Thomas
Bantin was a Blacksmith in Broadwell at the end of the 18th Century, I
have in my possesion his diary which began in 1764, His grandson Thomas
Bantin lived in Filkins with his father who was Butler for the Colston
at Filkins Hall, Young Thomas wrote the history of his life in 1879,
Below is a transcrip ot that history, It is fascinating inso much as
not that many of his ilk could read and write let alone write his
history, but what a hard life he had, as probable most labours did
then, Good old times?, I don't think so.
Thomas Bantin’s Story Commenced 1846
I, Thomas Bantin, was born in the year 1814 on December 20th at six
O’clock in the morning, at Filkins in he County of Oxford, just five
days before the commencement of the great frost of sixteen weeks
duration, when there was a fair on the Thames and the snow reached up
to the window of he bedroom in which I was born.. My father was the
second son of Thomas Bantin, my grandfather who died in 1812.
Grandfather was a blacksmith by trade at Broadwell in Oxfordshire,
where the family had resided for many generations. He was the father of
sixteen children, but only seven were alive when I was born, my father
being the only one that ever married, and I am the only issue of that
marriage. My father was apprenticed to an Ironmonger named Kirby at
Wantage in Berkshire in the year 1789, and was obliged to leave on
account of the severity of the winter, which had liked to be the cause
of his losing the use of his limbs. Not recovering immediately he was
obliged to give up the work and go into gentleman’s service. He went to
Filkins Hall about 1791 as coachman to E. F Colston Esq.. And lived as
such up to about 1825. He rented a house in the Village as tenant from
then until 1848 This history relating to my life may be said to begin
early in 1812 over two years before I was born and a little before the
death of my grandfather. A property came to him subject to a mortgage
of £150, which required my grandfather to borrow money on an old family
house and shop and land a Filkins, My father thinking to oblige him,
contrived with the assistance of my mother who he had not yet married
to advance the sum 0of £160 on this property. Then my father had to go
to the Isle of Wight with the Colston family for a few months, and on
his return he found his father too far gone to settle his affairs about
this property. They had already got the money but my father was always
slack in such matters and did not trouble t press the business at that
time. He received the rent of the place as interest for twenty forty
years, until the premises began falling down for want of repair. But in
return to my mother, she was not thought good enough for my father by
his brothers and sisters. She had seen a lot of gentleman’s service,
eleven years with the late Doctor Warneford of Bradwell by Stow and in
more families in the neighbourhood. My father’s family used every
intrigue to annoy herm the first thing they did was to intimate to her
that hey had got her money and so she must be under their thumb. They
had taken a fancy to the daughter of a man who rented one of the
cottages, and she was used to communicate anonymous messages to my
mother, and drove her nearly mad. They tried all ion their power to set
my father against her, they glot me to go and live there and pretended
to learn me a trade, so mother resolved to have me away, and going to
church one Sunday there was a regular scramble. Through their
persuasion I was unwilling to go home, so I remained until the Colston
family father was living in interfered. Then I came home and went
regularly to school for some years I done errands for a lady, backwards
and forwards from Alvescot Hall while I was still at school and at one
time and another, I managed to save five pounds, I bought a sow in pig
with this money and had good luck, she brought eight piglets. My father
said he would buy them for eight pounds, but they was seized with fever
and all died but one, so I never had a farthing. My father had taken
eighteen acres of pasture land at the valuation of the great Mr Joseph
Lays of Broadwell, who was an old school fellow of my mothers, and
thought to do justice by him, but instead of that he valued it as just
as much again as it w as valued a few years afterwards. About this time
(that was in 1828) a gentleman named Vizard took the Hall., He was a
lawyer to Queen Caroline. With Lord Broughham and Lord Denman they won
the trial for her, of which I can just recollect the band coming round
and playing a the houses where we lived. Lord Broughham cae to the Hall
on a visit when he was Lord Chancellor, and gave my father council for
nothing in a will case. This was a few years before the building of the
union workhouses. I well remember an incident that happened then. An
old man lay ill at a house not far from the Hall, called the Old
Workhouse. His name was John Hamblin, a Langford man, a maltster by
