Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Softcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> The first major changes were the coming of the first Congregational Chapel in 1828 the School in 1842 and St Peter’s Church in 1843. The three big houses in the lower village – the Manor House Chestnut Court and The Meade were not at that time the nucleus of the community. The gentlemen farmers who are brilliantly represented in these photographs were the village aristocracy; they were leaders of society pillars of church and chapel members of the Turnpike Trust and the School Boards and Guardians of the Poor their tennis and bridge parties were the main form of entertainment. Most of them were related by marriage and functioned like a private club. The country people worked as labourers or coal-miners often walking long distances to Pensford or South Liberty Lane in Ashton Vale or uprooting their whole families and moving to the South Wales collieries when times were bad. Women ran cottage laundries collecting on foot the dirty linen from the big houses in Clifton washing and ironing it in unbelievably primitive conditions and returning it for a few shillings a week. There always existed a degree of mutual suspicion between the upper and lower village. The upper village in Queen’s Road (now Withywood) regarded the lower village – the church the chapel the big houses as ‘snobbish’ and considered Holy Communion at St Peter’s to be a ‘gentry only’ service; while the lower village referred to the pubs and miners’ cottages in Queen’s Road as ‘The Barracks’ ‘Little Hell’ and definitely nobnice. By the end of the nineteenth century a few professional people had taken up residence in the village; and the building of Edwardian mansions by Mr Walter Chivers opposite the post office. (LL)