Dr Alina Congreve introduces this exciting new network of Archives and Museums across the country. With Essex being the home to three major new towns, all falling into different stages of the movement (Harlow, Basildon and South Woodham Ferrers), it promises to be of particular relevance to this county.
Essex Record Office are excited to be the lead partner for a new national network for post-war new towns. This new network brings together the archives and museums that hold significant collections of post-war new town material. It involves 19 archives and museums from across England. The purpose of the network is to share knowledge between members about activities relating to new town archives. This includes sharing good practice in cataloguing; engaging with families and young people; working with local history and heritage societies; and making links with researchers and universities. The members of the new network are at very different stages of engagement with their new town collections, and there is significant potential for peer learning. Secondly, the network provides time and space to develop larger scale collaborative funding bids. The network is open to new members in England and we welcome interest from from museums, local history centres and academics researching new towns.
New towns mark an
important turning point in British history and are a unique contribution to
urban development. British new towns have relevance today for new towns
being rapidly developed in Asia, Africa, South America and ‘new’ new towns
being planned here in Britain. Many British new towns are facing a period of
rapid change, with the developments of the post-war period being replaced with
little thought given to the original intentions in their design, or architectural
significance of the buildings that are removed. These post-war new towns
are paradoxically popular with their long-term residents while having a poor
external perception. Greater engagement with new town archives can help
make connections between long-term New Town residents and recent arrivals,
helping to build community and aid social integration. The archive
collection of some new towns have drawn the attention of international scholars
and generated books, journal articles and symposia. Others have had
relatively little attention, in part due to the lack of cataloguing and also a
low profile of the collections. A better understanding of our post-war
new towns can be valuable in positively shaping their future, and this
understanding can be achieved through greater access to and engagement with
post-war archives.
University of Essex MA student Grace Benham reflects on her placement spent working on a collection of oral history interviews tracing the history of women’s refuges in Essex. You can read her previous blog posts here.
Uncovering the hidden history of Women’s Refuges in Essex has been as rewarding as it has been difficult. The struggle of the women, and men, who fought to recognise the importance of protecting women from abusive histories, though tragic in its need, is incredibly inspiring.
In my academic history background, I have rarely delved into feminist history, and especially British feminist history, which surprises most as I have also been an outspoken advocate for women. This choice is rooted in two fundamental reasons: firstly, it is difficult to see the hatred and vile attitudes towards women that existed not so long ago which the matriarchs of my family would have grown up with, and it is hard to reconcile that with the privileges we hold today. But, more than this, I had never seen myself as a very ‘good’ feminist; in my younger years I failed to recognise nuance and my own privileges. But an important lesson from those who have dedicated decades of their lives for others is that, despite differences, unity for the common good is absolutely more important.
Tackling
this collection was daunting to say the least. My own personal
experience with abuse in a romantic relationship which had motivated
the selection of this collection also made going through this
material hard. However, the hidden histories of Women’s Refuges
also provides a wealth of hope in the selfless willingness to help
those who need it and to fight for everything they’ve got.
The oral history collection, ‘You Can’t Beat a Woman’, comprises stories from Colchester, Chelmsford, Ipswich, Grays, and Basildon and the women who worked, lived, and fought for refuges from domestic abuse (the interviews pertaining to London were beyond the remit of this placement). All stories which, although containing some collaboration and inspiration, tell of formidable and dedicated women who, born from the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s, took it upon themselves to fight for Women’s Refuges in a time when domestic abuse was not taken seriously at all, let alone seriously enough.
For an example of such strength and sacrifice, one should only look to Moyna Barnham MBE, who in her interview tells of how she would go alone in the middle of the night to collect ‘battered women’, having to go up against the abusers, such a dangerous role that one night her husband even followed her to ensure her safety. Such bravery is to of course be commended, but it is also unfortunate that the police and local welfare workers were not there for these women, and it was up to independent volunteers to provide such a service.
I also believe that such a study has come at an unfortunately poignant time as the tragic rise of people, particularly women, seeking help with domestic abuse during the lockdown period of COVID-19 paints a painful picture of the persistence of the problem. It is also important in such discourse to recognise nuance. In Alison Inman’s interview, a key figure at both Basildon and Colchester Refuges, she describes how society expects a ‘perfect victim’ of domestic abuse, i.e. an innocent and naïve woman. However the reality is that domestic abuse occurs in every gender, every sexuality, every class, and every age; it is a universal problem. I feel that the current COVID-19 domestic abuse discourse highlights this problem and its nuances. A recent BBC Panorama investigation revealed not only the scale:
‘Panorama has found in the first seven weeks of UK lockdown someone called police for help about domestic abuse every 30 seconds – that’s both female and male victims.’
But this investigation also showed a lacklustre government response that should not belong to a society that has, apparently, been acknowledging this problem since the 1970s.
‘It took the Westminster government 19 days after imposing restrictions to announce a social media campaign to encourage people to report domestic abuse, as well as an extra £2m for domestic abuse helplines.’