trade, Mr Vizaerd and his lordship went to visit him. They climbed pp
the ladder to the room above and there lay the old man on a bed of
straw. “This won’t do Vizard” said his lordship “ we must alter these
things”, they were altered a short time afterwards Lord Brougham used
to go to Cannes in France every winter and I remember he sent Mr Vizard
a cow from there, and so we had the cow and kept I and the family had
what milk they liked out of it. About this time the smallpox broke out
in the village, and I and my uncles apprentice had it together. He had
be vaccinated before the cow pox. I and never had the cow pox, and I
had small pox very bad. He never had anything, but his arm swelled a
little. I grew in height five inches from November we had it till the
next November. He was never right well afterwards; he had a scorbutic
humour come over him. Some said it was owing to the small pox not
coming out. However he lived to get married but the complaint killed
him at last. Somewhere about the time of my birth the Baptists came and
introduced themselves into the village of Filkins. I believe a Mr
Lawter was the first minister of the denomination here, but a family of
the name of Purbrick had attended Cote Baptist chapel near Bampton for
many years before that. I remember and incident which happened at a
house which stood where the Lamb Inn stands now (Or did) At that time
there was a cottage and garden with a hedge round, and a window facing
the street, While a prayer meeting was being held a lot of lads got u
in a row and throwed stones in at the window and struck several
persons, A Mr Clark preached there at the time and he took out a
warrant against two of them, although the magistrate was very reluctant
to grant it, as the dissenters were in very bad odour. They were
committed for trial at the following assizes where a young man named
William Adams went as a witness for them. The counsel for the
prosecution says to him ”I suppose you hallowed and flung the same as
the rest”, “O yes , Sir “ he says “Just stand down there along with the
other two” So he got tried on his own evidence, and they all had to pay
a fine of £25 each or remain in prison until they could. The Primitive
Methodists did not come here until fifteen or sixteen years afterwards.
A man named of Alcock was the first; he came and preached out in the
street. They met with great opposition from upr0ar and addled eggs
being thrown at them. Now there is a chapel for each denomination. The
church at Filkins is a very recent date – 1857. As late as the
beginning of the present century, the people of Broadwell, Filkins and
Holwell and Kelmscott were all buried at Broadwell. One Jane Kilby
whose husband for many years was shepherd for Mr Large of Broadwell was
the first person to be buried in Filkins churchyard I made a list of
names of the family of Colston’s and of their servants at the time I
was a boy, who then resided at the old hall, and who now mostly lie
buried in Broadwell church and churchyard Edward Francis Colston Esq
the father Mrs Colston the second wife of the above Rev Tom Colston Esq
son of he above Alexander Colston son of the above Charles Colston son
of the above Miss Areabella Colston daughter of the above Miss Sophia
Colston daughter of the above Fanny Colston daughter of the above Miss
Luisa Colston daughter of the above John Bullock Late huntsman to a Mrs
Colston former owner of the hall Mr Phillip Hott Butler Thomas Bantin
Coachman John Kirby Footman William Burdock Groom Mrs Kitty Wheeler
Cook Elizabeth Musto Housemaid Mary Jonson Kitchen maid David Harris
Gardener Sarah Crofts Ladies maid A curious thin g happened when the
old Parish Clerk died, my uncles apprentice applied for the office. My
uncles were Orthodox Church people, and as I used to go the Baptists
sometimes they hated that, so he for the office. I called to him “So
you are going to be the Clerk, John”, “Yes”, he says, “That will just
suit you” I said “My conscience would not let me do that,” so he
laughs, but in about three years he gave it up at once joined the
Plymouth Brethren and was decidedly averse to the establishment
Somewhere about this time (1828) the last bull was baited at Filkins.
There had used to be one always baited on Feast Monday. I can just
recollect the last man as was ever whipped in the stocks. His name was
Thomas Radway better known as Old Fielding. He was whipped by the great
miller named Purbrick at Filkins mill, a very strong man who stood over
six foot. Once for a wager he undertook that he and his horse would
carry round a market place half a load of wheat. He carried two sacks
and his horse three sacks, and they did it, but just as it was
accomplished a man patted the horse on the back, which caused him to
shunt and he broke his back. The miller said he would have carried an
extra sack himself if he had knowed this was going to happen. I think
it was in November 1830 that the machine breaking and rioting was.
