Self Sufficiency and Sustainability
in Victorian Britain
Self sufficient lifestyles
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Civilising
nature
When Cedd built his monastery of Lastingham, near to the entrance to Farndale, he selected a location
vel bestiae commorari vel hommines
bestialiter vivere conserverant,
‘a land fit only for wild beasts, and men who live like wild beasts’. Bede later wrote that he
had purposely selected a location in the habitation where once dragons lay so
that the fruit of good works shall spring up where once beasts dwelt or
where men lived after the manner of beasts. Cedd was on a
mission to civilise nature.
Despite Cedd’s
efforts, the forested Farndale continued to be a wilderness for another half a
millennium. It was still the place where Edmund the hermit dwelt in the mid
twelfth century, when parcels of land started to be given to the Rievaulx monks to cultivate.
By the early
thirteenth century, it was cleared on a grand scale for agriculture and by 1301
Farndale was a thriving agricultural community with two mills and significant
population of farmers.
Our earliest
ancestors were on a mission to civilise nature, although the pace was not fast
for thousands of years.
Self
sufficiency
Even as the industrial
revolution was in full flow through the nineteenth century, a rural economy
persisted, and an innate knowledge of the land allowed families to continue to
survive on small margins.
Every
house had a good vegetable garden and there were allotments for all; but only
three of the thirty cottages had their own water supply. The less fortunate
tenants obtained their water from a well on a vacant plot on the outskirts of
the hamlet, from which the cottage had disappeared. There was no public well or
pump. They just had to get their water where and how they could; the landlords
did not undertake to supply water. Against the wall of every well-kept cottage
stood a tarred or green-painted water butt to catch and store the rain-water
from the roof. This saved many journeys to the well with buckets, as it could
be used for cleaning and washing clothes and for watering small, precious
things in the garden. It was also valued for toilet purposes and the women
would hoard the last drops for themselves and their children to wash in.
Rain-water was supposed to be good for the complexion, and, though they had no
money to spend upon beautifying themselves, they were not too far gone in
poverty to neglect such means as they had to that end. For drinking water, and
for cleaning water, too, when the water butts failed, the women went to the
well in all weathers, drawing up the buckets with a windlass and carting them
home suspended from their shoulders by a yoke. Those were weary journeys 'round
the Rise' for water, and many were the rests and endless was the gossip, as
they stood at corners in their big white aprons and crossover shawls. (Lark Rise, Flora Thomson,
Chapter I, Poor
People's Houses)
On light evenings,
after their tea-supper, the men worked for an hour or two in their gardens or
on the allotments. They were first-class gardeners and it was their pride to
have the earliest and best of the different kinds of vegetables. They were
helped in this by good soil and plenty of manure from their pigsties; but good
tilling also played its part. They considered keeping the soil constantly
stirred about the roots of growing things the secret of success and used the
Dutch hoe a good deal for this purpose. The process was called 'tickling'.
'Tickle up old Mother Earth and make her bear!' they would shout to each other
across the plots, or salute a busy neighbour in passing with: 'Just tickling
her up a bit, Jack?'
The
energy they brought to their gardening after a hard day's work in the fields
was marvellous. They grudged no effort and seemed never to tire. Often, on
moonlight nights in spring, the solitary fork of some one
who had not been able to tear himself away would be heard and the scent of his
twitch fire smoke would float in at the windows. It was pleasant, too, in
summer twilight, perhaps in hot weather when water was scarce, to hear the
swish of water on parched earth in a garden—water which had been fetched from
the brook a quarter of a mile distant. 'It's no good stintin'
th' land,' they would say. 'If you wants anything out
you've got to put summat in, if 'tis only
elbow-grease.'
The
allotment plots were divided into two, and one half planted with potatoes and
the other half with wheat or barley. The garden was reserved for green
vegetables, currant and gooseberry bushes, and a few old-fashioned flowers.
Proud as they were of their celery, peas and beans, cauliflowers and marrows,
and fine as were the specimens they could show of these, their potatoes were
their special care, for they had to grow enough to last the year round. They
grew all the old-fashioned varieties—ashleaf kidney,
early rose, American rose, magnum bonum, and the huge misshaped white elephant.
