A HISTORY OF CROUCH (DEHYRATORS) LIMITED, STOKE FERRY

1. Introduction
2. The Crouch (Dehydration) Plant
3. Images of the operation process – from field to lorry
4. Closure of the grass-drying works to the present day
5. Sources
6. Footnotes

1. Introduction

Harry Oswald Crouch (1891-1965), known to all as ‘H.O.’ or ‘Chief’, was born at Manea, near March, Cambridgeshire. Between c1918 – c1937 HO was a farmer at the 123acre Willow Farm, Manea. It was here that he grew potatoes, carrots, mangolds, and swedes, and raised pigs. By 1935 he described himself as farming 1,500 acres and being amongst the top seven carrot producers in the country.

HO married twice. His first wife, Olive (d. 1946), came from Watering Hill Farm, Manea. They had two children, Derek and Maurice. Derek’s daughter, Fay, describes  her grandmother as being a strong, reliable individual who provided a firm foundation for her husband’s farming and business dealings. Olive ran Willow Farm’s poultry business with assistance from Reg Elvin. By coincidence, the Elvin family later moved to Stoke Ferry and Reg’s son, Len, became a foreman for Crouch (Dehydrators).

HO’s second marriage was to Laura ‘Lolly’ Casswell (d. 1966.) who was known to Fay and her brother Michael as Aunty Lolly. She had quite a different personality from Olive; she was much more outgoing and vivacious, and far less of a homebird.

In 1938 HO bought 2,500 acres and Stoke Ferry Bridge Farm buildings, and so our story begins….

2. The Crouch (Dehydration) Plant

The 2,500 acres bought by HO were along the banks of the River Wissey. Much of the land flooded every winter providing a home for water fowl. In the summer it was marshland tangled with sedge, willow, and alder. HO also purchased the derelict mid-Victorian mill and five cottages at Bridge Farm Mill.¹ This complex stood along the Whittington Road, immediately after the Stoke Ferry bridge. Remnants of the large grass-drying operation can still be seen today (see image at the head of this post).

Over a period of some 10 years, HO, with his sons, Maurice and Derek, transformed the land from a duck shoot into a full-scale factory farm. Their first job, which took over two years to complete, was to draw the water back into the Wissey. Draglines were brought in to cut a new 45foot main drain and secondary dyke works (deep ditches). These secondary drains created the rectangular fields which we can still see today. Bulldozers and winches were used to uproot the trees and scrub. Each spring fires were employed to clear the fenland. Deep ploughing was then carried out and covering crops such as rye and cole seed (basic rape seed) were used to prevent weeds reappearing. During these works, bog oaks were exposed and some of these were used as walkways across the dykes.

A 60 horse-power engine was installed to power a pump to take water out of the dykes and into the Wissey. This pump worked continuously in the winter and for some five hours a day in the summer. At the same time, permanent farm roads were created using chalk and gravel from pits found on the farm.

In 1944 Mr Watson was appointed as the Farm Manager. From the start, the farm used a high degree of mechanisation. Cabbages were planted at a rate of 4 acres a day, potatoes covered 200 acres, while carrots covered about 90 acres yielding 25-30 tons per acre.

The company’s original office was at Stoke Ferry Railway Station. Later, an office was built on site – and it is still there today. Malcolm Mycock remembers that “John Boyce² was one of the last ones in that office. Valarie also worked in the office in the ‘60s, as did Muriel Speed.” Fay Crouch recalls that Olive Ansel was an worker in the office, as was Audrey McBride who played a big part in creating The Village Pump.

Crouch (Dehydrators) Limited was registered in 1948 as the first Grass Drying Company in the UK. It had £20,000 in capital and its directors were H.O Crouch, Maurice Crouch, Derek Crouch, and E.R. Turpin.

That same year the directors went to the War Agricultural Sales and bought 22 ex-war Fordson tractors for £20 each. A fitter, Ernie Heywood, left Gordon Parker’s to get the tractors into use. Six new Ferguson tractors plus grass-cutting equipment were also acquired, together with 22 trailers each of which could carry five tons of wet grass.

Two HEIL grass drying plants were imported from the U.S.A. It took five tons of wet grass to produce the single ton of dried grass each drying plant produced per hour. This meant that during the harvesting season farm workers had to cut 24 acres a day, 7 days a week.

Leonard B. Turner, known to all as Don Turner, moved from Hilgay to become site foreman. He stayed with the company for over 22 years. Don lived with his family in the white house which faced the factory and is pictured here, in 1953, standing on one of the farm’s bog oak bridges.

