In the early years of the 20th century, however, “lifestyle” was very different; today the three houses have their own identity, but recollections of my mother's, and of the subject of this account, Herbert Beresford, suggest a more communal experience. Everyone knew their neighbours - “Goatscliffe” on a letter would have been sufficient to find someone living there, and there was just one landlord. They, and other properties in the immediate neighbourhood were part of the Stoke Hall Estate, with their present identities being settled upon only when the properties were sold to individual owners when the Estate was broken up in 1953.

My mother lived in the middle cottage until shortly before she died, and she was visited there in the early 1980s by a lady named Sheila Llewellyn. Sheila was looking for the house where her father, Herbert Beresford, had spent several happy years of his childhood. At the time my mother wasn't able to help her, as she had no recollection of his family, but a few years later, when the 1891 census was released, Sheila found the necessary confirmation. Her grandparents, Joseph Beresford, his wife Lydia, daughter Annie, and sons David, Herbert and William, were the first household enumerated on the Stoke, 1891 Census.

A plan which Herbert drew of his home indicates they lived in the house now known as ‘Goatscliffe Cottage’, although they may have known it as “Fair Flora Farm” (as recalled by Sheila's sister). The Beresford family lived there from about 1889 to 1902; but my mother wasn't born until 1905, so understandably she would not have known of them. Nevertheless the account which follows, the bulk of which comprises a series of Herbert's “recollections” does paint a similar picture to my mother, of her own childhood, and they must have shared many of the same experiences growing up.

I was delighted to make contact with Sheila myself in 1992, when I wrote to her following her request for help in ‘Branch News’, the Journal of the Derbyshire Family History Society in June of that year. She was seeking the location of Hospital Row, Walton, Chesterfield, where her father was born. We had a lot to talk about in the following exchange of letters; whilst I was able to provide background information about Goatscliffe generally, she shared transcriptions of notes she'd made from conversations with her father prior to his death in 1961, and also details of further research she'd done on quarrying, leadmining and (as one might now term it) “lifestyle”.

She most generously gave me permission to use “any of the information from (her) father's notes or that (she) sent (me)”, in any history of Goatscliffe which I wrote, and her father “would be quite delighted if he knew his memories were being incorporated”.

Sadly, I have now learned that Sheila passed on herself in 1999, just before completion of a book she was writing about Clifton Hampden^[a], a village near to where she lived in Burcot, Oxfordshire. Fortunately, it was completed by another resident of the village, and has now been published privately, no doubt according to Sheila's wishes. I hope in turn she would have been equally delighted that her Goatscliffe research now has the potential to reach a wider audience.

Herbert BERESFORD was born in 1885, and his younger brother William (“Bill”) was born in 1888; both are shown on their Birth Certificates to have been born at ‘Hospital Row, Walton, Chesterfield’.^[1]

Their father Joseph was a quarryman, and had had the somewhat unusual experience of emigrating twice to the USA. Immediately after his marriage to Lydia WEBSTER, in 1871, they journeyed to the mid-west of the United States, probably settling firstly near Duluth, and later, after crossing the Red River Valley, near Bismarck. Two daughters were born out there, both of whom died; and Joseph and Lydia both contracted some recurring infection, said perhaps erroneously to have been malaria, which resulted in them being so badly incapacitated that they decided to return to England. Joseph later went out again by himself, obtained a quarter section of land, then came back to Derbyshire to collect Lydia, but she refused to go - to which Sheila's comment was - “I can't say I blame her”!

Herbert's account also tells us something of Joseph's life too. From census and parish registers we know he was born at Littlemoor, Riber (Matlock) c1842, the son of David BERESFORD, a farmer, and Ann née BARTON. They married at Matlock on 20th June 1836, and Sheila also discovered David listed on the Tithe Apportionment of 1837, as a tenant of the Nightingale family. Joseph's own working background was however lead-mining and quarrying, and it may have been the possibilities of work at Stoke Quarry which led them to settle at Goatscliffe, where it is likely a house would be on offer along with the job to anyone willing to work there; then later to move to Hathersage to set up their own business, at Leadmill, and afterwards at Fallcliff Quarries.

