Rustic Renaissance by Godfrey Blount, The Introduction

I have recently got a copy of Godfrey Blount's Rustic Renaissance (The Simple Life Series No. 21, A.C. Fifield, London, 1905), and I have found that this small book excellently conveys the values of Godfrey Blount and with that the Peasant Arts movement itself.  It looks like the tree motif of A.C. Fifield's The Simple Life Series was designed by Godfrey Blount.

The Rustic Renaissance
(Blount, G., The Simple Life Series No. 21, A.C. Fifield, London 1905)

The Rustic Renaissance begins with a Preface which shows a remarkable self-awareness of their cause:

"My object in the following pages is to adduce sundry arguments in defence of what is beginning to be known as "The Simple Life," in which, if I have not succeeded in rescuing it from that position of ideal impracticability with which it is usually regarded - and indeed no advocate of simplicity ever expects his gospel to be eagerly welcomed by those who do not desire it - I have at least endeavoured to cope with some of the less recognised, but none the less formidable, difficulties in the way of attaining it, and to reason over their details.

"There are immense practical difficulties to be surmounted before any general or popular return to country life is possible, but I have avoided all reference to the Land question, not because I am ignorant how urgently reform in this direction is required, but because its need is admitted on all hands, and I am unwilling to commit myself to any particular plan of reform in this matter.  We must also acknowledge that till there is a more wide-spread desire on the part of our population to "inherit the earth" again, it is futile to tilt the dragons of monopoly.

"But neither is this little book intended to instruct the fugitive from modern industrialism how best to build a cottage, and cultivate the narrow strip of ground which public or private enterprise may have secured him from the grasp of the monopolist; nor is it designed to teach the would-be eremite how to sleep in the open air, grow carrots or eat grass.  These are subjects which deserve and have met with their worthy specialists.  My humble desire is rather to save "The Simple Life" on the one hand from that stigma of Bohemian savagery and want of culture for which the advocates of strange and extreme methods of living are responsible; and on the other hand, from the no less certain extinction that will overtake it, as it overtakes every good cause, as soon as it becomes the plaything of fashionable faddists.

"My object is to appeal for simplicity by identifying it with a revival of true culture, the culture which condemns alike an unsanctified asceticism and the refinements of epicurean luxury.  It insists, instead, firstly on the appreciation and then on the reproduction of those simple crafts and sciences which lie at the root of all civilisation, and are as superior to its superficial culture as a folk-story is to a popular novel."

Detail of Blount, G., The Rustic Renaissance,
The Simple Life Series No. 21, A.C. Fifield, London 1905

Vegetarianism in Haslemere c.1900

I've been wondering how popular vegetarianism was in 1893 when Maude Egerton King published 'Vegetarianism' (King, M.E,, My book of songs and sonnets, Percival & Co., London, 1893).  The impression I get from The Vegetarian Society, is that whilst the Society was formed in 1885 (from two previous groups that were established in 1849 and 1877), the movement was not that popular in 1893.

Gandhi at the 1891 Portsmouth Vegetarian Federal Union Conference
from gandhiserve.org

Interestingly Gandhi and George Bernard Shaw are both cited as being members of the Society.  Both having tentative links to the Haslemere Peasant Arts movement, with Gandhi citing in Hind Swaraj (Gandhi, M.K., c.1909) Godfrey Blount's New Crusade as recommended further reading, "some testimonies by eminent men", as discussed in my October 2011 post.  Bernard Shaw had links with Joseph King as discussed in my November 2010 post and honeymooned in Haslemere, staying in Haslemere around 1898 to 1900.

It appears that Godfrey and Ethel Blount were also vegetarians, as shown in Therese La Chard’s memoirs A Sailor Hat in the House of the Lord (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1967) where she reminisces about living in a bungalow in the Blounts' garden in Weydown Road, Haslemere c.1910, "The meals seemed to consist largely of salads and haricot beans eaten with horn spoons off heavy pottery plates laid on handwoven strips."

From this I would conclude that Maude's 1893 poem did not reflect a passing fad for her but that vegetarianism was part of the Haslemere Peasant Arts lifestyle.  