Farmers drawed all their four horse power thrashing machines out into
their grounds away from their homes for fear of having their farms set
afire. Every night parties went out somewhere or other to break up the
thrashing machines,, till at last they all agreed to a regular riot.
All the men of several villages round about met together on Southrop
Bridge by the hundreds, and I can just remember hearing the horn being
blown before it was scarcely light in the morning. By night fall they
were all dispersed in all directions. Some got clean away and never
came back. Very many went to prison, but the ringleaders of that day
was never caught. The head man came home many years afterwards and
died. Times were very bad then. I know twenty six able bodied men at
work on the roads at one shilling a day. They went to hop skip and jump
the greatest parrt of their time to keep themselves warm in winter.
There was aa plan common about then called ‘going on the yard land’.
That meant you had to employ whoever the overseer sent you, whether man
or woman girl or boy, and keep them as many days as you had acres of
land. Then you paid them half and the other half they received on the
book. That is you paid in proportion to your agreement. Large farmers
got a great deal of work done for almost nothing, such as dung carting,
spreading etcetera.. About 1832 my father took ten acres of arable
land, and I began to lean to be a farmer, and I was thoroughly devoted
to it. The first boy I ever had to drive the plough wore buckskin
breeches, and he was the last boy I ever knew to wear them, because the
old man as made them died soon after. Some years before that time all
the labourers and boys never wore anything else. What a difference now.
My boy wears a black jacket and a paper collar, although his father has
got ten children. I worked early and late, I ploughed and sowed the
land and milked the cows and Mother made the cheese, the greatest part
of which we sent to London. I had my breakfast beside a cheese tub
every summer for twenty six years. Mother and me did all the business,
that is the working part. My father had been in service all his time
and never take to business. We had a cow dealer living close to us, I
used to go about with him and his son at times and help clip the
heifers. I picked up a good deal in the judging of cattle and got to
deal a little myself, and had a got me a little money. Then my
companion, the cow dealer son went to America and I wanted to go with
him. My father and mother were terrible afraid I should go, and talked
me out of it. Another young man agreed to go with him, but on the
morning they were to start his heart failed him, so my companion had to
go by himself, he purchased a small farm over there, but before he held
it a year another man claimed it. He had bought it of someone who was
not the right owner, so he lost all he had. A gentleman took compassion
on him and lent him some money to commence cow dealing again, and he
got a wealthy man and returned to see me thirty years after, but he
looked a deal older than myself although I was several year older I had
another companion as went to America. A curious circumstance occurred
while he was there. I was walking up to the fair held at Lechlade when
I saw a young girl looking over a garden wall, and something seemed to
say to me, if so and so (My companion in America) was to come back form
America and marry that girl, Well, he did come home from America and
married that very girl, and went back to America. As I said before, my
mother and me did all the business, but she was frequently taken ill.