Sheila was also a member of the BERESFORD Family Association, although sadly she was never able to establish for certain her great grandfather's connection with the major lines being researched.

What follows was compiled from notes dictated by her father in 1958, and from subsequent letters between Sheila and her father; however this unique account paints a vivid picture of what life must have been like for many families in country villages in that most peaceful of times prior to the First World War, when summers were always long and hot, and lemonade was cool...

NB: Section subtitles have been added by the Editor.

At Goatscliff we had fourteen acres of land and kept four cows, which would be sent to summer at Calton Pastures overlooking Stoke Hall. Mother made mead which father said was as strong as spirits. She made her own cottage cheese. Milk was 2½d a quart. We killed our own pigs^[2] and would have four hams and four sides of bacon hanging from the ceiling. Mother salted this herself. We had a big stone slab, and all round the edge was a ¾-inch groove to run the brine off. The bacon was rubbed first on the flesh side and then on the skin side with salt and saltpetre until it wouldn't absorb any more, then laid out flat. All farm houses had strong hooks fixed to the joists in the pantry to hang the bacon.

I never saw anyone who could knit as fast as mother. The needles went like lightning. She knitted long stockings for us, until we were all grown up, and also made all the shirts for dad and three boys. I think she was a remarkable woman. Yet she found time for reading, and made jams and marmalade, and sausages and black puddings and pork pies when the pigs were killed. I am amazed when I think of it all.

When we lived there the son of the boss at the quarry was a spirited character and he used to be fond of cock fights on the quiet. He had an old English game cock - a special fighting breed, and we had a couple of barnyard cockerels. His bird and ours were housed about seventy yards apart, his higher up the hillside, and they used to crow defiance at each other. One day one of our barnyard cockerels went up on his own to do battle and met the game cock at the top farm. They fought all afternoon and finally ours slew the game cock and came home full of wounds and honour - but then the other cockerel got him when he was at a disadvantage and bit him until he went and hid himself. The boss's son was quite crestfallen at the defeat of his fighting cock by a barnyard cockerel.

I had a jackdaw^[4] which came from Stoney Middleton. The young fellow who obtained him got him from a nest in the limestone cliffs. At that time you could get a young jackdaw for a shilling, when they were nearly ready to leave the nest. He had a cage, but only slept in it. He was quite free and would ride on my shoulder when I took my Dad's and David's dinner to the quarry. One day we met the traction engine hauling stone from Stoke Quarry where they worked at that time. Jack was much alarmed at the rumbling, puffing monster, and flew away, but circled back to my shoulder when it had passed.

He had a very bright and wicked eye, and looked as though Satan dwelt within him. He would hop down the passage into the room^[5], when we sat at table, fly onto the table, and raid the butter dish, with a squawk, and be gone in a flash with a huge lump of butter in his beak. Out in the fields he would stand beside a stone fallen off a wall, and look up at me, to turn it over for him. There would be a dozen insects running for cover, but Jack's beak was up and down like a pneumatic road drill, and few got away.

We had a stone water trough at the kitchen door, with a tap and a board to put buckets on whilst they filled from the tap. In summer he would stand on the board and flutter his wings, inviting me to turn a little drip of water on him. He loved to bathe himself, and was very indignant if I or David turned the tap on full. He would squawk angrily and hop away. He would sit on the yard gate and imitate the fowls and turkeys. I don't think he was a year old when he died. We had killed a pig, and he stuffed himself with the scurfy scrapings off its skin and next morning he was dead. I wept - I was about fourteen at the time, having just left school.

(The family would have moved to Hathersage and took on Fallcliff Quarry after the above account.)

You know an ordinary stone jam pot with a ribbed outside. They were made in a plaster mould an inch or an inch and a half thick. They were sold in the country districts for the women to ornament the doorstep and the flag floors. Mother would draw a line six inches from the wall and then fill this border with a design of criss-cross lines about an inch apart. The middle of the floor was covered with a coat of sand.^[6] My brother Bill and I used to spend part of Saturday morning crushing small pieces of stone - sandstone picked up in the lane outside - to spread on the floors.

