Time for Tea!

We’ve been browsing the collection at Cheshire Archives and Local Studies for all things tea-related, so pop the kettle on, relax with a brew, as we go on a tour of Cheshire tea-time traditions past and present…

Afternoon tea first became fashionable in the 19th century, when Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, got peckish around 4 o’clock (who doesn’t?!) With dinner not being served till much later, she and her friends began to take cups of tea with bread, butter and cakes to sustain themselves through the afternoon and early evening. It became a fashionable social event, usually served between 4 and 5 o’clock.

For those of you who favour coffee over tea, coffee houses were popular haunts in the 17th and 18th centuries for men to meet for conversation and business, whilst enjoying the drink newly arrived in Europe. Prior to this, coffee had only been considered as a form of medicine. Tea, hot chocolate, and light meals were also served in coffee houses. One such coffee house in Cheshire was King’s Coffee House, located on King’s Street, Knutsford. Opened in 1907, the building housed council offices, a coffee house and a memorial to novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.

What about a slice of cake or biscuit to go with your brew? You need look no further than Mrs Elizabeth Raffald (1733 – 1781), housekeeper at Arley Hall in the 18th century. She then went on to become a successful writer after her cookery book “The Experienced English Housekeeper” was published in 1769. Containing 800 recipes and pieces of advice for ladies, housekeepers and cooks, the book was so popular there were around 20 editions printed in her lifetime. Did you know that the origins of the modern wedding cake can be traced back to her? Why not try out her recipe for macaroons?!

Several of the recipes to be found in “The Experienced English Housekeeper” are for traditional cakes and tasty treats associated with Cheshire. They include: 

• The Old Chester Pudding – made from flour, milk, breadcrumbs, suet, castor sugar, blackcurrant jam, bicarbonate of soda and a pinch of salt. Steamed for 3 hours, then a blackcurrant sauce is made as an accompaniment
• Bun Loaf or “Bara Brith” – Welsh Bun Loaf, with origins in Cheshire. Made from raisins, currants, sultanas, sugar, lard, flour, candied peel, mixed spice, yeast, hot water, milk and eggs. Also known as speckled bread
• Chester Buns – made from butter, flour, castor sugar, egg, milk, and yeast
• Chester Cake – a simple and economical cake, made using flour, baking powder, stale cake (!), golden syrup, currants, and ground ginger.

Where could you buy your cake ingredients from, as well as tea and confectionary, in the 19th and early 20th centuries? Bollands in Chester was established in 1846, as a fine tea and coffee merchant, located on Eastgate Row. You could also give your patronage to Dutton’s in Chester, which served “dainty afternoon teas”.

So whatever your beverage of choice, and wherever you choose to enjoy it, we hope you have enjoyed this “dainty” look at the afternoon tea tradition in Cheshire!

May Day!

Many of us will enjoy a bank holiday next week, but did you know that May Day celebrations have taken place for centuries?  The earliest, known as Floralia, dates back to Roman times - a festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers.  Festivities were banned in the UK during Puritan times, but traditions such as maypole dancing, crowning the May Queen and Morris dancing continue to the present day.  Cheshire Archives and Local Studies are fortunate to have some images and documents that show some of the many traditions and celebrations of this festival. 

A key May Day Festival in the Cheshire calendar takes place in Knutsford.  It was first held in 1864, and is known as Knutsford Royal May Day Festival after a visit in 1887 by the then Prince and Princess of Wales (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra), who gave the organising committee permission to use the prefix ‘Royal’ from then on.  As well as the crowning of the May Queen, Knutsford has a unique custom of ‘sanding’, where coloured sand is laid in mottoes and patterns on the streets.  According to the Official Programme we have from 1955, the origin of sanding comes from King Canute (who reigned from 1016 to 1035).  He is said to have,

"forded a brook near Knutsford and sat down to shake the sand out of his shoes.  While he was doing this a bridal party passed by – he shook the sand in front of them and wished them joy, and as many children as there were grains of sand.  The Festival Committee were very proud of this local custom and ‘sanding’ is still kept up at the Royal May Day Festival”.

That programme lists all the May Queens and Crown Bearers back to 1864, and a portrait of the 1955 Queen appears on the front cover. 

 

We also hold another May Festival programme dating back even earlier – from Runcorn in 1908.  This includes a detailed account of the procession, the people taking part and the various dances and other entertainment at the event, as well as the charities that stood to benefit from the proceeds. 

 

Maypole dancing has been a popular May Day tradition since the Middle Ages, and there are several prints available on the Cheshire Image Bank that show maypoles from across Cheshire West and Cheshire East. 

 

This selection shows a maypole being decorated mid-dance in Winsford at the May Festival at Whitegate in the 1960s; children at Elworth School in Sandbach in the 1920s, and at Vernon School in Poynton between 1910 and 1919.