Vegetarianism by Maude Egerton King

From My book of songs and sonnets (King, M., Percival & Co., London, 1893), this poem is cited as "dedicated to a very gentle friend", I wonder who that was?  It covers five pages, here is the beginning:

"When I tell how sad a thing

    Wears my heart out year by year,

Sight of creatures suffering,

    Martyrdoms of service here,

Seldom paying wrong for wrong,

   Dumb before a human rage,

Toiling hard and toiling long

  To be slain in useless age,

Elaborate diaper,
from Arbor Vitae, Blount, G.,
A.C. Fifield, London, 3rd edition, 1910

Never sacred from abuse,

  While a breath of helpless life

Holds them fit for slavish use,

  Or for science with her knife,

You will never ask again

   Why I made my view, and chose

Ne'er to add by death or pain

   To a cup that overflows

See the little god of self,

  Custom waiting on his greed;

Craves he feast of flesh or pelf,

  All is sanctioned by his need.

Ceaseless toil of men and beasts

  Is his worship's heavy price;

And the cities teem with priests

  Slaying hourly sacrifice.

No such load of death and toil

  Can my single life redress,

But at least I need not spoil

  Any live thing's happiness...."

Frieze from
Arbor Vitae, ibid

Walter Crane and the birth of the Arts & Crafts movement

Completing my foray into the not very well-documented birth of the Arts and Crafts movement, it is interesting to note that Walter Crane recalls “the title “The Combined Arts” headed our first circular, and it was not until later that our title “Arts and Crafts” was adopted, I think on the suggestion of Mr. T.J. Cobden-Sanderson, who acted as Hon. Secretary.” (An Artist’s Reminscences, The MacMillan Company, New York, 1907)

Arts and Crafts Society header by Walter Crane

The circular written by Walter Crane as chair of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society requesting guarantors to hold the first exhibition is reproduced by Crane in his memoirs:

“Something very like a revival of the arts and handicrafts has been taking place amongst us of late years; but while the awakening of interest is undeniable and widespread, there has hitherto been no means – except such chance opportunities as have been from time to time afforded by various trade exhibitions – of enabling those concerned with the more purely artistic side of the applied arts, or crafts of design, to gauge our general progress.  It has not been possible for a craftsman to test his work by the side of others, or, by a careful selection of examples, to prove that there are artists in other ways than oil or water colour, and other art than that enclosed in gilt frames or supported on pedestals.  In short, there is no existing exhibition of art which gives an opportunity to the designer and the craftsman as such to show their work under their own names, and give them at least a chance of the attention and applause which is now generally monopolised by the pictorial artist.

detail of The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society ticket, 1890
designed by Walter Crane

"It is believed that such opportunities of public recognition and distinction would supply a stimulus not hitherto felt by workers in the handicrafts, and would tend to draw artistic invention and skill again to the arts in their endless forms of application to daily life and its associations and surroundings, to the charm of which their beauty may contribute so much, and so, perhaps, we should go far to nourish the tree at the roots instead of, as now, too often attempting to grow it downwards.

"Art exhibitions have hitherto tended to foster the prevalent notion that the term ‘Art’, is limited to the more expensive kinds of portable picture-painting, unmindful of the truth that the test of the condition of the arts in any age must be sought in the state of the crafts of design…

New Gallery, Central Hall,from New Gallery Catalogue No. 1, Summer 1888

"The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society has been formed with these convictions, and with the aim (1) of taking measures for organising an exhibition of the decorative arts, which shall show (2) as far as possible the inventive and executive powers of the designers and makers of the various works that may be exhibited, such as textiles, tapestry, and needle-work, carvings, metal-work, including goldsmith’s work, bookbinding, painted glass, painted furniture, etc. etc. to illustrate the relation of the arts in application to different materials and uses, without, however, excluding paintings or sculptures less directly of a decorative kind when space is available for showing them in proper relations.  (3) It is not proposed to undertake the sale  of works, but to refer intending purchasers directly to the exhibitors. (4) All work will be exhibited under the name of the designer and responsible executant…

New Gallery, Regent Street interior, 1888
site of the first, and subsequent, Arts and Crafts Society Exhibitions

“The Society have the refusal of the New Gallery in Regent Street for their exhibition in the ensuing autumn, and a sum of £260 has been already guaranteed by the members, but while there is reasonable prospect of the exhibition being self-supporting, since it is not desirable to conclude final arrangements until the whole of the estimated costs are at command further guarantees are invited to make up a further sum of £500.  The profits of the exhibition, after exonerating the guarantors, would be devoted to future exhibitions of the Society.

