Coaching Inn research: A right royal visit!

Last week Clara took a trip down South with members from other teams at Beamish to visit Hampton Court. There, they met with various members of staff from Historic Royal Palaces to share ideas about everything from to how to recreate a Tudor heresy trial to cooking roast beef on a spit.

Henry VIII’s kitchens at Hampton Court

Henry VIII’s kitchens at Hampton Court

Henry VIII’s kitchens at Hampton Court

Henry VIII’s kitchens at Hampton Court

Clara, along with Rachel from Beamish’s Period Food Team went to speak to HRP’s Historic Kitchens Coordinator Richard Fitch about how the palace runs their period cooking operations. As part of our Remaking Beamish  project, we will be creating a late Georgian Coaching Inn. A major service that was offered by the coaching inns was to provide hungry travellers with a ready supply of hot food that could be eaten quickly before they had to catch their next coach. As such, our inn will have a huge Front Kitchen with a working Georgian range and bread oven, as well as several other fireplaces for cooking on throughout the building. We plan to use these fireplaces to prepare historically accurate Georgian fast food for our visitors and we went to Hampton Court hoping to glean from Richard some tips about cooking with ancient kitchen equipment. He showed us around the enormous Tudor kitchens, explaining the techniques that HRP use to cook the foods that would have once graced the table of Henry VIII in front of their modern-day visitors.

The Georgian Chocolate Kitchens at Hampton Court

The Georgian Chocolate Kitchens at Hampton Court

We were also shown the Chocolate Kitchens of the later, Baroque part of the palace. This would have been where specialist chefs and their assistants would have spent hours hand-grinding cocoa beans into a paste that would have used to create spiced drinking chocolate. The beans would have been roasted inside a container that was turned on a spit powered by a ‘fan-jack’, hidden inside the chimney breast above the cooking range. A ‘fan-jack’ is clockwork mechanism for turning a spit – it has a fan that is driven by the smoke rising from the fire below.They were the latest gadget in 18th century cooking, as they saved the need to have a servant to hand-turn a spit. By the time of our inn (the 1820s) chocolate would have become a more accessible luxury – available to the middle classes as well as to royals and aristocrats. While not every guest could have afforded it, it would have probably been served in an inn, alongside coffee and tea, which also had their own special rituals for preparation.

Work continues on our Georgian Hearse House

In October of last year, after completing work on St Helen’s Church, the Buildings Team began work beside the church’s graveyard on a Georgian Hearse House.  It will help us to tell a more complete and in-depth story of our Georgian area. When finished, it will house one of the rarest objects in our collections; probably Britain’s oldest hearse, built in 1828. The simple two-wheeled hearse was collected by the Museum in the 1960s from Marrick Priory, a former Benedictine nunnery in the Swaledale area of North Yorkshire. This early and vernacular horse-drawn vehicle is exceptionally rare, and perhaps more so, as we are aware of its origin and history. We even have a record of its very first occupant, as the Marrick Priory registry records: ‘1828 April 2nd, Mary widow of Thomas Hillary [a farmer], Lanehead House, aged 67, Hearse first time used’. The completion of the hearse house at St Helen’s Church will mean that this amazing object will now have a permanent home of its own and be on display to the public for the first time in decades.

The Marrick Priory hearse, built 1828

Our stone-built hearse house is a copy of the one at Marrick Priory which originally housed this hearse and is contemporary with our church, although it incorporates earlier elements of the Priory church.

Marrick Priory Hearse House, North Yorkshire

The building is progressing quickly and the main structure is now complete. Paul and Cos have finished all of the stonework, while Shaun and Dan were responsible for the joinery in the building, including the roof structure and doors. The roofers are now busy working on laying the stone slab for the roof.

The completed building, just waiting to be roofed

Once the exterior of the building has been completed, we will then turn our attention to the interior. Our newest team member, Shannon, has been researching the interiors of these kinds of buildings in order to inform how our own will look when finished.

 

The daily grind at Spain’s Field

As well as recording the buildings at Spain’s Field Farm, we’ve been recording us at work on the project. Here are a few of our favourite photos of life as we know it at Spain’s Field – in all weather!

