300 pages; 245 x 178mm; hardback

ISBN 1903018 021 £25.00

Foreword: C. Anne Wilson

Introduction: Eileen White, with Allan Hall and Terry O’Connor

Chapter 1: A Brief History of Plant Foods in the City of York, Allan Hall

Chapter 2: Bones as Evidence of Meat Production and Distribution in York, T.P. O’Connor

Chapter 3: Can we Tell what People Ate in Late Medieval York? Ann Rycraft

Chapter 4: The Food Guilds of York, Peter Brears

Chapter 5: The Daily Exercise: The Housewife in Elizabethan and Jacobean York, Eileen White

Chapter 6: The Domestic Scene, Eileen White

Chapter 7: Reproduction Pottery for Use in Historical Cooking: Some Problems for the Potter – a Personal View, John Hudson

Chapter 8: York and the Gentry: The York Season and the Country House, Peter Brears

Chapter 9: Continuity and Change, Eileen White

Chapter 10: Rebirth and Growth: Nineteenth-century York, Hugh Murray

Chapter 11: Poverty and Policy: The Rowntree Study of 1899, Laura Mason

Chapter 12: The Emergence of the Confectionery Industry in York, Bill Taylor

Chapter 13: Cooks and their Books: Four York Manuscripts, Ann Rycraft

Chapter 14: York Ham and other ‘Regional’ Foods, Laura Mason

REPRODUCTION POTTERY, FOR USE IN HISTORICAL COOKING: SOME PROBLEMS FOR THE POTTER - A PERSONAL VIEW

As the title of this piece suggests, this is a personal view of the making of historical pottery and is found in this series of papers on the Feeding of the city of York largely because of my involvement in the reconstruction of Barley Hall in the Coffee Yard, off Stonegate, York. This was the town house of William Snawsell freeman and merchant of the City in the fifteenth century, and was undertaken by the York Archaeological Trust. 

Their large repository of sherds taken from the excavations on the house-site and the rest of the City along with many excavation reports provided information for: reproduction house-hold wares: four thousand floor tiles for the Great Hall; over fifty ridge tiles; the large roof-louver; and over three thousand roof tiles. The latter were made Medieval-style in a field at New Eastwick and fired in a large clamp-kiln on the same site. Unfortunately this project failed, only just, but a failure is a failure, and was a severe blow to me after seven weeks of fighting the elements to produce the required articles. Fortunately the Trust has never lost faith in my abilities.

After studying ceramics at teacher training college and teaching for five years, I decided to become a professional potter in 1973, and follow the usual Studio-potter route of producing Japanese influenced stone-wares. I thought I knew all about the production of pottery, but after a few weeks of working full-time showed how woefully lacking my knowledge and skill was.

I had been influenced greatly as a child and then as a student by the locally produced Country-pottery of the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire; Medieval wares; slip-wares of the seventeenth century; Staffordshire; Metropolitan slip-wares of Essex and several other pottery centres especially Buckley, North Wales and the rest of West Yorkshire. Thus it was I decide to try and keep alive a multi-centuried tradition, especially as my attempts to produce stone-wares were not very successful, and neither, for some time, were my efforts at Calder Valley wares.

After four years I had moved from the production of vast amounts of sherds ( for use as land-fill) to being: a reasonable thrower and slip-decorator, digging and washing my own clay; constructing a purpose -built pottery; and feeling confident enough to borrow what at the time seemed a vast amount of money, to have installed three-phase electricity and buy a large electric kiln. I had used an oil-fired kiln until then and still continue to do so from time to time.

The four years of abject failure taught me a great deal and , when in the early 1980s I was asked to produce seventeenth century kitchen-wares for Clarke Hall Museum at wakefield, I felt confident to do so. This was the beginning of the problems suggested in the title of this piece, the solving of which was helped by the already mentioned years of failure and the books of Peter Brears.

TERMINOLOGY: as already stated I had been familiar with the Calder Valley wares and knew what bread crocks: baking bowls: stew jars: piggins and chicken drinkers were as well as tygs from my student days

The Clarke Hall commission introduced to me to a new esoteric terminology as well as arguments with curators and archaeologists. The following were the first of the new terms I learned and I shall deal with each one in turn: PANCHEONS; PORRINGERS; CHAFFING OF CHAFING DISHES; SALT-KITS; POSSET-POTS; FUMING-POTS; ROASTERS; SKILLETS; PIPKINS and SALTS.

PANCHEONS: The correct term for the item I had always called a baking-bowl in the Heavy Woollen District of Yorkshire. They are large-diameter, yellow-slipped conical bowls with thick rims used for the mixing of cakes, doughs etc. dating back to the Middle-ages, the making of which I shall describe later.

PORRINGER: A small bowl with one or more handles. These can take the form of press-moulded, rolled and cut or pulled applications (see illustration) and are luted onto the vessel at right angles to the wall or vertically as on a cup.

CHAFFING OR CHAFING-DISHES: The received wisdom here is to pronounce the word as chafing, but to me this conjures up the perennial childhood problem of wellington boot nuisance and I prefer the word chaffing, which is closer to the French "chauffer" from which it is derived. As the word "chauffer" suggests, a chaffing-dish is that which might now be called a small barbecue: a bowl set on a pedestal with three pips round the rim on which to place your cooking vessel and with up to four handles (as on the Saintange versions) for carrying the vessel whilst lit. The bowl and base are pierced to allow oxygen to flow to the lit coals which are placed in the bowl. These dishes are for the making of sauces, light-cooking etc. which is impossible on the roaring fires used for roasting.

