Chapter 15
The Cottager's Pig, His Allotment and His Money

Until the outbreak of war we were literally on the gold standard. Number One Branch of the National Provincial Bank had been long established, with Lloyd's at Wotton-Under-Edge. I expect when the 20th Century opened most of the larger farmers and tradesmen had bank accounts, but the cottagers and wage-earners used golden sovereigns, and when the precious metal was called in at the beginning of the war, the new treasury notes were bitterly resented.
A golden sovereign represented more than a week's wages for most men. It could buy a suit of clothes or several pairs of shoes. The thrifty countryman who wanted a pair of weaners for his pigsty would often get change out of his sovereign when he paid for them. Many of the Hillesley cottagers made a few extra shillings from the pigsty at the bottom of the garden.
Acorns carefully gathered (why did oak trees bear so many acorns then?), small potatoes boiled up with surplus garden waste, these additions made a sack of barley meal go a long way.
I well remember helping to load fat pigs from garden sties. We 'slipped' the protesting pig with a noose in his mouth and then coaxed it down the long path to the waiting cart. We were watched and often scolded by angry housewives when the pig wandered off the straight and narrow to trample flowers or crops.
The saga of the pig ended when the carcase, cold and stiff, lay on the scales at our slaughterhouse. My father would produce his well-worn ready reckoner and then proceed to count out payment in glittering gold.
Pigs were kept generally until ten-score dead weight. We wanted fairly thick fat for country tastes with plenty of 'leaf' or 'flick' to melt into lard. There was a saying then that if barley meal was eight shillings a sack (224 lbs), and pigs were eight shillings per score, then pigs paid money!
I think the cottager made a profit because of his garden surplus. The diet for most pigs was barley meal alone, plus the other oddments, and a weekly scattering of small coal for minerals. In general those pigs were a picture of health with glossy coats and a scrupulously clean sty. The reason for this was, I am sure, the basic diet of stone-ground English barley. Fluffy, warm to the touch, with golden barley skin showing here and there, there is nothing like it to be found today.
I suppose the pile of pig sovereigns was not so very high after all but I expect it seemed a lot to a man whose weekly wage was about fifteen shillings.
How many hoards of gold there were in the village nobody knew. Sometimes people changed their gold into five-pound notes. On white parchment paper, beautifully engraved in copper plate, with heavy water marks, those notes looked almost as trustworthy as gold itself.
A man had not to amass a great store of money before he could dream of becoming independent, either by starting a small business, or becoming one of those who, contracting for an acre or two of wood, made a living by cutting its growth into all kinds of things to sell.
In these days of energy crises, when oil shortage affects every one of us; when we shiver at the thought of power cuts, and tremble as we fear a possible coal strike, I think of some of the men I knew as a boy. I suppose they were a kind of survival of the happy commoners who made up Merrie England before the Enclosure Acts.
Simply by using their native skills in making use of natural resources around them, these men found in their gardens and allotments and especially in the acre of coppice wood which every year they were able to buy from the local squire, a great proportion of the necessities for a comfortable living.
A spell of haymaking, harvesting and thatching for local farmers brought in some money during the summer, but as soon as autumn coloured the woods the squire's agent could be seen measuring up the areas of coppice due to be sold for cutting.
Ten years growth from ash and hazel stools could be bought for a small sum and an acre or so would provide a skilful woodman with a lucrative job to which he could go all through the winter.
If nothing more profitable turned up he would be away, cold bacon and onions with home-made bread in his bag, axe and billhook on his shoulders.
Dark and impenetrable a piece of copse might look on a November day, yet if the woodman was good at his work one knew that, come next April, the growth would be cut clean to the ground, and that every stick which had grown there during the past ten years would have been converted into something useful for man or beast.
The best lengths of ash were carefully stacked, ready for the arrival of the hurdle-maker. Using his particular skills of splitting, peeling and morticing, he would leave a pile of hurdles glimmering white against the greenwood background, to await collection by some local flockmaster.
Biggest hazel sticks would make fencing stakes, the next size would be sorted for bean sticks and the twiggy ends would become pea sticks.
While all these processes were going on, a careful eye would look for the ash growth which could make a walking-stick, or the long forked stick for a clothes-prop, not to mention the straight briar root to please the keen rose-budder. All these products meant cash sales.
