The yeoman farmer was usually a reasonably well off individual as he owned the land he cultivated. He was not beholden to the local landowner for the land he farmed.

Their homes were quite substantial in that they could be two stories high and containing a large central hall where the family entertained.

If the Yeoman farmer employed servants they would be fed in the hall.

If there was no separate kitchen the cooking had to be done in the hall fireplace, although I say fireplace  there probably wasn’t a fixed fireplace at all. Fires were built up against a wall, or against an iron panel which could be moved about, or even on a stone plinth in the middle of the hall.

It wasn’t until the late 1500’s that chimneys started to appear, until that the smoke had to escape as best it could through a louvre in the roof. I cannot imagine that the atmosphere in those great halls was very good. This would be when static fireplaces came into being.

Glass for windows was not generally introduced until the early 1600’s. There were often latticed windows but they did not contain any glass.

Glass was such an expensive commodity that it was often bequeathed in a will, as well, would you believe, as chimneys! Can you imagine taking down a chimney brick by brick or painstakingly removing every pane of glass?

Yeomen seemed to own an amazing number of beds in their homes, but I suppose that would be because families were generally large. To have 8 or 10 beds was not at all unusual.

One wealthy Kentish yeoman left 7 feather beds, 9 flock beds and 1 of down.

They seemed to have quite a lot of bed linen too, but that was to be expected given the number of beds they had. Even a poorer yeoman could have owned 15 or 20 pairs of sheets.

Most bedrooms would contain chests, sometimes 2 or 3 to hold anything that needed to be kept out of the way of mice of the prying eyes of the servants. Another might hold special pieces of pewter or silver that were only brought into use when important guests were being entertained. Usually the chest in the Masters bedroom would hold all his documents and all ‘evidence’ of his property plus any money he had about him.

At different times rooms may have been added to the main building, perhaps an extra room for a kitchen or a storeroom or extra bedrooms.

Usually the dairy house, the bakehouse, the malthouse etc. were separate buildings. Most yeomen’s homes produced their own ale, they baked all their own bread etc. and produced their own cheeses.

There could have been a storeroom in the main house where they stored bags of wheat or rye, flitches of bacon. Perhaps pieces of timber or spare beds would be kept here to keep everything in good order.

The wealthy yeoman may have had one suit of clothes and his wife a best dress made by a tailor but everything else was made by the yeoman farmer’s wife, or by others under her supervision.

Altogether the yeoman farmer’s properties were generally quite substantial and quite a homestead for his family and servants.

The tax on armorial bearings seems to have been looked upon as a very lucrative source of public revenue.

It also seems to have been looked upon as a vanity to display a crest or escutcheon and as such the tax was going to be set at the highest rate that the largest number of people would submit to.

We are talking here of the late 1800’s and the rate at that point was one guinea [one pound and one shilling] for arms or crest; 2 guineas if these were used on a carriage and 10pounds sterling on any grant of arms by the Herald’s College.

With this rate of tax, in 1878 the Inland Revenue admitted that the amount produced was 82,600 pounds in England and Scotland, out of that amount  was 40,600 pounds from 42shillings per year for armorial bearings which had been used on a carriage, and 21 shillings a year when the bearings had been used in other ways. That is on rings, seals, envelopes or writing paper etc.

A surprising fact was that in 1878, the number of licenses in England for armorial bearings on carriages was 17,700, or around 13% of the four-wheel carriages and about 10% in Scotland.

the 21shillings per year tax in armorial bearings used in other ways produced 37,000 licenses in England and 3,000 in Scotland.

There was also evidence that a 10shillings and 6pence tax would raise a lot more money when the Inland Revenue made it possible for the licenses on dogs, guns, carriages, armorial bearings and other  things to be obtained at any money order office.

This information comes from an article published in the New York Times on September 19th, 1880.

I can think of no greater example of giving help to others than that shown to Family Historians by other Family Historians.

Nobody thinks twice about offering whatever help they can give to another person involved in tracing their family tree.

The information they give so freely could be the result of hours and hours of research, but no matter, they pass it on with the greatest pleasure.

I have been the recipient of such help many times and I offer help wherever I can. It is such a pleasure to have contact with likeminded people and especially exciting when you make contact with people who have some of your ancestors on their own trees.

You may discover cousins, many times removed, but the thrill is still the same.

The whole point is that people researching the same families may have approached their research from a different angle and they may end up with more information than you have yourself. Perhaps they are nearer the place where those particular ancestors resided and can get to local records easier.

Or alternatively you may have the answer to a question that has been troubling the other person for a while. The pleasure it gives to be able to clear away a ‘brick wall’ is great.

We are all apt to come up against these brick walls from time to time and sometimes it only needs one small piece of information to get you going again. The thrill of discovering details about somebody you have been looking for, perhaps for years, is what Family History is all about.