Victorian: Days when Yuletide was a simple affair

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Vivienne Smith takes a look at the diaries of King’s Newton naturalist John Joseph Briggs and his comments on Yuletide.

MANY people today feel that Christmas has become too commercialised and look back with nostalgia to Yuletide celebrations in times past.

Yet, just how accurate is the traditional Victorian image of Yuletide complete with snow and Santa Claus, and Christmas stockings hung up by the fire?

Thanks to a King’s Newton man, we have a unique window to this bygone age.

John Joseph Briggs kept a diary for some 30 years. In it he recorded daily life in the neighbourhood and comments on the changing seasons.

He was born on March 6, 1819, at Elms Farm, King’s Newton, in the parish of Melbourne.

His family had farmed the land there for generations.

The son of John Briggs and his wife, Mary, John Joseph was the only one of their eight children to reach the age of 25.

He was, himself, a sickly youngster.

Nevertheless, at the age of eight he was sent away to boarding school in Wymeswold, Leicestershire. Later on, private tuition was provided by a clergyman in Darley Dale.

Then, at 16, the farmer’s son was apprenticed to William Bemrose of Derby to learn the trade of printing and bookbinding.

A country lad at heart, he hated having to work indoors. Soon his health began to suffer, and he was eventually forced to abandon his apprenticeship and return to the family farm.

More interested in observing and writing about nature than working the land, the young man started to keep careful records of what he saw.

In 1855, J J Briggs became the first person to establish a regular natural history column in the magazine The Field. The venture led into correspondence with many of the leading naturalists of the day, among them Charles Darwin.

His work was also published in many scientific journals including The Zoologist and, at 27, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

But for all these outside interests, King’s Newton remained his home throughout his life.

Briggs first began keeping a detailed diary in 1845. His entries, some retrospective, reveal that Christmases were, indeed, often white in Victorian times.

Early in 1854, for instance, he recorded that snow-drifts were more than 5ft deep during the festive season.

A fresh fall of snow at New Year caused the mail from Derby to be five hours late. The postman had had to abandon his cart and proceed on horseback “with the letter bags slung around him”.

It was so cold that year that all the sparrows in the neighbourhood congregated at the brickyard, drawn there by the warmth from the kiln fires.

Meanwhile, at Elms Farm, several robins actually ventured into the house.

One lunchtime, as the Briggs family were eating their midday meal in the parlour, one of the birds flew in and perched on the holly decorations.

From there, it swooped down to the table for crumbs.

The coldest Yuletide by far, however, was in 1860 when temperatures fell to -16C on Christmas Eve.

Briggs noted in his diary that a report in the Derby Mercury claimed it was “a frost greater than has ever been recorded in this county since regular observations have been taken”.

Milk in the dairies was frozen into solid blocks of ice. And the naturalist could not believe his eyes when a cloth, which had been put in front of the fire to dry, actually froze on the side furthest away from the heat.

While watching horses at work in the village, he noticed that “the cold had condensed their breath which hung in icicles from beneath their chins as long and thick as men’s fingers”.

The Trent was completely frozen over all the way from Swarkestone to King’s Mills, a distance of around four miles.

With the ice more than 15ins thick in places, the river was transformed into a handy walkway for local people. They even lit a bonfire on the frozen surface.

The Arctic weather claimed the lives of thousands of wild birds that Christmas, Briggs recorded.

But a flock of sheep at Allestree Hall had a lucky escape.

When owner Thomas William Evans took a walk in the grounds in early January, the animals mistook him for the shepherd.

Anticipating a feed, they followed him across the frozen ornamental pond.

As they reached the centre, the ice began to creak ominously. Sensing danger, the sheep instinctively huddled together and their combined weight caused the ice to break.

Fortunately, with the help of a rope and a ladder, more than 40 of the animals were rescued and only 10 drowned.

Not all Christmases were so bitter.

Just three years earlier, the residents of Melbourne parish had experienced the warmest winter for nearly 70 years.

That Yuletide, Briggs discussed the matter with a group of local gentlemen.

One of them commented: “This is the mildest season I ever knew. I actually gathered a bunch of roses this morning in full bloom.”

The naturalist himself had also spotted that violets and primroses were in flower, while bats could be seen flitting about in the balmy evening air.

On Christmas Day, he even discovered the nest of a blackbird with eggs in it.

Like every generation before and since, Briggs grieved to see how the festive season had changed since he was a boy.

At the age of just 20, he wrote in his book Melbourne – a sketch of its history and antiquities (1839): “It is to be regretted that many of the simple and innocent customs, the delight and pleasure of our forefathers, have here, as in other places, long passed away.”

When he was a lad, children did not hang up their stockings for presents, and there were no such things as Christmas cards or crackers.

Few people then had ever seen a Christmas tree or heard of Santa Claus.

The only Father Christmas was a character in the traditional mummers’ plays which were performed around the villages, and was nothing like the modern equivalent.

By Christmas 1860, Briggs was recording, with sadness, the loss to the parish of yet another tradition, the Plough Monday celebrations.

He well remembered it from his youth.

The age-old ceremony, which marked the return to work after the holidays, was held on the first Monday after Twelfth Night.

A group of men, known as plough bullocks, used to parade through the village in costume, carrying a plough and demanding donations as they went.

Often they were accompanied by morris dancers, which the whole parish turned out to see. Briggs noted: “One was decked as a harlequin or fool in a dress covered with shreds and ribbons of scarlet, blue and yellow and all showy colours.”

He was relieved that at least the carol singers still made their rounds on Christmas Eve. Such music was most welcome entertainment.

As the naturalist wrote in his diary on Christmas Day, 1845: “It is truly delightful on a calm, still early morning when all is solemnity and repose, to awake from one’s sleep and hear the sweet voices of these village minstrels.”

Among the other simple pleasures at Christmas were the decorations.

Briggs recorded that local people used sprigs of evergreens, such as holly and ivy to decorate their homes and also the parish church.

Then, in 1855, he noticed a new trend. That year, several residents made Christmas wreaths out of the foliage, as well as attractive star and cross shapes to hang on the wall.

Two years earlier, the diarist had spotted an even more significant development. He wrote: “The German custom of having Christmas trees has been introduced to this parish.”

The craze had already started with the publication in 1848 of a full-page picture of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children around a Christmas tree at Windsor.

It appeared in the Illustrated London News.

Such was the tremendous popularity of the royal family, that before long people all over the country were following their lead.

It was also largely thanks to Queen Victoria that Christmas became a time for families.

However, Briggs did not have one of his own until the age of 49. In 1868, he married 32-year-old Hannah Soar, of Chellaston, and together they had a son and three daughters.

Sadly, the couple spent just seven Christmases together before his health began to fail.

John Joseph Briggs died in King’s Newton on March 23, 1876 and was buried in Melbourne Churchyard.

The diary he left behind was never intended for publication. Yet, the man himself appreciated its potential appeal to future generations.

He wrote in the introduction: “Times and manners change and man loves to contemplate how men lived and acted before him.”

Briggs was right. Today, his journal provides us with a fascinating insight into everyday life in South Derbyshire in the 19th century.

It also gives a glimpse of Christmas past.

The Melbourne Historical Research Group published Briggs’ journal earlier this year. Melbourne 1820-1875 – a diary by John Joseph Briggs, edited by Philip Heath (ISBN 0 903463 78 4), is available from leading book shops.

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