Self-sufficiency then and now… by Carolyn Hughes

I have been musing recently on how, for the past, say, nine centuries or so, until perhaps the early or even middle of the 20th century, the communities in the Meon Valley were mostly self-sufficient, one way or another.

Map of the Meon Valley William J Blaeu, Amsterdam, 1645

In earlier centuries, people rarely left their village, for almost everything they needed was there, produced by themselves, or local farmers or tradespeople. People’s “needs” of course were, necessarily and aspirationally, much more limited than ours, and, apart from “Shanks’s pony”, most people didn’t have the means to travel far.

There might be a market of some kind in the village, where folk would buy and sell their produce, and itinerant pedlars might bring “extras” that couldn’t be made in the village. In the days when a lot of villagers worked the land in one way or another, they took their grain to the mill to be ground into flour and either made their own bread or bought it from a baker.

  

Many grew their own vegetables and perhaps some fruit. If they were wealthy enough, they might have a cow and be able to make cheese. More likely, they might have a pig and produce their own bacon, and even more commonly, have a few hens to produce eggs and eventually a stringy carcass for the pot. If they didn’t, or couldn’t, have their own livestock, others could provide it for a price. People made their own ale or bought it from the village ale-wives. For tasks they couldn’t do themselves, there would be tradespeople who could – smiths, farriers, wheelwrights, carpenters, builders, thatchers and so on.

That said, I am not clear about the nature of the “market” in rural communities. I have always imagined that villagers would have sold their surplus to their neighbours in some sort of “farmers’ market”: more affluent housewives who produced a lot of cheese, for example, or ran a large number of hens and had eggs to spare, or had a large holding and grew more vegetables than the family could eat.

So when a community was “granted” a weekly market by the lord, perhaps this was a different sort of event, when merchants (to use the term loosely) might also come from outside to sell their goods? Maybe this was where villagers would purchase a new cooking pot, for example, or tools of various kinds?

Titchfield already had such a market in the 11th century, for the Domesday Book says its “market and toll (are worth) 40 shillings”. Titchfield’s was one of the first markets in Hampshire and, in the 12th century, it was the only place in the Meon Valley to have one. It wasn’t until 1231 that Meonstoke was granted a weekly Monday market, and in 1269 that Wickham was granted a charter to hold one every Thursday.

Titchfield Market Hall, built in 1620s, now at the Weald & Downland Open Air
Museum, West Sussex. (MilborneOne at the English language Wikipedia
[CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)%5D,
via Wikimedia Commons)]

To buy something more exotic, folk might make the effort to travel a few miles to the nearest annual fair. Fairs were more than just over-sized markets. They were, as Ian Mortimer says, “the great gatherings of mediaeval England.” They were usually three-day events, held in honour of a specific saint, on the saint’s day and the day before and after it. Merchants would come from further afield with more exotic goods, spices perhaps, fine quality cloth, more sophisticated household and personal items than could be had in the markets. They were also places of entertainment as well as shopping.

In the Meon Valley, there were several fairs, though only one or two would be within walking distance of a particular village. At the sea end of the valley, in the 13th century, Titchfield was granted permission by King Edward I to hold an annual five-day fair, which was of enormous economic significance, and perhaps reflected the importance of the town after the establishment of its Premonstratensian abbey, which was almost certainly visited often by officials and even royalty. Further upstream, Wickham, at the same time as being granted its market, also received permission for an annual three-day fair on the anniversary of the Translation Of St. Nicholas (in May). The Wickham Fair attracted buyers and sellers from a wide area, dealing in goods of all kinds. The fair has continued more or less without a break, and is still held every 20th May, now more of an entertainment than a grand shopping experience. In the upper reaches of the valley, Meonstoke was also granted an annual three-day fair, in 1231, to be held on the “vigil, feast, and morrow” of St. Margaret. East Meon, too, held an annual fair on Lady Day (March), which continued until the 19th century, but has recently been revived as a May Country Fair.

Knowing how very rural and tranquil the communities of the Meon Valley are now, it is interesting to picture them hundreds of years ago as – once a year at least – the busy, bustling centres of trade they once were.

Interesting too, to note how relatively large some of these, now quite little, villages once were. The Domesday Book of 1086 has the details... East Meon for example was very large in relation to the norms of the day, with 138 households (perhaps 700 people), although the area covered was probably more than just the existing village. Only a short distance away was West Meon, also quite large, with 50 households (250 individuals). A few miles further to the south is Exton, still quite big at 46 households, as was Soberton with 35. By contrast, and rather intriguingly, three of the communities that were granted annual fairs – which one interprets as an indication of their power or importance – were not among the largest: Titchfield had only 33 households, Wickham had 26 and Meonstoke had 28. How curious! Mind you, the fairs and markets were granted to these places nearly two hundred years later than Domesday, so perhaps they had by then become more important places.

