Norwich skyline
No other County in England is quite like Norfolk. Bulging far into the North Sea and cut off from the rest of the Country by a river system that is, perhaps, even more of a cultural barrier than a physical one, it has a distinctive building style, a unique dialect, and an individual culture. It contains a greater diversity of scenery than any other lowland county.
The wide range of rocks and soils provides many different environments which have limited and directed man’s efforts to impose his own pattern. However the Norfolk landscape of today is largely man-made. The woodland that covered most of the county in prehistoric times has gradually given way to meadows and pastures, fields, parks, roads, homesteads, hamlets, villages and towns. The story of the development of the landscape is not simple. Norfolk is a large county containing Roman sites, approximately 700 villages, over 700 medieval churches, moats, deserted villages, and landscape parks. The county is known for trade, industry agriculture and architecture. The people are hard working, resourceful, stubbom and independent and possessed of a caustic and subtle wit with a conviction to 'to do diflerent is to do well'. Nfk. 94 - 104(3)
Trades, Crafts and Professions in England.
If agriculture, despite the difficulties, remained the economic power-house of the countryside, a wide range of crafts and trades were needed to keep that running effectively, and to promote the smooth flow of the community life. Some men concentrated on building and repairing houses, others produced clothing and boots that people wore. Others concentrated on being tradesmen - wheelwright dependent on the blacksmith to fit the metal tyres to complete his wheels for carts and wagons, the baker relied on the miller for the supplies of his flour and the brickmaker for the tiles to line his ovens. Others took on lines of business such as baker, grocer, butcher, brickmaker, postmaster, com master, coal merchant etc.
Amongst these craftsmen it was the blacksmith who was the key figure in the village economy, at a time when horses reigned supreme as working animals on the farm. He was employed at shoeing them but he was expected to make and repair the implements they hauled. There were only several men employed at a blacksmith's shop each a specialist for a particular job, e.g. sharpening harrows and ploughs, shoeing horses, making new tools and outside jobs such as pumps for wells. For the labourers the smiths would make and repair hoes, scythes, leaking kettles, pots and pans etc. In their capacity as farriers the smiths were also required to treat animals which fell ill, while through their skills in shoeing they could correct faults in a horse's feet. Good feet were considered the first essential for a working horse. It was not uncommon for farmers to ask for a smith’s professional opinion before making a purchase. Some of the larger landowners would employ their own smith. Almost everywhere the local men would gather for a gossip as they waited for their horses to be attended to, or merely stood around watching with fascination as the blacksmith worked with his forge.
Wheelwrights were equally involved and usually had their shops next to the smithy.
The saddler, the hurdle-maker and the carpenter were other craftsmen, the tailor who made anything from the breeches, jackets and overcoats worn by farmers to the heavy cord trousers and sleeved Waistcoats favoured by the labourers.
Clothes for women were made by the women themselves, if she could not make them then she would turn to a dressmaker who was to be found in most villages.
A third category of tradespeople were the dealers. They ranged from rabbit-skin men,
purchasing skins at cottage doors for twopence a piece to the horse and cattle dealers. Often these dealers would work part-time as labourers, or keeping a public-house.
Then there were the pedlars and hawkers working mainly where there were few shops in isolated areas. In the area of Wood Norton, Norfolk, people were regularly visited by an old man driving a donkey cart, in which he brought clean silver sea sand to sell to housewives for scouring pots and doorsteps and for spreading on the brick floors.
Carriers played an important part collecting poultry, eggs, fiuit and dairy products selling to the nearest market, taking shopping orders as well as they went. People would share a ride to the nearest town market with the produce and lifestock.
Village shops held a great variety of stock - food, miscellany of drapery, matting, linoleum, ironmongers, candles etc. Surviving account books show the dire poverty of some of the customers who had the greatest difficulty in paying off even small costs.
Quarrying and mining providing clay, stone and coal were amongst the trades needed to supply the necessities needed.
Landowners and farmers provided the capital and the managerial abilities necessary for the running of British farming, but it was the skill of the agricultural labourers which ensured that the wheels of that industry were kept running smoothly. Equally it was they and their families who dominated the Victorian village community. These were the shepherds who worked on a semi-independent basis keeping some of their own sheep alongside those of their employer. These were later sold for profit and in that way they became almost small farmers in their own rights.
The labourer's role was of major importance only to a limited degree in the prosperity of farming. They had little alternatives for employment, their wages low and working hours long. The usual arrangement being from daybreak to nightfall during the winter months and from 6 am to 5 pm in the summer. For stockmen, who came early to feed their animals and return in the evening to settle them down for the night, the working day could be much longer.
Women and children played a part in gathering the grain, with the farmers helping to bind the corn into sheaves and the latter assisting them, or leading horses or carrying food and drink to the harvesters. The disadvantages experienced by the agricultural workers in the matter of wages and employment conditions, compared to the situation of their urban counterparts, were reinforced by housing problems.
Although rural areas escaped the worst health hazards of the town slums, many country cottages were poorly maintained and The high fertility rates of the labourers contributed to the difficulty, for the large size of their families aggravated the difficulties of overcrowding. Illegitimacy too, were highest in rural counties - one in ten born in Norfolk was illegitimate. It is true that birth and illegitimacy rates did fall a little in the last years of the century but they remained well above average for the nation as a whole and country households continued to contain large numbers of children.
