The Dentdale Story
Kitchen / Living Room
Picture Links
The work routine was the same every week:

Monday: Wash Day & Butter Making day
Tuesday: Ironing and Dent Town Market Day
Wednesday: Cleaning upstairs
Thursday: Baking day
Friday: Cleaning downstairs, blackleading the range and polishing brasses
Saturday: Mending clothes - the odds and ends day
Sunday: Chapel and rest day

The kitchen was the heart of the home - the 'house body' they called it - where food was prepared, cooked and eaten, and where the farmer's wife ruled the roost.

Until the 19th century, cooking was done in a pot suspended over an open fire from a 'reckan' - a swinging bar. These were gradually replaced by ranges', where the open fire was flanked by a boiler on one side and an oven on the other. Water was collected from a well or straight from the beck and poured into the boiler with a bucket. When it was hot it was scooped out with a ladling can.
To one side of the range you might find a 'lambing chair', where a sick lamb would be nursed back to health. On the far side was the family 'rocker', where the farmer's wife would knit or sew. A 'slopstone' sink and wooden washboard and dolly tub was the family's washing machine. A dresser or 'dishbink' held the crockery and perhaps a set of carved wooden knitting sticks.
'Before we got wash boilers it was really awful 'cos we'd all the water to carry... When I was at Dee Cottage we had to go up road and down into beck and get our water, there was a well under t 'road and we got it there... We had no running water in any house till I was in my forties &" - Mary Ellison
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Dent Village Heritage Centre
Dent, Nr. Sedbergh, Cumbria
LA10 5QJ
United Kingdom
Tel: 015396 25800
info@dentvillageheritagecentre.com
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Jim & Margaret Taylor
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