How self-sufficient were the Marlows in Hampstead?

[nickwhit.livejournal.com]

A couple of references I noticed in the earlier books - in Autumn Term when they go home for half term and Giles turns up unexpectedly at breakfast he asks for eggs if the hens are still laying - not an exact quote as I don't have my copy to hand. Then in TMATT when Peter can't identify the thing which goes over his head to protect himself from the glare whilst signalling, he compares it to 'the thing his mother put over her head when she went out to the beehives'. Are we to assume that in the 50s an upper-middle-class family like the Marlows would have had hens and bees in the back garden? I can't really square that with the way Patrick describes the garden of the Hampstead house in Attic term. Any social historians out there?

Comments

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

Food rationing continued until 1953, and that included eggs; anybody who had enough space kept hens, and that particularly included upper-middle-class properties. And once hens were there, they tended to continue to be there. I'm also not at all sure where they would have been able to buy eggs locally; villages tended to have just a "general store", often combined with a post office but they didn't sell perishables - these were usually from deliveries, and therefore took a considerable amount of planning in advance. Even in my London childhood, a bread van came around.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

And as for bees in Hampstead: again, sugar was rationed.

[lobeliaqueen.livejournal.com]

Are the Marlows in Hampstead during Attic Term or are still in, IIRC, Marlow? They had to leave the London house after it was bomb damaged and I think had only moved back shortly before they moved to Trennels.

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

Mr Merrick bought the London house when he became an MP. So we know about the house in At from Patrick's perspective ... neighbouring gardens sprout swimming pools in his absence so I'd think there'd be room for a henhouse and a beehive!

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

Keeping hens was very popular with the Mitford sisters - I think there are still hens at Chatsworth - so I doubt there is a class problem with it. I imagine that all kinds of people who had the space kept hens during the WW11 for to supplement egg rationing, and some might have just kept doing it. I think that rationing continued into the late forties, so there could have still been practical reasons in Autumn Term.

[bluebellbicycle.livejournal.com]

Plus there is the money bit; even though they are upper middle class they seem quite poor and used to making do and being thrifty (cutting up old dresses to make new). Buying eggs and honey when they could easily produce them themselves wouldn't fit into that ethos.

[nickwhit.livejournal.com]

I'm also interested that Mrs Marlow takes no part in the running of the farm at Trennels - perhaps because she has Mrs Bertie? Or more likely because of the timeline - it becomes less likely in the 1970s that she would have kept bees?

[richenda.livejournal.com]

I'd have thought it still very likely in the 1970s. There was a resurgence in bee-keeping in the late 1960s. If i remmeber the very funny beekeeping book that i owned in 1966, I'll post it. it was full of useful inforamation as wel las being very funny.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I can't remember how Patrick describes the garden, but you don't need much space for a hencoop and run. There might also have been a garden not attached to the house, but belonging to it, or indeed someone else's garden in which the beehives were situated (because I assumes you don't want beehives right by the back door).

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

They would definitely have had hens - in 1940s Britain, you used every available patch of space to grow your own food to supplement the rations, and most people kept hens. My grandparents certainly did, right up until my grandfather died in 1957.

My parents and brother still keep bees - at least, I don't think they do personally, but bees are kept on their land (and very good honey it is, too!).

[nickwhit.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't think the bees are mentioned again after TMATT - so it looks like they only kept them in Hampstead, not at Trennels.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've just remembered that they are still in London in TMATT -confusing it with another book for some reason - so maybe you are right.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

Sorry for confusing The Marlows and the Traitor with The Thuggery Affair - not sure how this happened, unless it is too much CNN - but my head seems to have suddenly sorted itself out (sort of). I did see some houses in The Grove in Highgate through The National Gardens scheme with huge gardens and probably space for bees and hens, so I guess it would be possible, if maybe a bit cramped in a smaller garden. I'm not sure if the Marlows would be able to afford a house on the scale of those Grove ones, but I'd think it might be possible, as they probably would have bought in the thirties, maybe with some help from Mrs Marlow's family and before the big explosion in property prices.