Social Snapshot articles by Joan West
From Lacey Green History
1911. Employment Analysis from the Census of Speen and Lacey Green. These figures do not include Loosley Row which are not yet to hand.
103 Agricultural Labourers were recorded. Agriculture was in severe depression with yet worst to come. Bad weather had caused crop failures so there would have been very little work and thus no pay.
28 Chair Turners, commonly called “Bodgers”. Hampden Estate ran a commercial wood. From time to time they held an auction of felled trees when a group of men would purchase one and working in the woods make it into arms and legs for the Windsor chairs made up in High Wycombe.
15 were listed as Chairmakers. A few worked for themselves at home.
There were a variety of other occupations with fewer numbers. Farmers, blacksmiths, farm bailiffs, builders, brick makers, bricklayers, carpenters, innkeepers, millers, bakers and iron founders. Denner Hill stone quarry provided a number of jobs. Denner Setts were famous cobble stones, much sought after for streets and floors. Women virtually all made lace, sometimes beaded lace, but their market was drying up. Some were dressmakers, but times were hard and most women made their own clothes. Some were servants, but there were few big houses hereabouts to employ them.
There was no doctor. For that you had to get to Princes Risborough. Occasionally a monthly nurse was in the parish after a confinement. There was always someone local able to lay people out.
1911 Life in the Parish. Analysis from the census of Lacey Green Loosley Row and Speen
Houses Large & Small. In the Parish there were very few large houses. A few farm houses were bigger but there were hardly any others. The Vicarage, Grymsdyke and Loosley House alone and a few farmers had house servants. All other homes were cottages, one up and one down with maybe a “Bucks Back” tagged on if they were lucky. These were the homes of the rest of the population.
Draughts Low out the Candles. In 1911 they would have had no foundations, no damp courses, and no cavity walls. They were very cold and damp. The windows were small, for glass was costly. It was also very thin and easily broken. These cottages and even those larger house were very draughty, enough to blow their candles out. There were of course no modern amenities. No piped water, no electricity, gas, telephone or sewerage.
Essential Fires. To keep the home dry the fire would be kept in all the time, being banked up at night. All the cooking was done over it as only the grand houses and the baker had ovens. For many centuries it had been the common right to gather fallen wood from the parish woodlands. A high wind would see women and children going to pick up this treasure. It was considered more vital than going to school. There had been vast woods here belonging to the parish up to 1823 when The Enclosure Act took place here. At that time all these woods became privately owned and were soon being felled and the timber sold. By the mid nineteenth century half the men were employed sawing down trees. By 1911 there were no sawyers left working here for all the woods had been cut down. How could they manage to keep the cottages warm and to cook now?
Research comment. These properties changed very little until after 1945 when WW2 ended. Life had been pretty bleak in the years preceding the 1914-18 war. The weather had been atrocious and crops had failed in field and garden. Agricultural labourers were not required as crops failed and that is what the majority of men did. With few vegetables to harvest in the gardens people were going hungry. So was the pig, which most people kept. It was their one source of meat but largely fed on scraps and peelings of which there was now few. The woods had gone so no free wood for the fires. Women probably went without most for the sake of their families and the birth rate dropped as they became unfit. The men were glad to go to war to earn some money when it broke out in 1914.
WW1 was followed by a flu pandemic that was said to have killed more people than all those who died in the war. From then on the country went into an economic recession which saw the General Strike, farms laying abandoned and men out of work. It was only after another war that things began to slowly improve as new homes were built in the villages to replace those bombed in the cities during the war.
1914. Local Life. click 2014 Reporting Local Life in 1914
1920 Homes and Weather pre 1950
2024 Winter Weather.