What was working class life really like in 17th-century Somerset?
Dr Mark Hailwood is a first generation academic from a working class background. He holds the position of Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Bristol and is a social historian with a particular interest in the everyday lives of ordinary men and women in England, during the period 1500 – 1700.
Ahead of his upcoming talk at Somerset Rural Life Museum on Thursday 10 October 2024, we asked him some questions about working class life in 17th-century Somerset.
Here’s what he had to say …
What was the most surprising thing you discovered in your research? What interested you in this area?
I have always been more interested in the lives of ordinary men and women in the past, much more so than in the history of kings and queens. It’s working class people in the past that I see as my ancestors, and I’ve always been curious about what their day-to-day lives would have been like. What has surprised me about studying their lives is how ‘modern’ they were in many ways. Most of them earned a living by running quite complex small businesses – either farms or workshops – and they were not simple peasants doing mindless toil as we often imagine them to be!
How different were the everyday lives of men versus women at that time?
Men and women did lead different lives. There were certain types of work that were more associated with one or the other, and men – in theory at least – had authority over the women in their household. But there was quite a lot of overlap in the sorts of work men and women did – both worked in the fields, and with animals, and both went to market – so their experiences were not totally separate or distinct.
What’s relatable about that time to people’s lives now?
Whilst their working lives seem very different to our own – only a small percentage of people farm the land today, for example – their relationships were not so very different. Men and women fell in love – and out of it! People got along well with some of their neighbours and wider family, and fell out dramatically with others. And they valued having a happy family and a nice house, and a bit of fun alongside all of their hard work.
What was the most significant challenge faced by 17th-century working class villagers?
Staying alive! Death rates were much higher then than today, and the life expectancy at birth was in the mid-30s. That number is so low because many infants died; if you survived to adulthood you might expect to live into your 50s, 60s, 70s, or even beyond. The other big challenge was making a living every year when your fortunes depended so much on a good harvest – bad weather and a bad harvest could be catastrophic, but there was not much you could do about it.
Life was seen as quite hard for people during that time, was there any time for leisure activities? What events in village life would have been celebrated?
People certainly knew how to have fun! Villages had regular festivals, usually tied into religious events such as Easter and Christmas, and there would have been weddings and christenings to celebrate too. But they didn’t need a special occasion to have fun – every village would have had at least one alehouse, and going for a few pints was something men and women did regularly to meet and chat with friends and to enjoy themselves after work or at the weekend.
Was Somerset village-life fairly typical of the rest of the country at that time?
There were regional differences of course, but most villages in the country had a similar set up, with the majority of people working in farming, with a few artisans, and with the church and the alehouse as the focus of community life.
To find out more, join Mark for his upcoming talk at Somerset Rural Life Museum on Thursday 10 October, you can attend in person or online.