Georgian era research

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Christmas at Avery Hall in the Year of Our Lord 1804

XMASbloghopThe Christmas Season 

(whatever your belief or religion)

 is the time for merry-making and parties…

So come and join some wonderful authors 

(and their characters)

for an Online Virtual Party!

Browse through a variety of Blogs 

(hopping forward to the next one on the list)

for a veritable feast of entertainment!

(And as with any good party, you’ll find a few giveaway prizes along the way!)

BookcoverCCC2Today, I’m officially launching my Christmas novella, Candle’s Christmas Chair. It’s available as a free download from Smashwords. They’ve been distributing to other ebookstores, and I’ll add links as the ebook hits the shelves of Barnes & Noble, Apple, and the rest. (Please note: Amazon insist on a charge of at least 99c, but you can download a mobi file for free from the Smashwords bookstore.) Merry Christmas. I hope you enjoy my novella.

 

Now join me in Avery Hall on Twelfth Night, 5th January 1805, and let’s play a few party games

Mary, Lady Avery looked around the large ballroom with great satisfaction. Everyone was enjoying themselves.

At the head table, the Bean King, her son Randall’s guest Lieutenant Beckett, was conducting a game of snapdragon. Randall was currently trying to snatch raisins and almonds with his teeth, ducking his hand in and out of the shallow bowl of burning brandy. Beckett had ordered the candles and lamps doused, and the flickering flames of the snapdragon bowl lit Randall from below, making him look strangely sinister, particularly costumed as he was.

Snapdragon 1887All of the party wore costume of one kind or another, in the character that they’d drawn earlier in the day.

The chant of the other players came to an end, and they cheered Randall’s haul, calling out the silly nickname he’d worn since he was a tall skinny redhead just entering Eton.

“Candle, Candle, Candle!”

Randall gave his place to Miss Petherick, daughter of the local squire, and the chant started again as she darted her hand at the bowl, shying away before the flames could nip her fingers.

This had, perhaps, been the best Christmas ever. In the six weeks since Stir-up Sunday on the 25th of November, when the whole household had gathered in the kitchen to take turns in stirring the Christmas pudding, she had thrown herself wholeheartedly into every Christmas tradition she knew, and embellished them as far as she could.

Twelfth night partyShe and Myron had only had the last three Christmases together in their lifetime. Myron had gone to India before she left the nursery, and in any case, Christmas was never celebrated in her father’s house. It was, in his view, a work day like any other. Partying was frivolity, and decorating was pagan.

The snapdragon game was drawing to a close, and several of Randall’s guardsmen colleagues were pouring wassail for the young ladies. She would have to watch their consumption. She had, herself, enjoyed a warming bowl from the wassailers when they came carolling up to the Hall earlier in the evening. Theirs was based on cider, but Mary was fairly certain that the guardsmen had added brandy to the wine, apples, and spices in the Hall’s wassail bowl.

wassailing1Beckett was ordering that the lamps be relit. Some of the guardsmen did his bidding. After the wassailers and the mummers finished their entertainment, accepted their figgy cake pudding reward, and went on their way, the houseparty had split, with the gentry to the ballroom and the servants to the servants hall. They were enjoying their own Twelfth Night party, around a wassail bowl that was the counterpart to the one in the ballroom.

The young people were organising a game of Blind Man’s Buff. She moved closer to her brother Myron, out of the way of the players. Myron smiled as she came as close as she could without scorching herself. He sat almost on top of the fireplace where the remains of the giant yule log burnt. He said his years in India made him feel the cold, but she feared he was wasting away from the illness that he had not yet admitted to her.

Randall had led the team that brought the yule log in on Christmas Eve. It was Viscount Avery’s job, as head of the household, but her husband had not spent Christmas at Avery Hall for many years. Though this year he had joined them on St Nicholas Day, the 6th of December, and surprised her with a gift of bulbs for her garden. Myron had given her a length of Indian silk, and Randall, still on duty in London, had sent a ring cut in the shape of a rose, and a bottle of rose-scented perfume.

kissing boughIn many houses, the greenery and other decorations went up on Christmas Eve, too. Mary couldn’t wait. As soon as the first O Antiphon was sung, heralding the Christmas Octave, she and the servants dressed the house with evergreen branches, holly, rosemary, ivy, and mistletoe.