She was subject to violent inflammations and she would sometimes go to
bed in good health, but before daylight she had cost a sovereign in
doctoring. Some years we paid twenty pounds for more for the doctor’s
bills, and that kept us in the background. We lived hard, we had barley
and wheat ground together for bread, bread being dear. But , however, I
was always of saving turn by dealing in pigs an d one thing and another
I managed to save as much as fifty pounds about 1843, and could have
got a good living for myself my then. That troubled the old folks not a
little, as I was their chief stay, so they thought how they could get
my money, for fear I should leave them. In 1836 a gentleman pretended
to purchase Filkins Hall and estate. He was a year or two about it, but
died before the sale was completed. Then it was again offered for sale,
this time in lots by auction at the Bull at Burford, but in consequence
of not selling the house firs it was all quashed In about two years
more another gentleman, named Archer purchased it and said he should be
here in a fortnight, but again it was abandoned alto0gether. Then it
remained as before for about two years, and then a solicitor named
Herbert of Northleach bought it and actually he had the deeds and
mortgaged them. It cost the family a good deal to get them back again,
but he was never heard of afterwards. To return to the subject of the
family property at Filkins which my father held under mortgage from his
father. My father pressed them (His relations) for a settlement, and
after a lot of trouble received the £160 back again and pujt it oujt to
mortgage for a time. Then an opportunity occurred of buying a cottage
and piece of land on which we built two more cottages. This was in
1844, the year of the great blight, with the wheat, and tremendous
hailstorms which destroyed the crops round Banbury and other places in
Oxfordshire and did a great amount of damage. It was either this year
or in 1845 when the potato blight commenced. One man I knew burnt about
twenty acres of standing wheat this year. Ever since the potato blight
has been on more or less, nearly all over the world, but the wheat
blight has not been so bad of late years. At that time even the straw
was good for nothing. January 1845 will ever be memorable, as on the
eighth day of January I saw a man mowing a large field of barley with
his great coat on. This was the coldest day I ever knew. There were
hundreds of acres of barley got in then, the government allowed farmers
to dry barley at the malt houses before they could use it. Some done
for seed and some for grinding, when mixed the foreign barley. Coal at
this time was two and sixpence a hundredweight. In the year 1847 one
Feargus O’Connor M.P. bought an estate at Minster Lovell for the
Chartists and built a lot of houses and laid four acres of land to
them. Hearing of this estate at Filkins for sale he came over and made
a bargain for it, which was a very great sore to the local gentry, and
he bantering them to hard. Then a neighbouring squire slipped in and
bought it, very much to the mortification of Mr Feargus O’Connor M.P.
but I understood he afterwards made them pay five hundred pounds for
the disappointing him. The little allotments on his Minster Lovell
answered well, thirty years after, several were let at three pounds and
acre. If he had kept it he would have been a great blessing to the
place. The gentleman as now bought Filkins Hall and estate began
cutting down timber and making alterations. A new tenant was brought in
who put his horses in he big stables. There was but one way to Park
through our cow yard, and they came in and out at all times. We had six
beautiful cows in calf, but one was run over and another cast her calf,
another dwindled, and being hurt by a cart horse coming in and out, all
the lot was spoiled. So in 1848/9 my father and I went and took a small
farm of fifty three acres about three miles from here. He wanted us to
leave the Park as bad as a child, and we obliged to take a meadow seven
miles away to put our stock until Michaelmas came and we could take to
the land. At this time we took this farm, things was lower than I ever
knew. I bought a two year stirk for ten pounds which would fetch
fourteen pounds now. Horses was never so cheap as they was then. The
road wagon horses and stage coach horses was all on he market by the
hundreds. Wheat was eight pounds per load. I went to a dairy sale of
thirty cows, most money the best cow fetched was eight pounds. The
first barley we sold made one pound a quarter, we never again growed so
good a sample. I bought a capital mare at Charlbury Fair in May 1950 to
breed from, and put her to the horse. The fellow there was drunk and I
lost the mare. That was a bad beginning, but I had a good friend who
gave me ten pounds to buy another, so I went to Lechlade Fair and
bought a mare that turned out lucky one and bred a lot of colts. My
father and mother were very feeble now and could do nothing, we was
very bad off and suffered great privations. Many a time we could not
get tea or coffee and was obliged to use bunt crusts for tea. That was
hard times, and our old people had weared out their strength in other’s
service that was rich as Dives. I had got to maintain them and should
have been happy to do so, but I had not the means. I worked hard night
an day at my business and for the last fifteen years I truly went
through the fire , but it was no use and I must have given up but that
my uncle (my mothers brother) died and left me and mother together
nearly four hundred pounds, so we went on better. About the year 1851
