Things we did before gardening

Zigs

Zigs

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Location
Kent, England
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9a
Well actually I've always done gardening (since 7) but work got in the way 😁

Carrying on from what I said on another thread, I used to work on Churches, Listed Buildings and generally old stuff. If it had been built a while ago and needed a bit of looking after, that's what I did.

I worked all over the country, staying away for weeks or months at a time, which was a bit upsetting with the children but I had to go where the buildings were. Try as I might, I couldn't make them come to me.

Most of the work was on Churches but also manor houses, follies, scheduled ancient monuments, war memorials, tombstones, granaries Etc.

I've not got many pictures as digital cameras were only just coming in but I've rounded up a few to put on here.

Some pictures are scans of old photos so excuse the quality.

First one is an 18th Century Granary in Somerset. It was derelict, and took a lot of brick repair/replacement, lime plastering internal and external and then limewashing.

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Took us about 6 weeks but I was very pleased with the result.

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I've got a few shots of Portland Church, which was right next to the sea in Dorset. It was on the side of a hill and there was just a ladder to reach the top of the tower so it felt a bit scary going up :eek:

I did quite a few masonry repairs to the Merlons around the top.

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It looked a long way down...

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I showed you Dunster Castle on the other thread but I also worked on The Black Castle in Bristol. (I pinched this pic from Google)

black castle.webp

It doesn't look very big now but it was 11 lifts of scaffold to get to the top. 3 of us rebuilt the top of the Tower on the left, from the string course (above the cross) to the top in one morning.

It was built in 1780 using the waste from copper slag production, the blocks were really, really heavy. When I was working at the top on my own it often felt like there was someone else next to me :eek:

It was right next to the fruit warehouses at the Bristol docks and the towers were inhabited by big black spiders that bit your pointing tools :cautious:
 
So, you were really like a historical conservator. Very interesting work and I suppose it takes quite a bit of skill, not to mention education to succeed at .

What I did first was train Western riding horses. I went down to the stables on my bike when I was almost 13 with $3 in my pocket to go for a half hour trail ride. The man running the stable had lost one leg and had a hard time doing chores. He hired me to work there, (after I begged him !) but said: " If anyone asks, you are my niece. " Child labor laws, you know. So, "Uncle Tom" took me under his wing.

Over the next 6 years he taught me everything about a horse. Then I got an opportunity to train Standardbred racehorse at a training facility in New Jersey.


From working there I learned to race train those horses but never drove in races. I'm too small to hold a puller in a race. I conditioned and trained them to race. I did that until I broke my back in 1992. 1731537349540.webp
Got this pic off google.
No worries, horses never hurt me, I fell from the back of the moving truck when the pin that held the truck in park failed as I was attempting to climb down from the back of the truck. When it lurched forward my body hit the concrete.
I was good with all the "cripples and the crazies",as they're called. Horses other people had issues with, I fixed.
 
Part of my work was using modern methods but most of it was just using traditional methods like lath and plaster :)

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Cor, that's brilliant Annie :cool: Proper chariott racing.

Aww, that's an awful thing to happen, for such a small thing like a pin failing too. I take it the injury was permanent?
 
Zigs said:
Part of my work was using modern methods but most of it was just using traditional methods like lath and plaster :)

View attachment 1811

Cor, that's brilliant Annie :cool: Proper chariott racing.

Aww, that's an awful thing to happen, for such a small thing like a pin failing too. I take it the injury was permanent?
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No, took me 5 years to get back to riding horses, which I was not supposed to do, said the Doc !!😂 Yeah, like I'm going to listen to him !! 😂

Then I went back to training riding horses to pull carts. I trained lots of mini horses, a couple goats, and trained my two heifer to pull a cart as a team. Who says you can't train a cow to pull a cart !!

And I raised goats and Guinea fowl.

My house has plaster and lath but it's old and crumbly. When the electrician added new wall outlets he had handfulls of it falling out.
 
Excellent, good to hear :)

I met two cows at college that used to pull a plough, they were called Gwyn & Graceful (I think)

Aah, I've spent a lot of time repairing lath and plaster after electricians have wrecked it 😁
 
Zigs said:
Excellent, good to hear :)

I met two cows at college that used to pull a plough, they were called Gwyn & Graceful (I think)

Aah, I've spent a lot of time repairing lath and plaster after electricians have wrecked it 😁
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I named my heifers Evelyn and Eva. I owned a blue roan draft mare who used to be part of a team called "Laverne and Shirley." Named after a TV show in the States. I had Laverne.
 
Anniekay said:
I named my heifers Evelyn and Eva. I owned a blue roan draft mare who used to be part of a team called "Laverne and Shirley." Named after a TV show in the States. I had Laverne.
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I've heard of Laverne and Shirley but I don't think I've seen it 😁

These are my children with Gwyn and Graceful. I ought to explain that the museum that they're in is next to and works with the college I went to. The museum is called the Weald and Downland open museum, it's where historic buildings that are at risk are carefully taken to and put back together.

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I had free entrance tickets to the museum from college (still got a few) so I took the kids there when we were on holiday.
 
