Music While You Work – 18th Century Style
Eighteenth century North Lancashire farmers clearly knew a thing or two about productivity. Schoolmaster John Lucas explains in this extract from his ‘History of Warton Parish’ how they invested in a mobile ‘Music while you Work’ system to get the most from workers at harvest time.
It makes sense to think that breaking off from the repetitive strain of bending and cutting to stretch, dance and have some fun would pay benefits in terms of an improved work-rate once the music stops.
Despite the calculation that lay behind the provision of a fiddler, there is undoubtedly a beguiling, Thomas Hardy-like quality to Lucas’s description of this scene. Once the harvest was gathered in, he says, the real party began.
“They have a merry night as they call it, against which each family of the better sort contributes, some time before, its quota of malt, which is brewed into ale , of which, and a plentiful entertainment provided at the joint expense of the masters of families, the whole village are partakers.
“The old people after supper smoak their pipes, and with great pleasure and delight behold the younger spending the evening in singing, dancing etc.”
In Carnforth, he says, the youth of the town danced under the heavens, weather permitting, “on the lower part of a little hill near Hellbank”. This place was at the meeting of four roads adjacent, says Lucas, to an ancient burial mound. I’m not certain where he means, but it could be the crossroads between North Road and Kellet Lane. The young people also had another spot in Carnforth where they gathered for dancing and sport – a patch of high ground called the Haas or Haws, which was a little west from Hellbank at the meeting of two roads. I wonder whether this is the modern Haws Hill. Here they would make a bonfire on Midsummer Day, Lucas writes, “and divert themselves by running about it, leaping over it, etc.” They would also meet here to play handball at Easter. Sadly, this bit of open ground was later enclosed and had a tithe barn built upon it…and the young-folk lost their playground: a strangely modern story.
Granville Tunnicliffe-Wilson provided the voice of John Lucas while Wendy Cann gave a rustic rendition of the hornpipe ‘Harvest Home’. My thanks to both of them.