SALT-KIT: The large hooded, flat-backed salt containers now called by most people salt-pigs ( a term which cane from one of the Sunday supplements or colour-comics as one of my friends calls them) a term which irritates me immensely. They are flat-backed intentionally so that they can be hung on walls which was their original purpose, space being at a premium in late eighteenth century and nineteenth century kitchens when they first appeared. They certainly keep salt dry, how I do not know, and on this occasion I am quite content to leave it there. Beware all unglazed salt-kits especially in terra-cotta as the salt invades the body and causes spalling (flaking off) and eventually disintegration.
 
 

POSSET-POTS: Posset was a drink much beloved in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, made from eggs, cream, sack and spices, served hot, and it has best been described as alcoholic egg-custard. I suppose Advocaat is a derivative. Posset-pots take many shapes and sizes with two or more handles and vary in decoration from plain black to elaborate slip and applied decoration as well as beautifully painted Delft or tin-glazed wares.

A mention must be made here to Wrotham-tygs which are in fact posset-pots and not really beer mugs. Examination of some of these show that the spouts or finials on top of the handles actually have covers and or pipes which extend inside the pot to the bottom and perform the same function as the spouted handles on the really large Staffordshire four-handled possets, viz: to suck up the liquid, thus saving the embarrassment of leaving a crescent of thick yellow posset on the top lip or moustache. The theory that they were some joke or puzzle which deposited beer onto an unfortunate drinker does not work. I have tried it.
 
 

FUMING-POTS: A tall pot, usually with two handles, of similar nature to chaffing- dishes. The tops of these are narrower and more pagoda-like on a pedestal. The rim is more decoratively pierced than chaffing-dishes and again is filled with lit coals. Because of the narrowness of the top, I think the name fuming-pot has been applied as the most logical use for these seems to be the burning of aromatic spices and herbs to rid the rooms of foul smells. I have found cloves and rosemary to be the best two. However, Stephen Moorehouse, the eminent archaeologist has pointed out that these were also used for cooking and keeping sauces and small batches of food warm.

ROASTERS: Again taking many shapes but always working on the principle of reflected heat onto meats and other roastable foods. I have a theory that some of the hooded roasters which were made until the twentieth century were used as fuel stores when made redundant in houses in the early nineteenth century as iron ranges became available and thus were the models for the coal-scuttle of later years ( see photograph).

SKILLETS AND PIPKINS: Which is which? I still do not know and have to ask purchasers which they want - deep, three-legged, flat, frying-pan type, round-bottomed, flat-based, lipped etc. etc.? This form is something of a problem for me as there seems to be no sound definition; perhaps someone can put me right!

ACCESS: Until I received my first commission to reproduce seventeenth century wares for Clarke Hall at Wakefield, I had tried on several occasions to seek permission to look at collections in various Museums for my own education. The usual reply was akin to that given " to the gallant Fitzwalter" by King John in the monologue "The Magna Charter" ( Marriot Edgar) " well leave your address and I`ll write". Usually this meant months of waiting. As this was not a necessity at the time "I did leave my address". Even when I went to Wakefield Museum to look at local wares for the above commission I was chaperoned by a somewhat nervous Pam Judkin. Since then I have done much research and work with many archaeological and historical institutions and the problem of access no longer exists. Pam Judkin seems to trust me implicitly and my name seems to be good enough as to be allowed to look at reserve-collections at fairly short notice.

PUBLICATION OF FINDS: To begin with, Peter Breares` two superb books of The English Country Pottery, its Materials and Techniques and Collecting English Country Pottery, along with his pamphlets on the excavations at Wrenthorpe and Country-Pottery Housed in the Yorkshire Museum, York, were my bibles. However, in the last fifteen years or so much work has been published on excavations from all over the country and now my only problem is finding bookshelves on which to put the reports. This now overcomes the problem of vernacular-wares being unknown to me and even where this might still be true, usually customers can obtain very easily copies of drawings and even samples of wares which they require. Sometimes the provision of samples is the only the most meagre of sherds and trying to reconstruct a finished piece from these is, to say the least, interesting.

MANUFACTURE: 

CLAY: I use the West Yorkshire coal-measures clay known as Toff-Tom, a red-firing slightly sandy clay which is perfect for all red-firing wares but the problem arises when I need to make wares from white or cream-firing clays. I was able at one time to dig such a body (an esoteric name for clay) but unfortunately houses were built on this area and I am afraid that the owners take exception to having large holes dug in their flower-beds, lawns and drives, although in the past this did not seem to deter the potters at Wakefield and other areas. Man made clays of this nature are now available and although not as good as natural bodies, I use these even though I have to buy them - I am a Yorkshireman after all!

SKILL: I have already indicated that when I began as a full-time potter my skill was woefully lacking but after four years I had become a passable thrower and decorator. However by the time I undertook my first reproduction project I was able to make most simple shapes, but as time has passed I have learned and developed skills which I think most potters never encounter. I must say at this juncture that the making of reproduction pottery is really plagiarism and is considered by many as a complete anathema and in many ways rightly so. However, would I now be confronted with the problems of: making and firing Medieval roof tiles in the original way; the making and perfecting of encaustic Medieval floor tiles; mastering the throwing of 50lb chimney pots, 30lb bread crocks and pancheons; making and decorating 2 foot long draped dishes; throwing the finest lobed cups and much, much more? I think not. 

