Interview with John Morris, local farmer
John Morris describes his family background and his childhood in Bow Brickhill, in a farming family. He also became a tenant farmer, and in 1941 took up a tenancy at Home Farm, Old Bradwell. He recalls the ‘dreadful state’ of the farms in Old Bradwell at that time and describes the extent and location of the farm, with the Farm House on Primrose Road. He talks of his workers and their wages and compliments his wife: ‘…do you know no one had a better… She could do anything on a farm and that’s how we went along’. As Chairman of the Farmer’s Union Bletchley branch during the war, John inspected other farms, and was complimented by the auctioneer on the condition of his farm, at its final sale in the 1960s. He was very involved with the Bradwell community and was a ‘Bradwell Rabbit’ – someone who had been there over 25 years.
In 1967, as chairman of the Conservative Association, John organised meetings to discuss the MK development proposals: ‘it got to the stage where there was nothing we could do about it’; his son, aged 20, took the opportunity to go into business hiring out plant machinery. ‘Well now my son has got men working all over the country …’. John describes the success of this family business, now based in the buildings of the Hesketh Estates at Paulerspury.
John believes he was the first farmer to be told that his land would be compulsorily purchased by MKDC; he was given very little notice by the landlord. He and his wife moved to Bow Brickhill to live with his parents, and remain there now. He has never been back to the Old Bradwell farm site: ‘When I left Bradwell I finished with it and that was it. …I was so disgusted with having to get out of it’. He uses the Shopping Centre: ‘because the last four years of my wife’s life I had to…’ He comments on the difficulty of shopping when he has become less mobile after hip operations, and is sorry for the smaller shopkeepers competing against supermarkets.
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