He recalled those early years:

“We had taken on a big job, especially as there were no roads to the farms. We found a chalk pit on the Stoke Ferry Farm. We built a light railway with ten little trucks that held about one ton each; pulled on the line by a tractor. We used a drag-line from the chalk-pit to dig stone and local sand for the roads. We covered the chalk with sand and gravel, it was then leveled by a bull-dozer tractor.

“By this time the grass was growing fast, and the grass-drying plant had arrived from America. Our first priority was to get the machinery installed so that we could start grass drying. We hired grass-cutters and lorries to harvest the grass and bring it to the drying-plant. When it had dried it went into a “miracle” mill which ground it into powder. This was put into paper sacks, each holding four stones (25.5kilo) and tied with wire. The sacks were then loaded on big trailers and taken to Stoke Ferry Railway Station loaded on trucks and dispatched to the feed merchants.“

In September, 1953, the company took out a mortgage to pay for the investments it was making in new machinery, i.e.; 23 Fordson Major tractors (below), 6 Ferguson tractors, 22 steel trailers and a fleet of lorries. The farm ran on oil with its dryers and tractors burning some 400,000 gallons a year. Malcolm Mycock recalls, “The oil was thick and black…there was a heater on the end of the oil storage tanks which were just inside the factory entrance agin’ the bridge”. The 23 Fordson Major tractors were later converted to diesel saving the company some £5,000 per year.

The whole farm was put down to cocksfoot, lucerne (alphalpha) and grass mixtures. These were grown on four-year  leys to produce high protein feed for animals and grass meal for chlorophyll extraction. The growing season was from the end of April to October. During this time the grass was cut five times  producing the 20,000 tonnes annually required to feed the non-stop dryers. “Every field had a field number. If you told me a field number, I could take you right there.” says Malcolm Mycock.

After the grass was mown and turned, forage harvesters worked in teams of three. They picked up the grass and chopped it into two-inch lengths. Then, they blew it into the field trailers. The trailers were taken two at a time into the yard. Here their contents were tipped into a hopper. The hopper mechanically sent the contents into one of the two rotating hot-air dryers. These dryers were housed in two separate buildings. The heat inside the dryers could reach 156^o Centigrade. From the dryers the material went into the hammer mill. Here it was ground to a fine green powder (meal) and then blown upwards into the plant’s bagging department. Here it was hand-weighed, placed into bags, stamped with a field number and date, and sealed. The whole process, from hopper to bagging was managed by just six men.

Finally, from the first floor of the main building, the sacks were lowered and loaded onto lorry trailers. The lorries to the sacks to be stacked in the company’s storage hanger at Methwold Aerodrome. The hanger could hold up to 5,000 ton of feed in sacks. “The protein packed bags were fed to cattle, poultry and pigs. Health & Safety wouldn’t let them stack the bags like that now!”, says Malcolm Mycock.

Samples from each batch of harvested grass would be sent to the firm’s on-site, chemist, Mr. ‘Doc’ Chester (pictured below). In his fully equipped lab ‘Doc’ checked the samples for protein, fibre, keratin and also chlorophyll, which was used in toothpastes, lipsticks, deodorants, food colourings, etc.

In its heyday, some 80 people worked for the company. As well as 25 tractor drivers, there was a blacksmith, a carpenter and fitters, all with their own workshops. There was a store for parts which was run by ‘Morry’ Coeper. George Curr of Whittington was employed as a night watchman, and there was also a mole-catcher.

Workers were employed on a casual ‘trial and error’ basis. They were recruited through the Stoke Ferry Employment Exchange at Bramcote House, on the corner of Lynn Road and Furlong Road. Don Turner, recalled that, “When Miss Lambert retired as Secretary, we had a new clerk who would not allow us to employ anyone without a [National Insurance] card. Several old men, including Harry Howard and Arthur Barrett had no card, so I had to tell them there was no work for them.“ During the busy growing season, the farmworkers worked in teams. They often worked for long hours – anything between 72-84 a week. In the winter the men were employed in the ‘cubing plant’, on farm work, or on repairing equipment.

At one time the company wanted to make fish meal by drying fish offal. Don Turner recalled, “This was the idea of Mr. Dick Turpin who had been to London to arrange it. Lorry loads of this offal came from London. The stench was terrible. Drying it was a slow job, as it was so wet. By the time we had dried one lorry load we had had complaints from the people in Stoke Ferry and all the surrounding villages.” Malcolm Mycock also recalls, “They tried to dry fish there, but people kicked up so much hassle.” Because of the many complaints an injunction was served forbidding the further drying of fish offal.

Rodney, Don Turner’s son, remarks that, “…chicory was also dried at the plant. They used to slice ‘em all up before they were dried.” While Malcolm Mycock recalls, “They tried drying brussels sprouts and potatoes, in fact in the chicory plant we used to dry deadly nightshade and foxgloves. We used to dry them in the big dryer out the back, what was where the chicory factory was. We got the chicory from local farmers.”