Work begins at Spain’s Field Farm

Work begins to take down Spain’s Field Farm

Work has begun of taking down Spain’s Field Farm in Weardale. It will be moved stone by stone to Beamish in order to be rebuilt as part our our Remaking Beamish project. We will use the buildings to tell the story of uplands farming and rural life in County Durham. The farmhouse was gradually abandoned from 1957 onward when the three siblings who lived there (Elizabeth, George and Joseph Raine) were asked to return to their parents farm on the other side of the valley, following their mother suffering a stroke.

Like most early vernacular buildings, the farm would not have been designed by an architect or even planned, but would have grown gradually  depending on the needs and fortunes of the farmers living there. Therefore the farm buildings are a really wonderful jumble. They comprises of a late 18^th century house that was extended during the second half of the 19^th century so that the house conjoined with the adjacent byre. The earliest stonework of this Main Byre probably dates from the 1700s or even earlier, but was later remodelled in around the 19^th century during the completion of a domestic extension to the older farm house. Next to this, is another smaller byre (the Cow Byre), built sometime during the early 19^th century, along with a later extension to the south that houses another byre (the Stirk Byre). Along the north side of the range there are a series of lean-to buildings dating from the latter half of the 19^th century and early 20^th century. There are other outbuildings including a pigsty, coal house and privy.

Recording of the farm has taken place over the last three years.

Since the farm was donated three years ago by the Jopling family (who now own the land it is situated on), the Buildings Team have been carefully recording the farm buildings in order to be able to accurately reconstruct them back at Beamish. This process has taken advantage of the various different skills that the members of the team have. The process started with John, who is a trained archaeologist, working with Clara and other members of the team to shovel through the layers of mud and sheep poo that had accumulated on the ground floor of the farm. Underneath, we discovered stone flags, which in places were covered with the original lino flooring. Additionally, mixed in with the mud and poo were lots of objects left by the family when the farm was abandoned. These were catalogued and sent to Beamish to be cleaned and recorded by Cassie and some of our volunteers. Clara, our buildings historian, then continued the process of recording by taking detailed notes and sketches of the farm buildings, looking for clues about the age of the various buildings and the stages in which they were constructed. During this initial period of recording, a LiDAR survey of the farm was undertaken by Geospatial Research, which created a 3D image of the farm buildings – you can view the survey by clicking here. More recently our in-house conservation architect Steve Elliot has conducted an architectural survey of the buildings and will be creating detailed drawings. We have also had rectified (or scaled) photographs taken by Peter Rickman from Kevin Doonan Architects, which will help us to accurately record the character of the masonry that makes up the walls of the farm.

Clara working with Mary Raine to collect her memories of the farm.

When the farm is rebuilt at Beamish we will be returning it to how it looked in  the 1950s before it was abandoned. Therefore, as well as recording the standing structure, we need to find indications of what the building looked like before it began to decay. We have taken samples of the paint, wallpaper and flooring left at the farm, as well as looked at scars in the masonry and joinery which may suggest what is missing. The objects found at the farm will be crucial to helping us when we come to select objects from our collections to fill the farm with when it is rebuilt. However, most useful of all are the fantastic memories of Mary Raine (the younger sister of the three siblings who lived at Spain’s Field), who can remember how the farm looked in the 1950s. She has also inherited lots of the items that were originally in the building that her siblings took with them when they moved out. We will be working very closely with her to make sure we get the details right!

 

 

One of the early stages of the deconstruction is to strip the roofs of the buildings of their heavy stone slabs.

Over the last few weeks, Paul, and Cos (both of whom are experts in trans-locating buildings, having worked on the reconstruction of St Helen’s Church), have begun the exciting task of physically taking down the buildings. This began with deconstructing the pigsty and coal store that were outbuildings next to the main range of the farm. We needed to do this first as it was the only flat are on the hillside on which to situate our site compound! We then needed to remove internal joinery, such as the floorboards and remains of animals stalls in the byre in order to construct a scaffold inside and around the buildings. Next, with the help of contractors Sid Lee Ltd., we stripped the roof of its heavy stone slabs, to reveal the very crude timber roof structure – which seemed far too spindly to have ever supported the slabs! Throughout the next few months, the walls will be coming down course by course until we reach ground level. All the while John will be on hand to physically number key features such as the door lintels and window jambs, and to record the dumpy bags of stone that will be making their way to Beamish, so that we can keep track of the materials. Clara and Steve will also be helping with the continued process of recording the structure of the buildings. Keep following our blog for updates on our progress!

