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This picture taken in 1991 was taken at Eric Sherriff's current home in Tewin. The previous sitting tenant farmer was John Crawford (Eric Sherriff’s cousin). The Welwyn Garden City Development Corporation compulsory purchased the Attimore and all the land and they paid John Crawford to give vacant possession. The Corporation approached Eric Sherriff and said would he like to farm the Attimore. They had previously taken Digswell Lodge Farm away from Eric Sherriff in order to build the Harwood Hill estate. They offered Eric the Attimore Hall Farm as compensation. The rent was £3 per acre of which there were 293 so total rent was £879. A
loaf of bread in those days was 3 old pence and now is 70p (56 times more!) so
the rent in today’s value was around £49,000 per year. The
farm was mainly a beef cattle producer but also grew cereals, wheat, barley,
oats, potatoes and hay. The farm previously had an active dairy
and the main cow shed had stalls for 60 cows but the Sherriffs changed
over to mainly beef farming. They used a technique of multiple suckling calves.
They took a cow who had a calf and they bought in two more calves so the cow
reared three. These cows and calves were kept in the main cow shed at night and
grazed on the fields during the day. The
land was very rich being mainly brick earth which produced excellent King Edward
potatoes with very red eyes which improved their market value.
Eric Sherriff reports that the small Jack Russell seen at bottom left of the photo was very good at disposing of rats! There were two granaries on the Attimore Farm so the little dog was very busy. One wooden clad granary can be seen as you enter the Attimore service road on your left. It is built on stilts called 'mushrooms' which prevented rats from climbing in. These are still there but a brick wall has been built at the front which obscures the mushrooms. There is a convenient hole to the right of this wall that allows the dedicated historian a glimpse. Eight
to nine men were employed on the farm on a permanent basis with casual labour,
sometimes gypsies, employed during harvests. Two of the permanent labourers,
Freddy Ray and Reg Smith lived at the twin tied cottages at Grubs Barn in Herns
Lane. During this time the Sherriffs were also involved with a farm at Digswell
and farm workers were sometimes shared between the farms. Here is a photo of a Minimum Wage Form that was used by Eric Sherriff to calculate the farm workers pay. Handwritten notes on this form show that Eric paid more than the minimum. Click on the picture to see more detail. 97K
The
water from the famous Attimore well was previously used to cool the milk from
the dairy. The pump pipes are can still be seen up the sides of the well shaft. The
Sherriffs left the house in 1962 but still kept the farm. They were still the
tenants of the Attimore Hall house but they sub-let it to the Denhams.
The Sherriff family enjoyed their time at the Attimore Hall. The
Welwyn Garden City Development Corporation was superseded by The New Towns
Commission and they earmarked the Attimore Farm land for development. Around
1972 they allowed the Sherriffs to continue farming the Attimore land on
a very low rent under the 1948 tenancy act. This gave the Commission the right
to take possession of any of the land for development at any time even if there
was crop growing there. The Sherriffs used to farm the land around the Sir
Frederic Osbourne school but this was soon taken away by the Commission for
development. This was the beginning of the end for the Attimore Hall Farm. Next
the Daniells was built on what was ‘the Aviary’. The
Sherriffs finally ceased farming the Attimore in 1982. Anecdotes: 1.
Circa 1959. There used to be a sewage works along what is now the north end of
Daniells and the Sherriffs were involved in clearing up the sludge beds prior to
housing development. They gave a driver of a very large D8 bulldozer a ten pound
note to push out the sludge beds but he immediately sunk and all that could be
seen was his exhaust funnel. Another D8 bulldozer had to be called to rescue the
first but that got stuck as well! 2.
A
twin engine plane crashed on takeoff into an Ash tree at the Panshanger airfield
killing the pilot in 1958. This is believed to be the only fatal accident at
this airfield which was part of the Attimore land. 3.
During the last war, the Germans tried to bomb Hawker Sidley and the Viaduct.
After one sortie, a stick of incendiary bombs were dumped by a crippled German
aircraft across the Attimore fields. The bombs lay mostly unexploded across a
line from where the Ridgeway meets the old railway to Rolls wood. Over the
years, many of these bombs were unearthed by ploughing. At first a couple of
bombs a year would surface but eventually hardly any appeared. One year around
1960 a group of gypsies employed to help the harvest were found throwing stones
at a bomb they had discovered. The farmer’s son Robert put it in a bucket to
deal with later. They were running potatoes from one farm to another over the
roads and the police stopped one tractor for having a bald tyre. Robert was
miffed at having to take his documents to the local police station because it
stopped him working so he took the bomb in his car when he went. He complained
to the police about the inconvenience and then produced the bomb. The police
immediately evacuated the police station and the chief constable was alerted.
During the panic, Robert drove off with bomb in his car but did not go home. The
police went mad trying to locate Robert and the bomb. When Robert finally
arrived back at the farm the bomb disposal team were in the yard and the police
were everywhere. Robert got a right telling off!
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The last family to farm on the Attimore Farm fields
were the Sherriffs. Eric and Marion Sherriff and family took up tenancy of
the Attimore Hall in February 1957.
