Medieval Fairs and Market Towns

October 25, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: History, Markets, Random, Shopping, Work

medieval fairs and market towns

After quitting Soberton Down, we came up a hill leading to Hambledon, and turned off to our left to bring us down to Mr. Goldsmith’s at West End, where we now are, at about a mile from the village of Hambledon.

A village it now is; but it was formerly a considerable market-town, and it had three fairs in the year. Wens [large overcrowded cities] have devoured market-towns and villages; and shops have devoured markets and fairs; and this, too, to the infinite injury of the most numerous classes of the people.

Shop-keeping, merely as shop-keeping, is injurious to any community. What are the shop and the shop-keeper for? To receive and distribute the produce of the land. There are other articles, certainly; but the main part is the produce of the land. The shop must be paid for; the shop-keeper must be kept.

When fairs were frequent, shops were not needed. A manufacturer of shoes, of stockings, of hats; of almost anything that man wants, could manufacture at home in an obscure hamlet, with cheap house-rent, good air, and plenty of room. He need pay no heavy rent for shop; and no disadvantages from confined situation; and then, by attending three or four or five or six fairs in a year, he sold the work of his hands, unloaded with a heavy expense attending the keeping of a shop.

Quoted from: “Rural Rides“, William Cobbett, 1830.

Sub-irrigated Planters

October 21, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: DIY, Farming, Gardening

sub irrigated planters

Sub-irrigated planters are simple devices that allow low-maintenance, low-water consumption container gardening. Appropedia has DIY-instructions, using plastic buckets or bottles.

Previously: Water batteries for trees, How to make your own low-tech vertical farm.

Featherbeds, Rushlights, Brooms: The History of Household Objects

October 17, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: History, Obsolete technology, Random

featherbed day

A very well documented and illustrated website on the history of everyday home life, housekeeping and domestic objects: Old & Interesting. A few examples:

“Featherbeds were only for the rich in the 14th century, but by the 19th century they were a comfort that ordinary people could aspire to – especially if they kept a few geese. The beds, also called feather ticks or feather mattresses, were valuable possessions. People made wills promising them to the next generation, and emigrants travelling to the New World from Europe packed up bulky featherbeds and took them on the voyage. If you didn’t inherit one, you needed to buy up to 50 pounds of feathers, or save feathers from years of plucking until there were enough for a new bed.”

“For centuries in small cottages there were people who could not afford any kind of candle. For them a cheap alternative was a rushlight made from a rush dipped in grease, or a burning splinter of wood. These were held pinched in a nip like pliers or tongs on a stand. Nips were also called nippers or a pair of nips. They could be combined with a candle-holder for people who used both kinds of light, depending on their needs and budget at different times.”

“When you stop and think about it, you probably realise that brooms got their name because they used to be made of branches of broom, a yellow-flowering shrub – except when they were made of birch or heather. Many other shrubby plants have been used across the world for sweeping and brushing. Tie a bundle of good local twigs together, with a tight, narrow grip at one end, and you can whisk dirt away. If you attach the broom to a broomstick, so much the better.”

More: Old & Interesting

Building with Mud and Steel Frames

October 9, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: Architecture, Cities, Construction, Housing


Building with mud and steel frames is an interesting hybrid between industrial and non-industrial technologies. Two examples:

Building with mud bricks and steel frames 2 “Kazakh architect and artist Saken Narynov created a superstructure able to host what we could call an adobe vertical city. In fact, the structure is used as a matrix that can be more or less densely filled with multifamily habitation units. The traditional earth based material thus hybrids with the steel structure in a very unusual and interesting way and the space resulting between the habitation units and the structure is beautifully occupied by mazes of staircases and elevated pathways.”

“The design recalls recent works by the Chilean architect Marcelo Cortes, who employs a steel meshwork onto which mud is sprayed, but on a far greater scale. Cortes has developed a “quincha metalica”, a form of traditional quincha construction (mud and straw packed between a bamboo or wood frame) that uses a steel frame work.”

[Read more…]

Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870-1873)

October 7, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: Barge haulers, Boats, Cargo, Human power, Paintings, Shipping, Travel

Barge haulers on the volga

“Barge haulers on the Volga“, a late 19th century painting by Ilja Repin.

The Private Bus System that Works

October 7, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: Public transport, Travel

“America’s 20th largest bus service — hauling 120,000 riders a day — is profitable and also illegal. It’s not really a bus service at all, but a willy-nilly aggregation of 350 licensed and 500 unlicensed privately-owned ‘dollar vans’ that roam the streets of Brooklyn and Queens, picking up passengers from street corners where city buses are either missing or inconvenient.” Read more. Via Makeshift.