“As one interested in the welfare of the arts, we venture to put our objects before you, and invite you to become a guarantor.

“In order to make the necessary arrangements, we should be obliged  if you would kindly favour us with your reply by the 26^th of March.

                                                                        Walter Crane, President

Harry Bates                                                      William De Morgan

W. A. S. Benson                                              William Morris

(Hon. Sec. and Treasurer)                                J. Hungerford Pollen

Somers Clarke                                                  G. T. Robinson

Lewis F. Day                                                    T. J. Cobden-Sanderson

Onslow Ford                                                     J. D. Sedding

F. Gerrard                                                         Heywood Sumner

C. Guiliano                                                       Emery Walker

Thomas Godfrey                                              Thomas Wardle

W. R. Lethaby                                                  Metford Warner

Henry Longden                                                Stephen Webb

W. H. Lonsdale                                                N. H. J. Westlake

Mervyn McCartney”

The first exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society was held in October 1888, and the ensuing rise of the movement is well-documented elsewhere.

The Peasant Arts Guild - an advert

In a 1912 Peasant Arts Fellowship paper, there is a page setting out the beliefs of the Peasant Arts Guild.  The subheading explains ""The true strength of a Nation lies in the spiritual and economic welfare of its Peasantry.""

by Blount, Godfrey, from
Arbor Vitae, Fifield, 1899

"The Peasant Arts Guild has for its object the re-creation and the re-vitalising of the social and personal life of the country folk, leaving to other organisations the equally necessary and important matters of land, housing, and wages, all of which problems must be satisfactorily solved if the country is to be saved in the only way possible- through its peasantry.

The stagnation of the country village must be broken up or its younger members and new settlers cannot be expected to resist the false lure of the towns; the Handicrafts of the people, which of old provided outlet for their artistic and creative instincts, must be restored, interesting occupations and recreations must be placed within their reach, and of a kind which (unlike mere show-gazing) will draw out their own faculties and reveal within themselves the seeds of happiness.

All these things can be done with the co-operation of a few of the more influential members of a village who will be willing to share some of their advantages with their poorer neighbours.

by Blount, Godfrey, from
Arbor Vitae, Fifield, 1899

Advice as to how to set to work will gladly given by the Peasant Arts Guild, which is also ready to send out trained teachers of Spinning, Weaving and Vegetable Dyeing, Toy Making, Wood Carving, etc. and to make suggestions for the introduction of such Country Arts as Folk Dancing, Folk Singing, Traditional Festivals, Games, etc.

Pupils can be taken in the Guild's School of Handicrafts and it is hoped that through the missionary zeal of some of these pupils, brightness and interest may be carried into many a village home where now is so frequently heard the complaint that "there is nothing to do" in the long winter evenings.

Inquiries will be welcomed and all particulars given upon application to

The Secretary of the Peasant Arts Guild
17, Duke Street, Manchester Square,
London, W."

The HAIA & the Peasant Arts Movement

The Peasant Arts movement mirrored the activities of the Home Arts and Industries Association (HAIA) by running craft classes, sending teachers into communities and exhibiting their products.  Mrs G.F. Watts (Mary Seton Fraser Tytler) of nearby Compton was a notable HAIA figure.

Example of Compton Pottery c.1902,
A successful HAIA venture.  Tankard wording: 'Compton in Surrey',
'St Nicholas on a pilgrims way shed sweeter roses day by day'

A good overview of the HAIA is given by Myzelev (Craft Revival in Haslemere: she, who weaves…, Women's History Review, Vol 18, Issue 4, 2009): "Organisations such as the HAIA which provided patronage and exhibition venues for various craft schools, classes, and workshops,   were regarded as amateurish.  The HAIA's products, although often accorded serious critical attention, with reviews of the annual exhibitions in The Studio were purchased because of the desire top support the cause of ameliorating the plight of the labouring classes.  The HAIA belonged to the tradition of the peasant arts revival that sought to re-establish or revive indigenous crafts; this pan-European movement linked the crafts with National Romanticism....

