Autumn's bounty

I cannot explain why, but come late summer, early autumn, I am just possessed with the urge to squirrel away as much preserved food for the winter as I can. We don't eat much jam or chutney, but I HAVE to make it - it is so satisfying and it makes good presents or thank you gifts. I love to try out new preserving recipes, love to save home-grown fruit and vegetables in the freeze, love to make wine, and above all love to go out and gather the wild harvest of blackberries, elderberries, sloes, crab apples, wildings apples, and in the past hips, haws and nuts too. I know that my maternal grandmother used to make all her own preserves, wine, cook everything from scratch and loved to bake, and so I guess I definitely have lashings of her domestic genes (I fear they skipped a generation with my mum although she was interested in cooking, she wasn't much cop at it! She did, however, make very good plum wine though.)

This year the blackberries have been threatening to go over early, due to all that rain we had at the end of August, but I am hoping that they may rally now and give a few more berries. I was reduced to picking in the rain the other afternoon, and also picking first thing in the morning for fear they would grow blue beards after a cold and wet night.

I cannot resist yet another Preserves book, and love to try out new recipes. Being given a bag of empty jam jars is like being given a prize and looking at my larder shelves filled with different jams, jellies and chutneys fills me with great pleasure. What better than to taste bramble jelly on the darkest, greyest, wettest of winter days, or to have home-made mincemeat at Christmas, and what better smell than the very first blackberry and apple crumble of the season?

Indian Summer

I was wishing for an Indian summer, and now it has arrived -thank heavens. I had such a stressful day yesterday, when Snowy had to have his checkup following being dabbed in the eye by one of the fluffy black horrors last week. It wasn't healing as well as the vet or I expected and it looks like his ear cancer is returning. I had psyched myself up for him having to be pts yesterday but he has been given another few weeks so we can see how things are panning out.

Anyway, today it was so warm and summer-like, I decided to walk for my free range eggs, which we get from a neighbour. I had bartered a large jar of my Queen of Jams for some. It was a wonderful walk, with butterflies (even both the Tortoiseshells were in evidence and I have seen more today than the whole of this year and last put together, so there must have been a hatching, which is good news after they were victim of a parasitic attacker ). My neighbour had an elder bush which I was able to pick from so I now have enough for my sauce making. I picked some more blackberries too- this late sunshine should produce a few more for the freezer. I had a chat with several of my neighbours, but otherwise had the lane to myself and the butterflies, with the river chuckling across the stones in the valley bottom, three Red Kites soaring high above me on warm thermals. On the far side of the valley a blue tractor droned up the hill as it cut the hedgerow.

I have been busy in the kitchen and got some pickled onions bottled today (in an old glass Horlicks jar.) The phasing out of glass Horlicks jars are much lamented in this household. I did a mini roast using some lamb breast from the freezer with potatoes from the garden as roasties, and yet more runner beans to accompany them,and then stewed up some windfall apples and put a layer of mixed frozen fruit (blackberries/redcurrants/raspberries etc) which had been on special offer in the supermarket this summer and I had bought several packs then. One pack will last us three pies, used that way and it gives a sharpness to the pie which my husband prefers. A small piece of pastry was rolled out and spread with bramble jelly I made recently and became a jam roly poly for two small appetites!

I am typing this very slowly and not at all fluently on my daughter's laptop as my computer is still in being mended and my camera is with it as it won't automatically load the photos. Needless to say I have not got access to any of my photos . . . Hopefully normal service will return tomorrow.

More photos from the Antiques Fair

Many apologies for some of these sideways pictures but I am having problems with the computer right now. Hopefully I will get it sorted tomorrow.

One of the outside stands.

This stuffed puma made me think of our local Beast of Brechfa which it is rumoured is one of these . . . or then again, it has also been seen in black leopard format too.

This primitive chair was another "something" that my husband would have brought home with him, and I would have loved the horse team bells below. Oh, and HOW . . .

Sorry it''s sideways, but this was my favourite stall . . .

A proper-way-up pic of some of the goodies on offer, two pairs of sugar nips at the fore (for when sugar came in rock-hard cones and had to be broken up and then pounded into submission in a pestle and mortar.

Sorry, the lighting wasn't very good here - I should have used my flash.

One of the many stalls specializing in lovely glass and china. Yawn.

Many of the stalls used their space as a room setting to display their furniture.

