Antique household equipment, furnishings, utensils - housekeeping as part of social history. Domestic life, household management - how people organised their homes and did the daily chores. Yesterday's everyday objects are today's antiques or museum pieces, and we may view them with nostalgia or curiosity about past ways of life. Old & Interesting takes a look at how these everyday things were actually used, how people managed their home life - and more. Alongside articles illustrated by excerpts from advice manuals, period novels and other literature, this page is updated every couple of weeks.  RSS feed or email will let you know about new articles.

Watering floors and gardens in medieval times, and later

Watering pots, managing dust, sprinkling plants, controlling water flow with your thumb

Do you tackle dust in your home by watering the floor? No, me neither - but perhaps we would if we lived in a house with rushes spread like carpet on a stone or earthen floor. The replica 15th century English watering pot in the photographs is the kind used in that period to dampen floors and keep dust from being irritating. Rushes or sometimes straw were used as floor covering and didn't get replaced all that often. They generated dust as they disintegrated, and accumulated other dirt too. Dampening everything down kept it under control. And when it was time to sweep it all away, extra water would help keep the dust from flying around.

Earthenware pots with sprinkling holes in the base were used from late medieval times till the 1700s, indoors and outdoors. The idea is simple. A pot with a thumb-size hole in the top is plunged into water. It fills up through the holes in the bottom. Put your thumb over the top and the water won't spray out, for the same reason you can't pour liquid out of a tiny hole in a can with no room for air to get in. Carry it to where you want it, remove your thumb and sprinkle the water.

The "immersion" or "thumb" watering pot was a simple rounded clay bottle in a pear or bell shape - usually a few inches across. It could be glazed or unglazed, with a handle or without. In a house it might be used with a pottery basin. Less common were pots with holes in the sides, or expensive metal pots.

Tackling dust and stopping it flying around during cleaning was a big part of housekeeping in pre-vacuum cleaner days. Moisture levels mattered. Even when wooden floorboards became common it was still important to "lay the dust" before and/or after sweeping.

The flooring of the [London Royal] Academy in 1833.....was nothing but bare boards, watered every morning to keep the dust down. The watering pot was used in similar fashion in...the National Gallery, where as late as 1850 ... the rooms [were] swept every morning ... first strewn with wet sawdust and then swept carefully, so as to raise as little dust as possible.
William Whitley, Art of England 1821-37, 1930

Damp sawdust or wet sand (also good for scouring) could be spread over a stone, brick or wood floor before sweeping - not necessarily using a watering pot. Used tea leaves were an alternative in 19th century Britain. Manufactured "sweeping compounds" with the same aim of not "raising the dust" are available today.

...take some Sand, pretty damp, but not too wet, and strew all over the Room, throwing it out of your Hand hard, and it will fly about the Floor and lick up all the Dust and Flew [fluff]...
Hannah Glasse, The Servant’s Directory, or House-keeper’s Companion, 1760

Floors made of flattened earth, or earth mixed with straw were common not only in the medieval period, but well into the 18th century in Virginia, parts of New England, the UK outside the south-east, and other parts of Europe. In some climates dampness was the main problem with earthen floors, but if they were dry and dusty, watering them would help. Paths were given a sprinkling too.

The same kind of watering pot, or sprinkling pot, was used in medieval and Renaissance gardens. They would be easy to fill from a pond or trough or pail, perhaps easier than the modern watering can shape with a rose spray head. Both shapes co-existed for some time. This French pot is from 1500 or a bit earlier, and this English one may be as old.

The common watering potte for the Garden beddes with us, hath a narrow necke, bigge belly, somewhat large bottome, and full of little holes, with a proper hole formed on the head, to take in the water, whiche filled full, and the thombe layde on the hole to keepe in the aire, may on such wise be carried in handsome manner...
Thomas Hill, The Gardener's Labyrinth, 1577

Bottle or gourd shaped ceramic watering pots have been "found on a wide variety of rural and urban sites at all social levels from the 13th century onwards" according to Stephen Moorhouse. Were they used in ancient Greek gardens? Certainly the author of a 19th century book which copied an illustration from 1616 (see right) believed so. (Thomas Ewbank, A descriptive and historical account of hydraulic and other machines for raising water, ancient and modern, 1864) He said they were also used to "drop water on floors, in order to lay the dust in Greek and Roman houses". He related what he called the "atmospheric watering pot" to atmosphere and vacuum theories debated in the 17th century by the philosophers Hobbes and Boyle.