Well done @Zigs and @Anniekay

I've always done gardening but not very often when working. I used to work at Littlewoods store in Worcester where I was born and grew up.
I worked in the kitchen preparing salads and sandwiches for the cafeteria for the public and the staff restaurant.
Then i had to learn how to do the sweets side for when the woman was having a day off.
Then for a while i went down to work in the cafeteria and serve the hot meals.
Then i was asked if i would like to go back up to the kitchen and become the cook assistant, so i did. All of that was in 5 years of me working there, then i had a baby and decided not to go back.
I didn't get another job after that, i re married and stayed at home.
 
@Logan , Worcester !! We have a Worcester in Massachusetts. I'll never forget the lady and her husband who pulled over to ask me where "Warch-ester" was. "Never heard of it", I said. So she tried again: "War-chester". She had a map opened in her lap so, I asked her to show me the name on the map. " Oh !! Woostah you mean !! "

She went: 😳

So, in our "New England sort of way I told her: " You can't get there from here".

😖😳😳😳

"You have to go to Woburn ( pronounced Woobin.") She looked furiously on the map for "Woobin" !! 😄

Poor woman stayed confused until I drew the route for her on her map !!😂😂😂

I know, I' m awful, aren't I !!
 
Logan said:
Well done @Zigs and @Anniekay

I've always done gardening but not very often when working. I used to work at Littlewoods store in Worcester where I was born and grew up.
I worked in the kitchen preparing salads and sandwiches for the cafeteria for the public and the staff restaurant.
Then i had to learn how to do the sweets side for when the woman was having a day off.
Then for a while i went down to work in the cafeteria and serve the hot meals.
Then i was asked if i would like to go back up to the kitchen and become the cook assistant, so i did. All of that was in 5 years of me working there, then i had a baby and decided not to go back.
I didn't get another job after that, i re married and stayed at home.
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Sounds good Logan, I like puddings :) Isn't Worcester where "Geoff Buys Cars" comes from? 😎
 
I'm a jack of all trades, like many Gemini people tend to be. My jobs were all where the mood took me. They involved catering, shop assistant, then manager. Several factories, some of those very grim, and none lasting five minutes or so - for example, I think I busted every sewing machine in the underwear factory :rolleyes: polishing spectacle frames was just lethal and the lump of polish used to spin around the big wheel, and if it slipped out of your hands, it flew round and out and thumped you right in the belly 😨 When I desperately needed work in Australia I had to tell a porky or two, but started screen printing shampoo bottles for 12 hour night shifts. ''Have you done this before?'' the chap said - ''Oh yes'' I replied, and was left for half an hour to work on this machine. I thought, don't panic, and asked a friendly looking chap who was making boxes - ''Quick, how does this thing work?'' I got a very brief explanation, and learned a few terms, like ''squeegee'' , threw some inky stuff in and messed up a few bottles, before I started them rolling off the line.... phew! I hid the messed up ones, and got the job.
I've sold real estate, and delivered leaflets and catalogues.....
But then I found my proper job, when I applied at a small nursery where they grew shrubs and climbers for the retail trade. That was IT. Within weeks I had more or less taken over the propagating house, and spent every day, all week, taking cuttings and growing plants - looking after the equipment, collecting the material from the stock beds, learning all the latin names. Occasionally helped out in the tunnels, collecting up orders, or working in the potting shed.
That was my happiest job.. at the same time I was running a camping site here on my own patch. My then husband was still alive, and able to help out a bit with that so I could still go to the nursery.
Those are only a few examples of my various ''jobs'' not all by any means.
 
Before then when i left school i had a job in a sewing factory, i past the 3 months training but couldn't put up with all of the noise from a button hole and buttons machine behind me and the fact that it was piece work.
Then i got a job at the royal porcelain putting picture stickers on plates but i wasn't fast enough for the piece work again.
Got a job at a hairdresser's but it wasn't a lot of money.
Got a Job in a shoe shop but couldn't understand the storage system for the shoes.
 
@Tetters I suppose " telling a Porky" means telling a big fat lie ? 😂
I did the same with my first job with "Uncle Tom". "How long have you been riding?," he asked. "Oh my Daddy got me a pony when I was 5, so, 8 years."😊 (My Dad died when I was 2 !!)

In actuality it was my third time that day apart from sitting on the retired Draft horses one of our neighbors had on their farm. They were retired, as were the horses and I used to come to their farm, play with their Bulldog and Boxer dog, then eventually climbed up the fence in order to get onto their very kid friendly Belgian gelding. After a while he'd walk off to graze with me riding bareback. I was so brazen because the house window shades were always drawn and you never saw a car there.

After a few years of this I was at Lucky's Supermarket, a tiny little mostly bread and eggs store on the corner of my street when the lady in front of me at the checkout dropped a $5 bill out of her purse. I picked it up and said: " Excuse me, Ma'm you dropped this. " She looked at me and said: " Oh, I know you !! You're that little girl who's always playing with my dogs and riding my horses . " 😁

I was never so mortified !! Caught in the act!! 😲
 
Logan said:
That's a good story @Anniekay
No it's in the UK. Lovely city with good shops but i bet it's changed a lot now.
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Annie was talking about a place in America Logan. When the Americans landed in their ''new country'' they couldn't think of any good names for their new towns that they built, so they copied lots of our towns and called them the same. After that, they thought that they had named the towns, and that the English people were copying them. Now, a surprising number of them think that we speak bad English because we don't speak the same way as they do. :oops:
🤭😆😂🤣
 
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