Haslet: a recipe

The haslet is one of Lincolnshire's most characteristic dishes, along with its sausages, pork pies and stuffed chine. The quality of such products is how a pork butcher in Lincolnshire is judged. I plan to visit Boston in the new year and will make a point of seeing if Bycroft's is still going. This shop was renowned for its meat and you could never go past it without seeing a long queue of people waiting to get in.

Here is a recipe for a basic haslet:

Ingredients:

Pig's liver (3/4 lb)

Belly pork (3/4 lb)

Onion, large

Bread crumbs (3 oz)

Mixed herbs (1 dessert sp)

Sage and onion stuffing (1 pkt)

Egg, large, beaten

Salt and pepper

Instructions:

Mince pork and liver, keeping rough texture. Traditionally, use old-style mincer.

Fine chop onion.

Put in mixing bowl, with all the other ingredients.

Mix by hand.

Divide into 2 loaves.

Place on baking tray.

Cook at gas mark 6 (200 C) for about 3/4 hr. Adjust for fan oven.

Notes:

As with sausages, the secret is in the herbs, and this recipe is merely basic. Mixed herbs and packeted sage and onion is obviously a short cut. This is where experimentation and personal taste come in. I wonder if a little apple sauce might enhance it.

The family chart that Susan sent me made me realise just how ignorant I am of my grandfather's family. I notice there are no dates of death and I am ashamed that I can't supply them.

So, Grandfather Henry was one of ten children, and had two sons himself.

I have a photograph of Uncle Alf (I always called them by the names Dad used), in uniform and moustache, making him look a lot older than the 25 or 26 he must have been at the time. At least that was my first impression. Looking at it again I wonder if he didn't get out his old WW1 uniform for the photo. He's standing with a cane and I'm sure he wasn't an officer. I'll bring it to the convention,where I'm sure someone can identify rank, regiment, etc.

It was Alf who left my father the money to buy our first house, and that was when I was four or five (ca 1954).

Aunt Lou (Lucy) was still alive when I was about 10, I think. She was in a nursing home (Woodhall?) and we would visit her sometimes on a Sunday afternoon. She must have been getting on for 90 by then.

Aunt Nell was someone else we used to visit around this time. Nell was widowed by now. I remember it was out in the country somewhere, and Tattershall Bridge sounds right. I can't say I enjoyed these visits. Aunt Nell was nice enough, but I had nothing in common with her. Older people seemed so ancient in those days. More than that, there seemed such a gulf between country life and the town life I was used to. Aunt Nell's home was pantries and sculleries, rag rugs and sterilised milk, old photos and nick-nacks. As she and Dad chatted, they might have been talking a foreign language.

Cousin Walter, as he was always called, was Uncle Joe's son. Profoundly deaf from an early age, he attended a special school somewhere, where he learned to talk (after a fashion) and lip read. I was always amazed at how well Dad and Uncle Ron would chat to him so fluently. I saw him only rarely and found it very difficult at first, but after a while it became easier.

I have a photo of my father, Ron, Walter and the other cousin, Nell's son (I assume, whose name I don't know). I guess he was the father of Frank Lamyman, who was often round at our house. Dad used to give him lifts in his lorry to London, when he was studying there. I've a feeling that Frank has died.

And that is about the total of my knowledge. Sad to say, that whole generation has passed. Ron's widow, Kathleen, is still living in Boston. I hope to bring her to Horncastle next year.

Merry Christmas.

Hello from Suzanne

This is my first time as a 'blogger' too. For Roger's benefit (Evelyn, Susan and Janet all 'know' me now!), I was born in Hull, Yorkshire. My grandfather, known to one and all as "Dadda Jim" as that is what my brother called him) was James Ernest Hundleby, b 1884, d 1984. He was a lovely man and very patient with us children.

His father was William Hundleby, b 1851 in Wormegay, Norfolk, and he died in 1908 in Hull. He lived near and was a great friend of Mary Elizabeth (Polly) and Albert Adkins and his son, James Ernest, married their daughter, Mabel. In fact, William is buried in their family grave.

