Glorious Pancake

'Glorious Pancake' the house-cow from Coggeshall Hall farm.
Pictured with “Boy” George Thompson one of the farm workers and taken in mid 1930s


‘Glorious Pancake' was a soft, dewy-eyed pedigree Jersey cow who supplied cream and butter as well as milk for the household, and for the cats to drink, before and during the 1939-45 war. I never took to her. She used to interrupt my weekend courting programme. ‘You won’t mind milking the cow this evening,’ my father would toss over his shoulder as he left for Colchester Corn Exchange on a Saturday afternoon. This was not a request and certainly not what I had in mind! However, Glorious Pancake had good breeding and good manners and a very docile disposition. She did not care where she was milked, so a long trek to find her across the water meadows would often be necessary. Her good breeding did not run to a conscience and she never worried how far the milker had to walk. But in her turn she was not too fussy about milking times – an hour or two one-way or the other would not bother her unduly. Perhaps with a better sense of urgency she would have stayed closer to the meadow gate.
There was nothing sissy about milking Pancake. I simply took with me a pail and a three-legged stool. There was no washing of teats or bag, just an initial squirt into the ground, my head stuck into her flank. Then milking commenced. I occasionally had to shuffle crab-wise with her when she saw something better to nibble ahead. The odd lash of her tail might indicate that she thought you had a fly in your ear. Back at the farm kitchen, foreign bodies were filtered from the milk through a piece of muslin.'

Taken from Harvest of Memories : An Essex Farmer Recalls A Life in Peace and War’ by Tony Bonner published in 2000

Glorious Pancake with Barry Bonner on top and Tony Bonner standing. Taken outside Coggeshall Hall in the mid 1930s

Coggeshall Hall is on the edge of the parish of Coggeshall off the road to Kelvedon down in the valley of the River Blackwater. It was one of Coggeshall's two Manor Houses and it's owners were lords of the manor of Coggeshall Hall and at one time held extensive land and property in Coggeshall.

The photos are from Tony Bonner's photo collection courtesy Sara Impey his daughter.