Yes, and ribbons and paper flowers, and cut-outs of dolls, and apples and oranges, and candles.

Every available surface was garlanded or framed, and every room had its own kissing bough, most now sadly denuded of mistletoe berries, one taken in payment for each kiss. The males in the household, of high and of low estate, had certainly done their duty this season!

Yes, it had been a wonderful Christmas; the best since Myron returned home three years before. Since Randall and his friends arrived on leave from London, the young men and women of the neighbourhood had flocked to the house every evening, and most afternoons. They had filled this Christmas season with laughter, music, games and dancing.

They had moved onto a game of Courtiers now, with the Bean King and  the Pea Queen making ridiculous gestures, while the rest of the party copied them and tried to keep their faces serious. To laugh was to be disqualified.

Fairfax-xmas-08-18Mary helped herself to a Twelfth Night pie. The food had been wonderful this year. Cook and her team had outdone themselves, filling the tables at every meal with festive dishes, such as goose, Christmas pudding, gingerbread, butter shortbread, trifle, and a whole host of vegetable, meat, and fruit dishes.

All too soon it would be over. Already, some of the parents were making moves towards leaving. And tomorrow, on the Feast of the Epiphany, the greenery would come down, the decorations would be put away, and the last of the yule log would be doused (and carefully saved to rekindle next year’s log). After church tomorrow, and an exchange of Epiphany gifts, Randall and his friends would head back to London and the new year.

Mary wondered what 1805 held for them; for the brave young men and the pretty girls; especially for her dear son.

(To find out what happens to Randall in 1805, please download Candle’s Christmas Chair.)

Thank you for joining my party

now follow on to the next enjoyable entertainment…

  1. Helen Hollick : You are Cordially Invited to a Ball (plus a giveaway prize)
  2. Alison Morton : Saturnalia surprise – a winter party tale  (plus a giveaway prize)
  3. Andrea Zuvich : No Christmas For You! The Holiday Under Cromwell
  4. Ann Swinfen : Christmas 1586 – Burbage’s Company of Players Celebrates
  5. Anna Belfrage :  All I want for Christmas
  6. Carol Cooper : How To Be A Party Animal
  7. Clare Flynn :  A German American Christmas
  8. Debbie Young :  Good Christmas Housekeeping (plus a giveaway prize)
  9. Derek Birks :  The Lord of Misrule – A Medieval Christmas Recipe for Trouble
  10. Edward James : An Accidental Virgin and An Uninvited Guest
  11. Fenella J. Miller : Christmas on the Home Front (plus a giveaway prize)
  12. J. L. Oakley :  Christmas Time in the Mountains 1907 (plus a giveaway prize)
  13. Jude Knight : Christmas at Avery Hall in the Year of Our Lord 1804 (you are here)
  14. Julian Stockwin: Join the Party
  15. Juliet Greenwood : Christmas 1914 on the Home Front (plus a giveaway)
  16. Lauren Johnson :  Farewell Advent, Christmas is come – Early Tudor Festive Feasts
  17. Lindsay Downs: O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree (plus a giveaway)
  18. Lucienne Boyce :  A Victory Celebration
  19. Nancy Bilyeau :  Christmas After the Priory (plus a giveaway prize)
  20. Nicola Moxey : The Feast of the Epiphany, 1182
  21. Peter St John:  Dummy’s Birthday
  22. Regina Jeffers : Celebrating a Regency Christmas  (plus a giveaway prize)
  23. Richard Abbott : The Hunt – Feasting at Ugarit
  24. Saralee Etter : Christmas Pudding — Part of the Christmas Feast
  25. Stephen Oram : Living in your dystopia: you need a festival of enhancement… (plus a giveaway prize)
  26. Suzanne Adair : The British Legion Parties Down for Yule 1780 (plus a giveaway prize)

Thank you for joining us and:

99943-004-B3D19C4B

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In a bit of a jam – cooking in a cottage kitchen in 1807

IMG2242MODSThe plan was that the maid-of-all-work who cooked and cleaned for my Farewell to Kindness heroine and her sisters would be a magnificent baker, and win prizes every year at the village fair. I envisaged lovely light cakes and bread to die for. And jam. Wild strawberry jam, made from berries collected by the hero and heroine together.

