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STMEA:A.1251; Milk Trolley; A three wheel trolley with bracket to hold the milk churn and aperture in rear for the tap. It has hooks for the milk cans and a rim handle for propulsion. There is an oval plate, with an inscription on the front.
Further information was received from the donor, then aged 76, in April 1975. He went to Stowupland in 1929 and started a milk round in the village soon after, using a bicycle with two milk churns on each handle. The round grew quickly and he shortly acquired the trolley from a milk round in Ipswich. In addition to selling milk, at 2d a pint, he sold eggs, cream, in cartons and butter, 2/6 [12 1/2 p] per lb. These were carried in oblong lidded baskets on the front of the trolley, whilst the milk was carried in 12-gallon churn at the back of the cart. The milk was delivered by the donor after the morning milking (by hand with 12 cows). The skimmed milk was used for weaning calves and fattening pigs. About the beginning of the war the round had grown larger, and also he had bought a second round from Dick Pryke at Earl Stonham.
Bethan Huby, Research Volunteer:
Milk and dairy products were delivered to households, in urban and rural areas, alongside the commercialisation of dairy farms . Handcarts or ‘prams’, three wheeled carts with a milk churn, were used by milkmen in the 19th and 20th centuries, which delivered fresh produce twice or thrice daily . These deliveries were essential to local areas, as there was no refrigeration to store dairy products long-term . This is also why milk was transported in large churns and could only be distributed to customers via their own containers .
Between 1920 and 1939 handcarts were replaced by horse-drawn carts, and churns were gradually replaced with milk bottles. There were upgrades to milk bottles in 1935 and 1980, and cardboard tops were changed for aluminium ones during the 1940s. Refrigerators became popular in the 1920s and 1930s, however their installation in the home did not become affordable until the 1950s, and milk deliveries continued using electric milk floats. In the 1970s, over 18 million households had milk deliveries, compared to 2014 when only less than 5% of households received milk on their doorsteps.
At the end of the 1930s, Mr Allard’s milk round was successful, and he expanded into Earl Stonham, 4 to 5 miles south east from Stowupland . Mr Allard upgraded his trolley to a cart, with two ponies, delivering in Stowupland in the morning, and Earl Stonham in the afternoon. Eventually, the cart was also replaced by two motor vans, when the number of cows increased to 40, until the 1950s when Mr Allard retired from the milk rounds (March 31st 1952).
Milkmen were perceived as a family friend, a cheerful chappie, and known as the “eyes and ears of their community”. Notes were left in empty bottles and after collecting the money “the milkman would then be invited in for a cup of tea”. As a figure of familiarity across a village, a milkman would be at liberty to hear any gossip, and this gossip would likely travel between villages, for example when Mr Allard bought a second milk round in Earl Stonham.
From: Food Museum
STMEA:A.4250; Apple Grader; An apple grader of fairly common type, known as a "cutlass".
The machine was used by the donor at his fruit farm, for a period of only 3 to 4 years until he ceased apple growing. Since he only had a relatively small number of trees, the grader was operated using only one side, the other being against a wall.
It was obtained from another fruit farm where is was used for 3 years. Two people would feed the machine, placing an apple in each cup manually, and four were employed on packing, taking the apples from the sprung trays, wrapping them in tissue, and putting them in boxes.
It is unlikely that the machine would have been hand-cranked. The grader has fittings for a "return belt" at the lower end (namely two rollers) but the belt itself is missing. At neither of the above farms was the belt in use, but the idea of it was to lay rotten fruit on it, which would then be taken down the wooden shoot and dropped into a separate box. There are a number of rough stands, made out of old wooden boxes, which were use for supporting the apple boxes which were being emptied or filled. Adjustment of the weights into which the apples were sorted is by means of bags of lead shot, and small pockets into which coins were inserted to increase tension. The lighter apples were graded into the first compartments and the heavier into the latter.
Hannah White, Research Volunteer:
An apple grader is used to sort or ‘grade’ apples so that they can be organised by size, type, and condition before passing onto the buyers or wholesalers.
We know apples were gathered in Europe in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, but these would not have borne much of a resemblance to the fruit we think of as apples today. Archaeology suggests that they were smaller, more in line with the Malus sylvestris breed: what we think of today as a crab apple. This scientific name translates as ‘forest apple’, and far from the sweeter taste we enjoy, we can imagine that they would have tasted very acidic.
Specially cultivated apple varieties spread across Europe to France, arriving in England at around the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066. Between 1455-1485, the War of the Roses, repeated droughts and the Black Death led to a decline in the production of both apples and pears in England. Henry VIII successfully managed to reverse the decline when he instructed the fruiterer, Richard Harris, to establish the first large scale orchards at Teynham in Kent.
The domesticated apples that we eat today come from central Asia, and sweeter tasting fruit nearer to what we would recognise appeared in the Middle East around 4,000 years ago. It was the development of a process known as ‘grafting’ that allowed the growing of trees with especially flavourful fruit helping to increase disease free larger yields. The varieties passed to Europe and were adopted by the Victorians who were always enthusiastic horticulturalists keen to create new varieties.