See also:
Tudor watering pot
Scrubbing floors and laundry

Notes:
Watering pot can refer to a modern "watering can" shape with spout.
Modern "thumb waterers" are available from some garden equipment suppliers.

3 July 2009

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Turf fires - burning peat

Cooking and living with peat fires

Peat fires may seem like a wintertime topic, but in fact summer is the time for cutting turves of peat, drying them, and stacking them.

There used to be many areas of northern Europe better supplied with peat bogs than with trees. Peat, also called turf, was a convenient household fuel when there wasn't much firewood around. Some regions of North America made use of peat for domestic fires in the 1700s and 1800s. (See quote lower left column.) It's been used for cooking, heat, and what we would now call background lighting for longer than history has been written.

Well into the mid-20th century there were places where peat fires were kept alight all year on the floor of a cottage. You can also burn turf, or sod, on open hearths, and well-engineered fireplaces with grates. Natural locally-dug peat is still used for domestic heating in Scotland and, famously, in Ireland where the slices of peat are always called turves and the fires are turf fires - even when manufactured peat briquettes are used. In the 19th century cutting peat for fuel was an important part of life in Scandinavia, and in fenland or moorland regions of England, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.

In Ireland, Scotland and parts of England it was considered very important to keep the fire burning all the time. At bed-time a peat block and/or ashes would be arranged to "smother" the fire without extinguishing it, so it would stay gently smouldering overnight. Then in the morning it would be blown into life again. Because of the significance laid on never letting the hearth go cold it's hard to find descriptions of anyone lighting a domestic peat fire. There would surely have been varied local customs for building the pile of turves, the use of kindling etc. - just as there were different tools and customs for cutting peat. Peat quality varies too, depending on depth, colour, age, and more.

...on the hearth, the ashes, instead of being inconvenient, are extremely useful to poor people in various processes of their cookery. Hot peat ashes are excellent for roasting fish, eggs, etc.; and likewise for stewing, and any kind of cookery that requires a mild heat. In this respect it approaches to charcoal.
Webster and Parkes, An Encyclopædia of Domestic Economy, 1855

How do you cook over a fire in the middle of the floor? You can have a chain and hook hanging from the roof above. In Scottish croft houses like the blackhouse in the photo (top right) this could hold a potful of porridge or broth, an iron kettle boiling water, or a griddle for baking bannocks or flat oat bread.

Even simpler is to just place a cooking pot on the pile of burning turves. If it's a cauldron with three little legs it will balance even better, but a well-made heap of peat, with ashes, can hold an iron pot quite steady - probably better than wood (or coal). Putting glowing turves on the lid adds all-round heat for a more "oven-like" style of cooking. You can even bake "turf cake" in a well-sealed pan or Dutch oven surrounded by hot peats and insulating ashes. This method was still in use in 1930s rural Scotland - probably in Ireland too. Potatoes were placed in embers and hot ash to bake in their skins, as an alternative to boiling them in a stew-pot.

Baking was ‘down under’, in the fire’s heart using a ‘baking iron’ ....a flat circular piece of cast iron approximately 1⁄2in thick and 2ft diameter ...set on a bed of hot ashes. ... biscuits or yeast cake were placed...on the iron and covered by the baker, a flattened cast-iron dome. The join was sealed with ashes, more hot ‘coals’ and new turves were heaped over it, and the whole was left for an hour or so or until an ear placed to a poker reached in to touch the baker could hear the food ‘frizzin’...(Cornwall)

Peat smoke has a pungent "peat-reek", and the smell gives a special flavour to fish or meat hanging from the ceiling or fireplace to be preserved by smoking. The distinctive aroma comes through in some whiskies too.

Cutting turves, digging peat, drying, carrying, stacking, storing

Getting peat ready for burning all year round in the home involves the same basic approach everywhere - and yet there are many varied styles of tool, and many different ways of organising the job. Will it be one person alone cutting off the top turves, digging the lower layers, and stacking? Or a team of men? Or men digging and women taking over the next stages? Families or communities working together, or a few professional peat-cutters planning to sell the peat?

Start by removing the top few inches, then dig out some slices or bricks from the darker layers lower down. You may use a knife to get started. A sharp spade with a wing at right angles (above right) helps make neatly-shaped peats. Someone has to lay them out in a formation that allows them to dry in the air (photos left, below right, drawing above left), and they'll probably stay there a week or two. They may be beaten or trodden to make them more compact.