Daggett House main room 2 fireplace cookingBut as soon as I began to research early 19th Century recipes, I hit a problem. Anne and her sisters lived in a workers’ cottage, on of a row of cottages built for his tenants by a former Earl of Chirbury some 200 years earlier. Yes, they had the largest dwelling in the row. Formerly two cottages, it had been knocked into one for a foreman perhaps, or some other slightly more prosperous tenant. But it was still fundamentally a 17th Century cottage, and the kitchen was very much a 17th Century kitchen.

What that meant was no oven. Not even a bread oven built into the brick of the chimney, which more modern and more substantial houses would have had at that time. Many of the villagers would have taken anything they wanted to bake to the cook shop, where it would be put into a large brick oven heated with firewood. The baker would burn exactly the right amount of wood to ash, then rake aside the ash and set the pots and pans in among them to cook in the heat radiated by the bricks.

Great houses, such as my Longford Court, would have their own brick ovens for bread built into a wall, and some might also have one of the brick stoves invented in the 18th century. Open at the front, they had a fire inside and an iron plate on top for the pots to sit on. The Rumford Stove, invented in 1795, was a huge improvement, since the heat could be regulated to give different pots heat at different times. It was not widely available just over a decade later and was, in any case too big for all but the biggest kitchen.

The efficient cast iron ovens that revolutionised cooking in the Victorian era were still at least 30 years away.

So in Anne’s little cottage – two rooms downstairs, and three up – cooking would have been done in an open fireplace.

Fireplaces were large, and set up a step from the floor. In an inn or great house, the fireplace might be so large that the cook would walk right inside, and move around the various fires that kept what was cooking at different temperatures. This was risky, especially in a long skirt, so many people would only employ male cooks for such establishments.

3209174951_9c0f2e116a_bIn Anne’s cottage, Hannah (the maid) would still have several fires, though they would be smaller and tended from the front. She would also have iron kettles and pots, spits to hold roast meat at the correct distance from the flame, and hooks that could be raised or lowered to regulate heat and swung away from the fire.

Food might also be cooked in a pot or kettle that sat on a trivet next to the fire, toasted on a fork, or baked on a skillet or griddle – a flat plate of iron that had been preheated either over the flame or by having embers piled on it.

Several times in the novel, Hannah serves drop scones that had been baked on a griddle.

But Hannah’s favourite tool was the dutch oven. An Englishman conducted a little bit of industrial espionage early in the 18th century, and brought the innovative Dutch process for making these cooking vessels back from the Netherlands. A kitchen such as Hannah’s would have had several, and would have used them all.

First, she would take embers from the fire, and sit the cast iron dutch oven directly on the embers. Then she would put into the oven whatever she wanted to cook – a stew, a cake in a tin, a loaf of bread shaped into the dumpy circle we still call a cottage loaf. After putting the lid on the oven, she would shovel more embers on top.

20090208---Dutch-OvenIf she was making a complex dinner, she might stack one oven on top of another, with different dishes in each oven.

As to that strawberry jam, into a kettle with that, and over the fire, with a careful scoop of sugar – not too much. The price was coming down in the early 19th century, but it was still a great luxury for a household living on the edge of poverty. Once the jam had boiled to setting stage, she would have carefully ladled it into earthenware pots, and sealed the tops with melted wax and waxed brown paper.

And here is what happened when Anne, her sisters, and her daughters went berry picking, and met the Earl, his sister, and his nieces:

The group sorted themselves into teams: Anna and Daisy, chattering away as they picked strawberries, feeding half to the baskets and half into their mouths; Amy, standoffish at first, thawing out as she talked books with Miss Kitty; Susan and Miss Haverstock bonding over a discussion of art and music.

That left Reede to work with Mrs Forsythe and Meg. Meg ate as most of the strawberries she picked. Reede began passing her some of his, and Mrs Forsythe scolded him, half laughing.

