A few extracts from "News from the English Countryside 1851 - 1950"

1853

Ratcatching Extraordinary

On Tuesday night week, three farm labourers residing in a farm house at Hardmead, Bucks, were awoke while in bed by a number of rats running over their faces.  They procured a light and brought up two dogs.  The latter immediately began to kill the rats, who were unable to get out of the room; they jumped at the window, but could not break the glass.  Twenty-two old rats were in a short time destroyed in the room.  It appeared they had come down in a lump through the ceiling, the habit of rats after a full meal to cluster together having in this instance caused them, from their great aggregate weight, to break through the slight lath and plaster.  Northampton Herald, 5 February 1853.

A Man of Business

At the village of Great Bowden there is a man who carries on the following profressions: Grocer, tea-dealer, tobacconist, druggist, boot and shoe maker, clock cleaner, rings and kills pigs, baker, ringer, sexton and parish clerk.  Northampton Herald, 5 November 1853.

1858

Public Sale of a Wife

Yesterday forenoon, a disgraceful exhibition, the attempted sale of a wife, took place in front of a beer-house at Sheer Bridge, Little Horton, near Bradford.  The fellow who offered his wife, Martha, for sale was Hartley Thompson.  She was said to be a person of prepossessing appearance.  The sale had been duly announced by the bellman.  A large crowd had assembled.  The wice, it is said, appeared before the crowd with a halter, adorned with ribbons, round her neck.  The sale, however, was not completed; the reason for this being that some disturbance was created by a crowd from a neighbouring factory, and the person to whom it was intended to sell the wife (Ike Duncan) was detained at his work beyond the time.  The couple, though not long wedded, have lewd a very unhappy life, and it is said they and their friends were so egregiously ignorant as to believe that they could secure their own legal separation by such an absurd course as this - a public sale.  Manchester Guardian, 23 November 1858.

(The last recorded instance of a successful wife-sale was in 1901 - the lady was sold for a pipe of tobacco!)

1884

Rat-Killer Extraordinary

Recently on a farm at Rushley-green, in the occupation of Mr J M Balls, a man named Dowsett killed 89 rats by nipping them with his teeth after catching them with his hands as the rats emerged from holes in the barns.  The Chelmsford Chronicle, 25 January 1884.

YUK!

A roundup of my week

These earlier photos are of the Brecon Beacons, when I was able to stop in a proper layby to get my camera out.

Shhh.  I'm hiding.  Those dratted cats have just been all over me as I tried to sit and do some x-stitch.  After a week's frantic gardening and very little sleep last night, I have given myself the afternoon off.  However, with geriatric Fluff on one side, who I didn't dare stroke because of her propensity to drool when happy, and fatso Ghengis on the other, sitting under my right elbow on the arm of the sofa, and gradually trying to slide down onto my lap, I didn't have much room to sew!

We have had a busy week.  On Monday we had to go and collect a bed we had bought at auction.  It is a French pine sleigh bed (single) and will go with us when we move.  We have to get a mattress for it first though.  We went on to Hay-on-Wye after that, as we had an appointment there, and we also caught up with a friend of ours there.  Then it was home and some gardening, to make the most of the wonderful spring sunshine we've had this week.

I just couldn't resist a couple of books at Hay this time.  Firstly:

This is a lovely compilation of snippets from British newspapers over a hundred year span.  I will add some pieces over the next few days.  It gives a real insight into how countrydwellers lived their lives.  I love social history.

Here was another book with my name on it as I have long wanted to walk a stretch of the southerly end of Offa's Dyke path.  The closest I have got to it is a hundred yards along the stretch by White Castle!   Must Do Better!!

Tuesday was spent mostly gardening.  I am currently out in the paddock plot, and have decided to let one area grass over (though it needs some more garden thugs removed from it first) as it's just too much hard work trying to keep it weeded.  It has never forgotten it was once a field . . .  I've weeded most of the gravel path, including UNDER the edging rocks, and pulled all the long grass and weeds up from around the young fruit trees, dug it over, fed them with lots of Poultry Poo Pellets and topped with compost - it looks so much tidier.  I've been digging out the grass and brambles from around the raspberries, but there are so many raspberry babies it is hard to tell where the original rows of canes were.  Last year was just so wet and I couldn't get out to tidy up that area at all so I have two years' worth of undergrowth to deal with.

As it has been the Cheltenham Festival (National Hunt Racing) all week, I gardened frantically and then dashed in to watch the races.  We even had a couple of winners though my choice for the Gold Cup (Cue Card) was unlucky and fell three from home.