Next they have to go into storage that will last through the winter - maybe near your peat bank or strip, preferably near home. They may be carried in nets or baskets, on sledges, wheelbarrows, carts, or animals. They must be stacked so simple heaps will shed rainwater. Better still, the stack can be thatched, or sheltered in a farm building.

There is a lot of information on the web about peat harvesting. For English-speakers it's mostly about Ireland and Scotland. Before links to further information and pictures, here's some extra vocabulary to help anyone googling for more detail.

Other names for turf or peat spades (some for top layers, some for deeper digging): peat-iron, turfing-iron, tusker, tushker, tarasgeir, slane, sleaghdn, flaughter, flachter, scraw-cutter, bullin spade, breast spade
Peat carriers: kishies, meshies, creels, currachs
Places to dig: peat bank, peat hill, turbary, peatery, turf stead, trench, moss, peat-delf
Stack: rick, dyke, daek, peat-bing

• The Turf Spade - EU Cultural Landscape Project
• Turf cutting on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall - English Heritage
• Peat-cutter's equipment from Belgium
• Video of peat cutting
• Antique tools including several peat spades
• German peat-cutting

Other pages on this site about fires, baking etc.:

Baking on a griddle
Baker's peels
Fireplaces

15 June 2009

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Meat screens in front of the fire

Hasteners, hasters, roasters, screens, reflectors - aids to roasting

This meat hastener was used in front of an open fire to reflect heat back onto a joint of meat hanging from the hook. The hook is joined on to a bottle jack - a contraption which had to be wound up on a spring to make the joint twist from side to side while roasting. The combination of bottle jack and meat hastener was designed to get the meat evenly roasted without constant attention from the cook, and to economise on fuel. Household manuals often say how important it is that the inside should be well-polished - not black like this one - and often they are described as lined with tin.

The door at the back of the hastener allowed the cook to see how things were coming along, and reach in to baste the joint. There would have been a tray at the bottom to catch the dripping juices. The bottle jack was not essential. It was possible to use a horizontal spit with a different shape of screen. Isabella Beeton preferred to roast meat with a "common meat screen" like the one in the drawing below. She felt the "objection" to enclosed arrangements with a hook inside a three-sided hastener was that the meat ended up tasting like "baked meat".

Similar-looking "boxes" were sometimes called Dutch ovens. They weren't always used for roasting meat. Sometimes they had shelves to hold different dishes that could be cooked by the combination of direct heat from the flames and reflected heat from the metal back.

A bottle jack should always be used with a tin stand or case, called a hastener, movable, and standing on feet, with a dripping pan fixed in the bottom. This case is open to the fire in front, but closed at the back and sides. It should be of block tin, and should be kept very bright inside, that the rays of heat may be reflected back on the meat. Sometimes the hastener is made to serve also as a plate warmer.
IJ Kent, architect, On the Domestic Offices of a House, 1835

The well-planned hastener/bottle-jack combination was a desirable new piece of kitchen equipment in the 19th century. Like so many ingenious things that look hopelessly old-fashioned to us, it was once an innovative idea for improving domestic life. Simpler boxes on wheels like the early 19th century one in the drawing were also used. Before that, shiny screens lined with tin, or sometimes brass, were in use for fireside cooking, but not all rigged up with bottle jack, doors, drip tray etc.

The hastener seems to have been introduced in the 1800s, but meat screens were used before that. Meat screens are mentioned in household inventories and auction catalogues at least as far back as 1750, and simple reflective fireside screens were known before 1700. They were sometimes called roasters, but that could refer to other kinds of roasting/baking equipment too. Reflector or haster were other possible names.

