Jackson, Adam
A canny shepherd laddie o’ the hills - from the Cheviots to the Warksburn
The life story of Adam Jackson 1914-1987 as told by his daughter Mavis Nixon

Adam Jackson was born on 13th November 1914 at Goldscleugh, a hill sheep farm which is situated on the Northern slopes of the Cheviot hills on the College Burn running down to Kirknewton. He was the second youngest of 9 children. His Father, Jim Jackson was a Scotsman from Newcastleton who was married twice. He had 8 children from his first marriage. His first wife died aged 33 during child birth. His Father then hired a young housekeeper, Jean Storey from Harbottle, and the inevitable happened, he married her 3 years later and they went on to have another 9 children making a total of 17.
Mavis his daughter, tells us Adam’s nickname was “Yid” - which is Scots for Adam.
Six of Adam’s Brothers became hill shepherds and were renowned for their singing. As a shepherd he would get plenty of practice for his lungs calling the yowes to the knowes across the valleys of the Border hills.
Adam lived at Goldscleugh until he was 6½ years old. There was a school at Southern Knowe further down the valley and he would go to school there until he moved to Hill house, a shepherd’s cottage on Ingram farm. He went to school at Ingram until he was 12 years old. Ingram is located in the Cheviot Hills on the river Breamish. The Cheviot Hills straddle the border between England and Scotland.
The next move in 1927 was to Titlington Mount farm which lies South East of Powburn with the nearest village being East Bolton, Alnwick. It was there that he left school aged 14 years.
His working life covered many jobs on many farms, which was the pattern in those days, moving each year at what was called 'Term Day’, mostly on May 13 but also in November.
His first full time job was at at Whiteburnshank from 1930 until 1932 as a shepherd with two of his older brothers Tommy and Bob. Whiteburnshank was a shepherd’s house on the Kidlandlee Estate which is situated in the Alwin valley, Alwinton. It is all planted with forestry now.
From 1932-34 he lived at Scrainwood, which is a farm West of Whittingham in the Alnham / Netherton village area. He was horsemen and his mother milked cows.
In 1934, he ‘worked loose’ which was the term for working for yourself doing general farm work while living at Kidlandlee. While he was working ‘loose’ he dug drains at Bygate Hall which is situated in the Upper Coquet for 9 pence a chain (22 yards or 20m). He then stayed on as part-time ‘hay man’ to help make the hay, and ‘lambing man’ to assist with the birth of lambs in the spring.
From 1935-1937 he shepherded at Ridleeshope which is also in the Upper Coquet, for £45 a year, usually paid at the end of the term.
From 1937-1940 he herded sheep for £50 a year on a farm called the ‘Trows’ which is also situated in the Upper Coquet. Adam loved the Coquet hills.
As part of their wages a shepherd had a free house and usually a few head of sheep called ‘pack ewes’ and perhaps allowed to keep a heifer to turn into a house cow or rear a few calves.
Shepherds and farm workers were generally exempt for call-up for national service when WWII started in 1939, although Adam’s youngest brother Harry signed up. Unfortunately, he died in 1948 from tuberculosis which was very common in those days.
In 1940 Adam left the Coquet and went to work as a shepherd at Coldcote Hill in the Warksburn and that is where he met his wife Daisy Nelson who lived at Longlea. His yearly wage was £94 pounds. By this time he had a motorbike, not sure what make but a BSA rings a bell. Coldcote Hill wasn't far from Longlea so he visited Daisy on the motor bike.
In 1941 he went to shepherd on the 1,800 acre farm called Threestone Burn which was an off farm run with Linhope Estate in the Breamish Valley. Part of the agreement was housing a single shepherd to assist him. Threestone Burn itself lies in the Roddam Valley, where apparently, people and supplies would be met with horse and cart at Wooperton station. It was to Threestone Burn that he took Daisy as a young bride. They were married on 3rd. April 1943. She hated Threestone Burn as it was in the middle of nowhere up in the hills and she used to talk about the terrible mists that wouldn't lift all day. She was used to living nearer to civilization.
