A morning imagined in 1670

Beti (1), the maidservant, was up from her straw mattress before it was light. She joined Mistress Gunter and the two of them were quiet as they moved around and down the stairs. Only Morgan, the clerk, was up, readying the working rooms for the legal business of the day.

Outside, dawn was arriving and the street was noisy as people, carts and animals jostled to get through the narrow South Gate. The gateway was just up the hill from their street door, still barred and closed at this early hour. They drew on their cloaks and the pattens (2) over their shoes and picking up their baskets and cloths, made their way out of the back of the house, down the garden and through the gates into Beili Lane.

Turning left to Monk Street, they passed between Priory House, where her brother-in-law lived, and the Tithe Barn. They made their way through the queue of carts at the East Gate and then turned right to walk up Cross Street to the half-timbered Market House (3)   in the centre of the street. It was still cold and they were glad of the long cloaks.

First, they climbed the stairs in the Market House to the Buttery. Mistress Gunter haggled over the price of a pound of butter and, once it was agreed, the butter was scooped out of the cask and weighed. Beti produced the cold earthenware jar from her basket and it was scraped in with both of them watching carefully for any short weight. They looked at the flour, oats and barley and noted the prices today. It was not urgent to arrange for any to be delivered and they would see how much was left after they had baked pies and bread and made the next batch of ale. It was always difficult knowing how many people they would be feeding, as visiting Catholic friends and priests made irregular inroads on their supplies.

Downstairs in the Market House, they picked their way between the butchers’ stalls and the people. Mistress Gunter chose an animal, haggled over the price and had the joint cut for her. Beti wrapped it in a cloth and added it to her basket. Then they parted, Beti to take her purchases back to the cool larder and Mistress Gunter to look for some other goods. She had not had time to make candles, so bought some from a shop on the High Street with the shutter up and the table down at the front. She tutted over the price but good candles for upstairs and for the working rooms were essential, and Thomas, her husband, disliked the smell of tallow ones, saying they “smelt of poverty”.

The chandler (4) was recently established in Abergavenny and had little Welsh. She slipped easily into the English that was increasingly in use locally as more incomers joined the prosperity of the market town. She thought with pride that she could use either, unlike most of the poorer sort locally. She could read too, write a little and keep accounts as well, lessening the burden on her husband and keeping costs down. The brewing business she ran, making enough for themselves and selling the surplus, helped pay the fines they incurred by not attending the St Mary’s Priory, the parish church. Thomas would not conform, even occasionally, and neither would she. They kept to the Old Catholic Faith of Rome, even though it cost them large sums of money.

The Spicer further along the High Street with the sign swinging in the cool breeze still had the shutters up – despite the noise of the cattle from the cattle market in Rother Street. She would have return later in the day, as she needed some more nutmegs and cinnamon. She hoped that they would not be too expensive but she knew prices were high.

As she walked back along the High Street, a new shop was opening up its shutters – selling pipes, tobacco and snuff from the front room. It was well situated to catch the trade of men who visited the Golden Lion on the corner of Frogmore Street and Lion Lane and the Greyhound Inn on the High Street as it was between the two. She wondered whether they were from Caerleon, where so much tobacco was landed, but the voices sounded local in their dialect Welsh, so they were probably trying to make a living from the increased popularity of tobacco.

She thought about visiting the poultry market in Chicken Street, but the joint she had purchased would probably be enough unless she had unexpected visitors, and she wanted to keep some money back for the spices she needed. She hoped that they would not be so difficult about the silver this time. Last time she was in there they had weighed her coins and insisted on an extra one as they were too clipped to make up the correct weight.

It was about time she had some new stockings too, so she hoped one of the stocking sellers would come to the house, but when she returned home a pedlar was already at the door with a flustered looking Beti trying to tell him that they needed no knives sharpening or pots mended. Mistress Gunter had only to raise her voice a little and the man was gone, only to be replaced, before she had her cloak off, by another selling penknives and quills. She brought him into the kitchen and choose some good quality goose quills as she knew how quickly Thomas and the clerk, Morgan, used them up with their document writing and copying. They had enough penknives for cutting the quills and erasing mistakes, so she sent him on his way after haggling over the price. When she put them in the store room, she checked that they had plenty of oak-apple galls, copperas (5) and gum Arabic (6) for Morgan to make into ink and made a mental note to ask him if he was running low.

Huw, the boy, came into the kitchen looking dirty and tousled. He put the basket with eggs from the hens on the side table, took one look at Mistress Gunter and fled outside again as she shouted at him to wash. He thought there was no point, he was about to get dirty again in the garden and he still had to see to the pigs before they started making too much noise. Beti chased after him to tell him to pull some leeks, taking a basket out herself to pull sallets (7) .

On her return, Mistress Gunter was sitting on a stool by the table with a mug of ale and some bread and cheese. It was only around nine o’clock by the bell in the tower and they had been busy since just before dawn. Beti sat with her and they discussed what tasks to do. In the larder was an unfinished meat and vegetable pie made yesterday, the meat could be roasted and there were plenty of vegetables from the garden. They had enough cinnamon to make a posset with cream, ale and bread for a third course which could be kept warm near the roasting meat by the fire. They needed to make some fresh bread and while Beti started that, Mistress Gunter went into the brewery house to tend to the beer and ale. That made her think about Richard, their ward and nephew, now away apprenticed to learn the brewing and wine business. She knew Thomas, her husband, missed the boy, but she felt, grimly, that they could do without the extra mouth to feed and the school fees to pay. Money was always short.

Beti took ale and some cakes through to the lawyer and his clerk at the front. She bustled back, looking pink, for another tankard as they had a client and Mistress Gunter hoped her husband had not been annoyed to be interrupted. Later, Beti set the table in the dining room with knives and napkins. She changed her apron before serving the meal to Master Thomas Gunter, the clerk Morgan and Mistress Gunter and then thankfully was able to sit down for a short while with the boy to have some food herself in the kitchen.

(1) A frequently used Welsh forename.
(2) Wooden overshoes to raise the shoe out of the muck of the street.
(3) Built after 1603, when Phillip Jones of London and Llanarth Court, left 200 marks (one mark = 160 old pence) to build a market house like the timber -framed one at Monmouth. It was in the middle of the top of Cross Street, obstructing all the traffic, one of the reasons why it was demolished and the new Market Hall built on the present site.

(4) A candle maker.
(5) Ferrous sulphate which turns black interacting with the tannin from the oak-apple galls.
(6) Gum Arabic was used to thicken the ink for use with a dipping nib of quill or metal.
(7) A collection of greens, including spinach, and others now usually thought of as weeds, like fat-hen and sorrel .