BBC PANORAMA, 17 AUGUST 2020
Of course the lockdown was an unprecedented event that, hopefully, exists in isolation, but surely such a demonstration of the terror in some people’s homes shows in undeniable terms that domestic abuse and violence remain problems, and the services and education addressing the problem are underfunded and underrepresented. Therefore, what we can glean from this oral history collection is an invaluable educational resource on how to combat domestic abuse, and to be inspired by those who came before us.
This truly has been a transformative experience, both personally and as a historian, and I would like to extend my warmest thanks to the Friends of Historic Essex for their funding of the project.
Sources:
‘You Can’t Beat a Woman’ collection of oral history interviews in the Essex Record Office (Acc. SA853)
Please Note: This blog post contains potentially upsetting material that may not be suitable for all.
Our University of Essex placement student Grace Benham reviews some themes emerging from her work on the ‘You Can’t Beat a Woman’ oral history project about the founding of women’s refuges in Essex and London. Read her first blog post here.
In September 1976, after years of domestic abuse, Maurice Wells shot his wife Suzanne dead and held his daughter hostage in the ensuing siege of his home in Colchester. In February 1977 he was sentenced to manslaughter and served a ten-year sentence. Chris Graves, a solicitor who aided Colchester Refuge in its inception, credits the outraged reaction to such a short sentence to his own involvement, and the refuge movement as a whole.
Chris Graves reviews the Maurice Wells case and its impact on the women’s refuge movement. From the ‘You Can’t Beat a Woman’ collection of oral history interviews, Acc. SA853.
Colchester Refuge had been in the works previous to this case. Many of the interviewees recorded for the ‘You Can’t Beat a Woman’ project (Acc. SA853) explained how the refuge was born out of the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s, which had come over from America and gained its own life in Britain. However, the Wells case, a case which myself and everyone else I have discussed this with have never heard of, highlights an important theme of both the past and the present, the privatisation of domestic violence. According to the Daily Gazette, once out of prison Wells went on to commit crimes against children and told his victims that if they reported him, he could kill them like he killed his wife.
This story is one of many featured on the ‘You Can’t Beat a Woman’ website and one of many that are unheard amongst the general public. Domestic violence is, generally, an inherently private crime as it occurs within private spheres, but the issue goes beyond just this. The prevalence of domestic violence, which only became properly acknowledged in the 1970s following the Women’s Liberation movement, created uncomfortable questions, shame and denial. It could be easy to dismiss domestic violence because it occurred ‘behind closed doors’. Alison Inman recalls a story in which a local authority in Essex refused to set up a refuge because ‘they didn’t have domestic violence within their borough’, which led to an increase in women from that area entering neighbouring refuges.
Alison Inman describes a local authority’s denial that domestic violence was a problem in their region. From the ‘You Can’t Beat a Woman’ collection of oral history interviews, Acc. SA853.
Moreover, the women who needed refuges and would go on to become residents typically were those of lower classes due to the fact that those with available resources would have other options to avoid going into a refuge. This builds a stereotype of a certain type of woman who suffered domestic violence, even though this is a problem that affects all classes, all races, all genders, all sexualities. Such women could be demonised for their choices as they had little to no one defending them. These women could also be silenced through the normalisation of violence in working class marriages. Normalisation occurred through popular culture, such as the Andy Capp comics that featured in the Daily Mirror from 1957 to 1965, which regularly portrayed domestic violence as not only humorous but as a normal and acceptable way to treat one’s wife, particularly within working class marriages.
Alison Inman on the development of stereotypes around domestic violence victims. From the ‘You Can’t Beat a Woman’ collection of oral history interviews, Acc. SA853.
Another facet of this conversation that has slowed bringing the issue of domestic violence the time, energy and funding it deserves are the elements of shame and denial which are intrinsically linked. Rachel Wallace, who addresses domestic violence and humour, in particular in regard to Andy Capp, makes excellent observations on how humour is used in a response to shame. She depicts how these comics would not have been a success without an audience. In validating a taboo subject that is, unfortunately, rife in our society, such an audience finds themselves validated and vindicated, and therefore the shame is diminished. Much like denial, humour is used as a defence against shame, and it is hard to argue that those who were indifferent to domestic violence would find humour in such situations. We can see examples of this use of humour within this oral history collection, with councillors joking about how their wives treat them in response to being petitioned for refuges, with change only coming, according to Moyna Barnham, when the law required councils to provide homes for ‘battered women’, a burden councils did not typically want to bear.
Moyna Barnham on the problem of unwelcome jokes encountered in the campaign to set up women’s refuges. From the ‘You Can’t Beat a Woman’ collection of oral history interviews, Acc. SA853.
