Summary of Ruth Goodman's The Domestic Revolution

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The way a fire burns is important. Some fuels burn in short, concentrated bursts, while others burn over a longer, slower period. Fuel can be treated in a number of ways to alter its nature and behavior within the fire.
#2 The smith’s forge is a great demonstration of the possibilities of fire. Working with coal, the smith can create a fairly shallow fire that is suitable for tempering a blade. With skill and knowledge, the fire can be used to shape and bend metal, temper and adjust its hardness, brittleness or spring, and divide it.
#3 When we turn our attention from the forge to the kitchen, we can see a similar range of options and subtleties at play. Different fuels can be used to perform different functions by dint of the techniques and equipment particular to them.
#4 Common land was not public land, and was not free for anyone to use as they pleased. It was held in common by a specific group of people who were allowed to use it in specific ways. Dung was often used as a fuel in parts of Britain where other sources of fuel were scarce.

Sujets

• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• History
• Modern history
• Histoire
• Modern
• 19th Century

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 12 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822507494
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Ruth Goodman's The Domestic Revolution
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The way a fire burns is important. Some fuels burn in short, concentrated bursts, while others burn over a longer, slower period. Fuel can be treated in a number of ways to alter its nature and behavior within the fire.

#2

The smith’s forge is a great demonstration of the possibilities of fire. Working with coal, the smith can create a fairly shallow fire that is suitable for tempering a blade. With skill and knowledge, the fire can be used to shape and bend metal, temper and adjust its hardness, brittleness or spring, and divide it.

#3

When we turn our attention from the forge to the kitchen, we can see a similar range of options and subtleties at play. Different fuels can be used to perform different functions by dint of the techniques and equipment particular to them.

#4

Common land was not public land, and was not free for anyone to use as they pleased. It was held in common by a specific group of people who were allowed to use it in specific ways. Dung was often used as a fuel in parts of Britain where other sources of fuel were scarce.

#5

Dung is a fuel that is only found in rural areas today. It is a very strange fuel, as it is wetter and darker-colored than most fuels we use today. It is difficult to understand, as most people use it for either fuel or fertilizer.

#6

The dried dung of wild buffalo herds was an essential fuel for those heading out across the Great Plains in nineteenth-century America. It released about the same amount of energy as peat, and it was typically there for the taking.

#7

The use of cassons in the home was not as common as the use of peat and turves. Cassons were used to store food, while peat and turves were used for fuel. The best known of the old peat-cutting areas in England today are the Norfolk Broads.

#8

The last commercial peat cutter in the area of Wicken Fen, in Cambridgeshire, was Mad Jack Darnell. He was a peat cutter who worked in the late spring of 1892. He would mark out a straight line parallel to pits he or others had worked in previous seasons.

#9

The peat cutters would cut into the peat, and then stack the blocks one on top of another at the edge of the digging so that they could begin drying as soon as possible. The peat blocks had to be moved and restacked in different formations several times as they dried to allow the sun and wind to do their work.

#10

The process of peat extraction left behind a landscape of multiple small deep pools divided by walls of untouched peat. From the early fifteenth century onwards, some secondary rounds of peat extraction were conducted by cutting into these walls.

#11

Peat is a very slow-burning fuel, and it takes a long time for your fire to warm up. It is best used for cooking and heating water. It can be used for baking if you lay food on a hot stone or iron surface in the center of a peat fire and upturn a pot over it.

#12

Peat is a slow-burning fuel that produces smoke. It has a strong, distinctive smell, and it stays lit for a long time. It is especially good for smoking dairy products and other animal fats.

#13

The use of peat, turffe, heath, furze, broome, and such like fuel for firing spoke of severe poverty and poor husbandry. People who were using dung for fuel were not using it to fertilize the fields, sacrificing future food crops for present warmth.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The British Isles traditionally chose wood as their primary fuel. It is a renewable source of energy, fairly concentrated and easy to handle, and it burns in a clean, controllable and predictable fashion.

#2

Managed production, rather than casual gathering or felling, was in evidence in Britain as far back as 4000 BC. The Sweet Track, a prehistoric wooden walkway discovered in 1970 by Ray Sweet while digging a ditch, was preserved in the peat of the Somerset Levels.

#3

The practice of woodland management for thousands of years has been to divide the woods into separate workable areas, known as fells, cants, coupes, or haggs. This was done to prevent overgrazing and felling the trees in rotation.

#4

Coppicing is the process of cutting down a tree stump and leaving the wood on the ground to grow back naturally. It typically occurs in late autumn once all the leaves have fallen. The poles are cut a few inches above the ground, and the remaining stump will shed rain to help discourage rotting.

#5

The Tudor government made sure there was enough wood to build houses and ships, as well as for fuel and fencing. The most common tree used for timber was oak, but other species were allowed to develop into standards in areas where oak did not grow well.

#6

Firewood is a bulky commodity whose transportation is much eased if it is first trimmed and shaped into something that will stack easily and tightly. It is one thing to supply irregular loads to a cottage at the edge of the wood, but it is another to fuel a city several or many miles away.

#7

The Assize of Fewell, passed in 1601, specified the sizes of firewood that could be sold in cities, boroughs, and incorporated towns. The three acceptable circumferences were the greatness of the billet: a single billet with a circumference of 7½ inches, a caste billet with a circumference of 10 inches, and a two-caste billet with a circumference of 14 inches.