One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ... part 136 ….. the pig in the garden

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since. *

In the farmyard, 1844

Now I can be fairly confident that Joe and Mary Ann Scott never kept pigs in the garden, despite burying some of their pets there.

But step back just a handful of decades and the “family pig” would have been a common sight here in Chorlton along with a clutch of chickens.

These were kept in the back garden or yard and could be fed on almost anything and would provide a family with food for almost the entire year.

As well as fresh pork there was salted bacon, cured ham, lard, sausages and black pudding.

Beyond its food value the dead pig offered its pigskin for saddles, gloves, bags and footballs while the bristles could be used for brushes and an average pig gave a ton of manure a year.

All of this was fine but often the pig became a family pet which made its killing just that bit harder.  Not that this halted the inevitable, which tended to be done in winter.

The family pig, 1844

It was reckoned that the cooler months should be preferred given that in the words of the farming expert Henry Stephens, “the flesh in the warm months is not sufficiently firm and is then liable to be fly born before it is cured.” **   

So, the traditional time was around Martinmas in early November which had the added advantage that cured hams would be ready for Christmas.

As for the slaughtering of the pig this was done by the local butcher who was often paid in kind, and could be a traumatic event for both pig and family.

Not that there was any set way to carry this out and stories abound of botched attempts all of which led Stephen’s to recommend that the pig be placed on a bed of straw and the knife inserted into the heart.

The event was very much a family affair with everyone pitching in to scrap the hair clean from the body by either immersing it in boiling water or pouring the scalding water over the carcase, and later salting down the meat.  Immediately after it had been killed it was hung and left for the night before being cut up.

It was a time-consuming job to rub salt into the hams and not a pleasant one either.  First the salt had to be crushed from a salt block which was then rubbed into the meat.

A side could be anything up to four feet [1.2 metres] in length and special care had to be taken to rub the salt into the bone joints.  All of this left the hands red raw.

The Common fowl, 1844

Nor was this the end of the process.  The meat then had to be soaked in water and dried before being wrapped in muslin and hung up.  Meanwhile some of the pork might be cooked up into pies and the blood made into black pudding.

The family pig was indeed an important part of how many in the township supplemented their earnings.  But pigs were part of the local economy and both farmers and market gardeners would find keeping pigs a profitable undertaking.

As we have seen they could be fed on almost anything.  In winter this might be potatoes or turnips and in summer they could be left to graze in a grass field.  The going rate at market in 1844 for a pig was anything between 24s [£1.20p] and 30s [£1.50p].

Our old friend Henry Stephens calculated that two brood sows could produce 40 pigs between them and that retaining six for home use the remaining 34 could easily be sold at market.

So many of the smaller farmers and market gardeners in the township might well keep at least one sow and use it to supplement their income. The same was true of poultry which existed happily enough in a back garden or farmers’ yard.  But I doubt that there was much to be made from selling the eggs.

Mr. Gratrix's field and farm buildings, 1854

A dozen eggs in the summer of 1851 might cost 4d [2p] a dozen and rise in price to 8d [4p] later in the year.

Enterprising farmers and market gardeners might store up summer eggs to sell in the winter.  

This involved smearing them with butter or lard while still warm and packing them in barrels of salt, oats or melted suet then transport them into the city or sell them to egg merchants who visited on a weekly basis.

All of which may seem a long way from Joe and Mary Ann but not so, because the site of the house they built in 1911 was once farmed by Samuel Gratrix.

Bagel and Tamla, circa mid 1980s

His farmhouse stood on the corner of Beech and Beaumont Roads, and I am sure he would have kept chickens if not pigs, as would the Bailey family whose farm house stood on the site of what is now Ivy Court, and the Sutton’s cottage which is underneath the Launderette.

And there may well be people who remember Chorlton chickens in theirs or other people’s gardens.

At home in Peckham during the 1950s our next door neighbour had chickens and a decade later I can remember  the man who lived beside my grandparents in Derby owning a load of pigs which lived happily at the bottom of the garden.

So that is it, the pigs and chickens come from Henry Stephens manual to farming which was first published in the 1840s and was reprinted throughout the 19th century, and the pictures of the cats, Tamla and Harvey along with Bagel the Labrador who lived with us.

Leaving me just to add that Tamla and Harvey are buried in the garden, along with a small plastic figure of Superman, but that is another story

Harvey, circa mid 1980s

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; from the Book of the Farm Henry Stephens, Vol 11 1844, Mr. Gratrix's field and farm buildings, 1854, from the OS map of Lancashire, 1854, courtesy of Digital archives Association, https://digitalarchives.co.uk/and collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

** The Book of the Farm, Henry Stephens, 1844

***THE STORY OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, Andrew Simpson, 2012, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html