The future of refuges and reform around the handling of domestic violence situations require us to recognise the lessons of the past, and the need for education and recognising nuance. I had the great honour of attending a talk regarding a project titled ‘Sisters Doing it for Themselves’ , a collaborative project by the Women’s Refuge Centre and the London School of Economics. For this project, leading figures of the women’s volunteer sector in London are interviewed by schoolchildren, to not only teach oral history practices to a younger generation and collate such vital histories but also in order for both parties to learn something from the other. The main points of this talk resonated with these interviews that occurred in 2016 and 2017 regarding women’s refuges in the East of England, in that there is an emphasis going forward on education and nuance, both of which were crucial in the first founding of women’s refuges. To confront the denial, shame, blame and stereotypes around domestic violence is surely only a step in the right direction.
Joan Bliss on the changes within the women’s refuge movement and the need for continued education of society. From the ‘You Can’t Beat a Woman’ collection of oral history interviews, Acc. SA853.
Wallace, Rachel. 2018. ‘”She’s Punch Drunk!!”: Humor, Domestic Violence, and the British Working Class in Andy Capp Cartoons, 1957–65.’ Journal of Popular Culture 51 (1): 129–51. doi:10.1111/jpcu.12646.
I am probably known to many as the editor of the Victoria County History of Essex, a project researching and publishing historical accounts of communities in Essex to a standard format as a work of reference.
I am also currently Chairman of the Friends of Historic Essex, the charity that supports the ERO, and a Vice-President (and former officer) of the Essex Society for Archaeology and History. My personal research interests lie in medieval economic and social history, and also landscape history and buildings. I live with my wife Lynn in the centre of Maldon and we have a daughter, Ruth, who is currently studying French and German at the University of Bristol.
Where is your ‘office’?
My ‘official’ office is a room in the centre of the house (the
former dining room), but it is currently so overrun with stacked books and
paperwork I can’t work in there! I have also taken over the dining table in the
bay window in the lounge, which is currently occupied with the notes and books
for VCH work on Harwich. My current working space is therefore another dining
table in the garden room at the back of the house.
Do you have a view out of a window when you are working?
What is it and is it a distraction?
The view out of the garden room is, unsurprisingly, of the
rear garden. It is only a small space, but south facing, green and peaceful,
backing onto Maldon’s Quaker meeting house grounds. It won’t surprise anyone
who knows me to learn that I have lost both the keys to the patio doors – so we
have to exit out of the side kitchen door!
The garden attracts lots of birds which I enjoy watching,
and they will probably like it even more as I have plans to dig up the lawn and
plant potatoes. Planning my own personal dig for victory can certainly be (enjoyably)
distracting.
What Essex research are you catching up on? Will this
result in something published?
I have occasional work to do seeing VCH Essex XII (part I)
through the publication process, and preparing XII (part II) to start on the process
later this year. I am also completing some research on Tudor sources on Harwich
for VCH Essex XIII, including court rolls (ERO), the Harwich Town Book (churchwardens’
accounts) (Harwich Town Council archive) and Prerogative Court of Canterbury
wills for Harwich (TNA). I have digital photographs of all or part of these
sources.
I also have the final amendments to make to an edited volume
Dr Thomas Plume, 1630-1704. His Life and Legacies (University of
Hertfordshire Press, forthcoming 2020).
And, finally, an introductory article on Colchester’s
history to accompany a new volume funded by Colchester Borough Council which
brings together all of Dave Stenning’s fabulous reports on Colchester
buildings.
Do you set yourself a strict timetable to work to or just
pick up your research as and when?
I was always a night owl, but of recent years increasingly
find I can’t work past mid-evening as my brain turns to jelly. With research
and note-taking I find I can work solidly to a timetable. With writing I find I
have to be in the mood and then the keyboard takes a hammering until
inspiration runs out.
Do you have a favourite online resource?
A little dull, but probably the ERO, TNA and BL catalogues.
What is your favourite research beverage and snack?
It has to be tea. At the moment a large pot – one part
English breakfast to one part Earl Grey. Snack intake is reduced due to my type
2 diabetes, but if allowed by the cake-police (Lynn) then any sort of bun or
biscuit will do (I’m not that fussy), although admittedly partial to a
home-made scone.
Apart from the news, is there anything that distracts you
from your research?
I play a few on-line games with old school friends, several
of them now living in the US. It’s proved a good way of staying in contact as
we berate each other about tactical ineptitude or muddled strategy.
What are you most
looking forward to when you are able to visit ERO again?
Some cheery conversation with the archivists and searchroom staff,
and meeting up with other researchers and asking for and sharing advice and
finding out about other interesting research in progress. I think this is now
called networking.
Grace Benham, MA History student at the University of Essex, has recently embarked on a twelve-week placement with the Essex Record Office. She is working with a collection of oral history interviews in the Essex Sound and Video Archive, which documents the establishment of domestic refuges in London and the East of England (Acc. SA853).
When I chose to apply for a work placement as a part of my MA programme, applying to the Essex Record Office was an easy choice. As a Colchester resident born and bred, being able to engage with local history on such a practical level, working with an institution that holds interviews of my own grandmas on their lives – it was incredibly exciting to be accepted. I wanted to do a work placement as I wish to pursue a career in history, particularly archives, exhibitions or museums, and so such an experience is invaluable, as well as simply just really interesting.
