Cinema has immortalized the American cowboy and has spread his tough guy image all over the world. Even here in Wales, most of us who are of a certain age (myself included) grew up watching cowboy films. Little did I realize back then that we had our own version of cowboys: the drovers. But no one ever talked about the drovers, and the drovers certainly never featured in any films.
Welsh history is notoriously understated. We have a great Welsh poet named Taliesyn who was active in the 6th century, but few people have ever heard of him and, although his birthplace and grave are known, no throngs of tourists flock to photograph these spots. William Shakespeare, England’s national poet, on the other hand, is hugely famous, and his birthplace is visited by 2.5 million people per year. Welsh people don’t tend to shout about their history, and it’s for that reason that I was in my 20s before I found out about the Welsh drovers – the men who drove cattle out of Wales to the markets of the great cities of England.
It’s thought that the story of the drovers goes back to the 12th century, and possibly further. Likely, droving was taking place from the time city dwellers began to grow in numbers and the demand for meat in urban areas led to the business of droving cattle.
North Wales was a great place for rearing the hardy sheep and cattle of yesteryear, but there weren’t any big cities in North Wales, and cities were where the biggest demand for meat was. Before the advent of refrigeration, the only way to get fresh meat to the city dwellers was to walk the cattle to the city for slaughtering. The cattle traveled slowly so they wouldn’t lose condition, and they had to stop frequently for rest, food, and water. Directing the cattle, keeping them safe and healthy on the route, and dealing with the finances involved was the job of the drover.
The more experienced drovers, the lead men, might have ridden on the small, stocky Welsh horses that we today call “Welsh Cobs,” but most members of the droving team were on foot. The terrain in Britain was hilly, and there were many river crossings, so progress would’ve been painfully slow by today’s standards.
Walking with the livestock required physical fitness, and it was commonplace to hire children for this work. Children were cheap to hire, generally required less food than an adult, and were fast and nimble on their feet. “Drover’s boys,” as they were known, would often come from upland farms in Wales, and they’d likely never have traveled out of their communities before embarking on their droving careers. These farmers’ sons may well have walked their fathers’ livestock to the local market, perhaps a few miles away, but they would’ve had little knowledge of anything outside of their small communities. It’s easy to imagine that the prospect of trading the daily toil on the farm for the excitement of the wider world would’ve seemed quite irresistible to many.
The drovers were rather charismatic figures. They were seen as tough, brave, and worldly – insofar as they’d experienced towns, cities, and places beyond rural Wales. There were all sorts of deals that could be made on the way from rural Wales to London. A drover might buy a wool coat from one place and leather boots from another, so that when a drover appeared in a poor farming community in the heart of rural Wales, or perhaps rural Scotland, he would’ve seemed like quite an exotic figure. Tenant farmers were often cripplingly poor, and many small farms were of insufficient size to support large families, so if one of your sons could get some work helping the drovers, that was considered a very good opportunity.
Before the advent of media, the drovers would bring news, gossip, and stories to rural communities. Ordinary people rarely traveled out of their own rural communities, so any stories that came from the wider world were received with great excitement, and the drovers’ knowledge of what lay over the horizon added to their charisma.
Overnight Stops
As they made their slow way toward the big cities, such as London, the drovers made frequent overnight stops to rest their cattle. The cattle would generally be enclosed for the night, and the head drovers would take rooms in an inn when they could, but the drover’s assistants, the young boys, often slept out in the open, under a hedge; if they were lucky, they were able to bed down in a barn. Some of the pubs, hotels, and inns where drovers stopped overnight are still open today, and their names often reflect their history. There are many pubs in rural Britain called “The Drover’s Arms” or the “Drover’s Inn” and such like. Not far from where I live is an alehouse called “The Bull,” which is an old drover’s inn, located on the edge of what was once a drover’s road.
