Country Ways

By Terence Kearey

This is a story about the passage of time, from a Norman invasion to a narrowly-avoided German one. It tells of the joys and hardships of life in rural southern England through the seasons and through the centuries. It relates how a family coped with poverty and penury, and how one day in the 1930s a daughter went off to work in a mill. In due course this particular young woman went on to become a lady’s maid and eventually a London suburban housewife – and the author’s mother.

The tale is set in and around the town of Chard in the West Country, although many of the events described could have taken place almost anywhere in England. The family in the spotlight, the Collins family, were in the main men of the soil and women who toiled at home. Some were miners, made shoes or clay pipes, or repaired machines for the two main local industries, weaving and butter making. The lives of those men and women, and the lives of the community around them in a rural England which is now largely forgotten, are brought vividly and touchingly to life through this well-studied and meticulously-documented tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mereo Books
• Release date: Feb 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781908223579

Terence Kearey

Terence Kearey was born in North Harrow in 1935, one of three children of a hard-working lower middle class family. In the 1950s he embarked on a career in the printing and reproduction industry, but dismayed by the industrial greed and strife of the 1960s and 70s, he abandoned a successful career to become a college lecturer. Along the way he developed a keen interest in history and spent many years researching the story of his own family, all the way back to the Irish Ciardha clan of the Dark Ages from which the family name is derived. He has taken a similar interest in his mother’s family, the Collinses of Chard in Somerset.Having studied the lives and times of his forebears over the centuries, he has woven their stories together into a fascinating narrative thread which reaches all the way from the Irish clans of the early centuries AD to his own personal experiences of love, life, work, marriage and parenthood in the 20th century. He is now working on a film script involving moments from the first three of this quartet, Country Ways, History, Heroism and Home and A Changing World. His next book focuses on a key campaign of the First World War in which his father, Regimental Sergeant Major (later Major) Albert Kearey, played a key role.

Book preview

COUNTRY WAYS

A rural community through the centuries

Terence Kearey

Smashwords Edition

Copyright ©Terence Kearey, Petworth 2012

Published by Memoirs

MEMOIRS BOOKS

25 Market Place, Cirencester, Gloucestershire, GL7 2NX

[e-mail]

www.memoirspublishing.com

A companion volume to

History, Heroism and Home, A Distance Travelled and A Changing World

Without limiting rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior permission from both the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

Cover Design Ray Lipscombe

ISBN: 978-1-908223-57-9

Contents

Introduction

Preface

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 The lie of the land

Chapter 2 Settlement & enclosure

Chapter 3 The freeman & villein

Chapter 4 Mineral & land rights

Chapter 5 Outworking

Chapter 6 Good husbandry

Chapter 7 Social inequalities

Chapter 8 Village life

Chapter 9 Stream & riverbank

Chapter 10 The welcoming hearth

Chapter 11 Cottage, inn & church

Chapter 12 Crossways

Chapter 13 Through the seasons

Chapter 14 The harvest

Chapter 15 Schoolwork

Chapter 16 Elsie’s first job

Bibliography

Introduction

This is a story about the passage of time, from a Norman invasion to a narrowly-avoided German one. It is about lords of the manor and three-field systems. It tells of rural life through the seasons, how a family coped and a girl went to work in a mill. Its tells how, hoping for a better life, the girl went on to become a lady’s maid and later a suburban housewife. That woman happens to have been my mother.

The tale is set in and around the town of Chard in the West Country, although many of the events described could have taken place almost anywhere in England. It involves a burg that was tithable – ‘burgage land’, held in tenure by the church and receiving a charter from both the Bishop of Wells and King John in 1234 to become a borough. The manor of Chard and its sub-manor of Tatworth and surrounding hamlets continued through the ages, until the land sales in 1911. The local aristocracy had to pay their tithes like everyone else, but they benefited from land enclosure and settlement, unlike the village folk. The family in the spotlight, the Collins family, my family, were in the main men of the soil; others were miners, made shoes or clay pipes or repaired machines for the two main industries of weaving and butter making.

The events of the book took place inside the walled garden and the knapped flint cottage, among waistcoated men of good solid stock and their dependable womenfolk. The ford, arched bridge and water meadows are the location, backdrop, and stage. It is a familiar world, yet it is a world that has changed for ever.

Preface

The task I set myself when I began this book was to describe my mother’s roots, life and times, with little idea where it would lead. My own working life was connected to the world of pre-printing technology, starting at the age of fourteen in 1950 as an indentured lithographic artist working on stone. I then took up pen and pencil and wrote and illustrated booklets on rural trade matters for the Weald and Downland Museum.

