Post 107 from @theporlockpippin
Windmill JackÂ
In the 1920s Exmoor photographer H M Lomas took pictures of local character Windmill Jack outside his lime kiln home. Jack Hurley tells the story:
âI am not sure when Jack first appeared, but it was probably early in the 1920s. He was 69, an ex-soldier with the [Royal East Kent Regiment] which heâd joined in 1880. [On leaving he had] became a wanderer, finally settling at Watchet. He derived his nickname [from making] toy windmills for local children, with whom he was a firm favourite, [but stopped] when traffic began to increase, fearing a child might run into the road with a windmill and become a casualty.
â[He lived in] a disused line kiln, a relic of Watchetâs fame in having supplied lime for the Eddystone Lighthouse. It [afforded] protection in bad weather and shade on a hot day, for two trees grew outside the entrance, one on either side, and the branches met to form a leafy bower. Jack shared his meals with a black-and-white Tom cat, which had a supplementary diet of mice and sparrows.Â
â[He ate with a silver spoon after coming] across several in a rubbish heap. For chairs he used boxes. He washed his own clothes and hung them in a line across his living room. His bedroom was in another part of the kiln; his bed, of his own design, was an iron framework, boards, and straw filled sacks. In front of his living quarters, he laid out a little garden, bordering it with iron railings, and growing many kinds of flowers. His kitchen garden included marrows and tomatoes.
âLocal farmers used to find Windmill Jack a bit of work to do now and then, and he also helped with the work at the adjoining limekiln. Sometime in the 1930s, when he was well into his 70s ⊠in a mood of depression because his eyesight was failing, he attempted to end his life by cutting his throat. He survived and was brought before the magistrates. I remember that day, for it was the last time I saw the old man. The magistrates were
Storm Darragh at Watchet. Nigel Eastwood filmed this from a third-floor bedroom at his home, Severn House.
From the middle to the end. Dulverton By StarlightVisit Dulverton x
Post 101 Wild harvest from @theporlockpippin
Foraging went into full swing during both World Wars. German pharmaceutical companies dominated drug markets resulting in supplies to the UK drying up.  As a result volunteers were asked to forage (or to grow) any plants that could produce drugs, medicines or other products that were suddenly no longer available.  Vast quantities of wild plants were harvested.
Conkers, for example, were widely collected in WWI to manufacture the explosives nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose. Their use was kept top secret and just in 1917 a total of 3,000 tons were recorded as collected and sent to the Synthetic Products Company in Kings Lynn.
Deadly nightshade contains many useful if toxic compounds including atropine and hyoscyamine. Atropine was in high demand for eye operations, and 200 tons of leaves and roots were harvested during WWII. It was also an effective antidote to nerve gas attacks.
Nettles were collected for their chlorophyll used in the synthesis of anti-asthma drugs. They also yielded a green dye used in camouflage.
The opium poppy too was both gathered and cultivated, and the seed heads milked for their latex. Although containing less opium than those grown in hotter areas, they still gave a useful amount of the pain killer drug which could then be further refined to produce morphine.Â
Meadow Saffron bulbs were collected to provide the drug colchicines, which was used to reduce inflammation. In WWII collectors were instructed to gather bulbs from pastures and meadows before these were ploughed up to grow crops.
Foxgloves were also harvested for digitalis, a powerful drug used to regulate abnormal heart rhythms. And of course sphagnum moss was gathered in both Wars and dried to be used as wound dressings - see my previous post number 58.
Finally Rose hips were collected, 500 tons a year by 1943, enough to make 2.5 million bottles of syrup. This saved the importation of 25 million oranges on shipping tha
âWhat do you do?â
âI run a magazine.â
âWhatâs that like then?â
âFun, but can be a bit like herding cats.â
And here is another clip from tonight, of the inimitable Johnny Kingdom, complete with infectious enthusiasm. Courtesy of David Parker / Forum Television.