When Daisy was pregnant, she moved to Humbleton on the outskirts of Wooler where their daughter Mavis (me) was born. Adam’s Brother was farming there so she stayed with him and his wife during the latter stages of her pregnancy. Apparently, she had several miscarriages and was on complete bed rest before I was born in 1945. After that in 1946 they took up the tenancy of Ravensheugh which was adjoining Longlea in the Warksburn where Daisy’s family lived.
It was a 65-acre holding on the Allgood Estate 2½ miles (4 kms) from the village of Wark and the only means of getting to the village was on foot. Adam bought his first car in 1961 which was an Austen A30. It was a mixed farm carrying 40-50 Blackfaced ewes which were mated to the Border Leicester Tup to produce Mule lambs. The cows were Shorthorn, which included two milking cows, a handful of stirks (calves up to yearlings) and a pig which was fed for a year then killed for later consumption. There were only 2 small byres, a stable, a hemmel (straw-bedded covered yard), two calf hutches, a pig stye and a hay shed.
The two cows were milked twice a day with some of the milk being fed to the calves by bucket, and the balance used in the house to be separated. The separator was a hand operated device which separated the cream from the milk. Butter was made from the cream once per week in a wooden churn which was also turned by hand. Any surplus butter was sold to customers in the village.
As time went by machinery took the place of a horse and a grey Ferguson (Fergie) tractor was bought. The stable was then fitted out with cages for hens and the hemmel converted to deep litter for hens which meant the out houses were being utilized instead of standing empty. The eggs from the hens were sold to the butcher who came by van every Thursday. Money for the feed came out of the farm account and the proceeds from the eggs were kept to run the household.
Adam also used to help some of his neighbours at clipping time and at haytime as he was skilled builder of stacks. He was also the local Mole (mowdie) catcher again helping his neighbours keep them under control.

There was no electricity on the farm until 1959 so lighting in the house was by means of a Tilley lamp in the middle of the table. A candle or a small oil lamp was used to go to bed.
Toilet facilities were also pretty primitive: an earth closet in a small enclosed building out the back. There was no hot water in the house. The cold water was from a spring and was gravity fed from a tank on the hill not far from the house. Bathtime was in a tin bath in front of the fire with me first, then mother and father last before emptying.
Entertainment in the winter was local dances and in particular Hunt Balls in the surrounding villages which were preceded by a whist drive with all prizes being donated. There was usually a china tea set among the prizes. A whist drive was also held in the local village hall every Saturday night. Other entertainment was visiting each other’s homes and playing cards. The popular game being “Nap”.
In late 1962 and into 1963 there was a very bad snow storm which blocked access for 10 weeks. The only way out was by either horseback or foot (shanks pony). We were always pretty self-sufficient. There was always plenty of milk, butter, cream, eggs, tetties (potatoes), bacon and ham from the pig that had been killed and cured. The bacon and hams used to hang from hooks in the kitchen. Then there was always the staples of flour, sugar and canned foods. Everything was homemade from scratch. A ton of coal was bought every year and the wood shed was always full. Anything else like fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and fish would be bought from Tommy Nichol in Wark or at Hexham on a Tuesday. Tuesday was a very important day to go to Hexham as it was Mart Day. They certainly didn’t starve and for Adam it wouldn’t be much different to living up the Coquet where they had some pretty bad winters.
Adam retired from the farm in 1967 as it was becoming harder to make a decent living and he was having to take on outside work. He moved to Hexham to a place called Craneshaugh which was on the outskirts of Hexham. From 1967-1983 he worked at Hexham livestock auction mart for Iveson and Walton as a yard stockman, helping to pen stock after arrival and ensuring their safe departure away from the mart. He retired from there in 1983.
He lived in Hexham until his death and liked nothing better than to go to the Mart every week for a bit craic with his old cronies. He also enjoyed attending the local agricultural shows and having a game of quoits at the same time meeting up with people who he probably hadn’t seen since the last show. Alwinton Show was one of his favourites.