May Festivals culminate in the crowning of the May Queen.  Here is a selection of May Queens, Attendants and Crown Bearers from across Cheshire from the early 20^th Century: at Knutsford between 1910 and 1919, at Chester Roodee Racecourse in 1926 and in Handbridge in the 1930s.

However you might be celebrating, we wish you a happy May Day 2019!

 

Volunteer Stories: Connecting with a collection

In 2016, Sandbach High School student Zia Duncan first began examining our collection relating to the Knutsford Ordination Test School (collection reference D 3917). She had this very personal and emotional response to the material ...

It has been just over a century since the beginning of World War One in 1914, a war that lasted four years but took millions of lives away from families across the world. But for the ones that survived, they came back to a home that was very different. Boys who were pulled out of having an education at fifteen or sixteen came back as men who lacked the knowledge and training for future careers as the years that were supposed to be spent in school had been replaced by living in a trench. Their prospects seemed dim, especially for the poorer classes who could not afford the cost of re-learning all their missed years.

Using newspaper articles, photographs and written histories related to the school I was able to research the incredible story of the men who had had the courage and bravery to fight but now wanted to build a future for themselves. The building chosen to house this school was originally Knutsford Gaol, which had been occupied by German prisoners during the war. Due to the housing shortage it was one of the few remaining buildings left that could house the number of men, although it was grim, dirty and out-dated. After enduring the trenches, there were initially some doubts as to how the men would take the news, but fortunately they rose to the occasion. The students arrived at their new school on the 26th March 1919. The advance party, which was aided by a few local well-wishers, had worked very hard to get it ready in time (which meant cleaning up the mess of the German prisoners). Men would now enter their first term at Knutsford with “gallant and high-hearted happiness”.

Despite the obstacles that the residents of the Test School had to face, many of them completed their education in the subjects of History, Natural Science, English Literature and Greek (or Latin) to Test Examination standard and set themselves on the road for higher ambitions. For example, by the end of the Summer term in 1920, 155 men left for further education, 111 for universities and 44 for theological colleges. Through the dedication of the local people and the well-wishers who helped transform the dirty Gaol into a school, the former soldiers of a dreadful world war had managed to set themselves up for a bright, well-deserved future.

Volunteer Katherine Treacher has continued working on the collection as we anticipate there may well be interest in this remarkable institution in its centenary year in 2019. The collection has inspired her to visit sites connected with the School, including St John's in Knutsford where the men went to church. She continues the story ...

The primary aim of the Knutsford Ordination Test School was to educate young men from all backgrounds returning from the First World War having missed out on higher education, with a view to them following their vocation to become priests. The school spent two years equipping the men with an education that would give them access to theological college or university to progress on to ordination. The ‘test’ part of the school’s ethos referred to the testing of each student’s commitment and suitability for clerical life. One well-known figure involved in the teaching at the School was the Reverend Philip ‘Tubby’ Clayton of the Toc H movement.

By 1922 the Church of England had stopped funding the school and it became a voluntary organisation. With this came the necessity for the School to raise all its own funds and provide student bursaries with limited outside support. From then on the School’s existence seems to have been dogged by struggles to raise enough money to stay open.

The archive contains many interesting documents including Annual Reports that chart the progress of the School from its early beginnings until the early 1940s when funding became extremely challenging. They record the progress of the school from Knutsford Gaol, now the site of Booths supermarket, to the Hawarden Old Rectory, now the Flintshire Record Office. The School had moved briefly in the early 1920s to a large house near Knutsford Common but struggled to operate in cramped conditions. In 1925, the Gladstone family gifted the Old Rectory at Hawarden (new) Castle and £3000 for building works to enable the creation of a new, spacious school in grounds of nearly eight acres.

The Annual Reports also record the wide variety of activities, giving an impression of a lively and vibrant community involving sporting events, fêtes, festivals, musical concerts, plays, lectures, lantern shows and Quiet Days led by local bishops and other religious visitors. As the number of ordained old boys from the school grew, so subscriptions and donations from their parishes grew, helping to make the heyday of the school the late 1920s. The archive also includes copies of the School magazine Ducdame and magazines of the Knutsford Fellowship dating until the early 1970s.

There is also a card index which contains what appear to be the records of all the students who attended the School and notes about their nature, attendance and later careers. Comments such as ‘fond of girls…sacked!’ and ‘chief interest cars and films,’ are amongst the more colourful. This information might be of particular interest to researchers interested in tracing an ancestor who attended the School. Amongst other items that might be of interest are playbills, copies of exams, minutes, letters, Knutsford Fellowship directories and numerous photographs of the men. A number of photographs have names on the back or are early, signed studio portraits, but many more of these are not named. However, the spirit of School is apparent in the numerous group shots which emit happiness and pride.