Newlyn Cooper,
another successful HAIA venture

The HAIA functioned as a sponsoring institution for many independent ventures, unifying disparate craft classes and workshops established in isolated communities.  Its national and regional exhibitions encouraged exchange of ideas and experience plus sharing resources.  Classes were primarily aimed at the rural population: men, women and children taught a variety of crafts to enrich their lives and to ‘open their eyes’ to the beauty of the surrounding countryside.  The principal aim was to provide ‘rationale recreation’, to steer workers away from bad influences…Only a few organizations under the auspices of the HAIA became viable rural industries; the Compton Pottery, the Keswick Industrial Art School and Newlyn Copper representing the success stories.”

Related links:

HAIA exhibition review in Studio International 

HAIA Home-making 

The Peasant Arts Museum - a beginning

One of the most tangible legacies of the Peasant Arts movement is the Peasant Arts Museum’s works.  The collection is of household items, woodwork, metalwork and textiles.  These are now held by the Haslemere Educational Museum..  The Peasant Arts Museum pieces were mostly collected by the Rev. Gerald Davies, who sold it onto the Peasant Arts Guild. 

Davies was a master at Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey nearby to Haslemere.  He began collecting pieces that he found beautiful following a holiday in Norway in 1885.  Lou Taylor (Establishing Dress History, Manchester University Press, 2004) describes Davies’ motivation to display peasant works “as a counterweight to mass-produced goods”.  Taylor claims that the “motivations behind the formation of this specific collection stemmed from the same utopian interests in the ‘purity’ of peasant culture, coupled with local philanthropic concerns over migration from the countryside to the city”.

Davies held strict puritanical views on what constitutes a “peasant object”; Taylor recounts that Davies “decided that pottery, even if made by a village potter for commercial sale to his local community, was not of genuine value as ‘folk art’”.  Davies’ “guiding principal in buying the craft was to obtain work made by the peasants themselves, ‘for their own use and not for sale’” (Crowley, David and Taylor, Lou, The Lost Arts of Europe: The Haslemere Museum collection of European Peasant Art, Haslemere Educational Museum, 2000.

page from Guide to the Collections of Peasant Arts, Haslemere Educational Museum

Davies looked for a buyer for his collection in 1908 as his job moved to London, to become the Master of Charterhouse, London.  Greville MacDonald says in his memoirs MacDonald (Reminiscences of a Specialist, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1932)  “…he (Gerald Davies) allowed me to buy it at a price well below its value, but on the condition that it should never be displayed in any City Museum, where, he thought, its beauties might be swamped, and its materials damaged by smoke.  Realizing the national worth of the collection, I put it, by Trust Deed, in the hands of the Founders of the Peasants Arts Guild for the public benefit, thus protecting it against any possible mishap to the Guild.  But at last, because Mrs Joseph King’s illness made it no more possible to carry on the Guild, we, the Trustees, offered the collection to the Haslemere Museum, whose Committee put at our disposal two of their largest and best-lit rooms. …One passage of an article he (Gerald Davies) contributed to The Vineyard dealing with his collection is worth quoting:

“…I am not saying that Peasant Art is the only art worthy of preserving or practising.  It is the spontaneous expression of the joy of life uttered in a very simply and very delightful language.  It is full too of the handcraftsman’s pleasure in and understanding of material.  It asserts, all unknowingly, the Use is beauty and beauty is Use.  If you divorce one from the other there is less beauty and also less use.  But it does not attempt to express any great independent idea, spiritual, social, intellectual, literary.  These ideas are the property and field of a different Art which exists as a rule but not invariably, in isolation from the industries.  The two phases of Art aim at satisfying two very different cravings of humanity, though once upon a day very far back in human history they set out from the same starting-point.  It is as the difference between a Devonshire folk-song and a sonata of Beethoven…”

Peasants or Princesses?

I have a few more pictures of the Wheel and Spindle Club which I thought I should share with you following my last post.  Unfortunately I did not note down the journal that they came from, but I am sure I will track it down again!


