The Commonplace Daughter of a Wiltshire Shepherd

MARY DAVIS

My great grandmother Mary Davis was a stunningly attractive woman from the photograph that we have of her as a young mother – and I still carry a few snippets of her West Country or Wessex family culture (or memes) that were handed down through my mother.

For example, as a visitor to the houses or flats that I occupied as a young man, my mother was a compulsive and rather unwelcome seeker and interpreter of the personal letters, trinkets and photographs scattered throughout the furniture drawers.

This intrusive searching she excused lightly as simply being ‘a Poll Pry’, after the manner of her grandmother.

Mary was also the origin of the female-line mitochondrial DNA that has came down to me – with the link to ‘Katrine’ (one of Syke’s Seven Daughters of Eve) whose family would apparently have been found in Lombardy, Northern Italy some 10,000 years ago waiting out the last Ice Age.

And through whom I am related to Oetzi the Ice Man who perished hunting in the Alps some 4,000 years ago, and whose deep frozen corpse has been the subject of much study (and squabbles between the Italians and Austrians) in recent years.

Well what can we say about the Davis family?

Mary’s father Henry was a shepherd who was born in Huish, Wiltshire in 1841, as the son of an agricultural labourer. Mary’s mother Martha was born Martha Whatley in Chitterne, Wiltshire, the daughter again of an agricultural labourer. In the 1861 Census she is recorded as a 17 year old domestic servant working (with her 14 year old sister Mary) in the household of a prosperous farmer Henry Allard in the hamlet of Corton, near Chitterne.

The previous generations in both the Davis and Whatley families all seem to have been agricultural labourers / shepherds in the villages of Huish and Chitterne, though one (possibly Henry’s grandfather) Stephen Davis became the baker at Huish (a bakery that was apparently famous for its ‘lardy cakes’).

My family members appear to have lived mostly in severe poverty in a somewhat desolate landscape, though they carried a great inheritance as the community associated with Stonehenge, Old Sarum and the most wonderful of English cathedrals at Salisbury.

W.H. Hudson writing in 1910 has this to say about rural Wiltshire (and he had spent his boyhood on the Pampas in Argentina):

“There is nothing striking in Wiltshire, at all events to those who love nature first; nor mountains, nor sea, nor anything to compare with the places they are hastening to, west or north.

The Downs! Yes, the Downs are there, full in sight of your window, in their flowing forms resembling vast, pale green waves, wave beyond wave, "in fluctuation fixed"; a fine country to walk on in fine weather for all those who regard the mere exercise of walking as sufficient pleasure.

But, as to walking on the Downs, one remembers that the fine days are not so many, even in the season when they are looked for--they have certainly been few during this wet and discomfortable one of 1909. It is indeed only on the chalk hills that I ever feel disposed to quarrel with this English climate, for all weathers are good to those who love the open air, and have their special attractions.

What a pleasure (normally) it is to be out in rough weather in October when the equinoctial gales are on, "the wind Euroclydon," to listen to its roaring in the bending trees, to watch the dead leaves flying, the pestilence-stricken multitudes, yellow and black and red, whirled away in flight on flight before the volleying blast, and to hear and see and feel the tempests of rain, the big silver-grey drops that smite you like hail!

And what pleasure too, in the still grey November weather, the time of suspense and melancholy before winter, a strange quietude, like a sense of apprehension in nature!

And so on through the revolving year, in all places in all weathers, there is pleasure in the open air, except on these chalk hills because of their bleak nakedness. There the wind and driving rain are not for but against you, and may overcome you with misery’.

So a shepherd’s life must often have been a kind of hell – bleak and lonely work, trudging vast distances haunted by cold and the stupidities of sheep – constantly having to move cottages in search of work.

Though I am sure that when the larks were singing and the dogs were tail-wagging on a bright spring morning, a smile would alight and thanks would be given to the high heavens.

So let’s explore this world in its impoverishment and curiosities.

THE FAMILY JOURNEY FOLLOWING SHEPHERDING WORK

First, the catalogue of villages that were visited and within which Martha had to start over and bring to life a deserted cottage to create a home for her family:

1866 Son William born St Mary Bourne, Hampshire

1868 Mary born Shrewton (near Stonehenge), Wiltshire

1870 Son George born West Lavington, Wiltshire

1872 Son Frank born West Lavington

1874 Daughter Fanny born Shrewton, Wiltshire

1876 Son Charles born Wimborne, St Giles, Dorset
(A small village, ‘scattered about in the lush, well-wooded landscape on the edge of Cranborne Chase at the centre of the estate of the Earls of Shaftesbury’, who are remembered for the 7th Earl, 1801 – 1885, who successfully campaigned to end brutal sweated labour from children as young as 5 years old in coal mines and as chimney sweeps. He was largely responsible for the labour regulation provided by the Factory Acts of 1847 and 1853).