The recording work is one going at every stage of the deconstruction.

A key part of the process is physically numbering key features so that we can keep track of where they were on the building

Recreating Joe the Quilter’s Cottage: what has the excavation taught us?

Back in September John led an archaeological excavation of the site of Joe the Quilter’s cottage (you can learn more about Joe’s tragic story and the excavation of his house by clicking here) .  Our team of Beamish staff, local volunteers and archaeology students discovered the remains of the walls, flagstone floor and brick chimney breast of Joe’s little cottage.

The uncovered remains of Joe the Quilter’s Cottage

The clues revealed by the excavation have allowed Clara to piece together a more accurate interpretation of what Joe’s cottage originally looked like, which will form the basis of a recreation of the cottage at the Museum.

The initial interpretive plans of the cottage that Clara made, were based on contemporary images and descriptions that were made following Joe’s murder in 1826, as well as by using comparisons with other regional cottages of roughly the same age. One very significant plan and elevation printed by W. Davidson in January 1826 (shortly after Joe’s murder) of the cottage (which was intended to record grisly details such as where the body was found for the enthralment of the general public) gives an invaluable insight into the rough layout of the building. It suggests that internally the cottage was divided into a main domestic room and a storage room/animal shelter. The front (and only) door is shown as leading immediately into the main room, in which is depicted a recessed fireplace. This plan also gives additional details, including that the bed was located in the south west corner of the main room and that Joe kept his coals to the west of the chimney breast.

A plan of Joe’s cottage, published by W. Davidson, shortly after Joe’s murder. 

Upon excavating the site, the lower two courses of the back wall and rear half of the two gable ends of the cottage were revealed. Unfortunately the front of the cottage has been lost due the disruption caused by the newer boundary wall of the field in which the cottage site sits. These sections of wall revealed that the length of the cottage was actually slightly larger than initially expected, being 30’ long. As the remains of the two gable walls are intersected by the boundary wall, their total length has to be estimated, based on other archaeological evidence; including information such as the positioning of what we believe are the remains of the chimney breast. This evidence has allowed us to reasonably interpret that the footprint of Joe’s cottage was approximately 30′ long by 20′ – still a very small dwelling for what was before the death of Joe’s wife, a family home.

A composite of aerial photographs of the excavated site. The overlay in blue shows the initial scaled plan of the cottage and the overlay in red shows the revealed size of the rear and south gable walls. 

Other discoveries, were that of the flagstones in front what appear to be the remains of a chimney breast, built from hand-made bricks, and the charred remnants of what we think was a wattle and daub divide between Joe’s living and storage rooms. Crucially, all of this evidence helps us to imagine what Joe’s home looked like when he was living there.

Clara’s interpretation of what the plan of the cottage looked like. The archaeological remains are shown in green. The locations of furniture shown is based on contemporary sources, including an sales notice that listed some of Joe’s possessions. 

However, unfortunately, archaeology can only take us so far in being able to understand what the cottage looked like. As only the lower courses of walls remained, we had no indication of the position of the doors and windows or what the roof structure was like. To gather this information, Clara had to return to looking at archive sources and other similar local buildings of an contemporary age to Joe’s cottage. For example, the etchings of Joe’s house that were made to be illustrate publications about his murder show that the cottage had a very shaggy thatched roof with a steep pitch. This led us to agree that the cottage must have been thatched with heather. Heather is often thatched in loose bundles and is left uncombed or trimmed, unlike straw or reed thatch, and therefore it requires a steeper pitch to through water and snow off of it. Additionally, due to its abundance and durability, heather was the most common form of roof covering on vernacular buildings in the North East until the early 19th century. Indeed the moor behind Joe’s house would have been full of heather!

The elevation of Joe’s cottage that was published by W. Davidson in 1826.

