Fen and Upland – Part 3

THE LAST TWO CENTURIES

THE POPULATION
In telling something of the history of the Church in our area we have reached recent times. It is necessary to say rather more about some of the changes in the last century and a half and worth recalling some of the events of this period. The skeleton of the history of the period is revealed by the population changes which took place. The population of every parish rose steadily from 1801, to reach a peak near the middle of the century. Then began a catastrophic fall which affected every parish except Willingham. in Elsworth it began between 1841 and 1851 ; in most parishes between 1851 and 1861, but in Conington only after 1861 and in Fen Drayton after 1871. Between 1901 and 1931 the population of most villages was at or below the 1801 figure; in many cases this meant a fall of 10% to 50% from the mid-century population peak. The parliamentary enclosure movement, which ended the strip system of farming in most Camhridgeshire parishes in the first half of the nineteenth century, may have brought prosperity to agriculture until the agricultural slump which followed 1874, but to the labourers it brought economic distress. They fled from the villages and many emigrated. The 1841 Census return noted that “upwards of 100 persons have emigrated to the United States since 1831” from Willingham alone, and Willingham was the one parish whose population increased through the century! From 1871 to 1951 the Census returns show an extraordinary alternation of a rise and a fall in Willingham population every decade, but each rise was higher than the fall in the previous decade, so that in 1911 Willingham had 1695 inhabitants as compared with 1604 in 1851 and 795 in 1801. The population of Swavesey began to rise again between 1921 and 1931 and almost every village had a larger population in 1951 than in 1931. Long Stanton and Fen Drayton increased extraordinarily in population the population of Long Stanton more than trebled, rising from 416 to 1481, due to the arrival of RAF. personnel with the building of an airfield ; the population of Fen Drayton more than doubled, rising from 204 to 484, due to the development of the Land Settlement. Apart from these two changes, brought about by external influences, the rise, fall and recent rise in the population of most villages epitomizes their agricultural and social history.

The records of the poor introduce us to life at the bottom of the social scale, in the seventeenth century Swavesey still had a guildhouse with a resident master which served both as poorhouse and workhouse in the literal meaning of the latter word. In the early eighteenth century relief of the poor in kind was more common. The overseer of Swavesey spent, in a half-year in 1737,  £44. 12s. 6d. on the following goods

•                                                                             £          s             d
•           To ye weekly bill ye 1^st Qtr                   9          5             0
•           Do. 2^nd Qtr                                             12           6             3
•           To ffewell                                                  8         17             0
•           First By Bill                                               1         18             9
•           Second by Bill                                          1         18          2½
•           To Mr. Cutcheys Bill                               1          5          6½
•           To ye repairs of ye Town House                     11             6
•           To ye rents                                                 6        10             9
•           To Abatements                                                    19             6
•           To carrying Mary Benstead to
  Landbeach Per Order and Expenses          1          0             0
•                                                                                ———————
•                                                                             £44        12             6

The ‘bv’ bills included payments during sickness, clothing expenses, shoe repairs, and the purchase of spinning wheels and reels.
Some Returns made to the House of Commons in 1803 give us a picture of the quantity of unemployment and poverty in the area at that time and suggest that this had greatly increased at the end of the eighteenth century. The Poor, that is the unemployed and unemployable, aged. sick and orphaned children, were maintained out of the Parish Rates, which also paid for road maintenance, church repairs and many other local government functions. But the Poor Rate was the largest item, by far, as education is in the County Rate today – perhaps a measure of our social advance in a century and a half. In 1803 the expenditure on the Poor amounted to more than two-thirds of the total Rates in every parish except Long Stanton All Saints and Fen Drayton; in these two cases it was more than half the total. But in the larger parishes, Swavesey, Over, Willingham, and in Lolworth the expenditure on the poor was much higher in Swavesey it was over five-sixths and in all the others over seven-eighths of the total Rates. Now this was something new, for a quarter of a century earlier the Rate burden had been much lower. Between 1776 and 1803 the sum collected in Rates increased in Fen Drayton by about two and a half times, and in Madingley by more than fourteen times ; it is suggestive that in 1803 Fen Drayton spent, relatively, such a small percentage of its rates on the poor. The lowest increases, by three to four times, were in Boxworth, Dry Drayton, Over and Long Stanton All Saints ; in all the other parishes the sum collected in Rates increased by six, seven or eight times, in Lolworth by twelve. Childerley, which had only 47 inhabitants in 1801, actually increased the sum collected in Rates from £2. 19s. 6d. in 1776 to £66. l0s. in 1803, but the parish was exceptional. The Lyson’s account of Childerley in Magna Brittannia, published in 1808, was that “there is now only one cottage besides the old mansion” and this, earlier “the seat of the Cutts family, is occupied as two tenements by farmers who rent the estate”. The rate in the £ levied in 1803, incidentally, ranged from 1s. 9d. in Conington and 2s. in Childerley to 6s. 2d. in Knapwell, 6s. 7½d. in Willingham and 7s. 4d. in Long Stanton St. Michaels.