Adam was noted for his singing ability and was in great demand at Shepherd’s Dinners, Burns Suppers and Hunt Balls where he delivered all the old traditional Border songs without any accompaniment. He was always whistling and singing as he went about his work. His friend and neighbour, a local farmer, John Buglass of Hetherington, Wark, would compose a new hunting song for him each year to sing at Crookbank Hunt Ball. He would have a few glasses of rum beforehand so he was in good fettle. Adam and his brother Bob used to sing every year at the Rothbury music festival and they were often compared to the Alexander Brothers who were popular singers at the time. They would take to the stage with their shepherd’s crooks in hand and bring the house down. In 1954 the BBC did a recording of him singing. There were 3 songs:
- The Bairnies Cuddle Doon
- The Lads that were reared among the heather
- The Dosing of the Hogs
Adam Jackson. Mole (Mowdy) Catching
By Clive Dalton
Moles have a devastating effect on pastures, particularly in those fields needed to make hay where they can fill the entire area with great heaps of soil. It requires a great deal of skill to understand their behaviour to reduce their numbers, and Adam Jackson was one of those talented folk, so was in great demand by neighbouring farmers for help to reduce their populations. He never ran out of requests as it was never possible to catch the last mole!
Moles are noted for their short soft black fur and live mainly on earth worms. In the more fertile soils, more moles take up residence and breed with litters of 4-5 young, to be found usually under a very large heap of soil. Many rural folk and visitors from overseas can never understand what all the large and small heaps of soil are over the entire area of a field. A mole infestation means extra work for the farmer, as the fields have to be harrowed to let the grass grow for lambing ewes, and then to be shut up for hay. Cutting through a mole hill soon blunted the teeth on a cutter bar in hay time.
In the early days when Adam started ‘mowdy’ catching, poisoning using strychnine was allowed, and it could be purchased at a chemists to known people with the chemist’s approval. Adam got his from Patterson’s the chemist in Hexham. The method was to dig to find some large fat earth worms, and slit them down their side before applying the poison and placing them in the run. They didn’t move far after surgery. Great care was needed to make sure the deadly poison did not contaminate anything else. The use of strychnine was soon banned and only trapping was allowed.
The first traps were like a small wooden barrel with a groove inside in which you fixed a cord using wet clay. This was pulled up tight around the mole’s neck when it pushed a trigger when moving through the trap. It took a lot of time to set these traps and they were soon replaced by metal traps.
The metal traps were like a short piece of upside-down spouting with wire loops and springs in both ends that you set in the mole run. As the mole tried to push the obstruction out of the way, trap was triggered and the wire ring caught the mole around the neck causing instant death. In a heavy infestation, it was common to catch a mole in each end of the trap.
This was the usual practice:
- Locate the main run, which was often along the side of the field boundary wall or fence, and not necessarily beside the soil heaps. To do this you needed to keep poking a metal rod into the ground till you felt it go in with no resistance which would be the run.
- Then carefully remove the turf and soil from above the run, and any that had fallen in so a clean run was left.
- Gently insert the set triggered trap. Replace the turf first to prevent any soil clogging up the trap, and then put some soil on top and gently firm it down.
- Mark the spot with a peg.
- Repeat the same technique near any other areas around large hills as these could be breeding areas.
Adam Jackson. The ‘Clippin’
By Clive Dalton

Sheep were clipped (shorn) once a year and it was a big job on all hill farms, requiring help from neighbours. Adam Jackson was in regular demand for this, as he was so skilled at the task.
There was a standard order of clipping sheep with tups (rams) clipped first by the farm’s tenant and the shepherds. This was never popular as they were big brutes with massive horns and seemed to welcome a wrestling match. Sometimes the clipper welcomed the help of an assistant to help hold the top end of the tup by the horns, while the clipper cut the wool around the rear end and long tail.
