Tony Taft writes:- Today we had an attendance of 20 with 4 apologies, sadly we had no new members or guests.
Our speaker today was the ever popular John Risdon and the subject of his presentation was entitled “ Christmas in Victorian Torquay “
John has given us talks in the past and when we read his name in the program of talks we look forward to his talk with great enthusiasm, John did not disappoint us on this occasion.
Although John mentioned Christmas in his title he did not dwell much on how the people actually celebrated Christmas in their homes.
John did a lot of research with the great help of the Torquay Museum, and it was in this research that John found a lot of useful information from old news paper advertisements and read out a selection of them.
Because photography was in its infancy people advertising would have to rely on the eloquent use of the English language to describe their services or products, thus a certain amount of over exaggeration was used in their description, (nothing has changed over the years)
John talked about a tradition in Devon called the Ashen Faggot. Now as a kid growing up in Birmingham my mother would take us kids to the Faggot and Pea restaurant in Birmingham city centre as a tasty treat for being good kids; as you can imagine we didn’t go very often.
But you wouldn’t want to eat the Ashen faggot (also known as Ashton faggot), it is an old English Christmas tradition from Devon and Somerset, similar to that of the Yule log and related to the wassail tradition.
A faggot is a large log or a bundle of ash sticks, it was bound with nine green lengths of ash bands or beams preferably all from the same tree.
The faggot is burnt during Christmas Eve.
John led us on a visual tour around Torbay pointing out buildings of interest especially a picture of the Main Street in Torquay looking Down the street. He said Victorian England was a class society where the lower class would be in the work rooms making the latest fashion in clothing, the middle class would be be those selling the products, and the upper class would be in the large properties that you can still see today on top of the hills.
People would live above their properties including the workers, so if you had a job you had a roof over your head
In 1848 the first trains arrived at Torre station, which was the main station for Torbay.
John showed us a picture of Livermead boarding house, quite a modest looking property, but today it is a very popular hotel.
I have included some pictures of people enjoying a Victorian Christmas in their homes, without the need for a mobile phone, a computer or television and I am sure they had a great time.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish all our members and their families a wonderful Christmas and a healthy and happy new year. Tony Taft.
Addendum by Website button pusher Tony Hare:-
The Speaker today was introduced as usual by our Chairman Colin Small
and we also had an update on the forthcoming Christmas Lunch, to be held on Saturday 14th December (12pm for 1pm sit-down) from our “Dinner Monitor” Barry Ross.
Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 15th January when Ray Helm will speak on the subject “Making Changes in a Dangerous World”
Let’s hope that before that we all have a quiet and peaceful break.
Paignton Probus Club 