Everybody knew the elephant was an unsatisfactory potato, that it was awkward
to handle when paring and that it boiled down to a white pulp in cooking; but
it produced tubers of such astonishing size that none of the men could resist
the temptation to plant it. Every year specimens were taken to the inn to be
weighed on the only pair of scales in the hamlet, then handed round for guesses
to be made of the weight. As the men said, when a patch of elephants was dug up
and spread out, 'You'd got summat to put in your eye
and look at.'
Very
little money was spent on seed; there was little to spend, and they depended
mainly upon the seed saved from the previous year. Sometimes, to secure the
advantage of fresh soil, they would exchange a bag of seed potatoes with
friends living at a distance, and sometimes a gardener at one of the big houses
around would give one of them a few tubers of a new variety. These would be
carefully planted and tended, and, when the crop was dug up, specimens would be
presented to neighbours.
Most of
the men sang or whistled as they dug or hoed. There was a good deal of outdoor
singing in those days. Workmen sang at their jobs; men with horses and carts
sang on the road; the baker, the miller's man, and the fish-hawker sang as they
went from door to door; even the doctor and parson on their rounds hummed a
tune between their teeth. People were poorer and had not the comforts,
amusements, or knowledge we have to-day; but they were happier. Which seems to
suggest that happiness depends more upon the state of mind—and body,
perhaps—than upon circumstances and events. (Lark Rise, Flora Thomson, Chapter III, Men
Afield)
As well
as their flower garden, the women cultivated a herb corner, stocked with thyme
and parsley and sage for cooking, rosemary to flavour the home-made lard,
lavender to scent the best clothes, and peppermint, pennyroyal, horehound,
camomile, tansy, balm, and rue for physic. They made a good deal of camomile
tea, which they drank freely to ward off colds, to soothe the nerves, and as a
general tonic. A large jug of this was always prepared and stood ready for
heating up after confinements. The horehound was used with honey in a
preparation to be taken for sore throats and colds on the chest. Peppermint tea
was made rather as a luxury than a medicine; it was brought out on special
occasions and drunk from wine-glasses; and the women had a private use for the
pennyroyal, though, judging from appearances, it was not very effective. As
well as the garden herbs, still in general use, some of the older women used
wild ones, which they gathered in their seasons and dried.
All kinds
of home-made wines were brewed by all but the poorest. Sloes and blackberries
and elderberries could be picked from the hedgerows, dandelions and coltsfoot
and cowslips from the fields, and the garden provided rhubarb, currants and
gooseberries and parsnips. Jam was made from garden and hedgerow fruit. This
had to be made over an open fire and needed great care in the making; but the
result was generally good—too good, the women said, for the jam disappeared too
soon. Some notable housewives made jelly. Crab-apple jelly was a speciality at
the end house. Crab-apple trees abounded in the hedgerows and the children knew
just where to go for red crabs, red-and-yellow streaked crabs, or crabs which
hung like ropes of green onions on the branches.
A quickly
made delicacy was cowslip tea. This was made by picking the golden pips from a
handful of cowslips, pouring boiling water over them, and letting the tea stand
a few minutes to infuse. It could then be drunk either with or without sugar as
preferred. (Lark
Rise, Flora Thomson, Chapter VI, the
Besieged Generation)
Carbon
footprints barely registered for generations.
Nature’s
mastery
Subsistence
lifestyles were risky and subject to cycles of overuse, bad weather, poor
harvests and sometimes disease.
After the
widespread taming of agricultural land in the thirteenth century, by 1315, the number
of tenancies had multiplied and an average holding was only about 10 acres.
Households were increasingly struggling to feed themselves, let alone feed the
towns, and had probably reached their sustainable levels. Real wages fell by
about 20% between 1290 and 1350.
In the
second half of the thirteenth century there was a disastrous fall in global
temperatures, which led to a succession of storms, frosts and droughts. The
Great Storm of 1289 ruined harvests across the country. The Thames froze in
1309 to 1310. In 1315 to 1316, two years of continual rain ruined harvests. A
great famine across Europe lasted for 7 years. These were years of perhaps the
worst economic disaster that the nation has faced. Half a million people died
of hunger and disease.
In 1349 came
the Black Death. Indeed the plague
attacked the population four times in thirty years and became endemic for three
centuries.