There were other things the woodman valued; hazel rods for his summer thatching, and long split 'ledgers' to be stored until the day when he might be asked to roof a house.
All this would be done, the products dispersed to farm and garden, and with money in his pocket he would leave his acre tidy and clean to await another ten years of silent growth.
So when autumn came round again such men and their families feared no energy crisis. A shortage of paraffin would have been irritating, but I expect they would go to bed early if they couldn't light their table lamps - and tallow candles were made locally until the thirties.
As for the miner's strike - who would have worried since there would be a great stack of wood at the back door? An armful of hazel sticks, split and placed overnight on the hob of the old black grate meant almost instant heat in the morning. As the housewives often said, "It boiled a kettle luv'ly.''
The existence of Harley and Inglestone Commons was often a factor in some enterprising young mans rise to fortune. The rule was that anyone could summer on the Common as much stock as he could feed in winter. In the day of the horse this parish right was especially valuable. Our shoe-maker, coal merchant, liveryman, Edward Carter, kept his two horses on the Common in whatever spare time they had. Cousin Jesse, the corn miller, put his team down there and in spite of the donkeys which nibbled constantly, these equine stomachs were somehow filled.
It was to the horse-breeder, or the man who saved five pounds with which to buy a 'sucker' colt at Barton Fair, that common rights really meant something. By scavenging the grass from the road-sides (all scythed then), enough hay could be saved to keep the precious animal for its first winter, then for two long summers it would be on the Common. At two years a bit of light work and at three it could be anything - a farmer's cob, a tradesman's delivery pony or sometimes even it could be a smart cob for the doctor's gig. Many a patient man who could afford to wait sometimes made as much as forty guineas of his humble Welsh sucker.
To the lucky man with a brood mare opportunities were even greater. The cob or pony mare would work much of the winter then in spring 'Alonzo the Brave' would come around the district. Old Alonzo, as he was affectionately known, was owned by a Mr. Pullin at Cromhall. For nine months of the year he pulled the milk cart to Charfield Station, then, when spring came, he was put on a diet of oats and beans. His mane and tail trimmed with ribbons, he stepped gaily along the country roads. He served mares for a fee of one pound, and two shillings and sixpence for the groom. It was said that when mated to a mare inferior to himself the results were often surprisingly good - proof of the old horse breeding dictum 'put the best blood on the top'. I expect there are people still living who can remember riding or driving horses sired by 'Old Alonzo'.
Wynford Vaughan Thomas in his book 'Madly in all Directions' tells of an 'Alonzo the Brave' which in 'Thomas's boyhood travelled the Swansea district. Did the Pullen's buy their Alonzo from Wales, or was Alonzo a popular name for any cob stallion?
If the enterprising countryman could get a bit of land his capital expenditure for working equipment could be fairly light. While good young horses commanded a premium, up to forty or even fifty pounds for something really good, for the poor man there were horses off town work, or those which had passed their best on the brewery or railway wagons, which could be bought very cheaply. They lasted for years on country work which was kind to their feet - a pair of these, a mowing machine and a hay wagon could be bought for less than a hundred pounds. A few cows at fifteen pounds each and a clever wife who could keep hens and make butter, and another man would be started on the farming ladder, that is, if he could rent a bit of land.
As a contribution to the well-being and the good feeding of the village the allotments should not be forgotten. At some time in the late 19th century there had been a movement to provide land for villagers and the Hales of Alderley provided the Common gardens, a field now owned by Mr. Spencer, and the Duke of Beaufort allocated the farther end of Stavilands. At spring or autumn both these areas were a hive of activity as people planted or gathered their crops. The Common gardens were especially noted for the Black Kidney potatoes they produced. Many hard-working men grew more than they needed for their families, selling their surplus at Kingswood where Hillesley Black Kidneys were greatly prized. I suppose Tubbs Lewis' workers were better paid than farm-workers and could afford to buy potatoes instead of growing them. Allotments were a family affair. At potato gathering mothers and children joined in loading donkey-carts, pony-carts and wheelbarrows with the winter's potato supply. Few farmers grew potatoes on a field scale. Everyone expected, as a matter of pride, to prepare for the long months before they dug the May Queens in the next year. The boys often came to school boasting, ''I put down a 'hundred' (I cwt) of seed last night for our Dad to cover in," or, "I hacked (hoed) twenty rows in our allotment." They certainly learned how to work in the garden when very young.