The McFarlane Churn

This wooden cylinder churn was made by J & A McFarlane, Albert Works, Springbank, Glasgow. It holds approximately three gallons and is bound front and back with iron hoops. The handle is of iron with a wooden grip.

Inside the churn are two beaters which were rotated when the handle was turned. The beaters would agitate the cream and force it to turn into butter. At the back of the churn is a small hole where the buttermilk would drain out.

An advert from a Dairy Supplies catalogue of 1894 gives the following details for a similar churn:

"Improved Cedar Cylinder Churn - These we consider by far the best small cheap churns on the market. It is made from the best Virginia cedar, it has a double beater and the crank is locked to the churn with a clamp and thumbscrew, which prevents leakage. Lock cannot break. The top is large and beater easily removed. The hoops are of galvanised iron and will not rust".

The small capacity of the McFarlane churn made it ideal for the crofter or smallholder who had only a couple of cows and wanted to make their own butter. It would have been a marked improvement on the plunge-dash type of churn which many crofters would previously have used. This was an ancient type of churn, generally looking like a large wooden bucket with a lid with a hole in it and long handled beater. Cream would be poured into the bucket, the beater placed inside and the lid put over the top. The handle would then have to be pushed and pulled up and down (plunged and dashed), time and again until the cream had been turned to butter. This was long hard and repetitive work. No wonder then that when more advanced churns were being invented the "Standard Cyclopedia of Modern Agriculture", published in 1914 stated: "The plunge-dash churn, indeed, is moribund, and must be classed amongst the vanished equipment of dairies".

We looked at the McFarlane churn and compared it in size with the larger Champion Churn. We decided that only somebody with a small farm would want to buy it, so we decided to set our advert in a croft.

We devised a storyboard outlining the action and decided to use characters which we scanned from the museum's photo collection.

In order to duplicate the action of using the plunge churn we videoed Katie (7) moving an old washing dolly up and down.

We then used the computer to break the video down into a series of pictures, from which we chose 3 that showed her arms in the best positions for using a plunge churn. Using a drawing program we then erased Katie from the 3 pictures leaving just her arms and the handle of what would now be our plunge churn. We coloured in Katie's arms to match our picture of the milkmaid and stuck them all together - and as if by magic we had a milkmaid using a plunge churn!

Ross and Alan used the video camera to record the action of the McFarlane churn in motion. We again used the computer to recreate the motion of the churn handle going round and of the milkmaid using it.

About the Project

Client List:

Castor Oil