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Another golden oldie film the Keeper 1975


figgy
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I used to love the old Bygones series with **** Joyce , very similar to the Out Of Town with Jack Hargreaves ones, I am not sure if the above film was from the Bygones series but I hadn't seen it before and really enjoyed watching it before I went down down the marsh , so a big THANKS to figgy for sharing it .

I started beating on an estate not far from that one in 1968 , at that time we got £3.00 and a bottle of beer at dinnertime , this was the only place we would see a Pheasant as it was very rare we would see one on the marshes let alone bag one , a mate of mine who is long gone once got a hen bird from a reed bed near the estuary wall in the late 60s and that was talked about for ages .

On our very early shoots you would rarely see any other gun apart from a s x s , in the above film it was taken in the mid 70s and you can see the odd one using a o/u , now it is rare to see a young gun using a s x s , if you do it could well be handed down from his father or even his grand father .

Another thing that was noticeable was the height they were shooting them , whereas today a lot of them birds would have seen another day , now we have a thread going about shooting 80 / 90 yard Pheasants , from one extreme to another , still we are still running and taking part in shoots but looking back I would say not everything have changed for the better .

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10 hours ago, figgy said:

Marshman at the beginning it says about it being a bygone special production at around 53 seconds where he is riding his bike with sunlit sky behind him.

THANKS for that figgy , the old Bygones ones normally consisted of the first half was about life in the countryside and the second half was about an unusual object connected to someones trade like thatching or cleaning dykes out .

His collection of old relics were on show for a while at Holkham Hall ( still might be ) and was a visitors attraction in it's own right .

Another site for old clips from the past is E A F A , ( East Anglian Film Archive ) click on to countrymen and a list will come up with gamekeepers ect , one of them is the well know name amongst keepers was Harry Grass and another one worth watching is Frainnie Brooks who was a marsh man from Burgh Castle just a mile down the road from mine , that one shows you the ole boy catching Coypu's. 

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My first job in 1959 was assistant keeper to Fred Bayfield a 4th generation keeper.That was on the Conyboro estate Cooksbridge.Transport was push bikes .Birds hatched under broodies.Stayed with the family at Deer park cottage.Fred went out at 5am to check traps on his beat.I went out at 7am checking traps.Fred helped out on shoot days until his late 90s .He reached 100.picture of me with Fred and son John . In book.More tales of the old gamekeepers.

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I had a few more came up on my YouTube. One is the gamekeeper 1975 different program but same era, some great old characters in it, been keepering since 1907 one of them. Some others are a BBC series in Scotland near Blair Athol about the Gamekeepers at different seasons. 

I'll post some links tomorrow if people are interested.

Edited by figgy
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55 minutes ago, figgy said:

Some others are a BBC series in Scotland near Blair Athol about the Gamekeepers at different seasons. 

That'll be the 1990s series with Charlie Pirie. Another great series - I still have the book that accompanied it.

I can't see the BBC ever making another series ever like it again.

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On 13/11/2019 at 11:02, dipper said:

My first job in 1959 was assistant keeper to Fred Bayfield a 4th generation keeper.That was on the Conyboro estate Cooksbridge.Transport was push bikes .Birds hatched under broodies.Stayed with the family at Deer park cottage.Fred went out at 5am to check traps on his beat.I went out at 7am checking traps.Fred helped out on shoot days until his late 90s .He reached 100.picture of me with Fred and son John . In book.More tales of the old gamekeepers.

Is that you with all the chickens around you? 

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I have had the pleasure and good fortune to shoot on the Estate in the film (The Keeper 1975).Twice on driven days and once on a retriever trial training.

Probably one of the best all round bits of ground in the country,  a fabulous mix of salt and fresh grazing marsh, reed beds, heathland, woodland and arable, fowling (coastal and inland), game, pigeons and some huge reds, some of the biggest stags in England. It would make superb wild game country, if you could roll back the clock. It has the largest continual phragmites reed bed in the UK.

I believe the Estate was sold in 2018 and the National Trust have had their fingers in it for years.

 

Edited by Penelope
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