Nature kept
progress in check and our family story was subject to Malthusian balances when
populations became unsustainable.
Small
Horizons and communities
There was a
strong sense of place in rural communities. In Roman religion, genius loci
invoked the protective spirit of a place. Amidst the extended families of Kilton, there was no doubt a sense of
security that was felt from close interactions between large numbers of
individuals who knew each other well and shared cultural ideas. Multi generational families had both a sense of place and
ancestry.
John Farndale
could recall some one hundred and twenty parents and children, besides
men-servants and women-servants; I remember ten farmers occupant of some seven
hundred acres of land. I see in the book recorded and registered in olden time,
the names of farmers who once occupied this great farm – R and W Jolly, M
Young, R Mitchell; W Wood, J Harland, T Toas, J Readman, J Farndale, S Farndale, J and W Farndale, all
these tenants once occupied this great farm; now blended into one.
I
remember what a muster at the Kilton rent days, twice a year, when dinner was
provided for a quarter of a hundred tenants, Brotton,
Moorsholm, Stanghoe,
those paid their rents at Kilton; and were indeed belonging to the Kilton
Court, kept here also, and the old matron proudly provided a rich plum
pudding and roast beef; and the steward also a jolly punch bowl, for it was
a pleasure to him to take the rents at Kilton, the day before Skelton rent day.
The steward always called old J Farndale to
the vice-chair, he being old, and the oldest tenant. Farndale’s was the most
numerous family, and had lived on the estate for many ages. Kilton had many
mechanics, and here we had a public house, a meeting house, two lodging houses,
and a school house, to learn our ABCs, from which sprang two eminent school
masters, who became extremely popular; we had a butcher’s shop, we had a London
tailor and is apprentice, and eight other apprentices more; we had a rag
merchant and a shop which sold song books, pins, needles, tape and thread; we
had five sailors, two soldiers, two missionaries, besides a number of old
people, aged 80, 90 and 100 years. But last, not least, Wm Tulley Esq., who took so much interest in the old castle – planted
its orchard, bowling green, and made fish ponds, which were fed by a reservoir
near the Park House, Kiltonthorpe, Kilton Lodge,
together with all these improvements around the castle, which are now no more.
The
Cosmic Perspective
This
genealogical journey tells the story of one extended family, all related to
each other, albeit increasingly distantly. From that limited perspective, we
have encountered a multiplicity of stories, of struggle, initiative, tragedy,
achievement, ambition, of following calls to battle, taming our own lands, and
travelling to new ones.
The astronomer
Carl Sagan (1934 to
1996), left a
cosmic perspective, to the multiplicity of human stories, when he thought
about a photograph of the earth taken by Voyager 1 when it paused
briefly to look backwards on its mission to the edge of the solar system.
Earthrise,
William Anders, Apollo 8, 24 December 1968, from the far side of the moon The Pale Blue Dot,
Voyager 1, 14 February 1990, from beyond Neptune
From this
distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But
for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home.
That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard
of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our
joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic
doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and
destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love,
every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of
morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every
"supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our
species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth
is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood
spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they
could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless
cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the
scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their
misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their
hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that
we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point
of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic
dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will
come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth
is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is nowhere else, at least
in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not
yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has
been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There
is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this
distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to
deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue
dot, the only home we've ever known.
(Pale
Blue Dot, 1994, Carl Sagan)
Good
Ancestors
In A Guide to Saltburn by the
Sea and the Surrounding District, in 1864, John Farndale, who was somewhat
self-righteous and annoyingly competitive at everything he did, wrote It was
ordained that even to me was given an errand to fulfil, which I am at this time
feebly endeavouring to discharge:- namely, to do good in my day and generation.
Roman Krznaric has recently picked up on the idea of The
Good Ancestor. He worries that we live in an age dominated by the
tyranny of short termism, perhaps epitomised by the iPhone culture of the
twenty first century, in which we find it difficult to gain a perspective of
more than a couple of generations. He advocates long term thinking as the tool
of the ‘good ancestor’ to take decisions which reflect the longer term future
of our human journey.
Balancing
the threats of climate change with the realities and challenges of day to day
living are not new. It might be however that a long term perspective, which
reflects lessons which have already been learnt, might help. A perspective of some sixty
generations through a journey two millennia …