Charles Dickens, in a Preface to The Christmas Carol



“I have endeavored in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly.......” Charles Dickens, in a Preface to A Christmas Carol

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Department 56 Snow Village Helps You Celebrate Mother's Day

Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Starbucks Coffee, 54859
On Mother's Day you may wish to surprise her with Starbucks coffee in bed...









Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Krispy Kreme Doughnut Shop,
55071




And maybe bring her a Krispy Kreme Doughnut, too...









Dept. 56, Snow Village,
The Dutchman's Pancake House,
55619

OR take her to brunch at her favorite place, like The Dutchman's Pancake House...Department 56 Snow Village The Dutchmans Pancake House











Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Cupid's Cardshop, 55384
Maybe you'll give her a card from Cupid's Cardshop...











Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Rose's Flower Shop, 805507

Or a beautiful bouquet of flowers from Rose's Flower Shop...Dept. 56 Snow Village Building - Rose's Flower Shop










Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Chateau Valley Winery, 799926


Or a bottle of vintage wine from Chateau Valley Winery...Department 56 Snow Village Chateau Valley Winery











Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Sweetheart Candy Shop, 55323
Or a box of chocolates from Sweetheart Candy Shop...










Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Pearlson's Jewelry, 55386 


Or maybe even a bangle from Pearlson's Jewelry...










Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Stillwater Collectibles and Antiques,
55383

Or that new Snow Village piece she saw at Stillwater Collectibles, and has been talking about ever since...










Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Our Lady of Grace Church,
805503

Maybe you'll go to church at Our Lady of Grace...Department 56 Snow Village Our Lady Of Grace Church













Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Snow Village Museum of Art,
55618



Or go see the special exhibit at the Snow Village Museum of Art...Department 56 Snow Village Snow Village Museum Of Art








Dept. 56, Snow Village,
A Day at the Beach, 55228

Or spend the day at the beach...A Day At The Beach










Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Wright Bike Shop, 55314


Or go for a bike ride...









Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Palm Lounge Supper Club,
55046




At night, maybe you'll take her to dinner at Palm Lounge Supper Club...










Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Nutcracker Playhouse, 808944



Or go to a play at the Nutcracker Playhouse...Department 56 Original Snow Village Nutcracker Playhouse Lit House








Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Cinema 56, 54978


Or go to a good movie at Cinema 56...Department 56 Snow Village Cinema 56









Dept. 56, Snow Village,
Woodbury House, 54445



Or maybe you'll just want to stay home together, and celebrate Mother's Day...

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

"Navvies": Builders of English Canals and Railroads in Dept. 56 Villages

One of my most popular historical blogs is from Feb. 25, 2011, entitled "Abington Canal Series."  I re-posted this article just below today's blog, should you wish to reference it after reading about "Navvies":  Builders of English Canals and Railroads!
______________

"English Navvies and the Iron Horse, Acton Grange,"
Birtles, Warrington, from Salford Local History Library,
published: www.transportarchive.org.uk/ getobject.php?rnum=T2176&searchitem=&mtv=&pnum=
The canal and railroad building-spree that gripped England in the early 19th century contributed to the rise of the industrial age by providing a safe, efficient, and economical means to transport raw materials to factories and to distribute the manufactured products to cities.

New Jobs and New Ways of Life:  The men who built the canals and railroads spawned a new and distinct subculture in Victorian society.  This is a story of the builders of canals, and how they lived.

Navvies near Sheffield, Yorkshire,
Digitally repaired by Andre Hallam,
Published by Brett Payne, "Photo-Sleuth."
Navvies:  Colorful Guys who Built the Big Stuff:  Building canals and railroads was hard, dirty, dangerous work performed by men called "navvies," or laborers, who worked during England's Industrial Revolution on large-scale civilian projects.

Dept. 56, Christmas in the City,
"Keeping Sidewalks Clear," 808830
Surrounded by dirt, this figure would
look like the men in the photo above. 
Since workers such as these frequently had a say in plotting routes of canals and railroads, they became known as navigators, or "navvies."  Most of their work, though, was physical.  They used pick axes, shovels, and back-breaking strength to dig canal ditches and shape rail tip slopes, and dry acerbic wit to dampen the hardness and isolation of their existence.Department 56 Christmas in the City Village Keeping Sidewalks Clear Accessory Figurine

If you would like to see some dramatic images of canal-building, with a wonderful musical accompaniment by author and musician Foster Brown, click on this YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcDJ5hmTkpo  You can find information about Foster Brown at www.FosterBrown.net.

