History Of The Grange

Background

Farming has been practised in this locality for hundreds of years, and the pattern of hedgerows reflects the Enclosure Movement and the Agrarian Revolution of the 18th Century. However, much of the land in the basin of the River Gowy was semi-tidal, and only became cultivable during the 19th Century following the construction of the Chester – Helsby railway line (opened in 1849 as part of the Birkenhead, Lancashire and Cheshire Joint Railway), and the Manchester Ship Canal, which opened in 1892, and beneath which the River Gowy reaches the Mersey Estuary through a siphon at Stanlow. The sides of one of the farm bridges across the river date from this time, and were cast at the Roodee Ironworks, Chester, in 1848. The river itself was largely canalised during the Second World War when prisoners of war were used as labourers.

Tyre Farm

The sluice gate near to Trafford Mill was installed at the same time. Much of this land floods regularly to this day, and the meadows were a popular venue for ice skating in the 1930’s. Until 1947 The Grange was called “Tyre Farm.” It belonged to the Earls of Shrewsbury until 1917, when the part of the estate in Mickle Trafford and Bridge Trafford was sold to pay death duties, and this is the reason for the nearby pub being called “The Shrewsbury Arms.”

The original part of the farm house was built in about 1790, and the extension was added in the 1920’s by Tom Payne, whose family farmed here until 1936. Tom Payne was also a feed rep. for Silcocks, and a catalogue from 1936 informs prospective clients that he can be contacted by telephone on Mickle Trafford 6. The farm was then bought by the Waltons who left in 1947, when Eric Rowlands purchased the farm and renamed it “The Grange.”

The Grange

The farm has been fortunate to escape both the 1967/8 and the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease epidemics, with the last case being in 1924. Land along the banks of the River Gowy which had been rented was acquired when Mill Farm was sold on the retirement of Billy Wright in 1974, and the two fields behind The Shrewsbury Arms were bought from Whitbread around the same time. Two more fields next to Plemstall Lane were added to the list from Beech Farm in 1995.

FARMING PRACTICES

For much of the 20th Century cattle were kept for milk and meat, and there were pigs, sheep, hens and horses, as well as arable crops grown for fodder. Horses were replaced by tractors from the 1930’s onwards. Cattle were originally Dairy Shorthorns, but were changed to Ayrshires and then British Frisians in the 1960’s, with the emphasis moving firmly to milk production. Milk was taken in churns to the Cheshire Lines Committee’s railway station in Mickle Trafford from where it went by train to dairies in Manchester.

The end of milking

A new milking parlour and dairy were installed in 1965 when milk began to be collected by bulk road tanker, and the emphasis on the dairy herd led to the abandonment of the sheep and pig enterprises as well as the arable crops. Much of the land was drained in the late 1970’s as part of an E.E.C. scheme to increase milk production, but on completion of this project milk quotas were introduced leading to a forced cut in production. Egg production was abandoned in the 1980’s as a result of increased regulation and red tape, but spring barley was reintroduced at around the same time, and sheep came from North Wales to graze the fields during the winter each year until the 2001 Foot and Mouth Epidemic. The poplar tree plantations were established in 2003, and milk production ceased the same year on March 31st since it had become a loss-maker as a result of predatory supermarket pricing. The first Red Poll bull, Larry, had arrived in 2002, and the cattle are now predominantly Red Polls which are kept as a beef suckler herd.

One of the first cars in Mickle Trafford outside what was then Tyre Farm (now The Grange) , date unkown. The farm house is in original condition before the current kitchen, sitting room, scullery and two extra bedrooms were added in the 1930's. Foster Kelsall and Amy Payne are in the vehicle. To their right are Jack and Thomas Payne; to their left are Dorothy Payne and Tom Banks.

Cows being driven across the lower mill pool at Trafford Mill, circa 1914. Selina Wright is driving the cattle and Billy Wright can be seen leaning on the gate in front of the mill drift. They lived at Mill Farm, the land of which beacame part of The Grange in 1974.

6 division hay bay at Tyre Farm, with winter feed being stored in the form of loose hay, summer 1920. The barn caught fire and burnt to the ground in the year of the Royal Agricultural Society show at Chester in 1925 after a full harvest

Tom Payne, who farmed at Tyre Farm until 1938, inspecting the remains of his hay crop during floods on the Gowy Meadows in the summer of 1931

Tom Payne attempting to rescue a hay tedder from the meadows, summer 1931. This implement would originally have been horse drawn, but appears to have been adapted for towing a tractor.

Cars parked on the frozen Gowy Meadows in the winter of 1936/7. The meadows were flooded every winter and the locals used them for ice skating, as can be seen in the background. The above photographs are by courtesy of the late Mrs Esther Woodcock.

Young Friesian heifers on the Church Field at Plemstall in 1980, showing the field before the poplar tree plantation was established.

6 month old calves being reared as replacements for the dairy herd in 1982. The red calf has Ayrshire blood in her and the white-faced calf is a Friesian x Hereford.

Sheep used to be brought in from Trawsfynedd in North Wales for winter grazing and evident in this November 1987 photograph taken from near Trafford Mill looking towards the farm buildings.

The River Gowy looking upstream from the A56 Warrington Road towards the sluice gate. This photograph was taken before a programme of tree planting was undertaken by the National Rivers Authority in 1993/4. Photograph courtesy of Mr Graham Wilson, Henry Monks Ltd.

Restocking the River Gowy with brown trout in 2001. The fish were donated by Powergen from their own Cwm Rheidol hatchery near Aberystwyth. Peter Bevan and Ivor Hopkins, who ran the hatchery, are standing on the Land Rover. Stuart Godber, Stan Anderton and Ernie Shufflebotham of Bay Malton Angling Club brandish a net, and Huw Rowlands wields the bucket. Photograph courtesy of Powergen.

The remnants of what was a 130 cow dairy herd of Friesian cattle. These were the last cows ever to be milked at The Grange and milking finished on 31st of March 2003.

The first Red Poll bull, Larry, whose official name is "Ryehills Larry the Lamb" and who arrived from Paul and Pam Horton-Turner's farm at Breaston, near Derby, in 2002. Larry is "the Daddy of them all".

Larry's first calf with its mother in April 2004. The calf is a Red Poll x Friesian.

Red Poll calves arriving from Mark Cheetham's herd at Mottram in Longdendale near Stockport in 2004. Cattle have been bought from various Red Poll herds across England to ensure a diffuse genetic base.

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