There are other books with similar themes to Country Ways, but few have been able to describe the life so intimately, for I was there, and lived it.

I am grateful to Roger Carter, the Collection Curator of Chard and District Museum, for kindly providing the foreword.

Foreword

Terence Kearey contacted me with a query about the history of Tatworth and has since enquired about the Collins family. We have many such enquiries and usually, despite my request for feedback of the results of the enquirer’s research, nothing is heard again. To receive these results as a book is almost unique within my experience of nearly twenty years. It is indeed a pleasure to be invited to write a foreword to this book. Not only does it convey the useful and fascinating story of a local family but gentler, descriptive parts bring out the charm of the idyllic part of South Somerset, lying as it does in the lee of the glorious Blackdown Hills. I can therefore unhesitatingly recommend this as a most worthwhile book to read and keep as a source of reference about bygone life in Tatworth, local farming, the lace trade and the Collins family.

Roger W. Carter

Hon. Collection Curator

Chard & District Museum

Godworthy House

High Street Chard

Somerset

Acknowledgements

My grateful thanks for all the help I have received from the local library service at Petworth, together with Honiton and Chard and their Museums and Information Centres. Tatworth Parish Council, Chard History Group and the Parish Church and many other sources all too numerous to mention also require grateful thanks. The many books I consulted are listed in the bibliography.

I hope this book will encourage others to record their memories so that later generations will be more likely to understand what has gone before and what efforts others have made to develop a continuity of time and place. I have tried to be fair, reasonable and factual, but it is inevitable that some events and statements may have been missed and others misinterpreted or misstated. For any such errors I apologise.

In memory of my mother

CHAPTER ONE

THE LIE OF THE LAND

In the West Country, close to the town of Chard, lie a grassy mound and the remains of a trench. They are part of an Iron Age settlement, a ditch and earthworks which had their own hutted encampment. Rough grass now grows within the enclosure, giving cover to the rabbit, which never travels far from the warren. Close by, the partridge, neck thrust forward and keeping low to the ground, scuttles for cover. Everything of consequence lies at the foot of the hill. Those things beyond give a backdrop to these findings.

From the top of the earthworks the view is beautiful. It is the highest point in Somerset and from its height, you can see over many lesser hills and dales. It is the type of picture which lightens and warms long winter evenings, stirs the memory, reminds one of summer skies and the call of birds, of wind-blown sward, waving fronds of fern and nettle.

The bees are making full use of the wild flowers as they return repeatedly to carry the next golden harvest back to the hive. In the distance a plume of smoke rises from the charcoal burners’ mound, disappearing in the grey streamers of cloud, interspaced with brilliant blue, that skate by towards the darker grey horizon, heralding rain. Lower down a puffy white cloud scuds by, as graceful as a swan. The sun’s rays penetrate the breaks in the clouds to illuminate by turn the fields, the hill, and the distant farm buildings.

The grass-decked mound, its past associations with ancient folk recognised and considered, prompts us to seek out their source of fresh water for drinking. There, issuing from numerous springs, clear water fills brooks and streams which grow stronger as they wind their way down to the river. The ancient inhabitants of the settlement chose their encampment well.

Not far away a ribbon of road carries a wagon pulled by a pair of horses over a stone bridge. Watch the team pass through the gate as they enter a field. As your eye travels along the hedge and track, you spy a rick that has a bite out of it. It is to this that the wagon draws up for another load to be cut out for carting away. The driver saws out the next series of straw blocks which make up the next load, to make his way back over the bridge to the group of buildings lying in the distance.

The stream that travels under the bridge starts near to where you are standing and is a little lower than the warren. It wends its way down the hill – you can just make it out. It runs by cottage and farm through field and dale to land up, eventually, on one side of the main street of Chard. This is the river Isle; on the other side of the road runs the river Axe, which runs south to Tatworth and the sea beyond.

These rivers provide not only the reason why the town was there in the first place, but purpose for its one-time tanning industry. Their year-round waters, provided from perpetual springs, gave power to its mills.

To the east of the town is a ridge, which carries an important Roman road giving ease of access for the legionnaires to march and for chariots to drive westwards. These old roads, built so long ago, are still discernable today. They were purposely laid with their attendant forts to take the easiest, straightest route. On the uphill side of the paved way is the fosse – the ditch to take away storm water that is now full of weeds and grass. This gave the road its name – Fosse Way.

