Before combine harvesters were the norm, threshing was done any time from November onwards when other harvesting had been done and probably once the cattle had been brought in under cover for the winter.

Poster advertising Auction of Timber to be held immediately after the sale of stock in the Market Place, Bampton by Paxton and Holiday.

Poster dated August 18th 1890 advertising the auction of 8 acres of standing corn and 15 Acres of afterfield on Buckland Road.
Auctioneers Paxton and Holiday to be held at The Talbot Hotel.

Castle View Farmhouse, c1880

Old Poster dated October 15th 1873. Advertising the sale of Oxfordshire Down Lamb, Cattle, Horses, Hogs and Wool, and Steam Engines. To be sold at Auction b Jonas Paxton and George Castle. At Home Farm Premises, Bampton

This ticket for a tea was found in a pile of bits and pieces when clearing out a garage. Teas were sold to raise funds for the Bampton Horticultural Society. The cost was 6 pence in old money - 6d - so pre decimalisation of February 1971.

This peaceful scene is of an Ayrshire cow enjoying standing in the stream behind The Grange. It must have been taken fairly early in the twentieth century; by 1945 these cows were not often seen where they had once been bred

This threshing machine was used to thresh the grain from the stooks of corn and was the normal way to do this in the first half of the twentieth century, before the combine harvester did the job as the corn was cut in the field.

It was a labour intensive job with people taking stooks from the pile, others lobbed them on to the top where yet more people fed them into the machine. Two ladies and a man can be seen on top of the threshing machine doing this part of the job.

At least one person hooked sacks on to the back to catch the grain while others gathered up the straw and chaff. The straw would have been used for bedding animals under cover in winter and some used as feed.

The whole machine was belt driven - no protection - with power from a steam engine which had men keeping it going in good order. With a live fire in the steam engine, it's no wonder there were fires in the ricks from time to time.

There are 13 people working in this picture. Some have bailing string tied round their calves, probably to stop rats running up as the rick was slowly dismantled.

A threshing machine is nearly always seen working at the Fairford, Faringdon, Filkins & Burford ploughing match held the last Saturday in September on a farm within 16 miles of Lechlade.