UNITE Rural life
WHERE RURAL WORKERS ARE RURAL LIFE
Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury
Built around the old Abbey farm in Glastonbury, the Somerset Rural Life Museum shines a spotlight on the history, and lives, of rural workers and communities across Somerset.
The museum’s exhibitions are packed full of the tools and equipment for various rural jobs ranging from scythes and ploughs to hedging and shearing. It also has examples of many of the different tasks agricultural workers were involved in throughout the year.
The museum is based near the Somerset Levels, a flat landscape of drainage ditches, willow trees and orchards, so it’s no surprise that local workers and their families were also involved with fishing for eels, producing baskets and making cider. There is even an original cider press dated 1792.
However, there are also examples of some of the diversity of work that rural workers take part in today as well. The Glastonbury Festival just down the road has a massive impact on the local economy, and the museum includes signs and posters from the festival and even a highlight decorated bin.
In the centre of the “Working the Land” section is a banner from the National
Union of Agriculture Workers branch in Whitelackington which was funded by events in the village and the museum dates from 1948.
There are other examples of trade unionism in the countryside, including a report from 1917 when the Taunton Trades and Labour Council organised a demonstration with a brass band, followed by a meeting, in support of striking women workers at the Somerset Sanitary Steam Laundry.
Another exhibit shows that migration to find a better life is nothing new. Farmworkers across Somerset were encouraged to move to Australia, Canada and America to escape poverty wages and poor living conditions - and they left in their thousands to seek a better life and better pay.
The museum has an original poster from 1850 in Ilminster which advertised the “Advantages of Emigration to New South Wales or Eastern Australia”.
Though mainly aimed at farmers offering freehold land at six shillings per acre in a land where “The Climate is the finest in the World” with two crops a year and fine roads and markets, the poster also offered “Free
34 uniteLANDWORKER Spring 2024
Passage to Married Agricultural Labourers.”
There were even letters in local papers encouraging farm workers to move abroad. One from John Terrell, a carpenter from Stoke Sub Hamdon, was in the Sherbourne Advertiser in 1849 and said: “The poor labouring man is much better off than tradesman in England.”
Museum curator Bethan Murray feels it is important that people learn about the rural history of working people, saying, “Working life is an essential component of rural history. Agricultural labourers made up a huge proportion of the rural population alongside craftspeople and those working in rural industries.”
“The Somerset Rural Life Museum explores the ways rural workers learnt, celebrated, worshipped and spent their leisure time. It’s a museum that covers all aspects of rural history and has a strong commitment to contemporary stories.”
The museum originally opened in the 1970s and was run by volunteers, but in 2017 underwent a major refurbishment, with new galleries, and a recreated farmhouse kitchen, that
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40