I mentioned pancheons above, which brings in the skill of observation, which one needs to hone to the finest edge. I had never as a child or even older, noticed that the inside of these wares are as smooth as possible. It was not until I had one returned by one of my customers that I understood the reason why. The gentleman concerned presented the bowl to me with these words " Nah then lad, thi bowls alreight but when t’wife made t’bread all t’dooaf stuck I’yon rings and we’d ell on a job gerring it aht" which translated means that the bread-dough had stuck in the throwing rings and was very difficult to clean off. Much time was then spent in discovering how to make the inside smooth which I did in reading, by chance, an article in the local paper about the Morton family of potters at Salendine Nook, Huddersfield. The article describes Mr Morton throwing an 18lb pancheon which spun drunkenly until he ran a stick up the inside of the bowl. I thought the writer had mis-observed Mr Morton’s action as one normally runs a stick or more generally a throwing-rib up the outside of pots to make them spin centrally and in doing so produce a smooth surface. Then I saw this was the way to produce a smooth inside which took a little time to perfect, but at last produced the required finish ( which I am still perfecting) and I presented my customer with a "baking bowl ‘at dooaf didn’t stick ter".

I was privileged to meet Mr Morton before he died, who was able to give me valuable advice on throwing, firing and glazing which was much easier than having to go through the painstaking and time-consuming process of self-discovery, although you never forget the lessons learned this way. Fine observation is still something I fall down on and I need to force myself to look as closely as possible in order to achieve that liveliness and accuracy of the original pieces. Simply things that are not thought of such as: left-handled and right-handled pipkins, skillets, frying-pans and drip-trays: where to put the handle on a three-legged cooking pot, for if it is not over one of the legs it will fall over when used. The size of handles on porringers, which are cup-like need to be large enough to get the fattest of fingers through and yet not to be knocked off when being washed and finally one of the most important of all making sure that the diameter of cups is large enough to accommodate the largest of noses when drinking.

GLAZING: Most Medieval pots were glazed on the outside as decoration only, but hygiene dictates this glaze must be on the inside of wares when they are to be used which poses a problem in some cases of appearance, as indeed it does on Roman and Dark-Age wares. I once-fire all my pots with modern coated lead-glazes to give the correct colour response. These are safe ( I have had them tested) but to be ultra careful I glaze with leadless-glaze on the inside of beer jars and nearly all cooking pots.

USAGE: My corpulent figure is a result of my interest in cooking and food, and I have tried most if not all of the pieces I reproduce and therefore I can suggest several hints on the use of historical wares.

CHAFFING-DISHES: Do not light them using the received method of barbecue lighting as they will crack instantaneously. The cooks of old would take a few embers from the main fire and heat up the dishes in this way, adding charcoal until the fire was at the required intensity. Always stand the dishes on a stone or similar surface, i.e. tile, plate, metal dish. If you stand it on a wooden surface a superb pattern of charred circles will be the result.

SKILLETS, PIPKINS AND FRYING-PANS: Never use these on a roaring gas-burner or similar. They should always be used on gentle charcoal fires or grills ensuring that they always contain some sort of oil, fat, butter or liquid when placed onto a heat source and always remove them using a cloth or towel. Burned hands are the best producer of sherds. 
 

CONCLUSION: Over a period of thirty years of experiment, research and much failure, which has ultimately led to success, this short article seems the most concise of precise of the work of a potter and, if given my head, would run to an edition to rival the Encyclopaedia Britannia.

The production of English Country-pottery and slip-wares, especially those of the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire has become of paramount importance to me, in fact a way of life. Although the financial rewards are not great, the work I have undertaken reconstructing vessels from the minutest of sherds, of complete and incomplete pots, has provided and still provides a satisfaction beyond any monetary reward.

Peter Brears

In the three hundred years between the mid-seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, York was the social centre of northern England, offering every luxury for the visiting nobility and gentry, in addition to providing a ready source of fine foods for consumption both within the city, and back at their country houses.

In the Roman, Viking and early medieval periods, York had flourished as a major international centre, with sea-going vessels regularly tying up at its quays. The scale and quality of its surviving city walls, guildhalls, churches and houses reflect the great prosperity brought by this mercantile activity. But from the 1450s, economic decline set in as the growing size of ships meant that the overseas trade retreated towards Hull; while about the same time the cloth industry began to move away to the towns of the West Riding. The closure of York’s many religious houses, and other upheavals during the Reformation, made matters even worse, but from this period the city began to adopt a new role as a major administrative and social centre. The re-establishment of the Council of the North in the King’s Manor in 1561 brought the aristocracy and gentry to York for several months each year, creating a demand for luxury goods of all kinds.

Even as early as 1584, William Elderton, he of the ‘ale-crammed nose’, was celebrating the city, its clothes, archery, shooting and good company in the verses:

Yorke, Yorke, for my monie:

Of all the citties that ever I see,

For mery pastime and companie,

Except the cittie of London.

I [cared] not for my money it cost,

Though some I spent and some I lost,

I wanted neither sod [boiled] nor roast,

As if it had been in London.

For there was plenty of everything,

Red and fallow deer for a king

I never saw such merry shooting,

Since first I came from London.

