.jpg "A Victorian Christmas")
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In the wider world there was a new Queen on the throne, just a young woman and perhaps no-one knew how things were going to turn out. At that time Christmas had almost fallen out of fashion, gone was the old celebration of 'Twelve days of Christmas' with feasting and merriment. It hardly got a mention in the newspapers, and customs such as May Day and Harvest Home were much more celebrated. At this time it could not be taken for granted that you would get Christmas Day off work, much less the extended period we have now. The factories and mines kept going every day of the year but perhaps it was a bit better in the countryside. However, the men received no paid holiday, no state pension, and if there had been wet days in November and December when they couldn't work, very likely no wages at all.
Winters were colder than they are now, over Christmas 1837 snow had blown into Emmington Church preventing the Sunday service. The winter of 1840/41 was a very severe one with ice on the Thames, and through all the winter months there were temperatures considerably below average. Then in 1841, from July into November it was very wet with local flooding later in the year. Not very good years for agricultural workers. Luckily several of the women in our families were lace-makers, and this did give them an extra income which would have made all the difference to the family budget during those bad-weather years.
So how might they have made Christmas special? Firstly, St Andrews Church would be celebrating Christ's birth with extra services and the bells ringing at midnight on Christmas Eve for all to hear. In 1753 the Rector of Chinnor had recorded a payment on Christmas Eve, "To ye Ringers according to Custom, 5s 0d". It is likely that this custom continued, although the Rector in 1841 was the wealthy landowner and farmer William Musgrave, who was not known for his generosity even though he was also Lord of the Manor. The 1841 Tithe Award shows that he was the second biggest landowner in Chinnor, with 336 acres of land and wood. The normally very straight-laced and factual Victoria County History says: "The long incumbency of William Augustus Musgrave (1816–75) was little short of disastrous. He succeeded to the baronetcy and the manor, and was more of a landed gentleman than a parish priest."
It may well be that our families attended an Act of Worship at the Congregational Church down the High Street as this was already a more popular place for Sunday services than St. Andrews, or they may have gone to the Methodist Chapel which was first erected around about now. It's interesting to note that two of the three men responsible for buying the land for the Congregational Chapel way back in 1805 were Thomas Keen the farmer and William Allnutt, a Henton farmer. Was the latter related to the other Allnutt who lived in Chinnor High Street, our families' landlord John Allnut? I think it's likely that our families lived in a non-conformist area of Chinnor.
Perhaps some of them went 'carolling' one evening around the wealthier homes hoping for a few pennies or a loaf of bread. Maybe first to the nearby Tudor farmhouse called Hill Farm, the home of Thomas Keen mentioned above, who our agricultural labourers probably worked for. Thomas was famous for his home-brewed ale so perhaps they could 'wet their whistle' here. Then bracing themselves, round the corner to the large and imposing Rectory, home of William Musgrave. He may have known them by sight as, being more interested in his horses and farm than his religious duties, he visited Manor Farm every day so he could well have ridden up Donkey Lane past their humble cottages. As he also owned many of the local woods, John Guntrip (old Mary Gomme's son-in-law) the woodsman was probably employed by him. Very comfortably off and ensconced in the Rectory with his married sister and her family plus half a dozen servants to look after them, I hope his Christian conscience would have prompted him to give the carollers something.
The older residents may have remembered that in their parents' day, with a more benevolent vicar, 60 poor people were each given a sixpenny loaf on St.Thomas's Day, 21st December. In even earlier times this was a day when women and children had gone 'Thomasing' door to door, asking for wheat and flour to make frumenty and Yule bread for Christmas. In some parts of the country, there was a local charity funded by the better-off, known as St Thomas's Dole. This was distributed to the needy by the clergy or churchwardens, so no doubt this 'sixpenny loaf’ was the local Chinnor version. However, sadly when James Musgrave (William's ancestor) became Rector, he may have given us the lovely Thornhill paintings but he stopped the tradition of the St.Thomas Day loaf. He also spent thousands on rebuilding the huge parsonage. It's interesting but not surprising to learn that in his day, a third of the parish attended Methodist meetings even though they didn't yet have a permanent chapel!
Decorating both Church and home with evergreens was a custom going back many generations and harking back to the old pagan mid-winter festival. It is nice to think that the girls may have decorated a cottage doorway or a downstairs room with fresh green branches cut from the local woods, certainly both holly and ivy still grow there today. More importantly, I hope that living where they did, they were allowed to collect enough fuel to keep warm and to cook by. Before Enclosure in 1854, Chinnor folk had 'hillwerke' rights, meaning they could gather 'small wood' such as firewood from common land up in the Chiltern hills. They lost these rights after Enclosure, when the woods would have been fenced and no longer common land.
What about food, could they afford anything other than gruel, bread and home-grown vegetables? There were other ways besides labouring and lace-making to gain a bit of extra money. Perhaps they caught and killed a polecat and received half a crown from the Churchwardens, this payment was last recorded in Chinnor in 1850. For a much smaller reward, sparrows could be collected by the dozen and 1 3/4 d received. Perhaps they came by a rabbit, meat which could be jointed and cooked over an open fire. At this time poaching was still a very serious offence, ultimately punishable by transportation, but perhaps their employer let them have one. Between 1834 and 1852, 17 convictions for 'trespass for game' were reported locally. Equally sad, William Seymour was convicted of stealing swedes and turnips in 1839, and the following year John King was convicted of stealing apples, pears and walnuts. No doubt in a small village community, many of these people would have been known to our families. And who were the magistrates who tried them? Their landlords and employers of course! Times were so hard that in 1843, nine Chinnor families left their homes and emigrated to Australia.