there occurred a magnetic storm in July, we had just returned to work
from dinner in the middle of the day. We had a man and woman hoeing
Swedes just over the hedge, and I said to the man that I expected some
thunder, but he said it did not look much like it, as the sky was clear
nd the weather hot. Then there came such vivid flash of lightning, like
a long white chain, which seemed to fall in a field beyond where we
were. My father had been walking up there a few minutes before, and so
I was alarmed about him, never having seen a flash of lightning without
a cloud before in the daytime. It so happened that this flash struck
down a man at Black Bourton about a mile beyond us, exactly the
direction in which it appeared to us to fall. Hi name was Benjamin
Clark, he survived, but twenty years later he told me had never been
right since. A few years afterwards I noticed a phenomenon in natural
history worth recording. We used to have several magpies nest every
year, and as they became old ones the sparrow hawk’s took to them and
built their nest in them. Once there was a hedge sparrows nest under
the hawks nest, the young were big enough to fly in and out, but they
and the old hawks never interfered with the pair of sparrows
underneath, although the sparrow is their chief food. Then I noticed
another nest very particular, and there was a sparrow’s nest under that
just the same. I thought I would keep an eye on that dodge, so when
afterwards some of our boys went to rob another hawk’s nest, I told
them to see if here was a sparrow’s nest under the bottom, and there
was one, with eggs in. This was the third time of it occurrence. We had
not been at the farm more that four or five years when my poor mother
died of aged eight two, the best friend of my life. She dropped down
dead going up stairs to bed, then about two years later my father died,
and I was left alone by myself struggling along and working hard and
gradually losing money. On February 8th 1863 I was married at last, at
Langford church to Ann Taylor. Nearly twenty years before this I red an
account in the newspaper of the death of Mr John Campden Neild,
Barrister at Law in Chelsea aged 72. He was possessed of an immense
fortune, but of very eccentric habits. At the age of thirty, when his
father died, he came into possession of £250,000, which sum had not
been touched up to the time of his death. He never wore a great coat,
and his blue coat with metal buttons he prohibited being brushed, as it
would take off the nap and deteriorate its value. His appearance and
manners led strangers to have pity and compassion on him. He held
considerable landed property in Kent and Bucks, and was always happy to
receive invitations from his tenantry to visit them, which he did often
staying a month at a time, as he was thus enabled to add to h is
savings. He made a will leaving all his property to her Majesty the
Queen, not even leaving his old housekeeper anything who had served him
for twenty eight years. Little did I think, when reading about him,
that I should marry a relation of this man, but so it was, My wife’s
father, John Taylor of Grafton died anbout 1862 aged ninety nine. He
and Robert Taylor of Colebourne in Gloucestershire, who lived to be
over ninety, and Mrs Castle of Stanton Hardcourt, who was also past
ninety, were supposed to be nearest of kin, petitioned the Queen for
some little acknowledgement, as their father waas married to a Campden
Neild at St Mary’s church Oxford, andas he well knew they were related
to him. They received an answer back that the Queen was going to lay it
in charity. Nobody ever needed it more than these very old people.
Robert Taylor and his wife were both bedridden together. It was said
that the property was worth over half a million, but they never had a
farthing. I had been renting my farm for twenty seven years from one Mr
Price of Burford, and worked early and late for nothing at all. What
little property I had got went yearly towards paying the rent. In 1876
Mr Price died, next year I gave up the farm after losing nearly £400
although I worked like a horse. By 1878 no end of farmer sere in the
same case. Now it is 1879, and a wetter season than ever. For four
seasons there has been no lad cleared, and prices of corn are so low
that nearly all the farmers are giving up their farms. At the time of
writing there is an inquiry in Parliament into the existing distress of
the farmers, and before long there will be an inquiry into the distress
of he landlords. There has been a Conservative government with a
majority of one hundred, and never attempted to do one thing for the
tenant farmers. They passed an act to do away with the turnpikes and
put all the expense of the roads on the ratepayers, and one brewer I
have heard save one thousand pounds a year in turnpikes alone.
Here at the age of sixty three Thomas Bantin ends his own life story.
George Swinford, who was not born until 1887, says that Bantin lived to
be quite and old man, and remembers him wearing a smock. He used to
keep pigs and a few hens in a plot of land in Filkins near the Hadge.
He died about 1900. The story of his life is followed in his original
manuscript by an extraordinary ?????? about the number seven, the
writer (Thomas Bantin) provided by introduction or explanation to the
outburst which is backed on as though it was a continuation of his
memoirs.
These sites cover the ox18 area of Oxfordshire England, including the following villages, OX18, Alvescot, Bampton, Black Bourton, Burford, Broadwell, Carterton, Clanfield, Kelmscott, Kencot, Langford, Lechlade, RAF Broadwell, Shilton, Parish Pump, Oxfordshire Events,