This was a little farm - fourteen acres.

I left school at the age of thirteen.^[7]

Lighting was by paraffin lamps and candles. Most of the time there was a hanging lamp from the ceiling, paraffin candles and tallow dips, which were like a cigar in shape.

We used to be put to bed with the warming pan-in winter, and it had a lovely sulphury smell.

Washing: All was wrung out by hand, but in later times there was a mangle. Plenty to do but money was scarce. Dad worked at the Quarry (Fallcliff) and when he finished the wages were only about 7d an hour for quarrymen. We had to take a lodger in to help out - a fellow called Wilf Wane. He was rather a rackety type and was fond of saying, “I don't care, Mrs. Beresford, I don't care if I die drunk”, to which she would reply that he would probably get his wish. He would go from one pub to another in a dog cart, and come home lashing the horse and going round the corner on one wheel. Once he was thrown out, and he told her, “I thought of what you said, Mrs. Beresford; as I flew through the airs”.

Beningborough Hall, An Old Mangle

The fire bars were set diagonally and an iron hook fitted onto them. A little gadget with a hook on it was quite sufficient to take all the irons, which had to be well wiped before use. [Ed: When she was at school, Sheila mentioned using a ‘sleeve’ herself, which the iron fitted into to go onto the fire to prevent the iron itself getting dirty.]

Baking: If we had any candied peel or raisins or currants mother used to give us a handful mixed with coarse oatmeal and sugar for a treat. (Note from Roger [Ed: Sheila's brother]- Dad also mentioned turnip slices with sugar as a treat.)

Oatcakes: These were made on a hot bakestone of very thick porous sandstone which would not crack with the heat. It was an inch thick round the edge and two inches in the middle. The oatcakes were turned over with a “back spittle” or “sprittle”. This was made out of a big slab of very thin wood made like a shovel. Mother made a dozen loaves twice a week in a big panshion. She had a bit of muslin cloth with some hardish fat in it, probably suet. When she had taken an oatcake off she rubbed this over the bakestone.

Sugar was in little thin flat lozenges, 5/16ths of an inch long, 1/4" wide, and 1/6th thick, and glassy looking oblongs. It was called crystallised sugar.

Froggatt Edge, The Pinnacle Click to see larger version

Going up into the mountain at Easter probably originated from some old fertility rite. On Easter Monday the boys and girls of the village all brought sticks of liquorice and boiled sweets at the local shop. These were crammed into a medicine bottle, and filled up with water. Then it was shaken until it all dissolved. It was called “shak”.[b] Mother gave us something to eat and we took it up onto Froggatt Edge - a party of twenty or thirty of us. There was a very big rock[8] up there, where we played and drank our “pop”. The boys would go and bathe, and there would be a lot of horseplay - the girls didn't join in.

Dad (Joseph Beresford) kept bees, and rendered down beeswax and could always, when he had a stock, sell it to the housekeeper at Chatsworth. So I was sent off with about 10 or 14 lbs. I had to ask for Mrs. .... I don't remember the name - but anyway, a rather shy and nervous boy^[9], I was introduced to what I thought was a very grand lady indeed. I think she must have been like the housekeeper in Bleak House, Mrs. Rouncewell. She received me kindly, gave me the money for the wax, and inquired if I was hungry.

I had walked seven miles carrying the wax, so the answer was in the affirmative. So she called a stately gentleman, and as it says in Scott's poem, “bade him the menials tell that they should tend the young man well.” The gentleman took me into a long room, and put me down opposite himself, at the end of a long table. I gathered they were expecting a house party, and all the London servants were down as well as the Chatsworth staff. I think the man in charge of me must have been the butler. He said grace and did some of the carving. He gave me a large helping and I soon polished it off.

