June, 2012:
Mrs. Mary ‘Polly’ Roberts (1857-1935)
Families were large, wages were small and life was a struggle for the working classes in Victorian Britain, especially in rural communities. The well-being of the family often depended as much on the resourcefulness of the wife as on the hard labour of the husband. Mary Roberts was born into the Wareham family of Iwerne Minster and as she grew up her mother instilled in her all the skills and virtues to be a good wife and mother.
She was born Mary Eliza Wareham in 1857 at Iwerne Minster, but known as Polly. The daughter of agricultural labourer Benjamin Wareham and his wife Sarah, she was the sister of William Wareham about whom we have written elsewhere on the site. (see: William Wareham 1860-1961 in the Real Lives Category). During her teenage years she spent a little time in Battersea, London, with Joseph Aldworth, an Irishman, and his Dorset born wife Ann, whose mother was Irish.
In 1878 at the age of 21 she married a young man from her village named Frank Roberts. He was employed as an agricultural labourer on the Iwerne Minster estate, though in the early days of their marriage they lived at Shroton (Iwerne Courtney), until a cottage became available on the estate. Here at Till Hayes Cottage, they lived for many years. Polly and Frank had twelve children including two twin girls; sadly one died aged one year and the other aged 12. They also lost a son to the First World War. Later, when her eldest girls had left home and gone into service, Polly took in two homeless children. Later, she brought up her orphaned granddaughter, who wrote warmly about her grandmother: “This patient, kind woman lived the religion she professed every moment of every day, day after day. No matter how demanding and exhausting her own troubles and household duties, she made it her Christian duty to go to help, freely, anyone in the village who was ill or in need.”
Life was a constant struggle for the lowly paid agricultural worker and his wife. Their little bits of furniture were mainly the work of Frank Roberts who, though not a carpenter, had a talent for woodcarving.
They kept chickens, a pig and grew their own vegetables. Each year after the grain had been harvested and with the farm Bailiff’s permission, Polly took the children into the fields to glean the ears of corn left on the ground; this was fed to the chickens. For a while the family had a goat that, by all accounts, was quite a character and fond of slipping his tether and trotting off to meet the eldest lad from school.
On occasions the family was so hard-up Polly had to keep the younger children away from school because they had no boots to wear; footwear for a family of twelve was a big item to come out of the family’s small budget. Her granddaughter tells of Polly walking the twelve miles to Blandford and back to buy boots for the children and recalls: “one evening on her way back from Blandford Polly decided to take a short cut across a field at Steepleton. It seems she fell over a cow that was resting peacefully in the darkness.” We don’t know who was the more surprised – Polly with her upturned pram or the cow!
In those times of austerity Polly was rarely able to serve meat to the family, except when the family pig was killed and at Christmas when the estate owner gave his workmen a joint of beef. In the kitchen, hanging over the fire a large pot of stew would be cooking: it was made by boiling some bones with vegetables and dumplings.
Always having to think ahead, Polly would make as much jam as she could during the season from the plentiful fruit in her garden. She would make large apple dumplings and boil them in cloths in the copper. Her granddaughter tells us: “she made what the children called ‘stirred in’ apple puddings,” that were made the same way. She had a small bread oven but often took the bread, wrapped in cloth, in a wheelbarrow to be baked along with her sister-in-law’s loaves. The family could only afford to have butter or margarine on Sundays. At the start of a meal each child had to eat one thick slice of bread as a filler before being allowed any jam or dripping.
Saturday was a particularly busy day for Polly. She cleaned and dusted the Baptist Chapel, did all her own housework and cooking and made sure all the mending was complete. Scissors and needles were put away on Saturday night as were all tools. Polly laid out everyone’s best clothes and polished all the family boots and lined them in a row ready for Sunday when all the family would attend all of the services at the Chapel.
During the autumn of 1905 there was an epidemic of diphtheria. Polly’s husband, two of their boys and three of the younger girls were all ill. Day and night Polly nursed them all but the family lost the second of the twin girls.