On Wednesday, another outing, as we had planned to go to Abergavenny Fleamarket again.  We made an early start, but there were no goodies for us this time and we came away empty-handed, though we had a chat with a few dealer friends there.

Abergavenny has our nearest Waitrose supermarket.  I needed a couple of things and just couldn't resist these two in-house magazines:

With the baking ideas for Easter, I just couldn't resist them, especially as one was free anyway.

You'd have thought it was a quick enough route, along the A40.  However, what we didn't know was that they had SHUT the A40 just after Brecon, and although they had put up a detour, it was a lengthy one.  We cut off across country (clever clogs!) and came out - just where they had shut the road off completely!!  We managed to turn left again before we ran out of A40 (by the first lorry) and this time came out at Bwlch.  Narrow lanes (nothing we're not used to) and little hamlets we had never seen before.

On the way back we started off on the Official Detour (which would have been 15 miles long), before cutting acrossd country again.  I wish I hadn't been driving as the views along the back of the Black Mountains was amazing, but there was no place to park up and take photos.  This is the best I could do:

As you can see, little eyebrows of snow still left along the ridge.

Yesterday we went into town to do the grocery shopping.  I had to go to Charlies to get a final sack of Sunflower hearts for the bird-feeders.  Opposite is a place selling - sorry, giving books away free for a donation.   I went inside to check it out, and couldn't resist this novel, plus an historical trilogy set along the Welsh Marches by Edith Pargeter, and Anthony Trollope's Dr Thorne, which was recently serialized for tv but which I missed. When there are THREE programmes you want to watch all on at the same time, something has to give . . .  I can see me going back there - for someone denied books as a child (no money for them) I just cannot shake off the urge for yet MORE.

Anyway, we have decided we will probably move away from Sky (it's so expensive) and instead we have taken out Amazon Prime, bought an Amazon Firestick and are enjoying that.  We're already on episode 4 of the third series of Black Sails (almost a pirate version of Game of Thrones, in that it is an epic power struggle with no holds barred).

Today I have been baking - the hot X buns were a failure (again!) but the sesame and ginger biscuits perfectly edible if a tad mis-shapen!  Have a good weekend all.

A few more Romsey photos

This was my favourite angle.  The horse's attentiveness; the tension built into the muscles of the turning neck and the muzzle just waiting to snuffle up a treat.  Superb.

I have happy childhood memories of walking to the Salmon Leap and back.  My dad worked in Romsey and I used to go riding with John Bridges, who had several ponies and lived in Alma Road. His parents ran the pub there.  Seems like a century ago.  I still haven't forgiven him for giving me the rubber dinghy that LEAKED when we went on the Romsey Canal.  Let me tell you, NOTHING stinks like canal water!  Sinking in it was NOT fun . . .

Looking downstream.

This has been a busy week so far.  I will be back later today with a roundup.

Romsey - a trip back in time

Last Saturday, when my dear friend Trish was being treated to an early Mother's Day meal, her husband John and I took a flying visit to Romsey, where I still have family.  However, as I didn't have anyone's address or phone number in my travelling handbag, we just had a very quick walk around the shops by the Corn Exchange and then had a wander around the Abbey and environs. These beautiful Regency houses, a little reminiscent of Strawberry Hill Gothic, just cried out to have photos taken.

I loved the sundial beneath the window.

Sigh . . .  I could live here!

Romsey Abbey from a variety of different angles.  My parents were married here.

The Abbey was founded in 907, and the first Abbess was AElflaeda.    The Wikipedia page gives more details of the Abbey's history.

The light wasn't helpful in capturing this wonderful 16th C reredos in St Lawrence's Chapel, but it is amazing that it survived the Protectorate period.  It dates from 1525-30.

On display here are the exposed foundations of the earliest building on this site, the Saxon church, which was sadly demolished when the present Norman church was built.

I took this photorgreaph with my husband in mind.  We both love early carved chests, and this is a stunning example.  I think it was used for storing the copes which were worn.

One of the beautiful stained glass windows.

This lovely memorial is to the memory of John and Grissell St Barbe and their four sons.  The parents died of "sweating sickness" which could carry people off in just hours.  They were buried on the same day in 1685.

The Mountbatten family has always been a prominent one in Romsey's recent history.  Lord Mountbatten's tomb is a simple slab, in the Chapel of St Nicholas.  It lies north-south (rather than the traditional east-west alignment) to face towards where his wife Edwina's ashes were buried at sea.  I can remember when he was murdered by an IRA bomb in 1979, along with his grandson Nicholas and two others.  He was much-loved by Romsey folk and every single shop was dressed in mourning in his memory and people felt as if one of their own family had been slain.  He is remembered as the Supreme Allied Commander of South-East Asia (1943-46) and as the last Viceroy of India.

