Bill Allison Video Transcript


BILL ALLISON.

Member of the Allison family who owned North and South Lickprivick Farms.


Can you start off by telling us em your association with Lickprivick farm and tell us a bit about your family and their association with it.

“Ah well, I was born there, it was the only home I knew, and… my grandfather came there obviously, so I take it my father was born there as well. And… another thing, I'm no historian, I don't go into it so I don't know”.

How many were there of the Allison's?

“Well, my son- I don't know my father's family. He had a sister too but that's as far as I, that's all I know. That's going into the distant past as far as that's concerned, you're a kid you werenae interested, that was it. And all of a sudden there was… 2 girls and 5 boys. And one girl at each end of the family, 5 boys in the middle. So there was 2 years between us all, you know ?”.

Can you describe the layout of the farmhouse for us?

“It's no any different fae any other house really, you know? Just… a house. Eh… well, kitchen, living room was all the oner, you know and…4 bedrooms. Didnae have an inside bathroom at that time when we were kids. That came later when there was the extension put on wi' an extra bedroom and a sitting room and that… ah well, the original sitting room be taken up as a bedroom because of the number o' kids, you know, but in they days you never , you were working all the time”.

And what type of farm was Lickprivick?

“A dairy farm, purely dairy. It's not a crop farm, anyway so you werenae… you had to grow crops during the war but eh, it was just… to get you by because you couldnae buy in pudding. Other than that, no, it wasnae a crop-growing farm, just… that was all that came oot o it”.

What was it like during the war, having to grow food and also rationing being involved?

“Well, it was obviously better on farms than it was in town, you can always have your hens and you always kept a pig or something like that to get your bacon. And eh, no, we didnae have sheep at that time but yeah, ach you got by. But eh… it would be easier I suppose than other people because you always had milk and eggs and that so well… that's always a start isn't it? And your bacon, plenty of that. That kept you going”.

What other sort of things happened on the farm? Could describe a typical day for us?

“As a kid before I left school? Ah well, you had your wee chore that you did in the morning. Aye, well, you did your wee chores before you went to school and then the same when you come back. Somebody'd have the coal pails to fill, somebody'd have sticks, tinder and sticks to split, somebody'd feed the hens and things like that, that was… everybody had their own wee chores to do”.

What did you do with your spare time?

“Your spare time, you didnae have any when you were a kid. Well, you played with your crowd… round about the farm and all that there's always somebody to play wi' you, yeah. You didnae have much time, the time we walked back fae the school it was dark and then that was it. So at night, well, just do the same as anybody else did when you're in the house at night. Wasnae a lot, play cards, or something you know”.

Who else lived there?

“Well, we were the only ones that lived there in the farm, but yeah, as you said, the camp round about my cousins lived in a hut in the camp in the sty yard so they were always around, we had plenty of people round once we left school at that age, yeah. Cannae remember exactly when they came but it must have been roond aboot… when I was 12 year old sort of style, because they didnae go to the village school, they went to East Kilbride when they went… after12 , you… I remember them there then, so yes, when you left school they were around, yeah”.

What was the holiday camp like? Whereabouts on the farm was it?

“Just beyond the, the high point, it's a wee bit beyond it. And aye, what was it, 30, 30, 32 huts on the top. Yeah. And there was a few on this side between the high point and the farm, there were 2 or 3 there- there were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 nine or something in the wee field there, you know”.

And what sort of huts and things would they have been?

“Och, just all shapes and sizes, yeah. Railway carriages, wee huts and there was something like taking a big horse carriage things, you know, four-wheeled things. Aye, just all sorts o' shapes and sizes, yeah. And they werenae particularly pretty a lot o' them, right enough. But eh, no, people seemed to enjoy that. And aye, a few lived there during the war, during the Blitz, a few people lived there at that time. In fact that Jean Turner was one of the ones because she used to torment us about we got the taxi, when you were over 12 you got the taxi to East Kilbride and she didn't because she was in the car park she was nearer the town, so you were over 2 miles, and she wasnae over 2 miles. So she'd be walking doon the road and we passed her in the taxi, she's always digging me about that one”.

What sort of people went there on holidays?

“Och, just everybody, everybody and anybody, yeah. I couldnae tell you what most of them do, you know, cos as I say we were kids at the time so you didnae ask anybody what they did. There was too many kids running aboot when I think of it in that respect, you know? The campers themsel' used to always play football on a Sunday afternoon, we used to go up and join them for that sort of style. They had a wee pitch and putt course as well, I mind the pitch and putt. And that's from how I learned to play my golf, from that. Yeah”.

Give us a brief sort of picture of farming in general, what it was like then and how hard it might have been.

