by Sylvia Kent
A remedy from Feering for a cut finger involved pepper sprinkled on the bandage. For a deep cut, it was customary to apply a slice of horseradish to it to arrest the bleeding, put pepper on the wound and then draw the edges of the cut back together to effect healing.
Fingernails and toenails often occur in ancient cure recipes. It was not always the rural folk who knew the secrets of curative properties. Samuel Pepys was a great believer in the old cures. He records in his diary a visit to Brentwood to see his old friend Cesare Morelli, who, as a practising Catholic at that sensitively religious time of 1680, was forced to leave London for safety reasons. Pepys had employed Morelli in 1675 as house musician and enjoyed his company very much. He made the tiring journey from London along the Essex Great Road, accompanied by Mr and Mrs Houblon, who also wanted to meet Morelli to commission him to compose songs and psalms for their young daughter Sarah to sing. As Morelli had been suffering from gout, Pepys had earlier visited a London healer ‘possessed of miraculous sympathetic powers’ and had been instructed to save parings of Morelli’s toenails and three locks of hair to take back with him to London so that the healer could produce a cure. Pepys is also recorded as returning to Brentwood again with the cure, but this time accompanied by the infamous Lady Mordaunt.
Romany gypsy Paul Stevens.
Brother Adam, champion bee-keeper and mead-maker.
A bee skep.
White witchcraft spells and stone witch bottles containing nails and hair have been found, usually in the roof space or the walls or cemented over the door frames of cottages. One theory was that the witch had created a magical link with her victim using human body products such as urine, blood and nail parings.
As fingernails were important ingredients in some remedies, there were several local anecdotes and rhymes regarding them. The idea that it matters when you cut your nails is believed to date back to the sixteenth century. Most agree that Monday is the best day and Friday should be avoided. Kathleen Curtis in Colchester remembered this rhyme:
Cut them on a Monday, you cut them for health,
Cut them on a Tuesday you cut them for wealth,
Cut them on a Wednesday you cut them for news,
Cut them on Thursday a new pair of shoes,
Cut them on Friday you cut them for sorrow,
Cut them on Saturday see your true-love tomorrow,
Cut them on Sunday the devil will be with you all the week.
Using urine to cure chilblains is probably world famous and is often recited by Essex folklorists and Romany gypsies. Even today, urine is used as a cure for many illnesses and was once baked in a cake or made into a paste with garlic to restore hair.
The Romany gypsies in Essex had a cure for a hernia, which involved passing the patient (usually a child) through an ash sapling, split through the middle, preferably one which had grown naturally from seed and had not previously been damaged by man. The tree was then tightly bound up and, as it grew together, so the patient would be healed.
In 1722, writer and journalist Daniel Defoe was on one of his rides through the Essex marshes, exploring the North Essex villages for his book A Tour Through the Eastern Counties. He gives an interesting account of one of the most prevalent ailments of the time, which he called ‘dreaded ague’. The antidotes were strange: some folk were desperate enough to swallow live insects; others chewed gunpowder.
An old-fashioned cure for shingles, collected from an elderly lady in Paglesham who remembered her grandparents using it, was the ‘abracadabra ritual’. It was employed in the marshland villages. The patient simply wrote down the word ‘abracadabra’ in large capitals and wore the charm around the neck on a silken thread for eleven days. It was then removed and flung into a fast-flowing river or stream. As the water bore the amulet away, so too, it was believed, did it carry off the illness. Such was the power of positive thinking.
More modern remedies included drinking cabbage water and nettle tea to purify the blood and liquorice powder to purge the system. Eva Baxter, who was born in 1908, remembers how, when she was a child, grown-ups seemed to be obsessed with bowels. She recalled that:
It was believed that constipation was thought to be at the root of most illness and should be avoided. Every family had their own method. Ours was a Friday night dose of senna pods, placed in a glass and covered with water, left overnight, strained and drunk upon waking on Saturday morning. When this did not work, we would be given syrup of figs or castor oil.
She also remembers eucalyptus being sprinkled on her handkerchiefs and pillows at night when she had a bad cold:
How I hated that eucalyptus smell! I remember I had to sip hot lemon with no sugar and it was awful. If I hadn’t improved, the next day was spent in bed and then came the poultice which was made of warm mustard spread on brown paper and this covered my chest and back. It was very messy and the paper crackled and scratched every time I turned over in bed. Next came rings of raw Spanish onion – I dreaded getting a cold when I was young.
Hermit Cures
In centuries past, Essex seems to have attracted an unusual number of ‘men of the road’. Dido was such a person; he roamed around the Essex lanes and fields from around 1880. He lived in Hainault Forest and was well known in the markets and pubs, where he peddled his wares in the small towns surrounding Epping. Using roots, leaves and flowers which he collected from the forest, he brewed up an assortment of potions in a large pot or cauldron hanging over an open fire. The resulting elixir was a much sought-after remedy which apparently cured all manner of ailments, from whooping cough to arthritic pains. Perhaps the most famed of his remedies was his green fern ointment. This was believed by local people to possess powerful healing and antiseptic properties and was applied indiscriminately to cuts, bruises, sprained ankles and sore eyes. It gave instant relief to burns and was supposed to cure chilblains overnight. Dido had once promised to pass on the recipe for making this unguent to a friend before he died, but in fact he never did and the secret was lost.