Almost ditto the above. The little primitive child's chair on the table had a hefty price tag.

This was my favourite stall as she has some really unusual and interesting bits on it - the sort of stuff that NEVER turns up at our local auction. I was very taken by the period sewing things - tape measures in unusual cases, a bone crochet hook, some really lovely old lace bobbins, andall sorts of other goodies like those beautiful embroidered caps.


If we'd had lotsa dosh, this would have probably come home with us as my husband loved this.

Another sideways picture, this one taken in Builth town, and it is a mural depicting the history of the town and historic people connected with it.

An old spinning wheel which had seen better days. I was wondering whether the wheel was original to this as it was a totally different colour.

An over-view of one of the halls with many lovely stands.

On the way back through the town, we stopped at an old chapel which had been turned into an antiques shop. I bought a biography of Thomas Hardy, but the rest of the stuff on offer was a bit too junky for our taste . . .

A sideways view of the BIG ceramic pot which is my new flour container. K has to make me a lid now.

Lastly, the four beautiful hand-carved Victorian lace bobbins which I can't wait to use. It's going to take quite a while to get all my lace making kit together though.

I am in love . . .

. . . and I'm afraid it is an unrequited passion and always will be . . . for the darling man is dead.

The object of my passion? Dymock - or war - poet Edward Thomas. I read his prose, his poetry, and wish that I could have met this man for like his wife Helen and their friend Eleanor Farjeon, I would have worshipped him. His thoughts, his sensitivity, his eloquence, his empathy with the natural world and his knowledge of it, his descriptions - does such a man exist now? I doubt it. Let me share one short piece with you and see if you aren't half in love with him too . . .

THE BROOK The brook rises in clear, grey, trembling basin at the foot of a chalk hill, among flowers of lotus and thyme and eyebright and rest-harrow. Here the stone curlew drinks, and above is the gently rounded encampment, ancient, and yet still young compared with the dusky spring which has something gnomish and earthy about it, though ti takes the sun. it drops in thin, bright links over the chalk, and then for a time loses its way in playing with cresses and marsh marigolds,spreading out so finely that hardly will the ladybird drown that falls therein - falling at length in cascade from one dead leaf to another down a hedge bank. Below, it nourishes the first forget-me-nots, by a gateway where it slips across the lane, and is dew-fed by the vetches and clovers that swaddle the posts of the gate. Now it is unheard and unseen in the darkness underneath dog's mercury leaves until it has gained its first treble voice as, pausing by an interrupting branch it fills a hollow and pours over in icy fingers to the ditch beneath. Here it has cuckoo-flowers and creeping jenny and butterbur to feed; thrushes drink of it, beetles dart across it like scullers that dream now and then upon their sculls. It learns now to sway the cress, to bow the brooklime, to brighten the sides of the minnows, the fledgeling of the robin that falls into it dies. It floats the catkin down and out of it rises the azure dragon-fly. Sometimes it muffles its going in moss, but in a little while it gushes through drains and falls and falls with a now unceasing noise in a land where all the hollows are full of apple trees, rough grey with dewy clover, and through all the hollows winds the brook, dappled by blossom, leaned over by the bee-cradling, sleepy, meadow cranesbill flower; in its green bed the water-voles wear their submerged pathways.

There is more. It appears in "One Green Field" (ISBN 978-0-141-19091-4).

Sadly Edward Thomas was killed by blast on the date of my birth, but in 1917. There was not a mark on him - it was as if he had passed in his sleep. Thank God for that much . . .

Oh, and just a footnote. I have computer problems (it won't load my photos) so if I go quiet for a couple of days, it is because the computer is having keyhole surgery . . .

Day out at the Antiques Fair

Yesterday K and I had a great day out at the big Antiques Fair up at Builth Wells. It's about a hundred mile round trip from here, but it was our last day out before winter confines us to quarters, so we made the most of it. I gave myself a £20 budget and more or less stuck to it (£2 over). I was fortunate to find 4 beautiful (early?) Victorian hand-made lace bobbins for just £2.50 each. With my lace-making ancestry on mum's side, I am determined to learn lace-making, even though it looks terrifically complicated, so I am very gradually getting together what I need. I am having problems with loading photographs from my camera to the computer at present (I believe I have a glitch in the computer) so whilst I've taken photographs, I can't share them on here yet. The photos included in this post are from the Antiques Fair at Builth back in May of this year.

