Self Sufficiency
Self-sufficiency Introduction
Even those who lived off the sea had quiet months and needed to turn their hand to other work in order to survive. The skills the locals acquired included boat building, thatching, brewing, bee-keeping and, especially vital before the NHS started in 1948, creating herbal remedies.
Anecdotes remembered
Anecdotes, often at each other’s expense, were frequently told, here are three of them.
Independent characters
Bill Ballard, his brother Alec and their close neighbour Alf Woodford, were good examples of self-sufficiency.
Home remedies
Some of the womenfolk were skilled herbalists, gathering all sorts from the hedgerows to cure every ill.
Poaching
Most plentiful then, as now, was the rabbit. A good, wholesome rabbit stew was a weekly treat.
Beachcombing
An early morning walk along the beach after a stormy night often resulted in a good find, a tin of this or that, or a useful piece of timber.
Living off the land
A good store cupboard was vital and every member of the family played their part in filling it. The hedgerows were loaded with blackberries in the autumn and these could be bottled or made into jam.
Weather forecasting
Knowing what the weather was going to do was as crucial to a good harvest as ensuring a successful washday.
Beekeeping
The Reverend Morris is known to have kept bees in the Rectory garden in the late 1800s.
Make do and mend at Bank Cottage in the 1930s
Audrey Rann describes the resourcefulness of her parents:
Mother used to make our clothes and the rag rugs for the floor. The latter would be put in front of the fire...
The deep snow of 1881
When the weather was unusually severe, the villages would be completely cut off...
A snapshot of village life
Eve O’Neil’s memories give us a snapshot of village life: On Saturday afternoon we would catch a Shotters bus to Newport...
Living at Compton Grange in the 1950s
In the 1950s domestic comforts for the villagers had not changed a great deal from the time before the first world war.
Memories of childhood summers at Dunsbury
Eve O’Neil remembers vividly her childhood summers at Dunsbury spent with her grandparents, Fred and Emily Barnes...
Cooking and everyday life
Most people kept a pig or two which would be reared, killed, then salted down and stored in a meat safe, ready to cook and eat over the coming weeks...
Growing your own
Everyone supplemented the weekly rations by living off the land and growing their own produce.