Tag Archives: summer

Document of the Month, August 2018: Drought in Essex, 1905

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As we experience some of the warmest temperatures on record for the UK, Archivist Katharine Schofield finds out how hot weather affected some of our ancestors, using the voluntary rate book for Belchamp Walter, 1883-1920 (D/P 215/4/2)

So far 2018 has seen the warmest May on record and the driest June, followed by near-record high temperatures in July, and it appears to be destined to become a long-remembered summer, like that of 1976. While we can enjoy the air-conditioned temperatures of the ERO Searchroom, and currently there are no plans for any restrictions on water use in the county, we should spare a thought for residents of Essex in years past who had no respite from hot temperatures and the longer-term consequences.

The years between 1890 and 1910 witnessed what has been called the ‘Long Drought’.  A series of dry winters were exacerbated by several hot summers causing major problems with the water supply.  In Belchamp Walter the wells dried up in the autumn of 1905.

In 1906, the ratepayers of Belchamp Walter were asked to contribute to the cost of bringing water to the village after their well ran dry

The amounts paid by individuals are recorded in the rate book, and add up to a total of £3 10s 1 1/4d

On 1 January 1906 the ratepayers of Belchamp Walter were asked to contribute towards a voluntary rate ‘for the purpose of defraying cost of conveying water to the villagers during the autumn, an insufficient supply being obtained from the well, owing to the drought’.  A total of £4 0s. 9¾d. (around £317 today) was assessed to be due, although 10s. 8½d. was not collected, leaving a total of £3 10s. 1¼d. raised, the equivalent of around £275.

Of this sum, £2 17s. was spent on what was described as expenses, with a note that the balance of 13s. 1¼d.  had been in the hands of the Revd. A.P. Pannell and that he then paid this into the Post Office Savings Bank on 3 October 1906.   It is not recorded how the water was taken to Belchamp Walter, but presumably it must have been taken there in barrels by horse and cart.

The rate book will be on display in the ERO Searchroom throughout August 2018.

Document of the month, July 2015: The heat of summer

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Each month one of our Archivists selects a document to highlight. This month it is the turn of Chris Lambert – his chosen document will be on display in the ERO Searchroom throughout July 2015.

It was July 1615.  Joan, Lady Barrington, of Hatfield Broad Oak was unwell, and she sought medical advice.  That advice, from Dr Duke of Colchester, survives amongst the Barrington family papers in the ERO (D/DBa F40/1).

D-DBa F40-1 watermarked

The advice of Dr Duke of Colchester to Lady Barrington of Hatfield Broad Oak, July 1615 (D/DBa F40/1)

Reassuringly, Duke did not believe ‘that the swelling of her legges shold be an effect of a dropsy’ (what might now be understood as heart disease).  Lady Barrington’s urine suggested to Duke ‘only much melancholy’.  The effects of melancholy were extensive, including ‘windiness of stomacke & body, flushing heates, [and] causeless feares’, but Duke did not think them dangerous.

Beyond that, Lady Barrington was ‘of a good complexion, well coulered & eateth her meat well, having a full body’.  For Duke, this was evidence that the swelling was simply ‘an effect of watery humours in the veynes, wherewith Nature being burthened, she doth expell & abandon them to the inferiour partes’.  The condition appeared in summer because Lady Barrington ‘eateth & drinketh liberally although the naturall heat of the stomacke be now much lesse then in winter, as also because the passages of the body are more open in sommer … and so the humours do with more facilitye flowe into those partes’.  The ancient Greek doctrine of the four bodily humours, associated with the four seasons, still ruled 17th-century medicine.  In 1615, William Harvey’s revolutionary discovery of the circulation of the blood still lay 13 years in the future.

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Hatfield Broad Oak, seen in a contemporary map (D/DQ 14/191). Lady Barrington’s home at the Priory House appears just above the church.

Duke’s prescription was a moderate purge, the ‘often use of turpentine of Cipres [Cyprus]’, and frequent ‘astringent bathes’ for the patient’s legs.  But ‘at the fall of the leafe, it wer necessary to take some more forcible purging physicke’.  The humours of the body being un-balanced, purging would restore them.  Perhaps it did: Lady Barrington lived on until 1641.