As archival sources and oral histories record, heather was often thatch wet, with the roots intact, and left to form a semi-living roof of up to two foot thick. This of course would have been extremely heavy! Therefore the cottage’s roof structure would have had to have been very strong. It is unlikely that the cottage had a ‘king’ or ‘queen’ post that required advanced joinery skills, but it may have had a simple ‘A’ frame truss formed of two principle rafters and a tie beam. However, the combination of the need to support a heavy roof covering, with the requirement of a steep pitch, with the found nature of the cottage’s materials and its vernacular design, suggests that it may have had cruck trusses. Crucks are where the principle rafters of a truss are formed by the two halves of a split tree trunk. Often the natural curve of the trunks inevitably created a steep, almost Gothic arch, providing the sharp pitch needed for heather thatch. Recreating the cruck trusses and heather thatch roof will be a particularly exciting challenge, as both methods of construction have almost become lost skills. We are hoping that this is something that our team of volunteers from Warden (where the cottage is located) will help us with, by collecting heather and helping us to experiment with thatching techniques.

Clara’s interpretation of the cottage in section, showing the wattle and daub room divide, the cruck trusses, and brick chimney breast

The next stage is for Beamish’s architect, Steve, to transform Clara’s initial interpretative drawings into plans that can be used to recreate the cottage as part of our planned Remaking Beamish project (learn more about Remaking Beamish by clicking here). Look out for more posts for updates about Joe’s humble home!

 

 

St Helen’s Church opens to the public

The finished nave

Over twenty years since St Helen’s Church was first moved from its original location in Eston, Middlesbrough, it has reopened to the public in its new home at Beamish.

To get the church ready for the opening, a lot of work had to be done to finish the interior. The vestry, which the vicar and church wardens would have used as their office, had to be furnished with everything one would have expected to find. This included a Georgian bureau from Hamsterley covered in replica paperwork, candlesticks and a capstan ink well and quills. The glazed cabinet in this little room was filled with a collection of 1825 Adam Clarke Bibles,  a pewter mug and a brandy bottle! The whitewash on the walls were given another touch up and a resplendent and newly restored Royal coat of arms was hung above the gallery.   The beautiful box pews that were kindly donated from St Andrew’s Church in Wiveliscombe were being installed by Sid Lee and his tireless team right up to the morning of the opening!

The fully furnished vestry

Outside, the remains of Revd Moyle’s 1870s Gothic style window (which was a later addition to the chancel) were laid outside to form a flowerbed. Our contract blacksmith, Andy Basnett, created a wonderful arch, which supports an oil lamp, to go over the main gateway to the church yard. Still to do is to install the whale bone arch at the yard’s rear entrance. The two whale jaw bones from two different whales came from a Lincolnshire museum. St Helen’s did originally have a whale bone arch, which is not surprising given Eston’s close proximity to the coast.

Some of the members of the team who worked on the church

On Saturday 14th a special service was held in St Helen’s for its former parishioners and community members – it was wonderful to see the church come back to life again!

The interior of St Helen’s Church

The bell hanging in the belfry.

Today, was an exciting day at St Helen’s Church as the two ancient bells were finally installed into the bell frames of the belfry. They will soon be set up with ropes and pulleys, so that the sound of bells ringing from the tower will be heard for the first time in half a century.

The newly hung priest’s door.

 

 

 

 

The priest’s entrance in the chancel has now been hung with a reclaimed lapped oak door, complete with a iron Suffolk latch decorated with a pheasant head.

 

 

 

 

Our traditional lime plasterers from NEPR have nearly finished the top coat in the nave of the Church; gradually transforming the building’s shell.

The nearly completed plaster in the nave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To help inform  us about how to interpret the inside of St Helen’s, we have looked at other contemporary churches. A couple of weeks ago, Jim and Clara visited a beautiful church in Lincolnshire. St Mary’s has Anglo Saxon origins, including an intriguing cat carving on one of its external window lintels.

St Mary’s Church at Barnetby le Wold, Lincolnshire.

Like St Helen’s, St Mary’s was greatly altered in the late Georgian period, and was again changed by the Victorians. The Georgian gallery and box pews (to the rear of the church), as well as the lime-washed walls and exposed roof trusses give a real sense of how St Helen’s should appear once it is completed.

The interior of St Mary’s.