“But they taste so good!” To prove it, he popped one in her mouth, his fingers lingering for a moment on her lips, brushing past her cheek. Their eyes caught, his suddenly hot; hers with an expression he couldn’t quite read. Apprehension, perhaps. Some yearning, though that might have been a figment of his own desire.

Meg broke the moment, pressing a strawberry into Reede’s own mouth. “Taste so good!”

He savoured the sweet taste and the rich smell. “Yes, Miss Meg. It tastes very good.” But his eyes drifted back to Mrs Forsythe’s lips. She, he was convinced, would taste even sweeter.

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How England reacted to the death of Lord Nelson

The redoubtableI accidentally set my novella, Candle’s Christmas Chair, in the months that saw the naval power of France broken at Trafalgar. When I realised, I made sure that my hero was present at Bath’s premier coaching inn when the news arrived from London.

The victory was massive. The British navy won against a considerably larger force, and won decisively. They lost 449 men and none of their 33 ships; on the other side, the French and Spanish lost more than 4,000 men and, 22 of their 40 ships.

But joy in England was tempered by grief, as her greatest naval hero had died in the battle.

Battle of trafalgarOn the Death of Lord Nelson

Anon
The Morning Chronicle (November 8, 1805)
Why o’er the dark and troubled deep
Is heard at times a mournful noise;
While Victors midst their triumphs weep,
The vanquish’d in their fall rejoice!

Why burst the sobs of yonder Tars,
But now triumphant o’er the foe;
Unmindful of their gory scars,
Their tears that now first learn to flow?

For NELSON’S death their tears are shed,
And grief alone their thoughts employs;
Ev’n Vict’ry’s self reclines her head,
And weeping checks her wonted joys.

Lord NelsonThy deeds, great Chief, shall be the theme,
Afar on Ganges’ hallow’d shores;
While Niagara’s lightening stream,
Thy dreaded name in thunder roars.

Stern MARS, as ‘midst the fight he raves,
Shall ev’ry dreadful peal prolong;
And NEPTUNE roll his gory waves,
To sound their fav’rite’s fun’ral song.

And while on high her Warrior’s tomb
Thy weeping country grateful rears;
Thy laurels o’er it e’er shall bloom,
Still water’d by a Nation’s tears.

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Little brides, or big initiates?

First-Communion-2010-JPeg-1

A first communion photo showing a row of gorgeous young ladies in white

Yesterday (Sunday New Zealand time), eight young members of my parish made their first communion. They all wore white; of the five girls, two wore veils and three had coronets of white flowers.

Bride in medieval finery

I’ve been asked why our first communicants dress as brides. A better question would be why brides dress as first communicants.

By at least 1700, Catholic and Anglican girls approached the altar for their first communion wearing a white garment.These echoed the white robe worn by priests, which in turn symbolises the white linen garment that the priests of ancient Israel wore. And veils were shawls in a light material, worn by many women as part of their daily wear. For the special occasion of their first communion, girls then, as today, might wear a veil that had been worn by a mother and maybe a grandmother, folded away and kept since the last first communicant proudly wore it.

1880s wedding dress

1880s wedding dress

In the 18th and early 19th century, brides wore their best dress and bonnet on their wedding day. The dress might be new for the occasion – if the family was wealthy enough, it probably would. But only the very wealthiest could afford a one-time dress. All other brides expected their bridal gown to do service for many Sundays to come. Most also wore a bonnet rather than a veil (or a bonnet with a veil attached, which was common enough in everyday wear).

The dress could be in any colour. The poorer the bride, the more likely they would choose a darker colour, since it required less care. Wealthier brides might wear white, silver, or blue.

In 1840, Queen Victoria wore white to match some lace she wanted to use. Several others at the wedding also wore white:

Queen Victoria’s dress was of rich white satin, trimmed with orange flower blossoms. The headdress was a wreath of orange flower blossoms, and over this a beautiful veil of Honiton lace, worn down. The bridesmaids or train-bearers were also attired in white. The cost of the lace alone on the dress was £1,000. The satin, which was of a pure white, was manufactured in Spitalfields. Queen Victoria wore an armlet having the motto of the Order of the Garter: “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” inscribed. She also wore the star of the Order.

Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert

The lace of Queen Victoria’s bridal dress, though popularly called Honiton lace, was really worked at the village of Beer, which is situated near the sea coast, about ten miles from Honiton.  It was executed under the direction of Miss Bidney, a native of the village, who went from London, at the command of her Majesty, for the express purpose of superintending the work. More than two hundred persons were employed upon it from March to November, during the past year.

The lace which formed the flounce of the dress, measured four yards, and was three quarters of a yard in depth. The pattern was a rich and exquisitely tasteful design, drawn expressly for the purpose, and surpasses anything that has ever been executed either in England or in Brussels. So anxious was the manufacturer that Queen Victoria should have a dress perfectly unique, that she has since the completion of the lace destroyed all the designs. The veil, which was of the same material, and was made to correspond, afforded employment to the poor lace workers for more than six weeks. It was a yard and a half square.

The Queen Dowager’s dress was of English lace with a rich deep flounce over white satin; the body and sleeves trimmed with the same material. The train was of rich violet velvet lined with white satin and trimmed with ermine. The whole of this dress was entirely composed of articles of British manufacture. Queen Adelaide wore a diamond necklace and earrings, a head dress, feathers, and diamonds.

 The dress worn by her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Kent, was of white satin splendidly brocaded with silver and trimmed with three flounces of blonde. It was trimmed with net and silver. The train was of sky-blue velvet lined with white satin and trimmed with ermine. The body and sleeves were tastefully ornamented with ermine and silver with blonde ruffles. The head dress was of diamonds and feathers with a necklace and earrings en suite. The articles in the dress were wholly of British manufacture.

 H.R.H. Princess Augusta wore a corsage and train of rich blue velvet trimmed with Brussels point lace and tastefully ornamented with aigrettes of diamonds. There was a rich white satin petticoat with volants and heading of Brussels point lace. The head dress was of Brussels point lace with superb lappets to correspond and a magnificent spray of diamonds.

 The Duchess of Sutherland wore a dress of white satin trimmed with barbs of Spanish point lace and white roses. Included was a stomacher of brilliants, point ruffles and berthé; plus a train of white moiré magnificently embroidered in coral and gold. The head dress was of feathers and point lappets with splendid diamonds.

 The Countess of Carlisle had a dress of sapphire blue velvet with a Brussels point tucker and ruffles. Her head dress was a toque of velvet and Brussels point lappets.

And brides who could afford to do so emulated her for the next 150 years. Even today, we think white is the ‘proper’ colour for a bridal gown.

Another medieval bride

The dress worn by Queen Charlotte when she married George III

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Happy ever after – a different perspective

Vittorio_Reggianini_-_The_LetterMy FB friend author Mari Christie and I have been discussing the HEA ending. In romance novels, the convention suggests the happy ever after involves a couple (or, in some interpretations of the genre, a rather larger group) riding happily off into the sunset.

I’ve posted elsewhere about happy endings being new beginnings, and happy ever after involving an upward trajectory that the reader can believe in. In the romance genre, and particularly in the historical romance genre, happy ever after means a marriage that the reader thinks will work.

But for a huge number of people in my chosen time period, the early 19th century, marriage was not on the cards.

For a start, out of a population of 16 million, more than 300,000 British men died in the Napoleonic wars between 1804 and 1815. That’s a huge number of men of marriageable age – probably close to 1 in 12. Men were also more likely to indulge in risk-taking behaviour in their leisure, and to belong to risky occupations, further increasing the gender imbalance.

And men were not subject to social stigma if they did not marry, and had easy access to many of the benefits of marriage (with one in five women in London, according to some researchers, earning their living from the sale of sex).

So even if our late Georgian miss wanted to marry, she may not have had the opportunity. Jane Austen wrote to her sister, Cassandra:

‘There is a great scarcity of Men in general, & a still greater scarcity of any that were good for much.’

Beyond that, though, our Miss may not have wished to marry. Married women had few rights.

Yet what is remarkable, unmarried women were more legally independent than the married ones. Single women could own property, pay taxes to the state, and vote in the local parish, none of which married women were allowed to do. [Women in the middle class in the 19th Century]

And the health risks of pregnancy concerned many women. With a maternal death rate of one in 1000 live births, and an average of five children per mother, women had a two or three percent chance of dying in or shortly after childbirth.

