FARMING has had some bad times in recent years, but few can compare with the 1840s.

In an interview published in the South Wales Daily News of Monday, July 6, 1914, a North Pembrokeshire farmer, Mr John Thomas, who farmed 400 acres at Trevigan, Croesgoch, recalled those times.

Mr Thomas was referred to as is one of the best known agriculturalists in West Wales.

In Pembrokeshire, he had a reputation for sterling honesty of character, straight dealing, piety and great business capacity.

Although 86 years of age although looking 10 years younger, Mr Thomas was still hale and hearty and, during the 70 years he had been farming, it was recorded that he had witnessed such a remarkable change in social conditions and in the methods of agriculture as to constitute nothing short of a revolution.

He had grim memories of the Hungry Forties, and had his property seized during the Tithe War when the Nonconformist farmers of Cardiganshire and North Pembrokeshire revolted against what they considered to be an unjust levy on them by the Church of England.

By then (1914), however, with the broad landscape dotted with houses, the district seemed to appear amongst the most populous and thriving of all the rural parts of Pembrokeshire.

Mr Thomas and his ancestors had been farming in the district since 1793 and, it was interesting to observe a lease which Mr Thomas had in his possession, and granted to his great-grandfather for the whole of his natural life, in which King George III is described as King of France as well as of England and Ireland.

In addition to the payment of rent, the lease quaintly provided for the surrender of four fat hens and five Winchester measures of black oats annually from tenant to landlord.

For the best part of his life Mr Thomas had been closely identified with public affairs in Pembrokeshire. He was elected a member of the first county council, and fought three contested elections, only retiring in March of the previous year because of advancing years.

For many years he was also a member of the Haverfordwest Board of Guardians and District Council, and, at that time, was the oldest living member of the North Pembrokeshire Farmers Club.

Mr Thomas remained a regular worshipper at the local Baptist Chapel, where he was senior deacon and treasurer and confirmed that “The one thing he put before his Liberalism was his Nonconformity”.

When interviewed by a representative of the paper he had readily consented to say something about the great changes which had evolved over the methods of farming during his lifetime, and other outstanding events in his career.

He was one of many Nonconformist farmers in Pembrokeshire who took part in the great Welsh tithe war - it was a bold and dramatic stroke which farmers then made for religious freedom and, by then the great cause for which he fought and suffered was on the point of triumphing.

Mr Thomas chose to say little of those stirring and exciting times. He well remembered how the auctioneer, accompanied by the bailiff, visited homestead after homestead in the Solva and St Davids districts, and of their “warm” reception at some of the farms where stock and utensils were put up for sale.

Of the Hungry Forties this veteran farmer had vivid recollections.

“People of the present day,” Mr Thomas had said, “cannot imagine what were the social conditions when wheat was 16 shillings per bushel and when agricultural labourers worked, as I remember them working, for 3d per day”. [the equivalent of 80 days for £1]

Furthermore, if there had been anything more appalling than the misery and wretchedness of the labourers, it was the greed and hard-heartedness of some of the big farmers, some of whom had themselves been hard hit by the repeal of the Corn Laws.

In those days news travelled slowly to remote spots and Mr Thomas told how one farmer at Solva, when wheat was selling at 16 shillings per bushel refused to sell because the season was a disastrous one and everything pointed to the price rising to 20 shillings or even higher. But meanwhile an event of far reaching importance –the opening of the ports –had occurred and the price of wheat suddenly fell. The farmer was ultimately obliged to sell his wheat for 6 shillings or 7 shillings per bushel.

Mr Thomas had little patience with those who prated about “Tariff Reform” and the good old days under Protection. The people were so very poor that stock was almost unsaleable. Labourers went about hungry, crime was rampant, money scarce, and the ragged and gaunt figures of peasantry still haunted his memory.

He remembered threshing with a flail, when men were engaged to do work not for money wages, but for every twentieth part of the wheat threshed. Then came the horse threshing machine, and this was followed by portable machines, which were again succeeded by engines drawn by horses and, finally, came the traction engine.

He also remembered winnowing by hand, gleaning by women and, 62 years previously he had introduced the first turnip drill which, by the way, was still being worked on the farm that day.