There was a beautiful little beer barrel with brass bands and taps at each end. It ran on brass wheels, all highly polished, right down the middle of the table, and people from either side filled their glasses as it progressed along. I think there must have been a combined staff of about a hundred. My gentleman got me a bottle of lemonade, as he said I was too young for beer. The second course was plum pudding, and as I got it down a young woman opposite said, “I wish I had an appetite like that boy.” Then, a well fed boy, I set off home again. Taught to clean up my plate, my frugal up-bringing was much shocked by the huge basket of leftovers after each course. I suppose they were “pampered menials” as the saying is, but I have only a memory of kindness to a rather bewildered country boy. That would be 55 to 60 years ago in the spacious days of great Victoria. A duke was no small beer in those days.

Father wintered a few sheep at Longshaw Lodge. David (brother) used to go up as a boy to see they were all right, and one day the gamekeeper took him to see the butler - they were wanting a boy.^[10] They showed him round and took him down in the cellar to see the Twelve Apostles. These were huge beer barrels, higher than a man, and each had an apostle's name inscribed on it. They all sampled some of the contents of “The Apostle Paul”, which I suspect was one of the main objects of the trip. David did not go to work there. I think Father was too independent to fancy his lad in gentleman's service.

His job was firing a boiler and “tenting” an engine at a bleach works. He started at 2/6d (£0.12.5) a week. One pay day he found half a crown (the same amount) on the way to work. He never in all his life felt so well off again. His first job was at a farm some miles from home. He was seven, and the food was shocking. The bread was made from flour ground from their own corn which had sprouted in the ear in a bad season. He said the middle of the loaves were ropey, which I think meant they were doughy. It was a treat to walk home on Sundays and get a bit of white bread.

Then when he got a bit bigger he worked for his father, who hired him out with the horse and cart, to cart lead slag from the hillsides around Matlock down to a smelting furnace in the valley. This slag had been smelted in Roman times, on hillsides exposed to strong winds, with wood fires. There was a large percentage of lead left in the resultant residue, and heaps containing thousands of tons were at that time being carted down to where they had installed a furnace, driven by water or steam which drove fans to provide forced draught.

There are several old furnaces in this district. Leadmill gets its name from that. The pond against Askew's house provided water from Highlow Brook to drive the fan, which was across the road. There is lead slag in the ground all round the back of the pub. They cannot keep fowls, they always die of bellond, i.e. lead poisoning. There was another furnace up at the top of Hathersage Dale, the foot path to Burbage Bridges runs past it. If you go up that way you are going up the “Cuperlow”. There was another in Haywood, Grindleford. The little wheel pit and hand-sunk stone spouting, displaced to some extent by tree roots, will be there to this day. I played around them many a time as a boy.^[11]

He, as I said in another place, worked at quarrying stone at Riber. Then he and my Uncle had a quarry called Foxholes which they worked for a time. By this time he would have arrived at man's estate, and I suppose would in the next few years marry Mother. I don't know if the old people had died. (No, for David and Annie were both born after they came back.) Uncle Tom's Cabin was much in the public mind at that time, and Father, reading it, was much upset by the death of little Eve. Annie was a baby.

John Webster (grandfather - Lydia's father) - his wife was a Steele - was a mine captain at Cawdor Mine at Matlock. He could neither read nor write, but was very good at figures, and if any problems came up he would work them out on Sunday morning in chalk on the flagstones.

When the mine closed down, the lead vein having petered out, it being the time when they are building the railways, he went railway tracking, and they were driving the tunnel at Dove Holes on the High Peak Railway, and they struck a very wet patch. The contractors used to take a distance of heading. Grandfather having a lot of sons had a contractors gang from his own family of six big young fellows. (Uncle Jim would still be a boy at home with mother.) The chaps who were driving this heading struck this wet patch with a terrible amount of water, and first one contractor took it on and gave up and then another.

Grandfather was approached and asked if he would tackle it, and told he could have a good price, and if that didn't pay - well, they would see that it did pay. That was when the family fortunes were built up temporarily! They were fortunate in getting quickly past the wet ground and through into normal ground - all at the special high rates. Mother used to go from Matlock to Wirksworth. Your grandfather used to bring money down as Matlock was not then modern enough to have a Bank. Your grandmother used to walk over the hills with the money and was told to vary the times when she went to avert any one waylaying her.

