Sussex Oxen

In 2021, I created a video exploring the history of oxen working in the Sussex Downs. At the time I understood Stanmer’s Spencer Mugridge to be the last man in the country to plough with a team of eight. But as the photo (below) shows, teams of eight were also in use at Saddlescombe. Anyone know who retired first?

My 15 minute compilation video, Sussex Oxen, has clocked up over 9,000 views, suggesting that there is growing interest in considering the return of this ancient ploughing tradition as a way to help restore precious lost chalk grassland. The video features many images of working oxen, including these photos from Saddlescombe, another beautiful medieval farmstead on the other side of Newtimber Hill, where the land was ploughed using a team of eight. Interestingly, Saddlescombe and Stanmer share a number of other downland water features, including a pond, rainwater reservoirs in all the cottage gardens, a deep well and another example of a rare Donkey Wheel.

I took some photos during a visit in the hot summer of 2022, when the National Trust Ranger kindly showed us round, and I have added a few below. The Saddlescombe Donkey Wheel is on the South Downs Way and I would urge you to go and see the ancient structure for yourself. The first photo shows a number of half moon shaped ox shoes nailed to the wooden wheel; the second, the wheel itself; the next shows the bucket; and finally a decaying metal fitting suggesting that, like the Donkey Wheel at Stanmer, the buckets had originally been raised and lowered by means of a chain, not a rope.

One of the YouTube comments is reproduced here:

The pics of Saddlescombe ox are of particular interest to me as I grew up there in the 70s and 80s and my great grandfather Charles Hollingdale features in the first picture, the younger man at the front, 19 years of age in this picture. He died in 1936 aged 50. The other Saddlescombe picture shows shoeing an ox, the boy sitting on the head is another relative of mine, Ely Rapley, my great grandfather’s nephew I believe.