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Chapters (44)
  1. Lark Rise to Candleford
  2. Copyright
  3. LARK RISE
  4. 1
  5. 2
  6. 3
  7. 4
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  10. 7
  11. 8
  12. 9
  13. 10
  14. 11
  15. 12
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  17. 14
  18. 15
  19. OVER TO CANDLEFORD
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  33. 29
  34. CANDLEFORD GREEN
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  38. 33
  39. 34
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  44. 39

She was often to think of those baths in later years when she stepped into or out of the few inches of tepid water in her clean but cold modern bathroom or looked at the geyser, ticking the pennies away, and wondered if it would be too extravagant to let it run longer. But perhaps the unlimited hot water did less to make the brew-house baths memorable than the youth, health, and freedom from care of the bather.

The community was largely self-supporting. Every household grew its own vegetables, produced its new-laid eggs and cured its own bacon. Jams and jellies, wines and pickles, were made at home as a matter of course. Most gardens had a row of beehives. In the houses of the well-to-do there was an abundance of such foods, and even the poor enjoyed a rough plenty. The problem facing the lower-paid workers was not so much how to provide food for themselves and their families as how to obtain the hundred and one other things, such as clothing, boots, fuel, bedding and crockery ware, which had to be paid for in cash.

Those with an income of ten or twelve shillings a week often had to go short of such things, although the management and ingenuity of some of the women was amazing. Every morsel of old rag they could save or beg was made into rugs for the stone floors, or cut into fragments to make flocks to stuff bedding. Sheets were turned outsides into middle and, after they had again become worn, patched and patched again until it was difficult to decide which part of a sheet was the original fabric. ‘Keep the flag flying!’ they would call to each other when they had their Monday morning washing flapping on the line, and the seeing eye and the feeling heart, had the possessor of these been present, would have read more than was meant into the saying. They kept the flag flying nobly, but the cost to themselves was great.

33

Penny Reading

In those days, when young or progressive inhabitants of Candleford Green complained of the dullness of village life, the more staid would say, “It may be dull in some villages; but not here. Why, there’s always something going on!” which the dissatisfied could not deny, for, although there was none of the amusement they desired, amusements of a kind were plentiful.