GENERATION 6 - EDMUND C.QUINE & MARGARET KILLIP
Edmund Corlett Quine was the eldest son. He started his education in Baldwin, but later travelled into Douglas with his siblings in the pony aand trap each schoolday. At one time as boys Eddie and Harold would be riding in to Douglas to school on horse-back, and were looked at somewhat enviously by the other Baldwin boys.
In 1915 Eddie had a bad accident when a horse he was leading alongside the railway track at the Quarter Bridge bolted. In pre-Health Service days, this could have been a great burden for a less affluent family. The hospital bill was £22 1s, and there was also Dr. Panton's bill. His father made a claim for medical costs to the Rechabite Tent for £1 5s 0d.
In the traditional Manx country way, Eddie as the elder son would have been heir to the farms at Baldwin, but the Quines had always made landed provision for second sons as well.. When T.E. Quine decided to retire , both Eddie and his younger brother Harold took the farm over from their father on 12th November 1920; their father placed his own valuation on the live and dead stock;
80 ewe lambs £280
175 ewes £1050
6 tups £36
6 horses & colts £150
30 cattle £575
1 bull £55
5 pigs £64
Crop £260
Implements £140
TOTAL £2610
Their farming operations were centred around lamb and milk production. In August and September 1920, 29 ewe and 64 weather lambs, 36 ‘fat’ lambs, 40 yearlings, 20 weathers and 21 old ewes were sold through Ballasalla and J. T. Faragher’s Marts. A further 8 lambs were sold to Crowe Brothers in November, bringing the income from this source to around £420. The clip yielded 1436 lbs, sold to Cowley’s for £32 18s 2d. An additional £79 was earned from cows and heifers sold during the year, but there is no record of milk or beef sales. Records for 1921/22 are more complete for the cattle side of the farming operation, and show milk sales to W. O’Dell & Co of some £90 over the summer months. Seven store cattle had been sold in the spring, for £88 and a bull was sold to John McKnight, butcher, for £37 6s in August. Oats was sometimes sold off the farm; 21 bolls fetched £21 in December 1922. Among the expenses, wages were paid to two men in 1922; John Corran earned £30 and David White £15 5s. Rent of £215 was paid to the partners’ father.
Wool prices were volatile, and the yield gradually rose.In 1921 a similar amount of wool was sold to a dealer for over £74. The 1924 clip yielded 1609 lbs and prices had risen, as £117 6s 6d was received from the buyer. There were lower prices until 1929, when 1s 51/4 d. per pound was achieved, bringing a record price of £136 11s 3d. Thereafter there was a collapse in prices, as the 1932 wool crop of a record 2254 lbs fetched only £47 5s. It was only in the 1940’s that the income from wool approached close to £200, and this was after Eary Ween had been acquired. Around this time, E.C. Quine became a member of Braddan Parish Commissioners, remaining on the Board from at least 1922 to 1946. His father had previously served for a similar period.
On Eddie’s marriage to Margaret Killip of Grawe, Lonan, they set up home in Ballachrink farmhouse. Eddie’s brother Harold stayed on with them. In September 1932, a few days after their father’s death, Eddies’s younger bachelor brother and farming partner, Harold, was found dead of a gunshot wound in a disused outbuilding close to the farmhouse. The gun had not been used for years, and Harold had no reason to be in the shed with the gun. High Bailiff Lay, who had drawn up T.E.Quine’s will, presided over the Inquest. He commented that both brothers had benefited equally and inherited extensive property under their father’s will, on which there was not a penny mortgage. Harold had no money worries, and there was no known motive for taking his own lif e. An open verdict was returned.
We know the stock which the farms were carrying at the back end of 1932 due to a valuation carried out by F.H. Crowe in connection with Harold’s estate;
Horses Crop 1 Foal Mare £24 95 bolls oates £47 10s 1 aged mare £12 7 tons hay £14 1 pony £13 Corn Binder £20 1 foal £9 2 Bogies £6 1 Cart £5 Cattle Turnips £16 11 Cows £132 Odd implements £10 1 Stock Bull £15 2 Calving Heifers £28 TOTAL £1040 10s 12 Store Cattle £102 8 Calves £32
Sheep
360 Sheep @ £1 1s £378 105 lambs @ £10s £52 10s 122 lambs sold £68 18s
Wool 17 cwt £47 12s
Eddie and Margaret Quine had no children to follow on at Ballachrink, and in 1938, one of Eddie’s nephews moved over from Kirk Michael to live with the Quines, and work on the farms.
