out could possibly freeze.

He would listen attentively to all we said and just when we thought we had convinced him, he would say “Aye, but ahd still like it unnergrund”!

We got the salesman to have a word. He could talk the hind leg off a donkey, or a cow for that matter. But after half an hour and a lot of head nodding, the response was still the same - “Aye, but ahd still like it there Philip – unnergrund”.

As a last resort, we mentioned the situation to the boss who said he would call in, ostensibly to check how the work was progressing. But his other plan was to explain that an underground pipe was not necessary because it carried vacuum – not even air.

He was also thinking of the cost, as these jobs were quoted for and a price agreed before the work commenced. When the boss realised that he also was getting nowhere with the argument, he brought up the subject of extra cost – thinking that would surely touch a new nerve. But no – the farmer agreed to the extra cost, even dug the trench and tunneled under the foundations at each end. We had to put drain pipes at the low points just in case of frost.

The salesman reported later that the farmer only used the machine at busy times of the year. When everything was covered in snow, he too liked to hibernate in the warmth of the byre and spend a bit of time keeping his hand in, just in case one day the engine wouldn’t start. Well that was his story.

Fitting milking machines and cheeky kids

Farming in the North Pennine Dales

By Eric Wilson

Lead mine tailings in Upper Yorkshire Dales

The next job was pretty well straight forward, or at least it would have been if it hadn’t been for the farmer’s kids. I think it must have been school holidays and they had been sitting in the window waiting for us to arrive. I say “us” because we usually had a trainee aboard. In this case it was Nigel, an athletic type of lad who didn’t believe in modern climbing aids like ladders. He just climbed up the walls!

We barely had time to open the van door and the kids were there; a girl who said very little and an older boy who never shut his gob. At first we though he was a bright young lad, and went along with the theory that he had to ask questions to learn. But when he asked the same question five or six times on the trot, it began to get rather wearing.

It was what, which, and why to everything we attempted to do. The other hassle was to keep him out of mischief and try not to do him an injury with the long lengths of pipe we were slinging about.

It got round to 10am and Nigel thought he would have a cup of tea. He took out his flask and looked around for somewhere to sit down, only to be confronted with the inevitable of “what are you going to do?”, and “what’s that for” and so on.

Nigel suggested to “Junior” that perhaps his mother would have some lemonade or sweets for him. But it was to no avail and the chattering continued. He told Nigel that he (Nigel) couldn’t have his tea or a snack because he hadn’t got a table to eat it off.

That gave Nigel an idea. He told the kid he didn’t need a table. He took a sandwich from his box, put it in his mouth and proceeded to climb into the roof of the byre where he hung upside down with his legs hooked over a beam, and continued to chew. The results were dramatic, the kids eyes bulged and remarkably he was lost for words. He took off out of the buildings, closely followed by his sister and we didn’t see anyone again until nearly lunch time.

Then the mother appeared in the doorway holding the two children by the hands to ask if we needed any tea making, while glancing around the roof , no doubt looking for the “monkey man”! I don’t know who was more curious in the end. We finished the job without any further visits from the kids, so we never did discover what they told their mother. Another of life’s little mysteries.

The byre - a lovely warm place to be on a frosty morning

Selling milking machines

Farm Machinery in the North Pennine Dales
By Eric Wilson

Photo: Limestone walls in Durham Dales

But of course, all through the hectic activity of haymaking, someone had to be there in the cow byre, twice a day to milk the cows and see to getting the milk cooled and into the twelve-and-a-half gallon churns for collection. Once a day the churns had to be transported out to the road where each farm had a milk stand on which the churns were placed for pickup.

The milk stands were constructed to be about the same height as the flat-deck trucks belonging to the Express Dairy Company in our district. They collected the full churns of milk and left the empty ones that had been washed and sterilised at the company depot.

After all, this is what it was all about. The hay that had been painstakingly persuaded to become edible fodder for the animals, was bread and butter for the cows that produced milk during the time fresh grass was not available in the Dales meadows. This in turn provided the monthly milk cheque that was the regular income the Dales farmers relied on for survival.