William was a joiner and undertaker (and, my mother, Grace, nee Hundleby, who is now 90 years old, insists, although I can find no evidence, that he was a publican too at The Falcon in Neptune Street. If anyone can help with this I would be very grateful). His father was William Hundleby, b. 1819 in Ashby, Lincolnshire. He moved to Wormegay in Norfolk and married Amelia Emily Nurse (Emily). Unfortunately, he contracted Typhoid Fever and died there in 1854, leaving his wife with three young sons.

I have been playing a small part in the organisation of the Hundleby Convention next year by sending out invitations and receiving the all important cheques! My husband, Tony, and I are really looking forward to meeting everyone in Horncastle in May.

Message from Susan Hundleby

Thank you Roger for setting this system up for us. This is my first time as a Blogger too Evelyn. I have had to sign in as Roger because I didn't have a password for my e-mail address; Roger please advise what we should use. I am looking forward to meeting everybody on Sunday May 6th 2007 at the convention.

Susan Hundleby

Childhood in B.C.

Hello again from Evelyn. I guess I am 5 years older than you - born in 1944. Used to tease Dad that I was a furlough baby which made him blush. Dad and his brother, Fred and Ed were the twin sons of Ellen Hundleby and Valentine Mackinder. They were born in 1900 and lied about their age in order to join WWII. However, both remained in Canada, my Dad being a Heavy Duty Mechanic and Bandsman.

We always had central heating, Roger, but when I grew old enough and the others had left home I happily went to the basement bedrooms which Dad had built for the older ones and which were not heated. We lived in Cranbrook in the East Kootenays where the temperatures could go to -25F and I used to wake up with frost on the quilt from my breath. It was a mad dash up the stairs, across the enclosed sun porch and into the warm kitchen where Dad had the pot of porridge bubbling on the stove before he left for work.

Anyway, what more news from the two contacts you had from the publicity. The graves in Hemingby will be my Great-grandfather Samuel, his wife Elizabeth and probably some of his children who stayed there in the agricultural machinery business and threshing. I would love to go there when I come in April/May.

We had winds of up to 157kph last night. We are fine, but two trees at our old house blew over and put a large hole in the neighbour's roof. Glad we don't have to pay.

Evelyn

Roger's early years

I don't want to turn this Hundleby blog into an autobiography, but thinking about family history has made me nostalgic. It may be of interest if I indulge myself and reminisce.

If my calculations are correct, I was conceived in Matlock, Derbyshire, but that's probably too much information. I was born above a baker's shop in Kirton, Lincs. No maternity hospitals then for the likes of us, nor for my sister, Janice, who was born two years later. By that time I think we may have been living in Stickney.

My grandfather, Henry (Harry), died before I was born. He was a farmer in the Butterwick area. Whether he owned his own land, I don't know, but I do know he was his own boss,because my grandmother was appalled when, after the war, my father, Ernie, and his brother, Ron, went to work for others. She considered this to be going down in the world.

She died soon after I was born, and so I have no memory of her. I do have a few letters that she wrote to my mother, Doris, after I was born. I might publish them here some time.

I also have some letters written by my mother and father to each other during their courtship. I have never read them, because it seems too intrusive, even sixty years later.

My grandmother may well have been right about her sons leaving the farm, because, according to my mother, we were very hard up in the early years. In Sibsey (about 10miles from Boston), my father used to sell firewood from a horse and cart and food was in short supply. But by the time I was five things had taken a turn for the better. Dad had got a steady job, probably lorry-driving for Firth's of Kirton, though that may have been later, and he received a legacy from his Uncle Alf. This was about £1,000 and enabled Dad to buy a bungalow in Wyberton West Rd, Boston.

Like so many houses in the area, there was lots of land, even though the house itself was small. It had two bedrooms, a dining-room, a kitchen and a front room. This was supposed to be a drawing-room, parlour, lounge, what you will, but we called it 'the room' and it was rarely used. It contained a three-piece suite and the best china, again rarely used. Only when my sister and I grew too big to share a bedroom did the room serve a useful purpose when I was moved in.

Outside was a small brick building, containing the toilet, the coalshed and the wash-house, complete with 'copper' (boiler), 'dolly tub' with a big stick for mashing the washing, and a mangle. Hanging somewhere was an aluminium bath which was carried into the kitchen once a week to be filled with laboriously boiled water on bath night.