Navvies in front of their hut in Leicester, circa 1897.
Leicestershire Co. Council,
Pub. by Railwayarchive.org






Often working in sparsely-populated and inaccessible locations, navvies were housed in temporary buildings, dormitories, or shoddy huts, which distanced them from local residents and culture.  Our own Villager Charles John Buffam (Boz) Dickens himself described one of these huts in "All Year Round," Vol. 74:

...poor thin edifices of a single storey, facing the Canal...as higgledgy-piggledy as the Canal banks in the neighborhood...Disorder and dirt were rampant.  And the walls of the room were loosely papered with fragments of fifty different patterns, which from they grime might have been rescued from a Runcorn Ashpit.(1)

Dept. 56, Dickens Village,
"Fagin's Hide-A-Way," 56.55522
Fagin hardly lived better, and his Dickens' Village house could stand as a Navvie home:Dept. 56 Dickens Village Oliver Twist Fagin's Hide-a-way 55522

Dept. 56, Dickens' Village,
"Constables," 56.55794








Most often "navvies" were single men or living away from their families.  Their living conditions were so bad that it was difficult to stay clean or prepare food in a normal manner.  Because of this transitory lifestyle, they did not integrate with surrounding towns.  This isolation from conventional society brought on violence, heavy drinking, and lack of conventional morality, which further isolated them. It was a vicious cycle, and the police were frequently called in.  When navvies completed their work and left the area, local communities celebrated.

Yet Dickens had kind words for the men, and gave hope for an improvement in their lives:
Navvies...big ruddy fellows, most of them, walking advertisements of the virtues of honest open-air toil....And yet, I daresay, when the "Ship Canal" job is over, the tenants of this dismal camp will settle down elsewhere and form as neat a home as need be.  The transitory does not stimulate like the permanent. (2) 

Dept. 56, Dickens' Village,
"Keeping the Streets Clean," 56.58532,
Surrounded by dirt, these would work well in
a construction scene with "navvies."
Navvie Names:  Their names for themselves belied their humor, and said a lot about them.  "Lank" would hail from Lancashire, or was lanky.  "Yorkie," from Yorkshire;  "Moonrakers" were Wiltshire men; "Taff," a Welshman.  A "Punch" was a man from Suffolk, named after their big horses, or sometimes the name just referred to a wide-shouldered squat man, like "Punch and Judy."  A common nickname was "Scan," short for "Scandalous...a name so common it's a mystery how so many navvies managed to scandalize so many others as to earn it."  (Read that again if you didn't get it the first time.)  (3)Keeping the Streets Clean #56.58532

From http://www.victorianweb.org/history/work/sullivan/4.html
Notice the "pantry" and the metal tea bottles.
Navvie Language--Colorful as the Men Themselves:  To the "navvie," food was called "tommy," and it was purchased in a "tommy-shop,"
and wrapped in red and white fabric called a "tommykerchief."  The "tommy" was carried to work in a straw bag called a "pantry."  Tea was the "navvie's" drink, made onsite in a "drum," which was any biscuit tin or basket with a handle.  Making tea was "drumming up," and the tea was carried by the "navvie" in a metal tea bottle.  A "nipper" was a boy who "drummed up." (4)

Dept. 56, Christmas in the City,
"Bucket Lunch," 799984
Notice how similar he is
to the men in the photo above.
Department 56 Christmas in the City provides a perfect fill-in for a lunching "navvie," the "Bucket Lunch."Department 56 Christmas in the City Bucket Lunch 799984

According to a "navvie," to "welsh" or to "slope" was to do a "midnight flit," or sneak away without paying your debts.  The worst sort of "sloping" was for one "navvie" to steal from another, though that was not wide-spread.  "Sloping" was considred dangerous, since you never knew when you would meet up with your victim again. "Slopers" were not considered "navvies," but rather "...moochers (that) have no business working with decent men, and bringing disgrace on our respectable class.  I wish every (sloper) was back and starving where they came from." (5)

