Attleborough Heritage Group
Turkeys being walked by drovers to Attleborough railway station in 1927. The practice of sending live birds to London dwindled with better refrigeration from the mid-1930s
Long before Christmas turkeys arrived shrink-wrapped in the shops, they walked to market on their own two feet.
First introduced to England in the 1500s, the birds gradually gained in popularity to become a must on the dinner tables of London’s wealthy.
But before the advent of refrigeration and the railways, getting turkeys from Norfolk and Suffolk farms to the capital involved a long walk for the birds.
In a practice known as turkey droving, thousands of birds, some wearing tiny leather boots, were herded through fields and along rough roads on a three-month journey.
At the heart of this tradition was one of Britain’s oldest breeds, the Norfolk Black, which was nearly lost to history until one farming family stepped in to save it.
Pat Graham
This 1990 re-enactment shows turkeys walking through Attleborough. In times past, drovers would walk the birds some three miles (almost 5km) each day
Pat Graham’s family, the Peeles, have been farming turkeys since the 1800s when demand grew among wealthy Victorian families.
The 84-year-old amateur historian recounts how the birds were walked to markets in Attleborough and Aylsham in Norfolk, to be sold to merchants who had travelled from London.
Once selected, the birds then set off with a “drover”, covering about three miles each day.
They arrived at the start of December at Smithfield Common in the City of London, where they were rested and fattened up for Christmas.
Norfolk Museums
A steam traction engine was used in 1913 by the Peeles’ Wymondham farm to transport plucked turkeys to London
“Because of their long journey, sometimes, especially if some of the smallholders had a few pet flocks, they would make little leather boots for them,” says Mrs Graham.
Most turkeys, however, would have their feet coated in a protective layer of hot tar and sand.
“There’d be flocks of up to 1,000 turkeys go down to London,” she says.
The drovers would forage along the way, picking berries, acorns and gleaning corn for the birds to eat.
The turkeys would roost at night in trees before being encouraged down in the morning with food and then walking on again.
Some died along the way or were eaten by predators.
The turkey drives to the capital ended when the steam engine and railways came along in the late 1800s.
By 1913, Mrs Graham’s father’s farm would instead slaughter and rough-pluck the birds, putting them on trains in wicker crates to arrive in London a week later.
Live birds were still walked but much shorter distances to railway stations, from where they were sent to the capital.
And from the mid-1930s, onwards improved refrigeration saw more birds slaughtered and sent on trains and lorries.
Pat Graham took over the family turkey-breeding business after her father Frank Peele died, and has written a book about the history of turkey farming in East Anglia
Pat Graham
Turkeys being hand-plucked at the Peeles’ Norfolk farm in 1905. The birds’ shape was different then, with a long breast, like a pheasant, and longer legs
It is thought turkeys were introduced to the UK by the explorers, Sebastian Cabot and William Strickland, who brought them back from the Americas in the early 1500s.
The black turkey, originally from South America, was said to have arrived in East Anglia during King Henry VIII’s reign, via Spain.
Mrs Graham’s father, Frank Peele, has been credited with saving the breed known as the Norfolk Black.
In 1931 he was asked by Britain’s poultry club to help preserve the breed, whose numbers had dwindled due to changing tastes.
“They found a dear old lady who had got a few black turkeys, and they got some eggs from her, and my father put them in a very old incubator and hatched them,” says Mrs Graham.
The Peeles still farm the Norfolk Black, now referred to as a heritage breed.
Pat Graham
The Norfolk Black turkey was saved after a concerted effort by Frank Peele
From the 1950s, demand for turkeys exploded when mass production breeding techniques were adopted, says Mrs Graham.
“After the war, you see, everybody wanted turkey. And so the turkey industry really went booming.”
