Upstairs Downstairs
Thanks to everyone who commented on my story about English tea. One moral I have drawn is never use the passive.
Because there were no downstairs staff. My grandmother, who had rheumatism that made it hard for her to move around the house, did have someone (Mrs. B) who came in to help with the cleaning.
But my grandmother sat at the large deal table in the kitchen and churned the butter, made the cream, made the jam, made the scones, made the cakes, and laid the table. She would normally have turned on the pump, filled the AGA with wood, riddled it out, laid the fire in the breakfast room. Afterwards she would have washed up.
This was a Sunday tea, a tea when the family was entertained. That is, it was a bit more elaborate, though not much more, than an everyday tea. It was also a bit earlier in the day. I suppose we would have arrived about three and left between 5 and 6.
During the week, tea was always at 5 when the farm day ended. It was the last meal of the day, the other two meals being a full cooked breakfast at 9:30 after everyone had been working for a couple of hours (or longer if you were helping with the milking) and dinner at 12:30, a full cooked meal with a “pudding” (dessert).
There was no formal end to the meal, just the ordeal of being fitted for nasty itchy woolen socks that my grandmother knitted for us using wool unraveled from old sweaters belonging to my aunts, it being difficult to buy clothes for years and years after World War II.
My grandmother did have help in the garden, another “old chap.” There were a fair number of old chaps who had to be employed because the labor needed on the farm declined from thirty to forty men in the 1930s to about five by the 1950s (now it’s two).
Actually a good thing too because the life of a farm worker was a miserable one. If you can make it out, look at the expression on the carter’s face in this photo, which I suspect dates from the 1920s. It’s one of my aunts up there on one of the carthorses. They all vanished in the 1930s and 40s with tractors.
And while we’re at it, here’s the last rick built on the farm. This was a very skilled and very laborious job. No farmer had enough barns to store all the straw for bedding and hay for feed so they had to be put up in ricks. The rick maker (on the left) paced out the size, and then laid the straw or hay as it was thrown up to him (by a team including my uncle on the right, very exhausting). If it was not laid properly, the rick might collapse in a heap.
When it was all up, the rick had to be thatched to protect it from the rain. And they had to be made quickly after hay making or harvest, as soon as the hay or straw was dry enough and before the next rainfall (a trick in the glorious English summer).
Isn’t this just beautiful? It angles out slightly so that the water runs off. And of course it has to be fenced to prevent the cattle and sheep from tucking into it. This photo is from the 1950s when every farm built half a dozen ricks every year. Then came the baler.
“Because there were no downstairs staff. My grandmother, who had rheumatism that made it hard for her to move around the house, did have someone (Mrs. B) who came in to help with the cleaning.
But my grandmother sat at the large deal table in the kitchen and churned the butter, made the cream, made the jam, made the scones, made the cakes, and laid the table. She would normally have turned on the pump, filled the AGA with wood, riddled it out, laid the fire in the breakfast room. Afterwards she would have washed up.”
“There were a fair number of old chaps who had to be employed because the labor needed on the farm declined from thirty to forty men in the 1930s to about five by the 1950s (now it’s two).
Actually a good thing too because the life of a farm worker was a miserable one.”
These are the parts that many seem to gloss over when looking at the past through the lens of nostalgia.
My paternal grandmother had health problems too at a time in Korea when the social order was being turned on it’s head. She didn’t staff and had a great deal of trouble cooking the most basic things in a traditional Korean kitchen.
I’ve mentioned this before but what’s left of my mother’s family farm is now very much modern and mechanized. My mother once commented, “the work of those peasants in the past is now done with a few machines”.
I find it depressing (and amusing) when proponents of slow ways neglect to consider LABOR!!!
Ji-Young, if you are not already doing it you have to write up your parents’ food story sometime. Utterly agreed about labor.
Really fascinating material, Rachel. I’m enjoying this very much.
Cindy
Thanks Cindy.
Hmmm. I wonder if any of my Wiltshire farm labourer ancestors worked for yours?
Eventually when these farm labourers moved to Australia in the 1850’s they got large farms themselves (after a number of years labouring on the farms of their sponsers) and eventually there were plenty of servants/labourers. I have always wondered where the labourers stayed as there is no extant evidence of housing left. Maybe in tents or basic huts?
This picture is worth looking at. The small stacks of hay in the background are called “stooks”, these are being formed into a huge stack or rick.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Building_a_wheatstack_from_The_Powerhouse_Museum_Collection.jpg
Great picture. I wasn’t clear whether it was Australia or Britain. Getting out was certainly the way to go for a farm laborer. Not a good life. Shaming.
As an American of English and Welsh descent, I loved my time spent in England while earning my postgraduate degree. But what I miss the most is Sunday Tea :) Thanks for sharing!
I appreciate your writing, Amy.
“Ji-Young, if you are not already doing it you have to write up your parents’ food story sometime. Utterly agreed about labor.”
One of these days…
But I have to say that when I do start talking about it almost everyone wants to focus on some idea of the glories of being an aristocrat.
They have a hard time wrapping their minds around how things like foreign occupation and civil war upset food security. That the Korean civil war also finally dismantled the feudal system and industrialization (including mechanization of the food chain) helped create a thriving middle class.
So I am really looking forward to this and hoping that one of these days is not too far in the future.
more fascinating insights on the english tea
were there special times in the year when people were invited to a formal dinner party – i’d love to hear about those too
Lovely post, Rachel. Changes over the last 50 years in farming – in the West – have been really quite extraordinary, and it is useful to think (at least for me) that the turn towards growing one’s own food does rest upon a highly industrialized agricultural base that has been developed over this period.
Diana.
Hi Diana, you mean the turn to gardening, etc? Yes, it does.
Thanks for the clarification! I think the passive voice combined with the photo at the top to confuse me — is the house in the foreground the “farmhouse” you reference? I can barely keep my small house tidy, even with many modern conveniences, so the idea of managing a house that size (and churning butter, to boot!) seemed inconceivable for an older woman without a staff to help. Great photos and great stories.
Thanks Erica. I have for years regretted my late teen dismissal of the women of the family as “just” housewives. And the house in the foreground is the farmhouse. I’ll explain its size in a later post.