Jack Hargreaves' Old Country

Jack Hargreaves' "Old Country" (and "Out of Town")


Please note: This torrent includes video files digitized from old VHS tapes that are now more than 30 years old. The quality is not what we are used to today. These videos are being made available for fans of Jack Hargreaves, and anyone who is interested in the British countryside of long ago. Don't download if you are expecting High Definition!

Jack Hargreaves was a UK broadcaster who presented hundreds of TV programmes about British countryside traditions and agriculture between 1959 and 1987. He is mainly remembered for two series, "Out of Town" on Southern Television, which ran from 1963 to 1981, and its successor programme, "Old Country" on Channel 4 from 1983 to 1985.

The vast majority of these programmes are completely unavailable, and many may be lost. Just 27 re-edited episodes of "Out of Town" were issued on DVD in the 1980s, and a further 34 (with some duplicates) thirty years later. "Old Country" has never been released.

However, some programmes were recorded off-air by viewers on VCRs and, decades later, have been uploaded to sites like YouTube and Vimeo. This torrent is a collection of 63 of these survivors. Most are half-episodes (because of YouTube's length-limit) of "Old Country" -- "Out of Town" finished before VCRs became popular. Several "specials" and tribute programmes are also included.

Off-air copies made on 1980s video recorders are never of the best quality, so apologies for the poor, small, blurry images. Barring the unearthing of surviving master tapes, this is the only authentic material available. These recordings are unique.


LIST OF VIDEOS:

Old Country

9-pins
Old Country. The origin of skittles and what's meant by a 'flopper' at the Old Swan, once called The Swine, in Toller Porcorum, Wessex. In this clip - sitting at a table with Jack Hargreaves at 14.12 - we catch a rare glimpse of Isobel, his wife and companion of 30 years, right of the picture wearing sunglasses.

A spokeshave, a clog, a bung-hole borer and a ram's pole
Old Country.

American Brook Trout
Old Country.

Bantams
Old Country.

Blagdon horse
Old Country.

Brassey Searle's Circus
Old Country.

Breeds of cattle
Old Country. Jack shows new and old breeds of British cattle, including Shorthorns, Friesians or Holsteins, Guernsey, Jersey, Ayrshire, Hereford, Aberdeen Angus, Charolais, Simmental and the Suffolk. He ponders the balance of English and imported breeds, the greater difficulty of identifying dehorned cattle, and their respective merits for beef, butter and milk.

Bygones
Old Country.

Cape cart
Old Country. The Cape cart, invented by the Boers, was the best of all cross-country carts. Its reconstruction in Dorset was the realisation, with the help of Jeff Mitchell who farmed on the edge of Sturminster Newton, of "a farm boy's dream".

Cart building
Old Country.

Cider making
Old Country. Another version of this theme was filmed for Jack's long-running Out of Town series on Southern TV, and for the VHS/DVD series of Jack's programmes.

Coopering
An Old Country episode about the barrel making craft - coopering - involving the restoration of an old wooden barrel.

Corn, chaff, straw and thatching reed
Old Country. Jack visits a thrashing barn catering to a growing market for thatching reed.

Cow-foot trimming
Old Country. As dairy cows are bred larger with higher milk yields, so they become heavier, move indoors, and spend most of their lives in large covered parlours with grid floors instead of grazing in fields. Their hooves, often treading in slurry, become misshapen, and need attention from a specialist in cattle chiropody.

Dipper
Old Country.

Do it yourself
Old Country. Jack's favourite examples of the home made - a bait courge, a cow horn, toasting forks, nutcrackers (made from a single hazel branch), and a cost-free hunting whip. Includes reflections on artificial insemination.

Dog training
Old Country. Shows the training craft of John and Mary Holmes.

Dorset buttons
Old Country. How buttons were made in the villages before mechanisation. Jack shows Elizabeth Gilbert making buttons by hand in Twyford, a village a few miles south of Shaftesbury in Dorset. He talks of the days when button-making was a cottage industry - the traditional form of manufacture before the Industrial Revolution replaced the rural family out-worker with factory-based machines. The film shows casting, laying, and rounding techniques, and explains such button types as the high top, knob, crosswheel and Blandford cartwheel, as well as the impact of mass production on traditional country households in the once thriving village.

Dry fly casting
Old Country.

