A WITCH-BROOM MAKER
By H. L. KAY.
2 photos
In the very heart of industrial Lancashire, on a little stretch of moorland between Chorley and Bolton, a solitary survivor carries on the last example of an industry rapidly dying out, and, in fact, practically extinct in this part of the country.
This is far away from noisy factories, with the hum and whirr of machinery, and with the co-operation of hundreds of workpeople. On the clear, open moorland, in the winter snow or summer sunshine, the solitary master and man lives and works.
Surrounded by the wilder beauties of Nature, amid a silence seldom broken save by the grouse or the whistle of a distant railway engine, the humble besom-maker pursues his business.
On fine days he gathers his heather, or “ling,” for his “witch-brooms,” working, a solitary figure, on the expanse of moor. Having cut an abundant supply of “ling,” he carries it to an ancient farmhouse, or sometimes to one of the neighbouring villages, and stores it away to season for weeks.
When the wild winds of winter whirl across the unsheltered moor and the snow makes deep drifts, he sits in his old “workshop,” warmed by a blazing fire of ling, and patiently binds up bunches of heather with pieces of split cane. His work requires skill as well as patience. It runs through families for generations. By his own family, the old man told me, it has been carried on for years. His grandfather made besoms, his father was brought up to it, and he himself, now seventy, has made them many years and in all kinds of weather.
He laments that of recent times the good old industry has been gradually dying. There is not the same demand in these “new-fangled” times as in former days. Old farmers who recognised the value of the besom for cleaning their farmyards and shippons are becoming fewer, and the new ones do not know the use of the commodity.
They are, however, still used to a fairly large extent in Bolton and Wigan, and he receives frequent orders from the collieries. In many works, too, where ordinary brushes would soon be worn away, he has a market.
With a good store of heather (and Nature’s charge for the raw material has not increased) he can make a few dozen besome in a day. Selling these at a few coppers each, undisturbed by strikes and lock-outs, he makes an honest living, and after the toil of so many years he has grown to love his labour.