Charterville, Minster Lovell, Oxfordshire

Alternative settlements (2)

I have blogged before about Chartism, the working-class movement of the 1830s and 1840s that campaigned for electoral reform and set up settlements where people could live in decent accommodation with a plot of land to cultivate. A number of Chartist villages or colonies were established in the late-1840s – Heronsgate in Hertfordshire, Snig’s End and Lowbands in Gloucestershire, Great Dodford near Birmingham, and Charterville, at Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire.

Charterville was founded in 1847 on 300 acres of land divided into some 57 smallholdings and so, while in 1848, Europe’s year of revolutions, campaigning Chartists marched in support of such demands as universal suffrage for men over 21, a group of their fellows in Oxfordshire settled down to a quiet agrarian life. They built the standard Chartist bungalows, generously laid out with oak floors, good-sized windows, and bookshelves, that still survive today.

In spite of setbacks – the colonies were declared illegal by a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1851 and there were difficulties repaying the loans that had been taken out to buy the land – the smallholdings continued to function and many of the bungalows remain. Their typical layout – central gable with flanking rooms – makes them easy to spot in Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, and here not far from the Witney bypass in Oxfordshire. Here amongst the trees it is not difficult to imagine the attractions they held for their first occupants.

Minster Lovell, Oxfordshire

The ruined 15th-century manor house at Minster Lovell is an idyllic spot for picnicking, kingfisher-spotting, and meditating on the passing of time. Although the years haven’t been kind to the house – it seems to have been dismantled in the 18th century and the remains used as farm buildings – the wonderful circular dovecote is still very much intact.

Hundreds of nest holes line the walls and an impressive bit of carpentry holds together the roof, with its central lantern, through which the birds could come and go. On a hot summer’s day it’s cool inside the substantial stone wall, which is thick enough to accommodate nest holes almost an arm’s-length in depth.

That was quite deep enough, as it was the dovecote-keeper’s job to reach into the nest holes and pull out the young pigeons – known as squabs – when they were well grown and plump, but not quite ready to fly. The squabs were harvested during the breeding season (roughly March to October), providing the Lord of the Manor with a source of tasty meat. In the Middle Ages only barons, manorial lords, and abbots were allowed to keep a dovecote, so pigeon-meat was a luxury for the upper-classes, not, as is sometimes said, a winter supplement to the diet of the poor.

Dovecotes come in several different shapes. Oxfordshire alone has wonderful round, octagonal, and rectangular examples. As working farmyard buildings, they’re not usually highly decorated, but the timber-work required to roof a round or eight-sided building often has an intricacy of its own. Thanks to Neil Philip of Adventures in the Print Trade for introducing me to this one, and for providing the picture. And while I’m at it, thanks too to Emma Bradford for a picnic worthy of the Lord of the Manor.