The closure of the Council of the North in 1640 and the following civil wars brought a temporary set-back, but by the 1650s the city was the third largest and wealthiest in the kingdom, and although it was later eclipsed, it retained its fashionable prosperity for the next three hundred years.

As far as its wealthy patrons were concerned, York, as England’s northern capital, fulfilled two principal functions. First and foremost, it was their major administrative and social centre, while also serving as the major point of distribution from where they could obtain all the luxuries required for their country houses.

As Francis Drake recorded in 1736:

The grand meeting of the nobility and gentry of the north…is now at York in or about the month of August; drawn hither by the hopes of being agreeably entertained, for a week, in horse-racing, balls, assemblies, &c. horse racing.. draws in the country people in vast crowds, but the gentry, nay even the clergy and prime nobility are mixed among them. Stars, ribbons and garters here loose their lustre strangely, when the noble peer is dressed like his groom. But to make amends for that, view them at night and their splendour returns; and here it is that York shines indeed, when…a concourse of four or five hundred of both sexes, out of the best families in the kingdom, are met together. In short, the politeness of the gentlemen, the richness of the dress, and remarkable beauty of the ladies, and, of late, the magnificence of the room they meet in, cannot be equalled...in any part of Europe.

The races, established in 1709 and equipped with a fine grandstand for entertainment in 1755; the theatre, built on its present site in 1744; the elegant 112 by 40 foot Corinthian-columned Egyptian Room of the Assembly Rooms designed by Lord Burlington in 1730; and the smaller assembly room in the hall of the King’s Manor: all made York a thriving social centre, with numerous balls, assemblies for cards and dancing, and concert seasons throughout the winter and summer, especially during the Assize weeks.

In addition to the formal Assizes and Seasons, many people came to York throughout the year to consult its considerable body of professional expertise. There were numerous lawyers to deal with every legal requirement, and doctors, ready to treat all medical conditions. The remedies prescribed by the most fashionable medical men frequently appear in the manuscript recipe books kept by the county gentry, that of the Foulis family of Ingleby Greenhow, for example, recording ‘how to prevent Miscarryings’ from Dr Wintringham senior (1689–1748) who built the present Judge’s Lodgings in Lendal as his house in c. 1718–25, and also prescriptions for a mouth water for a bilious disorder, a cough or cold, and for the gravel, from his successor, Dr John Dealtry (c. 1708–1773). Another recipe book, probably from the St Quentin family of Harpham, who lived at numbers 118–120 Micklegate from 1757 to 1785, has a prescription for the ague from Dr Boerhaave of Leyden, who taught Dr John Burton of York, (‘Dr Slop’ in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy), one for a plaster for a cold from ‘Old Johnson of York’, and another for the bite of a mad dog from Dr Richard Meade (1673–1754). The latter was Pope’s physician, and appears in Tristram Shandy as ‘Dr Kunastrokius’. For more intensive care, the County Hospital was built here in 1740, and the York Lunatic Asylum in 1772–7. The staff of the Asylum is of particular interest to food historians, for its physician was Dr Alexander Hunter, author of Culina Famulatrix Medicinae, or Receipts in Modern Cookery with a medical commentary, published in York in 1804, while his assistant from 1804 to 1808 was Dr Charles Best, father of Mary Ellen Best, whose fine watercolours show York’s markets, food, and table-settings.

Here too were to be found architects such as John Carr, designer of the great country houses at Harewood, Denton and Farnley, and Thomas Atkinson who built Haughton and Dalton halls, and worked at Burton Constable. When Ann Lister required an architect to restore and extend Shibden Hall, she came to York on 13 April 1835, and consulted about ‘Harper the Architect here...J. S. says he is a rising man, is building the new street called St Leonards’. The next day she met him at the Black Swan in Coney Street, and gave him the commission, but regrettably his towering gothick kitchen wing and massive banqueting hall were never constructed. Miss Lister’s interest in gothic architecture had first been fostered by John Brown of Walmgate, one of several drawing masters in York, for here were artists to paint the miniatures, portraits and landscapes of the gentry and their properties. Some, like Philip Mercier (1689–1760), active in York before 1738, also depicted aspects of the local social scene, his Taste showing a fashionable trio, with a blackamoor servant, enjoying their wine, and a silver tazza of peaches and of whipped syllabubs. His Allegory of Taste, meanwhile, shows a clown presenting a fashionably-dressed young woman with a silver tazza of wines and a long sponge biscuit. York also boasted a number of dancing schools, including Mr Tate’s establishment in Petergate where, around 1754, he invented a popular dance called ‘The York Maggot’.