1879 Son Alfred born Ropley, Hampshire

1881 Frederick born Chilton Candover, Hampshire

A PROFILE OF THE VILLAGE OF HUISH

‘Huish is the smallest parish in Pewsey Vale, in terms of both area and population, The parish, like its western neighbours, sits on the south-facing edge of the Marlborough Downs, here called Huish Hill.

Nowadays Huish is served now by a minor road running west from Oare, which replaced an earlier, more southerly approach between 1773 and 1817. The road meanders on past the village, following ‘too faithfully the angles of old fields,’ until at Draycot Fitzpayne it leaves the parish and returns to Wilcot.

The root meaning of the name Huish, which is common in Somerset (where there are 21 examples) but rare outside south-west England, seems to be ‘household’ or ‘family farm’. It has been suggested that Huishes are survivals of an older, perhaps pre-Saxon, farmstead-based settlement pattern, which was largely replaced in the English lowlands by planned open-field villages in the later Saxon period.

Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, the village land was under the ownership of the Doygnel family and their successors. The church, probably built originally in the late-thirteenth century, lay within the village, which seems to have been defined by a rectangular ditch embracing the area of the church and the present Huish Farm and farm buildings.

The village around the church had been deserted by 1500, perhaps because of its vulnerability to flooding, and the present site was in use (possibly after an interval of neglect and depopulation) by the seventeenth century, since several of the cottages contain work of this period.

At about the same time parts of the downland in the north of the parish were enclosed, and eventually cultivated.

This expansion of the arable into an area not easily accessible from the village was probably the reason for the emergence of a secondary settlement, known as Huish Hill or Upper Huish. Today the area of this upland hamlet, which straddles the Huish – Wilcot boundary, is marked by a double-bend in the track, a stagnant pond close to overgrown building rubble, and one smart modern house masked by trees.

Upper Huish existed in 1773 and only fell into decline after 1920, as motor transport and agricultural changes rendered it unnecessary. The last house to survive was the bakery, which had enjoyed a reputation for lardy cake and fine bread baked partly from potato flour. It has been demolished since 1962.

An earlier casualty was the Methodist chapel, erected in 1863 at a cost, it was said, to each inhabitant of ten shillings. One impecunious shepherd raised his contribution by selling his smock’.

THE SWING RIOTS IN NEARBY OARE

Friday, 19th November 1830

"During the night all the wheat, barley, beans and oats belonging to Mr. Fowler of Oare, near Pewsey, was destroyed by fire. Had it not been for the exertions of several respectable people of Pewsey, Mr. Pontin's house and farm buildings would have shared a similar fate. One of them placed the engine between Mr. Pontin's property and the fire. It has to be said that the labourers of Oare, instead of assisting to put out the fire appeared to take pleasure from the situation, and with the exception of a very few, were laying about enjoying the scene.

It was found necessary to place 12 Pewsey men to guard the water pipes after it was found that one of them had been cut. One of those fighting the fire has stated the belief that if it had not been for the Pewsey men there would not have been a house left standing in Oare and it is believed that the fire was the work of the labourers of the village.

As soon as the fire was put out those watching were heard to mutter threats against other farmers and one of them, Charles Kimber, told Mr. Edmonds to his face, that his property would be the next to go. This fellow was instantly taken into custody and is now in prison. He was apparently very active in endeavouring to intimidate the Pewsey men and in throwing, and encouraging his companions to throw, brickbats at the heads of those putting out the fire. He is also accused of knocking James Self off a rick into the fire. Damage to the property is put at around £400 and was partly insured.

"The distress at Oare and Wilcot is certainly very great, much more so than at Pewsey."

BACKGROUND TO THE SWING RIOTS

In 1813, Thomas Davis prepared a report on the state of agriculture in Wiltshire by revising a previous work of his father's published in 1794. He was the steward to the Marquis of Bath of Longleat, and of the labourers he states:

"It is a melancholy fact that ..... the labourers of many parts of this county ..... may be truly said to be at this time in a wretched condition. The dearness of provisions, the scarcity of fuel, and above all the failure of spinning work for the women and children have put it almost out of the power of the village poor to live by their industry.