Let the roaster or meat screen, basting ladle, and dripping pan be carefully dusted, and the spit or jack-hook, however clean when put away, have an additional rub. If the smallest particle of rust remains it will make a black mark in passing through the meat. If a spit is used it should be slid in along the bones, - if a hook, it should be so inserted as to take in a bone which will be a security against tearing the meat or suffering the juice to escape.
As to making up a fire nothing but practice and experience can make perfect.....at what time, and in what manner must I make up my fire so as to secure the desired result ? ...
The fire being properly made up, the meat screen had better be placed in front, both to draw up the fire, and to become itself thoroughly heated before the meat is put down. Reflected heat never dries or scorches meat, but greatly promotes its being thoroughly and hot done.
Esther Copley, The Housekeeper's Guide; or a Plain and Practical System of Domestic Cookery , first published 1834

More about bottle jacks, spring jacks and spit jacks

28 May 2009

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Sugar cutters & nippers

Nips, nippers, cutters, tongs - handling loaf sugar, lump sugar, cones

Until Victorian inventors figured out a way to get sugar to the grocer's shop in ready-to-use granulated form, it was always transported in large cone-shaped sugar loaves. (See below) Households could buy a whole sugar loaf or a lump broken off and sold by weight. But then what? How did people prepare it for kitchen and dining table? Sugar nippers were an important part of the answer.

Sugar nippers were basic household tools, but before using them you would probably cut the hard whitish cone into smaller chunks with a hammer and chisel. The nippers were sometimes on a stand (see top right) so you could put all your strength into forcing the cutting blades through the pieces of sugar-loaf. If they had no stand, the better ones had a piece that stuck out at right angles (third picture down on right), and was used to steady the sugar nippers against the edge of the kitchen table, while you gripped and squeezed.

It is always a bad plan to buy sugar by the pound, for the paper is weighed in with every pound. To break loaf sugar into small pieces ready for the nippers, use an iron hammer and cleaver; a wooden mallet chips, and the particles of wood become so incorporated with the sugar-dust, that it is difficult to separate it.
Family Magazine or Monthly Abstract of General Knowledge, 1837, USA

This was heavy work, producing lumps and crumbs that could be used in the kitchen. For the dining-room and tea table you needed to nip the sugar into neat lumps. This was sometimes seen as a job for the mistress of the house, especially before 1800 when refined sugar was expensive and often kept in locked boxes, like precious tea leaves in lockable tea caddies. Smaller steel sugar nippers (see "scissors" right) were good for this work.

A pair of sugar-nippers are indispensable, for breaking small the loaf-sugar, after it has been cracked with a stout knife and a mallet or hammer. It should then be kept in a closely covered tin or wooden box, There should be a box also for brown sugar.
Miss Leslie's Lady's House-Book, 1850, Philadelphia

At first glance these look as if they may just be tongs for lifting sugar-lumps into a tea-cup, but look more closely at them, including the picture taken from a different angle (left), and you can see they are tough enough to grip and break hard sugar too. (After corresponding with the writer Leslie What, who kindly let me use her pictures of these central European smaller sugar nippers, I realise that the same word is used for "lifting" tongs, "cutting" nippers, pincers etc. in some languages, e.g. German.)

When powdered sugar was called for in a recipe, the cook had to use a mortar and pestle, or possibly a spice-mill. Some sugar-boxes had compartments for powdered sugar alongside the lumps. Finely sifted sugar could also be used in a caster, or sprinkler. Tongs, boxes, and casters were all made in fine silver for the wealthy, but there were a lot of plain iron nippers and wooden sugar boxes too.

Loaf Sugar should be well pounded, and then sifted through a fine sieve.
Isabella Beeton, Book of Household Management, 1861

The cone-shaped sugar loaf was such a common sight until the later 19th century that everyone knew what it looked like. Mountains and hats were named after it. Even the paper it was wrapped in played a part in domestic life. Most sugar loaves sourced from the Americas were wrapped in blue indigo paper which was recycled as a source of dye for yarn or cloth. The Finnish sugar loaf in the picture obviously has a different kind of wrapping.

The whiter the sugar, the more elegant, desirable and expensive it was. In medieval times, sugar was brought to Europe from the near East. For a long time it was an expensive luxury sold in tiny quantities alongside spices. It was used for medicinal purposes or special concoctions cooked for the nobility. By 1600 when the picture of sugar-making above was published, sugar was becoming a little more available. The cone-shaped moulds for the loaves had holes in the bottom so the dark treacly syrup from a mess of boiled sugar-cane could drain out. This didn't leave perfectly white sugar in the mould, and "double-refining" was used to produce a better grade of refined white sugar. Extra ingredients were used to encourage whitening and purification - from clay to bullocks' blood.

See also:
17th century sugar-loaf scissors or nips (Scroll down)
Cone-shaped sugar loaves in the 21st century

14 May 2009

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Tallow candles & snuffers

Candle wicks dipped in beef or mutton tallow

Tallow candles don't sound good to us - a sooty wick burning in animal fat - but for centuries they were a reliable way of having some light after dark. In a small home the fire in the hearth was often a major source of light, but you could brighten up different areas, and even have a light you could carry from place to place if you had a candle in a portable holder.