From these pictures and those in my previous post it is evident that the Peasant Arts movement was performing a worthwhile community function through the Wheel and Spindle Club, which seems to have brought a number of young girls together to learn spinning and weaving.  From the "garland day" picture it is evident that boys were also included in some events at Sandhouse.  

The Wheel and Spindle Club, Sandhouse, Witley

The picture above would appear to have been taken at a special Wheel and Spindle Club event taking place in the gardens of Sandhouse, Witley, Joseph and Maude Egerton King's home.  The girls all dressed in white wearing bonnets make for a curious sight, and the older women at the back appear to be wearing what I would call formal 'event' hats.  


In the book Rearing an Imperial Race (Hecht, Charles, National Food Reform Association, 1913) Ethel and Maude are quoted with reference to an address by a Miss Gordon on the place of handiwork in education: ""There is nothing," said Miss Gordon in an inspiring address, which like her paper, claimed for her subject a high place in the educational curriculum, "like handiwork for helping men and women to find their level; in other words, there is nothing like craftsmanship for character building and character building is the whole object of teaching, I take it"".  There is then a footnote quoting "To give a little girl the use of her hands is to bring a disinherited princess back into her kingdom"  (‘Our experience of the Influence of Handicraft upon the Workers’, Peasant Arts Guild Paper, No. 10 , Ethel Blount and Maude E. King).

Garland Day in a MPs garden,
from 'The Ailing Countryside, and prescriptions for some forthcoming physic'

The mass of flower garlands on heads in the picture above, and the poor quality of the photo and photocopy(!), make it hard to make out individual faces.  The distinctive chequer work of Sandhouse is more easily visible.  In some parts of England, May Day (1st May) is called Garland Day, and it seems in other parts of England, like Derbyshire, it is at the end of May.  The picture appears to be testimony that the Kings were holding a quaint 'country' community event. 


The girls in these pictures do appear to be closer perhaps to Princesses than the 'country peasant' that the Blounts and Kings wrote about.  The Kings were clearly wealthy, as the magnificence of their house, Sandhouse, testifies, and the Blounts and Greville MacDonald were also comfortably off.  Maybe as a result of their wealth, their concept of the 'country peasant' which they were aiming to inspire through their movement, was a little distorted?

Weaving and the Emancipation of Princesses: The Wheel & Spindle Club

As well as targeting adults, the Peasant Arts movement also reached out to children.  The teaching and inclusion of children in the weaving activities is exemplified by the Wheel and Spindle Club that Ethel Blount and Maude Egerton King established in 1912 “to teach local girls to spin.  

The Wheel and Spindle Club, Sandhouse, Witley
Carding and spinning.
Reproduced courtesy of Haslemere Educational Museum

The youngest, seven to nine years old, carded wool, while older children, nine to fourteen years old, spun on spinner and spindle wheels…The half-day sessions (from 3 to 6.30pm) finished with singing sessions” (Myzelev, Craft Revival in Haslemere: she, who weaves…, Women's History Review, Vol 18, Issue 4, 2009).  Myzelev reports that these sessions ended with the singing of folk songs of Cecil Sharp.  This links up with Mrs Godfrey Blount being recorded in 1908 as a member in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society.

Maude Egerton King working the loom,
The Wheel and Spindle Club, Sandhouse, Witley
Reproduced courtesy of Haslemere Educational Museum

Blount and King reported on this venture that “To give a little girl the use of her hands is to bring a disinherited princess back into her kingdom” (‘Our experience of the Influence of Handicraft upon the Workers’, Peasant Arts Guild Paper, No. 10 , Ethel Blount and Maude E. King).  Myzelev surmises that “Beautiful traditional tunes and the practice of handicrafts had the power to stimulate young girls, allowing them to escape reality, to imagine travelling to enchanted lands.”  This reminds me of Greville MacDonald’s statement in Reminiscences of a Specialist (MacDonald, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1932) “I am increasingly sure that fairy-tale is a necessary corrective to the inevitably mechanical of much school education.  It is a wild flower for the child adventurer to clutch at and gather for his joy: from its free, untutored glory all literature has grown.” 