The farmers complain, and with reason, that the labourers do less work than formerly, when in fact the labourers are not able to work as they did at the time when they lived better".

Things got worse during the years that followed. When the great radical William Cobbett visited the Pewsey Vale and the Avon Valley in August 1826, he was appalled at what he found. He prophetically recorded:

"In taking my leave of this beautiful vale I have to express my deep shame, as an Englishman, at beholding the general extreme poverty of those who cause this vale to produce such quantities of food and raiment.

This is, I verily believe it, the worst used labouring people upon the face of the earth. Dogs and hogs and horses are treated with more civility; and as to food and lodging, how gladly would the labourers change with them! This state of things never can continue many years! By some means or other there must be an end to it; and my firm belief is, that the end will be dreadful."

Four years later the working man had had enough of poverty and hunger. By this time his conditions were worse than before or during the Napoleonic Wars and they were suffering from "appallingly low wages, bad conditions and incredibly long hours of work".

The recently introduced thrashing machine would deprive him of one of his main sources of winter work and so, faced with a generally uncaring ruling class, he took matters into his own hands. The normally passive and quietly suffering labourers of Wessex had, for once, had enough. Yet despite those in Wiltshire and Dorset being the lowest paid in England (some receiving only 8/- per week compared with 10/- to 12/- elsewhere) the pressure for a living wage, which ultimately resulted in England's greatest proletarian uprisings, started elsewhere.

The first attributed outbreak in Wiltshire was on November 8th, 1830 and they continued throughout the following year although the worst was over by the end of November 1830. The government, believing that the magistrates of Kent had been too lenient towards their rioters, set up a Special Commission to deal with the worst effected counties: Hampshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Dorset and Wiltshire.

As a result of these trials at least 9 men or boys were hanged, 450 were transported (about 200 for life), and over 400 imprisoned. Subsequent trials in the Assize and County Courts raised these figures to 19 executed, 600 imprisoned and 500 transported to Australia for terms of either 7 years, 14 years or life.

Despite the severity of the sentences there was only one fatality recorded during the entire Swing Riots when, on Thursday, November 25th 1830 at Pythouse, the luckless rioter, John Harding, was shot dead by the Hinton Troop of the Wiltshire Yeomanry.

During their transportation to Australia, many of those convicted were given privileges not normally bestowed upon the normal "cargo". We learn from Robert Mason that when those aboard the Eleanor arrived in Sydney they "were permitted to come on shore in our own clothes, a great indulgence and considered an extraordinary thing by the people".

By 1834 public pressure in England had forced the government to consider granting pardons to the rioters and indeed, some were issued that year. In 1835 a further 264 were pardoned and by the mid 1840s most of them were free with the only exceptions being those who had committed further offences while in Australia. Despite gaining their freedom, few seemed to have returned to England.

William Cobbett was also a target but was acquitted through the skill by which he conducted his own defence. For the labourers, many saw their wages increased to 10/- per week (although in some cases it was later reduced) but the effect of their actions on society was more far reaching.

After procrastinating about the reform of the Poor Laws since 1817, the political establishment in England was finally forced to accept the important role that poverty played in civil unrest and a genuine commission of inquiry was established in 1832. It announced (for that period) far reaching (and far from popular) recommendations in March 1834.

Similarly, the Swing Riots helped ensure that Parliament finally got around to reforming the electoral system that saw, amongst other things, the demise of the "Rotten Boroughs", such as Great Bedwyn and Old Sarum (where a few hereditary voters had been easily bribed to return wealthy political hacks to sinecure constituencies).

SOME EXCERPTS FROM ‘A SHEPHERD’S LIFE’ BY W.H. HUDSON (1910)

1. SHAPED TO THE LAND

‘It is now several years since I first met Caleb Bawcombe, a shepherd of the South Wiltshire Downs, but already old and infirm and past work. I met him at a distance from his native village, and it was only after I had known him a long time and had spent many afternoons and evenings in his company, listening to his anecdotes of his shepherding days, that I went to see his own old home for myself--the village of Winterbourne Bishop already described, to find it a place after my own heart.

One of his memories was of an old shepherd named John, whose acquaintance he made when a very young man - John being at that time seventy-eight years old - on the Winterbourne Bishop farm, where he had served for an unbroken period of close on sixty years. Though so aged he was still head shepherd, and he continued to hold that place seven years longer - until his master, who had taken over old John with the place, finally gave up the farm and farming at the same time.

