THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com  created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

THE TOM HUMPHREY'S STORY

Copyright Valerie Martin 2005

Originally published in Along the Furlong in March 2005

Thomas Humphreys was a Sussex lad. He was born 108 years ago in Ford in 1892 and came from a long line of well-known Southdown shepherds.

His father, George, was a shepherd and his grandfather before him. Young Tom had little schooling and he easily explained the reason for this — he was in constant demand by the local farmers as a "rook scarer". When not doing this important task he was a "minder" of the sheep flock, pigs or horses.

He left his scant schooling days behind at the age of twelve years and eventually became a shepherd boy with the Duke of Richmond and Gordon. He was always proud of a particular conversation he had enjoyed with King Edward VII on his visit to Goodwood House. The King had apparently asked the young Tom how he recognised the qualities that go to making a prize-winning sheep. The pleasure-seeking king appeared to have been well satisfied with Tom's answers.

One morning the Duke of Richmond and Gordon passed by and asked Tom what he had for breakfast.   Tom replied —

"Bread and cheese"

"Not enough" replied the Duke .

He instructed the cook to prepare a cooked breakfast each day and told him to be at the kitchen door at 8 a.m.  

Looking over a field of ewes and lambs early on a summer's day must have been one of the most fulfilling sights for Tom.  He said that he learnt to read and write while attending his flock on the downland behind Goodwood.

He was a familiar figure at the Findon Sheep Fair each September on Nepcote Green and, in fact, attended more than fifty fairs during his rewarding lifetime. In Tom's day there were plenty of side-shows, especially in the 1920s.

One of the attractions for everyone was the young Joe Beckett, (later the British heavyweight boxing champion), who challenged all comers at a shilling a bout.  Those who managed to last three rounds received a silver coin for their endeavours.

Fighting was not confined to the Joe Beckett spectacular in the official ring. There was plenty of rough stuff too on the fringes of Nepcote Green when the auctioneers and sellers had generously plied the usually mild shepherds with drink. There were some noisy altercations that led to terrific arguments and ended in fisticuffs. When riled, the men of the Downs would contest the respective skills of their four-legged canine friends and resort to battle to settle the matter of whose sheepdog was the superior.

In the 1920s, when Tom was earning 35 shillings a week as a shepherd, he married a Thakeham girl, Winnie, who had spent her girlhood in domestic service. Winnie's first position had been at West Grinstead with a probationary pay of only £9 per annum, increasing to £10 when she had proved evidence of her abilities three months later. She had to rise at 5 a.m. and clean the fireplaces and carry the family's hot water to the bathroom. There were no days off. If she wanted any time off, she had to ask permission. When they were married, Tom's was not a great wage. For every lamb reared he received a further bonus of a shilling, but the extra was not forthcoming until the animal was weaned.

The couple moved to live on the outskirts of Findon and Tom became a shepherd of the Findon Downs. He was employed at Tolmare Farm just beyond the shadow of Blackpatch Hill and here he tended some 450 head of sheep belonging to Les Langmead. 

The Findon downland at that time was a lonely place but a wildlife paradise, although few in those days were able to appreciate it — they were like Tom and too busy trying to make a living.

He remained at this job for twenty years in a snug little cottage in a fold of the Downs that was idyllic in the summer or on a fine spring day when the skylarks tried out their musical scales in the fresh downland air. Occasionally he saw a grey heron flap wearily high overhead, so slowly he thought it might fall from the sky. Sometimes he heard a jay screech as he disturbed it from its autumn feast. Conditions were somewhat foreboding during the dreary winter months when fitful gusts of wind whisked through the bushes and rattled the branches and the persistent gale blew down the valley and created strange sounds in the chimneybreast of his cottage.

The years passed and Tom had his dogs and his sheep for company and that was all he needed. Shepherds in those days would invariably breed their own dogs and kept an Old English Bobtail for "fold work" and a collie for the downland work.

In time, the shepherd and his wife, left their cottage on Tolmare Farm. It was not long before the farm ceased sheep farming and went over to cattle and pigs and all that was left as a reminder of the sheep farming days was the old shepherd's hut abandoned on the bleak hillside.

By 1975 when Tom was 83 years old, he was living at 1 Homewood in Findon.  He had two sheepdogs when he retired but the council would only allow residents of Homewood to own pets but they relented and in time allowed shepherds to keep one dog each.   He gave the other dog he was training to Derek Bushrod (who later resided in Colchester, Essex).   Tom was a familiar sight, a weather-beaten old shepherd of yesteryear, leaning heavily on two sticks, and walking his two collie along the noisy bypass.

He would reminisce with pleasure of how he walked across the hills from Findon to Chichester or Lewes, as the case may be. He would relate how he did not see a soul the whole time on the deserted landscape. He recalled that he took only a hunk of bread and cheese and a bottle of beer and that was all he had until he arrived at his destination. Nothing was thought of the 18-mile walk in those days.

Tom is buried in the cemetery at Findon, along with his wife. Time moves on and Tom's old cottage at Tolmare Farm was demolished in May 1997 and replaced by more modern dwellings.

Goodbye to a rare breed of men who devoted their lives to herding flocks of sheep when all those years ago the welfare of their charges depended on their selfless dedication.

Continue if you would like to read Tom Rusbridge's Nepcote.

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THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.