If you were making the candles yourself, you needed a pan of hot tallow. This is the hard pale fat from cows or sheep, and it was available in different qualities according to how much it had been processed by the tallow boiler. It could be pale creamy fat, not too smelly when the candle was alight, or full of impurities. Occasionally people made use of the worst fat of all - lard, or pig's fat - said to stink when burning.

The quality of a candle depended on the fat that was used. The better the quality of the fat, the firmer and less offensive was the candle. New England settlers were fortunate to discover that the waxy berries from the bayberry bush made very pleasant candles. ...Peter Kalm wrote...in 1748...There is a plant here from which they make ...wax...Candles of this do not easily bend, nor melt in summer...nor do they cause any smoke, but yield rather an agreeable smell when they are extinguished."
J and D Volo, Daily Life on the Old Colonial Frontier, 2002

Next you measured out thread for the candle wicks. By dipping the wick repeatedly into the melted tallow you can build up a candle. Each time you dip, the candle gets a new layer of fat. Pull it out into the cool air to harden, then dip again until the candle seems the right thickness. Hanging a group of threads over a rod means you can dip plenty in one go and make several pairs of candles at once. The rod was called a broach when used by a professional tallow chandler or candle-maker. In the reconstructed 19th century candle-making workshop (photo top right) you can see a well-organised operation with a tallow trough, and a dipping frame for lowering and raising a batch of candles.

At home you might just dip a few threads strung over a stick but the basic idea was the same. Or you could buy ready-made candles. The picture to the left shows a candle seller and customers at a stall in 14th century Italy.

Snuffers, snuffs and wicks

The wicks were made from twisted threads of flax, cotton, or hemp, and didn't burn nearly as well as our modern wicks. Trimming the wick to get rid of "candle snuffs" was an important part of keeping your candle burning well. If you didn't attend to it, the candle could get too hot, melt too much fat and send it streaming wastefully and messily down the sides - known as guttering. Smoking and excessive smell could also be improved by careful trimming.

Candle snuffers were not primarily for extinguishing the candle. Snuffers were like scissors (or nippers) for cutting off excess sooty thread. A sharp point was useful for spearing any scraps of burnt wick that fell into the hot tallow. The snuffers often had a box to catch those clipped threads - the "snuffs". I guess you had to be experienced to make the trimmings fall neatly into the box! Snuffers were sometimes called snuffer boxes or box snuffers.

A snuff-pan, dish, or tray to lay greasy snuffers on was useful too. Sometimes the snuffers were kept upright in a snuff-stand. Conical extinguishers to put the flame out are still used today. The cap fits over the top of the candle and stops air from keeping the flame burning. They can be on any length of handle and are useful for putting out hard-to-reach candles. (See photo at bottom of page.) We often call them snuffers nowadays.

England 1788:

"Bought and paid for a Dozen of candles 10 in the pound...8s 6d."
...candles were usually sold by the pound. There were three principal sizes, eights, of which eight made a pound, tens,...and twelves, which were the least substantial...
David Eveleigh, Candle Lighting (Shire Library), 2008

Rushlights made from rushes dipped in grease were like the simpler kind of tallow dip, but even cheaper since there was no need to spin or buy thread for the wick. Other early lighting included torches of flaming oily wood, lamps containing animal fat or oil, or scarce and very expensive beeswax candles. Tallow candles could also be made in moulds to get a regular size and shape for those who could afford an upmarket candle made of the most refined tallow. The moulds were pewter or tin-lined iron.

Braiding thread for wicks was one of the great discoveries of the 19th century. The braiding encourages the wick to curl back into the flame as the surrounding tallow burns down. This means more wick is burnt, and less charred, sooty "snuff" needs tidying up. The 1800s also saw great steps forward with tallow. Stearin could be extracted from it for better quality candles, or tallow could be mixed with other oils.

See also:
Rushlights, rush dips and nips
English National Trust history of lighting by tallow candles

18 April 2009

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For sources please refer to the books page, and/or the excerpts quoted on the pages of this website, and note that many links lead to museum sites. Feel free to ask if you're looking for a specific reference - feedback is always welcome anyway. Unfortunately, it's not possible to help you with queries about prices or valuation.