Work and workhouses
Work was hard for most people, including children. It wasn’t until 1880 that
children up to the age of 10 had to go to school. There were many new factories
and industries for people to work in.
Paper-making
Although paper mills had started in the seventeenth century, there were more
than ever in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Do a search on the
Unlocking Buckinghamshire’s Past website to find all the eighteenth and
nineteenth century paper mills in Buckinghamshire and mark five on the map of
eighteenth and nineteenth century paper-mills your teacher gives you.
Figure 1: Longwick paper-mill
Girls worked in the paper mills, shredding bundles of rags, cutting away buttons
and hooks and lengths of whalebone because only pure cotton or linen could go
into the rag boiler. The boiled cotton went to the beaters to be crushed and
soaked in water, which separated the fibres and turned it into a sodden white
porridge called "stuff".
The Vatman judged the quality of the stuff, which was poured into moulds on
which it formed into paper. The mould itself was a rectangular wooden frame
supporting a fine wire mesh of phosphor-bronze. The Coucher (from the French
coucher, to lie down) laid down each sheet of paper from the mould on to a thick
piece of woollen felt. Two moulds are used together, so that as one is empty it is
exchanged for another. Finally the paper was dried on hessian sheets or ropes of
cowhair. It was pressed, and sometimes glazed, and lasted for centuries.
What do we use to make paper today? Circle one answer:
Wood
Rags
Plastic
Work and workhouses
That’s right, we use wood! Do you think wood or rags is more environmentally
friendly?
Quarrying
There were lots of quarries in Victorian Buckinghamshire. Many have been
recorded on old maps. Look at the map your teacher gives you and shade all the
chalk pits you can find.
Figure 2: Clay pits on Brill common
Gangs would dig for chalk, clay or gravel. What do you think these things were
used for?
Type
Chalk
Gravel
Clay
Use
Fertiliser, cement
Roads, railways, cement
Bricks, tiles, pottery
When it is heated, chalk creates a liquid called lime that can be used as a
fertilizer on fields or in cement. Clay would be used for making pottery and bricks.
Gravel would be used for roads and railways and in cement.
Something called coprolite was also dug. Coprolite means fossilised dung but
this coprolite was proved to be ancient fossilised marine animals. Ground up this
was very good as a fertilizer. The first coprolite quarries started in
Buckinghamshire in 1869. Coprolites were found at Great Brickhill in 1873. Two
fields were dug up to remove them and a tramway was built between them and
the Grand Junction Canal. A geologist visited them in 1875 and described how
Work and workhouses
the fossils were taken out of the sand and washed in cylinders where stones
were picked out.
Do a search for coprolite quarries in Buckinghamshire on the Unlocking
Buckinghamshire’s Past website. Where are they mostly found?
Railways
The railways brought lots of work, though most workers were drafted in from
elsewhere. Navvies worked long days and went where the work took them, living
in temporary shanty towns. They were notorious for often getting drunk. Railways
had to be built, which involved laying miles and miles of gravel and track, cutting
through hills to make the railway as level as possible and building stations. The
railways in Buckinghamshire were built between 1838 and 1910.
One of the most famous railway engineers was Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
The people who designed the railways were very different to those who worked
on them. Most of the men working on the early railways probably never went to
school and came from poor families. Brunel’s father was a knight and he himself
spent some of his childhood years learning in France.
Part of Brunel’s Great Western Railway from London to Bristol passes through
Buckinghamshire. Do a keyword search on the Unlocking Buckinghamshire’s
Past website for the word Brunel and find out where parts of his railways survive
in Buckinghamshire.
Thorney Lane Bridge, Great Western Railway, Iver
Work and workhouses
After the railways were built, drivers, porters, ticket sellers and inspectors were
needed. These would mainly be local people and probably better paid than the
navvies had been. Do a search on the Unlocking Buckinghamshire’s Past
website to find out where the railway stations used to be in Buckinghamshire.
There were many more than there are today.
Chair making
One of the industries Buckinghamshire was and is famous for is chair making.
This was a big industry in the nineteenth century. Beech trees had been planted
on the Chiltern Hills and lots of beech trees can still be seen there.
Figure 3: Gomme’s furniture factory in High Wycombe
Most furniture factories surviving in the area date to the early twentieth century.
Do a search for furniture factories, where are most of them based:
Do a search on the Buckinghamshire Photograph website. Put the word chair
into the “Object” field. Find the answers to the following questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Where was the arch of chairs made?
Where was Gibbons Factory?
Where was Whielden Gate? Who was working there?
Find Hampden Woods. What was being made there?
Who owned the Windsor chair?
Work and workhouses
The Chilterns were the main base for chair making in the late nineteenth century.
Part of the work would be done in the woods. Bodgers worked in the woods to
turn the chair legs and backs, which would then be sent to the factories where
the woodworkers would make the seats and fit them all together. Did you see the
bodger’s house in Hampden Woods? Would you like to live there?
Workhouses
Those who couldn’t get work and were very poor got Poor Relief until 1834. This
was money given directly to those who were in need. After 1834 the law changed
and the Poor Law Amendment Act said that anyone who could work should be
made to work in workhouses rather than just given money for nothing and that
conditions in workhouses should be made very harsh to encourage the poor to
find proper jobs. Do a search for all the workhouses in Buckinghamshire. Where
are most of them based?
Find the list of inmates in Aylesbury workhouse on the Internet (your teacher will
show you where) and find the answers to these questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Who was the youngest inmate?
Who was the oldest?
How many children are there in the workhouse?
How many people altogether?
Some of the inmates are noted as disabled, what are the terms the
Victorians used?
6. Lace-making doesn’t seem to have been going well. List all the lacemakers:
7. How many inmates used to work on a farm?
8. Write the names of those who came from outside Buckinghamshire:
Would you be willing to work as a navvy, in a quarry gang or in a paper mill to
stay out of the workhouse? Imagine you had to choose one of them. Write a story
about what working in one of the Victorian jobs above or any other you know
about but ending up being thrown into the workhouse.
www.buckscc.gov.uk/archaeology