Many families decided that these attractions were so great, that they decided to set up permanent households here. Returning to Drake, he stated that ‘the chief support of the city...is the resort to and residence of several county gentlemen and their families in it. These have found by experience that living at York is so much cheaper than London, that it is even less expensive than living at their own houses in the country. The great variety of provisions, with which our markets abound, makes it very easy to furnish out an elegant table at a modest rate’. Some impression of the scale of this gentry population is given by the entry in the Universal British Directory of 1793–8, which lists fifty-nine gentry families in the city. Many of them were then living in the central area, in Minster Yard, Lendal, Petergate, St Saviourgate, Castlegate, etc., with further major concentrations along the broad streets of Micklegate and Bootham. A surprising number of their houses are still to be found in these locations today. Most date from the eighteenth century, and have elegant entrance halls leading both to ground-floor dining-rooms, and to fine staircases up to impressive reception or drawing rooms and saloons on the first floor. Their kitchens, meanwhile, are to the rear, either at ground or basement level. A walk along Micklegate, for example, shows where the Countess of Conyngham lived at nos. 53–5, the Garforths of Wiganthorpe at no. 54, the Bouchiers of Beningborough at nos. 88–90, and Charles Bathurst, High Sheriff of Yorkshire, at no. 86. Finest of all, however, is Fairfax House in Castlegate, refurbished in 1762–3 by Viscount Fairfax of Gilling, for his daughter Anne. With its magnificent carved woodwork, fine modelled plasterwork, marble fireplaces, excellent furniture and tableware, it was ideally designed for lavish hospitality, such as the ‘elegant Entertainment and a Ball to above 200 Gentlemen and Ladies’ which he gave on 15 April 1763. Full details of this event will be found in Peter Brown’s book Pyramids of Pleasure (York: 1990), which describes and splendidly illustrates how a major York household fulfilled its social responsibilities.

Those who chose not to purchase or build their own York town-house, could take the alternative course of renting a suitable house or apartment for the required season. This course of action, involving the regular removal of entire families between their major houses in the country and their accommodation in the city, presented considerable logistical problems for the wives of the gentry who were responsible for its organisation. This is clearly illustrated in the notes kept by Lady Mary Lister, wife of Sir William Lister of Thornton in Craven. Every October she appears to have packed up all the equipment she would require for cooking and entertaining her family and guests during her yearly sojourn in the city, sending it off in a horse-drawn baggage-train along the rough roads down to Skipton, then probably continuing by way of Ilkley, Otley and Tadcaster to York, perhaps taking two days over this fifty-mile journey.

In order to ensure that all the goods she left behind were in safe-keeping, she made ‘A noat of pewder at Thornton deliver’d to Isabell Clarke ye 14th of October, 1625’, ‘A note of wood Vessel Lent in Exley…and thorenton’, and similarly, on 18 October 1627, a note of the linen in Dorothy Wilcock’s charge ‘at my goeing to Yorke’, these ladies presumably being the servants who were to be entrusted with these items until her return some months later. On 24 October 1625, she completed her ‘Noate of the Yorcke trunke’ which contained all the linen she would be taking with her.

As for the culinary items, she made a complete list of everything that was in her kitchen at the Manor House at Thornton on 21 October, 1626, and everything in her milk-house just a week later. From these, she appears to have selected those items which she would need in York, these appearing in the list of the contents of her ‘things in the kitchen: at Yorke’ made on 28 July. 

Clearly her York kitchen was not going to operate at the same scale as her one at Thornton, but even so, it was going to carry out virtually every cooking operation. She had brought all the spice and seasoning containers necessary for producing good quality food for her family and guests, and the mortar and pestle and grater required to process them. Presumably intending to buy her meat either alive, on the hoof, or in large pieces from the butchers, she had taken her striking and flensing knives to kill and skin [flense] and joint it ready for either roasting on the spits, carefully draining the contents of her dripping pan into her kitchen-fee pot, or boiling it in a brass beef-pot hung by a pot-crook from a gallow-balk fixed within the chimney, the beef-fork being used to lift it out onto one of the wooden doublers, or serving-dishes. Alternatively the meat could be cooked over the fire on the broiling-iron, while other foods could be cooked in the small selection of porridge pot, great and little pans and posnets. The tripe pot shows that she intended to soak and boil her own tripe, rather than buy it in. The four pie plates and the pie peels show that she was going to bake her own pies, although many people preferred to send these out to one of the bakers’ shops.

In 1677 Thomas Baskerville had noted that the local apples were ‘quadlings’, which could be cooked while still unripe, which was from August onwards, Lady Lister’s ‘appelle credell’ probably being used to store them for pie-making throughout the winter months. Apple pie was certainly a celebrated local delicacy, Dr William King composing a poem describing both its supposed history and its method of making, in 1713. Their thin dough was made of flour, eggs and butter, while their ingredients were pippins, with quinces added for relish, brown sugar, cloves, candied peel, and orange-flower water. When prepared, they were sent to the bakehouse, but the wife was strongly advised:

To chuse your Baker, think and think again,

(you’ll scarce one honest Baker find in ten)

Adust and bruis’d I’ve often seen a Pye,

In rich Disguise and costly ruin lie.

The actual delivery of the pie to the baker’s could be problematical too, especially when the domestic staff were too proud to be seen performing this menial task. Once, when Margaret Wharton, who lived at 35–7 Micklegate up to her death in 1791, had made a pie, her footman and coachman both demurred to carry to the bakehouse. In consequence, she ordered them to bring her coach round. She was then driven to the pastry-cook’s with the pie, and sent her carriage back to fetch it when baked. She then complimented her servants on having ‘kept their places’.

Although no specific equipment is listed, it is also probable that Lady Mary Lister would be pickling the oysters which were arriving in York at this season. Baskerville had reported in 1677 that here ‘oysters are in their season dear, half a crown a hundred, and are brought hither in ships from Scotland, for they had none in the sea near the mouth of the Humber till of late, as a man in Hull told me, for a Scottish ship laden with oysters being there cast away, this now begins to breed there’. Certainly many of the recipe books of the Yorkshire gentry include instructions for pickling oysters, one from the Saviles of Methley cooking them in white wine before sealing them down in small barrels. Alternatively they could be bought ready-pickled, the Reresbys paying 4s 3d ‘For a Barril of Oysters & bringing’ to their country house at Thrybergh in 1666.