Due to the unfortunate circumstances which have affected us all, I was unable to participate in the original placement project which required collecting oral history interviews. I therefore had a choice on which archives I would like to engage with remotely. It, again, was another easy choice: to get involved with the ‘You Can’t Beat a Woman’ collection of oral history interviews and to research, catalogue and produce blogs about it. A subject dear to my heart, I have found the study of the founding of women’s refuges in Essex and London is as inspiring as it is difficult to listen to. I have chosen to start this project by homing in on Colchester specifically, as the collection is vast and a geographical focus was the most obvious and compelling place to start.
What is immediately apparent in listening to these interviews is the incredibly dedicated and tenacious people who founded Colchester Refuge from the ground up. The practical, legal, economic, societal and emotional work required to provide a safe place and an abundance of resources for female victims of domestic violence is extremely evident and it is nothing less than admirable the way in which these predominantly women, with little to no previous experience in any related fields, fought for, and eventually founded, the refuge against the odds. I even had the honour to talk with Dr June Freeman, a key founding member of Colchester Refuge, author, and lecturer who compiled these interviews and who was the subject of several of these interviews. June made a great emphasis on what an uphill struggle they faced, as domestic violence was not even known as it is today. It was seen as a problem that should be kept private and within families, a problem which held little support from the police, courts, doctors and even social workers. The founders had to work tirelessly to convince Colchester Borough Council of the importance of a refuge and to finance such a venture without help.
Moyna Barnham describes the first steps towards starting up a women’s refuge in Colchester and the challenge of convincing people of the need for a refuge.
Sadly, another recurring theme in the interviews is a feeling that at the time of the interviews (2017) a loss of funding and interest in domestic violence is occurring in Essex and across the country. This rings unfortunately true as current circumstances have led to a rise in domestic violence. Domestic abuse charity Refuge reports that calls to the National Domestic Abuse Helpline have increased by about 66% since lockdown began in March, while the website received a 700% increase in visits in one day. As such the opportunity to listen and learn from these oral histories is more important than ever.
Alison Inman mourns the continuing need for refuges.
We are grateful to the Friends of Historic Essex and the University of Essex for their financial support in making this placement possible.
If you need support to deal with domestic abuse, please call the helpline below or check out the following guidance.
Adrian Corder-Birch is
retired; he has interests in local history, genealogy and industrial
archaeology.
Where is your ‘office’? I prefer to call it a study rather than an office and it is situated on the ground floor. It contains part of my reference library, a laptop, computer and printer. My wife, Pam, has her study in the balcony room on the first floor.
Do you have a view out of a window when you are working? What is it and is it a distraction? I am fortunate enough to have two windows. One, where my main desk is, faces west towards the drive. The other, where my computer is located, faces south across our front garden where magnolia, cherry and other trees are in full bloom, with azaleas and rhododendrons just beginning to come out.
What Essex research are you catching up on? Will this result in something published? I am currently completing research for a book about the history of the Portway family and their foundry in Halstead where tortoise stoves were manufactured. Pam is compiling a separate book about the history of Bois Hall (now demolished) which was a former home to the Portway and many other families. It is our intention that both books are published and launched simultaneously, when circumstances permit.
Do you set yourself a strict timetable to work to or just pick up your research as and when? I no longer work to a strict timetable as I am retired.
Do you have a favourite online resource? I use several online resources and it is difficult to suggest a favourite. Those I use regularly include Ancestry, British Newspaper Archive, Free BMD and of course Essex Archives Online including Parish Registers. I also keep an eye on EBAY and sometimes purchase items relating to Essex history.
What is
your favourite research beverage and snack?
A cup of tea and this time of the year a hot cross bun.
Apart from the news, is there anything that distracts you from your research? I am sometimes distracted by wildlife in the garden including squirrels climbing everywhere, noisy partridges, green woodpeckers and occasionally a spotted woodpecker. I am very fortunate to see this wildlife, which is well worth being distracted. The main disturbance this time of the year is from rooks, building a rookery in our oak trees and making quite a noise.
What are you most looking forward to when you are able to visit ERO again? One of the benefits of the lockdown is that I am beginning to sort through documents and photographs, which should be deposited at the Essex Record Office. I am looking forward to normal service being resumed so that I can deliver these records, which will undoubtedly help historians in the future. This will provide an opportunity to see the archivists and archive assistants again, many of whom I have known for some years and have become good friends, quite apart from being extremely helpful and sharing their extensive knowledge.
Crops of every kind, including peas, were tempting targets for humans as well as natural predators, such as rabbits but mainly birds. Extensive acreages of field crops posed a challenge to protect, but an abundance of cheap human labour would have provided at least some form of bird-scaring by children armed with clappers and loud voices. Fortunately for the farmer, this was an easy job that required little skill and not much, if any, payment.
