204 BRITISH RURAL LIFE AND LABOUR. 



the dwellings of the labourers in a miserable condition 

 so bad, in many cases, that they could not be made in any 

 way habitable, and had to be used for barns or store- 

 houses of a rough kind, and not unfrequently they had 

 to be absolutely abandoned as useless. Overcrowding 

 of the possibly tenantable ones was therefore, necessarily, 

 rife. /The men had to walk two and sometimes more 

 miles to their work, and the same distance in returning 

 home the extra walking task having to be performed in 

 all weathers. The suspension of farming operations 

 during very wet weather was a relief, in such cases, to 

 which there was the heavy set-off of no pay for the large 

 number of those who were day labourers. 



For some reasons the inevitable walk to and from 

 work might present a small bright side when the weather 

 was fine and invigorating, but under rainy conditions, 

 not too pronounced to stop work, but quite sufficient 

 to wet through a thinly clothed man, the weary plod, 

 through deep rutted roads, thick, perhaps, with mud, to 

 a dreary, damp, and frequently tireless hovel with nothing 

 but coarse and scanty food to alleviate the hunger caused 

 by outdoor labour, was a dismal set-off for the day's dis- 

 comfort. Six miles, and sometimes more, of walking, in 

 addition to farming work, was a not infrequent circum- 

 stance. 



We found, in many instances, that cottage closets 

 were actually built over a village brook that carried 

 typhoid contagion to places where such drainage water 

 was actually drunk ! 



Of typical cottages some further descriptions may here 

 be given. In one the stone floor had numerous large 

 fissures between the flags, caused by long use. These 

 fissures were, in fact, small pits. The cottage itself stood 

 in a hollow of the ground, and frequently, in winter and 

 after rainfall, the water would actually soak through to 

 the room and form little pools. Even in summer the 

 floor would " heave," as the poor people termed it, or 