It seems evident from these figures that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the area contained a substantial section of the population who were unable to keep themselves alive unaided. Whether such a situation was the consequence or the cause of a rapid rise in population has been much debated. In 1785 Dry Drayton spent £7. 16s. ld. “in setting the poor to work”. In 1803 Long Stanton St. Michaels spent 18s. but with no return, while Over made £76. l4s. 8d. out of the work of the poor, apparently spending nothing in the process. The numbers of parish paupers were alarming. From 1921 to the late l930s between 10% and 20% of the population of Britain were unemployed and these years have come to be thought of as the worst our country has known in this respect; some areas naturally had far more than a fifth of the population unemployed at this time. In 1803 6.37% of the adult population of the fourteen villages in our area were permanently relieved from the Poor Rate and another 6.77% were occasionally relieved ; a further 5.34% on permanent relief were children of fourteen or under. The situation must have been comparable to that of the country as a whole in the l920s and 1930s. Villages were unequally affected. In Boxworth, Childerley, Conington, Dry Drayton, Elsworth, Knapwell, Long Stanton All Saints, Madingley, Over and Swavesey, less than 20% of the population were relieved from the Rates. In Fen Drayton, Willingham, Lolworth and Long Stanton St. Michaels the figure was between 21% and 39%. These averages conceal the fact that the situation was, in general, worse in the larger villages near the Ouse than in the smaller, upland villages. 21.5% of the 2971 people who lived in Fen Drayton, Swavesey, Over, Willingham and the two Long Stantons in 1801 received relief in 1803; but only 12.9% of the 1798 inhabitants of the eight upland villages. The difference must have been connected with the site not the size of the villages, for the two large upland villages, Dry Drayton and Elsworth with 964 inhabitants between them had only 11.1% of their population on poor relief. Some of the individual village figures are appalling Willingham had 78 adults on permanent relief and 77 on occasional relief, and 94 pauper children in addition; while Lolworth with only 98 inhabitants in 1801 had 14 on permanent and 3 on occasional relief with 21 children as well.
The situation had not greatly improved by the 1830s. The answers which Frederick Robinson, Overseer of Over for four years, gave to the Poor Law Commissioners in 1834 are revealing. He had spent 17s. ld. per head on the poor in 1831 No regularly employed labourers were receiving additional relief from the parish, but the overseer was ‘compelled to employ’ able-bodied men applying for work, and this he resented. In answer to a question about the industry of labourers in the neighbourhood, Robinson replied: “Certainly decreasing, and must, I think, continue to do so, while able-bodied men are allowed to apply to a parish for work, and the overseer is compelled to employ them. Where the parish has 40 or 50 employed, it is quite impossible they can all be attended to. They receive their money without any adequate equivalent in the shape of labour. Hence habits of idleness are formed, and we find that they do not want to leave the parish, except in the busy seasons of the year, when large wages are given.” Furthermore money from a parish was formerly considered a degradation; but now, in the busy seasons of the year, if a labourer can go into an adjoining parish, and earn 1s. a week more, he will leave his old master, well knowing the magistrates will compel the parish to maintain him when he returns.”