Going to class,
The Wheel and Spindle Club, Sandhouse, Witley
Reproduced courtesy of Haslemere Educational Museum

Maude Egerton King, with some of her work,
Reproduced courtesy of Haslemere Educational Museum

The wonderful pictures in this post have been kindly obtained from the Haslemere Educational Museum.  They place the Wheel and Spindle Club at Sandhouse, the Kings home in Witley.  It is fascinating to see the teaching of the Peasant Arts movement at work.  It would appear that the club met in one of the outbuildings at Sandhouse.  The pictures of Maude and another of a girl climbing the outside stairs of a building, appear to be of them entering the building where the Club was held.  

Girls carrying their spinning wheels to class, Sandhouse driveway
The Wheel and Spindle Club, Sandhouse, Witley
Reproduced courtesy of Haslemere Educational Museum

There appear to be a number of outbuildings on the Sandhouse site with outside staircases to the first floor, very much like the Dye House at Kings Road, all presumably designed by the architect Francis Troup.  The outside brickwork in the pictures of the stairs seems to match the distinctive chequerwork of the main Sandhouse building, and the picture of the girls walking down the driveway carrying spinning wheels has a Sandhouse gatepost (which are still there) in the background.  I had thought that the picture of the girl climbing the stairs was of Maude’s only child, Katherine King, but she was born in 1893, and so should have been at least 17 years old in these pictures; perhaps she is the lady in white carrying the spinning wheel in the picture above, and below looking down by the second spinning wheel.  The font of the 'Wheel and Spindle Club' posters in the pictures have the distinctive Peasant Arts feel to them.

Reproduced courtesy of Haslemere Educational Museum

Sandhouse, Witley c.1902
Built for Joseph and Maude Egerton King by Francis Troup
from the Francis Troup Archive, RIBA

Teaching Weaving in Haslemere: Spreading the Word

The first step towards the Peasant Arts movement was in teaching, and teaching is one of the cornerstones of the beliefs of the movement.  Teaching features strongly in the literature they produced, for example the Blount’s key books were written to assist others in creating art: Ethel Blount’s The Story of the Homespun Web taking the reader all the way through the weaving process from scouring and dyeing the wool to weaving and waulking, and Godfrey Blount’s Arbor Vitae subtitled as ‘a book on the nature and development of imaginative design for the use of teachers, handicraftsmen and others’.  

Leaflet detail: the Hall of St George is now St George's Flats, Kings Road, Haslemere

The number of different organizations that the movement set up is confusing, as there seems to be a different named Peasant Arts or weaving organization referred to in almost every old leaflet at the time.  They ran at different times at least four ‘schools’ for learning handicrafts: the Spinning and Weaving School at the Hall of St George (Kings Road.  Leaflet in a previous post), the St Cross School of Handicraft (at their house St Cross, Weydown Road) producing wooden toys (a request for craftswomen to carry out woodcarving is covered in a previous post), The Peasant Arts School of Spinning, Weaving and Vegetable Dyeing and The Peasant Arts School of Toy-making.  Greville MacDonald listed one of the Peasant Arts Guild’s operations as “sending into country-places teachers of spinning and weaving”. 

Lower Bertley, now Lower Birtley, Witley
detail of A House at Lower Bertley, William Egerton Hine, 1895 (Maude and Ethel's brother)

The origins of the Peasant Arts movement were firmly grounded in the teaching of handicrafts, after all handloom weaving was not an everyday skill at the turn of the century.  Myzelev (Myzelev, Craft Revival in Haslemere: she, who weaves…, Women's History Review, Vol 18, Issue 4, 2009) writes that in 1894 “the Kings moved to Lower Bertley, near Haslemere, set up the Wheel and Spindle Guild, which produced plain and figures materials in linen, cotton and silk.  Maude King taught a few local women to weave in a class run through the HAIA (Home Arts and Industries Association); the products of the class were shown at the annual Home arts exhibition held at the Albert Hall in 1895.  The textiles of the Lower Bertley weavers sold successfully, with the Princess of Wales and the Duke of York purchasing pieces, encouraging the expansion of the workshops…In 1897, Maude and Joseph King moved the weaving workshop to a purpose-built studio at Foundry Meadow (now Kings Road).  By that time, all of Maude King’s students from the Lower Bertley workshop had small Swedish looms in their houses.”

