Heavy horses who helped deliver milk in Nelson and Colne

The nostalgic 1950s picture is from my Primet Secondary School pal of the fifties, John Foster.

John’s family farmed Long Swinden for many years with a herd of horned Ayrshire cattle giving top quality dairy milk for John’s father Harold’s many customers.

The milk would be taken round in huge milk kits by horse and cart and our picture’s horse on the left is Tommy, the farm’s rusty-coloured Clydesdale, who would pull the milk-cart round the sett-paved streets everyday. Today this idyllic farm scene has been replaced by the forbidding White Walls industrial estate; never again will the handsome, heavy horses of Long Swinden Farm gaze out to acres and acres of flowing farmland.