Edward Thomas - Adlestrop

The photo was taken along our valley this morning. Wish I had a non-copyright picture of Edward Thomas, but sadly, no . . .


This is one of my favourite poems by Edward Thomas. I turned Radio 4 on today as I was preparing the vegetables for tea and was delighted to catch "Adventures in Poetry" . I fear we had some rather shabbily-peeled potatoes as my full attention was on the programme! HERE
is a link to listen to it in the next seven days.

Here, out of pure self-indulgence for me, is this beautiful poem again:

ADLESTROP

Yes. I remember Adlestrop -
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop. Only the name.

And willows, willow-herb and grass,
And meadowsweet, and hay-cocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

And HERE is a link to poets of the Great War, which seems very appropriate on today, Remembrance Sunday.

Car boot bargains again

There was the usual stroll around the car boot sale today. Sadly, none of the authors I collect were on offer, and nothing much in the way of books to interest, though I did get one for my eldest daughter, so she knows how to make curtains, blinds, cushions etc and loose covers for chairs. At 20p I wasn't going to leave it there anyway!

I was really taken with this beautifully embroidered 1940s? cushion cover. The stitching is far better than I can do. It now has a cushion on it and is on the sofa. It was only 50p. From the same stall I got another big crocheted blanket for £2. It's pink and white, not quite my colour range, but useful for cold nights.


This pretty green pressed glass bowl was £3. I didn't try and haggle as the old lady selling it is a regular down there, desperate to supplement her pension, so I reckon she needed the money more than me. I never set out to collect green glass, but once got our middle daughter a green glass dressing table set, then the odd bit of matching green glass. She doesn't care for it now, so I ended up with the start of a collection. I have some lovely dishes and a serving bowl in a deeper green than this and thicker glass too. I am still looking to find another couple of the matching dishes to make up the set.



A pale green stained picture frame, another pine ditto with a pretty picture in it, and two looooooong and aged reels of white cotton. £3 the lot.

Inglenooks . . .

This is especially for Hear Mum Roar, as she asked what an Inglenook was. Here are a couple of photos of the inglenook in our main kitchen. We have an even bigger one, with a bread oven, down in what was my mum's kitchen (the old dairy, in the bottom of the house). I don't think I have a pic so I will take one and add it later.


Our top inglenook (pics above and below) was all boarded over when we got here, nearly 22 years ago. Even the beam was covered over, and a Stanley stove was sat out in the room, with a length of piping somehow going back into the old fireplace and eventually the chimney, like something out of Heath Robinson, and no way would it draw properly!


This top inglenook is relatively small. I think it was built specifically to the size of the old range which was here at the turn of the century. We found some of the dark red glazed bricks which used to surround it used as infill. Some inglenooks are MUCH bigger and folks used to sit inside them where they would have a small central fire which they cooked over using a crane (like the one we bought yesterday) from which would be suspended the cooking pot or kettle. I will try and find an old photo in one of my books to scan. I know the very book actually, as it's beside me in a pile . . . Old English Household Life by Gertrude Jekyll & Sydney R Jones. Double click on the illustrations to enlarge them.




This is our bottom inglenook. We had to have the chimneys filled with volcanic dust "stuff" as the bottom one especially was so huge you got wet if you stood at the bottom when it rained! The Hergom in the top inglenook would never have drawn without that being filled and the necessary liner fitted. The intention was always to have the little Art Nouveau stove mended internally, installed and working too, but we never got around to it. In the next house perhaps . . .

The bread oven.

Another chair finished

I have been busy with my upholstery projects again today. The springs are now sewn into DH's chair, but I got a bit stuck on where the screws were meant to go for tieing the springs down - I could only find old holes at the front . . . Abandoned that temporarily and finished T's lovely chair instead. It came to us from auction in one heck of a state. The bottom was hanging out and the springs long-gone, and someone had vaguely tacked on a nicely-stitched tapestry seat cover which was far too big. Anyway, I stripped it down, to the next original layer of high quality rusty red cotton velvet, and finally some use-anything-up thin cotton ancient print! I cheated and used foam to put the seat back in with, as I couldn't get any small springs. Ideally it should be a little more domed, and it would help if the front edge was completely straight but I had the chair on its back to do it . . . that's my excuse anyway!



This is an old blacksmith-made chimney crane to go into the inglenook (in our next house, DH tells me). We have the support part it hangs from out in the barn. DH found this at the auction we viewed yesterday and went back and bought it for just £12 today. It has a lot of character and I love the little heart shape at the bottom. It needs a hook welding on, but nothing a blacksmith couldn't do in quick order.

Life of an Ag. Lab. Part 2

My photo of a prize milker as our local show is the closest I could get to a cow being milked without infringement of copyright!


Anyone who has ever seen "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" - or read the book - will remember Tess milking the cow out in the meadow on a beautiful spring day, and Angel watching her:

"All the men, and some of the women, when milking, dug their foreheads into the cows and gazed into the pail. But a few - mainly the younger ones - rested their heads sideways. This was Tess Durbeyfield's habit, her temple pressing the milcher's flank, her eyes fixed on the far end of the meadow with the quiet of one lost in meditation. She was milking Old Pretty thus, and the sun changing to be on the milking-side it shone flat upon her pink-gowned form and her white curtain-bonnet, and upon her profile, rendering it keen as a cameo cut from the dun background of the cow."