This is "my" sort of stand - lots of gorgeous goodies. . .


Outside stallholders take their chance with the weather holding, and have a mixture of items on offer. Nothing to tempt us here . . .

As my remit was ONLY to look for the things I needed and not be distracted, top of the list I had an earthenware jar to replace the one my daughter broke a few weeks back. I found one twice the size, although it will need another lid making for it, and got it for £12.



It was actually quite tiring walking round and round, and going back to stalls you'd seen first when you wanted to make an offer on something, having checked you couldn't find something better/cheaper elsewhere. Fortunately, it isn't SUCH a huge fair that you completely lose track - though if you were a china collector that was more than a possibility as there was some wonderful china on offer, but I have reached the stage where I can pretty well resist the temptation, as I am meant to be finding new homes for some of my present collection! Having said that, I was really taken with some unusual yellow Vaseline glass items on one of the stalls, and may get one or two bits if I see them at auction in the future. Just for an example, here is a picture I found on the internet. Stunning isn't it?


I will continue this thread WHEN I have got the photos loading again. The computer won't een load existing photos up properly so I have a glitch somewhere in the works, that's for sure. Hope it's not an expensive one . . .

Not a good day

I haven't been sleeping well this week and it has really caught up with me today. Everything seems to be taking so long to do - especially strigging elderberries for the Pontack Sauce earlier on - I have two thirds of the amount I need now, so must pick more. I got sick of doing them in the end, so went for a blackberrying walk, which I didn't enjoy either as not many blackberries around, a lot of mud and I got tired long before I got home.

The real crux of my annoyedness at present is the computer not speaking to the Camera. It says it is a complete stranger and no, it doesn't want to upload the photographs I've taken, and in fact, it is not going to. So there. Since I have some items to list on e-bay, as a practice run for some bigger pieces (furniture) I am doing my nut here - it has NEVER played up like this before.

Ah well, perhaps when I have had a good night's sleep I shall be able to sort it out. Meanwhile, back to clearing the cupboards out which are going to be sold, those which used to be in Adelina Patti's theatre at Craig-y-Nos.

I am hoping, if I don't feel like chewed string in the morning, that my dearly-beloved and I will have a day out at the Antiques Fair up at Builth Wells. Just looking, but it will be a nice day out all the same. We shall see . . .

Downton Lace

Lace maker

‘Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door,
Pillow and bobbins all her little store;
Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay,
Shuffling her threads about the livelong day,
Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night
Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light.’

So wrote William Cowper in the 18th century, when more than 10,000 people were involved in the industry.





Whilst we were at Salisbury museum, I was fascinated by the display about Downton Lace which I had never heard of before. On my mum's side of the family, I come from generations and generations of Lace makers in Northamptonshire and to be honest, I would love to learn simple lace-making. Since I can't even manage to work out how to do the rest of the sock I am currently knitting, now I have turned the heel, it had better be Lace Making for Dummies . . . Perhaps I might be able to manage this eventually:




although this would be nice:




The Museum sold a fascinating little booklet about Downton Lace, and I would like to share some of its story with you.

Lace making was a common cottage industry up until the time when the craft was mechanized. Many people have heard of Honiton lace, Nottingham lace, Irish lace, and abroad, Brussels and Malta had famous lace-making industries.




In Britain, lace making is beginning to be mentioned as an export around 1560 when both bobbin and needle lace were popular. However, there is no written documentation of lace making in the Salisbury area (Downton is just a few miles below Salisbury) until the early 17th century. The finest laces commanded high prices. James I's wife Anne of Denmark treated herself to "one piece of fine lawn to be a ruffe . . . 18 yeards of fine lace to shewe the ruffe at 6s a yearde £5. 8s. 0. (This was bought, however, from Basing in Hampshire), and from Winchester was "4 yards of great bone lace at 9s a yard, 36s(hillings)." According to the great traveller Celia Fiennes (around 1697), Honiton bone lace was equal to that made in Flanders and Antwerp, although it didn't wash as well, "which must be the fault of the thread".