Extract of Blount, Godfrey, Arbor Vitae, A.C. Fifield, 1910

The Peasant Arts Guild at 17 Duke Street, Manchester Square advertised ‘The Peasant Arts School of Spinning, Weaving and Vegetable Dyeing: In which instruction in Homespun Tweed, Linen, Cotton and Rug Weaving is given.” And also “The Peasant Arts Industry and School of Toy-making”  The teaching in an undated leaflet below was advertised as:

“Spinning and Weaving.  Single lesson of three hours                         £0.50

            “            “            Per Week of five days, three hours daily             £1.50…

Pile Carpet Weaving.  Single Lesson of three hours                                    £0.76

Vegetable Dyeing. “                         “                        “                                    £0.76…

Toy-Making.  Single Lesson of three hours                                                £0.50

            “            “Per Week of five days, three hours daily                        £1.50…

Terms for engaging the Guild’s Teachers for Villages and elsewhere.

Per Week                                                                                                £2.00...

Board, Lodging and Travelling Expenses Extra.”

Teaching Weaving in Haslemere – Sowing the Seed

The teaching of weaving, spinning and dyeing was central to the beliefs of the Peasant Arts movement; in Ethel Blounts word to “reconquer the ancient crafts of the home” would “in a thousand ways affirm the truths that imaginative hand-labour is honourable” (Blount, Ethel, The Story of the Homespun Web, 1910).  

Napkin (detail) made by the Haslemere Weaving Industry,
reproduced courtesy of The Dartford Warbler

The progress of the Peasant Arts movement's teaching can be seen in an article in The Times on 21^st March 1924 which reported on the Peasant Arts Guild: 

“Mr Joseph King presided on Wednesday afternoon at the annual general meeting of the Peasant Arts Guild in the Conference Hall, University of London Club, 21 Gower Street.   The seventh annual report stated that the success of the Guild’s two Industries – Country Toys and the Homespun and the rug-weaving industry carried on at Haslemere – had been very noticeable.  The range of brilliant and beautiful vegetable dyes, and the instruction in the use of them, had been widely extended.  During the year 50 weaving lessons had been given, 20 in wheel-spinning, and 24 in vegetable dyeing. 

21 Gower Street, London
- location of the Peasant Arts Guild 7th AGM in 1924
(now The Academy hotel)

The pupils came from America, Switzerland, Wales, and Hungary.  It was recorded that in the death of Mr. Maurice Hewlett the Guild had lost one of its most valued members and patrons.  Dr Greville MacDonald, one of the wardens, in an address, said he believed absolutely in the necessity for the work they were doing.  There was something more in it than the restoration of spinning-wheels, looms, and hand-made tools.  It was the gathering of seed which had been almost forgotten, sowing it broadcast, and letting it spring up where it might.  Mr Godfrey Blount also spoke on a Country Party.

Haslemere Cranks - Part 2

In Therese La Chard’s memoirs A Sailor Hat in the House of the Lord (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1967) she relates her move to Haslemere to teach in an elementary school, “I was able to rent a small bungalow used as his studio by a well-known artist Godfrey Blount before he had built a home for himself.  The bungalow was lightly furnished from his family scrapings and I paid five shillings a week for it.  It consisted  of a large studio with two small bedrooms and a tiny kitchen.  The outdoor sanitation was well away in the woods.  A huge butt supplied rain-water for the wash-tub bath, and a stout Pither stove, planted in the middle of the studio, heated the whole building…”

Little St Cross or the Country Church, St Cross reproduced courtesy of The Dartford Warbler

Following on from the generous receipt of information from the Dartford Warbler, I have deduced that the bungalow that La Chard rented was in the grounds of St Cross, Weydown Road and was to later become Little St Cross or the Country Church.  This is where the Blounts held Supernatural Society meetings in the late 1920s and early 1930s.  The Country Church was originally held in St George’s Hall on King’s Road and must have transferred to St Cross at some point.  From the photographs of it, it would appear that some of the creeds on the beams of the main St Cross house were also written on the beams at Little St Cross.  As La Chard does not mention the writing on the beams of her bungalow, it would appear that they first were used in St Cross itself.