Robinson clearly believed that the Poor Law itself was responsible for the distress, but there were more fundamental reasons. Can we learn something from the differences between the upland and fenland edge parishes? There are two factors to be considered. At the end of the eighteenth century the drained Fens were in a deplorable condition and the consequent economic distress may have affected those villages lying next to the Fens, along the Ouse, more than the remoter villages. The other factor was Enclosure. Most of the villages in our area were still largely cultivated in Open Fields. The growing distress suggests that the Open Field System in the area was not capable of adjustment to the fluctuations in the fortunes of the nation’s agriculture, which began in the late eighteenth century and have continued to our own day. We have already seen that some of the land in Long Stanton, Willingham and Over had been enclosed in the seventeenth century, but not much. According to Lysons ‘in the reign of King Charles I Sir John Cutts depopulated the whole parish (of Childerley), for the purpose of improving his park”.
Charles Vancouver, in his study of the Cambridgeshire agriculture of 1794, pointed to the different yields in bushels per acre obtained in enclosed Childerley and unenclosed Hardwick, although both parishes had “a perfectly similar soil’:

•                                                     Childerley         Hardwick
•            Wheat                                    24                     16
•            Barley                                    36                     18
•            Oats                                       36                     18
•            Peas and Beans                 20                      8

Knapwell had been enclosed in 1775 and Elsworth was enclosed by an Act of Parliament of 1800. Madingley belonged in entirety to the Cotton family and, it seems from a map dated 1811, that they enclosed the parish at this date, creating distinct farms. The Long Stantons were enclosed by Acts of Parliament of 1811 and 1813. All Saints was enclosed in 1816 the Hatton family owned most of the parish. Six open fields and Cow Common were enclosed, the Hattons acquiring 1700 acres, but the remaining 200 odd acres were given in small lots to those villagers who had previously held some land or rights.

The fenland edge parishes were enclosed much later. Over had had small enclosures in 1629 and 1801 but 3,683 acres were enclosed under the Act of 1837. The enclosure took two or three years to complete and it left the ownership of land still scattered. In 1840 the Enclosure Commissioners awarded the Green to the inhabitants and in 1896 the Charity Commissioners allowed the ownership to be vested in the Parish Council. Swavesey was enclosed under an Act of 1837. Willingham’s Act was passed in 1846. On November 9, 1844, the Cambridge Chronicle and Journal contained a notice from Pemberton and Thrower, Solicitors “that Application is intended to be made to Parliament in the next session for leave to bring in a Bill or Bills for Dividing, Allotting, and Inclosing the Commons, commonable Lands, Common Fields, Meadows, Pastures, Moors, Wastes, and Wastes Grounds in the parish of Willingham in the county of Cambridge; and for extinguishing all Rights of Common, and other rights and privileges, upon and over the said lands, and for conferring other rights and privileges ; and also for Draining, Improving, Warping, and Embanking certain of the Low Fen or Marsh Grounds, in the said parish of Willingham ; and also for the purposes last aforesaid, to make and maintain New Cuts, Drains and Tunnels, and other Works, and to alter, extend, improve, and maintain existing Cuts, Drains, Tunnels, and other Works, in the said parish of Willingham.
“And it is also further intended to insert in the said Bill or Bills power from time to time to raise money for the purpose of defraying the expence of the said Bill or Bills, and for other the purposes aforesaid, by levying a rate or rates upon the owners or occupiers of the said Lands intended to be divided, allotted, inclosed, drained, improved, warped, and embanked as aforesaid, or by some other means to he in the said Bill or Bills provided.”
On January 25, 1845, the Cambridge Independent Press contained the following notice “A meeting was held in the School-house, according to previous announcement on Thursday last, to take into consideration the inclosure of the parish, Dr. Graham, the rector, presided. After a good deal of discussion, it was agreed not to apply for a Bill in the next session of Parliament ; but instructions were given to Messrs. Pemberton and Thrower, solicitors, who attended the meeting, to propose a Bill for the Session of 1846, previous to which, it will be laid before the several proprietors for approval. So far the inclosure is settled, and before two more years have passed over our heads, we shall see the extensive commons and fields of Willingham divided into convenient allotments, which we cannot help thinking will be of palpable benefit to all classes in the parish”.
This was the decade in which the Repeal of the duties on Corn was being debated and the agricultural community formed a Protection Society. On January 4th, 1845, the Cambridge Independent Press contained a dry comment from Willingham on its efforts – “The Cambridgeshire Agricultural Protection Society have sent, through the secretary, Mr. Twiss, a quantity of pro–corn law publications to Mr. George Poynter’s, George Inn, in this village, for him to distribute among the labouring population. It is feared they will do very little towards forwarding the cause intended; for, be it known, that there is scarcely one of fifty amongst that class of individuals in the parish that can either read or write their own name and yet we live within nine miles of a University town.”
The 1851 History, Gazetteer and Directory of Cambridge commented that “pursuant to an act passed in May 1846, commons to the extent of 3,169 acres 3 roods 10 poles were enclosed, and the extent of the old enclosure was 1,492 acres, 3 roods, 10 poles. The soil is rich and fertile, and an engine of eight horse power has been erected for the drainage of the fen”.