A very sad memorial stone of the children of John and Mary May, whose children all predeceased them.  They must have thought they had lived for nothing.

This beautifully-carved monument is to the memory of Alice Taylor, who died of Scarlet Fever aged just two years old in 1843.  She was the daughter of a local doctor, who was also a gifted sculptor and made this life-sized effigy of her, lying as if asleep, with a rose in her hand.  So touching.

I am kicking myself for not looking round the gift stall area (but it is difficult when you are with someone else), as I missed what I had been looking for - a complete head of plaited hair (she was a redhead, or else her hair became stained down the hundreds of years since her burial).  This had been discovered in 1839 in a lead coffin below the floor near the Abbess's Doorway.  It has been dated to the middle to late Saxon period.  It is the one thing which sticks in my memory from going round the Abbey with John Bridges when I was in my very early teens (I used to go riding with him on his ponies).

Of course, with family links here I have many memories of visiting Romsey, and the main town centre hasn't changed too much in my memory - just a few different shops and the ubiquitous coffee outlets all over the place.  It was a real trip down memory lane for me.

Spring has sprung

I know that for a fact as I came down yesterday morning to a pair of baby bun-bun "trousers" left behind by one of our boy cats.  Probably Alfie as he is a terrific hunter.  They also leave the stomach behind, so I shall have to watch where I tread from now on . . .

Yesterday I popped up (finally!) to see my friend Dawn, and admire her new goat kids and some ram lambs (surplus triplets) she is rearing for the freezer.  I don't know HOW she gets any work done as those goat kids were so enchanting.  Her husband had made them a scaffolding playground . . .

Even the mama goats enjoy playing up there too!

The caged bit is around the goat house where they sleep at night.

These lambs were waiting for their brekkers . . .

Happy lambs.

Happy alpacas in the sunshine.

Dawn showed me her new sewing machine - it even THREADS its own needle!  She has so many embroidery programmes for this machine and her "old" one, and can speedily make up some lovely things.  When she showed me some of the things it could do, and the lacey dreamcatchers she had been making and other projects, I felt like my sewing was back in the Neolithic!!!

I will catch up more over the weekend.  About to go out the door here.

Back from Over the Border

I'm back home safe and sound after staying with my best friend Tricia, who lives near the New Forest.  I took myself off for a rather muddy-boot walk one morning.

A fallen giant - there used to be a tidy-up policy, but all fallen trees are now left to rot, which at least feeds a few insects and thus birds.

I will do a proper update tomorrow.  Feeling a little jet-lagged today (though I suspect it is mostly from not drinking enough on my journey and then swigging wine on my return!

I even got a VERY brief walk around parts of Romsey.  More of that tomorrow.

Life's journeys

Yesterday we travelled through the Forest of Dean to visit a property in the unwooded strip where it reaches the mighty River Severn.  It was in a quiet spot overlooking fields, on a river's edge, and within walking distance of small shops, Dr, etc, yet handily placed for travelling back to Wales to see our children or up to Yorkshire (ditto).  It needed a chunk of money spending on sorting out a damp problem - the vendors had chosen to splash their dosh on high-end en-suite bathrooms until they were skint, and just paint over the damp and do some VERY dodgy DIY "improvements".  However, the asking price was cheap enough to allow for proper improvements to be made.  There is so little on the market at the moment that even less than perfect properties are being deemed possibles, should our recent viewing here bear fruit.

We began the day having a wander (and a shop) around Abergavenny Fleamarket, and bought a lovely pine trunk to go in the Unit when my OH has replaced the hinges with the size of the set in ones which used to be on it.  I bought a cookery book and two new Kilner storage jars (for the nuts which OH couldn't resist in Lidl this week).  I think we had every season of weather yesterday.  As we sat in the car park with a cup of tea, we could see it was snowing up on the Brecon Beacon hilltops, whilst it then rained with us, then the sun came out and later in the day we had hailstones and finally a cloudburst just outside Llandovery!





I am making progress on my x-stitch - gate and sheep so far.  I need to work on it under my craft light though so can't take it with me to work on.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my breadmaker decided to pop its clogs and so I bit the bullet and bought myself a Panesonic one as everyone says how good they are (pleased with mine).

Hand-made (though I can bring it to dough in the Panny)

vs. a quick bung it Panny loaf!

See you on my return.