In 2011, the Dalesman published a recollection by Caroline Fields of a visit to her grandmother’s cottage at Hargill, near Hawes in North Yorkshire. Her grandmother was self-sufficient, with fresh meat and fish supplied to her by a local poacher: “She would never buy meat – she simply couldn’t afford it!”

Caroline’s grandmother, grew her own vegetables, made cheese, kept beehives and baked her own bread: “This tasted wonderful when, fresh from the oven, it was accompanied by her own butter, cheese, honey or jam.”   Caroline describes the oven in the cottage, “which completely filled one wall of the kitchen scullery.” 

 “The range, which was quite ornate, consisted of a small top oven and larger bottom oven on the right-hand side of the room. The fire (which burned night and day) was in the middle of the range, over which hung a large, black hoop. On the hoop was a cauldron-like black pan, constantly boiling water. On the left-hand side were two deep, wide, black open shelves, where Grandma would ‘proof’ bread or soften butter and honey when they were both solid in winter.”

The bottom shelf was also used for drying clothes: “In winter, she would frequently put on her bloomers whilst they were still warm and the look of ecstasy on her face would always make me laugh.”

Once or twice a week fish was delivered to her door, exchanged for her own honey, cheese, home-made beer and flowers.

 “The river-trout she cooked (in the oven with a knob of butter and wrapped in a large cabbage or dock leaves) was delicious and unlike anything else I’d tasted … Pat the Poacher would bring it to the door – which was always open, rain or shine – and shout ‘It’s Friday, Missus!’  I never understood why he shouted this as he rarely brought it on a Friday.  Eventually, years later, I realised he was making a pun on ‘Fry-day’ … Grandma loved hearing his stories and would invite him in to have a mug of char and a bit o’ cake.”

*

Source:  Extract from the article, ‘Tales from Grandma’s Cottage Kitchen’ by Caroline Fields, published in the Dalesman, July 2011, pp.333-34.