Obviously, the size of all communities has gone up and down over the ensuing centuries, but it’s quite interesting to see how the relative balance has changed since Domesday. In the most recent census (2011), East Meon and West Meon now have about 2000 individuals between them; Exton and Meonstoke, together with Corhampton (three villages that sit very close together) have 1600, with Corhampton now the largest of the three (having had only 60 or so individuals in 1086) and Exton the smallest. Soberton, too, has 1600. Wickham and Titchfield, however, have grown really quite large, at 4300 and 7200 respectively. As I have shown in a previous History Girls post, Wickham has been a thriving “townlet” for several centuries, and perhaps its location on a main route from the south coast at Portsmouth is a reason. In Titchfield’s case (see this History Girls post), it, too, was an important town for centuries, but eventually lost its status partly as the surrounding conurbation of Southampton/Fareham/Portsmouth grew and overwhelmed it.

Returning to the matter of the communities’ relative self-sufficiency, that way of life must have continued, more or less unchanged, for centuries, certainly into the 19th and in some places into the 20th. I am not clear to what extent the markets or the fairs continued, but change of a sort did take place during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when shops came to the villages. In the Meon Valley, two communities, East Meon and Soberton, offer good, if different, pictures of just how self-contained a village could still be, even up to a time that is well within living memory.

East Meon © Author

For example, East Meon was still virtually self-sustaining in the early 20th century, for then it had over 20 shops and tradesmen’s workshops. The East Meon History group (http://www.eastmeonhistory.org.uk) has a wonderful website with all sorts of fascinating information about the village’s history. The website includes a map, drawn from memory by a resident, which shows all the stores and workshops serving the village in the 1920s, and where they were located (all now, of course, private and highly desirable homes). Inter alia, there were four bakers, a dairy, three grocers, three butchers, two mills, a saddler and cobbler, a wheelwright, farriers, a post office, a herbalist, and a wide range of craftsmen and building trades. One of the grocers, alongside food, also offered haberdashery as well as household goods, fabrics, boots and shoes, and apparently all the grocers sold paraffin, vital for cottagers without electricity. 

In Soberton, in the 1830s, it is thought that there was just a single shop in the High Street, a grocery, but, before long, more shops appeared: a butcher, a bakery, which was apparently also later the post office and sold beer and insurance too, and also a bicycle shop, a boot repairer, a blacksmith, and building craftsmen (carpenters, joiners, masons etc). In Soberton Heath, in the middle of the parish, there were a couple of grocery shops, and, in Newtown, at the southern end of the parish, a shop was opened in the 19th century, which, in the end, was the only shop in the parish and didn’t close until the 2000s. As late as, perhaps, the early 1980s most things could be bought in the village.

Wickham's market square © Author

Wickham and Titchfield, now with very much larger populations than any of the Meon Valley villages, are unsurprisingly rather better served in terms of shops and businesses. In 1939, Titchfield had about 40 shops and workshops, and Wickham’s great square was lined on every side with businesses of different kinds. Now, each little town has a small chain supermarket and a second “open-all-hours” store, as well as a butcher, a post office, a chemist, hairdressers, several pubs, restaurants and tea/coffee houses. Wickham also has two hardware stores, several antiques centres and gift shops, and a chocolate shop…

Titchfield, South Street, looking towards the square. Public domain.

However, there is no shop now in Soberton, and once bustling East Meon has just one shop, which is a general store and part-time post office. But there are also village shops in each of West Meon (which also has a butchers’ shop), Meonstoke and Droxford, all of which offer at least part-time post office services, and are village hubs, offering access to all sorts of local services and tradesmen as well as selling food and household goods.

In truth, it is perfectly possible to live quite well in either Wickham or Titchfield without having to travel further afield too often, provided one is prepared to accept a relatively modest lifestyle in the context of 21st century consumerism.

Yet, some of those village shops are also really striving to recover at least a degree of self-sustainment for the communities they serve. The post office and village store in Meonstoke (which also serves Exton and Corhampton) is a good example. It offers nearly everything you could need for day-to-day living: bread, meat, vegetables and fruit; ale and wine; logs and coal; as well as culinary treats, and access to many trades and services. Moreover, a good deal of what the shop provides is locally produced, much as it was in the Middle Ages. Its website (http://www.meonstokepostofficeandvillagestores.co.uk/) sums up its credo: “Local produce, for us, is key for many reasons – to make sure you receive them when they are most fresh, to support local businesses and to promote a reduced carbon footprint.”.

There seems to be a growing desire (in truth, a need) for “local produce”, for reducing “food miles”, for greater “sustainment”. And some small communities are clearly beginning to return to at least a modicum of the self-sufficiency they had for so many centuries. What is happening here in the Meon Valley is undoubtedly happening in rural communities throughout the country. One wonders if the tide is beginning to turn.