He, too, was getting past work and wished to spend his declining years in his native village in an adjoining parish, where he owned some house and cottage property. And now what was to become of the old shepherd, since the new tenant had brought his own men with him?--and he, moreover, considered that John, at eighty-five, was too old to tend a flock on the hills, even of tegs.

His old master, anxious to help him, tried to get him some employment in the village where he wished to stay; and failing in this, he at last offered him a cottage rent free in the village where he was going to live himself, and, in addition, twelve shillings a week for the rest of his life.

It was in those days an exceedingly generous offer, but John refused it. "Master," he said, "I be going to stay in my own native village, and if I can't make a living the parish'll have to keep I; but keep or not keep, here I be and here I be going to stay, where I were borned."

From this position the stubborn old man refused to be moved, and there at Winterbourne Bishop his master had to leave him, although not without having first made him a sufficient provision.

The way in which my old friend, Caleb Bawcombe, told the story plainly revealed his own feeling in the matter. He understood and had the keenest sympathy with old John, dead now over half a century; or rather, let us say, resting very peacefully in that green spot under the old grey tower of Winterbourne Bishop church where as a small boy he had played among the old gravestones as far back in time as the middle of the eighteenth century.

[Caleb would have be born around 1815 and John around 1760]

2. DRIVEN BY HUNGER IN THE 1830s

Of sheep-stealing stories I will relate one more--a case which never came into court and was never discovered. It was related to me by a middle-aged man, a shepherd of Warminster, who had it from his father, a shepherd of Chitterne, one of the lonely, isolated villages on Salisbury Plain, between the Avon and the Wylye.

His father had it from the person who committed the crime and was anxious to tell it to someone, and knew that the shepherd was his true friend, a silent, safe man. He was a farm-labourer, named Shergold - one of the South Wiltshire surnames very common in the early part of last century, which now appear to be dying out - described as a very big, powerful man, full of life and energy.

He had a wife and several young children to keep, and the time was near mid-winter; Shergold was out of work, having been discharged from the farm at the end of the harvest; it was an exceptionally cold season and there was no food and no firing in the house.

One evening in late December a drover arrived at Chitterne with a flock of sheep which he was driving to Tilshead, another downland village several miles away. He was anxious to get to Tilshead that night and wanted a man to help him. Shergold was on the spot and undertook to go with him for the sum of fourpence.

They set out when it was getting dark; the sheep were put on the road, the drover going before the flock and Shergold following at the tail. It was a cold, cloudy night, threatening snow, and so dark that he could hardly distinguish the dim forms of even the hindmost sheep, and by and by the temptation to steal one assailed him.

For how easy it would be for him to do it! With his tremendous strength he could kill and hide a sheep very quickly without making any sound whatever to alarm the drover. He was very far ahead. Shergold could judge the distance by the sound of his voice when he uttered a call or shout from time to time, and by the barking of the dog, as he flew up and down, first on one side of the road, then on the other, to keep the flock well on it.

And he thought of what a sheep would be to him and to his hungry ones at home until the temptation was too strong, and suddenly lifting his big, heavy stick he brought it down with such force on the head of a sheep as to drop it with its skull crushed, dead as a stone. Hastily picking it up he ran a few yards away, and placed it among the furze-bushes, intending to take it home on his way back, and then returned to the flock.

They arrived at Tilshead in the small hours, and after receiving his fourpence he started for home, walking rapidly and then running to be in time, but when he got back to where the sheep was lying the dawn was coming, and he knew that before he could get to Chitterne with that heavy burden on his back people would be getting up in the village and he would perhaps be seen.

The only thing to do was to hide the sheep and return for it on the following night. Accordingly he carried it away a couple of hundred yards to a pit or small hollow in the down full of bramble and furze-bushes, and here he concealed it, covering it with a mass of dead bracken and herbage, and left it. That afternoon the long-threatening snow began to fall, and with snow on the ground he dared not go to recover his sheep, since his footprints would betray him; he must wait once more for the snow to melt.

But the snow fell all night, and what must his feelings have been when he looked at it still falling in the morning and knew that he could have gone for the sheep with safety, since all traces would have been quickly obliterated!

Once more there was nothing to do but wait patiently for the snow to cease falling and for the thaw. But how intolerable it was; for the weather continued bitterly cold for many days, and the whole country was white.

During those hungry days even that poor comfort of sleeping or dozing away the time was denied him, for the danger of discovery was ever present to his mind, and Shergold was not one of the callous men who had become indifferent to their fate; it was his first crime, and he loved his own life and his wife and children, crying to him for food.

