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Olden Times
Olden Times
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Moat Williams wrote
about the 1870s: 'During that time the
country living conditions were much as
they had been for generations: pitiably
low wages, long hours of crippling
toil, bad housing, rough and scanty
feeding -
more dinner times than dinners!' Indeed
when village people are writing about
those days, food is a topic to which
they return again and again, food or
the
lack of it, the long hours of work and
how they entertained themselves. The
housewife with a hungry man and a
family of growing children, had her
work cut
out to keep them fed. A whole egg to
himself made a birthday treat for a
youngster. There was usually plenty of
fat bacon, because for a few shillings
the cottager could keep two pigs, one
for food and one for sale. The pig
provided a variety of food. Besides
pork and bacon there were chitlins,
cretlins,
brawn, trotters, liver, kidney and ham,
in fact all except the squeak! Small
fowl, blackbirds, thrushes and
fieldfares were taken to give variety
to the bill
of fare. Larks and pigeons were sought
after, and at rook-shooting time
[i]every
household had at least one rook pie
or crow tart. River fish, including
pike
and of course crayfish, were eaten
regularly. Vegetable gardens and
allotments
were used to their fullest extent, and
many vegetables were stored for the
winter. When wheat prices were
prohibitive, barley meal was
substituted. Some of
it was made into a roly-poly
called 'clangers' which was sometimes
so hard that
it had to be suspended in the
river all morning
before it could be eaten for the midday
meal. Wine was made from an astonishing
variety of things, even oak leaves and
squitch (couch grass). Beer was brewed
from mangels boiled with hops. Any kind
of leaves soaked in rum would make a
tobacco substitute.
People seldom
travelled much more than five miles
from home.
There were occasional trips further
afield by wagonet or even by train, to
foreign parts like Weston-super-Mare.
So the newcomer to the village was well
advised to tread delicately lest he
comment unfavourably upon the behaviour
of
someone to a person who might be that
somebody's aunt, uncle or cousin! This
is
still so today!
Amusement had to be
homemade or brought to the village -
the
swings and roundabouts of Minster
Feast, the performing bear, the
itinerant
fiddler for dancing. There were penny
readings (dreadfuls) as late as the
1880s.
A minstrel troup (black faces, curly
wigs) were popular entertainers and
there
was the church choir. On St.
Valentine's Day a certain village
worthy had the
children line-up along the side of his
garden wall and he gave them all
pennies
out of a wooden bowl, while they
sang, 'Valentine, Valentine, I'll be
your
Valentine.' The Harvest Home was
attended by the farmer and his wife and
all
farm hands. There was eating and
drinking and polite speeches while the
farmer
was there, but when he retired from the
proceedings, the festivities became
more
uproarious. Dissatisfied farm workers
changed their jobs in early October
before
ploughing began. At the Mop or Hiring
Fair, wearing something in his hat to
indicate the kind of employment he
desired (a bit of sheep's wool, some
cow
hair), the farmhand looked for a new
employer.
Moat Williams
commented on the dress of the village
children:
'Graceful young bodies encased in
hideous garments cut down from the worn
dresses and suits which fathers and
mothers had discarded; little girls
wearing
preposterous hats; a general
dinginess.' Sunday was a day of gloom,
enforced
church attendance, no games, best
behaviour at all times.
Mrs. Amy Blake in her
memoirs of early this century recalls
the fete and cricket match, the bowling
for the pig and the competition for the
best wagon and horses. The farmers
would load their wagons with children
and
take them for a ride round the village.
Although poor Amy had helped prepare
the
horses, she was not allowed to go to
the fete because her father thought it
was
sinful. The spring brought violet and
primrose picking, and watching the
hurdlemaker, Will Ferriman, at work. He
used to make the children bats and
whistles, and the blacksmith, Mr. Hall,
made the boys iron hoops and the girls
wooden ones to bowl. Tradesmen called.
The grocer, Mr. Monk, from Witney,
called
monthly for his order; there was also
Mrs. Pratley with cotton, lace, dusters
and laces; the baker, Mr. Norridge,
with his
lovely cottage loaves and hot lardies;
and Alf Godfrey, the paraffin man, who
also sold soap, soda, peppermints and
all the things necessary for the
kitchen
grate. Mr. Castle brought fish and old
Mr. Walker came with black and hog
puddings, and there were the gypsies,
who always gave her a thrill, with
their
pegs and prophesies. •
Before the school was
built Mrs. Lock used to teach children
in her cottage, and a night school and
Sunday school were held in another
cottage. The school was built in 1871
and was first used as a vaccination
centre
for a smallpox epidemic. Minster
escaped this epidemic but did not
escape from
diphtheria. One poor father carried his
small children on three successive days
to the churchyard! Amy Blake recalls
all the fun of the playground games,
but
Evelyn Baker tells how cruelly strict
and how handy the Headteacher was with
the
cane. There were two classes and the
head teacher's wife was the other
teacher.
When her husband was called up to the
war, she would leave the children to
sewing and gardening and go up to the
main road to watch out for the convoys
of
troops and to buy beer for the
soldiers. One day while she was away
the boys got
into her house and drank the beer and
smoked the 'fags'. The cane whistled
that
day!
Amy Blake, in
remembering the good things of those
days,
writes: `When babies were born your
next-door neighbour did the washing,
someone
else had the other children and helped
with the cooking and ironing. If the
old folk were ill someone had to sit
with
them through the night - there were
always willing people - no such thing
as a
district nurse! I remember our doctor
cycling from Witney to all the
neighbouring villages night or day.'
Evelyn Baker writes that less serious
illnesses were treated at home with
brimstone and treacle, raspberry
vinegar and
blackcurrent tea. Goosegrease or
Russian tallow from the millwheels was
rubbed
on the chest and covered with brown
paper. Grease off the church bells was
believed to heal shingles.
Amy Blake
concludes: 'The showpeople used to come
to the
village and do plays and shows like
[i]
Murder in the Red Barn and others. They stayed about
a
week. Life was simple. Plenty of hard
work and lots of fun and everyone
seemed
content and so life went on.' Evelyn
Baker remembers entertainment held in
the
school, the vicar giving lantern slides
and musical evenings by local talent.
Drama was performed in the ruins with
one memorable play of Robin
Hood.
The
Baker family moved from the old village
to
a Charterville bungalow. She
recalls: 'The bungalows on the estate
were never as
warm as the thick stone walled cottages
in the old village. Water was close to
hand, even if it had to be pumped up.
The privy was close to the house, next
to
the pig styes. They had iron grates in
most rooms and certainly they were
needed, our being on top of the hill
and exposed to all the winds. My mother
lost her first baby and she always said
it was moving up here. It just got
chilled and died.'
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