That picture is a pleasant one; the life in the home was less picturesque. Churches and farm houses (especially the bedrooms) had next to no ventilation. The sanitary—or rather insanitary—state of country places was deplorable, and fevers of a very fatal character were common. The records of the desolation wrought by some of them is melancholy. Open drains and sewers in immediate proximity to farm houses were very usual. Bedrooms very often communicated through the length of a house. This was economy! A passage or corridor was not required. A leading clergyman, not finding a casement which would open in a church where he was officiating, extemporized ventilation by smashing a pane of glass. In the country cottages and farm houses, as well as in many habitations in the towns, the chimneys had no flues, and were funnel-shaped, being very wide at the bottom and gradually contracting to the top, where they had an aperture of the size of an ordinary chimney, through which the smoke escaped. In these open chimneys, hams, legs of beef, flitches of bacon, and whole carcases of mutton were hung to dry for winter consumption. Clarke, in his “Survey,” mentions having seen as many as seven carcases of mutton hanging in one chimney in Borrowdale, and was told that some chimneys in the vale contained more. Few of these old-fashioned chimneys are now to be found in the country.
Wheat has never been grown in large quantities in Cumberland and Westmorland; hence the necessity in former days for oat, rye, or barley bread being the staple foodstuffs. Certainly the Westmorland oatmeal, which required to pass through many processes, and to be stored with very great care, was the staff of the rural households. It was used in a variety of ways. There was the porridge for breakfast and supper, the thin oatcake serving the main purposes of white bread in these days, and the “crowdy”—an excellent and invigorating species of soup, made by pouring the liquor in which beef was boiling, over oatmeal in a basin. Oatmeal also entered into the composition of pie-crusts and gingerbread, like the famous Kendal “piggin bottoms”—snaps stamped out of rolled dough by the iron rim which formed the external base of the wooden “piggin” or “biggin,” a diminutive wooden tub used as a receptacle for various household requisites. Many good houses had either no oven or a very small one, and pies were baked in a huge iron pan covered all round and above the massive lid, too, with burning peats. Hence the contents were equally cooked on all sides.
The extent to which flesh meat, both fresh and cured, was used two or three centuries ago, must have been much less per individual than is now the case. Leaving out of account the cost to the poor—and the mere fact that meat was sold for a very few pence per pound does not necessarily indicate that it was therefore low-priced—there was not a great quantity available. The art of winter fattening of sheep and cattle was unknown, and so artificially preserved meat had to be depended upon after Martinmas, or at the best between Christmas and spring. One old chronicler wrote:—“The supply of animal food proved inadequate to the demands of the community, for the fat stock, fed in autumn, being killed off by Christmas, very little fresh meat appeared in the markets before the ensuing midsummer, except veal. The substantial yeomen, as well as the manufacturers, provided against this inconvenience by curing a quantity of beef at Martinmas, the greatest part of which they pickled in brine, and the rest was dried in the smoke. Every family boiled a sufficient piece of their salt provisions on Sunday morning, and had it hot to dinner, frequently with the addition of an oatmeal pudding. The cold meat came day after day to the table so long as any of it remained, and was as often eaten with oat-bread alone. At the same time a wooden can, full of the briny liquor in which the beef had been cooked, was placed, warm and thickened with a little meal, before each person by way of broth. The stomach was encouraged in the better sort of houses to digest these stubborn materials by a supply of pickled red cabbage, which was prepared for the purpose in October or November. Hogs were slaughtered between Christmas and Candlemas, and converted principally into bacon, which, with dried beef and dried mutton, afforded a change of salt meat in the spring. The fresh provisions of winter consisted of eggs, poultry, geese, and ill-fed veal.”
In this connection it would be very interesting to know whether the provisions of the will made by Thomas Williamson on December 14th, 1674, are in any way carried out, or what has become of the charity. He bequeathed the sum of £20 to be laid out in land to be bestowed upon poor people, born within St. John’s Chapelry, or Castlerigg, Cumberland, in mutton or veal, at Martinmas yearly, when flesh might be thought cheapest, to be by them pickled or hung up and dried, that they might have something to keep them within doors during stormy days.
