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can make cowkeeping in London pay; or rather perhaps
they alone are content to accept the conditions under
which the cowkeeper lives and is forced to work in order
to make a living. They are for the most part poorly
educated; they speak English very imperfectly ...
They are thrifty and self-denying, live in rough
surroundings, work exceedingly hard for abnormally
long hours and with very small return.
Many Victorian dairy owners kept their own cows and the
horse or pony for the milk cart in sheds or stables in mews
near their shops or even in the back yard or cellar. Milk
was ladled out of churns into the customers' own jugs and
the dairies also sold butter, eggs, and cheese and as time
passed added in groceries and whatever other products in
local demand that would help them to survive becoming
the first corner shops. At one time there were 700 Welsh
dairies in London but most were seen off by supermarkets
and large companies like United Dairies. A few beautifully
tiled old shop fronts have survived even if the shop didn’t.
In the 1850s the live cattle market was moved to a new site
outside of the City boundaries. The new Caledonian
Market at Copenhagen Fields was just off the New Road
near Kings Cross and Smithfield became and remains
today a dead meat market. The coming of the railways in
the 1850s heralded an end to the drovers way of life with
the last recorded large-scale cattle drove from Wales in
1870
but a strong bond had been forged between Wales
and the pastures of the Fleet leading down to the markets
and this part of London would become home to very many
Welsh families setting themselves up in the dairy trade.
The First Corner Shops
By the 18
th
century Welsh dairy farmers were living in
London and grazing their milk cows in the fertile pastures
of the River Fleet where perhaps once as drovers they had
stopped to fatten their cattle. Later with the coming of the
railways fresh milk could be brought into London every
day from Welsh farms and soon Welsh dairies colonised
what had been the cattle bypass route, the New Road.
Now called the Marylebone and Euston Roads they lead
directly to Paddington Station which was the mainline
terminus for trains from South Wales. We still call the first
train of the day the milk train. In 1903 the social reformer
Charles Booth, whose massive body of social research
Life and Labour of the People in London
would help lead
to the establishment of old age pensions and free school
dinners wrote:
Throughout the London milk trade generally the
proportion of Welsh masters is very large ... Common
report and our own observations lead us to suppose that
they number considerably more than 50% of the trade ...
they alone among the inhabitants of the United Kingdom