Duncliffe Hill in Dorset
Old Country. Duncliffe Hill, "like a plumb in the middle of a plate", is now owned by the Woodland Trust. This clip is episode 11 of series 3, first broadcast on 26 August 1985. One of the views of Duncliffe - from 1.31 in this clip - is from Bulbarrow Hill above Belchalwel in Dorset, where Jack's ashes were spread by Isobel, his wife, in 1994. Isobel's ashes were spread at the same place in October 1998.

Eels, how to catch them
Old Country.

Farm sale
Old Country. Jack uses a visit to a farm sale on a cold day in winter to talk about the old implements for sale - a turntable, seed drill, spring wagon, the broad iron disk on which to heat metal tyres for carts, back chains made by Black Country women, and many kinds of harness and tools once considered hi-tech.
Jack made another programme about a farm sale in 1986 for the commercially available VHS/DVD series of Out of Town.

Fishing evolves
Old Country. In the first part Jack shows how fishing rods and reels evolved over the last century from the famous hand crafted London roach pole and greenheart, through to factory made carbon-fibre and boron rods with fixed spool reels. In the second part he fishes with a fellow angler, Dave Swallow, on a flooded gravel pit and then a river, with some thoughts on how "the intricate pleasures" of angling have changed with the times. The recording ends abruptly just before the final credits.

Fishing fathers
Old Country. An episode in which a group of dads do what dads are for!

Fishing for Sea Bass
Old Country. Jack shows us a faggot of dried fennel, in whose aromatic smoke the French cook a delicacy they call 'Loup de Mer', the wolf of the sea - most likely caught off the coast of England, where we call it the Sea Bass. Jack goes out, before sunrise, with professional fishermen to fish for Sea Bass over hazardous shingle banks, where two tides meet off the Needles at the western end of the Isle of Wight. Sand Eels caught on the way serve as bait. The Bass cannot easily be caught by net, which is why these commercial fishermen resort to rod and line. Jack remarks on the conservatism of British urban restaurant customers (this was in the early 1980s) when it comes to enjoying Sea Bass. These Dorset fishermen sell their catch on the continent. In passing Jack mentions the need to be alert to the risk, when sorting live bait, of being stung by the little Weaver fish.

Flower pots
Old Country.

French horse sale
Old Country series 3, episode 8, broadcast on 22 July 1985. Jack makes a Sunday visit to one of France's greatest stud farms, founded by Napoleon to breed cavalry horses - Le Haras National du Pin near Saint-Lô in Normandy. It is the home of many magnificent breeds of French horse. In the second part, Jack attends the big horse fair at Lessay in Normandy. Horses, mainly Normandy cobs, are sold here every September for working, breeding and eating. Jack explores contrasting attitudes in France and Britain to eating horsemeat.

Goats
Old Country. The goat had almost disappeared in Britain, but now it seems "on its way to a new practical life".

Grayling
Old Country. "The grayling, a most peculiar fish... from the chalkstone rivers of the south and the limestone rivers of the north".

Harness making
Old Country. Mr Huskisson makes a collar for Jack Hargreaves's horse, Blue.

Horse driving; up-tight and laid-back
Old Country. The pony with the pack saddle that Jack is leading in the opening credits is called Ghost.

Horse vet
Old Country. Jack makes the case for investing in a vet's certificate when buying a horse, and shows an example of the work of a vet - unnamed to respect a professional convention not to advertise a service - whom Jack regarded as "one of the finest horse vets in the south of England". Jack speaks of leaving the farm where he lived as a youth, going up to London to the Royal Veterinary College, and discovering how much he still had to learn about horse anatomy as a student under Professor James McCunn - a brilliant vet who also held a medical degree and was an exceptional teacher.

How plague devastated the villages of Wessex (part 1)
Old Country. Jack, in the first of two films based on the abandoned chalk-land village of Knowlton, explains why the Black Death seems to have devastated more villages on the high ground of Wessex than on lower ground.

How plague devastated the villages of Wessex (part 2)
Old Country. Jack, in the second of two films, explains why the Black Death seems to have devastated more villages on the high ground of Wessex than on lower ground.

John Pickett's cart
Old Country. A visit to a yard "lost in the middle of Wiltshire" where Jack meets the most skilled wagon and cart painter alive - John Pickett. Jack talks about the development of transport among the Romany, who used to travel on open carts before copying covered wagons from travelling showmen.

