THE DECLINE OF THE HEN PEN

[Stanley]

THE DECLINE OF THE HEN PEN

by Wilfred Spencer

To my mind few sights are more truly and essentially typical of the Industrial North than the hen pen. I'm not speaking of the trim geometric and soulless acreages of well-disciplined paling and wire netting which for a time supplanted the genuine article. These were a degree better than our latter-day egg factories, but were still utterly lacking in the rugged individuality which is the hall-mark of the honest northern artisan and his projection of himself into his rugged, individual and honest hen pen.

They are not entirely departed, though, and if you have a taste for stark reality you can find ugly clusters of them bestriding the ginnels and snickets behind the terraced houses. I did say ugly, but there is something engaging and intriguing about this kind of ugliness. In some curious way it has integrity, and it doesn't - not in the slightest -
affect any pretence to be other than what it is. These hen pens do however reveal more of their owners than they perhaps realise.

The fence of each pen is almost invariably black with oft-repeated layers of gas tar, but the half concealed shape of the underlying wood often reveals its origin to have been in the cotton mill. The weaver or tackler who keeps hens seems to have little difficulty in laying hands on sufficient scrap wood from the mill to keep his boundaries in order, though with due regard for the uncertainties of the future, he will do what he can to make this wood last as long as possible. This is where the gas tar comes in handy. Cheap (or so it was) and easy to get hold of, it is liberally applied to every exposed surface. If there is any left the brush is dragged over the wire netting: in fact, the pen is Dot so much painted as engulfed. The roof of the hen hut, where successive layers have cracked and shrunk above the original felt, looks like the back of an ill-favoured crocodile.

This black hide covers an incredible variety of shapes some of them vaguely traditional. There is probably scope here for a regional survey of unique architectural interest, for the favoured type of hut does vary from district to district. But each is, unmistakably, a hen hut: Its narrow band of windows near the floor, and its the entrance, or "pop 'oil" for the birds being its hall mark. This entrance has a somewhat medieval look about it, Norman arch and wooden portcullis with a narrow board reminiscent of a drawbridge sloping up to it.

What goes on inside I'm not so sure. Men in cloth caps disappear into the man-sized entrance with tin bowls and later emerge with eggs, but for aught I know there may be other goings on. There is little doubt that the hen pen is, for many a wife-bound weaver, a refuge and a haven. There was something finely Northern in Priestley's opening of "Good Companions" where the hero is described as gloomily reflecting upon the emptiness and futility of life from the vantage point of his friend's hen house door. In his hen pen a man can be alone and, should the mood be upon him, brood. It is true that the scene of his contemplations may be littered with bits of household jetsam, the discarded slop-stone, the tired rocking chair, the dolly tub or the out-dated mangle. But these he will have diverted to some new, unlikely, but ingenious use in his more energetic moments, and his contemplation of them may bring some solace.

A friend of mine who is getting on now, and whose brother had become a national political figure of some eminence once said to me - expressing a deep and rich philosophy – “Our Tom were allus studying and bothering 'isself wi' politics: but, tha knows, Wilfred, I 'ad my 'ens” The ulcerations of a hectic public life had shortened his brother's life many years earlier but for him the hen pen had brought its own reward.

[‘Tom’ was Thomas Shaw, Minister of Labour in MacDonald’s first Labour cabinet. Jan to Nov 1924.]

[Stanley]

Bumped.

[Stanley]

Bumped again. There will be people who have never had the joy of reading it....

[Stanley]

I've just read it yet again.... I never tire of it, one of the best short pieces I have ever found I think. Thanks to the late Helen Spencer for giving it to me and permission to post it here.

[Stanley]

Bumped again. You can't have too much of s good thing!

[Wendyf]

Very timely, as we head back into lock down next week and hens are restricted to their pens!

[Stanley]

I heard that this morning on Farming Today Wendy and thought of you.....

[Gloria]

Very good

[Stanley]

I've always thought it was one of the best short stories I have ever read..... Helen Spencer alerted me to it......

[Gloria]

It fuels the imagination Stanley.

[Tripps]

That reminds me of much I had forgotten.
My grandad made a hen pen at the top of the garden. Probably in the late 1940's. They had not long moved from the slum housing in Failsworth to the sunny uplands of Chadderton. On reflection he must have craved the space to keep a few hens. It was done properly with a bought in hen house, and a lot of new words entered my vocabulary.
Day old chicks, point of lay. Rhode island Red. Light Sussex, layers mash, grit. I remember the 'egg book' where the daily score was kept, and the smell of the boiled potato peelings which were added to their feed.

[Stanley]

Nice. I'm glad it hit the spot David.....

[Wendyf]

The smell of boiling potato peelings wasn't nice! My current hens are Rhode Islands crossed with Light Sussex.

[Stanley]

I used to love the smell of Linseed cake when you poured boiling water on it.....