We have not studied the process of Enclosure in the area in detail. Such a study would tell us much more about the effects of Enclosure on the productivity and economic prosperity of farming and make clearer the social consequences which followed from the change. The general picture is suggested in two works, respectively of 1847 and 1851. In the first, Samuel Jonas, commented on the consequences of enclosure that “few counties, if any, have improved more in cultivation than Cambridgeshire has lately done”; but he noted that the “western side of the county” was not as well managed as the similar clay lands in the east, “particularly as relates to drainage”, On the other hand the improvement in fenland farming, from new drainage measures and the new process of claying the surface peat, was “truly wonderful”. James Caird, writing in 1851, revealed the other side of the picture “incendiary fires are said to be of almost nightly occurrence in this and the adjoining part of Huntingdonshire. Many of the farmers live in constant apprehension of them. In any district of England in which we have yet been, we have not heard the farmers speak in a tone of greater discouragement than here. Their wheat crop, last year, was of inferior quality, the price unusually low, and, to add to this, their live stock and crop are continually exposed to the match of the prowling incendiary.” The incendiarism “argues discontent among the labouring class, for which the low rate of wages may in some degree account, 7s. to 8s. a week being the current rate. Cottage rents are from £2 to as much, in some parishes, as £4 or £5, so that a labourer on 7s. a week has little to spare for the necessaries of life after paying his landlord 1s. 6d. or 2s. out of it. Labourers are fairly employed.” This discontent was not new. In 1834 Frederick Robinson of Over had answered the Poor Law Commissioners’ enquiry as to the cause of the agricultural riots of 1830-1:’ I consider it arose from the feeling of hatred on the part of the poor man, brought on by the present poor laws. The poor look upon the farmer as their oppressor, and the magistrate as their benefactor.” By 1851 the Poor Law had been radically changed and the able-bodied poor were being driven to get work by a Workhouse Test. The poor were worse off than ever and emigration increased, even though farming was improved. In 1874 just before the slump the Hattons of Long Stanton sold 1000 acres, including Home farm to William Phypers; there was a mortgage of £40,000 on the 1000 acres so the land was probably worth about £60 an acre. In 1896 the mortgagees foreclosed and brought a High Court action to prevent Phypers’ widow selling the hay and straw. They claimed that, due to the depression, “the present value of the land is much less than the amount due to the plaintiffs on their mortgages’’. When Home farm (400 acres) was finally sold, in 1905, to John Longwill it brought in only £16 an acre; the rent was then 17s. 6d. an acre, 5½%. Land mortgaged at £40 an acre in 1874 was sold at £16 an acre in 1905! Incidentally the depression was not over in 1905, for in 1938 the farm was sold again and only brought in £11 an acre.
This depression produced important changes in farming methods and in local crops. As the Victoria County History records of an area to the north of Cambridge, which includes Long Stanton, Willingham and Over: “since the middle of the 19th century a strong concentration of fruit growing (especially apples, plums, gooseberries, and strawberries) has here developed. There is also a very substantial output of market-garden produce (asparagus, cauliflowers, broccoli, brussel sprouts, dwarf beans, and peas), while in recent years the introduction of cutting flowers (pyrethrums, scabious, iris, gladioli, asters, marguerites, gypsophila, etc.) and of nursery stock has been of considerable importance. Small holdings, of 20 acres or less, producing these intensive crops are numerous in the district, while there are a large number of part-time holdings of an acre or so in the occupation of agricultural labourers and other wage-earners. Poultry and pigs are kept largely to utilize by-products and to make manure.
The war years brought changes. The government decreed that flower growing must be reduced to 10% of the 1939 acreage. So Willingham turned over to tomatoes. In 1942 there were 280 acres of outdoor tomatoes under cultivation as against 2 or 3 acres in 1939 and perhaps 10 today. Flowers came back after the war. Willingham’s main glass house crop today is chrysanthemums, with lettuces and tomatoes as catch crops, in the open flowers and fruit. Over has developed the cultivation of statice and other flowers; white varieties are often dyed in various colours, and this has produced the local pun “we dye, to live”.