Polly would be the first to help others in difficulty: she was present at most births and deaths in the village, acting as mid-wife, nurse and friend. This was before the network of District Nurses was set up. Those she helped often sent gifts of second hand clothing to her cottage and, as she could afford to buy new clothes only occasionally, she would get busy with her needle and scissors, altering these gifts to fit the family. Although poor, her children were always turned-out neat and tidy. She took in sewing and washing from the gentry to subsidise her meagre housekeeping allowance and to make ends meet.
Polly was often heard to say: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” and “Waste not, want not,” was another of her favourite expressions, as was: “Shan’t let myself be beaten” and she rarely was. This ingenious and resourceful lady confronted the trials that a hard life sent her way. She was a good woman, good mother, good wife and she taught her children to reverence God and to pray.
At the age of seventy-two, having been a widow for fourteen years, this
wonderful lady became worn out with physical effort and took to her bed, where she lay ill for six long years, attended by two of her devoted daughters. Mary ‘Polly’ Roberts passed away in the spring of 1935.
The Passing of a Village Store
Today we lament the closing of our village shops, forgetting it is we who are ultimately responsible by choosing the supermarket. The demise of the village store is not a new phenomenon; it has been happening over many years. This is the story of a little Provisions Store in the village of Fontmell Magna and the people who ran it until it closed about sixty years ago.
It was not unusual for small village shops to be a part or corner of a cottage. What is unusual about this shop is it had no shop-window in which to display its wares, just a glass-fronted entrance door above which was a shabby little sign reading “E. BECK, PROVISON STORES.” The thatched cottage, judging by the solid grey-stone and faded bricks, some of them built into a herringbone pattern, dates from the late seventeenth to early eighteenth century.
We know from the 1841 census the cottage was occupied by George and Sarah Hart and their one-year-old daughter Anna. George Hart was a cordwainer (a shoemaker) who would walk 40 miles each way to Bath to collect leather for his business. The following decade was eventful for the family: George opened a bakery on the premises and during this time three sons and two more daughters were born.
In those days Fontmell Magna was a busy place familiar with toil and enterprise for it had a vibrant local economy. People were employed on the estate and in the woods, as well as in the brewery, malthouse and foundry.
Few cottages could boast any baking facilities. Cooking was usually done in a large iron pot suspended from the ceiling by a chain over an open fire on the hearth. Everything went into the pot: swedes and turnips from the fields joined garden vegetables and bacon from the family pig. Occasionally a rabbit or a hare might add to the feast and some might even have known the taste of venison. Poaching was not unknown in these parts.
The Harts were an enterprising family. The 1861 census confirms George Hart continued to repair footwear and make boots, helped by his 16-year-old daughter, Kezia, who is described in the census as a shoe binder, while his older daughter, Anna, made straw bonnets. Sons George and Samuel, respectively 18 and 14, were employed as agricultural labourers. The youngest children – Mary, Stephen and Frederick were still at school.
The 1871 census reveals that sixty-year-old George is concentrating on his shoemaking business and is leaving the running of the bakery to his sons Samuel and Stephen, who are assisted by their sister Mary. During the next decade there are further changes at the bakery, which expanded and was selling provisions. Ten years on, George is back assisting his son Stephen with the bakery as well as working a five acre farm. George’s wife Sarah passed away in 1883 aged 71.
It was not unusual for people to bring to the bakery their cakes, tarts, pies and their meagre joints to be baked in George Hart’s oven. Over the following few years it is likely the young daughters of Tom and Jane Beck would have been sent to the store on errands for their mother and for two of them the bakery-come-village shop was to play an important part in their lives.
At the age of 80, George was still making boots and farming his five-acres. Stephen Hart is 39 years of age and, still a single man, he had sole responsibility for the bakery and provisions store. George Hart passed away in 1898 at the age of 87. About this time another bakery opened in the village.
With the advent of the 20th century, Stephen is running the bakery and shop alone; his brother Frederick, a tailor and a widower, is living with him. Stephen is an officer of the village Methodist Chapel.
The Beck family were also members of the Chapel. Tom Beck and his brothers John and Joe and his nephew Charlie from Iwerne Minster would lead the carol singers as they went round the village. Tom also played the cornet and was the unofficial village barber, charging a penny a trim; in the winter one of his daughters would hold a candle for him. Tom was employed as an estate woodman.
