| No school - we're carrying bark for a month ! |
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Sometimes
children missed school lessons because they could earn
money for their families
by helping with seasonal jobs. One of these was 'bark
carrying', or barking, which was needed for the leather
tanning industry. When oak trees were cut down, the bark was stripped from the trunks and local children collected it and carried it to carts to be taken to the local tannery. This Log Book entry is from Llandyssil School in 1865... |
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28th
April
1865 |
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"The attendance is diminishing. Children engaged carrying bark in the woods and potato-setting.The bark carrying will probably continue a month or more". |
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The strips of bark
were ground into small lumps and put into tanpits.
The leather hides were then soaked
in mixtures of oak-bark and water for long periods.
Autumn was the time for gathering acorns in the woods. These were known as 'mast' and large quantities were collected and sold to farmers for feeding pigs. This is Llandyssil School again, from 1868... |
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I'm
nuts about acorns !
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15th
October
1868 |
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"Fewer children at school than there has been for a long time: most are away picking acorns as the wind has been rough and has blown them off the trees". |
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After this gale one local boy collected
"19 bushels" [692
litres !] of acorns which he sold for 2
shillings a bushel, making a very useful sum of money for 1868. Back to Montgomery schools menu
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RDR
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