Those rough, tough, golden days of yore
Last updated 05:17, Friday, 28 November 2008
Dr Kathleen Rigg’s first memory of the village is “the marvellous smell of woodsmoke that always permeated it”. Caldbeck before World War Two was a remote place, isolated in its own upland hollow, self sufficient, sturdy and independent just like the folks who lived there.
Memories of Lakeland: Life and Work in the Caldbeck Area – 1914-2000. Caldbeck and District Local History Society. £8.99
Like most Cumbrian villages it had a strong sense of individuality and identity – there was a sense of belonging.
School is remembered warmly. There was the old school at Howbeck, the one at Uldale and the one at Fellside. Memories are dominated by the stick but it seems to be more of the folklore of the place than a reality.
Joe Scott, born in 1881 and 95 when he was interviewed more than 30 years ago, said: “Corporal punishment at school was caning on the hand, but the children were very biddable and the teachers were good and so the cane was seldom used.”
These disciplinarian teachers were not quite as intimidating as they might seem. The children at Howbeck were not that afraid of Mr Pittaway for they would recite the following lines:
Mr Pittaway was a very good man
He teached us all he can.
Reading, Writing Arithmetic
But he never forgot to use the stick.”
However, Dr Rigg’s grandfather, who was the Sunday School teacher, regularly pulled the children’s ears, and Sunday could be a day of unrelieved boredom. Children were not allowed to read.
Life was not easy by today’s standards. There was little domestic plumbing, perhaps just a cold tap, and the privy was down at the bottom of the garden. Much food was home-grown and everyone would produce their own vegetables.
During the war people would live off the land even more. The children learned to ignore stings as they collected nettles to make soup.
Laura Brough states that: “Everyone made their own bread, scones, teacakes and brown bread. Cooking was done on the black-leaded range which would be heated by putting sticks up the flue. Before thermometers, the temperature was measured by hand.”
The old smithy was at the centre of the village. The children would stand outside – they weren’t allowed in – and look amazedly at the sparks and listen to the din of hammer and anvil.
There were three cobblers in the village and another two in Hesket Newmarket. Joe Strong remembers as a little lad with his mates sitting down on the roadside and taking off his clogs because his feet were sweating when “an old fellow who sold studs saw them, went into the field and came back with ‘seeves’ or rushes”. He told them to put them in their clogs and Joe said he could have walked to London after that.
Joe remembers the rushes. Another speaker remembers her grandmother: “She always wore a long black dress and a black top. I never saw my grandmother’s legs.”
Caldbeck life has changed. Woodsmoke no longer hovers over the village. Many of the people talking about their childhood feel they are recalling a golden age.
These accounts of village life have been collected by the local history society. Even though we would find the villagers’ lives harsh, difficult and strict, perhaps it really was a golden age.
Memories of Lakeland is available from Bookends, 56 Castle Street, Carlisle, and 66 Main Street, Keswick, and from www.bookscumbria.com.