It is likely that our small cottages did not have a built-in oven, but instead cooking could be done over the fire in a pot, as long as you had fuel. In southern Britain at that time, goose was the preferred Christmas meat. I have not found any record of a local 'Goose Club’, a way that people sometimes saved a few pennies each week over the year to buy a goose at Christmas. But if they were lucky enough to have a better joint of meat, for example given by a local benefactor, then they could take it to the baker who would cook it in his oven ready for Christmas Day. It is recorded that the squire of Emmington, Mr. Wykeham, gave a hundred-weight of coal and a piece of beef to every member of his Parish at Christmas. He could well afford it, owning both the Thame Park and Tythrop estates. The Chinnor squire William Musgrave does not seem to have been so generous (but his sister had married a Wykeham and eventually when bachelor William died, the Musgrave estate passed through her to the Wykeham family).
Presents would have been few and far between, in any case the day for present-giving was Boxing Day (or St. Stephens) when some servants were given their Christmas 'boxes’, but this probably didn't apply to labourers. Maybe the children got a new item of clothing hand-made by their mother, or something a bit special to eat, like a stored apple. But childhood did not last long; in 1841 George Way was just 10 but already working as an agricultural labourer like his father and older brothers. And even Ellen Howlett aged 5 may have been going to one of the Chinnor lace schools already, there was one nearby at the top of the High Street. These were not schools as we would recognise them. Here very young girls would be trained to make lace, not for their own or their mother's dresses, but to sell to a middle-man for hard cash.
Christmas doesn't sound that much fun - you may notice I have not mentioned Christmas crackers or Christmas cards, the Christmas tree hung with candles and gifts, parlour games, not even Santa! But all this was very soon about to change. By the end of the 1840s Christmas had become the central festival of the Victorian calendar, and a time for celebrating and strengthening family ties. In fact, just about everything that we now regard as traditional, can be traced back to this time, a period of rapid change. Some even say that 'Christmas' was a result of industrialization, the time when mechanisation came into farming so fewer labourers were needed, and towns expanded with factories and mills, leading to a de-population of the countryside as people moved to where the jobs were. The more cynical say that the authorities needed to promote family values especially at this time when there was so much unrest in the country both in the countryside and in towns.
The influence of Victoria and Albert combined with the writings of Charles Dickens, are generally accepted to be the two biggest factors that shaped the re-invention of Christmas.
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| Victoria and Albert and family with Grandma |
"This illustration, showing the royal family gathered round the tree at Windsor Castle, attracted a great deal of attention when it appeared in the Christmas supplement to the Illustrated London News in December 1848. The German custom of bringing a tree into the house and decorating it with candles and gifts was observed enthusiastically by Victoria and Albert. At Windsor they took delight in preparing trees for each other as well as for the children and the royal household, and regularly gave trees to schools and army barracks. The practice had been popular amongst the upper classes for some time, having been introduced by Queen Charlotte in the 18th century, but this article helped spread the fashion to the rest of society."
The promotion of images and articles about the ever-growing Royal family is credited with a change in the way people thought about children. They could be given love and attention without seeming to spoil them, perhaps childhood as we know it really began now. A Christmas tree mania was sparked and the middle classes soon got one for their homes, decorating it with fruit, nuts and home-made decorations.
Charles Dicken's 'Christmas Carol' published in 1843, was a highly moral story that encouraged the rich to give to the poor and promoted hospitality and general goodwill to all men. Again, it highlighted the value of family. By as early as 1850 the Christmas number of 'Household Words' (Dickens' magazine) described a group of ordinary London children standing in awe around an illuminated tree hung with tapers and laden with toys and trinkets, indicating this had already become the new shape of Christmas in the town. Some of the toys were tin, 'wonderfully made' in the new factories of Wolverhampton - the start of the commercial opportunities of this new tradition! Carols and carol-singing were reinvigorated with new carols including the still well-known ‘O Come all ye Faithful' in 1843 and 'Once in Royal David's City' in 1848. The Christmas card was invented in 1843 and crackers in 1846. Christmas cards and many of the other new goods would have been well out of the reach of a Chinnor labourer, the cards cost 1s each and even Queen Victoria encouraged her children to make their own. But it is amazing just how much had altered in this one decade.
Gradually these new ideas or at least home-made versions of them, would have trickled down and reached rural Oxfordshire. Victoria and Albert later promoted the idea of giving all workers the day off for Christmas so they could have family time. And as the decades went on, Christmas celebrations even for the poor would have become much more like those we know today. If you happen to walk up Donkey Lane over the Christmas break, as you pass by the Orchard, please spare a thought for those 1841 families and their hard lives.
Christine Davis - Orchard Story Group December 2022
If you would like to know more about the Donkey Lane Community Orchard project or get involved, please contact Linda on 07973 788993 or email greeningchinnor@gmail.com.
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SOURCES
`A Christmas Tree' by Charles Dickens in Household Words, Volume II, Magazine No. 39, 21 December 1850 found at DJO: Dickens Journals Online (http://www.djo.org.uk)
Aston Rowant and Chilterns Spring Line Villages at https://astonrowant.wordpress.com/
Chinnor 1929 and Chinnor 1979 compiled by the WI (hard copies on heritage trolley in Chinnor Library)
Fiona Mantle's thesis 'The Social History of Medical Self-Help in 20th -Century England' 2019. Available online
https://www.ramptonandwoodbeck-pc.gov.uk/ for an article about 'Thomasing' in England.
Victoria County History accessed online
Victorian Farm, BBC publication by Alex Langlands, Peter Ginn and Ruth Goodman
1841 census accessed via Ancestry
1841 Chinnor Tithe Award seen at Oxfordshire History Centre, thanks to Bernard Braun
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