The country’s earliest record of fruit orchards appears in the foundation charter of Castle Acre Priory of about 1089, and the earliest mention of a named apple variety in England is recorded in a 13th century document from the Broadland parish of Runham, when a tenant farmer paid his annual rent with, “200 pearmains, and four hogsheads of wine, made of pearmains”.
Large-scale commercial orchards arrived with the coming of the railways in the 19th century. These were concentrated in two areas of the county, in the west, centred on the town of Wisbech, and in the east, on the Broadland Rivers of the Waveney, Bure and Ant. Gaymers Cider Works in Banhmam, and later Attleborough, was also a large consumer of Norfolk apples. At one point Suffolk had around 6,000 traditional orchards-virtually every farm and country house would have had one-but as land has been sold, they have gradually disappeared.
From: Food Museum
STMEA:A.985; Corn Merchant's Desk; Used by D. Quinton & Sons in the Stowmarket Corn Exchange until it ceased to operate in December 1966. Quintons owned the corn mill (watermill) at Needham Market.
The top of the desk has a lockable 1 foot square lid. Below the desk compartment is a sliding tray which can be drawn out to project in front of the desk.
Research by Richard Hall, Volunteer:
Have you ever wondered how farmers used to sell their crops of wheat and barley? Millers and Maltsters used ‘Agents’ (no not the James Bond variety!), often knowledgeable employees, to buy grain at a ‘Corn Exchange’ (or open marketplace) for them to turn into flour for bread and baking or for malt for brewing. Rather than having a free for all, the farmer was able to go from one company to another in order to negotiate the best price for the crop.
Our wooden Corn Merchants Desks would be set up at a weekly market, held in a local Corn Exchange. From here the miller or maltster’s agent would negotiate the purchase of a crop with each farmer who visited his desk. There are two such desks in our collection, both used by different millers and in different corn exchanges.
This desk was owned by D. Quinton and Sons and used in the Stowmarket Corn Exchange. The representative stood on a 7’’ platform behind the desk which would have raised him above the farmers he traded with (probably a negotiating trick to obtain lower prices). The desk has a lockable lid and a seat for the representative to rest on. It has a shelf and a draw underneath the top. The drawer pulls out to the front of the desk. The drawers were used to store labelled up grain samples to return to the mill.
D. Quinton and Sons, were millers, corn merchants and animal food producers. They owned one of the two watermills in Needham Market, for which they would have bought grain via the Stowmarket Corn Exchange. Their mill was located on the B1078 Coddenham Road. It can still be seen today. This Grade Two listed watermill was built in the late 18th or early 19th Centuries. It is four storeys high with timber frame and weatherboard cladding. It is driven by a large ‘undershot’ (that is to say the water flowed underneath) water wheel. This type of arrangement was quite common in East Anglia, where the land is reasonably flat with little rise to aid water flow. An image of this mill, taken by Peter Dolman can be found on the Mills Archive website. Quinton’s continued to trade in Needham Market until 1991 when the company was bought out by Muntons.
In the 18th Century Corn Exchanges were held in an open market place but controlled by the local town or borough authorities, very much as open markets are today. Their popularity grew as demand for corn and wool increased and by the mid-18th Century richer boroughs considered erecting special ‘Corn Exchanges’ to allow trading to continue in all weathers. Also allowing the borough to charge a larger rent for each agent. Corn Exchanges’ were not limited specifically to trading in grains. The Bristol Corn Exchange, built in 1743, was also used to trade other produce, when grain was not being traded.
Several other towns and cities took the initiative and built their own Corn Exchanges to serve the surrounding area and growth in building accelerated following the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, which brought about a fall in corn prices due to cheap imports of grain from America. East Anglia, as a major agricultural economy, built Corn Exchanges in most market towns. In Essex there were six, Norfolk had eight and in Suffolk there were seven, found in; Beccles (1849), Bury St Edmunds (1862), Ipswich (1812), Hadleigh (1813), Haverhill (1889), Stowmarket (1835) and Sudbury (1841).
As we have already stated Corn Exchanges were not limited to trading grain, many served as community resources, hosting meetings, political meetings and other civic or social events such as concerts and dances. This was important to their survival as farming in the years between 1846 and 1946 was in depression and many people were forced to seek work in towns and cities.
From: Food Museum
With help from 449 volunteers, hailing from 25 different countries, the Food Museum team has been turning handwritten object index cards into a digital catalogue that can be shared online and seen around the world. Browse the objects below or use the search to explore the fascinating items we have.
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If you type in the word milk and press Enter, the engine will search all fields of all records and return any records that contain that term.
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If you type in milk AND NOT bottle (with AND NOT in capitals) the engine will search for records that contain the term ‘milk’ but not the term ‘bottle’.
Really enjoyed our day here with our young grandchildren. So many fascinating items!
Liz from Colchester
