Costumes of Old Yorkshire: The Farm
A series of plates showing the people of rural Yorkshire in the 1810s and an exploration of their changing times.
From: 1810 C.E. To: 1814 C.E.
Location: York County, England, United Kingdom
Yorkshire, or the county of York, is the UK’s largest county and one of its most important agricultural centers. The region, while best know for its sweeping moors, historic towns, and cozy farmlands, has also played a dramatic role in English history. Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans all contributed to its modern English character.
These images, created by George Walker, take us back in time to Yorkshire in the 1810s. This was a period of both prosperity and tumult—Britain found itself enmeshed in the War of 1812 and also under threat from an expanding Napoleon. Meanwhile, at home, the rise of machine-assisted industry was causing some to flourish and others to go full Luddite. The illustrations here capture a changing Yorkshire, but one still deeply tied to the land.
In the same year these were made, Jane Austen published her masterpiece Pride and Prejudice. Though her work was set farther to the south, in Hertfordshire, the cares and pastimes of her characters might have been familiar to the people depicted here. Tensions between the landed gentry, rising tradespeople, and the military are all explored in the background of Austen’s romance. Less visible are poor or middle-class families, who spent more time hard at work than at fancy balls.
For the landed classes at this time, however, life could be lavish, relaxed, and full of sports. Typical farm and estate owners kept fast horses, the ancestors of the modern thoroughbred, for racing and hunting. Despite the looming armies of Napoleon and the loss of thirteen North American colonies, Britain was still an expanding colonial power. The exploitation of other nations brought huge influxes of wealth into the country, which mostly trickled through the commercial and aristocratic classes.
Of course, some of this prosperity also reached the working classes. While poverty and child labor were still a common problem, especially in urban centers, George Walker paints a hearty picture of life in Yorkshire. Women wear the high-waisted fashions of the Napoleonic era while serving up hearty meals for their family. His overall, possibly flattering, impression is a place of industry, close community, and cleanliness.
In the wake of the French Revolution, just a few years earlier, fashions changed rapidly across Europe. The stiff, powdered, and elaborate styles of the French court had been cast aside. Women returned to a more flowing style reminiscent of Classical Greece and Rome. Both genders trended toward practicality, creating a closer resemblance between the nobility and the peasantry.
Fashion was not just a form of self-expression for people of Yorkshire, but also a livelihood. Abundant cotton from colonial economies, often grown by enslaved people, became the most popular fabric of the age. The sewing machine, invented in 1790, dramatically sped up the process of turning that cotton into clothing. And so, in many households, women and children began to produce more clothing than their family needed. They sold the excess for extra income, and textiles became a cottage industry. This work would later mostly move into factories, but it connected the people of rural England to global commerce.
Of course, this work was put on hold periodically to match the rhythms of farming. Spring and fall, the seasons of sowing and harvest, saw much higher workloads than winter and summer. When crops needed harvesting, it was common for families to stay outdoors from sunrise to sunset for days or weeks at a time.
As we reach the end of Walker’s pictures of Yorkshire farm life, consider how your own life compares to these people of the past. What would they, in turn, think of your modern life? Can we learn anything from these tight-knit communities and their connection to the land? The answer will be different for everyone, but learning about our collective past is the first step toward examining our own present and future.
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