When all depended on a good harvest in 1847

Now I do have to say I am worried about our grapes.

It has been a rotten summer and what we need is sunshine and lots of it.

Our vine was planted nearly ten years ago and despite doing all the research to find the right one for south Manchester, it didn’t really do much till last year when it took off in all directions along the south and west of our garden wall.

And with this prodigious growth  came bunches of grapes which we could eat and were happy to offer friends and neighbours.  True they were pretty small things but we had grapes.

This year the bunches are there and plenty more on last summer, but I fear they won’t ripen as well. All of which is a disappointment but is not the sort of disaster it might be if we were growing them for money.

And I was reminded of this after a recent visit to a winery out towards Bradford in Holmfirth.  The owner remained quietly confident but that reliance on the weather is something that I most of us no longer appreciate.  Our food comes from supermarkets that can source the world and a poor harvest here will usually be matched by crops grown in the sun on the other side of the world.

All of which is a lead in to another of those reflections on farming here in Chorlton in the 19th century as we head towards harvest time.

“The summer of 1847 promised to be a good one which was an important consideration for a rural community and a good starting point for our story.  

After all 96 of our families were engaged in some form of farming and so a good harvest would put food on the table, guarantee work for the many and help the village through the dark cold winter a head.  

Equally important for the sixteen families who made their living as tradesmen and retailers the harvest was central to their fortunes.  Only the gentry might be more relaxed at the weather.  But even they would have been aware of the distress and possible social unrest which might follow a bad year in the fields. 

Three years before there had been a bad summer, which had meant a meagre hay crop and even more disastrous harvest.  The following year had proved little better and this further aggravated the poor condition of the livestock.  And while the cycle of bad summers was broken in 1846 leading to a plentiful harvest, the potato blight which had first appeared the year before now devastated the crop and led to the first famine year in Ireland.  We were luckier.  It had been a very dry and cold winter and less than an inch of rain fell through January, March, April and July and the summer months proved to be very hot.”*

*Chapter 2, from the Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, available next month, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the Lloyd collection