Dido the herbalist in Epping Forest.
Old Oddy lived in the woods near Childerditch, not far from Warley Barracks, during the 1920s. Wally Hull remembers seeing him in the woods when he was a child:
He lived in an old hut made of branches and sacking. Without heat or electricity, he survived and was always cheerful. He loved a chat. He cooked all his food on an open fire and also knew how to use wild herbs and would sell bunches of watercress, which grew in the stream near his shack. He snared rabbits, selling them for sixpence in the Horse and Groom and the Thatchers, together with bunches of wild flowers and mushrooms. He reckoned the watercress growing near his home had special healing powers.
Later it was found that the stream passed through Warley Barracks and had a fair amount of sewage content.
Healing Waters
In earlier times, when people were sick or infirm, it was human nature to seek cures from any source, however unlikely. At a time when medicine was less the science that it is today, the creative powers of the natural waters found in some areas acquired a certain reputation. It was well known that people would travel long distances to visit spas and watering places such as Tunbridge Wells, Bath and Cheltenham, as well as watering holes on the Continent.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Essex received unexpected attention for its natural water springs, which were believed to be imbued with medicinal, almost magical, properties. William Fitzstephen, in his book History of London (1180) wrote: ‘Round the city ... arise excellent springs at a small distance, whose waters are sweet, salubrious and clear, and whose runnels murmur o’er the shining stones’.
Although Essex was not generally renowned for its waters, there was enough evidence and interest for the writer and historian Miller Christy to study the subject seriously. During the early years of the last century, he went on an odyssey around the county, seeking out natural springs. His findings are included in his book Mineral Waters and Medicinal Springs of Essex (1906). C
hristy located at least two dozen springs, although there were probably more, and carefully collected samples of water from each, taking them back for laboratory analysis. The results of the majority were disappointing. Among the many places visited were the springs at Gidea Hall in Romford and at Chadwell, whose name is derived from St Chad, patron saint of medicinal springs and wells. Christy spent time at Weald Hall, where the water was claimed to have a drying and astringent quality and was recommended for haemorrhages. The spring at Tilbury Hall was close to the side of a hill overlooking the River Thames and its waters were said to contain calcareous earth, true nitre, sea salt and mineral alkali, useful for treating gout and diseases arising from acidity. The Forest spring on the north side of Hainault Forest, in the parish of Stapleford Abbots, was said to contain purging salts, iron and sea salts, useful for ‘bilious and nephritic colic’, as well as for sore eyes and legs.
Weald Hall, 1900.
Above: The Upminster Common well.
Left: Hockley Spa.
At Upminster Common, today signposted Tylers Common, there was a popular spring known to have existed from at least 1670, just 200 yards below the eastern boundary of Tylers Hall Farm. Famed as a medicinal spring, it was numbered among the three most efficacious in Essex and many people made their way there hoping to be cured of all manner of illnesses, from consumption to the pox. This mineral well was guarded by iron railings.
Hockley was another place that received special attention. Robert Clay and his asthmatic wife Letitia moved to the area in 1838 and Letitia’s health improved so miraculously and so quickly that the owner of the land, a London solicitor named Fawcett, had the water analysed. He also discovered that an earlier cottage on the site had been inhabited by William Hazard, who had lived to age of 105, dying in 1808. On the strength of this, an attempt was made to establish a commercial spa at the site, which the owner hoped would rival the famous Bath and Cheltenham spas. During the 1840s, pump rooms were erected, advertisements were printed and a female attendant was installed, but the venture was unsuccessful and disappeared after a few years, although the pump room at Hockley still stands.
There was also a spring at Vange. Lynn Pewsey, in her book A Taste of Essex, writes:
About 1900 ‘Vange Water’ became a fashionable fad. Five wells were sunk on the site of a spring in Vange and the product bottled and sold at 2/3d a pint with extravagant claims for its health-giving properties. Edwin Cash the entrepreneur behind the scheme grew wealthy on the profits as a trusting public poured into Vange to sample this new cure-all, and orders for the bottles came from all over the world. The bubble soon burst, however, and Vange Water is now only a footnote in the history books.
Some startling tales of cures were told during the heyday of the Vange water scheme. One man is said to have drunk just a glass and then thrown away his crutches and walked.
Perhaps today’s interest in old remedies is due to the often disturbing side effects of some of our modern prescribed medications. Over the last century, there has been a noticeable interest in homeopathy and a drift back towards reliance upon herbal remedies and the beneficial aspects of the living world.
FIVE
FOOD LORE
Famous for good land, good malt and dirty roads.
This was Daniel Defoe’s description of Essex in 1722. John Norden, writing earlier, waxed lyrical about the county: ‘This shire is more fatt, frutefull and full of profitable things, exceeding (as farr as I can finde) anie other shire, for the general commedities and the plenty.’ That description explains why Essex had so many windmills, for where the corn grows high there must be stones to grind it.
