“Silas Marner the weaver…worked at his vocation in a stone
cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe and
not far from the edge of a deserted stone pit.”[1]
These words by George Eliot in her 19th century tale of a linen
weaver provide the reader with an insight into the features of the ‘rough suburbs’
that could be found on the edges of most nineteenth century towns. This description of the deserted stone pit is
one that is a true example of life in the ‘rough suburbs’ of Headington Quarry,
Oxfordshire, which is described as having “Stone pits, working or abandoned,
remained in their original state and alongside them were the old pit banks.”[2]
This is from the excellent book by Raphael Samuel called
“Quarry Roughs: life and labour in Headington Quarry, 1860-1920.”Samuel
describes Headington Quarry as a primitive place, where “Piped water did not
reach the village until the eve of the Great War…Water had to be drawn from
wells.”[3]Clearly
this residential area was lacking in the basic needs of a community such as
piped water, where cottage laundries were so dependent. The quarrymen of
Headington in the 1800s lived in “poor insubstantial hovels which could without
difficulty be removed and set up elsewhere.”[4]
This would then enable the workers, just like Silas Marner, to travel and
wander to the places where work could be found.
Evidence of poverty
can be found in the ‘rough suburbs’ and the ineffective nature of the Poor Law
in John Hollinshead’s book, Ragged London in 1861. Here he describes a bread
riot that nearly came about due to adverse weather stopping labourers from
working outdoors in the East End of London.
This led to dissatisfaction and when the workers could not find relief
from the unions or workhouse they attacked various baker shops, emptying them
of bread. Hollinshead claims, “The
workhouses have been daily besieged by noisy and half famished crowds: the
clumsy poor law system…has broken down”[5]
Hollingshead claims in his book that the government could not and did not provide
relief to these poor suburbs. There is some truth in this statement as significant
welfare reforms were not introduced until the 1906 Liberal landslide and the
following 1909 Peoples Budget. A description of the ‘rough suburbs’ of London
is found in Charles Kingsley’s novel
“Alton Locke”, which was considered to be sympathetic to the Chartist
movement. Here we find the protagonist
dreaming of sunnier climes in Italy where he can pursue his ambitions as a
poet. Although he describes the “poor wretches who sit stifled in reeking
garrets and workrooms, drinking disease with every breath”[6]
he is still proud to be a cockney.
So we can see life was hard in the ’rough suburbs’ both in
the capital, London, but also in the country and the outskirts of the towns
like Oxford. George Eliot paints a
bleak picture of life in Raveloe: “Pain and mishap present a far wider range of
possibilities than gladness and enjoyment”[7]
“There is no manor house in the vicinity,
but there were several chiefs in Raveloe”[8]
highlighting the lack of a Lord of the Manor, but demonstrating the management
of the community between perhaps the elders, thus resulting in a less formalised
structure of land ownership and decision making. Indeed Raphael Samuel illustrates this point
further in his book about Headington Quarry. He explains that “land was easier
to come by on the wasteland edge of the village”[9]
and evidence can be found in the Charity Commissioners’ archives which show
that there was the successful establishment of two squatting families in the
Headington Quarry area. The 1869 churchwarden accounts complain that “buildings
have increased into two cottages and the occupants have enclosed a piece of the
ground as gardens, but for none of this do they pay any rent.”[10]
The residents of Headington Quarry in the 1850s spent thirty years resisting
the enclosure of the Open Magdalens by a local farmer called Richard Pether.
This resistance took the form of “mass trespasses, large scale raids for wood,
and the illegal grazing of cows.”[11]
This ‘rough suburb’ was almost a law unto itself in a place with a fearful
reputation where even the police did not like to venture.
The church was a prominent feature of the 19thcentury
literature described in these suburbs. For example in Catherine Furze by Mark
Rutherford the church is described as “immense…. and big enough to hold half of
Eastthorpe.”[12] But
although the church may have had a presence the influence of religion in theses
suburbs is quite different. Silas Marner was thought to be able to “cure folks’
rheumatism if he had mind….if you could only speak the devil fair enough, he
might save you the cost of the doctor.”[13]
The book describes this as “such strange lingering echoes of the old
demon-worship”[14] Demonstrating
that religion perhaps did not hold should a firm grip in these areas, where the
community were more familiar with the older demon, perhaps pagan, worshipping
practices. This weak hold of the Church
of England was also true in the quarry roughs of Headington where “for
centuries the villagers seem to have lived almost outside the reach of
organized religion.”[15]
When Bishop Wilberforce preached a sermon there in 1847 he described the Quarry
as “an abandoned district where evil had found a ready home.”[16]However,
Alton’s mother in in Alton Locke is a pious character of Calvinist nature who
prays for her reprobate children to be reborn and saved.