Some of these drover’s inns had cock-fighting pits for entertainment in the evenings, and it was probably the case that many of the drovers were of the hard-working, hard-drinking type who appreciated the opportunity to gamble and drink the night away. A metal detectorist that I know has found several “drover’s tokens” (coins that were given as payment and could be spent at hostelries on the route). The fact that these coins were found under hedges suggests that they dropped out of pockets of drovers’ assistants while they were sleeping. It was no doubt a hard life on the road, but it would’ve also been hugely exciting, especially when compared to the simple pastoral life that most country folk were living.
Many of the old drovers’ roads have been incorporated into our modern road system and are now tarmac roads. However, some of these old roads have become footpaths and bridleways, with high banks on either side, giving clues to what their original purpose was. Groups of Scots pine trees were often planted around the places where drovers tended to stop for the night, and many of these trees, and their descendants, can still be seen today grouped near old pubs on known drovers’ routes. It’s thought that the drovers collected the pine cones as they walked and then would plant them for future use in the places where they stopped for the night.
As they traveled with their cattle, the drovers would frequently buy and sell goods along their routes as something of a side hustle. It’s known that some drovers would take woolen socks from rural shepherds and sell them in the cities, and goods only available in the cities could be sold in the more remote communities as the drovers made their way home.
Banking
Welsh Black cattle were of huge economic importance in Wales. These small, hardy animals could thrive on the rough, hilly land of Wales and were often called “black gold” due to their commercial value. When it came to walking long distances, Welsh Black cattle performed well. They were agile enough to cover rough ground and long distances, and they were good doers, which meant that they could manage to keep their condition on the long journeys to the large markets, such as Smithfield Market in London.
Drovers would collect cattle from various farmers as they traveled, and the drove would increase in numbers along the way. This meant that some sort of banking system was required. Huge amounts of money would ultimately be changing hands, and, on the way back from selling the cattle, a head drover might have to carry thousands of pounds with him. Carrying large sums in gold coins would not only be extremely heavy, but it would also put the drover at massive risk of being targeted by highwaymen and robbers, so bank notes and tokens became a necessity.
The first banks in Wales came into existence through the drovers. One of the famous early banks, known as the Bank of the Black Ox, was founded in 1799 by David Jones, who was a farmer’s son and a drover. The bank was named as such because of its links to the droving trade and because the bank’s notes were adorned with a stamped picture of a black ox. The Bank of the Black Ox continued until 1909 when it was sold to Lloyds Bank, thus ending the history of the last surviving private bank in Wales.
The Destination
Given that much of Britain was hilly and rich in rivers, the progress of the drovers was extremely slow, with perhaps just 10 miles a day being the average distance covered. It was important not to rush the cattle or else they’d reach the markets thin and worn out. So, there were frequent stops, and the journey from Wales to London might take several weeks. Sometimes cattle were shod in order to protect their feet, but one can only imagine how difficult it was to shoe such an untamed animal.
Routes were made by or for the drovers, as when we go back hundreds of years, it seems that roads were built more to facilitate the movement of livestock than for the movement of people. Livestock were, of course, a hugely important portable commodity. Cattle were used as currency, and therefore the movement of livestock was, for a time at least, more important than the movement of people. Drovers’ routes wound their ways across all of rural Britain linking up with more major routes that led into the larger cities and markets.
Change of the rails
The work of the drover continued largely unchanged for many hundreds of years, but then something arrived that radically altered life for everyone in Britain: the railway.
Britain has the oldest railway network in the world, and the first public railway was opened here in 1825. The arrival of the railways brought about a period of massive expansion, and it also heralded the beginning of the end for the drovers, as it became far faster and far more efficient to travel livestock long distances by rail. In 1866, Smithfield Market became connected to the railway system, and this allowed direct access from the countryside to the market. It’s thought that the last long distance cattle drove took place in 1870, and, although cattle and sheep continued to be walked to local markets, the days of the long droves to London were over, and it wasn’t long before people began to forget that drovers ever existed.
When the age of droving came to an end in Britain, some of our drovers emigrated to America to become cowboys, taking their cattle-handling skills with them. It’s nice to think that our histories might be linked in this way.
Josephine Roberts lives on an old-fashioned smallholding in Snowdonia, North Wales, and has a passion for all things vintage. Email her at josiewales2021@aol.com