Feasting and folklore go hand in hand and Essex is a county renowned for its interesting gastronomic and brewing history. Many of our age-old customs, culinary traditions and festivals have close associations with food, such as Colchester’s annual Oyster Feast, the Dunmow Flitch Trials, the Hornchurch boar’s head and Daniel Day’s annual picnic at the Fairlop Fair, among others.
When the Romans invaded Britain and settled in Colchester, they must surely have been delighted to find such a huge diversity of food. Fish and oysters were there for the taking from our coastline and the numerous rivers and streams, and the woodlands were home to wild boar and birds. Having established their capital at Colchester, the Romans expanded local oyster production. Oysters were considered a great delicacy and the Romans enjoyed them and had enough to be able to export them to Rome, where they fetched a high price.
Cheese
The Romans were cheese-makers and it is likely that they brought the skill with them. During the seventeenth century, Essex farmers made cheese from cow’s milk, storing it in special cheese lofts. At Ingatestone Hall, there existed the great West Cheese Chamber, which was lined with boards ‘to keepe owt rattes’. At one time, farmers sold their surplus cheese in the London markets, where the street cry advertised it as coming ‘from the meadows and marshes of Essex’. But Essex cheese-making declined during the agricultural revolution in the following century.
The Essex coastal marshes provided grazing for sheep, which were reared mainly for their wool but also valued for their milk which, when transformed into a hard cheese, kept well through the winter months. During the seventeenth century, the cheese was loaded on to wagons and sold over the London border in the markets. The ewes were milked in small huts on the marshes, known as wicks, and the word has become a part of several place names on the Essex coastline. With a welcome revival in cheese-making in recent years, Essex now produces some excellent farmhouse cheeses, including curd and goat’s milk varieties from Rozbert Dairy at Pebmarsh on the Essex/Suffolk border.
Our county cheese was obviously not enjoyed by the poet and satirist John Skelton, who wrote:
A cantle of Essex cheese
Was well a foot thick
Full of maggots quick.
It was huge and great
And mighty strong meat
For the devil to eat.
It was tart and punicate.
Sea Harvest
The fishing industry at Barking is mentioned in the Domesday Book. During the eighteenth century, the town was considered to be one of England’s greatest fishing ports. In 1722, Daniel Defoe described Barking as ‘a busy little port, fishing for the London market’. Its success until the mid-1800s was due, in no small way, to Samuel Hewett, that doughty son of Scrymgeour Hewett who had come from Scotland to Barking in 1760. When Samuel took over the family business at Barking, he ingeniously kept the fish on ice, sending the catch back to port in a fast boat while the trawlers stayed on their fishing stations. The ice was obtained by flooding the marshes above the town before the first hard frost, then breaking up the ice and storing it in icehouses. However, when the railway came to Essex, fish from other ports could be delivered to London faster than Hewett could transport it by road or river from Barking. The fishing port closed in 1899.
Harwich, Leigh and other small ports supply herring and flat fish, which end up in the many fish and chip shops around the county. People living on the Essex coast at the beginning of the twentieth century enjoyed fish at certain times of the year, and no Sunday tea was complete without cockles and winkles served with brown bread and butter. Many people bought them directly from the cockle sheds at Leigh-on-Sea, near Southend.
A Barking fisherman.
The Whitebait Festival
Whitebait, which is the mixed fry of small fish of all varieties, but usually herrings, has for centuries been an esteemed delicacy from Essex. The first Whitebait Festival originated in Essex as a private annual dinner and was enjoyed by some of the gentry who had been connected with the costly schemes to repair the ravages of the great Thames flood of 1707, known as the Dagenham Breach. The host, Sir Robert Preston, the MP for Dover, invited distinguished guests to his fishing cottage nearby. The Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, became a regular visitor, but asked for a venue closer to London. To suit him, Greenwich was chosen and the loca
l delicacy, whitebait, was adopted as an important part of the menu. Its annual day of glory was the Whitebait Feast, held until 1884 at Greenwich or Blackwell. Traditionally attended by leading politicians, the occasion marked the close of the parliamentary session and was held on Whit Monday or the nearest convenient day.
The Whitebait Festival was revived in 1934 by the Southend Chamber of Commerce, Trade and Industry. In the early days, the opening and the ‘blessing of the catch’ was held at the end of Southend Pier, but sadly this was destroyed in 1976. In modern times, this unique service, in which church ministers of five denominations take part, is held outside the Cliffs Pavilion in Southend, followed by the prestigious Whitebait Festival.
Herbs and Vegetables
Essex folk have long considered parsley to be a plant of evil omen and many superstitions have grown up around it, among them a belief that it is unlucky either to plant or transplant parsley.
The allium family, which includes onion, garlic, leek and ramson, is one of the most useful groups of plants, offering not only the healthiest of vegetables, but a cure for many illnesses. According to a seventeenth-century proverb: