Toffee and Wine

Brookside, Barkby

Mrs Baines: I’ll tell you what I used to do if somebody gave me a farthing [a quarter of an old penny]. I used to go to, up to the brook, brook side cottage there, there was some little cottages up there and there used to be an old lady she used to make toffee and she gave us ever such a nice bit for a farthing. As soon as ever I got a farthing I used to go right up there, over the brook, used to go up to the old lady and she used to give me a piece in a paper for my farthing. I daren’t tell my mother I’d been and spent it else we should have got into a row again, but I enjoyed the farthing’s worth of rock. And I know when we were kids we used to try and get through to go and get some foal foots [also know as colt’s foot] out of the field before they ploughed it, you know. If he seen us going through the field, going through the gates, he’d stop us and shove us back. He lived at the cottage right against Barkby Holt, and we used to go along by the cricket field and creep through the hedge, and get there. But you know, Barkby Holt, there’s a lot of nuts there and I think he thought we were going to get the nuts but we didn’t, we went to get the foal foot before they ploughed the fields, you know.

Mr Bentley: What did you want the colt’s foot for?

Mrs Baines: Make wine of. Mother used to take them to the farms for the wine, they used to make foal foot wine. And they were the first flower come in, like, for wine making, and then there used to be the cow slips. We used to go to Beeby for cow slips…

Mr Bentley: By the brook?

Mrs Baines: By the brook, yeah, there were two fields used to be covered all yellow over in cowslips and we used to go there to get them.

Mr Bentley: What did you collect them in?

Mrs Baines: In big bags. Mother used to wash the sack bags and we used to take them and put them all in there. Used to... then my mother’d take them to the farm, farmers used to make the wine.

Mr Bentley: Did you sell the wine?

Mrs Baines: No, the farmers had the cowslips to make the wine of, they used to have it.

©EMOHA with permission of Barkby Local History Group