Gone, but never forgotten (From Worcester News)

Gone, but never forgotten

10:03am Monday 1st June 2009 in

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IT’S not far across the south Worcestershire countryside from Evesham to Bredon, 10 miles or so, but Fred Archer’s journey takes a hundred years.

Actually it’s a bit more that than.

For while the oldest photograph in his re-published book of sepia images of the Vale dates back to 1862, the most recent is one taken of Fred and poet Pam Ayres in 1978.

Fred Archer, you may recall, was the farmer from Ashton-under-Hill, the village in the lee of Bredon Hill, who was cajoled into giving a talk as a late substitute speaker in his local parish hall in the mid-60s and went on to become a household name for his books chronicling life on the farm in the first half of the 20th century.

It was a time when tractors took over from shire horses and steel barns replaced hayricks.

Fred had two distinct advantages.

He shared a surname with a hugely popular radio series that was synonymous in the public’s mind with farming and English country life.

This was pure coincidence, for Fred had no connection with the fictional Archers of Brookfield Farm, Dan, Doris, Walter Gabriel and all the rest. Secondly, he was a natural raconteur and writer, who conveyed his memories and anecdotes in an easy style. He was, if you like, a Worcestershire version of Yorkshire vet James Herriott.

But in the re-publication of his book Evesham to Bredon in Old Photographs, which first appeared in 1988, it is the pictures that tell the story and the text takes a back seat.

As Fred writes in the foreword: “Old friends have lent me their prints to reproduce. The faces of some of them speak to me much more than the written word.”

While some of the photographs may have been borrowed, many are from Fred’s own collection, which he amassed as he could see the pace and face of farming and country life changing.

With the passing of the years, everyday scenes like haymaking, ploughing, the local fire engine, villagers outside a pub or schoolchildren playing in the lane gain a nostalgic fascination and tend to give the impression of a rural idyll, although in truth life was often anything but.

Early farm mechanism was erratic and there is an image of a steam engine powered circular saw – no safety guard of course – that claimed the life of its operator, Jonathan Bayliss soon after the picture was taken.

But it wouldn’t be a Fred Archer book without a few tales and there is space for a few.

I love the one about Beckford Fire Brigade, which was on its way to a fire when it came across travelling photographer Trotting Johnny in Rabbit Lane.

Naturally, it stopped to have its picture taken.

Then there’s Daddy Jelfs leaning on a gate in Bretforton.

Fred said: “There are so many folk called Jelfs in Bretforton that if you shouted ‘Jelfs’ half the village would come out.”

And Teddy Vale the Grafton stone-breaker who married a servant girl in his old age.

When asked by the vicar: “Wilt thou have this woman to be your wedded wife?” Teddy replied: “That’s what we be come yer for unt it?”

More of Fred Archer’s books are to be re-published over the summer by Amberley Publishing, ensuring this great Worcestershire character may be gone – he died in 1999, aged 84 – but like the old times, is not forgotten.