19th Century

The difficult times of the late 18th Century were succeeded by a period of high prices during the Napoleonic wars, when farmers prospered but after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, there was a farming collapse, prices tumbled, and farms bought at high wartime prices were sold at a loss. There is no sign of these events in the parish books. Life as ever seemed to go on its usual quiet way, and the main concern of one of the first meetings of the century of the parish officials chaired by the Rev. Allen Cliffe was that all the people who owned land adjoining the highways should ‘cleanse and scour their ditches and lay and plaish their hedges, and crop their trees’. A new list of apprenticeships was drawn up, and a surgeon, Mr. Henry Beale appointed at a fee of £6 6s. to care for sick people in the parish who could not afford his fees. Midwifery and surgical operations were however excluded.

The reputed father of Elizabeth P’s male bastard child was to be ‘called upon in the regular way to recover the sum already paid, and insure the parish against any further expense.’ John H was to take care of his grandson, James for two years at the sum of one pound ‘except in case of broken bones or any other misforting to indemnyfy the parish from all other expenses.’ John C agreed with the Churchwardens and Overseers ‘for the house I now live in at Pemberton at the yearly rent of ten shillings for year for myself, Dolly D and Mary B to live in.’ The workhouse at the Brays does not receive any further mention, but the parish did own several houses in addition to Pemberton’s Pitch, including cottages at Smith’s Green. The parish officers were obviously in some difficulty at this stage, and in 1828, presumably as a temporary measure, the Vicar of Mathon, who owned Netherley, and lived there, rented the vicarage to the Churchwardens at £10 per annum for the use of the poor. The following year, they agreed to sell the parish houses by public auction, and build a workhouse with the proceeds opposite Pitt’s Cottage, and to enclose a piece of waste land on the opposite side of the road to use as a potato garden. None of this appears to have happened, as the parish houses were not sold for another seven years and the Vicarage was used for six more years. The provision of satisfactory housing for these poor folk must have been a most difficult problem for the unpaid parish officials, and one that local councils later found far from easy to solve. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, brought the end of outdoor relief for the poor, and set up the system of workhouses with several villages grouped together (hence ‘Union’) to share the cost of facilities. Mathon’s poor were sent to Ledbury Union Workhouse. It is sad that this well-meaning measure inaugurated a system which was dreaded by many working people for a hundred years, a miserable end which lay in wait for hard-working folk after a life of toil. The separation of man and wife, the uniform, the monotonous food, are too well known to be discussed here. It was almost certainly to fund their share of the Union workhouse that the parish sold the houses that they owned, three at Malvern Hill, two at Pemberton’s Pitch, two at Smith’s Green, and one at Moorend Cross. Mrs. Mary Ann Layton bought two houses for £70, and Peter James two more for £60. The two houses at Pemberton’s Pitch were also on sale at £60.

At this time the parish officials were concerned that 28 people had attempted to enclose land on Malvern Common, and the Hayward, Richard Woodyatt, who lived at Parker’s and earned a salary of £5 for his post, was ordered to ‘throw open and remove all encroachments.’ Legal proceedings were started against five of them. Richard was also to be ‘put upon his duty to impound any stray animal and levy a fine before releasing it.’ He was allowed to pocket the money for his trouble. If the animal was not claimed within ten days, ‘it must be cried in the churchyard, and by the Town Crier of Ledbury and Worcester and if not claimed, sold at the market to defray expenses’. He was also instructed to impound any horse, mare, gelding, mule or ass suffering from Riff, Mange, Glanders, Snitch, or any other infectious disease. He had to apprehend anyone cutting or stealing trees, brush, hop-poles, vegetables or fruit. A pound had been built at this time near the present church car park and they obviously wanted to put it to good use. The Hayward’s was clearly an important appointment, at a time when there was much interest in improving farming practice, and perhaps when fences and hedges were not so good as they might have been. The hayward might be thought to have deserved a higher salary but it was probably assumed that he would have another occupation - many men had.

For hundreds of years, people had paid one tenth of their crops and increase of live-stock to maintain the church and the parson. Rectors had been entitled to the great and small tithes, and vicars to the small tithes only. The great tithes were corn, hay, and wood, and the small tithes other crops, but especially wool and the increase of livestock, and it was to store these crops that the magnificent Tithe Barns were built, like the one at Bredon. But now, in 1836, the Tithe Commutation Act provided for tithes to be paid in cash instead of crops, and as a result, the parish, like many others, was surveyed, and a large scale map produced, measuring some 8 feet by 5 feet, showing every field; its use, whether devoted to arable, pasture or coppice; its name, its area, who owned it, who farmed it, and how much it should pay as a tithe. It was in fact, the most complete picture of the area which had ever been produced, and a splendid source of information to anyone who is interested in the parish in 1840, and containing far more information than can be condensed into the present chapter.

