Marcia Miller and the Manor Turkeys
Crier Profile Marcia Miller recently retired, for 24 years Marcia Miller reared
turkeys at Baldwin Manor.
I STUDIED zoology with parasitology at university and in the vacations I worked at the Central Veterinary laboratory in Byfleet. I actually handled turkeys for the first time in those days! So I was used to turkeys and being with them.
When we bought the house in ’78 we had all these empty outbuildings – Mrs Menzies-Kitchen who lived here before had kept horses everywhere! The big turkey barn was divided up into stables. She even kept a Shetland pony, I’m told, where we keep our deep freezes at the moment. It seemed so quiet because I used to work in veterinary research. I had hens, and cats of course, but I just wanted to have something else. A friend of ours said, well, why don’t you keep turkeys? With these deep litter systems you only have to muck them out once a year...well, you know...after they’ve gone! You just put fresh straw down every day. My husband was President of the Churchill College Boat Club and most of the First Boat would come, with a very good lunch promised to them - once, they demolished a 17lb fore-rib roast - and barrow this stuff out, it was better than any circuit training! – it all got done in a morning with five hefty lads, and we carted them all back to college after lunch in the Landrover.
We started off by delivering the birds house to house but as the numbers
increased it became impossible – John was spending two whole days running
around in the rain and the snow sometimes. Then, customers living near
Cambridge used to pick them up from Churchill College. 11 o’clock, on the 22nd
in the Fellow’s car park– everybody, all the dons or their wives, even the
Vice-Chancellor would be there to pick up their turkeys. People near the
village would collect them from me here.
Then my husband retired and we didn’t really feel we could call on these chaps to muck out the turkeys. So that was one thing. The others reasons.. it became more and more difficult to get the pluckers. That was a good bit, that I miss – having the pluckers round at Christmas time. I used to learn quite a lot about the village from the banter that was going on! Lots of people have come over the years. Even Bob Sheldrick came donkey’s years ago...Reg Webb – he was the mainstay. I felt without Reg things would come apart, because Reg and Peter Taylor used to do the killing, and they were really skilled, and it was all very quick and beautifully done. We used to do it in two – well, it could be done in one if it fell on the right day and didn’t clash with somebody’s bowls... Paul Murfitt, the milkman – I don’t know when he slept. He’d leave here at ten-thirty and be doing the milk again at four. Bryn Fitchet – he worked with wood veneers but had done some butchering, came did it for me in more recent years. Peter Sergeant would be doing the lifting and the legging...his younger brother Dan came too. Kim Sheldrick used to help me out a lot as well. One day I picked one up - to dust it, dose it, do something to it, and it did a flap – and I lost one of my earrings - you couldn’t see it in the colour of the straw. We could not find it – then we got Graham Jackson - one of Kim’s friends to come and eventually he did, with his metal detector.
Bob Sheldrick was fantastic over the years – he worked for us and helped us in
the garden and did everything that needed to be done... he used to get rid of
all the cobwebs in the roof of the barn...the sun used to come streaming in
here and so they used to all sit and gently change places until they’d all had
a good sit in the sun...you could watch them changing spaces! These are their
toys ... (indicates CD's hanging on strings) - got to have their toys –
they love the glint, peck them, and jump up to them. And there’s the boxes...
big cardboard boxes from Tesco that had had tomatoes in, they’d compete to
stand on the box and they’d peck at the pictures of the tomatoes until they’d
demolished the box. They loved that.
They aren’t noisy – no, they’d be as quiet as mice, at least, they’d talk to each other the whole time, little warps and things, but if somebody drove into the yard they’d get excited... Somebody drove into the yard and dumped a skip – Clanggg! – and they’d all (she does unwritedownable excited turkey impressions here) you can tell when they’re getting a little bit older because they’re making that noise – when they’re small they’re just beep, beep, beep. We used to go and collect them from Attleborough poultry farms in the back of the Landrover, and we carted them in cardboard boxes with holes in till we realised it was much easier to get them to deliver them to us. It was always hot days in August, and harvest was on...nice fresh straw, straight off the fields...barley straw was always best. We only had them four months of the year – and you couldn’t go on holiday then – you know, between August and Christmas we were here – and my back didn’t like it, towards the end. You try lifting a turkey sack! They had four swinging hoppers and the feed had to be tipped in.
