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What we learned at Liverpool’s Big History Weekend…

big1It’s amazing how much we can learn, just by talking to each other.  At the BBC Merseyside Big History Weekend on 8th-9th September, held at St George’s Hall here in Liverpool, ‘Memories of Mr Seel’s Garden’ took part by having a stall, at which we enticed visitors to learn more about our project, with the offer of an Everton mint (other mints were also available for supporters of other teams!). Everyone was really interested in what we’ve been up to, with lots of people signing up to learn more about the project and, hopefully, come along to one of the events we’ve got planned. Stay tuned for more about this in our next post… Our most common question was, of course, ‘Who’s Mr Seel?’, followed by ‘Where was his garden?’  But once we got chatting, we found that everyone had interesting memories to share with us, several of which have been added to our Google map. We learned about more bakeries in Everton, and how they would bake bread dough made by locals (cheaper than a shop-bought loaf or baking bread at home)

big2However the most reminiscences we heard related to food production in terraced houses with just a back yard, particularly in North Liverpool.  When I started this project, I imagined that we wouldn’t find much evidence of domestic agriculture, because Liverpool terraces characteristically have very small yards, often dark and surrounded by high walls.  But instead we heard of rhubarb, tomatoes, lettuces and even vegetables grown in pots outside the back door. Less surprising, but still notable for the prevalence, was back-yard chicken keeping.  Almost everyone within a certain age range we spoke to seemed to have kept hens themselves, or had neighbours or relations who did so.  Hens were delivered as day-old chicks and we heard of inventive home-made incubators in box-rooms, in the bath or even in the range, once it had been damped down.  Chickens were fed on domestic scraps, such as old bread dried out in the range and pounded up with boiled potato peelings in real waste not, want not spirit.  The range was also put to good use in providing cinders for the hens to scratch amongst.  Nevertheless, not all memories associated with chicken-keeping were happy.  One of our visitors remembered being terrified by the pecking of the hens on visits to the outdoor privy, others recalled the trauma of birds they had regarded as pets being eaten at Christmas.

On the whole, however, the nostalgia provoked by our project seems to have been warm and welcome.  Several visitors shared their childhood memories, when confectionary was rationed and raw carrots were sweet enough to seem a delicacy, and when children had more freedom to ask for food from neighbours (or steal it, on scrumping missions in local back gardens) and contrasted them with the experiences of modern children, who are believed to have both more choices and more restrictions.  Poverty was widely felt to be less of a problem when everyone was in the same situation and the lives of the rich were less on show via the media – the communal war effort was also felt to be a social unifier, as rationing applied to everyone.  It was generally agreed that things had started to change in the 1960s, when rationing was over and supermarkets, with processed food, such as sliced bread, began to open.  Smaller, more specialist, shops began to close and new leisure activities, particularly the television, started to become more widely available and drew people inside.  Nevertheless, many of our visitors were still happily involved in growing their own food, either in back gardens or allotments, or were enthusiastic about the idea of starting to grow fruit and vegetables, aware that whatever the causes, the climate is changing and our reliance on imported food may not be sustainable.

Carnatic House

Carnatic House

It was also good to meet with members of other local projects.  I was particularly pleased to meet up with the Everton History Society, some of whose members had participated in our research, and to see a copy of the St George’s Church cookery book, reprinted from an early twentieth-century original.  Our stall was adjacent to the friendly parish historians of St Michael’s in the Hamlet (along with St George’s, Everton, the remaining iron churches designed by architect Thomas Rickman), so we attracted a few more South Liverpool memories.  Being based at the University of Liverpool, I was particularly amused by the story of the cows of Coulthwaite’s Dairy on Penny Lane, driven daily down the road to graze on the lawns of Carnatic House, later the site of the University’s Halls of Residence.

All in all the weekend was both enjoyable and productive and I’m looking forward to seeing some of our visitors again at our planned events.

Alex Buchanan

Cowkeeping in Liverpool

Liverpool cowkeeper courtesy of British Driving Society

Liverpool cowkeeper courtesy of British Driving Society

It’s all about cow keeping today as I go through a load of links that people have shared with us recently. Here’s an extended quote about the recent history of cowkeeping in Liverpool from Marion Hearfield

“A Dalesfhg member sent me “Cow-keepers from the Pennine Dales”, an article written by P J Mellor and published in the Dalesman in May 1978. From this article I have extracted the following interesting facts:

  • Cowkeepers came from anywhere west of the Pennines. Cumberland and Westmorland names occur frequently in the West Derby and Liverpool censuses as do names from Wharfedale, Wensleydale and Swaledale. Particularly after 1870, whole extended families decided that the lucrative milk trade was a better bet than ever-increasing farm rents.
  • Cattle for the milkhouses were bought, newly calved, often fourth, fifth or sixth calvers and kept throughout lactation. This varied but was usually about 18 months. Cows were usually replaced when their yield dropped below three gallons a day. They were then either sold for beef or sent to the country to re-calf. By the end of the 19thC 4,000 head of cattle were being kept within the Liverpool boundary and replacement stock was being bought from cattle marts as far away as Oswestry and Kendal. Cattle were driven through Liverpool by the dealers and dropped off, a few at a time, at the various milkhouses, to the consternation of the local population: “There’s a bull loose” was a common cry.
  • For the most part the cattle were kept indoors and fed rich rations (during milking, to keep them still): a mixture of brewery waste, molasses, Indian linseed and pea meal, all pre-soaked in warm water. [I suddenly remembered a visit we made a few years ago to one of the many windmills in the northern part of France, where the mill was originally designed and built to crush flax, extract linseed oil, and bash the residue into cattle cake. Now I can understand why, and how the cake was used. I’m sorry if this is all old news to some of you; it was new news to me.]
  • Grass from local parks, cemeteries and verges was collected and fed to the cows during summer. Milk and butter were yellow in summer when the cattle were eating grass, and white in winter when they were consuming hay.

I find the “end of almost every street” part of the following quotation hard to credit, and plan to check the West Derby census returns in detail. I see another essay topic crystalizing!

“The Cowhouses, all of a similar style, were purposely built on the end of almost every street. Constructed of brick, they comprised a large house with dairy, shippon, hay loft over stables, trap shed, muck midden and a cobbled yard all within high walls and wooden gates. Milking began at 5am followed by the milk round at 7.30am. Afternoon milking took place at 3pm and the milk round at 4.30pm, finishing about 6pm.

And, returning to the subject of quality of milk and quality of life, the following quotation completes this section:

“Most of the premises were officially called dairies but the proprietors always referred to themselves as cowkeepers and their premises as milkhouses, for there were other dairies which sold only “railway milk”. This was brought in by railway from the countryside and soon went sour. The cowkeepers’ milk was always fresh and they took great pride in the superiority of their product .. [but] .. the work was arduous and the hours long. It was a seven day week, all-the-year-round occupation. The only time off was an hour on Sunday for church-going.””