Rounding up memories of clean milk cup

3:12pm Thursday 6th March 2008

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THANKS to all the readers who were moo-ved (sorry!) to contact Looking Back to tell us about the clean milk cup in the 1930s and 40s.

Mrs Marjorie Duckworth told us that her parents and elder siblings, the Todd family, delivered milk in the Little Harwood area for more than 4O years.

The sale of their farmland by the owners to build the Philips factory in 1938 forced a move to Rishton, where they won two cups for clean milk in 1940 - the Unnamed Cup and the John Redmayne Tiller Cup for the County of Blackburn.

She said: "This competition was an annual event and they won this several times afterwards, as well as a cup for the best-kept farm, also several times.

"The small replica cups are still in the family."

Mrs Dorothy Devereux also told of her family winning the clean milk cup for three consecutive years in 1936, '37 and '38.Her father and mother, Richard and Mary Wade, had Low Farm, in Clayton-le-Dale, and there were several other family members who farmed at Brownhill and Wilpshire.

"It was a mixed farm with a milk round, and in those days milk was usually sold in jugs. I recollect the judges ladling the milk out to inspect it during spot checks.

"Families kept smaller replica cups when the main trophy was handed back after 12 months, and the farmer's wife was given a brooch. Our family still have these."

Milk rounds used to be by horse and cart and this photograph shows Dorothy's father when he was a teenager, standing with his own dad James' milk cart, near Moss Street, Blackburn, around 1912.