Milk before Loxwood Dairy
Milk had been produced on farms around Loxwood for generations. A dairy farm kept cows and dealt with the daily work of milking, cooling and selling the milk. In rural districts many households could collect milk directly from a nearby farm. Regular doorstep rounds developed first in larger towns and industrial areas, while local farm rounds became increasingly common as villages grew and transport improved.
The earliest known regular delivery round in the neighbouring Wisborough Green area was run by George Dunkerton of Wheelers Farm from about 1900. His son Fred Dunkerton later moved the business to Sweephurst Farm around the time of the First World War. Sweephurst kept a herd of about forty-five cows, milked by hand in stalls in a barn beside the farmhouse, and sent a milk round through the village every day.
Loxwood had its own milk-producing farms. The Field family kept dairy cattle and poultry at Orchard House on Station Road, the house now called Farm Cottage. The 1939 Register recorded eighteen-year-old Robert Field as a cowman there. The same register recorded Frank Chase as a dairy farmer at Spy Farm. A local history of milk deliveries estimates that about twenty dairy farms were operating in the surrounding district during the 1950s.
Farm, creamery and retail dairy
The milk trade developed several different types of business. A dairy farm produced milk from its own herd. A farmer who also sold directly to households was known as a producer-retailer; the Harsfold account later used that description for Maurice Carter. A central creamery collected milk from several farms, tested and cooled it and could prepare a combined supply for a larger market. A retail dairy organised stock, bottles, vehicles and the delivery rounds that took milk to customers’ doors.
Kirdford provides an early local example of the central-depot system. Lord Leconfield’s estate built Kirdford Creamery in 1911. Farmers brought milk in churns, while collection vehicles travelled to more distant holdings. Milk arriving at the depot was weighed and sampled, cooled or pasteurised when required and sent through Billingshurst station for the London market. By the mid-1930s the creamery was handling about 2,000 gallons a day and sending the combined supply by road tanker to United Dairies at Streatham. Kirdford Creamery closed in 1943 during wartime petrol restrictions.
Most local dairy farms concentrated on producing milk and sold it to larger dairy companies, commonly Express Dairies. Sweephurst was unusual locally because it combined farming with its own retail round, while any surplus could also be sold to Express Dairies. That producer-retailer system provides the clearest surviving account of how milk reached homes around Loxwood before Loxwood Dairy expanded its own rounds.
From churn to doorstep
The early Sweephurst round gives a detailed picture of rural milk delivery before glass bottles became standard. The roundsman pushed a three-wheeled handcart known as a milk pram. It carried a churn holding about seventeen gallons. For houses away from the cart he could decant about two gallons into a smaller can and carry it by hand.
At the doorstep the customer supplied a jug, basin or other container. The roundsman measured the milk with pint and half-pint measures and poured it directly from his can. The milk was full cream and unpasteurised. Customers supplied their own containers, so the roundsman worked with churns, cans and measuring jugs.
Motor transport gradually replaced the handcart. Sweephurst acquired a Morris Cowley in the early 1930s and carried two seventeen-gallon churns on the car’s rear dicky seat. Maurice Carter, Fred Dunkerton’s son-in-law, took over the farm in 1938. An Austin 8 van later carried the bulk milk round, still using churns and measures at the doorstep.
‘Clean Milk’
Milk could be spoiled by dirty vessels, warm storage and delays between milking and delivery. Local farmers therefore advertised cleanliness as part of the product. On 7 October 1926 the West Sussex Gazette carried a Loxwood notice offering ‘Clean Milk’ from Fishers Farm at Wisborough Green. The advertisement specified pedigree Guernsey cows and stated that they were milked by a professional milker.
Public-health measures brought major changes during the 1930s and 1940s, particularly in the control of bovine tuberculosis and the treatment of milk. The Milk (Special Designations) regulations prescribed standards for pasteurised milk. A government statement in 1943 described two approved processes: heating milk at 145–150 degrees Fahrenheit for at least thirty minutes, or at not less than 162 degrees for fifteen seconds, followed in either case by rapid cooling.
Around 1947 the Sweephurst business transferred its cows to Harsfold Farm, where newer dairy equipment had been installed. The local account records that the herd moved there after tuberculosis testing. An Alfa Laval milking plant milked the cows, driven by an electric vacuum pump, with a Lister petrol engine available if the electricity supply failed.
Loxwood Dairy in 1945
The name ‘Loxwood Dairy’ appears in a Ministry of Food announcement published in the West Sussex Gazette on 20 September 1945. During wartime rationing, customers were registered with particular traders for rationed foods. The Loxwood notice concerned customers registered with Herbert Field at Orchard House and transferred them automatically to the new proprietor, Miss Kilner, at ‘Loxwood Dairy, Loxwood’.