Perhaps the most important is land ownership. William Bateson Cliffe with 491 acres was the largest landowner, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster owned 210 acres (Church Farm) but five other people owned more than 200 acres each, four owned between 100 and 200 acres, and 26 people owned from 2 to 100 acres, so there was a good distribution of land. The largest of the mediaeval shared fields, Red Field, of 60 acres, had become no less than 26 fields, owned by 9 people. Of these nine, John South owned 4 acres of land in the parish, William Reece 11, and Thomas Hendrick 22, and the other six owned between 44 and 210 acres, so most of this common field had been acquired by the large farmers.

The land was divided roughly in halves between arable and pasture, (1404 and 1278 acres respectively). There was 108 acres of hops, so evidently local farmers thought they were a profitable crop, unlike W. Pitt1, writing in 1813, who considered they were ‘a very precarious crop, subject to changes so sudden as to baffle all human care or foresight.’ Blight and mildew were hazards, for which at the time there was no known remedy, and if that was not enough, Pitt says, they were an expensive crop to grow. At all events, hop-picking provided work for the women, who were paid 8d. per day and breakfasts (or 9d. without food) and 3 pints of beer or cider per day.

One of the few omissions of the Tithe Report is any information about fruit growing. The fields having ‘orchard’ names are shown, but it cannot be assumed that all of them were growing fruit at that time, nor that there were no fruit trees in the other fields. However, contemporary accounts make it clear that vast quantities were being grown. John Chambers2 wrote in 1816, ‘The country lying on the west side of the Malvern Hills is remarkable for the large plantations of apple and pear trees and the consequent production of cider and perry, particularly the latter, which in general is rich and of fine taste.’

There is so much in Mathon’s history in praise of cider, that it is interesting to find the following conversation recorded:3

“Master, what horses shall I take to drive cider mill?”
“D---n the cider, and the mill too; you waste one half of your time in making cider, and the other half in drinking it. I wish there was not one apple in the whole county. You all think of cider, no matter what comes of plough.”

The Census returns of the mid-19th. Century show an increasingly organized, complex and prosperous society developing, and the occupations given in the returns make interesting reading. They show a society which had not yet become dependant on the mass production of clothes, so the village had its own tailor, and some of the farmers’ wives describe themselves as ‘dressmakers’, ‘seamstresses’, or more humbly ‘plain sewing’. There were also in the village several ‘cordwainers’ (shoemakers) and we can guess that anything their shoes lacked in style, they made up for in strength. Several women were ‘glovers’ which had long been a country occupation in this area as well as in Oxfordshire, Somerset and Devon, and children began to learn the trade at seven or eight. It was said that in 18644, 3s. 6d. was paid for making up a dozen pairs of ‘best men’s gloves’, and a mother and two daughters could make up 6 pairs a day. Such occupation, along with hop-picking, the cold winter job of stone-picking in the fields, harvesting, mushrooming, and blackberry picking often meant for many village mothers and children, the difference between a basic existence and a very little comfort.

The Victorian period, like those before it, was dependent on the horse for transport. By 1900, the horse population had reached a surprising figure of 3.5 million. At the local level, in 1881, at the sale of Church Farm when Mr. Charles Oakley was ‘declining farming’, he kept 11 working horses, and had a trap and a phaeton. A whole range of occupations was centred round the horse, and many of them were represented in the parish. There had been several blacksmiths since early years. William Watkins who lived at Tadpole Cottage in 1871, Joseph Hickox born at Bosbury, who lived and worked at Horsehole, and whose name appears in the records as Ecock, Heacock and Hickok, James Brant at Ham Green, William Saice, and Henry James were among them. There were several men practising the highly-skilled craft of wheelwright: John Price, William Jones and George Price who lived at Pemberton in 1851 were some of them. There were also grooms and waggoners. Several carpenters lived in the parish, including George Pitt who lived at the cottage of that name, and Samuel Archer, who lived at Twynings House, and repaired the church gallery. A thatcher was still finding work in the village, as indeed he might have done into the next century, and there was still a miller. The Vale family, at Mathon Court, the Vicar, and some of the farmers employed servants of various kinds, cooks, housemaids, grooms, washerwomen, parlourmaids, gardeners. Rev. William S. Vale, who lived at Mathon Lodge with his wife and two children, employed a cook, nurse, housemaid, kitchen girl, groom and page. There were bakers, shopkeepers, a victualler, beer retailers and a gamekeeper. One man describes his occupation as ‘profession of drawing’, and one man simply as ‘pauper.’ The most common occupation was still agricultural labourer, despite the national statistics which show a steady decline in the number of people employed on the land. The large farms were great employers of labour for most of the century. Richard Wall, at Church Farm in 1861, employed 30 men, 2 boys and 2 women, and John Jauncey employed a similar number at Hollings Hill. There was now more movement of men from village to village in search of suitable employment and a better cottage, as the family grew. The 1851 census shows that men who were ‘head of Household’ were more likely to have been born in a village a few miles away than in Mathon itself. Thirty-three men were born in other villages and ten in Mathon. This was probably due to the system of hiring farm labour in use at the time. Men went to a central point in the village, sometimes to a ‘Mop Fair’ in a nearby town, and were hired for a year less a day or two, in a process which was much disliked by some people, who compared it to a cattle fair. There is a stone slab near the church, which is said to be a hiring stone, on which deals were struck between master and man, and a small sum of money was handed over to seal the contract. Perhaps the proximity of the church was intended to convey the binding nature of the agreement.