Grandfather Webster died of pneumonia. Grandmother Webster died earlier, quite young, and left mother looking after Uncle Jim and Aunt Martha. She was only fourteen.

Aunt Martha took service as a domestic servant with a chap who kept a boarding house at Matlock, and Ouida came to stay there. Mr. Steele had been a gentleman's valet, so had a good presence and address. [Ed: It isn't clear to me who ‘Ouida’ was]

They used to work weaver's looms. My Grandmother and her daughters used to weave with the cottage looms - which was be ore the industrial revolution. Mother worked in the ribbon mills at Masson.

Father came back from America a second time. He had taken up a quarter section of land in Dakota or Montana, paid the registration fee, and signed for it, and had to return in twelve months to get a percentage of it cultivated under a crop of some kind and put up some sort of a dwelling, even if only a hut built of sods. A quarter of a section was about 150 acres.^[12] But mother would not go.

Famous Boxer ‘Bendigo’.^[13] My father worked at a bridge over the Trent. He was doing work for the stonemasons with quarrying tools, as many of the stones needed a good deal removing. There was a big gang of masons, and Bendigo came out of curiosity to see the work on the bridge. He had been “got at” by the Salvation Army, and converted, but he would break out from time to time. When he came back to the fold they would have him in Nottingham Market to testify that the devil had led him into his misdeeds. When he had had something to drink he was very quarrelsome - and in his prime a formidable person with whom to quarrel. He would walk through the Market and pick things up and throw them down. All who could, kept out of his way. He came on the job in this condition and insulted a young mason, who then answered him back. Bendigo was going to knock him down out of hand, but the young man raised his wooden mallet to defend himself. The foreman feared there would be murder done, and crushing his hard hat under his elbow, jumped up and down, crying, “For God's sake, William Thompson, don't strike him.” That was Bendigo's name. I have wondered if he had been to the diggings in Australia to get that nickname. ^[14]

Father had another story of when he was a boy working in a turnip field with a very old man who had witnessed the execution of some rioters in the Stockingers

Riots in Nottingham. They had broken up machines, set fire to mills, etc. The old man had not got his words right. He said, when the victim's head was cut off, the executioner held it up and said, “This is the head of a raifer.”

They installed stone sawing machinery at Stoke Quarry, and your Uncle David was much interested in it. Then the boss, old Joe Turner^[15], angry one day because he had found his son, who was in charge of the quarry, drunk in the office, started taking it out on the men. He made a row with your Uncle, who “jacked up”^[16] as the saying was. No notice was necessary in those days. There were no cards to stamp. Men were hired and fired at a moment's notice, and they would throw up a job themselves if work was plentiful, and go on the road, especially if it was summer time. In winter they were a bit less independent. So David got a job elsewhere. There were several little quarries working in the district.

After a time, having the idea of sawing up stone instead of laboriously splitting, shaping and dressing it by hand, he persuaded Father to approach Colonel Shuttleworth about taking the derelict corn mill at Leadmill. The Squire agreed to let the Mill for £25 a year and find £100 to recondition the waterwheel, and clean out the upper and lower goyts (mill streams). So the farm stock and implements were sold, the sawing machine was installed, and we came to live at the cottage under the viaduct at Hathersage.

Then the wire mill was let, so, as the new tenant wanted the house which belonged to the premises, we went to a new house in Crossland Road, and in a year or two the Squire agreed to find £200 to build the house by the mill. There was an old house, uninhabitable, as it was flooded when the river rose, being very low (an old man told us he had seen flood water half way up the face of the grandfather clock). So the old stone was used again, and the stone slates, and the old flag stones were used for pathways.

But even in those times the £200 did not suffice, but it was such a convenience to be on the job, we bore the rest of the cost. Then the tenant of the Quarry at Fallcliff gave up, and sold us his old cranes and tools, so we had a source of supply. We had bought saw blocks from several sources, even having it hauled by traction engine from Birchover, near Rowsley. After the First World War, concrete masonry began to cut the ground from under our feet, and it was a losing fight, right up to the Second World War, when we finally gave up.