Looking after a river
Old Country. "Hullo. Think we'll spend a bit of time by the water. First of all down by the river. I have a piece of... a chalk stream in Dorset where I go trout fishing".

Manor houses
Old Country. Jack makes a distinction between 'grandees' in magnificent houses, and the small manor houses of the 'country squires' who, unlike the rarely seen grandees, were woven into rural society. Jack shows in this 12 minute clip some of the places where they lived in his part of the world.

Mayfly
Old Country. "If you see a fisherman with a row of flies in his hat, then you know that he is fishing not for his own pleasure but to the astonishment of others. It is a very foolish thing to do. it ruins them".

Old farm tools
Old Country. Jack describes a range of old tools from his childhood whose purpose has often been forgotten, though they are often seen as decorative objects in pubs.

Old Pasture
Old Country. Wandering along a downland slope, Jack shows a close-cropped hillside full of cowslips - the product of regular sheep grazing and rabbit feeding. We then see a more recent ley grass monoculture of cocksfoot, ryegrass, and white clover. Next is an enclosed piece of common full of flowers and the insects that live on them, now rare in the British countryside. Jack finds 30 and more varieties of herbage that he knows best by traditional country names like ox-eye, marguerite, and dog daisy.

Pigeons
Old Country.

Pole fishing
Old Country.

Rabbiting
Old Country.

Ratting sticks, coppicing, wattle hurdles
Old Country.

Stow Fair
Old Country.

Stringing onions
Old Country. Jack responds to requests to show how to string onions, though he admits finding it more convenient to lay them out on a vegetable rack in the larder.

The Exmoor pony, a beautiful creature
Old Country.

The Lurcher
Old Country. The lurcher doesn't play the game. It broke the rules of traditional coursing among the gentry. Their pleasure was to chase the hare with dogs for a wager. They used greyhounds and judged them on their speed in precisely following the zig-zags of their prey. The poor wanted the hare for food, hence the lurcher. It used its speed, but also its wit, to lurch over a zig to catch a hare on the zag. Jack visits a lurcher show, an example of how a larger public has been attracted to the breed, once a poachers' dog, hardly known in recent times.

The Tarrants
Old Country.

Traditional pig butchering
Old Country. The first part starts with a talk from the 'shed' about home made tools, living on low wages, Saxon and Norman names for meat, and the life and death of the family pig. In the second part a butcher friend shows how to cut and prepare the different joints of a pig so nothing is wasted.

Trotting Race
Old Country. A 19th century writer, George Borrow, reports an appearance at Norwich Fair in the 1840s of a famous trotting horse, a Norfolk Roadster: "There was something of a hush, and an old man came through with an old horse which had one blind eye, and he said, 'What is this? Men taking off their hats to horses?'. Yes verily, men were taking off their hats to this one-eyed steed. I turned to a very old fellow and said "What horse is that?". "The best in mother England" said the very old man, taking his knobstick from his mouth. "If you live as long as I do you can say to your great-grandchildren, I saw Marshland Shales."

Turk's Pond
Old Country. Jack talks about a specially-made poacher's rod which he took to mainland Europe during the war, lent to Howard Marshall, from whom it was stolen, and got it back anonymously. He uses it on a pond that's ideal for encouraging a young person to start fishing, because it's a place where they'll almost certainly make a catch on their first day out. "Turk's Pond" - the title of this clip - is also called "Poacher's Rod" in other copies of this episode, first broadcast on 21 August 1983.

Turnout sale
Old Country.

Visiting the countryside
Old Country.

Walking with Ghost
Old Country. Jack walks with his pony Ghost following downland routes used by the packers to move the wool staple, source of England's pre-industrial wealth, noticing things at walking pace. After Jack's death in 1994 Ghost was, as Jack had wanted, moved to the care of Sue and Jeff Mitchell at Highsteppers Farm, Sturminster Newton, on the Dorset Stour less than three miles from Jack's last home near Belchalwel.


Specials (for details, see Info text files)

A tribute to Jack Hargreaves O.B.E
Jack Hargreaves At Home
Jack's film at SWFTA
Just one more 'Out of Town'
Living with a Dog, 1977
Stanley Bréhaut

Out of Town, rare

Dorset clocks, stringing onions, Churchill, 1980
Jack and the tittle tattler
The patent 'exploding' bait box