Anchovy sauce, moulded puddings and potted char…. food at a Georgian Coaching Inn

Image taken from A.E. Richardson and H.D. Eberlein’s ‘The English Inn, Past and Present’ (London: Fleetway Press, 1925)

As part of our ongoing research into the region’s coaching inns, we’ve been investigating what kinds of food Georgian travellers would have expected to have been available at these roadside establishments. Knowing what people ate will help us when we come to design the eating and dining spaces of the coaching inn that we are hoping to build at the museum, as part of our Remaking Beamish Project.

A rural coaching inn on the Great North Road could expect the arrival at least two coaches a day, carrying roughly ten passengers each, plus the driver and a guard. Not all of these coaches would have stayed the night; some would have only stopped to change horses or waited long enough for their passengers to have a quick meal. Independent travellers would have also arrived throughout the day. Therefore, during the day, a coaching inn of the scale that we’re planning would be expected to provide catering to unknown quantity of guests, often within the time it took to collect mail and harness a fresh team of horses.

The solution to this need for fast food was for inns to deliver a round-the-clock service. Speed was of the essence, as an innkeeper who could not provide a ready meal would lose trade from rushing coach passengers and in an industry reliant on sticking to timetables, would gain a reputation for lethargy. Numerous contemporary accounts tell of the efficiency of English inns, including one from the Italian exile Count Peechi who in 1827 wrote that ‘At every inn breakfast, dinner or supper is always ready; a fire is burning in every room and water always boiling for tea or coffee’.

The necessity for quick provision meant that the food served was usually very simple. Common victuals on offer would have included ham and eggs, bread, cheese, cold potatoes, preserved fruit and pickles. Steaks would have also have been quickly fried on a pan over the fire and a kettle would have been constantly on the boil. Along with preserved and salted meat, fish would have been readily available. Arthur Young, in his A Sixth Month Tour of the North of England of 1771 describes how anchovies were used in sauces and other dishes to add flavour. Oysters were then considered to be a cheap and plentiful food, which could be pack in barrels of salt water and sent across the country. Potted fish was again very common, as it could be sealed using clarified butter into clay pots, preserving it and making it easily transportable. Interestingly, potted char (similar to a large salmon) was conveyed from the Lake District (where the fish was caught) via the coaching system. Less elaborate food, prepared for poorer travellers, such as the drovers, would include a good amount of oatmeal, onions and cheese.

The cartoonist Thomas Rowlandson’s Dr Syntax in a coaching inn kitchen, c.1815. Image taken from ‘Inn Crafts and Furnishings’ (London: Whitbread & Co., 1950).

Along with the constant supply of hot and cold fast food during the day, a more substantial evening meal would have been provided for overnight guests. Georgian innkeepers faced the same problems that a modern hotelier faces today; that of not knowing how many guests they may have to feed, having a sufficient supply of ingredients and wanting to limit wastage. Concerns over supply and waste were compounded by the lack of refrigeration, reliance on preserved food and the seasonality of local produce. To get around this problem coaching inns offered to the everyday traveller a set menu, known as the ‘ordinary’. More well off guests or independent travellers could request their meals to be brought to their rooms. However, many guests would book a place for the ‘ordinary’, which was at a set time. Up until the mid-19^th century, formal meals were served in the ‘French style’, meaning that all of the dishes were presented at once. Guests would gather together to eat at a large table which would have previously been laid with food (all course would have been served in one go). Each dish would be well presented and may have included: steaks; hung meat; preserved fish; cheese, pickles and bread; pies; potted salmon and other fish; roasted fish and meat; beans; game cutlets; cabbage; peas; potatoes; various sauces; oat cakes; fruit and cream; moulded jelly puddings and steamed puddings. Diners would serve themselves from these central platters and pass dishes across the table to one another.

Drink would have been just as important as food at a Georgian coaching inn. Kettle of tea would have been constantly on the boil on the inn’s hearths, ready to warm up weather beaten travellers and coffee or hot chocolate may have been served in a special coffee room or parlour. Beer would be available in the less refined tap rooms. Normally this beer was a simple ale brewed in the inn’s own brew house.   Along with beer, wine and strong spirits would have been heavily drunk. Previously popular French Burgundy and brandy were in short supply due to the disruption to imports caused by the Napoleonic Wars, but Jamaican rum and Rhenish wine would have been a welcome alternative.

