168 OLD WEST SURREY 



them lissoin. There is usually a little pool of water near the 

 broom-maker's shed, where the bonds are soaked. 



The broom-squarer gathers up the spray round the end 

 of the stick, sitting in front of a heavy fixed block to which 

 the further end of a bond is made fast. He pushes the near 

 end of the bond into the butts of the spray, nearly at a right 

 angle to the binding. He then binds by rolling the broom 

 away from him, pulling it tight as it goes. When he has 

 wound up to the length of the bond, the end is released and 

 pushed into the work. Heath brooms have two bonds ; birch, 

 which are much longer, have three. A hole is bored between 

 the strands of spray and through the stick, and a peg is 

 driven tightly through, so that the spray cannot slip off the 

 stick. The rough butts are then trimmed off, and the broom 

 is complete. 



They generally work in thatched sheds, the thatch 

 commonly of heather. In old days it was usual to keep 

 their money in some hole in the thatch inside ; they con- 

 sidered it safer than keeping it in the cottages. The man 

 would put up his hand into a place something like a bird's 

 nest, and there was the money. An old friend, who knew 

 their ways well, told me he had known of a sum of between 

 three and four hundred pounds being kept in this way. 



Another home industry was the rush-bottoming of chairs, 

 and the making of workmen's dinner-baskets, mattings, and 

 hassocks of the same rush. In old days this w r as much more 

 frequent in the neighbourhood than now. 



Many found work at home on winter evenings in making 

 oak tile-pins, working by the firelight. But this industry 

 has long been dead, tiles being now hung with pins of 

 cast-iron. 