When we got them from the poultry farm in Attleborough they’d be about the size of a grapefruit with legs. They breed birds of different sizes, there were the Attleborough Small Whites, the Wolds, the Wold Golds and then the Supers. You have to have a bit of a scatter – one year I had about fifteen or twenty birds that were heading for thirty pounds, - dressed! – I knew I’d never sell them. I had to take them down to Fabish’s butcher’s in Mill Road – at a rock bottom price, but I had to get rid of them!
During the war this place was used, I’m told, as a place for difficult children. Ones that couldn’t be placed as evacuees. Certainly just before the end, towards DDay, this was a special ops unit. Quite a lot of old boys have come knocking on my door – we had a stream of people, years ago, saying, ‘I used to live here!’ One said there were armoured cars out on the orchard at the back of Christopher’s house...very difficult to try to imagine it; but we have found bits of communications equipment in the woods – sort of big ceramic blocks and wire...
The house..it’s about 1490, 1500 at that end the far corner is about a hundred years younger. The farm buildings...about 1700. There was a lot of work done down here then. There used to be an old farmyard in the garden - we’ve got pen drawings of it. Frank Riggs was always interested in researching the history of the churches - whenever he came across a bit about Baldwin Manor, he’d put that down for our interest. So we’ve gathered a few little bits about it here and there over the years. There’s always been a lot of activity down here because geologically, we’re just about on the ‘spring line’. The ‘hard’ rock – (clunch) outcrops halfway up our field. We’ve got a well just outside the back door. I remember old Mr Sheldrick he had a well in his back garden up there, he showed it to me – listen, he says, lobbing a brick down it: it took a long time to hit the bottom! It’s because it’s up on a hill – it’s a lot further down to get to the water. Here it’s only fifteen feet – a lot of rain and the cellar floods. It just comes up about a foot – only because the whole water table rises. Three years after we came here it flooded for the first time, and it was as clear as a bell, clean sweet water – so clear I stepped off the bottom step into the water – I did get a shock.
I’ve had a variety of butchers over the years – I had one chap for years and years, tattoos and goodness knows what, he was quite a character, but one year he didn’t come, and didn’t say anything about it; he said don’t worry, I’ll never let you down – but I couldn’t raise him on the telephone - he was quite clearly avoiding me. Turned out his son had won the lottery to the tune of three million – last thing he needed was a job butchering turkeys!
They were nice turkeys. Hand plucking makes such a difference. Machine plucking
bruises the breast...The little ones might look at you a bit and peck at your
wellie, though not much else. The last year they sent me three big Bronze
turkeys I hadn’t asked for. They were nice people. They were real characters. I
had to go and make the coffee when they were killing those.
We had an RSPCA man down here once. That was entertaining! I came home and there was a van in the yard. I thought, RSPCA, what’s going on? I said hello - Nice young man. He said, we’ve had a call, that you keep turkeys. I said (laughs) yes, you can see I do! Well, he said, I thought I’d better make sure she’s keeping her turkeys properly. I said: they are the most spoiled turkeys in the whole of East Anglia – come and have a look! Anyway, he was perfectly happy.
I miss the camaraderie of the plucking shed. They’d have permanent tea or coffee on tap – I used to make rock buns and cakes...Mince pies on the last day, when we used to settle up our accounts.. It was quite fun. Reg – one year he came – he always wore a hat of some sort, and this time he came with it adorned with tinsel, and baubles, and bits of holly – it was his Christmas hat, he said.