It is appropriate that it is in this neighbourhood, at Fen Drayton, that one of the Land Settlements developed in the 1930s. The Land Settlement Association was formed in 1934 to settle unemployed industrial workers on the land. At Fen Drayton today only two of the original settlers, still have a holding. Since the 1939-45 war new settlers are only accepted if they have had some agricultural or horticultural experience. But the Settlement has led to a much more intensive use of the land. Mr. Evison’s corn and fruit farm of some 300 acres employed not more than 16 to 18 people. The Land Settlement Association bought this farm in 1935 and today there are 50 tenants on the estate and 32 full time staff employed by the Association, with some 30 further casual workers employed between April and December.
When the Association was established, the first tenants lived in Fen Drayton House (the ‘Big House’), which had been Mr. Evison’s home, while roadmaking and preparing the estate. They moved into the holdings as they became available. These consist of 3 to 5 acres, a dwelling house, and a 60 ft. by 25 ft. heated glasshouse, usually of the Dutch light type. Most of the tenants have further glasshouses of their own. While the area under glass in the country as a whole has been decreasing, that in Fen Drayton is growing.
In the early days a strip cropping system was used (see p. 21). Today an estate machinery pool carries out all the tillage and a propagating department raises approximately 130,000 tomato plants a year for the tenants. The Settlement is co-operative, the estate packing station grades, packs and despatches the crops and the estate office keeps the accounts. The production has risen, as has the labour employed. Of the 200 acres let to smallholders, about 50 acres are under grass for pigs and poultry. The remaining 150 acres produce crops with annual sales of about £140,000. over £900 p.a. per acre.