A story passed down in my family is that my great-grandfather, Henry Wiffen (1862-1946), was taken out bird scaring as one of his first jobs, presumably when he was 7 or 8. His father lit a little fire in the base of a hedge for him to keep warm by while keeping an eye out for birds. This might have been at Nightingale Hall Farm in Halstead / Greenstead Green. See George Clausen’s painting, ‘Bird Scaring – March’.
For those levels of society that could afford to have large,
planned gardens, with an appropriate number of gardeners, then there was plenty
of people on hand to protect crops from predation. However, that fickle, enigmatic
element known to all gardeners, the weather, had also to be countered. To begin
with a warm wall or sheltered corner of a garden might suffice to an aspiring
gardener. Small moveable enclosures, known as cloches, or cold frames with a
covering of ‘lights’, could be used to give protection to particular plants or small
areas of crops. If you were rich then money, and lots of it, could be thrown at
this problem, and, as with all things, technology evolved over time along with the
aspirations of the owners of grand houses. They were the early adopters of even
greater resource-intensive infrastructure, and a good example of this can be
seen in the incredible, and now lost, gardens of Wanstead House.
The plan of the house gardens park & plantations of Wanstead in the county of Essex, the seat of the Rt. Honble the El. Tylney. (ERO, I/Mo 388/1/2, 1735)
A vitally important part of a planned garden was the kitchen garden, for in an age before global trade and refrigeration only a very small amount of produce was imported. So if you wanted to eat something out of the ordinary then you had to grow it, and if you wanted to eat that something out of season then you had to make it happen. The wealthier you were the more you could eat out of season fruit and vegetables, such as peas and peaches, and the more exotic would be the produce that your gardens grew – pineapples being the most unusual and difficult to grow (the first grown in Britain is reckoned to have been in 1693 for Queen Mary II: T. Musgrave, Heritage Fruits & Vegetables (London, 2012), p.193). Grapes were also a symbol of status and perhaps the most famous vine is the 250 year-old Black Hamburg at Hampton Court Palace, which has an interesting Essex connection (see: https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/whats-on/the-great-vine/#gs.2k24uk). Kitchen gardens then, were both a symbol of wealth and status as well as a practical contributor to the household economy. At Wanstead the extensive gardens were located close to the main house.
Extract from the plan of Wanstead House and gardens showing the main house and kitchen garden. The numbered parts are: 2. stables and out houses; 3. the church; 6. the greenhouse; 11. the stoves; 12. ‘kitchen gardiners house’; 17. the kitchen garden. The ‘kitchen gardiners [sic] house’ is probably what we would more familiarly know as the Head Gardener’s house. Having such an important person on hand was essential to oversee the gardens both as a security measure and for keeping a professional eye on the running of the garden. (ERO, I/Mo 388/1/2, 1735)
As can be seen, the kitchen gardens are on a grand scale and
laid out in a very formal manner with lots of beds and borders. From these
would have been grown all the run of the mill fruit and vegetables that would
have fed the household throughout the year. These gardens were powered by the
extensive use of manure, as often as not horse manure, to provide the soil with
the necessary body to produce large yields. As can be seen from the plan, the
stables are quite close but on the opposite side of the house from the gardens.
This would have entailed the carting of manure across the sightline of the
house or a very long detour to get it to the gardens out of sight. Wherever
practical the stables and gardens were, sensibly, located adjacent to one
another and quite often out of view altogether so as not to offend the owner
and his family with sights and smells that might not be conducive to their
sensibilities. It could be that at Wanstead we are looking at an early form of
that relationship and that by the nineteenth century the layout of an estate
had become more nuanced. A good example of a recreated kitchen garden and
stable set-up is at Audley End (http://blog.english-heritage.org.uk/organic-kitchen-gardens/)
Detailed extract from the plan of Wanstead House showing the Stove House, Green House and Great Stove House (ERO, I/Mo 388/1/2, 1735)
Having sheltered open borders was all very good but in order
not only to grow tender plants, but to extend the season of more general crops,
then much more intensive infrastructure was required. This is highlighted on
the 1735 plan of Wanstead with individual depictions of a green house (6 on the
plan) and two ‘stove’ houses (both marked as 11 on the plan). A greenhouse at
this stage was a light, airy building with some glazing that sheltered plants,
while the stove house was much the same but had heating of some kind, often
free-standing stoves located within the building. We think of greenhouses today
as having minimal structure and maximum glazing, but this design only came
around in the second half of the nineteenth century as developments in
cast-iron production and the decreasing cost of glass made the ‘modern’
greenhouse possible. The eighteenth-century equivalent had much more structure
and far less glazing, very much like what we would think of as an orangery. As
indicated above, these were very expensive to build and run.
