Glimpses of Colliers in the record - Bristol

This post is a short analysis of the brief mentions of 'Colliers' in Bristol Record Society's Publications Volume XLIV: TUDOR WILLS PROVED IN BRISTOL 1546 - 1603.

There are  one hundred and ninety-two wills transcribed in the book, and perhaps not unsurprisingly, only two mention Colliers: one as a benefactor of a will and the other the will of the Collier himself.

The wills:

[Will] 67   MARGARET JOONS, widow, [St Thomas], (23 November 1597).
Testatrix’s debts 23 November 1597: 

to Margery 10s 

to Mistress Pr[e]wett 8s 

to Mary Hill 2s 

to Robert Stevens 3s 9d 

to Richard Stevens 3s 4d 

to “bucher the collier” 3s 

to John Cooke 1s 4d 

to Richard Lentorn 1s 

to Robert Humphery 4s

Sick of body. Soul “to the hands of god my creator & to Jesus Christ my savior.” To be buried in the churchyard of St. Thomas. 

                Executrix Alice Maisy her Servant 

Overseers: John Grigg and Thomas Prestwood. 

Memorandum: “William Weall hath a ceverlett in pane [pawn] for v s”

[Will] 151  EDWARD AVERY, collier, St.Philip, 7 December 1600, nuncupative, proved 19 November 1601. 

Soul to almighty God, body to be buried in St. Philip’s churchyard. 

                To daughter Fortune £3 which his brother-in-law Thomas Brewer owes him, one ewe and one lamb. 

                Residue to wife Alice, executrix. 

Witnesses: Mr. Thomas Baynard, William Maynard, John Avery of St. Philip’s.

Analysis:

MARGARET JOONS

“Bucher the collier” is the only benefactor referred to by his trade and it is in inverted commas;  I suspect this is reflecting Margaret's exact words of who she owes money to and only knew Bucher by his trade rather than Given name?  This implies, to me at least, a less than personal relationship and the debt may well be for charcoal supplied for her domestic use?  Jumping a bit to conclusions there, I know, but not a lot to analyse really... 

EDWARD AVERY

This will is nuncupative, i.e. spoken not written; this could perhaps reflect the will of an illiterate man?  Also, it took over eleven months to be proved, but looking through the book at other wills this does not seem uncommon and may reflect the legal process rather than anything unusual in Edward's will or estate that would cause delay?  

The frustrating aspect to this will is it's brevity: he leaves his (beautifully named) daughter, Fortune, £3, a ewe and a lamb then the "Residue" to his wife.  This might be illustrating he was a man of few processions or maybe he had too many to list, and as they were all going to his wife why bother listing them?  The word residue, implies a small amount, but it is impossible to know.  There is no mention of a house or chattels, but I am guessing he had land or at least grazing rights to own (at least) a Ewe and a lamb?

His brother in law owes him a fair amount of money at £3 - a sack of charcoal sells at 8d (ish) in period - so £3 is 90 bags of charcoal... a good amount of work to produce this kind of capital  to loan to anyone.  This perhaps reflects that Avery had more interests than just charcoal making to have that kind of money to be owed him? Perhaps he was a small time husbandman too? St Phillips, his parish of residence was 'outside the walls'  and rather nicely the Braun & Hogensburg map of Bristol, published 1581, shows plenty of sheep grazing around the city. I have highlighted St Philip's on the map below to show it's 'rural' nature.

Map from http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/british_isles/bristol/maps/braun_hogenberg_III_2.html

So all in all I seem to have raised more unanswerable questions than anything else, but that's historical research for you.

Images of Charcoal Makers

I am collecting as many images of Woodcolliers as I can from the late sixteenth, and early seventeenth century. That said, it is fair to say that being the marginal group that Woodcolliers were there aren't that many images around.  Here are a few I have found so far, or course I will post any more as I find them.


This is one I found on a 'Cries of Rome' pamphlet dated 1612, interesting sausage shaped sacks, not very big.....

Image online at https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/8d/ce/69/8dce6988c6a7c483ad338ee42506472c.jpg

...when compared to the ones in  this 1610 statute  from London that specifies the size of sacks as:  "The length of a Colliers Sacke, one yard and a half. The breadth three quarters of a yard." That is 54 inches long and 27 inches wide.

I am not sure of the provenance of this image, I was sent this image by a friend some time ago and I can't remember who it was!

I think this shows a collier emptying a sack into an inspectors 'regulation' sack to prove his is the correct size.... or the chap holding the sack open might be the charcoal maker?  What makes me think otherwise is his stick - a measuring device?

This is the one  depiction of an English collier I have and a nice depiction of 'high shoes', commonly called startups by modern re-enactors - though there is some dispute over this term. Also  a nice image of a purse hanging from his belt.

I have made a few charcoal sacks to the 'regulation' size and they are a fair size, below is a picture of myself stood next to one full of charcoal.  It took two of us to lift this; unlike the muscle bound collier above!

The last image I have found was drawn by French artist Jaques Callot (C.1592 -1635) and is of St Alexander of Comana, also known as 'the Charcoal Burner', who died around 251 AD. 