Just as the farming and life of the villages has changed in the last century, so has local government. The 1851 Cambridgeshire Directory described Willingham at length and its description brings home how much of local government that is now undertaken by full time experts was then the responsibility of local people in their spare time “Here is an association for the prosecution of felons, comprising nearly all the farmers of the district, and of which Mr. H. W. Wilson is secretary.  The Charity School was founded in 1593 when £158. 8s. was raised by subscription for its support…Twenty-four children are taught free. Almshouses, for 4 poor widows, were endowed in 1616.” The village had recently been affected by transport improvements “letters are received through the St. Ives Post Office”. “The village…stands…2 miles north from the Long Stanton station of the Cambridge and St. Ives railway. Before the present turnpike road was made, the only carriage road from Cambridge to Ely passed through the village. Large quantities of cheese used to be made here, though it took its name from the neighbouring parish of Cottenham”.
In 1835 control of the Poor Law had passed from the Parish Officials to the Board of Guardians elected for a Union of several parishes. In 1833 and 1856 the powers of the old Manor Courts were restricted. In 1872 parishes ceased to have to appoint parish constables. In 1859 the Cambridge Independent Press and Chronicle had reported “The British School at Willingham which was opened in November, 1856, is now entirely free of debt. On the lst instant the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon preached two sermons on behalf of the school and the collections raised the handsome sum of £33. Not a farthing of Government money has been accepted for the building of the schoolroom which is the sole property of the inhabitants of Willingham. The school now numbers upwards of 200 on the books with about 140 in regular attendance.” But in 1870 the government assumed direct responsibility for providing education and School Boards were elected to fill the gaps left by voluntary provision. Finally in 1894 Parish and District Councils were established by Act of Parliament, the day of the Vestry and the Magistrate was over. On Dec. 4, 1894, the first election for the Parish Council took place in Willingham “There were twenty-seven candidates. The following fifteen were elected with the number of votes polled :- George Lack, 125 ; Edmund Smith, 109; Charles Smith, 102 ; H. G. Few, 101 ; J. Watkins, 100, J. M. Smith, 99 ; W. T. Barker, 93 ; Alfred Denson, 92 ; Cornelius Raven, 91; E. S. Thoday, 91; R. Osborn, 90 ; P. L. Poulter, 90 ; G. Hopkins, 90 ; J. Bullard, 83 ; I. F. Thoday, 99. The first meeting of the Parish Council was held on December 3lst, 1894, and the Rev. J. Carvath was the first chairman.
The Rural District Councils were created at the same time for a period there was an R.D.C. centred on Swavesey. It became part of the Chesterton R.D.C.

Swavesey had its own active local government life in the nineteenth century, some of which we have described on p. 68. We might add to this the story of Swavesey’s fire and fire engine. This was bought in 1827 from Merryweathers of London. Their records contain the entry “1827 Sep. 19. Per order of Mr. Thos. Mortlock and Mr. James Garner. A powerful second-hand (patent) fire engine (British) with copper branch pipe, brass nose pipe, 3 new lengths of leather pipe, 40 feet each, with brass screws, copper strainer, and two hose winches. Inscription ‘Swavesey Subscription Engine 1827’ in yellow letters shadowed….(per agreement) £105”. The fire engine was still in use in 1913, when Swavesey experienced a disastrous fire. Since the engine was second-hand in 1827 it was probably at least a century old in 1913 ; the firm which supplied it stated that it had originally been made for the British Fire Office. The old engine came under criticism after the fire but Swavesey’s P.C. Plowman stated “We were beaten altogether by the fierceness and the suddenness of it all….I timed it all, and I’ll swear that twenty houses were blazing all within five and twenty minutes”. In about two hours all the 28 houses affected were destroyed. It was natural, however, that the Weekly News and Express should comment editorially “The remedy, it seems to us, lies in the hand of the county authorities. There are two alternatives. Several up-to-date manuals might be purchased and placed in centres that would serve convenient groups of villages, or a modern motor fire engine should be stationed at some centre whence it could be despatched to any part of the county.”

The fire must have turned public opinion in Cambridgeshire against thatch roofs, for the Press reports constantly emphasized that “all the twenty-eight buildings had thatched roofs, and owing to a very high wind blowing they all caught fire within an hour, a spark from a chimney, it is believed, starting the outbreak on a thatched cottage roof. Only the cottages of brick with slate roofs escaped.” It is due to many such fires, of which Swavesey’s was the worst, that our villages have so few old buildings left. A Press report of a ‘conflagration at Willingham’, for example, stated that “sixteen farms with dwelling houses and the usual agricultural stock, implements and furniture, with the produce of a large number of acres of land, were, comparatively speaking, speedily destroyed. – The damage is estimated at upwards of £10,000.” Photographs of the village streets from the nineteenth century look very different to the scene today. Although 63 people, twenty-two families, living at Church End, near the railway station, were rendered homeless in the Swavesey fire, by some miracle no one was killed. But the misery was intense, for most of the families were labourers and they lost everything. There was a big appeal which raised a fund of several hundred pounds. Swavesey’s fire, in a most dramatic way, presaged the end of an old order the world of thatch cottages and horsedrawn manual pumps was giving way to slate and bricks and motors. In the next year the world was engulfed in war. The isolation of Britain came to an end; the isolation of Cambridgeshire villages, their self-sufficient and vigorous life was ending too.

