By Neil Stobbs

The household accounts¹ of the Shuttleworth family living, finally, at Gawthorpe Hall at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the seventeenth, it can give us an insight into the diet of an upper class family. An analysis of the entries appertaining to diet, over a period of about ten years, at the end of the sixteenth century has been undertaken. Problems arose when it was discovered, in a foot note, that the original editor, J.Harland Esq. F.S.A., had decided to “omit items that re-occur and would fatigue the reader”. This, of course, makes it impossible to apply any meaningful statistical analysis to the entries.

There are a number of interesting facts which have become obvious from the study.

1. The large number of birds of all kinds that were eaten.
2. The apparent strict adherence to the non-eating of meat during Lent.
3. The large quantities of fish of various kinds that were eaten throughout the year, but especially during Lent.
4. The entry of “White Bread” as a special item
5. The absence of any indication of the eating of beef, except for one entry.
6. The large amount of food which is entered into the accounts as being by “Gift”.

It may be of interest to list some of the birds that were eaten, even though the use of local names and aberrant spelling makes some hard to identify.

Domestic:– Hens, chicken, capons, geese, turkeys², drakes, green geese.

Wild:– Woodcock, wild fowl, larks, swan, pigeons, cygnet, plovers, heron, “suesse, pires” [?], snipe, teal, redshank, “puffers'[?], lapwing, curlew, grey plover, “snipe-naves” [jack snipe], partridges, fieldfare, thrushes, mallard, whekers [wheatears?], yellow-hammers, “pereterghe” [partridges?], “odd birds”, sea-birds, “cargrasses” [cargoose or Crested Grebe?], blackbirds, sparrows, “scargraffe” [?], “oucles” [?], pheasants.

Similarly with fish :-

Salted salmon, cockles, “smeltes and tenchies”, pike, fresh eels, herrings, mussels, bream, white herring, red herrings, fresh salmon, salted eels, sprats, skate, flook, “fish with claw”, “stubbing” [?], tench, fresh- water trout, “Kongereel”, dace and perch, “morttes” [third year salmon], gudgeon, ling, organ-ling [a larger ling said to be the commonest fish in the North Sea], codlings and greylings, whiting, “stoke fish” [stock-fish or dried cod?], porpoise and sturgeon (the latter a present from Lord Derby).

Meat in the early years was for the most part mutton and veal, only in March 1585 is there any specific entry naming beef, “a buttock of beef cost 2s4d”. Mutton appears 19 times in the accounts between 1582 and 1593, once in 1582, 1585, 1588 and 1592, twice in 1593, 4 times in 1587 and nine times in 1583. The distribution suggests it was very popular in 1583, but then lost popularity. Or was it that the original editor did not transcribe the entries?

The main meat eaten seems to have been venison in various forms, variously entered as doe, fat doe, buck, venison, fat stag, hind, shoulder of stag, “wenysonne”. Considerable numbers of the entries show the venison as a gift, often from named persons. It may be possible with further research to build up some idea of the social circle of the Shuttleworths from this information.

Other entries show that veal was a common dish and also calf’s heads. One interesting entry reads: – Cows feet and calves feet from 8 cows and 12 calfs, 22d, with jelly bag and strainer”. Another entry lists “22 cows feet and 28 calf feet for 2s- 6d from Manchester”. Obviously they made calf’s foot jelly. And possibly cow heel pie?

Rabbits appear in the accounts as both rabbit and “conyes”. 22 brace of rabbits cost 20 pence in December 1594. 5 brace are entered at 3 shillings in November 1590. “4 brace of conyes” cost 3s-4d in January of 1593, 6 brace cost 5 shillings in December 1592 and October 1591. A considerable variation in price if we take them both to be the same animal.

Fruit does not have any large number of entries. Apples and pears are the most frequently mentioned but also “fidges”, peaches, oranges and lemons. Other fruit listed are”bastard wardens” [a type of pear], “press-codes” [?] and puselides [?].

There are other types of food listed, but not in much variety :- white bread, bread “for dry leche” [?], hopps, “artichope slypes”,[v.i.] parsnips, eggs, “sallat”, oil, woodcock pie, pots of honey, pigs, bacon, gammons of pork, oat cakes, puddings, “sewett”, butter.

One of the problems of analysing the accounts is that the house and farm accounts,in the early years, are run together and it can be difficult to decide if an entry means a live animal, which could be used for breeding purposes, or if it is named as a food source. For instance the pigs mentioned above could be such a case, as there are also entries for bacon and gammons of pork. The entry “artichope slypes” may refer to the slips used to propogate artichokes; one could then infer that artichokes would appear on the menu later.

It is interesting to note that herrings, sprats and other fish and shell fish seem in some cases to have been sold in barrels or measured by volume, in others by count. Herrings appear sold “in messe”[?] sprats in a “hundreth” and also in one half “ceade” [cask] containing a thousand. Mussels and cockles were bought in pecks or “mettes” [the local name for a bushel].

The remaining entries have to do with wine. The first entry, in 1582, was simply “wine, one quart 6d”. By 1583 the entries became more specific as: – February Claret Wine 10 gallons 3 quart 14s-4d. Sac wine 3 quarters, 2s. “White wine” is mentioned later, also bottles of ale, “Ipocras”, “spiced wine, a gift”. In trying to calculate the total amount drunk a hogshead has been taken as containing 522 gallons and a “tieresse” 35 gallons (as it is said to be one third of a pipe which contained 105 gallons). A bottle seemed to have contained 2.86 quarts, baseing this on the average price of sac wine at 4d/quart. Between 1583 and 1594 the household had imbibed, as far as can be calculated, a total of 741 gallons. If this is broken down, they used 74 gallons a year on average, or just under 1.5 gallons per week. This would be for the family only one would suppose.

Also among the inventories are various quantities of hops, so they must also have brewed beer and/or ale. There is nothing to show if they produced any wine on the estate, but considering the poor summers and cold winters which were frequent in the period, the growing of grapes in Lancashire is not something which could be imagined.

One further insight into the domestic arrangements of the household regarding wine can be seen from the entry for May 1592 when a hogshead of claret and one of white wine were purchased from Mr Richard Bavin of Chester, and 33 gallons of sac from Mrs Calpounne of Chester. After giving the price of the wines the entry runs as follows:-

houpinge and spannynge of the vesseles 12? the porteres for loding the same wyne 6d Carredge of the said wyne from Chester 9s 4d expendies of Roberte Aspenden when he wente for the said wyne to Chester, and home agane 3s 8?

Obviously new barrels were made to transport the wine to the house, the loading of them must have been a heavy or skilled job as porters were paid to do the job. The carriage of the wine had been contracted to an outside carrier, and was also important enough for Robert Aspenden to be sent with the order and for him to return with the wine. As far as can be seen from the accounts Aspenden was a Gawthorpe servant, but quite high up in the hierarchy of the estate.

There is a considerable amount of detail in the accounts which can give us some insight into the working of an estate and household of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The most likely households of the level of Gawthorpe which existed in the Mourholme area are those of the Bindlosses of Borwick and the Middletons of Leighton Hall. One can postulate that they would have run their estate and household in a similar fashion, but without similar accounts it is difficult to tell.

References

1. John Harland (ed.), Shuttleworth Accounts”, Chetham Society, 1861. ↩︎
2. Possibly American turkeys by this date, but the name was also used for guinea fowl ↩︎

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 28 1996