Gang of navvies near Haddenham,
Buckinhamshire, from
www.railwayarchive.org.uk/stories/getobjectstory.php?rnum=L2202&enum=le123&pnum=0&maxp=8
Dept. 56, Dickens' Village,
"London Gas Worker," 56.58576
Surrounded by dirt, a good representation
of man in a navvie costume.
Navvie Dress:  The most common clothes for navvies were knee-breeches or long sturdy woven pants, vests, white shirts, and thick-soled shoes.  Apparently in the early railway period, navvies dressed more gallantly, with "scarlet waistcoats, glowing neckerchiefs, velveteen coats, white felt hats with the brims turned up, breeches buttoned at the knees, high-laced boots.  The "navvies" above, and the Dept. 56 worker to the left, however, seemed more sensibly attired. 6)London Gas Worker Dept. 56 Dickens Village D56 Dv


References:  (1) http://books.google.com/books?id=1N4RAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA178&lpg=PA178&dq=charles+dickens+canals+navvies&source=bl&ots=VwHNBIRyKF&sig=z63ImNMTF4eJqYBPpdTFSCXweR0&hl=en&ei=yZu1Ta-iOsffiALbq7ivBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false  (2)  See #1 above.  (3), (4), and (5) http://www.victorianweb.org/history/work/sullivan/4.html

Repeat of Feb. 25, 2011 Blog: "Dept 56 Dickens Village 'Abington Canal Series'"

Dept 56, Dickens Village,
"Royal Stock Exchange," 56.58480

This blog entitled "Dept 56 Dickens Village 'Abington Canal Series," was originally published on Feb. 25, 2011, and has been one of my most popular historical blogs.  I am republishing it again in order to  make it easier for readers to reference as they read the April 26, 2011 blog describing the subcultures of workers who built the canals and railroads, called "navvies."
_________________________

A large venture fund floats shares of a new business.  It cites proven and significant industrial needs that the business can meet.  The fund manager attracts investors with visions of substantial gain, with little risk, using a proven, yet enhanced, technology.  Speculators rush onboard, even though the new company shows no profit yet.  It doesn't matter, because the investors buy and resell the stocks, churning for immediate appreciation.

Let's translate here:  *Goldman Sachs, *1990's, *Silicon Valley, *High Tech.
Right?  Well, yes, but remember, this is a blog about Dickens Village, not Manhattan or Menlo Park.  So wrong people, place, century, and industry.
Try this:  *Various Schemers, *1790's, *England, *Canal Construction

Abington Canal Series  Between the 1770's and the 1830's England created a network of canals throughout much of the interior of the country that served to ignite the industrial revolution, create a whole new sub-culture of boat people and canal workers, and give 21st century hot-wire manufacturers a new lease on life.

Abington Canal Display, by Barry Brideau
The Abington Canal Series, introduced by Department 56 in 2000, serves to remind us of this Golden Age of canals.

Abingdon, Oxfordshire  Abingdon is a small historic market town, one of several villages that claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in England.  It is located about 6 miles south of Oxford, at the confluence of the Thames and Ock Rivers.  In the late middle ages, it was a flourishing agricultural center, specializing in wool production and weaving, in addition to having a charter for its lively market.

For the economic forces to come, Abingdon was beautifully positioned.  To the north lay Birmingham and the Black Country, named after the surface coal throughout the area.  To the south-east along the Thames lay London, with a port for national and international trade and a population that needed products.  To the south and east were Reading and Bristol.

Dept 56, Dickens Village,
"Abington Canal," 56.58535
Abington's lock was contructed in 1790.
Dept 56, Dickens Village,
"Abington Locks,"56.58521
It was built to ease river navigation, and also to provide a connection with the proposed Wilts and Berks Canal, which was to link the town to another canal system far to the south, that ran east/west from Bristol to Reading.  As the industrial revolution swelled, then, Abingdon was important as a link between the Thames River system and the Wilts and Berks Canal.  You must click on this link for  fascinating interactive map of the entire canal system in England. http://www.canaljunction.com/canal/maps.htm

Why Were Canals Built?  In the mid-1700's, the economy of Britain, and ultimately the western world, was being transformed.  Local cottage industries were giving way to factories, where goods could be produced faster, with greater standardization, less supervision, and less cost.  There was one bottleneck in the path to  industrialization: a way to transport raw materials to the factories, and then distribute the manufactured goods.

