Counting Sheep
by Malcolm Webborn
During his visit to Mumbles in 1872, Francis Kilvert described the pastoral scene where ‘A shepherd was holloing and driving the sheep of the pasture furiously down a steep place into the sea, and a school of boys came running down the steep green slope, one of them playing ‘Rosalie the Prairie Flower’ on an accordian as he ran.’
Malcolm Webborn recounts his boyhood memories of helping with the sheep on this same stretch of hill some fifty years later.
Thistleboon Farmyard, c 1930
Haymaking at Thistleboon Farm, c 1920
Included in the group are Davey Williams, Newton, his son Jim,
Bertie Wheeler, Albert Kift, Llew & Ernie Howell, David Lloyd,
Mrs. Woollacot, Thistleboon and Maggie Owen
Malcolm Webborn recalls Gerald Lilley who lived near us in Park Avenue and was employed by the Woolacott family at their farm at Thistleboon. In those far-off days before World War Two, I would sometimes help him round up the sheep, which grazed the hill from Thistleboon to Bracelet. They would be driven to a field, long since overgrown, below Mr. Boulanger’s house (Somerset House) where they would be counted as they passed through a stile and any missing ones would be then searched for in nooks and crannies until all were accounted for.