“It's just if you've got like a, you spent all day somebody says you put it in one end and take it out the other and that's what you spend your whole day doing. Feeding them and cleaning them out. And if you're not feeding and cleaning out you're preparing for it you know, you're filling barrows of hay and turnips and things like that and then the feeding them these days, it wasnae like buying compound feeding that you just weighed it and then put it into them, you had to mix it up in a big feed cooler and put boiling water in it and you know, virtually cook it, as it were. That's what you spent your day doing, that style you know, preparing. If you weren't feeding you were preparing it for them, and that took your whole day really, that amount of time. Yeah”.

You said you did quite a lot of ploughing....

“Aye, you were ploughing you've got to sow grain, you had to plough it up and it was a pair o' horses I was working wi' at that time to begin with. And you followed them up and doon the parks, it was a long, boring job really. Yep. Very boring. You get so little done in a day, you know… well, you had a short day because you were busy feeding the cattle in the morning and then you get a wee while in the middle of the day, you go out and there's a wee bit of ploughing. But yes, it was a boring sorta job, yeah”.

If you look back on your life as a farmer, how difficult was it? And were you aware of how difficult it was?

“No. You didn't know any better. So that was your life. It was a… oh aye, you just accepted what it was. Yeah, as I said before, when I went to leave school I wasnae looking forward to going home because I knew it was gonna be hard-going. But eh, aye, once the second brother left and he was able to help then, you know, like it became that much more pleasant and yeah, you just couldnae wait to get a place o' your own so you could do it the way you wanted and that was just your life, yeah. Yeah. And then the new things were coming in by that time. Tractors were coming in, milking machines come in and all that and things got a lot better than what had been, yeah. Aye, that's what just at the time things started to move, you know”.

So what sort of output were you getting from the farm? How many cows were there, how much milk were you churning out and what happened to it?

“I couldnae say, it just all went doon to the Co-operative in East Kilbride, doon the main street. How much? How many gallons did we put out? It would have been about 3 gallon a cow I'd imagine so we had 60 cows, probably 180 gallons a day or something like that, yeah. Yeah. And it's trying to think, what output was it at that time, you know? That's changed a bit now, yeah”.

Could you describe the process from taking the cows in, milking it, putting it in the barrels - how did all that happen?

“Aye, well, when the milk machine came it wasnae bad, you just… well, when the milk tank came in, that was later right enough. Before then you filled it into a 10 gallon can in the byre, wheeled them through and poured it into the fridge and it…., there was a freezer with water running through inside and running down the outside back into a 10 gallon can, so you've got 10 gallon up the top and you had 10 gallon underneath, you filled it up, took it away and put a new one in and that was it. And it just sat outside and the big lorry come along and picked them up in the morning and that was how it was done, yeah. But there was a lot of work for all these cans, they'd all to be washed when they come back and yeah… that was your sisters' job, they took a Sunday, about a day in the dairy washing, you know, if you had 18 milk cans to wash plus all the dairy equipment as well, yeah”.

And what are your happiest memories, looking back on growing up on Lickprivick Farm?

“Happiest? Och just always the sun, see your job when you think of it as a kid. You always remember sunshine, running about in your bare feet, that sort of thing, yeah. You cannae really remember a wet day. Oh, there was plenty of wet days, but no, you just always… well, you remember the good times obviously and that was it, when the sun was shining, it was as I say, probably running about in your bare feet ?? But as I say with being a family there were always kids to play wi' and you always had company you know. So you were never lonely in that respect yeah”.

What was the worst thing about the work?

“Eh… the worst? Ach, just the fact I think you knew there was so much work to do you were tied to that and you… there was no way out, you know… I would say my father wasnae too fit and I was the oldest so I was getting the heavy end o' the stick. The worst time was the first 2 years after I left school. Yeah, when you were on your own wi' the most o' it to yoursel', yeah”.

Did you envisage ever doing anything else?

“No really. You didnae know anything else, yeah… as I say, when I left school, aye, always think of go and do something else, but what would I want to do I wouldnae know. No, I'd never, you know, thought, he was expecting you to come home, it was as simple as that. But eh, yeah, once it came time to come home I wasnae looking forward to it. And the first 2 years I say werenae too pleasant, mainly because it was just work, work, work. But then after that things eased and they got better and then 2 years on you were16, by that time you were starting to learn drive and things like that. So yeah. Things got cheerier”.

When you actually got that wee bit older …

“Yeah, well, you didnae, until you could drive, you werenae going away and going on the bike- well, I did bike, I biked up to the bowling hut, used to bike up here twice a week and that was my only hobbies in the early days before we started to drive a car, yeah. And then once you could drive, then you started going to dances and things like that yeah. OK, and we biked down to East Kilbride to where we're gonna learn the dance, went doon to Hamilton to learn to dance, we biked to East Kilbride and the auld chieftain bus down to Hamilton to learn to dance, yeah. Missed the bus home and walked home one night”.

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