[Summary of recordings of conversations Sheila Llewellyn had with her father, Herbert Beresford in 1958]

Additional Notes

[1] ‘Hospital Row’ is now called ‘Lodge Cottages’ - they front the busy main road to Matlock. (Sheila Llewellyn)

[2] One of Julie Bunting's articles[c] recounts:

“each cottager in Derbyshire had a pig-sty in front of his house door, at the bottom of his garden, or as lean-to at the corner of his habitation... but when it was said that pigs kept under such conditions were injurious to health this mode was declared to be bad... Yet it went against the grain to do this for no cottager could be made to believe that to keep his pig so near his home was in any way detrimental to health, and the doctors were soundly berated for their ignorance.”

All three of the houses at Goatscliffe would have had at least one outbuilding, and in the case of Goatscliffe Farm, several, known to have been used as a pig styes; their use may well have been brought to an untimely end in 1899, when the bylaw was passed prescribing the distance a pig sty should be from the home. After that time, the Inspector of Nuisances could be called to remove swine housed too near to dwellings. On the other hand, perhaps the Inspectors never reached Goatscliffe. I recall as a child being able to climb the back wall of our garden, and look over into the ‘croft’ of Goatscliffe Farm (which was almost on a level with the top of our wall), to see old jaw bones, which my mother told me were the remains of pigs that had been slaughtered - so I was viewing what I suppose archaeologists would call “the kitchen midden”. As a child I found the sight quite terrifying, but of course I would dare myself to look.... (Rosemary Lockie)

[3] The ‘House Place’ was a common name for the cooking and workplace area, where the fireplace and bakestone (pronounced ‘bak-stun’) would be, and of course the sink, where the washing would be done - I've also seen it used in Wills, and elsewhere. Its nearest equivalent today would be probably a large kitchen, with a communal living area. (Rosemary Lockie)

[4] Keeping Jackdaws may well have been quite common, although I hadn't known until I read Herbert's account how they were acquired. My mother's family had one too; he would follow them around - sitting on the table, or, in a photograph I used to have (now discarded as it was very faded), perching on my grandmother's head! It looked as though she had a ‘help’ bubble above her head, and especially in the way she was looking up and sideways at him as if she might be saying... “hey, I've just had an idea!!” The custom was also possibly reflected in my mother's saying that “The crows all go home to Stoney Middleton at night!” (Rosemary Lockie)

[5] This was probably their sitting room, and might have been referred to simply as ‘The Room’. It sounds somewhat incongruous out of context to call a room ‘The Room’, but my mum did! She lived in the house she was born in almost all her life, and so far as I can tell, the names she used for the two downstairs rooms in her home were what they'd been when she was a child, namely the ‘House Place’ (we'd now call it the ‘Living Room’) and ‘The Room’. ‘The Room’ was usually too cold to live in, as although it had a fireplace it was usually only lit at Christmas and for special occasions - we have a lot to be thankful for for Central Heating! (Rosemary Lockie)

[6] The floors were of course also stone-flagged, as were the work surfaces on which the pig would have been cut up - the latter were scoured regularly, using soap, water, and a special fine-grained “rubbing-stone” - stone in the area was plentiful, so why not use it?! My mother also told me their floor coverings were often ‘rag rugs’, with later the ‘luxury’ of coconut matting, so the sand covering must have been before her time. Sheila also found other references to the custom of scattering sand in her research. ^[d] (Rosemary Lockie)

[7] Herbert went to Grindleford Bridge School, and Sheila had a book which he won as a prize there in 1898, ‘for regular attendance’. On leaving school, he went to work on the farm at Goatscliff. (Sheila Llewellyn)

[8] Thought to be the rock-formation on Froggatt Edge known as “The Pinnacle”. (Sheila Llewellyn)

[9] Herbert was probably about 12 years old at the time, c 1898. (Sheila Llewellyn)

[10] That is, they were looking for a boy to employ on the staff. (Sheila Llewellyn)

