East Anglia
East Anglia was full of Scottish cattle on their way down the east of England to St Faiths Fair, north of Norwich.
The main route was via Wisbech, but the excerpt from the Norfolk Chronicle of October 16th 1790 (#1) suggests a route via Fakenham. They would graze outside Norwich and change hands at St Faiths Fair, after which the Scots would return home and leave the beasts to be fattened for resale in London (Romford & Smithfield). I read that the favourite grazing ground was in the triangle Norwich-Yarmouth-Eccles. (The author, JBS Haldane, actually wrote Beccles; but he was quoting Defoe's journey of 1724 and Beccles would not make sense.)
The St Faith’s droves usually left Dumfriesshire around the 14th September, the 340 miles taking twenty-eight days, at an approximate twelve miles a day. Before reaching St Faith’s, each drover would have hired a field for his beasts, the majority being bullocks, four to five years old, mainly black or brindled, some dun and a few red - but mostly Galloways because they tasted like no other1.
As with all markets and sales, there was an art to selling lean cattle and much could be gained by choosing a favourable stand. The cattle looked best on a gentle slope with a minimum of forty beasts, especially the polled variety which stood closer together. Sixty were better and eighty better still. Ten beasts, matched for quality, would be segregated in one corner in the hope of persuading a grazier to buy all ten, in which case a discount would be given. The grazier had to know at a glance how much a beast would improve on good, bad or indifferent land as well as on turnips, in three, six or twelve months.
However, in the late C19, Irish cattle from Meath & Roscommon began to be shipped across to Holyhead, Birkenhead & Fishguard, where they would be put on trains to Norwich. They were highly popular in E-A because they were ideally suited for the coastal marshlands of Norfolk and North Suffolk.
The dealers accompanied the cattle but employed local drovers to take them into market. The Irish didn't allow their beasts to be put under the hammer, however; all cattle were sold under private deals with farmers their touts had met off the train (and often plied with whisky). So everyone was happy.
(Thank you to the web page on East Anglian Droving for the detailed information in the last four paras.)
The saddest thing I've read about those days: James Seeley said the happiest days of his life were spent in France in World War 1. The idyllic countryside we see today masks the fact that countrymen longed for companionship, a laugh and (of course) the good food that they would rarely find at home.
1And the (Scots?) drovers slept like no other too: at The Scole Inn, outside Diss, it is reported in the Coventry Evening Telegraph (1962) that a gigantic round bed was built by the landlord for communal use, to be used by drovers & carriers. It measured nearly 15 feet in diameter and sloped down towards the central post "like an outsize roulette wheel...straw was laid on it to make a rough & ready mattress and drivers and drovers bedded down like the spokes of a wheel."
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Finally, I quote from K J Bonser’s The Drovers: an Epic of the British Coutryside, p204:
“From Wisbech the route to Norwich lay through the small village of Setchey, three miles south of King’s Lynn. This once had its own fair, held every year before St Faith’s fair. Ralph Thoresby the eminent historian & topographer of Leeds, rode through ‘Setcha’ in 1680, and noted:
“September 29. From Wisbech we rid to Setcha, a small country village, but much noted for the beast fair, all the closes round the town for a considerable distance being spread over with beasts from Scotland etc. – and (if not too light an observation in this place) for the common country proverb, Setcha has but thirteen houses and fourteen cuckolds: true enough for the former part, but I charitably hope false in the latter. From thence we rid to Lynn, three miles off….”
Apart from the disgraceful proverb there is little to be found about Setchey on the internet, but I once talked to the owner of what was previously The Black Bull inn (#2), who said there was a chance of oil being discovered in his back garden. I hope it was and that he’s been able to move away from the sounds of the A14…