It’s hard to tell how many women were single. Marital status was not systematically collected in statistics until the middle of the century. But at that time, one in three women were not married. Florence Nightingale commented on the general belief that women had no more important role than to marry and have children.

Women are never supposed to have any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted, except “suckling their fools”; and women themselves have accepted this, have written books to support it, and have trained themselves so as to consider whatever they do as not of such value to the world as others, but that they can throw it up at the first “claim of social life”. They have accustomed themselves to consider intellectual occupation as a merely selfish amusement, which it is their “duty” to give up for every trifler more selfish than themselves.

Women never have an half-hour in all their lives (except before and after anybody is up in the house) that they can call their own, without fear of offending or of hurting someone. Why do people sit up late, or, more rarely, get up so early? Not because the day is not long enough, but because they have “no time in the day to themselves”.

The family? It is too narrow a field for the development of an immortal spirit, be that spirit male or female. The family uses people, not for what they are, not for what they are intended to be, but for what it wants for – its own uses. It thinks of them not as what God has made them, but as the something which it has arranged that they shall be. This system dooms some minds to incurable infancy, others to silent misery.

So, to be true to life, historical novels, even historical romances, need to consider the presence in Society and society of a great army of women who never married, many of whom may not have wished to do so. Rather than the common trope of a war between women for the hands of the few suitable men, perhaps we need more books about groups of female friends who support one another in their decision not to be pressured into a choice that is wrong for them.

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To everything there is a season

AdventWreathToday is the 1st Sunday of Advent in the liturgical calendar of the Western Christian churches. It is also the first day of the new liturgical year. This afternoon, I’ll put the Christmas tablecloth on the table, with the advent candles in the middle of it. I’ll also put up the Jesse Tree, to which I’ll add an ornament a day until Christmas Day.

I love these markers of the annual cycle of seasons, feasts, celebrations, and memorials. They speak to something in the human soul. All cultures have their own markers–even the modern business world marks the end of the tax year and annual report publishing day, and commerce seizes gleefully on traditional festivals as a reason for that very up-t0-date marker: the sale.

In earlier times, the markers were mostly linked to the rhythms of the season and the demands of a society that lived on the proceeds of agriculture. We tend to think of people in earlier times as working day-in, day-out, without 40-hour-a-week legislation to protect their rights to leisure. But the rhythms of the season and, in Christian countries, the feasts of the Church meant perhaps more leisure than any of today’s workers could imagine. Harvard economist Juliett Shor claims that medieval peasants worked as little as six hours a day and might get up to 200 days a year off.

Whatever the arguments about the detail of those claims, 700 years ago, a Church feast day meant no work beyond what was needed to keep animals fed and watered. Every Sunday was a feast day, and–depending on the particular year and the local bishop–anything from another 50 to another 150 might be added into the mix.

pieter-bruegel-maypoleMy novels, set in England’s late Georgian era, fall in a time where many people had been driven from the land. But for those who remained, some of the old ways endured. In Farewell to Kindness, the action of a third of the novel happens before the backdrop of Whitsunweek (also known as Whitsuntide).

Carl Spitzweg - Das PicknickApart from walks, fairs, picnics, horse races and other activities, the week was known for the brewing of the Whitsunale. This was a church fundraising activity–the church wardens would take subscriptions, create a brew, and sell or distribute it during the week of Whitsuntide. It has a certain appeal. It would certainly be a change from cake stalls and sausage sizzles!

Whitsunweek was the week following the Feast of Pentecost (WhitSunday), and seems to have been the only week-long medieval holiday to survive into early modern times. It usually fell after sheep shearing and before harvest, and it was a week of village festivities and celebrations.

I’ve already posted about the mob football game in my novel. In the following excerpt, my hero is visiting my heroine, who is his tenant. Will is his land steward.

Anne had nothing to add, except to comment that the chimney was the most urgent of the needed repairs.

“Very good.” The Earl smiled. “I’ll get someone onto that immediately.”

“After Whitsuntide,” Will corrected. “I doubt we’ll get anyone here before that.”

The Earl nodded acceptance. “I’ve been hearing about the Whitsuntide festival. You are on the committee, are you not?”