In 1901 Tom and Jane’s daughter Emily, who was born in 1877, was working away from home at Bournemouth, where she was a domestic servant in the household of an Auctioneer and Estate Agent. Her sister Bessie, who was born in 1882, is still living at home with her parents in their little cottage beside the millpond.
When Emily returned to the village she became Stephen Hart’s housekeeper and moved into his cottage and soon became involved with the running of the provision store and sometime after 1911 she became Stephen Hart’s business partner.
When Stephen passed away in 1927 Emily decided to close the bakery side of the business and concentrate on the shop. Her younger sister Bessie had been helping to run the shop and looking after their aging parents. Tom Beck passed away early in 1928 aged 81 years. Bessie and their mother, Jane, moved in with Emily but about eighteen months later their mother passed away, aged 82 years.
The enterprising sisters started a guest house in addition to the shop and they continued throughout World War II and the fifties. Early in the sixties the sisters bade farewell to their last guests, served their last customers in the shop, and retired.
Village shops used to sell everything from bread, cheese and bacon to cards, buttons and bows, often all over one counter. Shopkeepers usually provided the comfort of a chair for customers while they prepared their purchases and passed on the latest news and gossip circulating in the village. In places like Fontmell Magna these scenes are distant memories.
Emily and Bessie Beck gave a lifetime of service to the village of Fontmell Magna and they were both in their eighties when they retired from their business. Emily was a Sunday school teacher at the chapel and Bessie kept it looking spotless and was part-time organist there for 50-years.
Emily was known as Miss Emmie – she died in 1969 aged 92; and Bessie died in 1977 having reached the age of 95 years.
We have placed a photograph of Emily and Bessie Beck in the photo section.
Swyre
Swyre has been the home and the last resting place for members of two of Dorset’s best known families, the Russell’s and the Napier’s, and the Rector here from 1729 until his death in 1778 was John Hutchins whose work The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset is a main source material for anyone studying the County.
Swyre is a coastal parish about 5 miles east of Bridport that comprises nearly eleven hundred acres of farmland. The church in the Early English style was dedicated to The Holy Trinity in 1503 and stands on the eastern edge of the parish. Its walls are built of local rubble and the roofs are covered with slates. The chancel arch and the west tower survive from c.1400; the nave and chancel were rebuilt in 1843 and in 1885 the vestry and organ-chamber were added. The tower houses two bells both thought to be from the 15th century.
There are brasses in the church and memorials in the churchyard to members of the Gallop and Squibb families and others commemorating the lives of prominent members of the Russell and the Napier families.
About a mile from the church is Berwick House. Built in the 16th century it is the birthplace of John Russell, the first Duke of Bedford. In 1506 a vessel with the Archduke Phillip of Austria and his Spanish wife on board sought shelter in Weymouth harbour. The couple were taken to Wolfeton House, the home of Sir Thomas Trenchard, on the outskirts of Dorchester, and word was sent to Berwick House for his nephew, John Russell, who was a Spanish speaker, to come and interpret. On a later occasion when the Archduke was visiting King Henry VIII, he mentioned to the king the service provided by John Russell and in recognition of his service he was appointed to the King’s Privy chamber.
John Russell had a distinguished career and managed to keep his head, in itself no mean feat for an advisor to the King. He held many posts including that of Ambassador to the Pope. In 1547 he was granted the monastery of Woburn Abbey and in that same year he attended the coronation of King Edward Vl in his position of Lord High Steward of England. He was created Earl of Bedford around 1549 and died in Buckinghamshire on the 14th of March 1554.
In 1851 a school was provided to teach 40 children, by 1895 the Duke of Bedford owned all the land in the parish, although none of the later Dukes resided in Dorset.
From the beginning of the 17th century Berwick House and farm have been leased to tenant farmers. The Napier family, who held land in Swyre, Bexington and Puncknowle appear to have had an interest in Berwick between 1602 and 1641, while Mary, the daughter of Julius Squibb and wife of George Gallop inherited Berwick in 1687. George and Mary Gallop’s son George was the Sheriff of Dorset in 1745, Thomas was Captain of Portland Castle and James was Sheriff of Dorset in 1768.
Arthur Mee, the editor of the 1939 edition of The King’s England, dismisses Swyre in one sentence as “a small, humble and uninteresting settlement.” We beg to differ.