This brings me to the other main activity our company involved with. This was not actually milking the cows, but trying to sell the farmers a milking machine to make the monotonous milking chore easier for him (or more often his wife and family). And remembering of course that I was in the business of getting a commission from a sale.

Selling milking machines to Dale’s farmers required different approaches depending on the circumstances and the personalities of the clients. Originally the milking machine manufacturers had their own sales reps who were allotted districts or areas for selling in. After making a sale, arrangements would be made for a “company installer” to be accommodated for as long as it took to complete the installation. This involved fitting the piping and taps for the “vacuum line”, installing a vacuum pump with the means for driving it, and other ancillary equipment such as the sanitary trap, vacuum controller and so on.

The equipment to drive the machine was usually situated away from the cow byre as the means of driving the pump was usually a 1.5hp petrol engine which could be rather noisy. If the farm was on mains electricity a 1hp electric motor usually replaced the engine.
The electric motor eliminated the noise and engine starting problems, but could create new problems if there was a power cut or voltage drop. People on the same supply who were not farmers all knew when it was milking time as their lights often went dim.

However, small businesses were springing up to service farmers, and milking machine manufacturers found it easier to appoint agents who in turn employed local people to install the equipment and kept a stock of spare parts. This arrangement simplified the installation situation considerably, as the local man could travel to and from the job each day, and didn’t need to live-in with the farmer like the itinerant company man.

Our company was eventually agent for four different brands of milking machine,(Gascoigne, Fullwood ????) so if prospective buyers looked in our direction, we had a good chance of making a sale. Milking machines at that time were all what were called “bucket plants”. There was a single vacuum tap installed between each two cows in the byre, the cows being chained to a dividing stall, originally made of wood but later made of concrete or tubular steel.
A special bucket with a lid that carried the pulsator on which hung the teatcups and all the rubber pipes, was placed between the two cows, and each milked in turn into the bucket which held about four gallons.

A spare pail was part of the equipment. It had a loose lid so when the milking pail was near full, a change of lids was made and the full pail carried to the dairy. At the dairy the milk was put through a cooler and then through a “sile” or filter into the empty churn. Many of the so-called dairies were fairly primitive but improved rapidly when strict hygiene regulations were introduced. The “not–so particular” farmers suffered injury to their wallets if their milk was returned from the dairy company for any reason. They usually learned quite quickly after that.

Many of the cowsheds or byres were very eighteenth century in design. They had thick stone walls with stone slates on the roof. They were occasionally two-storey with a loft or granary on top, which usually meant there was very little headroom. I think the ancient “window tax” must have been in vogue when they were built, and there was a permanent semi-darkness inside which at least hid the grime on the walls and the cobwebs cascading from the roof that built up over generations.

The major tuberculosis testing programme was in full swing however at the time, and the results were catastrophic for some farmers, some getting positive readings on the whole milking herd leading to their slaughter and great economic loss.

Hygiene regulations were getting very strict in both the cowsheds and in the dairies. In one period we installed quite a few solid-fuel boilers and steam sterilising chests in which all the milking units, pails etc were steam treated. They seemed to lose favour once better chemical detergents and sterilising fluids became available.

Eventually the cow’s accommodation improved to the extent that is was often better than farmers’ houses. One big complaint was that these new byres were colder in winter and the farmer could no longer take a pail and tuck himself under a nice warm cow to avoid the wintry blasts.

I had one customer who in winter, regardless of the time of day, could immediately be found in the byre, with a pail handy just keeping warm! I had not been able to persuade him that a machine would get the job done faster, but when he was obliged to update his buildings, I got his order. He said that his byre lost it’s homeliness and the cows didn’t look all that happy either. But his wife had found him things to do to fill in the extra time he had suddenly found. Digging the garden and repairing the hen houses, etc, were some of these.

