No 40 A. BAILLIE FARM CART WHEELS.

A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.

No 40.A. The Baillie Cart. continued.


Following my article on the Baillie Farm Cart I had a phone call from Burray in Orkney from a regular reader of the John O’Groat Journal asking where were the photos of rimming the cart wheel referred to in the article. For reasons of space we did not manage to include all the photos, but my caller was a man who cannot be denied. Willie Mowat, blacksmith extraordinaire, still going strong and working in his blacksmith’s shop at 83, descended from his great grand father John Mowat who migrated from John O’Groats to Burray in 1862. I am glad he called me as he was paying for the call, I spent a most interesting half hour getting my ear bent, which I am not used to!!!
The Baillie Farm Cart brought back to him memories of rimming two cart wheels for Alexanders of Lyth about 18 years ago. He came over the Pentland Firth to trim and repair the old farm implements on show at Mary Ann’s Cottage in Dunnet. His blacksmith shop has been taken under the wing of Historic Scotland and is seriously worth a visit, and most days he is there. One mile into Burray from the South Ronaldsay end of the Barriers after crossing to St Margaret’s Hope from Gills. A visit I intend to make very soon.
But rimming or shodding cart wheels was not so simple as I thought. Even in Stronsay there were so many differing horse drawn conveyances, not just the humble farm box cart. We had the gig which I referred to some time ago, going to Church and to Airy and to the Village, or just plain visiting. Its wheels were shod with rubber rims, and I have no idea how they were put on. Softened the rattles of the hard road a bit. As a gig was used much more rarely than a farm cart, with much lighter loads of course, then the rubber rim would last that much longer. So too was the milk float for the mile run down to Whitehall Village. Lighter wheels, but still the standard twelve spoke design. The Spring Cart had rubber shod wheels and springs, was lighter than a box cart and used for many easy tasks, doing service as a gig for some. Same basic build as the milk float.
All other carts were iron shod. The farm box carts I mentioned, everlastingly being used for farm work, capable of being tipped with its load of turnips, but we had other carts. The Long Cart, not tipping and heavier built entirely, with higher and heavier wheels. This cart at Greenland Mains with hay to sit on took the school children down to Dunnet Beach for a school picnic. The lorry cart as we called it, longer and non tipping, low to the ground for easy loading, used by our father for much carting in the herring season, with a turn-table front end with two wheels, very maneuverable, good for hay carting or loose straw. It was capable of being loosed off from the horse and stand on its own four legs, so to speak, without needing a prop as the box carts needed, be it a barrel under the shafts or a post under the back chain. Very handy for a farm servant flitting from one farm to another with all his household goods. Or a farmer.
There was a barrel cart just for the herring barrels in season, rolling them up the cart from the back and then put in two pins at the back to keep the barrels from rolling off, well designed and good for its task.
There was the water cart, much used on most farms with no mains water in those days and possibly no wells, taking water out to the fields to fill a water trough for the cattle. Or water from a big farm tank filled with rain water off the steading roofs. It was really a very large heavy wooden barrel permanently fixed on a wooden cart frame on wheels. A very steady job in summer for a single horse, very laborious to fill with buckets from a well or a pond or a eater filled ditch or a burn. We had a well with a simple one handled pump but good enough to fill the cart. A similar water cart was used to make water-bound roads before we had tarred roads, watering the final stone-dust coating before the heavy road roller did its final run.
There was the Paddy Cart, a box on wheels used for taking pigs to the steamer, or to another farm. Cattle and sheep were easy to drive along the road, but driving pigs along the road was impossible. They had very definite minds of their own. Even taking a sow to visit a boar on another farm needed the Paddy Cart. Low built and with a cranked axle to carry the wheels and to allow a low level loading floor.
And every one of these carts needed different wheels.

Until I wrote the article on Willie Grant and the Baillie Box Cart I did not appreciate just how much a wheelwright had to learn to do his trade properly, nor the multitude of bits and pieces needed. Oak and larch and ash timber usually, spokes shaped with a spoke-shave, an article of the farm workshop I did not fully appreciate till now. We used it as bairns to shape some piece of wood or other for something or other. Kept razor sharp by Ould Pat, double handled and always drawn towards you. In the hands of an expert it could produce the very finest of finishes on wooden wheel spokes, or any other similar task. We used it to make arrows out of any suitable bit of wood.

Wheels were slightly saucer shaped which gave a wider look at the top than at the ground, looked odd but there was a reason. It put the load directly vertical from the axle to the ground, a very smart engineering concept which avoided any sideways stress on the spokes.

All the carts and gigs and others mentioned above had differing wheels, small and light, heavy and large.
So there was more to Willie Grant and his wheel rimming at Achscrabster than I at first thought.