THE EARDISTON ESTATE
The
Eardiston Estate was one of the largest in the area and because its very long
association
with hop picking was more widely known as “The Dumbleton”
But apart from its hops it had a number of farms with sheep, cattle, root
crops, wheat, fruit orchards
and soft fruit—including black currants, gooseberries and logan berries
The
Estate was owned by the “Eardiston Farming Co. 1919 Ltd” The sole Directors
were
P.I
Wallace and L.L Wallace, spinster sisters, known locally as the “Wallaces”
They
lived in Eardiston House opposite the Whitehouse Farm and close to the bottom
of
Dumbleton
Lane
The farm was part of their estate--as was most of the village of
Eardiston
Eardiston House has been converted to a block of flats—but still known as Eardiston House
A very unusual iron footbridge connected the Wallace’s house with
the
Whitehouse
Farm across the road and attempts were made to preserve
it in some way when the
road was widened
George Johnson, a member of the Cradley
Heath
Billingham family, pictured under the footbridge
It
was demolished in the 1960’s
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A George Ballard managed the Estate; it seemed well organised and efficiently managed and ran
extremely well
He lived in an Estate owned house on the outskirts of the village
George Ballard had an under manager, a certain Mr Selby,
who cut a fine figure in his riding
habit astride his roan hunter.
No doubt he had many other management chores but, as far as
us kids were concerned, he
seemed totally preoccupied with spoiling our fun by trying
to prevent us from scrumping
and kicking us out of the fruit orchards
One vivid memory was when he caught my cousin David
Whitehouse and me srcumping
apples from the orchard opposite the Barracks—on
horseback-- he chased us halfway down
Dumbleton Lane before we “escaped” by the skin of our teeth
over a stile into another orchard!
He also lived in an Estate house, called Selridge, in
Dumbleton Lane
And
the style, at least most of it, is still there
Pictured in 2005
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George Ballard corresponded with the Billingham family to agree a
programme for the upcoming
picking season which included a list of the family names of the Hop
Pickers
A letter from George Ballard, to Mrs Billingham, dated 20 August
1943
It Reads;
“Thank you for your letter. We are pleased to hear that you have the
names
of the number of Hop
Pickers we required. We will give you as long a notice
as we can when we want the Pickers, at the moment it seems clear that we
shall not want them till after the week ending September the 3rd
On the back of the letter the names of the pickers have
been listed, by the Billinghams, including
four allocated to
my family group-- the Shaw family;
Granny Shaw
Lizzie Holloway---Daughter
Edith Walker—Grand Daughter
Eunice Shaw—Daughter-in-Law
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