Frank Baker, a farmer who was renting a farm in Mellor on the Cheshire / Derbyshire border, bought New Hey Farm  ( now the Scout Outward Bound Centre ) in 1928, from Mr Tom Kaye of Edgerton, Huddersfield.   

Frank Baker outside New Hey Farm 1928

New Hey Farm was a small rough hill farm amounting to 32 acres, 1 rood and 6 perches.

The buildings consisted of a farm cottage, barn, a mistal and a stable. The Farm cottage has a date of 1693 inscribed in the door surround. A condition of the sale included a contract to contribute one half of the expenses of keeping the road to Scammonden vicarage in good repair and to allow the vicar to get stone from a quarry situated by the road at the back of the Vicarage, at a price of  6d per one horse cart load.

Frank Baker was joined by his father, Alfred Baker, a Bank Manager from Manchester who had recently retired.  

Alfred Baker 1929

Frank started to improve access to the farm by making the lane suitable for motor vehicles as it was only passable by horse and cart . (Part of this new lane is now known as Kirklees Way).

He started to build the farm business up with a few cows and calves and an increasing number of poultry, which eventually became the basis of his day old chicken and egg production business.  As he had a motor wagon he did some contract work for local councils to supplement his income. He worked for Scammonden UDC, repairing non tarmacadem lanes, keeping the drainage ditches open and stonewalls repaired. He also worked for Colne Valley UDC on the main Buckstones road helping to build and strengthen bridges and transport materials.  

In March 1929 Frank married Gladys Ernill from Marple Bridge, near Stockport and they settled down to married life at New Hey Farm

Gladys Baker nee Ernill

Their first child , Alan, was born in 1930, and  now 4 people were living in the small farmhouse.  Frank was developing a poultry business and sold day old pullet chicks both locally in the Huddersfield / Halifax areas and further afield. Chicks were despatched in hay lined chick boxes, each containing about 25 chicks , via the railway from Slaithwaite station. All this was achieved without any mains electricity or telephone connections.

In early 1935 Frank bought Scammonden Vicarage from the St Bartholomew’s Church, Deanhead, after the Deanhead Parish was merged with Barkisland parish. The vicarage house and gardens were close to New Hey Farm and were surrounded by the farm land.  

The vicarage is believed to have been built at the same time as St Bartholomew’s Church in 1865. The ground added 1.24 acres to the 32.28 acres of New Hey Farm.

All three generations of the Baker family moved into the large vicarage house, soon to be joined by Keith, who was born in June 1935.

L to R:   Alfred Baker  Alan Baker  Frank Baker  Keith Baker

Frank and Gladys now renamed the combined properties Deanhead Farm.

The original New Hey Farm had an outside well as a water supply, situated across the yard behind the stable building and an earth closet across the yard. The vicarage house had a piped cold water supply from a spring fed well in the grounds  ( now able to be seen from the Kirklees Way ) but still had an outside earth toilet . The Bakers installed a back boiler behind the kitchen fireplace which gave hot and cold running water into the kitchen, scullery and their newly installed bathroom. This was one of, if not the only house in the valley with a bathroom and hot and cold water on tap. They also installed a WC.

Frank also set up a stationary engine powered generator in one of the farm outbuildings and had the house wired up for 25 volt electric lighting   ( no power sockets ) by the Kitson brothers, Joe and Walter who lived at The Nont Sarahs Hotel with their parents.

The poultry business could now be expanded as the vicarage had several outbuildings.The coach house and stables which had a loft, were now filled with 16 – 20 incubators. By this time there were well over 1000 head of poultry and eggs were sold mainly to the Slaithwaite Egg Packing Company. In the early months of the year the breeding flock were selected and were kept in pens on the White Lee fields, to keep them separate from the other hens.  The eggs from these hens were incubated. The incubators were each heated by paraffin heaters and held 260 eggs each. The eggs had to be turned by hand twice a day.  

Deanhead Farm showing chicken pens on White Lea Fields

All poultry were kept free range in wooden huts around the farm and some stonecotes in the clough and one stonecote in the top field. This meant three visits every day, first in the  morning to let the hens out, feed  them and clean the huts, second in the afternoon to feed them again and collect eggs, finally at dusk to shut  them in the huts and stonecotes to prevent them being killed by foxes. Many hundreds of hens were killed by foxes over the years.