One of the other items which Lady Lister carried with her to York was her recipe book, so that she could make her capon with herbs, her sauce for roasted mutton, and various other dishes served at her dinner-parties. After washing their hands using Sir William’s silver basin, ewer and pots, her guests would sit around her linen-covered table, with its silver cups and covers, salts, bowls, sugar box and spoons, its pewter dishes and saucers, there enjoying the best of her hospitality. Along with numerous other county ladies who spent seasons in York, she used her recipe book to note down the culinary and medical recipes obtained from her compatriots, attributing them to Lady Fairfax, Lady Hearte, Sir Matthew Lister’s Lady, or to Dr Lister, President of the College of Physicians, Physician in Ordinary to both Anne of Denmark, and to Charles I, who knighted him in 1636. One of her recipes ‘A Medicine for…hurt of a hand Gunne’ probably came in useful during the Civil War, for in July 1643 her house at Thornton in Craven was attacked, and shortly afterwards burnt down, never to be rebuilt again.

A revealing insight into the social life of York households during the early eighteenth century is provided by Mary Davy, whose Northern Heiress, or the Humours of York was first presented at the Thursday Market House in 1716. Here we enter the home of Lady Ample, one of the wives of the numerous ex-Lord Mayors who retained their title after their year of office, according to the old formula:

He is a Lord for a year and a day,

But she is a Lady for ever and aye.

It is breakfast-time, and she is joined by Lady Swish, Lady Cordivant and Lady Greasy at a table set with ‘hot ale and ginger, butter, rolls, a huge Cheshire cheese, and a plate of drunken toast’. Her guests all expected to pay for their share of the meal, even though it was given in a private house, and when Lady Ample begs them ‘to dispense with the custom of the town for once’ the other ladies insist on paying, Lady Cordivant explaining ‘This has been a custom Time out of mind. Our ancient and loyal City of York has always been famous for keeping up an hearty and neighbourly way among ourselves, which keeps us all friends; for eating as well as lying together makes folks love’. In the afternoon Isabella, the heiress, comes in and invites them to drink a dish of tea with her, to which Lady Greasy responds, ‘No, Mrs. Isbel, no; we are for none of your far-fetched liquors. Tea! – no thank you, we are for none of your tea!’

Isabella: I doubt, Madam, your not sociable, if you don’t drink Tea, I am sure you are in a neighbourhood where they drink a great deal.

Lady G.: Yes, yes, but I don’t like ’em, they are too proud and knows not how to behave themselves to their betters…

Next enters Sir Jeffrey Hearty: ‘Aye, this is like the good old-fashioned way of house-keeping, I expect to have found you all set round a table no bigger than a Past-board and not much stronger, by my troth, with a parcel of little Crocks that hold no more than a Girl would drink before her Sweetheart.’.

They then go on to denounce the bad habits of the young women of fashion, who ‘mind nothing but their pleasure, and study nothing but how to consume their husband’s money, rising at noon, sitting down to drink tea and eat till they are fit to bust, so they can eat no dinner, then, as soon as the cloth’s away, they send a messenger to bring three or four idlers to make up a set at Lue. After losing all their money...they then begin to dress for the Assembly.’

For those with no wish to set up either permanent or temporary households in York, the city was provided with a large number of inns and lodging houses, some of the best being the Angel, the George and the Black Swan, all in Coney Street. Here guests were assured of a warm north-country welcome. When Lieutenant Hammond and his friends arrived in the city soaking wet and tired one Saturday night in 1643, they ‘fortunately lodged their colours in Coney Street, and victualled the camp at the house of a loving and gentle widow, who freely and cheerfully extended her bounteous entertainment to us; for no sooner heard she of her wet, and weary, benighted guests, but she came to us, and welcomed us with a glass of good sack, and a dish of hot, fresh salmon, she herself presenting both, in that kind and modest phrase of Northern speech "May God thank ye, for making my house your harbour"; likewise took such care of us, both at board and bed, as if she had been a mother rather than a hostess’. It was probably the same lady who Sir William Brereton identified in 1635 as ‘Mistress Keyes’ [Isabella Kay, widow of Thomas Kay, innholder] where he ‘had excellent entertainment, and very reasonable’. Not every establishment was so comfortable, however, one traveller describing how, in 1713, he arrived at his inn, and ‘I’d no sooner ener’d the House, and call’d for a Pint of Sir John Barleycorn’s best Stingo [strong ale], and a pennyworth of sot’s-weed [tobacco]…I call’d for my Landlady, and order’d a couple of Fowl for my Supper’, but when shown to his room, he discovered that it was in the cock-loft, or top attic, and comprised ‘four rough-hewn Boards laid upon two uneven Trossels, a Flock-Bed, in substance not half so good as a Quilt, full of Knobs and Bunches...The Sheets might seem rather to be of Leather than Linnen Cloth and you might have told every thread in the Coverlet’. The next morning, after a breakfast of ‘a Pint of Canary, a Penny-worth of Bread, and a slice of Stilton’, he departed to find lodgings elsewhere.