Herbert Field continued farming at Orchard House after that notice. His dairy and poultry farm remained in operation until 1954, when he died and the livestock, equipment and other farm effects were sold.
The Kilner name was already familiar in this part of Loxwood. Fred Kilner had moved his bus business to the village in the 1930s and operated services through Loxwood, Ifold and the surrounding district. The family owned land between Guildford Road and Spy Lane, close to the dairy site beyond North Hall.
Inside a modern dairy
The Harsfold dairy, which supplied the rounds later taken over by Loxwood Dairy, gives a detailed account of the work behind a bottled-milk service. A purpose-built cowshed stood beside the dairy unit. The milking plant carried milk from the cows, while a coke-fired boiler supplied the constant hot water needed for washing equipment and keeping the dairy clean.
Inside was a walk-in refrigerator for bottled milk, churns and cartons of cream. Milk requiring heat treatment passed through the pasteurising plant. Returned bottles and crates went first through a washing machine and then into a steam sterilising chest before reuse. A cream separator removed cream from part of the supply, and the remaining skimmed milk was fed to pigs.
The bottling plant filled quart, pint and half-pint bottles. It also filled one-third-pint bottles for the Wisborough Green school contract. Subsidised school milk had been introduced nationally in 1934 and became free in schools from 1946. The small school bottles had cardboard tops pierced for a drinking straw; Jeff Herridge remembered a Mickey Mouse design on the tops used for the school milk.
The ordinary bottles were heavy glass with broad necks, and the early bottled Sweephurst milk used foil tops. Cream was sold in five-ounce and ten-ounce containers. Before the rounds went out, bottles of milk, cream and other goods were counted into crates and loaded onto the vans. On their return, empty bottles and crates went back through washing and steam sterilisation ready for another day.
Seven days on the milk round
The milkman’s work extended beyond leaving a bottle at the door. Dewey MacDonald drove one of the Austin 10 vans from Harsfold and became well known around Wisborough Green and Loxwood. In summer he also used a Dennis mower on Wisborough Green village green. As the round grew in the early 1950s, a second Austin 10 was bought for Stan Mewett.
Both vans carried eggs, cream, cheese and butter as well as milk. The rounds went out seven days a week, and an older Austin 12/6 was kept as a spare when the regular vans needed servicing. Jeff Herridge worked on the farm and became relief driver for Stan Mewett’s round. His normal work included tractor driving, taking feed to cattle, collecting dung, cutting kale, working with a horse and cart, digging ditches and helping the thatcher.
Jeff Herridge remembered tuberculin-tested milk, usually shortened to TT milk, selling at 9½d a pint and pasteurised milk at 7½d, with a half-pint costing 4¾d. The drivers carried farthings so that they could give the correct change. When Dewey MacDonald retired in 1956, Jeff Herridge took over his round and drove an Austin 10 until early 1959.
The Science of Milk Production
The changes taking place in local dairying were discussed close to Loxwood Dairy. On 30 November 1948 the National Agricultural Advisory Service arranged a showing of The Science of Milk Production at North Hall. Farmers, herdsmen and members of Young Farmers’ Clubs were invited to see a film on American milking methods followed by commentary and discussion.
Glyn Evans and Loxwood Dairy
The Sweephurst delivery business continued with bottled milk until the tenancy of Harsfold Farm ended in 1960. Its rounds then passed largely to Loxwood Dairy. Petworth Dairy also delivered in the area during the 1960s.
In 1961 Glyn Evans moved with his family to the Billingshurst area and acquired Loxwood Dairy. The business used electric milk floats for its rounds. Its delivery area included Loxwood, Ifold, Wisborough Green, Alfold and Dunsfold.
Electric floats suited a milk round because the vehicle stopped repeatedly over short distances and travelled slowly while the milkman walked between the float and customers’ doors. Crates kept the different bottle sizes and other products within reach. The late-1960s photograph supplied by Gareth Evans shows a Loxwood Dairy vehicle with its side open and crates of returnable glass bottles stacked across the load space.
From Loxwood Dairy to the last independent round
Glyn Evans operated Loxwood Dairy for about twenty-five years. In 1986 the business was sold to Taylors of Wick Farm at Littlehampton, who operated a depot near Five Oaks. Milk deliveries in the district later passed through larger businesses including Five Oaks Dairy, Sussex Dairies and Unigate.
Glyn Evans’s son Gareth Evans remained in the trade and continued an independent daily milk delivery to Loxwood and Ifold. He kept the round until 1999, when he sold it to Unigate Dairies.