In Salisbury itself, the Poor Laws of 1598 deemed that it was better for the poor to work and be independent rather than having to pay them parish relief, and overseers were encouraged to chivvy their paupers to find paid work for however small an amount and in a survey of 1625, 47 lace makers were listed. Half of this number were children and thirteen of these under 10 years of age. It was preferred that children be industrious and "be set to sewing, knitting, bonelace making, spinning of woollen or linen yarn, pin making, card making, spooling, button making or some other handiwork as soon as ever they be capable of instruction to learn the same." This was generally judged to be around 5 years of age and a little girl aged six, Rowland Rose, "works at bonelace with Widow Ashlye - to have weekly 3d)." Apprenticeships lasted some 7 or 8 years and the terms were very demanding, so much so that cases of apprentices running away and being brought to the quarter sessions. One apprenticed bonelace maker Ales Ireland apparently ran away 18 times (despite being given 'three good meals a day and having only once been corrected'). "She never cometh home but full of vermin in such state not fitting to come within any mans dores before she be cleansed and the time being dangerous she may not onely undoe us but also the town and country". One wonders what happened to Ales (Alice?) Ireland . . .




Parliamentary legislation had various effects on lacemaking and recorded numbers of lacemakers around 1698 show that there were 1081 in Salisbury; 336 in Downton; 500 in Blandford and 145 in Wincanton and area. This is the earliest recorded reference to Downton itself being a centre of lacemaking. Downton is not a large place, even today, and it would seem that a large percentage of cottagers there were involved in the industry. By mid-Victorian times, 30% of women described themselves as Lace Makers. A check on my 1881 census hs revealed that by then, only one woman, Ann Poulton (66) described her occupation as "Lace Maker", although there were three more in nearby Redlynch: Sophia Webb 61, Fanny Futcher 60, and Mary Herrington, 34.

Below: some Downton Lace patterns (double click to enlarge).

Attempts were made in the early years of the 20th century to revive the industry and to save information on lace making in the area, and patterns. It was noted that a group of lace makers from Redlynch had gone to Fonthill in answer to an advertisement for lace makers to make lace for the Queen. Indeed, Sophie Webb, mentioned above, was one of their number.

In 1903, lace making classes were started by a Mrs Plumptre in Downton (these would be the Council's night school classes) and about 2 dozen women and girls joined, but these classes were discontinued and instruction was contiued privately. Initially the Countess of Radnor (of Longford Castle, just outside of Salisbury by Britford and Bodenham) was involved in setting up the Downton Home Industries but she found it too arduous and Mrs Robinson took over the reins of the lace-making industry in 1909. Thus by the dedication of a few women was Downton lace making kept alive.

Apparently Downton bobbins were unique to the area, being of a slim shape tapering to a point and abut 3 - 3 1/2 inches long. The designs used on them included one "rather like a repeated Celtic cross in a square shield, in red and black alternately." Other motifs included "twigs, branches, pot-plants, pheasants, fishes, hearts, suns, crosses and stars, and also a few snakes, ships and human figures." They were made from "native species of wood such as box, plum, yew, may, spindle, cherry, apple, oak and occasionally from (imported) ebony" and were usually hand-whittled up until the 20th century.

The quality of the lace was dependent upon the quality of the thread, the finest being Nunns Thread, which was also apparently renowned in Castle Cary, over the Somerset border. various types of lace were made and the booklet states that: "the Downton/Midlands Point Ground/Lille type was being made together with Bedfordshire, Torchon, Honiton and Russian Tape laces. Many of the subtle differences in working method which distinguish the downton patterns are in evidence amongst the samples collected (in the Museum). There was apparently always an ongoing desire to expand the repertoire, and some ofo the patterns were from as far afield as Russia, Sweden and Armenia, quite apart from the nearly-local (!) ones from Malmesbury, Wilts and Buckinghamshire. A total of more than 550 patterns have been recorded. Some of them were named after local people - Mrs Moody, Mrs Rolfe, Miss Gain, and local places - Romsey and Downton Daisy. Commemorative patterns were called Princess, Duchess and Princess Alexandra, whilst grumbling tummies were perhaps responsible for Buns and Butter, Orange, Lemon, Cheese-cutter, Eggs and Rasher, and Strawberry. There were also The Doll, The Rattle, Bat and Ball, Propellers, the River, Rabbits, owls, Horseshoe, The Shell, The Button, Ace of Clubs and Ace of Diamonds. There were even a Big and Little Idiot!!!

If you are in Salisbury or would like a special day out, do visit Salisbury Museum and make a point of looking up the Downton Lace display, where dozens of different samples are on display.