Image online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_of_Comana

He is the patron saint of Charcoal Burners and although this is a depiction of a figure from the early days of Christianity who lived in what is modern day Turkey, he seems to be wearing contemporary early seventeenth century western clothing.  Not sure I would want to carry a sack of charcoal on my back though!

A snippet from Page 168 of 'Industry in the countryside' by Michael Zell:

The chapter is about the cloth industry so the quote is demonstrating the ubiquitous nature of spinning equipment, but it is an interesting glimpse of the wealth of a charcoal maker. I so need to get a wheelbarrow!

"The goods of James Basset Of Goudhurst, collier (d. 1580), totalled just £3 3s., according to local appraisers. He owned no livestock or farm goods his professional tools (Including two wheelbarrows) were valued at just 3s.,  but in his house were the requisites for spinning:  three spinning 'trendles',  a pair of stockcards and a pair of handcards."

Cadlemas work camp 2012 - What we did...

Well despite the snow we got lots done this weekend on the hill: we managed to coppice the stools we wanted to do (thanks to Mike and his chainsaw... until it gave up the ghost, hope it's not to costly to fix Mike?) Below is a rough sketch map showing the bit we did (very crudely marked with hashing)

The rest of Coupe A either had young saps in or the mature Oaks were shading the hazel, so to give it a chance we have left them to get bigger and stronger before coppicing them.

We generated a fair bit of product: Spars for the stables roof to form a floor to place hay on, wood for the charcoal stack (will be used in 2013 if not later) as well as pea sticks, bean poles and lots of lop and top to make faggots for the ovens and to repair the top pigsty roof with later this year.
























We also finished the post and rail fence down the length of triangle field and dug in a post for the gate at the bottom end. We also replaced the post and rail in top orchard where the horses had got through into the coppice recently - thankfully they had not done any damage.

All in all a very successful weekend.

Candlemas work camp

Tomorrow is Candlemas or the midpoint of winter, halfway between the shortest day and the spring equinox so I have arbitrarily decided to call this weekend's work camp 'Candlemas work camp'....

Right, what are we going to do this weekend? I have spoken with Stuart and we need to start coppicing in Coupe A, starting in the corner adjacent to to triangle field and top orchard. From this we are hoping to get:

• A very small amount of hazel to complete wattling in the stables.
  
• A few thick pieces could go into the stables roof to make a 'floor' for the hay to sit on although Stuart hopes to get some birch dropped for this.
  
• New poles for peas would probably be good as well.
• A lot of the coppice is too chunkey for wattling and best used by the Wood Colliers to make charcoal. This will need to be cut to lengths - we need roughly as long and as thick as a mans arm - then stacked for at least one summer to season.
  
• We can make faggots from the top and lop, but judging from the amount of deer in the area this may be better put to use making a brash dead hedge around the coppiced stools to keep the nibblers out.
• I also need a selection of poles to rebuild the Charcoal hut and to make wind breaks (see previous post) these we will store in the stable roof or cart shed until the summer.
  
• And finally any good straight rods might be dumped in the pond for use at Easter wattling the woad house.

As well as coppicing we hope to have more post and rail arrived by the weekend to complete the boundary along triangle field, plus we will need to think about making a gate at the bottom end, gate posts available in store can be dug in as well.

So quite a lot to do. If you are coming then billhooks, axes, gloves and brute force would be useful to bring.

I will update the blog post weekend to tell you all the things we didn't get around to doing!

Charcoal Camp - Things to make 2012 # 1

There are a few 'bits' I would like to add to the charcoal camp to make it look and work better: to start with I would like to make a few windbreaks to shield the birning heaps from the breeze which helps the heap burn more evenly.

I don't have any C16th illustrations of these but below is a illustration, from 1879 showing Charcoal makers in Epping Forest, on the right hand side of the picture you can see some rudimentary windbreaks made of poles interwoven and filled with branches. These seem to held by poles bracing them against the wind.



So we need to retrieve a number of hazel lengths this winter to make into the frames and then in the summer we can use bracken to fill the gaps.

As it is a slow day at work today I have even made a little model, from coffee stirrers, of what the finished article might look like:

I know I really should get out more!

Weekend 15th/16th October

Spent part of Friday, Saturday and Sunday on the hill in the coppice. I was own my own for most of it so didn't get as much done as I'd hoped (I was joined for a few hours on Sunday by Jim whose wife was sewing with Gilly in Bream); nevertheless got a fair bit of bracken and bramble cleared. I also put some tarps over the wood stacks in the Charcoal Camp for the winter.



















Whilst pulling the bracken we found a pleasing amount of Hazel saplings doing OK, despite the monster bracken cover shading them out. Sadly, most of the ash saplings had succumbed to the lack of light. Some replanting will be needed...

On a positive note, I have been intensively 'weeding' a small patch just below top orchard for a little over a year now and it is really showing positive signs of how you can beat the bracken: there is a healthy amount of grass and a covering of foxgloves coming up.

Found a few saps that I didn't know were there including what I think is a lime tree or Gilly thinks it could be a Sallow, What do you think?:



















During the November work camp, if I get an hour of two, I might try and remove the bracken I have pulled and burn it in the charcoal camp so to expose as much of the coppice floor as possible to encourage other woodland plants, other than bracken, to grow.