THE PAST IN PICTURES
Harvest rick
Last century, photographers captured dying rural traditions as technology changed the face of farming
Remarkably, this photograph by Eric Guy was taken less than a century ago, in the 1930s. It’s harvest season in Compton on the Berkshire Downs, and the men are building a rick – a stack of hay topped with a thatch to keep it dry, for use as winter feed. Even in the 1930s, half the thatching done in Britain was for ricks. Tractors were only beginning to be a familiar sight in fields and the use of horses was still common. Guy’s photograph is among more than a million images of farming in the archive of the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) in Reading, Berkshire.
MERL, Reading RG1 5EX. Free admission; open Tues–Sun. merl.reading.ac.uk