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After the unfortunate enforced cancellation of our first two meetings we finally saw the new season under-weigh with Hugh Grainger entertaining us with an outline of the social structure and life of the village of Haddenham in 1450 as seen through the eyes of the village Reeve.
He explained how the villagers gradually clearled forest to create more farm land. How the remaining forest could be used by freemen to run swine and other animals on payment of a fee. They also had the right to collect dead wood, necessary to prove fuel for fire, and to cut living wood from trees if it could be reached by a shepherd's crook and cut with a single blow from a billhook, ("By Hook or By Crook")
The villagers worked the land on a four field system, three with crops rotated and one left fallow with animals grazing to recover. Each field was divided into strips which were a furrow long (furlong) being he distance that the pxen pulling a plough could work before resting. The whole affair was very wasteful, only about 25% of seed sown grows and the yields are poor.
He explained about the different types of houses which the villagers had, from very basic to slightly more substantial. The better ones, such as the Reeve himself lived in, were crook frame with stout oak struts forming the frame and daub and wattle walls between. The walls could be strong when the work was done well or weak. The interiors were just one room in all cases. A fire was kept smouldering all the time and the smoke had no escape other than when a door or window shutter was opened. One end usually had a raise platform used by some of the extended family which occupied the house for sleeping as well as storing things like apples. Under this area the animals lived during the night and in winter. With no ceiling and the thatched roof home to all kids of insects and animals, including wasps, bees, rats, squirrels and various birds, it was not wise to sleep on one's back with your mouth open the narrator suggested.
Cooking pots were mostly roughly formed clay fired in a basic kiln which had been used for maybe five hundred years. These were generally unclazed and not really suited to sitting on the fire. Iron pots were used by some but most cooked by putting the ingredients into the pot with water, heating stones in the fire until red-hot and then dropping them into the pot. By this method a gallon of soup could be boiled in two minutes and gept going by replacing he stones regularly. small animals caught could be roasted by covering in clay and buried in the ashes of the fire over night. Care had to be taken over the use of fire, whether the hearth or crude torches made of rushes dipped into any fat available because of the highly inflamible nature of the houses.
All the villagers had to provide work in the squire's field strips, usually two days a week. The freemen also had to act as soldiers in the service of the king. for this they also had to supply their own weapons, usually a long bow and arrows, which might be replaced by a pike as one grew older.
Cotters were those who had only a little land and many tokk up a trade to help survive. Below them were the surfs or villeins who were little more than slaves. They could not leave the village with out permission, they could be sold, their daughts need the squire's permission to marry, which meant paying fee, an impossibility. Running away meant harsh punishment if caught, and they usually were. The only escape was for them to be granted their freedom or tosurvive in some near by town for a year and a day without detection.
In the village the squire owned the mill, the baking oven where everybody's bread was baked. The mill had to be used by everyone and the miller took a percentage of the flour for himself. At the time of our story the squire did try to help the villagers; he provided a boar and a stallion to help improve the animal stock for example.
The squire has a bailiff who is the estate manager really. His job is to see that everything is done properly and to acqire anything need in the village that cannot be found locally. The Reeve, our story teller, is the intermediary who allocates the work and ensures that everyone does their duty in the fields. he makes sure at haymaking and harvesting that the squire's crops are harvested before everyone else's. After the harvest the squire provides a feast and this is probably the only time in the year that serfs have meat.
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