Easterton milk round

The photo we have today, taken well within living memory, may amaze younger readers of this site. It shows a milk delivery round at Easterton Sands in the 1940s.

Albert Merritt on the Vicarage Farm milk round in the 1940s

This is the milk round from Vicarage Farm. Vicarage Farm was opposite what was once the Easterton Vicarage and is now called Easterton House. The farm still exists, up there on Vicarage Lane, Easterton Sands. Back at the time of the photo the farm was held by a branch of the Merritt family and here we see Albert Winston Merritt delivering the milk produced by cows on the farm where his dad was the farmer. Albert was born in 1914 and as a farm worker he was not called up for military service in World War II. He served in the Home Guard and we have seen him in this role before. Click here to see that post

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At Vicarage Farm

Vicarage Farm is in Easterton. It is on Vicarage Lane and is more or less opposite the former Vicarage which is now known as Easterton House. It is one of many small farms which once flourished on the sands in both Market Lavington and Easterton. These days they’d be deemed too small to offer a living, but in times past these farms supported families tolerably well.

Vicarage Farm was, for much of the twentieth century, owned and farmed by a branch of the Merritt family. Perhaps our best known local Merritt was John who was master of the Market Lavington Prize band for more than 60 years. But he had relatives throughout the area, and further afield and one of them, James Merritt acquired Vicarage Farm. Perhaps he took the photo because it is his wife, Elizabeth we see in the photo outside the house.

Vicarage Farm in Easterton

Elizaebeth Merritt (née Fitch)

 

Elizabeth and James married locally in 1910 but Elizabeth (née Fitch) was a Londoner by birth and spent her childhood in the Paddington area. It must have been a real shock to the system when her dad got a job as coachman at Market Lavington Manor and the family moved out to the country. But she settled and the photo suggests she was happy in her lot as a farmer’s wife.

James and Elizabeth are buried in Easterton churchyard.