At this time, Eary Ween came onto the market. This property lay further out the valley from Ballachrink, between Ballagarey and The Dhoon, with lengthy boundaries to each. For many generations the farm had belonged to the Cowleys, who were related through the marriage of William Cowley to Ann Quine (who died in 1778.) In the mid-nineteenth century John Quine of Ballachrink had been a trustee of Eary Ween for his cousin William Cowley junior. Later T.E. Quine had a mortgage on the property for £500 during the 1930’s, but this had been assigned and was no longer held by the family. According to Bobby Moughton who worked for the family, there was a great worry over who would end up living at Eary Ween, and whether they would prove to be good neighbours. The upshot was that Eddie borrowed money from his wife and bought the farm at auction for only £600. This effectively linked most of the Baldwin properties together.
Eddie did dispose of two relatively unimportant parcels of land at Creg e Cowin which were detached from the main Quine holding there, and were sold to the Kaneens who had rented them from his father.
When Eddie's nephew married Ruby Clague of Ballafreer in 1948, they took over as tenants at Ballachrink. Uncle Eddie granted a long lease of 21 years at a fixed rent of £230 per annum, although the new tenant was responsible for maintenance and all out-goings. Eddie continued to collect small rents from tenants in the other houses; Mr & Mrs Philip Garrett who kept beach donkeys at the Curragh or Quiggins place, paying £25 per annum from 1952; Abba Taylor at Ballagarey, Mrs Moore and her family at Eary Ween, and Mr. Hyde who rented The Dhoon at 5/- per week
At Union Mills, Braddan Parish Commissioners had laid out a few plots fronting onto the main road in front of their new housing estate at Snugborough. Eddie and Margaret Quine had a new house ‘Ardwyn’ built fronting onto the T.T. course there, where they lived in retirement. ‘Ard’ was for Arderry, and ‘wyn’ for Baldwin. The house stood on a good-sized plot. The rents on the Baldwin property provided the largest part of the Quine’s income in retirement, as capital had been spent on building ‘Ardwyn’, and about £90 per annum was forthcoming from British Government Securities and a private mortgage. Aunt Margaret had her own money, although she had advanced £600 to her husband to acquire Eary Ween during the depression when cash was hard to find.
At Baldwin the new tenant took on the farm workman Bob Moughtin to help him. Ruby bought the hens and ducks from Aunt Margaret. They moved into the old farmhouse built by John Quine in the 1860’s which was beginning to show its age. The young couple started their family when their daughter was born in 1949. ‘Uncle Eddie’ Quine stood as godfather to the elder son in 1952. He is now (2002) the seventh generation of the family to farm Arderry and Ballachrink
Sheep farming continued as the source of the family’s livlihood. In the last year of Quine ownership, the wool clip of the Ballachrink flocks was worth £520, more than paying the rent of the farm at £283.
On 24th December 1953, Edmund Corlett Quine died suddenly of coronary thrombosis at ‘Ardwyn’, bringing this branch of the Quines to an end in the male line. His smoking habit, coupled with the accident he had suffered as a young man may have contributed to his early demise at only 62 years old, although his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all lived into their eighties or nineties. Under the terms of his last will and testament , the farms and houses at Baldwin passed to his nephew who had been farming the land, subject to an annuity of £300 in favour of Aunt Margaret, who continued to live at ‘Ardwyn’ until she passed away in 1961. By leaving the Baldwin property in this way, the farms bequest was kept out of trust, and the provisions of the Settled Land Act did not apply. The annuity probably equated more or less to the rent roll from the property at Baldwin. There was also provision for a lump sum of £600 to be paid by the new owner to members of the Killip family, on Margaret’s death, which reflected Killip money invested in the purchase of Eary Ween. A sum of some £230 was still owing to the Anglican Church for Tithe Redemption on the farms.
The remainder of E.C. Quine’s estate was held by his Bank Manager nephew as a trustee during Aunt Margaret’s life, and then divided equally between the other nephews and niece. Ardwyn was sold in 1962 to Mr. Corkill, whose family still own the same.
RETURN TO FAMILY INDEX