After installing a milking plant, it was customary for the fitter to instruct the farmer on how to use the machine for one or two milkings. This involved showing how to strip or take the units apart, and how to wash them effectively. Putting the machines on the cows could be a particularly hazardous occupation, as word had got about and it wasn’t long before a few visiting neighbours – who had just happened to be passing, called in to join the family, the kids and dogs to watch the new milking machine working.

There were not many telephones about at the time, usually one at the village Post Office, so how many folk got to know about the milking baffled me. I was sometimes tempted to take a crafty look around the surrounding hills to see if the ancient beacons had been lit! As can be imagined, the usual calm tranquility of the byre was more than a little disturbed by all the activity. The cows’ heads were waving about watching the audience and when the bright and shiny milking unit was placed between a pair of animals, their eyes took on the appearance of the proverbial organ stops or chapel hat pegs.

New milking machine - let’s start with Betsy

Farming in the North Pennine Dales
By Eric Wilson

Invariably the farmer would suggest starting with “Betsy”. “Anybody can milk Betsy, she’s as quiet as a lamb” he would say. So she was duly chosen to be introduced to the joys of machine milking.

On more than one occasion, after picking up the equipment from the dung channel, washing and re-assembling it, after starting with a so-called quiet cow like Betsy, I changed the plan. I decided to ask the farmer which cows gave him most trouble at milking time.

Strange as it may seem, they were usually the ones that gave least trouble with the machine. They must have disliked hand milking so much that they accepted the machine more willingly. At the time it seemed as though some of the cows would never take to being machine milked, but a few days later the sound of the engine being started was the signal for them to let their milk down, and they gave no further trouble.

The odd rogue cow cropped up now and again. She was usually spruced up and quietly entered in the market some distance from the local one, where not too many questions needed to be answered, although it did become the norm for the auctioneer to announce to prospective buyers that the cow in the ring had been machine milked.

It didn’t suit everyone that it had been machine milked as not all dairy farmers by this time had milking machines. Local wisdom had it that it was harder to hand milk a cow if it had been machine milked, but fortunately I never had to experiment or demonstrate in that direction.

The previous attitude that the farmer had taken with his cows played a large part in the success or failure of their initiation to machine milking. I recall installing a small plant for a part-time farmer in the nether regions of Teesdale – he augmented his income by working a few shifts at the local quarry. The installation was easy, one byre had ten cows and the vacuum pipe went straight through the wall to a typical farm shed, where a space was cleared to accommodate the engine and ancillary equipment.


The job was finished in double-quick time ready to milk that afternoon, and I anticipated a reasonably early finish. My plans to go dancing that evening were clicking through my mind as I checked that all was ready. But those famous words of Rabby Burns about “the best laid schemes of mice and men”, were to be proved correct once more.

The farmer arrived and we proceeded to the byre, laden with all the paraphernalia of modern Dales dairy farming. He was still shod in his quarry boots and he walked up to one particular cow and gave it a massive kick in the ribs, telling her in no uncertain terms that “Nah yer buggar, ahs ‘ere”!

I was flabbergasted. Our boss who had many years’ experience on the job always advocated a quiet approach, and here was I, relatively new in the cow milking business with nine cows trying their level best to escape from the byre. One cow was literally trembling, no doubt wondering where the next hob-nailed boot was going to land.

Usually I would put the teatcups on the first time to get the cow used to them, then show the farmer how to hold the cluster without losing the vacuum until he got the hang of it.

After the above pantomime, I decided that I was not going to be the one to be kicked around the byre and explained that there wasn’t any future in me doing the milking. I was merely there to show him how it worked, the rest being up to him! He got there in the end. I had a late tea and didn’t feel much like dancing after the dancing I’d done in the byre to avoid flying feet.

I presumed that particular cow had given the farmer a hard time, but I saw him about a week later and he thought the machine was a “cracker”. I concluded that he had reached an amicable agreement with the wayward cow, and I did not dig any deeper.