Further Reflections of Boughton
May 2013
Further Recollections of Boughton’s Yesteryears!
We would like to point out that the material passed to you from a Boughton resident in the last three months is full of errors and would like to take the opportunity to correct some of the miss-representations of events.
When the foot and mouth disease broke out at Poplar Farm the event was reported in The Eastern Daily press on 15th June 1946; we still have this newspaper. My husband, Ralph Proctor, was born in Boughton and farmed Church Farm until he retired aged 73. He was 25 at the outbreak of the disease and kept all the details of events from start to finish.
No animals were burnt, simply because coal was short at this time; they were all buried and covered over with lime. The records show the impact of the disease on Boughton farmers:
Robinson: 13th June 1946 – 47 cattle and over 300 pigs
Marks: 16th June 1946 - 18 cattle
Halls: 2nd July 1946 - 67 cattle, 20 c0ws and 21 pigs
Lankfer’s: 18th July 1946 - dairy herd
27th September 1946 Boughton was deemed clear of foot and mouth, with only the dairy herd at Church farm being spared from slaughter. The outbreak continued locally, at least until August 1946, when the records show:
Mason’s (of Fincham): 13th August 1946 - Number unknown
Incidentally, the Miller family were not involved in this outbreak because they did not take over Hall’s Farm until 1947.
The April edition which included facts about the foot and mouth outbreak upset my husband because he lived through it all. He is 93 this year and there are very few left in our village who shared this experience. Some of those who did have moved out of Boughton but still live locally. We keep in touch with several ex-Boughton residents, including John Marks who now lives in Norwich.
I hope you agree to print this for me and that Boughton will not send you anymore of these articles which read more like FICTION than FACT.
Ann Proctor (writing for Ralph Proctor)