William D., a Mathon man, who worked as a labourer on farms in this parish, in Coddington, Great Malvern, Bromsberrow and Leigh, served two years in the militia, and worked in Hanley Castle and Leigh before returning to Mathon on old age. Not many men travelled as far as Vincent Bosworth who farmed Ham Green at this time. He was born in Northamptonshire, but we cannot tell what prompted him to travel so far in search of his farm.

A similar analysis of the wives’ places of birth shows that most of the men married girls from Mathon or Cradley. The wanderings of the family in search of a better job or accommodation can often be followed by referring to the birthplace of the children. John Hill, who farmed Bank Farm in 1851, was born in Upton, his eldest son in Upton, his daughter and next son in Munsley, and his two youngest sons in Mathon.

The practice of working on two or more jobs, ‘moonlighting’ as it is now known, is not a new phenomenon. The census returns show that it was not unusual in the village in the 19th Century. Peter James, who has already been mentioned when he bought two houses at Smiths’ Green, was a cordwainer by trade, a shopkeeper, was the parish clerk for many years, and when in 1834, the church replaced the bass viol, which with a clarionet and bassoon was used to accompany the hymn singing, it was put into his care. Thomas Ravenhill, who kept the ‘Cliffe Arms’, like his ancestor, John was a tailor and owned 22 acres of land, and Elisha Thomas, describes himself as a grocer, but found time to farm 6 acres. Those who are interested in ‘Women’s Lib’, would perhaps be surprised to see how many women were farmers, though of course some of them were widows, who continued to farm with the help of a bailiff, to supervise the daily work. In general, the need to own a little land, and produce some if not all their own food, seems to have been common amongst all who were able to do so.

The Vicar of Mathon, George Reece, farmed Netherley at this time, and in doing so, was repeating the practice of his Anglo-Saxon predecessors, who worked alongside the village people on the glebe land. Whether the vicar ploughed or supervised, evidently it was a healthy occupation. He was vicar for fifty years, and died aged 78 in 1848.

The directories published in the 19th Century such as Billings’, Kellys’ and Littlebury’s give some useful information about English villages. This is what Billings’ Directory of 1855 said about Mathon.

Rev. A. J. Douglas Vicar Pitt Robert Shoemaker
Rev. P. H. Lee Curate Price George Wheelwright
Archer Samuel Carpenter Price John Wheelwright
Atkin John Tailor Racester Ann Farmer
Bennett Thomas Farmer Racester John Farmer
Southend Mathon Lodge
Calder William Farmer Rutter Edward
Old Country
Downing John Farmer Saice William Shopkeeper and
Mathon House Blacksmith
Ecock Joseph Blacksmith Shapland John Farmer
Moorend Farm
Graves John Farmer Smith Robert Farmer
Upper House
Holyoake Mrs. Farmer South John Farmer
Croft Farm Netherley
James Peter Shopkeeper and Thomas Elisha Shopkeeper
Parish Clerk
Janucey John Farmer Thomas William Beer Retailer
Hollings Hill ‘The Case is Altered’
Jauncey Robert Farmer Trigg William Victualler
Church Farm ‘Cliffe Arms’
Johnson Charles Carpenter Wall William Farmer
Bank Farm
Jones Frederick Shoemaker

There was a small parochial school, supported by contributions and the children’s payments. Number on roll 40 Mary Ann Cohen Mistress.
William Thomas was the grandson of Thomas Ravenhill, and the inn he kept, at the present ‘Elms’ farmhouse was remembered by a Mathon resident, the late Mrs. Pollard. It had a most unusual name, ‘The Case is altered’, sometimes abbreviated to ‘Case Alter’ or just ‘Case’. The name came from a title used by Ben Jonson for a high 16th Century comedy, and refers to a story about an eminent lawyer, Plowden, who was once asked what ground there were against the owner of pigs which had invaded the complainant’s garden. “Very good grounds,” he replied, but when told that the pigs were his own, he said, “Then the case is altered.” Evidently it was a joke which was much appreciated, and passed into the collection of pub names. As there was another inn at what is now Lower Harcourt Road. ‘The Old Bell’ and a cider mill nearby, and also a beer house at Moorend Cross, there was no shortage of places where a thirsty man could find refreshment, when he had the money.

1. W. Pitt, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Worcs., 1813
2. John Chambers, A General History of Malvern, 1817
3. John Clark, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Hereford, 1794
4. Mingay, Rural Life in Victorian England, 1977