Cattle grazed the farmland over the winter months. They originally came from the North Wootton Farming Company. Up to six drovers and two sheep dogs drove them  through the streets of Kings Lynn and along country roads to Stoke Ferry. This practice continued until the time the cattle, being thirsty after being driven such a long way, headed straight into the Wissey and, with some difficulty, had to be winched out. After this incident the company bought its own herd of cattle from King’s Lynn Cattle Market.

Rodney Turner, recollects that, “The cattleman at Stoke was a former German prisoner-of-war who had chosen to stay in England.”

Local historian, Richard Coates remembers being friends with Rodney Turner and playing in the grass-drying factory, “We would climb and explore all over; it was our extended playground!”

When HO died in 1965, his sons, Derek and Maurice, took over the running of the business, though by 1967 the firm was solely owned by Derek. Malcolm Mycock remembers Derek, “He was a nice chap, a gentleman. If we was brushin’, you know, he’d come in with a bottle of whisky, give you all one if you wanted one. Once he walked past me and there was just that much in the bottle. I said, ‘Derek you’re not goin’ to take that little drop back are you, mate? He said ‘No, there you go’.“ He also recalls,  “Derek Crouch Construction, they were civil engineers and did open cast coal. Derek built that bridge down at Brandon Creek. Nigel “Nudge” Cannell had a photograph of it. Nudge was my manager. But they’ve all gone, all gone, mate, I don’t know if there’s many left, mate.”

Derek Crouch used dragline expertise acquired at Stoke Ferry Bridge Farm to create a very profitable construction and open cast coal excavation business. Advertisements in Peterborough and other regional newspapers show his new company continually advertising for ‘RB [Ruston Bucyrus] Operators’.

3. Images of the operation process – from field to lorry

4. Closure of the grass-drying works to the present day

Soaring oil prices in the 1970’s spelt the end of grass drying at Stoke Ferry. Malcolm Mycock also reflects that, “The quality of the grass that was cropped began to decline. There was hardly enough to pick up some time. I mean, at one time you could look across from the main road and see three or four of them RBs {Ruston Bucyrus’] cleaning dykes out, all the time, all the year. Later on, you’d look across there any time and see just one jib stickin’ up there cleaning dykes out.” Grass growing was reduced, and cereal crops, potatoes and sugar beet were introduced. By the end of the 1970’s the work force had decreased, but, even so, in the mid-1980s the concern was still an important local employer with nine office & management staff, and 17 people working on the farm. But eventually the grass drying plant was dismantled and sold. As Malcolm says, “I think it closed in the late ‘80s, it would have been about that time.”

It was Derek Crouch’s son, Michael, who eventually took over the firm. And it was Michael who focused its activities on conservation projects. The name ‘Crouch (Dehydrators) Ltd’ was kept and traditional farming operations continued on the land until the present day. Michael’s daughter, Sophie Skeffington writes, “Wildlife has always been of great importance, so we have not farmed the land intensively. We always leaving plenty of natural habitat for birds and animals to thrive alongside the business operations. For over 40 years many areas of new woodland have been planted. We have also excavated numerous new ponds. During the last 10 years, under a Higher Level Stewardship Agreement with Natural England, a large area of land has been taken out of production. This has caused a huge increase in biodiversity. Successful habitat has been created for ground nesting birds such as Lapwing and Skylark, wintering and breeding waterfowl and wading birds. Wildflower meadows and specialist pollen and nectar mix plots provide habitat for bumblebees, butterflies, and all manner of insect life. Target farmland bird species are now prolific. A local herd of native breed cattle graze much of the land during the summer months. It is interesting to note that the farm has almost come full circle with much of the land that was originally boggy, unfarmed fenland and taken into farming by the Crouch family is now restored back to wet grassland and that grass is now predominant over most of the farm as it was back in the days of the Grass Drying business.”

5. Sources

• Our thanks for contributions and help from Fay Crouch, Janet Taylor, Malcolm Mycock, Richard Coates, Rodney Taylor, and Sophie Skeffington.
• All images are from the family collection held by Fay Crouch.
• The Stoke Ferry Branch, Oxford Publishing Company, P. Paye, 1982.
• Tales of a Fen Farmer, Leonard B. Turner, edited and written by Doris E. Coates. (From which come the quotes from Don Turner)
• The British Newspaper Archive website.
• Companies House website.

6. Footnotes

1. Malcolm Mycock says the cottages along Whittington Road were demolished sometime in the 1950s. ↩︎
2. John Boyce was the office manager. He lived in Riverside Bungalow, on the bank of the Wissey opposite The Moorings. ↩︎