For dinner, most inns would cook food to order, Viscount Torrington having sufficient time to visit Todd’s bookshop and the Minster between ordering his dinner at the George in Coney Street and finally ‘sitting down for two hours to a comfortable dinner, and a bottle of good port wine’, a process he repeated with satisfaction the following day. Alternatively, one could take the ‘ordinary’, the table d’hôte meal prepared by an inn- or lodging-house keeper. These represented very good value, Lieut. Hammond hastening ‘to our good Hostess and her good Ordinary, which would not be forgot, for such in our Southern parts could not be afforded under three times the price. The Company and the discourse was answerable to the cheer, well, for such an Ordinary, such Usage, such an Hostess, and such good Company, we shall hardly find the like in the whole Island’. Similarly, around 1660, Thomas Fuller noted, ‘The ordinary in York will make a Feast in London; and such persons who in their eating consult both their purse and palate, would choose this city as the staple place of good cheer’. John Aston in 1639 had found ‘there were excellent ordinaries; 18d the masters and 6d servants, as at the Talbot (a very faire inne) especially. At Ouseman’s the poast master, the signe of the Dragon for 12d and 8d; and at the Bell in Thursday-Markett, for 8d and 6d, with many other places.’

William King provides a description of an apparent ordinary served in a York lodging house in 1713. ‘We sat down to Table, and the first thing they serv’d was a dish of Pickles…next came Flesh and Fish, all of it high season’d to promote Drinking; after that four good Minc’d Pies were serv’d up in broken Platters and pieces of old Crocks and Pans; they took off the upper Crusts and fill’d ’em with wine. [Then] a Dish of scurvy Sausages [were] set upon the table…After all this Medley came some Soup’, but since the company was now becoming riotously boisterous, he left to stroll homewards to his friend’s habitation. Next day, at his friend’s, he gratified his palate ‘with a Roasted Goose, and a Fricassee of Rabbets’.

At other establishments, the food was provided free of charge to those who bought liquor. In 1677 Thomas Baskerville could not drink the strong, heavy sluggish ale made from the stagnant waters of the King’s Fishpond, and so went to drink at a barber’s house. ‘Here my landlord did ask us whether he would bite? I, asking what he meant, he told me if people had a mind to eat when they came to drink at his house they should have cold roast beef and such like victuals for nothing’. This was customary in a number of Yorkshire towns, including Leeds, where it was known as the Brigg-shot.

Coffee houses, which had been established in the city in the 1660s, also provided a full range of food and alcoholic liquors. At Parker’s Coffee House in the Minster Yard in 1684–5, the wench could offer:

…Ale that’s strong and old,

Both from North-Allerton, and Easingwold,

From Sutton, Thirske, likewise from Rascal-Town,

We’ve Ale also that’s call’d Knocker-down.

A receipt from Burland’s Coffee House in Micklegate in the 1790s lists breakfast at 3s, dinner 5s, tea and coffee 2s 6d, brandy 2s 6d, ale and tobacco 2s 6d, and lodgings 2s, thus illustrating the full range of services it could offer.

In addition to full meals, there were plenty of opportunities for taking lighter refreshments. At the Assembly Rooms, tea, coffee and chocolate were served in the refreshment room, and here, during intervals in the dancing, ‘the beaux hand glasses of Arrack, Mountain Wine and French Claret, Hearte cakes, and plates of Orange Chips to fair Ladies’. A similar room in the King’s Manor Assembly Rooms had also been provided for ‘Tea and Scandal’. At the theatre, gingerbread and oranges were the traditional fare, the thirteen year-old Mary Worsley paying ‘for oranges 6d; for seeing a play 2d’ on 2 June 1697.

Some of these items could be bought as ‘fast food’ from the street traders, such as Mary Atkinson the orange-woman in 1713, and her successor, the orange-man who is seen crying his ‘Sweet China Oranges’ in James Kendrew’s Cries of York printed in the opening years of the nineteenth century. Other traders of 1713 had cried:

Hot Black Puddings, hot,

Smoaking hot,

Just come out of the Pot

or

Here dainty, brave Cheese-cakes,

Come buy ‘em of me;

Two for Two Pence

And one for a Penny.

Come along Customers, if you’ll buy any.

In the early 1800s you could hear: ‘Come buy my nice Muffins!’: ‘Buy my nice Banbury Cakes!’: ‘Six-pence a score, Oysters!’: and ‘Cockles alive, alive O!’

One could also buy food from the numerous confectioner’s shops, William King noting in 1713 how ‘Passing long Ness-gate, I was on a sudden furiously assaulted with the warm Hogo of Applepies, Custards, Cheesecakes, Cakes, Wigs, Jellies, sausages and Black-Puddings; and turning about, on my Right Hand, I beheld great Treasury of Past rang’d Mathematically and built according to several Orders of Architecture: The Seed-Cakes appear’d as wrought Images, and the Jelly-Glasses, as so many Pinnacles addorning the Illustrious Fabrick. The Puddings and Sausages represented the Carv’d Work, and the Fustian Operator with his Dough, was as a Bricklayer and a Hod of Morter.’

By 1818 there were eleven confectioners, seven fruiterers, forty-six grocers, sixteen liquor merchants, twenty-five tea dealers, and one hundred and eighty-four inns, taverns and public houses offering food and drink in the city. In addition there were two cutlers, twenty-eight linen drapers, twelve glass and china merchants and eight silversmiths and jewellers selling every description of tableware, and three furriers, eight glovers, ten hosiers, thirteen milliners, six perfumers, six stay-makers, seven straw-hat makers, twenty-three tailors and habit-makers and two umbrella makers to satisfy the needs of York’s fashionable clientele. These were far in excess of the needs of the city’s 18,000 inhabitants, and stress the continuing importance of York as the combined Oxford Street, Bond Street and Knightsbridge of the north of England.