No central heating of course, just an open coal fire in the living/dining room which Dad had to light, with much swearing, every morning. Many a time he would set a newspaper on fire when he spread it across the grate to 'draw' the fire. And sometimes he would give up and use a drop of paraffin. My father would, of necessity I suppose, have a go at most things, but he did lack a certain something in practical matters. I remember that once he borrowed some rods and tried to sweep the chimney. Oh dear!

To a child, the lack of heat, apart from a hot-water bottle, made bed-time an ordeal. I'm sure getting up was even more difficult then than it is now. But the one thing I miss is the frost on the windows on winter mornings. We were told, of course, that during the night, Jack Frost had painted them.

The land behind the bungalow was probably 150 yards long, room for a kitchen garden, and orchard and a penned off area where we kept chickens, geese (vicious birds who got their just deserts at Christmas) and sometimes pigs.

The memory of the pigs brings to mind an odd event and I wonder if it still occurs. Was it called a 'pig-killing party'? The pig would be professionally slaughtered and butchered and then friends and family would congregate to carve it into chops and joints and meat for sausages, haslets and pork pies. How all this pork was preserved I don't know. We didn't have fridges, let alone freezers. Salt?

When it was all done, I was given the pig's curly tale and told to put it under my pillow for luck. I did as I was told and I would say it worked reasonably well.

Roger Hundleby

Hundleby B.C. connection

Hello Roger: What a great idea. This is my first time as a 'blogger'. I read the newspaper article on-line and the 5 W's were there, so from that point of view, it was a success. I used to deal with the Press a great deal in my working life and always found it useful to give them a one-page sheet summarizing the details which they could then refer back to as they wrote the article. It would be useful, if you are doing any more papers, to mention descendants from both the male and female lines of the Hundleby name, as, of course, we are all not Hundlebys now.

Regarding the Convention next May, I was thinking of going to Lincoln for 3 or 4 days before the date to do some research at the Archives. My sister and I were in Lincoln for 4 days last September and stayed at the Carline Guest House on Carline Road. What a shame we did not know of each other's existence. I do now have a much better idea of what I wish to search for. I will then take the train from Lincoln to Spalding and stay with Janet and Brian for the Convention Weekend.

Our weather on the idyllic West Coast has been anything but this last month and a half. We had a windstorm on Monday which tore off 4 or 5 shingles from the roof. That has now been repaired but we have another storm on the way which is supposed to be packing 100kph winds with it. This is not our usual weather at all!

Hope this gets on the site O.K.

Evelyn

Distant Cousins

The internet is a wonderful thing.

When I finally decided to fork out my £30 a month to ntl nearly a year ago, the first Google search I did was for my own name, Hundleby. I was looking for Prime Ministers, poets, winners of the VC and Olympic gold medals. All I found were thousands of references to estate agents in North Lincolnshire, parish council meetings and a fishmonger in Manchester.

But I scrolled down and down, and down, until I came to a date and a name that seemed familiar: Samuel Hundleby, 18 hundred and something. An old enquiry from Evelyn. Frankly, I was more excited by the fact that I could so easily communicate with someone on the west coast of Canada than by family history.

Now, as a former librarian, living in Lincolnshire I had no excuse for neglecting to research my family tree. After all, I worked in Lincoln Central Library, with its local studies department, and the Lincolnshire Record Office was across the road. But all I ever did was scan through the censuses back to 1851 and jot down the names of fathers and forefathers from Thomas Hundleby (b 1794) onwards.

According to my notes, Samuel was the brother of my great-grandfather, Henry, probably his twin, and Thomas was his father. I e-mailed Evelyn to inform her of this momentous fact. She politely pointed out my error; that, in fact, Samuel, despite being born in the same year (1842), was Henry's uncle and Thomas his grandfather. Henry appeared to have been born out of wedlock to Thomas' daughter, Sarah, who died the same year, aged 20. Henry was brought up as one of the family and given the surname Hundleby, which passed down along with the forename Henry, to my grandfather, 'Harry', my father 'Ernie', myself and my own eldest son James.

I made contact just in time. Otherwise I may never have known about the Hundleby Convention next year. About which more soon.

Roger Hundleby