Look out for a further post on the unusual equipment used in Georgian kitchens.

Investigating a murder!

Front side of card recording Joes’ Cottage in 1826. Published by W Davidson, Alnwick, Drawn by R Donkin, Warden 10th January 1826. Image held in the Beamish Museum Collection (Acc. No 30802).

As part of our future expansion of the 1820s area at Beamish, the Buildings Team  are hoping to recreate the lost cottage of a Georgian quilter. This involves  investigating the scene of an unsolved crime from nearly 200 years ago!

On the 3^rd of January 1826, an elderly, widowed quilter, Joseph Hedley, was  brutally murdered in his isolated cottage in Northumberland. Joe  was a kindly soul, who offered shelter to travellers and passers-by in his humble home. It was alleged that the killers were looking for his imagined wealth,  but his murder was never solved, despite making national news, and a substantial  reward being posted. In the wake of this tragic event Joe’s cottage was recorded in both plan and elevation sketches, which provide an extremely rare insight into the size, style and use of such a small, vernacular building.

Reverse side of card recording Joes’ Cottage in 1826

The cottage was demolished in 1872, although it is shown on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map, and Joe’s story is further recorded in a chronicle of folklore published in 1887 (see p221-225 of The Monthly Chronicle of North Country Lore and Legend, July 1887), its exact location was unknown.

In order to prove whether the plans were accurate, the Beamish Buildings Team set out to locate and excavate the remains of the cottage. We found a clue to the building’s location from some bricks and tiles included in a field boundary wall in the area, and with the kind permission of the land-owners Mr and Mrs Straker, began our search.

Some bricks and tiles in the nearby wall

We started by removing the heavy field stones and thick vegetation that covered the site before scrapping layers of soil off to see what was below. Thanks to some precision excavation from Beamish’s Track and Plant Team – Darren and Mark – we managed to uncover a spread of mortar which shows us we were in the right area.

Darren and Mark taking a well-earned break

A bit more digging showed some ‘linear concentrations’ of the mortar which we think represent the location of the walls.

John and his trusty trowel do some closer investigation

There was also an area of ash signifying a fire, although this is probably associated with the building’s destruction rather than its occupation.

We recovered a few finds, most excitingly a few fragments of blue and white Scottish Spongeware which we think dates from the same period as Joe was living in the house. We’re not sure if the plate would have belonged to Joe or the people who lived in the house after him, but it is a tantalising glimpse of the cottage’s past.

The excavated area highlighting the walls (Red) and ash deposit (Green)

Clara and John diligently obeying Jim’s instruction to ‘look excited’ about the pottery

After our brief investigation we’ve now covered the site over for the winter, and plan to come back to do a full investigation of the site next year. Having identified where the cottage was, we’re hopeful that we may even find the floor where Joe breathed his last – a bit gruesome, but a real help for us in telling the story of the life, work and death of Joe and other ordinary people of the Georgian North East.

A better look at the Scottish Spongeware fragments

The hunt for an Inn continues…

Clara studying a plan at the Tyne and Wear Archives in Newcastle’s Discovery Museum.

We’ve been continuing with our search for lost Coaching Inns throughout the North East, and last week Clara and John visited several Archives looking for more information and some plans. Unfortunately, while we did find a number of great plans, most of them were of Inns that are still in business – which is great news for the buildings, but a shame for us!

None of the ones that are lost had plans that are complete enough for us to copy, so the search continues! We did come across a fantastic story from an Inn though. A newspaper from 12th Feb 1790 tells of an duel that took place in a Coaching Inn in Morpeth – thankfully it ended happily – without anyone being injured!

On the evening of Friday night a misunderstanding took place at Morpeth between a Mr B. and a Mr L. in consequence of which they met attended by their seconds in a room of the Phoenix Inn. They took their ground at six yards distance and agreed to fire together. But after poising and looking and looking and poising and chameleon-like alternating and changing colours it was discovered that the pistols would not go off. The seconds then interfered assuring their parties that they had sufficiently proved themselves men of honour which it was said they were highly pleased to hear and the matter was finally adjusted without blood-shed.