Footsteps in the Furrow. Andrew Arbuckle
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beams until an unsuspecting bullock wandered below. The aim was to land on its back, but more often we missed and fell onto well-trodden dung.
As we stepped from rafter to rafter we had little thought of the joiners of a previous century possibly having skimped on their nailing. In our escapades, we believed that accidents were for other people; any superficial damage would sort itself. That is why short trousers were always worn because skinned knees were cheaper to sort out than tears in long trousers.
Below us were the cattle that were spending their winter being fed and watered as part of the fattening process. Fife was, and still is, an area for finishing cattle and winter housing was required for this purpose.
On farms with breeding herds there would be some smaller buildings with stalls, where the cattle would be tethered by the neck. These buildings had large, vertical flagstones separating the stalls. There was a food trough in front and a dung passage at the back, where the day’s animal waste, as we never called it, could be swept along to the end of the shed before being barrowed out to the midden – the heap of waste and animal dung.
Milk cows were also tethered in the same type of stalls so that milking could be carried out in relative safety with only the danger of a kick from the hind legs, if the cow did not relish the milking process.
When we tired of the cattle courts or the milking stalls, with their warm, moist, sweet smell, we would play in the turnip shed, which was handily built next door so that the cattlemen had only short trips to make between shed and trough. The turnip shed was less fun and invariably led to excursions onto the roofs of the steading itself; the route was through a broken roof light, then a clamber up the pantiles, trying hard not to dislodge them.
Again, we seemed to care little for the robustness of the roofs. We could see down into the sheds, but never thought that the whole roof might be somewhat unsafe. The brave walked along the ridges, from where they could see the whole layout of the steading, all the time hoping no adult would see them.
Many of the old farm steadings were built in a U-shape, with the farmhouse often helping to fill the gap in the ‘U’. From a high point on the roof, our eyes followed around. First, the stables, then the loft and cart sheds, and onto the cattle courts, always bounded in by the turnip shed.
Many of the smaller farms had a horse mill. This was a separate hexagonal building, in which the power to drive the threshing mill was generated by a single horse pulling a shaft that drove a central hub or capstan. The old steadings were built for, and by, horsepower, though on the larger farms steam engines may have puffed away, turning the wheels of the threshing mills.
The majority of the steadings in the arable parts of Fife were built in the middle and late 1800s. Most of the farms were tenanted and landlords, keen on improvement, built farm steadings for their tenants. Stone was the main material used in the construction and the buildings were built of local sandstone or harder whinstone. Because of the cost and effort of transporting stone, many quarries were created purely to supply material for farm steadings and cottages.
In that busy building era, most of the parishes had several stone masons. The buildings they created reflect the agricultural priorities of the area, as well as the relevant importance of both the farmhouse and the farm cottages. But even in my youth, there were additions to these traditional steadings, thus proving the old adage that no farmer, however intelligent he claimed to be, ever built his steading big enough or his field gates wide enough.
The latter point related not just to the ever-increasing scale of farm machinery, but also to the fact that generations of ploughmen, farmers and farm students have notoriously been unable to guide a tractor or implement into, or out of, a field without touching, scraping, or even the downright breaking of a gatepost. The arrival of the tractor saw great ugly holes being punched through the original stone walls as the old stable door had not been built wide enough to allow access for mechanical vehicles.
Some of the earliest additions to farm steadings were former World War II buildings, which were given a second lease of life as implement sheds, henhouses or pig-fattening buildings. Many of these were made of corrugated iron; others were pre-fabricated buildings.
On some farms, silage towers had been built in the 1920s and 1930s. These were often made with concrete and a few examples such as the one at Collairnie Farm, Letham still exist. Then, as new materials came along and more knowledge of silage making came into use, fibreglass sealed silage towers soon pierced the skyline. With less demand for grass-based forage, there were always fewer of these in Fife than in dairying districts of Scotland.
The boy on the roof of the old buildings in the 1950s could also see the first bulk grain bins built close to the steadings. These came in with the combines when lifting heavy sacks fell out of favour. Conveying grain electrically by auger and elevator was found to be far more efficient and much quicker.
The first of the specialist potato sheds also came into being in the post-war years. These were brick-built, with asbestos sheeting over steel trusses. As technology advanced, later models dispensed with the trusses, replacing them with steel beams. This allowed farmers to maximise storage space by stacking the potato boxes higher than previously imagined.
Today’s modern potato shed comes with ambient temperature control that removes the old problem of tuber diseases spreading through the crop when the potatoes overheated after being lifted in wet conditions. It also stops the sprouting of potatoes in warmer weather.
As husbandry knowledge increased, specialist livestock buildings were erected. This was especially true for pigs and poultry. Long, low buildings with controlled ventilation first went up in the early 1960s. Outside these were metal feed hoppers to automatically feed the livestock; inside, the intensive production of poultry or pig meat was carried out.
For those farms still considered working units, the footprint of the buildings has multiplied several times during the course of the last century as crop storage and livestock production moved indoors.
At the start of World War II, there were some 1,243 farms or landholdings in North-East Fife. Today’s total of viable working farms in the same area numbers less than 300. What has also happened is a congregation into fewer, but larger working units. Quietly, many smaller farms have been taken over.
Often no agricultural use is made of the farm buildings on these smaller units. Many, especially those around St Andrews, where there is a strong demand for accommodation from those working or studying in the ancient university, have been converted into housing. Once a month, the Planning Committee of North-East Fife area of Fife Council meets in Cupar. Almost without exception over the past decade, in the normal list of planning applications there have been bids to convert redundant farm steadings into housing on a regular basis. These are invariably granted. At least in this local authority area there is a requirement that any conversion largely takes place within the original curtilage or footprint of the buildings, with as much of the original building as possible retained.
Other councils take a more relaxed view. They allow old farm buildings to be demolished and then transplant a clutch of largely identical houses or a small piece of suburbia onto the flattened site. Even containing any development into the area previously covered by cart sheds, barns, lofts, cattle courts and neep sheds, sufficient space can be created for a dozen or so houses. So, now, theoretically, we have a repopulation of the countryside.
The reality is different as there is little or no connection between the work of the land and those who live in the steading conversions; the vast majority drive to work early in the morning and return late at night, the week’s shopping achieved at some distant retail park.
It is fanciful to think that the ghosts from the past inhabit these old buildings recycled into modern homes; it is difficult to believe today’s inhabitants, looking out from their floor-to-ceiling windows placed in openings of the old cart sheds, hear the voice of the old grieve shouting across the close about some perceived failing by one of the loons. And as they rush out to their cars to go to work, they will never hear the clip-clop of horseshoes over the cobbles at the start of day, or the sound of the turnip, or neep hasher, getting the daily diet for the cattle.
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