A farmer's account of a Victorian Christmas in Rickmansworth

It’s not quite ‘the season to be jolly’, but many of us are getting ready for it. But what was it like, around here at least, in the past? The local farmer John White has told us what he and his family and work force were doing in December 1873.

The weather always makes a difference, doesn’t it? It’s been pretty cold and wet here recently, but we have a mental picture of Christmas seasons in the past being cold and crisp and snowy. Well, not in 1873 it wasn’t. Christmas Day was a Thursday, dull and foggy – the preceding week had been generally fine and mild, the week before cold and frosty, so what we’d now regard as ‘pretty normal’.

The changing face of Rickmansworth – High Street in 1870s. Image: Rickmansworth Historical Society/Three Rivers Museum

And the pace of working life didn’t change at this season. The whole farm, plough teams and other workers, were at work every day except Christmas Day itself, all across John White’s farms in Croxley Green as well as Rickmansworth, working the land, threshing the grain - and tending the animals, just as those with livestock do now. Saturdays were the same (Sundays were a day off), and there was very little concession to the season – there was a lot going on, and everyone was needed, pretty well every day.

Watford Observer December 13, 1873 – advertising the Christmas Agricultural Show and cards for sale. Image: Watford Observer/British Newspaper Archive

A seasonal highlight on Monday, December 15 was the Watford Cattle Show of the West Herts Agricultural Society, for which John White went to enormous trouble: he took four head of cattle himself to Rickmansworth station (Church Street) for the short trip to Watford (two animals walked there as well), expecting to have several first prizes – he ended up with just four seconds, on which he puts a brave face in his diary. The prize categories, by the way, included turkeys, clearly not as recent an innovation as we might think – all carefully recorded by the Watford Observer on December 20.

And the same issue of the Observer also reported on the Christmas windows of the grocers’ shops. Mr Kingham had in one window a model of a cottage made of butter with three figures in the garden, and on the other side Father Christmas holding a Christmas tree illuminated with gas, which sounds pretty familiar – we can only hope the heat of the gas didn’t melt the butter. And immediately after Christmas, the stationer W T Spencer in Watford High Street was among those advertising Christmas cards and Christmas tree ornaments, which sounds like a pretty modern post-Christmas sale.

The changing scene of Rickmansworth at Christmas: High Street lights, about 1990. Image: Rickmansworth Historical Society/Geoff Saul collection

But mixed in with it all was family business. John White was also providing transport to move his widowed sister-in-law Mary from Chorleywood to Rickmansworth – his brother Jim had been killed on his own farm earlier in the year. He was also arranging delivery for both Chorleywood and Rickmansworth Coal Clubs, which allowed the ‘poor’ to save weekly to take part in a bulk purchase of coal also funded by local more wealthy contributors, of which Mr White will have been one - coal was delivered around December 21, and John White provided two carts with three horses and three men to do that.

Hand-made Christmas card from the early 20th Century. Image: Three Rivers Museum Trust

And for these better-off families there was a steady stream of visitors and visiting, often by train: on Christmas Eve his daughter, son-in-law and their whole family (four plus a baby) came from Oxhey to stay over, and on Christmas Day they were joined by Mary and her children aged 20 and 17 – a fine Victorian family gathering, although overshadowed by tragedy. As usual, though, the house staff (a live-in housemaid and a cook, at least) won’t have had much time off!

So Christmas 150 years ago was perhaps not that different from what we have now. The weather was patchy but not cold, trees were decorated, cards were exchanged, tradesmen decorated their windows and sold Christmas goodies, and families and friends came together in various ways. The pace of life may have been different, but perhaps the way it was lived still has echoes today.

We hope you can all have a very happy and peaceful Christmas.

• Three Rivers Museum will not be open between Christmas and New Year, but will be open as usual afterwards – Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 2pm to 4pm, and Saturday from 10am to 2pm. Visit www.trmt.org.uk for more information.