Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Sale gamble paid off for a breed of cattle on the brink
THOUSANDS of cattle changed hands at the fall of Les Hall’s hammer during his 50 years as a West livestock auctioneer, but few sales have made it into the history books in the same way as the one held at Wick Court on October 25, 1972.
Just 33 lots were available – usually far too few to warrant the expense of printing catalogues, placing adverts and setting up the ring, but Les was determined to do his best for Ella and Alex Dowdeswell, the reclusive sisters who owned the last herd of old Gloucester cattle in the UK.
This dual-purpose breed had been kept in the Severn Vale since the 13th century for its meat as well as its milk – the latter containing high levels of butter fat and used to make Double Gloucester, a cheese exported all over the world.
The animals, with their dark mahogany bodies, black heads and legs and distinctive ‘finchback’ white stripes, were also revered as strong draught oxen. One of their number even made history in being the source of the first smallpox serum administered by Dr Edward Jenner in Berkeley in 1796.
Yet after the Second World War farmers were encouraged to develop dairy herds containing high milkyielding animals, such as Holstein Friesians, and steadily numbers of ancient breeds like the old Gloucester declined.
With the dispersal of a previous Lord Bathurst’s cattle at Aston Blank in 1966, the Dowdeswell herd was the only one left.
Ella and Alex had continued to run their family farm on the edge of Arlingham after the death of their brother, Robert, an original member of the former Old Gloucester Herdbook Society.
However, by 1972, the effort involved in looking after the family’s collection of cattle, built from just two animals acquired in 1924, was becoming too much for the sisters. Indeed, a doctor had told them in no uncertain terms that they were ‘too old to be farming’ after Alex took a tumble in the cow yard.
Les, a partner at J Pearce Pope & Sons in Gloucester, had got to know the Dowdeswells reasonably well over the years because they would contact him whenever they had cattle to send to market, enabling the auctioneer to pass this information on to Derby-based butcher Arthur T Morley, who rated the quality of the animals’ beef.
The sale of the final herd of Gloucesters required a different approach, however, and Les resolved to do whatever he could to find new owners who would ensure that Molly II, Dorcas II, Twopence, Fussy II and fellow herd members would not be the last in their line.
“Usually with such small numbers it would have been straightforward to have arranged transport to get the animals to Gloucester Market,” recalls Les, a chartered surveyor and auctioneer.
“It was quite a gamble holding the auction on the farm, which could easily have backfired. The cost of making the arrangements for 33 cattle was the same as several hundred and it was very risky to expect buyers to make the trip to Wick Court, when only 20 cows and 13 calves were for sale – people wouldn’t normally come a long way to buy such a small number.
“Previously, Joe Henson had gone to the farm to buy a couple of the cattle to preserve the breed, but nobody else had been interested and there was little indication of the revival of interest in preserving rare breeds that was to come.
“Nevertheless, I felt it would have been sad to see some of these cows go to slaughter when they were in milk; our decision to hold an onfarm sale was something we would have to put up with if it failed.”
Les was right to be anxious, not least because of Alex’s reputation for greeting casual visitors to Wick Court with a shotgun, but he went with his instinct and he kept his fingers crossed that the sale would be a success.
“Alex was apparently 70 on the day I went to see the herd and advise them I was prepared to conduct a dispersal sale on the farm rather than put the animals in the slaughter market,” Les recalls.
“It took some two or three hours before I could finally convince them as they were very much against strangers being on the farm, but once they were on board they were full of it and thoroughly enjoyed meeting people.
“A lot of people went to view the herd beforehand.
“A lot of the locals were able to go and visit the farm perhaps for the first time. We had buyers coming to
Farmers are not the only people who have had a hand in helping to save Britain’s native farm breeds. Sue Bradley meets a retired auctioneer who took a big risk to give Gloucester cattle a fighting chance
All the sales I conducted stick in your mind for one reason or another – sometimes we sold up to 600 or 700 cattle – but the one at Wick Court was extra-special
LES HALL