Detail of ‘The Great Stove House’ (ERO, I/Mo 388/1/2, 1735)
While the gardens at Wanstead House were obviously
cutting-edge, they also deployed other techniques for growing fruit, vegetables
and flowers. If we look at the image of the Great Stove House we can see a
couple of examples. Firstly this sub-section of the garden is surrounded by
what appears to be wooden fencing. Not only does this define the area, but the
fencing also gives protection from damaging winds thus creating a sheltered
micro-climate. In a later period, brick walls were built which fulfilled the
same functions as a wooden fence but also had the advantage of acting as a
structure up which plants could be trained – tender ones on the south facing
walls with hardier ones on the cooler, north facing walls. Some of these walls
were built to be heated themselves by fireplaces and flues to protect crops
from frost, think outdoor radiators – but they must have been extremely
expensive to run. Not all plant protection at Wanstead was very expensive, for
in the borders are bell-shapes which are probably glass cloches, a low-tech
form of plant protection. Cloche being French for bell – hence they get their
name from their shape.
Cloches and cold frames were available to a wider
cross-section of the population than expensive greenhouses. For example, Richard
Bridgeman (d.1677) had 18 ‘cowcumber’-glasses worth 9 shillings, while
Theophilus Lingard (d.1743/4) had, among extensive possessions, 20 bell glasses
and two cucumber frames. (F.W. Steer, Farm and Cottage Inventories of
Mid-Essex, 1635-1749 (Chelmsford, 1950), pp.145, 270.) So for gardeners of
all degrees there was some form of artificial plant protection available to
give that little bit of advantage when growing crops. A more modern version of
the traditional bell cloche was the Chase barn cloche, introduced in the early
twentieth century by Major L.H. Chase. These simple forms of protection were used
in their thousands by nursery and market-gardeners to give protection to their
crops from the bad weather. However, they were susceptible, along with greenhouses,
to the rain of shrapnel that was caused by anti-aircraft fire during the Second
World War – thank goodness we don’t have that to worry about now!
Surviving Chase barn cloches about to protect Ne Plus Ultra peas from the weather and pigeons.
While no longer bell-shaped, protective covers are still known as cloches, although it is thought that in Essex most market gardeners of the post-war years pronounced cloche as CLOTCH (sounding like BLOTCH) – no subtleties in pronunciation there! (Photo: N. Wiffen)
How to pronounce ‘cloches’ if you’re speaking Essex
Hi, I am Julie Miller and I am finishing my second year as a
part-time History MA student at the University of Essex. In the summer of 2019 I won a research
placement at the Essex Record Office to transcribe and research a handwritten
18th century Journal by a Saffron Walden Quaker called John
Farmer. He is now the subject of my
Masters’ dissertation and ongoing research.
When the lockdown was announced my stepdaughter and
ten-year-old granddaughter moved in with us so we could all help look after
each other. This means the house is not
quite as peaceful as before. It’s been
very special spending time with them, but Nanny Jules is now in charge of home
schooling a very reluctant reader. We
have found comic poetry a great resource and my disinclined pupil is enjoying
her reading much more. My husband is a Flour Miller and designated a key worker
so he is working a lot of extra shifts, day and night so I am trying to keep
everything running smoothly for him too.
Where is your office?
Currently my office is a summer house in the garden. Called Miller’s
Rest, it was a gift from my husband for my 40th birthday and I
usually use it as an art studio. We have
rigged up a rudimentary power supply and I’ve moved all my research materials
and laptop up there so I can work in peace. My desk is a curious bit of
Colchester history. It was made for my
Uncle out of offcuts of coffin oak from the Co-op Funeral Service workshops
many years ago and I inherited it when he passed. Because its coffin wood it’s a bit narrow, so
the laptop doesn’t quite fit, but I manage, and I like the quirkiness of it. I
have a really good office chair though and that makes working at an odd desk
much more comfortable.
I have a radio because there is always time for Women’s
Hour, and I also have a 1920s gramophone and a collection of wonderful 78s by
the stars of yesteryear like Elvis, Doris Day, Bill Hayley, Dean Martin and
Glen Miller. Sitting out there in the evenings with a drink and the gramophone
is a real treat, till the mosquitoes from the pond start munching.
Do you have a view out of a window when you are working?
What is it and is it a distraction?
From the open doors of Miller’s Rest I can see all
the way back down the garden to the rear of our 1920s house where an ill-thought
out 1970s extension does nothing to improve the view. However the side window in front of my desk
looks out onto trees overhanging an ancient pond which is currently full of
tadpoles. The sparrows enjoy balancing
on twigs over the pond to get a drink, or maybe a nibble on a tadpole and they
are very entertaining. The garden is
always distracting, and I am drawn to my greenhouse at this time of year, but I
am trying to be disciplined. Sadly there is often a full washing line too.
What Essex research are you catching up on? Will this
result in something published?
For the last 4 weeks I have been doing a job for one of my
tutors, a 22,000-word transcription of a research interview she did with a
professor of Chinese Religious History.
Not very Essex at all admittedly, but now that’s finished I am writing
an article for the magazine for the Essex Society for Family History. I was very lucky to win their 2020 Award for
my research into John Farmer. They want to know more about him for their readers,
and I am happy to oblige.