[11] Herbert talks about playing in Haywood - growing up at Goatscliffe myself, that never seemed very practical, as it was on the other side of the River Derwent, which was fast-flowing, and in places deep. Sheila however said her father talked about being able to walk across the river in dry spells. She was also of the opinion that boys may have been freer than girls to play away from home, which of course may have been so, as my mother never mentioned playing in Haywood either. (Rosemary Lockie)

[12] I think a section was 640 acres [not 150]. (Sheila Llewellyn)

[13] “Bendigo” was a ‘bare-knuckle’ fighter. Outdoor boxing matches were a popular spectator-sport, and thousands watched Bendigo fight Bill Looney on a hill opposite Slack Hall, Chapel en le Frith in 1837. The contest lasted through 99 rounds, lasting over 2 hours, Looney finally accepting defeat. The marathon contest subsequently caused quite a stir, both locally, and nationwide, with 'Every stable in Chapel en le Frith taken, and ... hardly any hay or corn to be bought for miles..., and a write-up in the aptly-named magazine 'Fistiana'. [e].

There are several (brief) accounts of him online, for instance an article on Wikipedia on William Thompson (boxer).(Rosemary Lockie)

[14] According to some sources it was the other way round! Former online resources stated that Bendigo in Australia was named (indirectly) after William ‘Abednego’ Thompson! (Rosemary Lockie)

[15] See the account of Percy J. Turner Ltd., which mentions Percy's father Joseph, and brother George being in charge of the Stoke Hall Quarry at the time Herbert would be living at Goatscliffe. (Rosemary Lockie)

[16] “Jacking up” would involve simply walking out of the job, but first making sure to have one's own set of stoneworking tools, which would be “sammied up” (collected up) into a bag or pouch made out of sacking. (Rosemary Lockie)

Bibliography

[a] Llewellyn, Sheila - Clifton Hampden - The View from the Bridge, completed after her death, and published privately. The copyright is held by The Friends of St Michael and All Angels Church.

[b] Opie, Iona and Peter - The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren.
“The one drink exclusive to children is the Scottish and North country ‘sugarolly water’, which they make out of a fragmented liquorice stick, sugar, and warm water, shaken up in a bottle and left as long as possible in a cupboard until the concoction becomes nice and black. This they offer (just a sip) with the words:

‘Sugarolly water, black as the lum (chimney),
Gather up sticks (or peens) and ye'll all get some.’

‘Sugarolly water’, also known as ‘Spanish Juice’... or ‘Spanish liquorice water’ (‘fit for a lady's daughter’), or in the West Riding, as ‘spaw water’, or ‘poplolly’, used to be a favourite beverage at Easter (‘Spanish Day’), and is still made at this holiday by the Pace Eggers around Halifax.”

[c] Bunting, Julie - Killing the Christmas Pig. Article published in The Peak Advertiser, 18th December 1995.

[d] Porteous, Crichton - Portrait of Peakland. Published by Robt. Hale, 1963.
“A quarry with an unusual reputation was that called ‘Peep o' Day’, near the highest point of the road from New Smithy to Hayfield... The stone from ‘Peep o' Day’ was first broken by whip-hammer into fist-sized lumps, then ... crushed as fine as possible, to be supplied to rag-and-bone dealers. Carpets were rare and dear, and would have soon worn through on stone floors, therefore nearly everybody scattered sand (sometimes in special patterns) over their ground-floor rooms. Stone which broke to fine dust would have been dirty and a nuisance, but the ‘Peep o' Day’ stone fell to very tiny, bright flints, which were too heavy to fly as dust... ‘Peep o' Day’ silver floor sand was thought to be ideal.”

Also from London Cries:
“Sand was generally used in London, not only for cleaning kitchen utensils, but for sprinkling over uncarpeted floors as a protection against dirty footsteps. It was sold by measure - red sand, twopence halfpenny, and white a penny farthing per peck. The very melodious catch, ‘White Sand and grey sand, who'll buy my White Sand?’ was evidently harmonised on the sand-seller's traditional tune.”

[e] Bunting, Julie - Up To Scratch. Article published in The Peak Advertiser, 2nd January 2006, p1 & p13.