The people who lived in these ‘rough suburbs’ were what we
might call ne'er-do-wells, or outcasts living on the fringes of society. Thomas Hardy cites the biblical word
“Addulam” which was the name of cave that Saul hid in when he fled from David
where upon he was joined by “everyone that was in distress and everyone that
was in debt and everyone that was discontented.”[17]
The same can be said of the characters that Hardy describes in the Mayor of
Casterbridge, who were poachers, in distress, in debt, drinkers, fighters, too idle to work or to
rebellious to serve. Comparisons can be drawn from Hardy’s description of his characters
to those who lived in the Headington Quarry where the local pub, the Mason’s
Arms was a place of much activity. It was here that the gypsies, well-diggers,
rabbit-catchers, horse-dealers and poachers would reside, perhaps of no fixed
abode, wandering between suburbs not unlike Silas Marner the weaver. The
gypsies settled in Headington Quarry as it gave them a place to live rent free
without the interference of a land owning farmer and it also gave them rough
pasture for their horses. A local Headington man explained, “They were chaps
who got their living on the side – they were poachers, ‘orse dealers – some may
have been up straight and others may have been under-handed.”[18]The
fictional town of Raveloe from George
Eliot’s novel was also a place of travellers
and settlers who came from distant parts outside of the area, but they were
never treated with distrust, unless that is if the were seen to be clever, or
too eloquent, this would then be treated with suspicion. Thomas Hardy also speaks
of travelling gypsies in his book, travelling the country to set up their
annual fair.
But of course progress changed and continues to change the
landscape and community of these ‘rough suburbs.’ As the country went to war
and then became more modernized so these suburbs could not avoid the influence
of progress. Many of the men who had previously been poachers or horse-dealers
went to work in the factories in the city and with the advent of public
transport, in particular buses, this again encouraged the younger generations
to move out and find traditional work. “The village of the well-diggers and the
morris-dancers gave way to one in which man clocked in for work in the morning,
and took home a weekly wage.”[19]
[1]
Silas Marner – George Elliot pp2
[2] Village Life and Labour – Part 4 Quarry
Roughs’: life and labour in Headington Quarry, 1860-1920 – Raphael Samuel pp
142
[3]
Village Life and Labour – Part 4 Quarry Roughs’: life and labour in Headington
Quarry, 1860-1920 – Raphael Samuel pp 141
[4] Village
Life and Labour – Part 4 Quarry Roughs’: life and labour in Headington Quarry,
1860-1920 – Raphael Samuel pp 142
[5]
Ragged London in 1861 – John Hollingshead pp5
[6]
Alton Locke – Charles Kingsley pp 4
[7] Silas Marner – George Elliot pp2
[8]
Silas Marner – George Elliott pp2
[9] Village Life and Labour – Part 4 Quarry
Roughs’: life and labour in Headington Quarry, 1860-1920 – Raphael Samuel pp
143
[10] Village Life and Labour – Part 4 Quarry
Roughs’: life and labour in Headington Quarry, 1860-1920 – Raphael Samuel pp
141
[11]
History Workshop pamphlet, Headington Quarry and the fight for the Open
Magdalens – Jack Holland, Alun Howkins and Raphael Samuel
[12]
Catherine Furze – Mark Rutherford pp2
[13] Sailas
Marner – George Elliott pp2
[14] Sailas
Marner – George Elliott pp2
[15] Village Life and Labour – Part 4 Quarry
Roughs’: life and labour in Headington Quarry, 1860-1920 – Raphael Samuel pp
158
[16] A
Sermon Preached on Behalf of a proposed Church at Headington Quarry, Oxford
1847 – Samuel Wilberforce
[17] 1
Samuel. 22:2
[18]
HQT, Buckland, fol. B. 2.
[19] Village Life and Labour – Part 4 Quarry
Roughs’: life and labour in Headington Quarry, 1860-1920 – Raphael Samuel pp
243