How different it could be in winter for the foggers and milkers in her time and throughout the Victorian period:

"Foggers and milkers, if their cottages are near at hand, having finished the first part of the day's work, can often go back home to breakfast, and, if they have a good woman in the cottage, find a fire and hot tea ready. . . . . . The fogger and milker, on the other hand, are often exposed to the most violent tempests. A gale of wind, accompanied with heavy rain, often reaches its climax just about the dawn. They find the soil saturated, and the step sinks into it - the furrows are full of water; the cow-yard, though drained, is a pool, no drain being capable of carrying it off quick enough. The thatch of the sheds drips continually; the haystack drips; the thatch of the stack, which has to be pulled off before the hay-knife can be used, is wet; the old decaying wood the the rails and the gates is wet. They sit on the three-legged milking-stool (whose rude workmanship has taken a dull polish from use) in a puddle; the hair of the cow, against which the head is placed, is wet; the wind blows the rain into the nape of the neck behind, the position being stooping. Staggering under the heavy yoke homewards, the boots sink deep into the slush and mire in the gateways, the weight carried sinking them well in. The cattle must be attended to whatever the weather, Sundays and holidays included. Even in summer it often happens that a thunderstorm bursts about that time of the morning. But in winter, when the rain is driven by a furious wind, when the lantern is blown out, and the fogger stumbles in pitchy darkness through mud and water, it would be difficult to imagine a condition of things which concentrates more discomfort."


Note: a fogger was one responsible for feeding the cattle - cutting the hay from the stack with the hay-knife, etc.

The way of life for the Ag. Lab. - Part 1

Looking down my family tree, many of my ancestors were Ag. Labs. Some had specific jobs such as Carter or Ploughman. One or two made it to Groom up at the Big House, but most of them were just employed at the nearest farm. Some of them started work at 10 years old - literally "farmed out" in the hope that they would have better nutrition at the farmer's table than their own - and of course, one less mouth to feed and perhaps even a little money for their parents when they began to earn a wage.

One of the books I have bought this year is one I've been hoping to find on a bookshop shelf for quite a while: Hodge and His Masters by Richard Jefferies. I believe the book was the ultimate result of a letter to The Times, although his "take" on the labouring rural poor was somewhat derided . . .

Here is what he wrote about the life of the carter:

"Another man who has to be up while the moon casts a shadow is the carter, who must begin to feed his team very early in order to get them to eat sufficient. If the manger is over-filled they spill and waste it, and at the same time will not eat so much. This is tedious work. Then the lads come and polish up the harness, and as soon as it is well light, get out to plough. The custom with the horses is to begin to work as early as possible, but to strike off in the afternoon some time before the other men, the lads riding home astride. The strength of the cart-horse has to be husbanded carefully, and the labour performed must be adjusted to it and to the food, i.e. fuel, consumed. To manage a large team of horses, so as to keep them in good condition, with glossy coats and willing step, and yet to get the maximum of work out of them, requires long experience and constant attention. The carter, therefore, is a man of much importance on a farm. If he is up to his duties he is a most valuable servant; if he neglects them he is a costly nuisance, not s much from his pay, but because of the hindrance and disorganization f the whole farm-work which such neglect entails."

Just another day . . .

The bridge down the hill. You can see how much the river has dropped since Sunday. I mentioned in my comments to this thread, that the year before we arrived here in Wales, a terrific spate had carried fallen logs and trees down which had got caught up on the middle stanchion of the bridge and resulted in the water being forced up and OVER the bridge. Nearby houses were flooded to a depth of four feet and our neighbour couldn't move back home for over 6 months, until the damage to her house had been put right.


It has come on to rain steadily this evening, so no moon to be seen, Atkinson Grimshaw or otherwise. We managed a walk up the valley this afternoon.

Close-up of bubbles in the little feeder-stream which gushes into the river at the bottom of the hill.


Colours were looking very demure and tweedy under an overcast sky.

Unfortunately, our arrival home coincided with the early beauty parade of cattle coming down for milking. . . .

Here are some recent upholstery projects:

An old swivel office chair which has gone into auction now.

My re-covered Victorian footstool (and yes, I did manage to get the pattern upside-down and not central. Dolt!)
This is the current one (which is my husband's chair, and was pretty beat-up when we bought it). All the springs were shot and the bar across the back had broken , so now I have it stripped down, that was one job we could fix today, and in place of the broken dowels, my husband has put four BIG screws.



As you can see, Snowy thinks it is in the kitchen purely as his new bed . . .


Down the back of it I found a half sheet of the Daily Express dating from 22nd August 1939. Sadly, the bits that were remaining weren't terrifically interesting - advertisements for Steradent powder, Radio Rentals advertising the latest (1940 designs) of Consoles, Radiograms and All-wave sets from the amazingly low rental of 1/9d (reducing to 10d). Phone Royal 2585 (the address was Regent Street, London).

A little piece entitled: Boy, cakes, POP, PAIN (The story was told at Ilfracombe (Devon) Juvenile Court, yesterday, of a -

BOY of ten who took 3s from purses at his home, treated his school pals to

CAKES (a large number of which he ate himself) and to ginger

POP (a large quantity of which he drank himself); and then had such a

PAIN in his tummy that he did not go home to dinner or back to school

- and the magistrates bound him over on condition that he goes to bed at eight every night for two years. (!!!)


The paragraph which fortunately survived was this one:

"This period, neither peace nor war, through which we are passing, has many of the attributes of war on a world scale. Certain it is that the magnitude of the preparations, the immensity of the cost and the universality of the effort compares with conditions prevailing in 1915-1917."

And they were right weren't they?