Another difficulty was the "tied" cottage system, whereby workers who lost their jobs and inevitably lost their homes as well. Described by one labourer, "There is a feeling about tied-houses that it is not your home. You do not seem able to plant fruit trees nor work any little paying hobby because you know if anything goes wrong, out you go at a month‘s notice or less".
Inadequate and polluted water supplies added to the grievances of the labourer who sweated in the heat of the harvest field or endured the dust of thrashing operations and the mud of the winter ploughing, often existed without the first essential of civilized life, a plentiful water supply. Education was a low priority.
Often over their evening half-pints, the men would exchange anecdotes or discuss the affairs of the day, or engage in a communal sing-song passing on the tales and folk songs of the past.
As urban technology grew and a network of transport sprouted up, the change in the structure of communities meant many trades and crafis and cottage industries ensured they were no longer contributing as they had previously done. There followed an agriculture depression causing many to move from their village or town or, for the more adventurous, the obvious solution to their problem was to emigrate looking for a better life for themselves and their children.
How did they get there?
If they were moving to another village the journey may have been made by the farm wagon and two horses which carried their belongings. Often with children sitting on top of the furniture or space would be left at the back for them to sit. They would all help to carry the household goods outside to be packed in the wagon. In early times goods were transported by packhorse and pannier. The simple two-wheeled wain was also then in common use, the wagon being introduced in the 16th century. Their use was difficult in winter and on poor roads. Then a network of carriers increased linking every major town in England. When the Foundling Hospital in London had a policy of open admission, in the 1750s, unwanted babies were sent up to London he means of the carriers in ever increasing numbers from the most distant parts of the country. As carriage was pre-paid many a poor child did not survive the experience.
For the majority of people the carrier was the cheapest means of travel. These local carriers, taking passengers and goods to market towns, survived the coming of the railways and played an important part even into this century.
The stage coach, at first only in London, spread to country areas, however, you would pay eight shillings for a 30 mile ride: 5 pence a mile as an inside passenger or 3 pence outside, which was quiet beyond the means of the ordinary labourer. The system disappeared almost overnight with the coming of the railways.
In all times those who could not afford to pay a carrier or hire a horse, walked, taking nothing with them except what they could carry. They would have thought little about sleeping out at night. The network of acquaintanceship by which everybody in the country knew somebody in the local towns probably meant that they could stay with friends at least a night or two. To stay at some rough lodging house, at the end of last century, would have cost about 4 pence a night.
Going to work. A farm labourer thought nothing of walking two miles or more every morning and night to and from work, getting there at 6 am, earlier at harvest time. It was not unusual at certain seasons of the year for a man to get up about 4 am and do an hour‘s gardening before starting to walk to work. Early nights were not unusual! Even young children walked miles and thought little of it,
Children walked to school, three or four miles every morning from age seven. It couldn’t have been much fun in the rain and snow, sitting in wet clothes all day.
Women walked to market carrying their wares a good four miles or more. The food purchased from the proceeds would then be carried home. Children who helped considered this a great treat for although the distance might be long it was by no means a lonely journey. The chance of a lifi in a carrier’s wagon or a friendly neighbour's cart, seldom occurred. In bad weather the women would return "in a pitiable plight". The coming of the railway made little difference as the women could not afford the fare.
A farm labourer who lived at Leek in Staffordshire in the 1880s related. that once a week he would walk the six miles to Leek market with a basket containing 200 eggs on one arm and another basket with 12 lbs of butter in it on the other”. When young, he had been a carter‘s lad and helped to lead the horses walking between them when there were two often getting trodden on. He too spoke about the weather “Often my clothes were quite wet when I took them off at night and still wet when I put them on again next morning”.
People walked distances to attend a church service on Sunday. They mainly walked to the church to be married. The custom of the coffin being carried on the shoulders of men for funerals died out when those that could afford a horse-drawn shell-a-bier, a sort of hearse and carriage combined, was introduced.
Footwear. All wore thick, stout-soled boots, well studded with nails and tipped heels and toe. They often kept a lighter pair less heavily nailed for special occasions. The boots were, of necessity, frequently examined and any missing nails or tips replaced. Nearly every cottage possessed a hobbling foot for use in these repairing jobs. They also kept a grease pot for odds and ends of tallow candles which would be warmed up and used to grease boots in winter time. It was not unusual, at the back door of the cottage, to find a pair of ‘patterns’. These wooden soles with iron rings fixed under them and straps for the feet raised the wearer well out of the mud. They were slipped on and off as the housewife went in and out of her cottage. She would not go out her the backyard in the wet weather without them. The farm labourers commonly cut the feet ofi new stockings and wrapped their feet in pieces of white linen or other cloth, binding fresh dock leaves over any sore, that remedy being thought generally effective, especially if the leaves were renewed fairly often. Men put a thin layer of soft hay at the bottom of their boots, it acting as a sort of absorbent sock, this again being often renewed.
It is interesting to note that the coming of the bicycle made little difference until almost the end of the century. Eventually the excellent railway system in England overtook most of the carrying needs from town to town.
The above information was obtained from the following:
The History of Britain and the British People
The Dukes of Norfolk
Cottage Life in a Hertfordshire Village
: How the Agricultural Labourer Lived and Fared in the Late 1860s and 1870s.
by Edwin Grey
Destiny Obscure and Useful Toil
by John Burnett