The hoggs (yearlings) came next and were the easiest to clip as their fleece always had a good rise. The ‘rise’ was the new wool that had grown from the skin when the sheep’s nutrition improved and the weather warmed up. If left unshorn, or the sheep suffered some malnutrition, the rise could be so weak that it would break, and the old fleece would fall or be rubbed off by the heather.
The ewes were clipped last and the state of their fleeces varied depending on how many lambs they were sucking, and how skinny they were because of poor feed supply. Often all their belly wool had been rubbed off by the heather, and it was a great ruse when grabbing a sheep to drag out of the pen on to the shearing green, to rub your hand along its belly to find one which was bare so less wool to clip.
There was nothing worse than having to clip a skinny ewe with no rise, and certainly not on the belly. The clipper just left it on and would snip away at the rest of the fleece with the very tips of the shears as a large ‘bite’ would take a large lump of skin off with the wool.
If sheep had been scouring, the wool around their back end would be covered in dung (dags or clarts) and had to be kept separate from the clean body wool. A dealer (the clart man) came around farms once a year to buy the clarts, which went away for grinding and when dry the clean wool extracted. Daggy sheep were always prone to attract blowfly maggots which were often discovered by the clipper, and these sheep had to be treated before being released.
The clipping always took place at some sheep pens, and extra smaller pens were usually erected which could be tightly filled with sheep to make catching sheep easier, before they were dragged out onto the area near the pens to each clipper. This could be just left in grass, or the sheep were clipped on tarpaulins to keep the wool clean.
Once the fleece was off, and the clipper shouted ‘Bust’, one of the non-clipping team came with the farm mark (mainly two letters on a long handle like a poker dipped in raddle), which was stamped on the approved place on the sheep held firmly by the clipper. Every farm had a different approved Bust. The same person usually responded to the shout – ‘Tar’ if the shearer had cut any newly exposed skin on the sheep. This was easy to do if there was little rise. The treatment was a dab of Stockholm tar which kept the flies away till the wound quickly healed.
The final job of the clipper was to roll the fleece up before it was picked up by a general helper and put into the large pillow-like sack or bale which was suspended between two upright poles. When the bale appeared to be full, a helper climbed inside and ‘possed’ the wool down to make more room. When no more wool would go in, the bale was sewn up and a farm Identification marked on with a stencil before being sent to Henry Bell the wool merchant in Hexham.
To roll a fleece up, it was laid flat out on the ground with the ‘skinside outside’ for hill sheep like Scottish Blackface and Swaledale, the sides folded in and then rolled from the back end forwards. When it got to front end, the neck wool was pulled out and twisted into a rope to wrap around the roll before going into the bale which well full was like a big pillow. For crossbred sheep, the fleeces were rolled in the opposite way – skinside outside.
The hardest job at the clippin was to be the sheep catcher. Here the job was to be in, or be ready to open the gate of the catching pen, watching what stage each clipper was at, to be ready to catch a sheep by the horns and drag it out into a position for the clipper to grab it easily.
This was often the job of the ‘Shepherd Laddie’ on the farm who had not yet learned or been allowed to clip. It was exhausting dragging sheep all day to a clipper every 5-10 minutes, gradually losing the skin off your fingers from the rough horns. It was a massive stimulus to learn how to clip, and ask folk like Adam Jackson to show you a few moves of the craft so you didn’t take all day to get the wool off, and half way through some wag would bring you a bit of grass for the sheep as she must be getting hungry. Folk like Adam loved to help any ‘yunguns’ being keen and wanting to learn.
Shears soon got blunt and each clipper used their own sharpening stone which over time showed clear signs of wear. Everybody had their own sharpening angle, so they would never let anyone else do the job for them. Most shears had long blades so they had a big ‘bite’, but some had very short blades and were kept for dagging. A shepherd often carried these around with him to deal to a dirty sheep or one with maggots (maaks) on his rounds.
But the one thing that took a lot of the pain away was the crack by helpers from surrounding farms and the news that it was bait time, or that the lunch had arrived. It was always good to part company with the visiting helpers like Adam as you knew you’d meet again soon at their clippin. The work was hard but the crack always good.