The villages in our area may not have such a wealth of surviving picturesque buildings as other parts of the country a few of those that do survive we have chosen as illustrations (see pp. I-IV). But our area is rich in other survivals, which local inhabitants would do well to preserve and record. There are several agricultural implements still in use, or recently so, which are peculiar to the area. Willingham uses a round tined fork for digging — a modification of a manure fork. The hoe used in the area is known as an Ely hoe. The names used for implements are local ones a mattock is a twybill – a tool with two blades or bills – and a gimlet is a twinet. Lallygags are the strings round the knees for holding in trousers. In Over the old flail (thrail) for thrashing corn was made of an alder handle, a whitethorn swingle, bound with ordinary leather and jointed with dried eel skin. The piece that turned round was called a cap and made of boiled ash. Over has preserved a wealth of dialect words, only a few of which we have space to give. Buds or Burlings were young cattle with horns just appearing. Bro is a small bridge, a plank bridge. Slub means muddied, Chimble crumble. Over people had innumerable picturesque nicknames Charlie Conquest was Bigenough because at the annual hiring fair he answered a farmer, who had turned down another labourer as too small, ‘I’m big enough’. Joseph Chapman, who made toffee, was Smasher Joe. The last miller was Jack Parish.
Bells ruled Over’s life in the old days. Bells tolled for funerals, three for men, two for women, and lighter bells were used for children. Benjamin Wilkin baked bread in Silk’s shop: his daughter rang a bell to let the villagers know the oven was hot. People took their own dough along to bake it. The women going gleaning did not cross the gateway into the field until a bell was rung to give all a fair chance. The bell ringers held their annual supper on New Year’s Eve in the Swan ; they had roast beef and Hot Pot from a Long Tot or Long Tom mixed by the publican. The Hot Pot was made of beer, spirits, eggs, sugar, nutmeg and sometimes milk The Long Tot was a cow horn, from which beer was drunk until surprisingly recent times. Plough Monday was celebrated on the second Monday in the year; any old iron plough was used. Molly (Morris) dancers accompanied the plough, and young men collected money. Shoemaker Cook played the fiddle and cornet, Ben Sutton the piccolo, Warren Adams the flute, J. Webster played the fife. Faces were blackened and whips were cracked. A schoolmaster, Wheeler, introduced a drum and fife band. Fromenty was made on Feast Sunday of wheat, soaked the night before, in a milk pan ; it was eaten like porridge. Fleckalina cake was a special sweet made by Mrs. Anne Webb for the Methodist tea-party.
Betsy Farmer (whose real name was Thoday) made toffee, singing “O! Happy Day – Wash my sins away” and spitting on her hands as she made it. Jersey (Tom) Norman made sweets and toffee taking them around local feasts ; when first married, Jersey had only 4d., with which sugar was bought and sweets made ; 1 lb. of brown sugar cost him 1½d. Mrs. Webb, whose brother-in-law was known as Whistler Webb, was another toffee maker. If Jersey ate his own sweets he would have been unpopular with modern educationalists and dentists, for he had all his own teeth at 90.
There were some odd local remedies for diseases. Ringworm was treated with oil mixed with wheat heated on a shovel by the blacksmith, Isaac Robinson, who was known as a healer. A skinned fried barn mouse was used to cure whooping cough. Alma Thoday’s house in Station Road was: ‘The funniest house in Over O, Thatched a ‘top and tiled below.’
A duff-house was a low thatched, round house (a dove house).
Every village in the area must have similar things to record. Our story will have proved worth telling, if reading it encourages you, the reader, to record the life of your village, in much more detail and more accurately than has been possible for us, for our children and grandchildren to read.