A few cows and calves were reared for dairy produce (milk, cream and butter) and in the summer Gladys made ice cream and sold it to walkers on their way past the farm on walks to or from the Nont Sarahs Hotel, the Manor House tearooms (in the bottom of the valley, now under the reservoir) and the Brown Cow Hotel.

A horse was kept to pull the plough, cart, mowing machine and other farm implements. This was later replaced by an old motor wagon and then a tractor.

Haymaking and Ploughing at Deanhead Farm

Alan started infant school at Deanhead, a small school joining the church at the other side of the valley, at the age of four. At the start of the war, Gladys’s father, John Ernill, who was a retired copper smith, came to live at the farm because of the bombing in Manchester.

Keith Baker and John Ernill

Then in 1940  Alan attended Royds Hall Grammar school. He cycled from the farm to Outlane, catching the trolley bus to Marsh and then walking to Royds Hall School and returned the same way every afternoon. Keith now started Deanhead Infant school.

During the war the  lower farm fields were ploughed up and various crops were grown, including potatoes, turnips, Swedes, carrots and occasionally oats but these did not ripen well in the Scammoden weather.

Alan left Royds Hall at 16 years old and went to Huddersfield Technical college to study for a BSC degree in Engineering.

Keith now aged 11, left Deanhead school  and went to  Hipperholme Grammar school. At 16 he started as an apprentice at David Brown & Sons, Lockwood and studied in the evenings at Huddersfield Technical college for an HNC in engineering.

Keith Baker and Alfred Baker 1951

The poultry business was badly hit by the Second World War because of the shortage of poultry corn, which was rationed. Frank expanded the cattle business and started a milk round which extended as far as Pole Moor and Berry Mill.

 When school milk was introduced in the mid 1940’s, they supplied milk in one third of a pint bottles to Deanhead School, about 30 bottles per day which were carried by hand across the valley.

This became Alan’s job, each day after he had taken Keith to Stainland on the back of his motorbike to catch the bus to school, he returned to the farm, carried the milk across the valley  in two wooden crates with handles, collected the empty bottles, returned to the farm and then set off for his day at Huddersfield Technical college which started at 9am.

The top fields were ploughed and reseeded to provide better pastures for cattle crazing.

Frank still continued with his poultry business but on a smaller scale and produced eggs which were mainly sold to the Yorkshire Egg Packing Company and cattle were raised for meat instead of milk.

Conditions in winter when the snow came could be very difficult, as can be seen in this photo below.

Frank Baker was an organic farmer and all the produce was produced naturally. All poultry were kept free range in huts or cotes around the farm. Smaller huts containing about 30 hens in each were sited on the lower meadows during the winter and were moved to the top fields in the summer to enable hay making to take place. The cattle were out every day , coming to the mistal early morning and late afternoon for milking. During the winter , when there was frost and snow , the cattle were kept inside, but were let out to go to the well to drink. Farm manure was used as fertiliser on the meadows. The only other fertiliser used on the steeper hill fields was lime.

4 generations L to R: Frank Baker  Alan Baker  Peter Baker  Alfred Baker

Frank planted  many trees, holly, sycamore and birch, some of these can be still seen today, the holly up the hillside above the Scout centre, birch and sycamore up the sides of the lane and across the fields to White Lea.

The three sided walled structure in the top field behind the vicarage is the remains of the Stonecote, built by Frank Baker in the early 1930s, using local material as a building to house his expanding poultry business.

Mains electricity finally came to the valley in the mid 1950’s and Frank had to sign a guarantee to use a minimum of £25 worth of electricity per year before the Yorkshire Electricity Board would connect the farm to the mains supply.

Deanhead Farm was compulsory purchased in 1966 in order to build Scammoden Dam, Frank and Gladys were sad to leave and went to live in Marsden for their retirement.

New Hey Farm is now the Scout Activity Centre and the Vicarage is now Scammonden Water Sailing Clubhouse.