After the article, I will be turning my full attention to
completing my dissertation, which will cover the work I did on the John Farmer
Journal while I was at the ERO, and subsequent research I have done to flesh
out his later story. He was a remarkable
man who visited the Native Americans and the Caribbean Islands in the
1710-1720s but was thrown out of the Philadelphia Quakers for challenging them
to give up slaves and slave trading. He was described as a man of ‘indiscreet
zeal’. He was way ahead of his time and
deserves to be recognised. Neil Wiffen at the ERO has challenged me to write a
book about Farmer before 2024 which will be the 300th anniversary of
John Farmer’s death. No pressure there
then Neil! I will also be continuing my research into John Farmer and his wife
Mary for my upcoming PhD which I hope to start in October (lockdown
permitting).
Do you set yourself a strict timetable to work to or just
pick up your research as and when?
I try to do at least two hours a day, more if possible but
with the cooking and work associated with extra people in the house it is
proving tricky. My Supervisor is
starting to make chivvying noises and asking to see draft chapters, so I am beginning
to feel the pressure.
Do you have a favourite online resource?
I have been lucky in that I was able to get lots of copied
material from the ERO while I was on my placement, and I have visited several
times since so I haven’t needed to rely on much online research. But there are some interesting online
resources in America and the UK relating to Quaker history and I have had an
enjoyable ongoing discussion with a genealogist from Mobile, Alabama who had
posted on the Find a Grave site, to try to resolve some errors in the family
history relating to John Farmer. Note to
any researcher – do not upset an American genealogist, they take their work
very seriously and luckily I was able to supply documentary proof of my
research and they corrected their information.
I think that is quite an achievement.
What is your favourite research beverage and snack?
Well, as I am writing this on Easter Monday I suppose I
would have to say Easter Egg. However on
a (what passes for) normal day I would have a ham sandwich and a packet of
crisps washed down with water or diet coke.
Our family have a long tradition of tea or coffee and cake at 4pm, so
that is usually when I stop work and we all come together to watch the BBC
virus update before planning the evening entertainment.
Apart from the news, is there anything that distracts you
from you research?
One of my university colleagues has set up a regular quiz on
Zoom, several times a week and we all join in from our sofas which has been a
lot of fun. My granddaughter has a liking for gambling with grandad’s pennies
and we play Newmarket sometimes. I like
folk music so enjoy watching the online live sessions from people like Kate
Rusby, Chris Leslie and While and Matthews and being a nosey parker I like
seeing their homes. Also I belong to a
local shanty group and we have been using Skype to do virtual unplugged singing
sessions. Its been funny seeing everyone
placing themselves in front of bookcases.
Along with that it’s regular calls to family, I am missing
my little grandson a lot, and am so thankful that social media allows us to
stay in touch.
What are you most looking forward to when you are able to
visit ERO again?
I am desperate to get back into the Colchester and Saffron
Walden Quaker minute books from the 17th and 18th century
as I am trying to trace John Farmer in both towns, filling in some of the gaps,
and also looking for more information about his amazing wife and daughters who
all had their own stories to tell. Also
Mary Farmer and her daughter Mary Fulbigg left behind journals that still need transcribing,
so I have lots of work ahead of me.
Dr James Bettley is an architectural historian, currently planning his next project.
Where is your office?
I’m lucky to have a study on a mezzanine floor at the back of the house that makes it feel quite separate from the rest of the house. We’ve lived here for 30 years and I’ve been working from home for 20, so the current situation doesn’t feel that strange.
Do you have a view out of a window when you are working? What is it and is it a distraction?
There are two windows, facing east and south, with views over our garden and fields beyond. The windows are not in my direct line of site so I don’t find the view too distracting.
What Essex research are you catching up on? Will this result in something published?
I’m thinking about a couple of subjects – John Bateman of Brightlingsea, and the 20th-century restorations of St Peter’s Chapel, Bradwell – but the research I really want to do involves travelling in the UK and abroad, so that’s on hold for the time being. Any thoughts of publication are very remote just yet.
Do you set yourself a strict timetable to work to or just pick up your research as and when?
Generally when I’m at home I work from 8 to 6 with an hour for lunch and a walk, but I’m slipping into a more relaxed coronavirus regime of concentrated working from 9 to 1, lunch followed by a couple of hours permitted exercise or essential shopping, then catching up on emails etc until 6 or so.
Do you have a favourite online resource?
British Newspaper Archive. Endlessly diverting.
What is your favourite research beverage and snack?
Coffee, mainly. I tend not to snack, although I can’t pretend that if there’s a packet of biscuits open I don’t occasionally…
Apart from the news, is there anything that distracts you from your research?
I’m easily distracted by emails, tweets etc, but not for long.
What are you most looking forward to when you are able to visit ERO again?
T/M 508/2. It’s only
a photograph of a map (the original’s at New College, Oxford, who owned land at
Bradwell) but it includes a vignette of ‘St Peter’s Chapel in Ruins’ that I’d like to see. But mostly I’m
simply looking forward to being able to visit the ERO and a number of other
libraries and archives again. Perhaps we’ll value you all the more after this
period of abstinence and deprivation.