Once upon a time in a tower, Part One – Michelle Lovric

Once upon a time, my architect husband wanted to take over a deconsecrated bell tower in Venice and turn the top floor into a studio. Venice’s skyline is punctuated by dozens of empty bell-towers, now slowly crumbling into the lagoon. Inhabiting a building is the best way to keep it alive, and we were prepared to invest in the restoration of a tower even though we knew that we would never actually own one. But Byzantine negotiations with the church finally deprived our idea of the will to live. So Project Venice Bell-Tower was consigned to the imagination. I expiated my frustration in the usual writerly way – I wrote a novel about it. Talina in the Tower is the story of a girl, a cat, three dogs and an elderly writer who inhabit an imaginary bell-tower on the northernmost edge of Venice. I enjoyed myself immensely, fantasizing about the layout of each single room on each successive floor, furnishing it with every comfort and accoutrement I’d once desired for my own tower.

At the end of Talina in the Tower, I wrote an historical note about towers and their uses in Venice, enviously noting that some people had succeeded where we had failed: These days, parts of some bell towers are being used as dwellings. San Marcuola’s tower is partly residential now, as is the tower of Santa Margherita (which lost its spire in 1810) and those of San Boldu and San Stae. San Vidal’s lower floors are used as offices. The top floors of the abandoned towers would, of course, make wonderful studios for architects . . . or writers.

Truth is relentlessly stranger than fiction, of course. Before Talina in the Tower is even published, I’ve discovered that another mind at work on the same idea of making a creative studio in at the top of a disused bell-tower. But Alex Scott-Whitby had done more than imagine it. He is actually doing it.

I first met Alex Scott-Whitby in Venice eighteen months ago, when he was part of a team of young architects invigilating at the British Pavilion at the architecture Biennale. (Rather flatteringly, it happened that Alex and his colleagues whiled away some of their long hours at the reception desk reading my novel The Book of Human Skin.)

Over a dinner on the Zattere, we talked about Alex’s project called (IN)Spires – an idea to create a series of creative studios for a new generation of St Jeromes nesting within the belfries of the City of London's churches. By that time, Alex had already taken possession of a tower himself – that of St Mary Woolnoth in Lombard St – and was using it as a studio, from which he was already dreaming of even greater things.

To demonstrate the spirituality as well as the materiality of his aspiration, Alex recreated Dürer’s depiction of Saint Jerome in his study. (I am not sure how he persuaded the lion to walk up the hundred steps to the tower. Perhaps there was a steak at the top, or a gazelle.)


Alex’s plan is facilitate a layer of creativity floating like cream above London’s economic engine room – a new intellectual community in these airy eyries with their strange and wonderful perspective on the city. The 51 churches in the City of London serve just 11,000 residents. Alex believes that 38 of them have St Jerome potential. There is an urgent need, too, to protect the towers from globalization and commercialization: Alex explains that ‘mobile phone company circle like vultures around a carcass,’ waiting to fill them with broadcasting antennae.


Over the next 30 years, Alex envisages, suitable applicants will be appointed both curates and curators of these towers. His own experiment has shown the worth of this human investment: ‘By acting as a curator of this place and becoming a keyholder to the church, I am also protecting it through occupation and as a tenant I provide a small income and so help to preserve and enliven this historic monument.’

And Alex looks beyond London too – foreseeing a global network of artists, designers and writers nesting in abandoned monuments.

In late October, I was delighted (though not surprised) to see that Alex’s (IN)Spires had won first prize in the RIBA Forgotten Spaces competition, which asked architects, artists, local groups and designers to nominate an abandoned place in Greater London and conceive an imaginative and inspiring proposal for its regeneration.

You can now see Alex’s and other architects’ ideas in an exhibition staged in some of Somerset House's own forgotten spaces – the lightwells and coalholes that lurk beneath the Edmond J Safra Fountain Court and in the evocative space known as the Deadhouse. The visitor makes his way in and out of these dim, mysterious niches and passageways, finding installations, images and multimedia that illustrate proposals for, amongst many other things, an urban climbing tunnel under Clapham High Street, a physic garden in Nag’s Head Yard, a Fish Ladder and salmon hatchery in the River Wandle, a Bee Farm and agro-forest in Neasden and a project to re-invent Crystal Palace as a Northern version of the scintillating market square of Djema el Fna in Marrakesh.

The Forgotten Spaces exhibition is open daily January 29th, 2012, 10am – 6pm. Admission is free. I suggest it would be an excellent place for novelists to go to refresh their sense of place, and for fantasy novelists to refresh their sense of the imaginable.

Part two of this blog is to follow – because I am lucky enough to have received an invitation to dinner in Alex’s bell-tower and I’m sure I’ll have plenty to tell you about that.


You can see more images of Alex’s airy desk here
Alex’s website
RIBA website
Somerset House website
Michelle Lovric’s website

Talina in the Tower is published February 2nd, 2012, by Orion Children’s Books