Family history bound up with farm’s past

I WAS delighted to read your report (Yorkshire Post, August 20) on the initiatives to preserve Stirley Farm, Huddersfield, as a community farm. I visited it two years ago and was saddened by the dereliction, fearing it would be lost.

Stirley Farm was the home of my great-grandfather, Benjamin Shaw (1810-1880) and his wife Ann (née Ibberson) from the late 1830s until 1884. Both were noted in the 1851 census as cattle dealers, reflecting their principal business of stock and dairy farming.

At this time, and for some generations before, the Shaws farmed several locations on the Earl of Dartmouth’s estates around Farnley Tyas and the Ibbersons likewise at Woodsome Lees.

Benjamin died suddenly in 1880 while bringing his cart through the farm gate and was brought home by his obedient horse and Ann continued until the tenancy could be wound up conveniently.

Family recollections passed down reflect a thriving and productive period in a good community with the wives working equally while bringing up their families.

At Stirley, Ann also held a brewer’s licence catering for the workers’ and local needs, and our family records reveal many family members living locally where the addresses are still identifiable.

I still retain an original poster of the final sale at the farm of stock, implements, equipment and furniture, by Arthur E Wilby on Monday, December 8, 1884, listing the stock and contents which would be of interest to those promoting the community farm and might suitably be transferred to their archives in due course.