Anne demurred. “Not for all the festivities. I am part of a small sub-committee of the Ladies Altar Society that is organising the fête for Tuesday.”

“I remember the fête from when I was a child. Stalls, Morris Dancing, the Whitsun Ale. My cousin Susan and I won the blindfold wheelbarrow race two years in a row.”

“We’re to have all of that, my Lord. And archery, and skittles, and a tug-of-war, and other tests of skill or strength. The village band will play for dancing. The Whitsun Ale, of course. And the Squire is organising a fireworks display.”

“My cousin’s children will love it. I expect them one day this week.”

Anne nodded. “Mrs Cunningham’s grandchildren. She and her sister, Lady Redwood, are so looking forward to seeing them.”

“So what else might they enjoy next week?”

“There’s to be football on Monday, and cricket on Wednesday,” Mr Baxter contributed, “and horse racing and coursing on Friday.”

“That makes for a busy time! Will any work be done, do you think?”

“Very little!” Mr Baxter acknowledged. “But with the shearing over and the haying still to begin, this week is a welcome holiday.”

“Yes, and both village and farm will work all the better for a brief time of play,” Anne agreed.

“Is anything planned for Thursday?” the Earl asked.

Anne beamed. “Yes, indeed. There’s a singing competition in Chipping Niddwick, at their Whitsun fête. We expect our psalm singers to win!”

May you all have a peaceful and productive Advent, and a Happy New Year.

 

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Making a joyful noise to the Lord

Thomas_Webster_-_A_Village_ChoirFrom the beginning of the 18th century until the spread of the church organ in the mid 19th century, many villages had a quire (choir) of psalm singers. Often called ‘West Gallery Singers’ because they sat in the west gallery above the rear end of the nave, they sang the psalms and other selections from the Book of Common Prayer to tunes composed by local teachers and quire members.

In 1700, the nave was already ‘owned’ by the more affluent members of the congregation. Galleries to the north and south were built to seat the poorer members of the flock, and the west gallery became home to the singers and musicians.

And they took their job seriously. Here’s an extract from the Rules of a quire in Kent:

1773 Oct. 28th Ann agreement made for the Company of Psalm singers in Kenardington. We Do gree to forfitt two pence on all Sundays for not being at Church in Divine Sarvis time to joyn to sing to the praise an glory of GOD and to meet on Sunday Evening at Six o’clock and forfitt one penny and to meet on all Thursday evenings at Six o’clock or forfitt one penny for each Neglect of not being there at the time. The mony to be gathered by One Whom the Company apoint for that purpus and the forfitt mony to be Spent on January 1st 1774 at a place apointed by the Company. Agreed and aproved of by us Who have hear unto Sett our Names.

Wm Chittenden
Thos Noakes
Wm Durrant
Thos Kingsnorth
Jn Austen
Thos Tolhurst X his mark
lsaac Dadson X his mark		 Thos Leads X his mark
Wm Hills
James Backer
Thos Hampton
Henry Holit
Wm Jones X his mark
James Huld

And here’s what they might have sounded like.

They used their skills in other settings, too:

There is no doubt that the mixed groups of instrumentalists and singers which we refer to as ‘quires’ to distinguish them for the organ-driven, surpliced latter-day groups, became very important in parish life. Those who played for the singing in church would also have played a major part in parish social life on feast days, high days and holidays. They had status within parish society, the nature of their jobs often gave them a measure of independence, and they were not infrequently in conflict with the parson or the squire. Their music often travelled far and wide, and in surprising forms. For example, few people today realise that when they sing the Yorkshire anthem ‘On Ilkley Moor Bah’t ‘At’ they are actually singing a west gallery hymn called ‘Cranbrook’, composed by the Canterbury shoemaker Thomas Clark who alone wrote hundreds of such splendid tunes.

The following far more secular song (just listen to the repeated chorus) might well have been sung on the village green on the night of the Whitsunale celebration that is a central event in Farewell to Kindness. If I do a book trailer, this is the song I want in the background. I couldn’t find a version sung by a West Gallery quire, but this one is pretty and the words are clear.

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Much of the material for this article and all the quotes came from the West Gallery Music Association.