Home Farm, Perlethorpe Village

Above: Home Farm (2007) looks almost identical to the way it did sixty years previous. The post box is a later addition, made necessary when Perlethorpe village post office closed down.

Home Farm was one of the three main employers on Thoresby Estate, especially during the post war years of the 1950s. School leavers deciding to stay on the Estate might work on the farm, the Woodyard, or for the Forestry Commission. A growing number were tempted by the wages of Thoresby Colliery at Ollerton, whilst few vacancies now existed in service at Thoresby Hall. I remember the sights, smells and sounds of a wide range of farm produce, from the tall sugar beet which grew where the car park is now situated behind the houses at Perlethorpe, to the hay bails stacked high in the central Dutch barn, (burnt down in the early 1960s), to the pig sties which were once located opposite Perlethorpe Village Hall, and from which we would tease the pigs until they jumped over the wall. The pig stye was removed in 1964.

 Above: The rear of Perlethorpe Home Farm (2015). In the early 1960s the pig sty was to the left of this picture.

During the 1920s the villagers would take their own milk cans to the farm for their morning and afternoon milk. The dairy maid worked from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. milking the cows and making the cheese and butter. Thoresby Hall was sent daily fresh supplies. In 1936 Frank Cooper was in charge of the farm, and for long after it was sometimes referred to as Cooper's Farm.

Above: On the outer wall to the right of the Home Farm arch was the communal box from which the villagers in the 1950s / 60s would collect their bundle of newspapers and comics. This was a typical pocket money duty for many Perlethorpe schoolchildren, who would eagerly await that day in the week when the family bundle contained favourites such as "T.V. Comic" with Muffin the Mule (replaced by Sooty), or Dan Dare in "Eagle". The box was still there in 2007, but the railings we had to climb on to reach it were not.

In the early 1960's Maldwyn Fisher was in charge of Home Farm, succeeded in 1963 by John Roberson who died in 1975, after which John Orr took over.

 Above: The Thoresby Hayride 2014 starting out from Home Farm. (Video THIS LINK).

 

Above: Home Farm, 2022.

For more information and pictures about Perlethorpe see THIS LINK.