Old English household life: Some account of cottage objects and country folk

by Gertrude Jekyll

First published in 1925 and reprinted many times since, Old English Household Life is a fascinating portrait of a long-vanished way of being. Its author, Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932), is best known for her pioneering garden design work, but this volume reveals her wider knowledge and love of country life: its crafts, traditions and people.

From the sturdy tools arranged around the cottage hearth to the many buildings and trades to be found in the fields, woods and lanes of the English countryside, Jekyll details rural skills and customs which had endured for hundreds of years but were now giving way to the modern age. Without sentimentalising the often harsh lives faced by her subjects, Jekyll's account is full of admiration for the hard work, dignity and rich variety of country life.

Genres: Nonfiction

222 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1925

About the author

Gertrude Jekyll was an influential British garden designer, writer, and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the UK, Europe and the USA and contributed over 1,000 articles to Country Life, The Garden and other magazines.

Reviews

[^ · Rating 5 out of 5]

SECOND EDITION: An utterly, utterly fascinating and copiously illustrated book, and even more of a ‘must-read’ for those who live in period properties. So you want a rush-light holder …. Well then, go and see the blacksmith. It’s startling to even just begin to realise how very different, how efficient, the national pre-Industrial agrarian economy was at maintaining full employment; and how it shaped the character of those who lived, worked, brought up their family, etc in that era. Life was hard; quite literally a matter of survival; of getting out of life what one put into it. There was literally little or no free-time to innovate.

The authors constructively and convincingly argue why pre-industrialisation, when most people worked the land, the likelihood of unemployment within that old order of demand and supply, was appreciably less than in the new industrialised order; which promoted difference and dependency. For serviceable items, form very much followed function; unlike the present day, where mass-produced design can often be found guilty of impeding function; despite our present-day greater knowledge, understanding, and access to a massively wider range of materials and components!

So often our collective histories are told from the viewpoint of the upper classes who left behind them castles and big houses, estate documents and books, furnishings and jewellery. In just five packed chapters Jekyll and Jones here tell the story of how the forgotten masses lived, worked; and within that the vital psychological importance of hearth and home. Who dreams of being a daughter of a Peer of the Realm? Who dreams of being the daughter of a cowherd? Who calls themselves a ‘home-owner’, even if that home is mortgaged with money borrowed from another?

It was after reading this book that it dawned on me that perhaps I’d here gained an insight into T.E. Lawrence’s positively ascetic lifestyle at his cottage, “Clouds Hill”, in Dorset. Nowadays too many of us have become unhealthily obsessed with possessions (should I count-in my large collection of books, I wonder?) National economies have grown on the back of choice, of trade and ownership of physical possessions. Trade and improved health outcomes have contributed to a massive and potentially unsustainable increase in world population over a comparatively very short time. Is it actually possible for the masses re-jig their lives today, to live sustainably as Jekyll and Jones describe; yet without foregoing the time to think, the time to create, the time to see their grandchildren, the time that we have wrested from that earlier life where time was spent almost exclusively engaged in the operations of daily survival?

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

c1925: This is a must have book for any one considering writing a period novel. It is packed full of wonderful information and just highlights how much 'life' has evolved in a short hundred years. My personal favourite was the picture showing how a couple used their massive fireplace - I had no idea that they actually sat inside it. And then there was the kitchen dog used to turn the roast on a spit - I kid you not. How to use a rushlight? No fear - everything you need to know is in this book. I highlighted so many passages that it is nigh impossible to record them all. Narrowing them down, I think my favourite line has to be: 'The main cooking utensil was the iron pot, still made and largely exported to some half-barbarous people.' and there is me fondly remembering my days of enjoying a potjie on the weekend - which of course, is food cooked in an iron pot as a special treat instead of a barbecue. This is a keeper of note!