And the food for them was lying there on the down, close by, and he could not get it! Roast mutton, boiled mutton--mutton in a dozen delicious forms--the thought of it was as distressing, as maddening, as that of the peril he was in.

It was a full fortnight before the wished thaw came; then with fear and trembling he went for his sheep, only to find that it had been pulled to pieces and the flesh devoured by dogs and foxes!

3. THE BIRD-SCARER BOY ON THE DOWNS - c1900

It was in March, bitterly cold, with an east wind which had been blowing many days, and overhead the sky was of a hard, steely grey. I was cycling along the valley of the Ebble, and finally leaving it pushed up a long steep slope and set off over the high plain by a dusty road with the wind hard against me.

A more desolate scene than the one before me it would be hard to imagine, for the land was all ploughed and stretched away before me, an endless succession of vast grey fields, divided by wire fences. On all that space there was but one living thing in sight, a human form, a boy, far away on the left side, standing in the middle of a big field with something which looked like a gun in his hand.

Immediately after I saw him he, too, appeared to have caught sight of me, for turning he set off running as fast as he could over the ploughed ground towards the road, as if intending to speak to me. The distance he would have to run was about a quarter of a mile and I doubted that he would be there in time to catch me, but he ran fast and the wind was against me, and he arrived at the road just as I got to that point.

There by the side of the fence he stood, panting from his race, his handsome face glowing with colour, a boy about twelve or thirteen, with a fine strong figure, remarkably well dressed for a bird-scarer. For that was what he was - and he carried a queer, heavy-looking old gun.

I got off my wheel and waited for him to speak, but he was silent, and continued regarding me with the smiling countenance of one well pleased with himself.

"Well?" I said, but there was no answer; he only kept on smiling.

"What did you want?" I demanded impatiently.

"I didn't want anything."

"But you started running here as fast as you could the moment you caught
sight of me."

"Yes, I did."

"Well, what did you do it for--what was your object in running here?"

"Just to see you pass," he answered.

It was a little ridiculous and vexed me at first, but by and by when I left him, after some more conversation, I felt rather pleased; for it was a new and somewhat flattering experience to have any person run a long distance over a ploughed field, burdened with a heavy gun, "just to see me pass."

But it was not strange in the circumstances; his hours in that grey, windy desolation must have seemed like days, and it was a break in the monotony, a little joyful excitement in getting to the road in time to see a passer-by more closely, and for a few moments gave him a sense of human companionship.

4. A VISIT TO SALISBURY

Before a stall in the market-place a child is standing with her mother--a commonplace-looking, little girl of about twelve, blue-eyed, light-haired, with thin arms and legs, dressed, poorly enough, for her holiday.

The mother, stoutish, in her best but much-worn black gown and a brown straw, out-of-shape hat, decorated with bits of ribbon and a few soiled and frayed artificial flowers.

Probably she is the wife of a labourer who works hard to keep himself and family on fourteen shillings a week; and she, too, shows, in her hard hands and sunburnt face, with little wrinkles appearing, that she is a hard worker; but she is very jolly, for she is in Salisbury on market-day, in fine weather, with several shillings in her purse - a shilling for the fares, and perhaps eight pence for refreshments, and the rest to be expended in necessaries for the house.

And now to increase the pleasure of the day she has unexpectedly run against a friend! There they stand, the two friends, basket on arm, right in the midst of the jostling crowd, talking in their loud, tinny voices at a tremendous rate; while the girl, with a half-eager, half-listless expression, stands by with her hand on her mother's dress, and every time there is a second's pause in the eager talk she gives a little tug at the gown and ejaculates "Mother!"

The woman impatiently shakes off the hand and says sharply, "What now, Marty! Can't 'ee let me say just a word without bothering!" and on the talk runs again; then another tug and "Mother!" and then, "You promised, mother," and by and by, "Mother, you said you'd take me to the cathedral next time."

Having heard so much I wanted to hear more, and addressing the woman I asked her why her child wanted to go.

She answered me with a good-humoured laugh, "'Tis all because she heard 'em talking about it last winter, and she'd never been, and I says to her, 'Never you mind, Marty, I'll take you there the next time I go to Salisbury.'"

"And she's never forgot it," said the other woman.

"Not she--Marty ain't one to forget."

"And you been four times, mother," put in the girl.

"Have I now! Well, 'tis too late now--half-past two, and we must be't'
Goat' at four."

"Oh, mother, you promised!"

"Well, then, come along, you worriting child, and let's have it over or
you'll give me no peace"; and away they went.’

[From ‘A Shepherd’s Life – Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs’, by W.H. Hudson (1910)]