This is a post strictly for AFTER THE WATERSHED. Please turn away if you do not want to see Dick French's stripping song and simply scroll on to the next post. Viewing is at your own risk. đ
I have just returned (misty on top by the way) from a wonderful pre-event for the Dulverton and Exmoor Literary Festival. The evening was a sell-out success at Dulverton Town Hall, organised by Ali Pegrum Visit Dulverton, during which David Parker treated us to a first half featuring a huge range of clips covering rural life across Exmoor from 1938 to the millennium (there were tears and laughter) and a second half, which featured a 25-minute film about Dulverton from the 70s. At the end, we were treated to a couple of extra clips, culminating in this! This is Dick French's famous stripping song, which is referred to in a big five-page feature about Dick and Lorna French in our new Winter Issue, which was researched for us by David Ramsay and written by Victoria Eveleigh. Thank you to David Parker / Forum Television for allowing me to post this here and thank you to Ali and Dulverton for a memorable evening. Don't miss out - get your tickets to the Literary Festival soon. They are selling like hot cakes! https://visitdulverton.com/dulverton-exmoor-literary-festival-2024/
Next, from David @theporlockpippin
(86)  A wonderful example of a house originally built without a chimney (see previous post) is Kitnorâs, in the medieval hamlet of Bossington hin the Porlock Vale. Originally âa late 15th or early 16th century open hall-house,â it has âsmoke-stained roof beamsâ indicating that for many years there had been a chimney-less open fire within the building and the smoke had to find its own way out at roof level.  âA first floor supported by beams was incorporated into the open hall in the late 16th centuryâ and it was then that a proper fireplace with an external chimney-stack to the front would have been added. A projecting semicircular bread oven with a slate roof was also incorporated next to the new chimney; bread ovens such as this were very common at a time when both baking and roasting were difficult to achieve on an open fire. There are at least nine bread ovens still existing along Bossingtonâs single street.  Â
Bread ovens were usually fired once a week with a fuel that burned extremely intensely - dry gorse was a favourite - with the considerable heat generated being absorbed into the mass of surrounding stone or brick. When spent, the ash on the floor of the oven was raked out, it was mopped down and then ready for use over the following forty eight hours as it gradually released the stored heat.Â
None of this heat was wasted with all the different temperatures carefully used as it cooled. Bread went in initially, followed by food that required stewing, then, as the temperature dropped, cakes, followed by items that needed a moderate heat, milk puddings and egg-based foods. The bottling of fruit, the drying of nuts, the preserving of meats and potting of fish were all carried out in turn as the oven gradually lost its heat, along with the drying of considerable quantities of herbs and grain for the winter. Penultimately feathers would go in to be sterilised and fully dried before being used in
Ann is having a break today so here are two posts from David Ramsay @theporlockpippin about chimneys.
(85)  It is inconceivable to think that people commonly lived in rooms without chimneys and that smoke from the open fire was left to find its own way out at roof level. In fact it was not until as late as 1666 and the Great Fire of London that it became law in the UK for all new buildings to be fitted with a chimney.
Adding a chimney to an existing building was most easily undertaken to the outside of an external wall and most practically at the gable end with its additional supporting height. New external chimneys became quite a status symbol however, and were often placed on the front walls of houses in order to be more widely visible. On Exmoor chimneystacks were usually tall in order to draw well, but also to lift sparks well away from roofs that were often thatched. The free-standing sections of these stacks were usually round due to the difficulty of forming square structures with the slatey type of stone that we have in this area. Â
The new fireplaces built at the bottom of these chimneys were commonly from 8 -12 feet wide, and generally spanned by a large oak beam with no mantle shelf as we know it today. Horizontal iron bars were set in the flue above the fire to enable food to be cured in the smoke and from which pot hangers could be suspended. It was usual to have a step up to the hearth for easier access to cooking pots and for the fire to be built up on fire dogs to draw more effectively. A cast iron fireback was often added to reflect the heat and protect the rear of the fireplace. As time passed the use of fire dogs gradually gave way to the basket grate.
With the gradual introduction of coal as a fuel rather than wood or peat, there was a need for smaller grates, and the large open hearth was gradually abandoned. New cast iron cooking ranges were fitted and this is the point that the open fire with a pot crane, pot hangers, and other co
Look at that tide! Drone footage by @shaun.g.davey
This is post no.84 from @theporlockpippin.
Dovecotes were a familiar feature in the landscape from the Middle Ages right through to the 18th century when there were an estimated 26,000 in England. Pigeons, kept for their eggs, flesh and dung, were an important food source throughout the year but especially in winter when fresh meat was largely unavailable. Traditionally dovecotes were placed on the edge of an ownerâs land so that the doves fed mainly on their neighbourâs crops rather than on their own; a practice that Dorothy Hartley points out as a âa grievance to the hard-working farmer but destitution to the cottager with his small strip of bread cornâ.
The Dunster dovecote probably had 540 interior nest sites after the lower ones had been blocked off against the brown rat (which had reached this part of Somerset in the 1760s.)Â A revolving ladder, known as a âpotenceâ, allowed the pigeon-keeper to search the nest holes, and two feeding platforms were installed at the top of the ladder.
Pigeons mate for life, laying two eggs up to five times a year. The baby pigeons, the squabs, were taken by the pigeon-keeper just before flying, when almost as big as the adult birds but with flying muscles undeveloped, so had extremely tender breast meat. âPigeons, plump on stolen corn, are like tiny brown poultryâ Dorothy Hartley explains, and are a meaty bird which should be âcleaned and plucked very close.â The feathers werenât kept and used as was the case with other birds, and any birds that were old and tough were better in a pie, skinned rather than plucked.
From the 12th century, ownership of a dovecote was strictly limited to major landowners, monasteries and the clergy, but in 1619 this privilege was extended to other freeholders. Then, in the 18th century, the importance of the dovecote gradually declined as root crops and mixtures of grasses were introduced, making it possible at last to keep farm animals alive over winter, rather tha
A lovely video posted by @westcountry_hedgelayer Paul Lamb. A ministry of agriculture film from 1942 showing the process of laying a hedge. By this time, with the labour force fighting abroad, the craft was already in decline. The coming decades would see agricultural practices increasingly mechanised and much old war machinery was repurposed and used to clear the land for more intensive cultivation. The years after this film saw half of Britains hedgerows lost. Now we work again to reinstate what was lost in those years.
#hedging #hedger #britishhistory #britishagriculture #farming #livestock #hedgerows #landmanagement