If animal flesh was dear, despite its small cost, there was some compensation in another way. After the salmon season commenced, great quantities of this modern luxury were brought from Carlisle and West Cumberland, and sold in other markets in the two counties. The price was frequently as low as a penny, and not often higher than twopence per pound, the lack of carriages and roads of a decent character rendering conveyance for long distances anything but an easy task. Then the poverty of the people further south offered the owners of the fish no inducements to carry the commodity into Lancashire. The abundance and cheapness of salmon seem to have been proverbial. How far the story may be true the writer cannot say, but it is worth while noting that a condition concerning apprentices in some west of England towns, is also recorded as applying to the Charity School at Kendal. The boys apprenticed from that institution were not to be compelled to dine on salmon, or on fish in general, oftener than three days in the week.
Much worse was the condition of the labouring folk of the lower class, who are said to have “subsisted chiefly on porridge made of oatmeal or dressed barley, boiled in milk, with the addition of oat-bread, butter, onions, and a little salted meat occasionally.” This meagre diet was probably the cause of the agues which were once very common, especially in the country districts. The disorder, to a large extent, disappeared when the culture of vegetables became more general, and salted provisions less essential. Up to 1730 potatoes were very sparingly used, and were chiefly grown near Kirkby Lonsdale.
Many of the old stories of the curious methods of dealing with tea, before it became a common and indispensable article on the tables of all classes in this country, are obviously either untrue or exaggerated. Hence the veracity of the following statements, which appeared in print in Westmorland in the first decade of this century, is not vouched for:—“Not long after the introduction of potatoes, tea became a favourite beverage with the women, in spite of a steady opposition from the men; perhaps it found its way into the north in form of presents. From the method of preparing this foreign luxury not being generally understood, these presents were sometimes turned to ridiculous uses. One old lady received a pound of tea from her son in London, which she smoked instead of tobacco, and did not hesitate to prefer the weed of Virginia to the herb of China. Another mother converted a present of the same sort and magnitude into a herb pudding; that is, she boiled the tea with dressed barley, and after straining off the water, buttered the compound, which she endeavoured to render palatable with salt, but in vain, for the bitter taste was not to be subdued.”
How unfavourably the introduction of tea was regarded, by some writers at any rate, may be gathered from the following paragraph, which appeared in the Pacquet of October 23rd, 1792:—“A correspondent says that in the neighbourhood of Greystoke, during the late harvest, added to an increase of wages, the female reapers had regularly their tea every afternoon, and the men, toast and ale. How different is this from the beef-steak breakfasts of old! How degenerate is the present age, and how debilitated may the next be!”
Oat-cake and brown bread are less favoured in the two counties than was formerly the case, a fact which was often deplored by the late Bishop of Carlisle, Dr. Goodwin. It is not a little curious that two articles which formed the staple portions of the diet of the people from sixty to a hundred years ago, should now be regarded more in the nature of luxuries. As an example of the sparing way in which “white flour” was used, an old Appleby native tells a story concerning what happened at a good hostelry in the borough, sixty years ago, at a time when wheaten flour was very scarce, but butcher meat very plentiful. Among other good substantial things on the table was a huge meat pie, at the shilling ordinary. Just, however, as the “head of the table” was about to cut the crust, the waiter whispered to him, “Please, sir, missis says flour is so dear, ye must run t’ knife round t’ crust and lift it clean off on to my tray to do another time.”
From the remains of ancient structures it is still possible to draw good pictures of the way the old inhabitants passed their lives therein. The late Dr. M. W. Taylor by that means elaborated the story of the daily doings of the people, from lord to vassal, who inhabited Yanwath Hall. A similar picture has been presented by Mr. J. F. Curwen in his monograph on Levens Hall “in the bygone”:—