A Year In The Life Of Halligill

Researching the history of Dial House in the village of Great Asby led to the chance discovery of a diary, kept in the year of 1875, by an occupant of that house – John Brunskill. It was a year when he farmed at Halligill. Almost thirty years later he moved, a distance of a little over a mile, to Dial House. Diary entries are simple and spare.

This book adds depth to these entries by using material from local newspapers and from contemporary farming manuals, together with the recollections of a local farmer, the late Harry Saul, who once farmed next door to Halligill and whose working life in the 1950s may, in some ways, have been very similar to that of John Brunskill, many years before. These different sources are combined to breathe life into John Brunksill’s daily round on a small, mixed, upland hill farm in Asby parish in 1875.