Dept 56, Dickens Village
C. Bradford, Wheelwright & Son, 56.58181
Along the coasts, large ships could be used to transport among port cities.  In the interior, however, where coal and other resources lay, there were too few navigable rivers, and the roads were terrible. Horses could haul 1-2 tons of goods on wagons, but roads were muddy in winter, and rutted in summer. Wagon wheels frequently  became mired in mud or broke.  The resultant scarcity of raw materials lead to low production and high costs.  Dept. 56 Dickens Village C. Bradford, Wheelwright & Son

Locks on Caen Hill,
Devizes
Building canals was part of the solution, but England is hilly, and water can't flow uphill.  Tunneling a canal through hills was dangerous, time-consuming, and expensive.  The use of locks solved the problem.  A lock is an chamber in the canal, in which gates are used, at either end, to raise and lower water levels, floating a boat either up or down.  To climb steep elevations, a series of locks are used.  To the left is a picture of 16 locks in a row at Caen Hill in Devizes.  An additional 13 are elsewhere, all within a 2-mile canal.


Dept 56, Dickens Village,
Royal Staffordshire Porcelains, 56.58481
Age of Canals  Between 1770 and 1840, the Golden Age, over 4000 miles (6500km) of canals were built throughout England and Scotland, bringing virtually every part of England within 15 miles of a waterway.  Industry boomed.  One company that benefited was Royal Staffordshire Porcelain, which had struggled to find economical and safe transport for heavy clay and fragile wares.  By 1880, with the advent of canal transportation, Staffordshire had become the most important pottery center in the world. Royal Staffordshire Porcelains  

Dept 56, Dickens Village
"Lock Keeper," 56.58547
No centralized authority existed for planning a canal system, however, so they were built to meet specific local or business needs, without regard to an overall plan for the country.  The more glaring example of inefficiency was Worcester Bar in Birmingham.  At this one spot, two separate canals were only 7 feet apart, and could easily have been connected.  Due to a dispute over tolls, however, the two canal companies refused to cooperate.  For years, goods traveling through the city had to be unloaded from a boat in one canal, transported to a wagon, unloaded, and reloaded onto a boat the other canal!

Dept 56, Dickens Village,
"Scrooge and Marley Counting House,"
56.58483
The Golden Age tipped into "Canal Mania."  People from all over the country invested their savings in canal schemes, and some lost it all.  Of the many canals built, few made a profit, because they were built in agricultural areas, rather than in areas that linked industries, materials, and markets.  Some canals barely paid off construction costs.  Some were not maintained, and by the middle of the 19th century, could not compete with new railroads.  Frequently, the only people to make money were the promoters.Department 56 North Pole Scrooge McDuck and Marley's Counting House


Dept 56, Dickens Village
"Abington Canal Boat," 56.58522
Narrow Boats and Horses  Raw materials and manufactured goods were transported on "narrow boats," working craft no more than 7 feet wide (2.13 m), so they could fit through most locks in the canal system.  A boat would be pulled by one horse, who plodded along a towpath on the side of the canal.  As opposed to the 1-2 tons on a wagon, a horse could draw 30 tons through a canal. The economics were clear.  After the Bridgewater Canal opened in Manchester, coal prices fell 75% due to decreased transportation costs.  I wonder if oil could be transported from the Middle East in canals.

Dept 56, Dickens Village
"Butter Tub Barn,"  56.58338
"Packets" and "Fly Boats"  "Fly boats" were narrow boats that traveled non-stop, day and night, to deliver perishable goods, like cheeses.  "Packets" were narrow boats that carried passengers, letters, and parcels.  It would take a packet about 5-7 days to travel on canals from London to Birmingham, so passengers would need inns to stay in each night.  Of course, boatmen would also need stables for feeding and lodging their horses.  Thus, stores, inns, pubs, and stables grew up around the canal locks.  Department 56 Dickens Village_Butter Tub Barn

Upcoming Blogs on the Abington Canal Series  In my next blog I am going to discuss the  the "navvies," who built the canal, and the horses that worked pulling the boats.  In the third, and final, blog on the Abington Canal Series I will describe life aboard a narrowboat.