Description:

Extracts from a DVD published by the Longtown and District Historical Society in 2007 entitled “In the Shadow of the Black Mountains: Memories of Rural Life in South West Herefordshire”. The audio recordings are reproduced here with their kind permission, after adaptation by the Ewyas Lacy Study Group for website presentation.

The material consists of interviews with local residents designed to record an oral history of the parishes of Ewyas Lacy. The work was carried out by members of the LDHS Oral History Group between 2004 and 2006 as part of a project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The memories in this clip relate to the history of farming in Ewyas Lacy. Making a living on the upland farms in the lee of the Black Mountains has never been easy. These narrators describe some of the practical aspects of farm life in the early to mid twentieth century, at a time when trips to Hereford or Abergavenny market were a major expedition on horseback, threshing the corn harvest was a hard, labour-intensive community effort, butter was churned by hand and flour for baking was ground from home-grown wheat at the local water-mill.

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