Archive Assistant Neil Wiffen takes a look at how peas became so ubiquitous on the dinner tables of the nation.
Frozen peas must be the most accessible vegetable known to 21st century shoppers – such an easy convenience food to reach for all year round. Peas throughout history have been an important food source, and catalogue entries from Essex Archives Online are littered with references to them. During the middle-ages and early modern period they were grown as field crops for drying and use over winter, as an easily stored, high protein food source. Historians believe that ‘garden’ peas for eating freshly picked were an introduction from the Low Countries in the seventeenth century (T. Musgrave, Heritage Fruits & Vegetables (London, 2012), p.106). The kitchen gardens of the large country house would have produced them for the table along with market gardeners operating around towns, and it is quite probable that general gardeners, from a fairly early date, would have also done so once seed became readily available.
Through the nineteenth century the consumption of fresh(ish) peas increased, and the expansion of the railway network allowed Essex producers to send vast quantities of all sorts of fresh produce up to London – by 1850 3,900 tons of peas from surrounding counties were sold through the markets there (G. Dodds, The Food of London (London, 1856), p.387). And how were many of these peas harvested in a pre-mechanised age? Well, school log books of the period are littered with references to pupils being absent for all sorts of harvest work, not least that of pea picking, probably there alongside their mothers. The income that families made from seasonal work was not to be underestimated, and full advantage was made of these opportunities.
Note in Coggeshall school log book about pupils absent due to pea-picking, 9 July 1873 (E/ML 310/1)
And it was not just women and children who helped bring in the peas. Many itinerant workers also relied on various crops, and growers were glad of the extra labour to bring in the harvest. David Smith, farmer, author and broadcaster of Broomfield, wrote of the ‘grey tattered figures of all types and ages [as] they trudged along slowly in the bright June sunlight … They would come, every year … just as they came to thousands of other farms … And so to Hill Farm, with near it the brilliant green of two to three fields of picking peas … for a fickle London market.’ (D. Smith, The Same Sky Over All (London, 1948)*, p.116).
As to quite how ‘fresh’ hand-picked peas were in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is debatable. It wasn’t until freezing was first developed in the 1920s that the possibility of something akin to freshly picked peas became available to most consumers. However, without the advent of retailers with frozen sections and domestic home freezers, frozen peas eaten widely would have to wait until well into the second half of the twentieth century. In the meantime, and as with most vegetables, peas would have probably been well boiled!
If you wanted to eat peas fresh from the garden then, as indicated above, you had to grow them, and it is the same today. The joy of podding peas is one of the highlights of summer – so much so that sometimes more end up being eaten before they even make it to the cook! There are lots of varieties to choose from, not least the well known and locally raised Kelvedon Wonder which harks back to the 1920s. An older variety is Ne Plus Ultra from the early nineteenth century. Perhaps you know it from the BBC television series The Victorian Kitchen Garden (1987)* when Harry Dodson and Peter Thoday resurrected the variety from some very old seed. It was alleged to reach 7 foot in height, which is probably why it waned in popularity – modern varieties are generally all dwarfing which is an advantage to growers.
There used to be many more pea varieties grown in the past, partly because there would have been regional varieties that were only available locally, but also because of the proliferation of seed companies – something which, as with many businesses, has reduced over the last 50 years or so. If we take Chelmsford based Cramphorns, they listed 15 varieties of just the second early and maincrop varieties, including Ne Plus Ultra, in their 1898 catalogue. Along with the early sorts of peas, growing a lot of different varieties meant that if one failed there were others to come along and, in a pre-refrigeration era, it extended the length of the season in which to enjoy fresh peas.
The ornate cover from Cramphorn’s 1890 catalogue (ERO A10506 Box 7)
‘New Plus Ultra – one of the best; pods large and well-filled with dark green peas. Peas of delicious flavour – Height 6ft’. (From Cramphorn Ltd’s Catalogue of Vegetable and Flower Seeds (Chelmsford, 1898), (ERO A10506 Box 7) .
So as it is the time of year to start sowing peas I thought it might be fun to have a go at growing some Ne Plus Ultra peas – just as past gardeners in Essex would have done. I have also so challenged some colleagues and friends of the ERO to grow some to see if any of us can get them to 7 foot – all for a bit of fun I hasten to add. I’ll grow some Kelvedon Wonder as well by comparison and, weather and pests being kind, I’ll update you on how we’re all getting along as well as ruminating on other points of gardening that ‘crop’ up over the summer. For the moment though, keep your fingers crossed for a spell of dry weather as I’ll need to get on in the garden to prepare the soil.
A tray of Ne Plus Ultra peas grown by Neil for the ‘competition’, just before potting on.
*If you don’t know the work of David Smith then his books are well worth a read. There are copies of them in the ERO Library. If you haven’t seen The Victorian Kitchen Garden then it is available on DVD.