Little St Cross or the Country Church, St Cross reproduced courtesy of The Dartford Warbler

La Chard goes on to explain “Haslemere was at that time a charming little centre of crankdom and, because of my quaint bungalow, I was from the first counted one of the cranks.  My neighbours were two good women with unswerving faith in handweaving.  They had almost squeezed themselves out of their homes by the number of handlooms they had installed.  The Blounts invited me to their barnlike house with its open roof.  The cross-beams bore strange inscriptions of which the one facing the door ran: ‘Be in league with the toad and the stone’, while the inner side of the beam gave to esoteric reason for this command: ‘For mine are the cattle on a thousand hills.’  The meals seemed to consist largely of salads and haricot beans eaten with horn spoons off heavy pottery plates laid on handwoven strips.  When taking tea on the lawn, the stately old gardener could occasionally be seen passing slowly by with two buckets of human excrement on their way to remoter fertilizing duty.  In nature nothing was held to be unpleasant or unclean.  In a beautiful country house nearby, Maude Egerton King was writing children’s stories of valuable socialist intent.  It was all very kindly and very amusing.”

The View from the Surrey Hills – Haslemere cranks Part 1

It’s interesting to read a few observers reports of the lifestyle of Godfrey and Ethel Blount.  They provide revealing glimpses of what must have seemed a very unusual way of life at the turn of the century.

In The Surrey Hills (F.E. Green, Chatto & Windus, London, 1915) Green journeys around the Surrey Hills speaking to locals along the way.  After relating some tales from locals about being driven off the land due to the Enclosure Acts he relates “There is another kind of peasant at Haslemere who is enrolled in the Peasant Arts Society – at least it is a paper peasant if not a real one – the peasant that is put to the potter’s wheel, the carpenter’s bench, or to the hand-loom.  The wild moorland peasant, sprung from a struggling, poaching stock and turn aesthete, would be something to wonder at, could he be found.

The Devil's Punch Bowl, Hindhead from The Surrey Hills (F.E. Green, Chatto & Windus, London, 1915) 

I do not know if it is the air at Hindhead and Haslemere or the romantic scenery, or the literary and scientific heritage left by unconventional folk in the world of letters, that has enriched this neighbourhood with a number of striking and interesting individualities.  They desire not only a life beautiful for themselves, but also for other people.  The aesthete of Haslemere believes in the dignity of hand-labour.  The prophet, priest, and organiser of this interesting band of workers is Mr. Godfrey Blount.  He has even provided a country church for the taming of the peasant, where services of an unconventional character are carried out, and the unpaid priest is robed in a cinnamon suit of hand-woven stuff.  On the notice board of The Country Church, which is a humble green barn, (NB. This was in St George’s Hall on King’s Road, where St George’s Flats now stand) we learn that it is “oratory of the New Crusade for the true liberty of Life and Thought.  Warden, Godfrey Blount.”

St Cross hand-loom workers, Studio International, SVol 43, February 1908

Mr Blount lives at St. Cross, a house in which everyone is blessed “who cometh in the name of the Lord,” so we are told by the writing over the front door.  Work at weaving the wool spun at the spinning-wheel is carried on indoors at hand-looms, where the stuff is woven into cloth.  Mr. Blount designs, and Mrs. Blount generally arranges the colour schemes.  Here, too, some of the “peasant girls” work under Mrs. Blount’s guidance.  The large drawing-room is perhaps the most original I have ever entered.  The arresting note of the room comes from the large oaken beams overhead.  Here, one could read at a glance from the bold letterings the religious inspiration from which Mr. Blount wove his philosophy – his traditional reading of the earth, to which he adds the feelings of a prophet of the twentieth century.

On the first beam are the words, “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, whence cometh my help,” and on the other side of it, “My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.”

On the middle beam is inscribed, “Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and the beast of the field shall be at peace with thee,” and, “Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.”

Little St Cross reproduced courtesy of The Dartford Warbler;
the first beam says "In heaven the only art of living is forgetting & forgiving",
the other two beams repeat what is said below

And on the third beam are these words of hope, pregnant with a promised fullness of life, “Awake thou that sleepest: arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light,” and, “I am come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.”