The goods stocked by these tradesmen were either sold to visiting customers, or were supplied to order to distant country houses. John Elliott [d. 1833] the Spurriergate confectioner and pastrycook took orders for fish sauces, pickles, ketchups and curry powders brought in from Purkis’ of London, real Canterbury brawn and Moorby cheeses from Lincolnshire, as well as making ‘GAME and GOOSE PIES of the best quality, which will be carefully packed so that they may be conveyed to any parts of the Kingdom’. At this period thirty-two carrier-routes set off to all parts of the country mainly from the Coppergate, Fossgate and Pavement area, in addition to carriers by water who brought in and dispatched goods between York and Hull, Gainsborough, Rotherham and London from the Old and New Cranes in Skeldergate.

Other traders travelled into the county to provide their services, John Vickers [d. 1819], the Blake Street confectioner, catering for the Yorkshire Archers’ Ball at the Leeds Assembly Rooms on 26 October, 1790. Here two hundred guests, led by the Earl Fitzwilliam and Countess of Mexborough, danced from 9 to 12pm, when the supper room was opened. ‘It would be impossible to describe the decorations of the table…the propriety and brilliance with which they were ornamented reflect the highest credit on Mr Vickers of York. The effects of festoons of coloured lamps was particularly pleasing. Dancing continued till three o’clock in the morning.’ Some indication of the quality achieved by York confectioners about this time may be obtained from Joseph Bell’s A Treatise on Confectionary in all its Branches published in Newcastle in 1817. He was presumably related to John Bell the Spurriergate confectioner listed in the 1793 Universal British Directory, but unfortunately it has proved impossible to confirm this connection.

As an alternative to grocers and other tradesmen organising the distribution of their wares throughout the county, there was also a very long tradition of major households making their own arrangements, first drawing up their orders, and then travelling to York and back to collect them. This trade was very considerable, as may be seen in the domestic accounts of the Clifford family of Skipton Castle and Londesborough. While at Londesborough between October and June, all their groceries were purchased from Mr Peighen, and their wine from Mr Mason, both of York, but their collection was carried out by the household staff, as may be seen in the following entries:

13 March 1629: Mr Constable & Thomas Sherwood’s charges to yorke with 3 horses carying a box that went to London & bringing Back certain necessaries for my Ladye and the wine & grosserie herewith specified 14s 11d

21 May 1629: Mr Constable’s and John Wright’s Charges to Yorke for this grossery & wine 2s 6d

The volume of grocery required was quite enormous. On 25–26 December, 1628, for example, a detailed account was presented for spices, dried fruits, sugar, pickles, hops, paper, cooking pots, pewter dishes, saucers and spoons, wood trenchers, and various pieces of kitchen equipment, which totalled about a quarter of a ton in weight, and cost £35 1s 2d. For its transport, the groceries were packed up in three boxes, two bags, and a bottle for the salad oil, and two packs made up with straw and secured with pack rope. The Clerk of the Kitchen then set off with his three horses, another horse hired in York, Ambrose Musgrave and his three horses, and four more horses, making a ten-horse pack-train to carry all the groceries and wine for the nineteen miles back to Londesborough.

The Shuttleworths of Gawthorpe, over sixty miles across the Pennines in Lancashire, also bought their groceries from York, an account of March 1617/18 listing loaf sugar, white wine vinegar, raisins, almonds, figs, a barrel of olives, and a barrel of capers, all weighing over half a hundredweight.

The large stocks of goods held by the York grocers and tradesmen also meant that they were able to supply a large range of foodstuffs at very short notice, a useful facility when planning a funeral feast. When Elizabeth Currer of Kildwick died in 1697, her husband was able to draw up a shopping list and send it off with a man on horseback the forty-two miles into York. Having obtained these goods on 24 June, the rider then packed the boxes on the back of his horse, and rode back to Kildwick in time for the funeral on the 29th.

Household accounts of the eighteenth century show that this trade continued unabated, and in the early nineteenth century York shopkeepers such as T. Johnson, grocer, tea dealer and fruiterer of Colliergate, began to produce handbills listing all their wares, including over 175 items, ranging from all manner of groceries, seeds, tobacco and snuff, soaps, gunpowder and shot, to cleaning materials, lamp oils, writing materials, etc. These handbills provided an ideal aide-mémoire for housewives and housekeepers in country houses, miles away from the shops. One of them was pasted in the front cover of the St Quentin manuscript cookery book, ready for use in this way.

The role of York as a great social capital and the major luxury warehouse for the North continued until the arrival of the railways in l 839. Thereafter, the gentry could travel with ease and comfort to London, the seaside, the Lakes and the Highlands, and so they departed from the city, taking their trade with them. In addition, the railways enabled all manner of goods to be quickly and efficiently transported to all the inland towns, without having to rely on the coastal and river routes which had been York’s great advantage. Now the assemblies ended, no more fine houses were built in the city, and over a century of decline set in, earning it the description of ‘Poor, Proud and Pretty’ by 1869. Even in the 1950s fine Georgian shops still stood derelict in Petergate, and were being demolished. It was not until the late 1960s and 1970s that prosperity returned to the city as a major centre of a flourishing tourist industry.