Vanessa Collingridge and the team answer listener’s historical queries and celebrate the way in which we all ‘make’ history.
Programme 12
17ÌýJuneÌý2008
Vanessa Collingridge and the team discuss listeners' historical queries and celebrate the many ways in which we all 'make' history.
The Breast Hole at Tean Hall Mill
Former mill workers and members of the Tean and Checkley Historical Society contacted Making History to highlight the discovery of a remarkable architectural feature discovered during the re-development of an old weaving mill. Described as a 'breast hole' it was a crude device to allow women to feed their babies whilst still doing a days work in the mill.
Located on the River Tean not far from Stoke on Trent, Tean Hall Mill specialised in the weaving of tape. This had been a cottage industry but in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the advent of steam power persuaded John and Nathaniel Phillips to build Tean Hall Mill. Comprising four storeys, twenty-seven bays and housing 352 looms, the complex was completed in 1823.
The mill was hugely successful but it presented women-workers and their bosses with a new problem. Women were highly valued workers and needed the work that the mill provided. But, many walked two miles or more to work and had families to look after – not least young babies.
The breast hole allowed them to feed their babies, which were brought to the mill by carers each lunchtime. The hole was simply a hatch in a wall and offered no bonding between mother and child. But, it did ensure that babies received breast milk and allowed women to work.
The breast hole has been preserved as part of the re-development of Tean Hall Mills.
Local historian Joy Dunicliff discusses the breast hole in a pamphlet available from Tean Hall Mills.
"The move of weavers from cottage to mill meant that families could no longer assist the weaver, so women were employed at the mill to do the work in preparation for the weaving, work such as winding on the weft on o the shuttles and also in finishing the tape by winding into reels or into hanks. People were poor and wages low and women returned to work within a few days of childbirth. The women worked in the part of the mill near High Street and there was a hole not much bigger than the span of a man's fingers, from thumb to little finger, in the wall, covered by a vertical sliding shutter and through this a nursing mother could feed her baby. The baby would be brought by its baby minder, usually an aunt or an older sister, the foreman would fasten up the shutter on its cord, and with the baby being held to the outside of the hole and the mother holding her breast to the inside of the hole, the feeding could be managed.
Useful links
Tean and Checkley Historical Society
23 Cranberry Avenue, Checkley, Stoke-on-Trent
Making History consultedÌý at Oxford Brooke’s University
Narbonne 1907
Bill Cronin was surprised by a plaque he saw whilst visiting Narbonne for a short break. It recalls a riot by wine-growers in May 1907 in which 5 people died. The suggestion is that the protest was about the importing of Algerian wine and it laid the foundations for the Appellation system found in France.
Making History consulted Billy Kay the co-author of Knee Deep in Claret and the author of The Scottish World. He explained that the disturbances in Narbonne came at the end of a period in which the French wine industry, particularly in the Languedoc, had grown considerably.
The arrival of the railways in the middle of the nineteenth centuries enabled wine to be moved to the newly industrialised and urbanised centres of France and in this way became the national drink. It was not uncommon, particularly in bad years, for wines to be imported from different regions or even French colonies to be blended.
This was bad news for growers but not so much for the middlemen who were involved in blending or shipping. But, the idea of terroir or of an Appellation, which protected growers and regional grape varieties didn’t actually come in until the 1930’s.
Billy Kay pointed out that our idea of an insular, even conservative wine industry in France, isn’t that accurate. In particular, the English and Scots played a significant role in the development of claret which became a national drink (particularly north of the border). Indeed, many of the families involved in blending and marketing wines from Bordeaux, were northern European Protestants living outside the city walls.
Further Reading
Knee Deep in Claret Billy Kay & Cailean Maclean
Auld Alliance Publishing; 2nd Ed edition (Jul 1994) ISBN 0952362619
The Liverpool Overhead Railway
Opened in 1893, the Liverpool Overhead Railway was the world’s first overhead electric railway. It linked Dingle in the south to Seaforth in the north and was built to ease congestion on Liverpool’s Dock Road.
Unlike the overhead railways that followed in places such as New York and Chicago, there were no gaps between the railway tracks to prevent rubbish dropping down and sparks starting fires. This made it a good place to hid from the elements and it soon acquired the nickname of The Docker’s Umbrella.
Useful links
The following links give more historical information together with some terrific photographs.
Further Reading
Seventeen Stations to Dingle John W Gahan Countywise Ltd (Dec 1982)
ISBN 0907768202
Making History wants to visit you!
Later this summer and early autumn we want to record three of four edition of Making History on location.
We’re looking for three or four surprising stories from different historical periods in one particular part of Britain.
Vanessa has presentedÌýscience and current affairs programmes for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.Ìý
Contact Making History
Send your comments and questions for future programmes to:
Making History
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4
PO Box 3096 Brighton
BN1 1PL
Vanessa has presentedÌýscience and current affairs programmes for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.Ìý