My mum is a forester’s wife. Growing up, I remember her collecting logs every autumn and stacking them in the log shed, picking out the Sitka spruce needles from inside the drum of the washing machine.
When my brother and I were born in the 80s, prospects for working-class women in rural areas were few and far between. Especially for mothers. We grew up on a country estate in Yorkshire in a tied house, which meant it came with my dad’s job. Each morning Dad set off for the woods with his lunchbox and Mum stayed at home to look after us.
We lived four miles from the closest village, which meant four winding miles to the nearest shop and, of course, the school. She kept us entertained by playing in the garden and going for walks, even in the rain. There were no playgrounds, and few friends close by. The isolation my mum must have felt is something I struggle to imagine.
While researching the lives of working-class women in rural Britain, I learned that historically, isolation wasn’t seen as an issue for these communities. In the 1940s, the Forestry Commission built settlements for its workers in the far reaches of the UK – from deep forests in Wales to the far-flung woods of the Highlands. The men often worked for the same family or company, from dawn ’til dark, but being a long way from anything was a problem for the hidden pillar of these communities: the women.
In the Forestry Commission villages of the Highlands in the 1950s, it took some women a whole day just to get the shopping. One woman had to cycle two miles, then take a train, a ferry, and then a bus to get to the nearest town. And she could only buy what she could carry back. Others had to make do with lifts in timber wagons. If you forgot something for tea, you went without until the next week.
It is hard to find accounts of the lives of women in rural areas because who would have recorded them? They are the “wives” of the workers: the forestry wives, the farmers’ wives, the coalminers’ wives. The men’s jobs brought them to these beautiful but brutal rural areas, but the women made everything work. Cooking, cleaning, fixing, managing the household and caring for the children; they were the backbones of these communities. Not only were some wives expected to fulfil the traditional role, they also helped their husbands with their rural trades. Anyone know a farmer’s wife who isn’t as much of a farmer as their husband? Lambing, tractor driving, harvesting?
Even coalmining was once a family affair. Women and children worked underground until a government act in 1842 banned them from doing so. Women, however, carried on working above ground, sorting out the coal – they needed to bring in some money somehow. But their contributions have largely been erased from history.
These are patterns that go back many centuries. My great-great-great-grandparents led a transient lifestyle. Charles, my two times great-grandad, worked on big engineering projects, quite often in rural areas. He was involved in the building of the Manchester ship canal and various reservoirs, and worked on the railways. Mary-Ann, his wife, had 13 children, five of whom died.
What strikes me is the regularity with which they moved, only to set up home again in a hut in a field alongside hundreds of others families. Hut 10, Big Field, 38 Canal Huts: their list of addresses reads like a plan for a new estate now abandoned. Not only was their home constantly filled with children, but it was also common practice to take in lodgers. The beds were filled night and day, as the men worked shifts. Can you imagine the washing? The damp clothes hung on the rafters, the coal fire never able to fully dry the garments.
I was five months pregnant with my third baby when I learned about what kind of life Mary-Ann must have led. When the censuswas taken in 1891, she was pregnant with her fifth child – and was housing 11 lodgers. Just five months later, her baby, James, died. Her next child was born 10 months after that.
Reading about her, I wanted to reach back in time and pull her forward. We may know a little about the men who built our canals, railways and reservoirs, but I wish we knew more about the women who lived alongside them, who have been just as important as the men in how the countryside has been shaped.
Coal fires and paraffin lamps, labourers and kids. I want to ask them, how did you keep the floor clean? Was there always something cooking for the next meal? Did you ever get a good night’s sleep? The outside will have been brought in all day, the weather seeping in through the cracks in the building. How did they keep anyone alive?
When we think of work in the countryside, we picture the men working the land. Farmers toiling the earth, reservoir builders digging, foresters planting and harvesting. Alongside that image should be women like my mum stacking logs, forestry wives perched in the front cab of a timber lorry with their shopping at their feet, Mary-Ann, a full pregnant stomach, resting for a moment with a broom in her hand. All that silent, unrecorded work.
Rebecca Smith is the author of Rural (HarperCollins Publishers, £18.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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