The prehistoric Iron Age was a period in England of forest clearance and a settled population. The countryside was dotted with settlements made up in the main of extended family units. It is highly likely that the burg had a few homesteads, for it was surrounded by a rich countryside with ample water. This period lasted from about the middle of the first millennium BC until the time the Romans invaded.

Celtic people populated the West Country, originally from Ireland and Gaul, members of the Durotriges tribe. During the Roman occupation of central and eastern Britain, there was a great deal of trade. The Romans left the West Country alone, not fearing any attack. The relative isolation of the West Country, other than coastal trade, continued until after The Dark Ages and almost up to The Hundred Years War and the building of Exeter Cathedral.

The rural Pagani worshipped their native gods, speaking in the Celtic tongue and gradually adopting Latin. Their tribal lands were closer to the line that separated Roman Britain and the Celtic West Country. The west of England was consolidated into Saxon England proper towards the end of the first millennium, after the Romans had left, and encompasses The Dark Ages and Aethelred I.

Over a hundred years later King William’s Doomsday survey, catalogued in 1086, declared that Chard was owned by the church, but would be recorded for the assessment and collection of the ‘geld’ or land tax. In this there was no exemption from paying royal tributes, which included the provision and upkeep of armed men. As the land comprised eight hides (a hide was about 120 acres), and one man was to be provided per six hides, we will be generous in stating that the Bishop had to provide one armed man for the king’s service and pay towards the upkeep of bridges and highways.

He also had to hand over any fines (fees) from legal jurisdiction. He may have been able to levy fines and receive them instead of the king’s sheriff, but that privilege was not universal. The first time we come across the name Thatteworhe is about 1320, relating to someone of that name holding land attached to a dwelling house.

The geography of the market town of Chard, which sits upon the main arterial road leading to Honiton and London, Bath and Bristol, made it a valuable trade link. This geographical reason made Honiton one of England’s main lace production centres. It gave the driver of the pack-horse caravan a route to Somerset and beyond, to Devon villages, which lay in the valleys, particularly those to the south towards Axminster, and Lyme Bay. It is believed the skill of lace making began in the late 1300s, in Beer, Branscombe, Honiton, Otterton and Sidbury.

This close relationship is typical of trade routes – from outworking ‘cottage industry’ to make-up centres in towns. Horses and wagons, pack animals and walking traders made their way to outlying towns and ports. Ships carried the finished products across the Channel to the continent.

The discovery or invention of any industrial product leads to the construction of a factory. This industrial centre requires power, a delivery of material and a pool of skilled labour. This in turn leads to associated trades developing close by. When one product is overtaken by fashion or new technology, the former adapts. This occurs particularly when a product or technology is found in large towns or cities where local wealth relies upon maintaining full employment. This cycle occurred in Chard, each industry using the same source of power – the river. Later this was augmented by steam at about the same time the canal was built.

Chard’s industry grew in the fifteenth century from tanning leather. A hundred years later wool production took over as the major trading product. It would also be natural and convenient to expect wool to be used locally to weave. The cloth trade gave much employment in the town – spinners, carders, sheremen, fullers and dyers all were needed; so too, shuttle-makers, tearers, weavers and loom-makers, all giving industry to the area.

The manufacture of woollen cloth was this town’s only industry in the 1550s. It was indeed fortunate for the town and its citizens that the materials and skills needed for weaving and lace making were interchangeable, not forgetting Chard’s geographical position close to two rivers, on a trade route from coast to London. Three- quarters of the male population and ninety percent of women could neither read nor write and most goods were manufactured in the home. In the late sixteenth century silk weaving and the knitting of silk stockings complemented the wool trade, each using similar crafts. Both offered skills to the lace-maker. Bone lace received its title from the use of sheep’s trotters for bobbins. Fish and bird bones provided the pins.

The weaving of silk on handlooms still operated in 1870. It began in England during the reign of James I, who promoted the skill of knitting silk stockings. Mulberry trees were planted to feed the silkworms, and there were many gardens that catered for this industry. Another village industry was cheese making, producing cream and butter – the village of South Chard, within walking distance of Tatworth, had the butter factory where my granddad and uncles worked, just before and during the Second World War. The factory was modelled on cleanliness, an important factor for butter making.

About the same time as the weaving of silk stockings, the introduction of lace making was being encouraged. In about 1570, Flemish refugees who had fled to England settled in Hertfordshire, and later in Buckinghamshire. King William III's bill for lace amounted to £2459 19s in one year, and his wife, Queen Mary’s was £1918. These were considerable sums of money, demonstrating the importance of the trade.

By the 1700s, lace making was very firmly based in Honiton and served by outlying villages as a cottage industry. The wold gave up its brush to become cultivated to grow woad for the dyers. The workers, with other woodlanders, lived off the woods and forests. The summer work went on, growing the crop, cutting the leaves, grinding them into a paste then shaping it into balls to dry in the sun.

In England, the wool industry was linked to rural life and the use of cottage craftsmen. There was no production line. Excess was bartered, and interest led to skills being perfected. Later the need for mass production prompted the workers to join forces, to form communes relying upon each other. This voluntary act prompted by an obvious need became a necessity and finally, an important part of the area’s economy and a source of trade for the local and national exchequer. Many tradespeople hired out manufacturing equipment and raw materials, particularly cloth. Whole families would turn their hand to help spin and weave. Cloth was England’s largest export.

The major agricultural improvement came with the invention of a modern plough which considerably increased output. The Enclosure Acts replaced the old ‘open field’ system, and the new system helped achieves proper drainage, crop rotation and hedging.

In 1648 the Manor of Chard was taken away from the church and the king’s steward and given to Col Nathaniel Whetham as part payment for services rendered. The manor was land granted by the king as an inheritance, subject to the performance of such services and yearly rents as were specified. A cottage, according to a statute of law proclaimed by Edward I, is a house with land attached to it. An even earlier definition stated that those who dwelt in cots or cottages, were ‘bound’ freemen, providing a fixed service for the lord of the manor and not work for anyone else.

The Collins family were long established in Chard and its sub-Manor Tatworth. Their life was a reflection of many others that make up England’s heritage.

Chard’s sub-manor was arranged as a three open-field system, cultivated in a three-year rotation of white corn, wheat, rye, and barley, and peas and oats, one field resting fallow. The two main production fields raised corn crops on the furlongs – ground cultivated in strips.

Each farmer had rights over his land, which was scattered across the manor. The decision about what was planted and when, was made communally; all the men worked together sharing the oxen, ploughs and other tools under the direction of the Reeve. The other main activity was looking after the animals – sheep and cattle, on the common grazing land. One looked after the lord’s oxen, grazing the water meadows.

Each village gave work to a miller, a baker and an ale-house- keeper who sold provisions. They all worked in unison, as did all the other tradesmen. Each farmer gave a percentage of the grain to the miller for grinding his corn. The flour produced he used for his own household – any extra was sold to the baker. He in turn sold the bread to the tradesmen who did not work the land but needed loaves. Some of the grain went to the brewer to make into ale, providing all with brew.

The craftsmen needed the skills of the smelter and the foundry. The charcoal maker needed his axe and knives forged and sharpened. The blacksmith made up the farming tools, and the wheelwright wrought his rims; the carpenter put on the handles and made the yokes. The shoemaker and leather worker shaped the soles and cut the traces. The basket maker and weaver all exchanged their wares for basic materials from the farmer and his field. It was a part-bartering system that worked well; the wise Reeve saw to it that no one was given short change.

All these trades with their craftsmen had rights too, just as the farmer did. The tradesmen’s sons took over from their father, keeping the skills within the family and making themselves indispensible. They too had to pay for the privilege of working for the lord even though they were freemen. When there was trouble, they had to join the lord’s conscripted army, and when the harvest needed to be gathered in, they became farm labourers. It is only through long service that they could purchase their freedom from forfeiture.

Up to the late Middle Ages, the power in the land lay with the king, who owned all the land. The king awarded some of his land to relations and those who helped him – his lords. Both the king and lords gave land to the church so that they might be redeemed. A manor is principally a territorial unit, which corresponds to the parish.

The manor included settlements referred to as ‘vills’, which corresponds to villages, hamlets, and large farms. Most of England and Wales was divided up into manors. All the land in the manor was overseen by the lord or his tenants and was held as principle tenures being freehold and copyhold. The freehold tenants held their land by grant from the lord in return for a definite service. Military service was usually commuted in course of time for a money payment or ‘quit rent’ – quit of his personal service.

The copyhold tenants, whose evidence of title was their copy of the entry in the Court Rolls recording their admittance, owed various services, was usually particular to the parish. These included heriots, forfeiture, the obligation to do fealty to the lord, and suits and services of many different kinds. A heriot was the best live beast – horse or ox – of which the tenant died possessed, or sometimes his best chattel –