Stepping Back In Time To Look At The Common In 1837
Stand outside the Old School Cottages.
The school had not been built. The land on which it was to be built in 1848 (11 years later) was probably farmed by John Kemp who had 20 acres of land and ran a beer house called the Two Brewers.
Look across the road from the Old School Cottages.
The church was built in exactly 1½ years.
What a busy site it must have been in 1837.
There would have been workmen digging with picks and shovels.
Men would have been pushing wheelbarrows.
Horses and carts would have been delivering flints.
Skilled men would have been knapping or trimming flints.
Scaffolders would have been erecting wooden frames
Wooden ladders would have been used to climb on to the platforms.
Carpenters would be sawing up lengths of wood for the roof beams.
Experienced slaters would have had to be brought in from other areas.
There were about 300 people living in Chipperfield in 1837 and they must have been delighted to have the opportunity to do extra work and earn extra money. Women and children would also have been employed to do some of the menial jobs.
The muddy track in front of the Two Brewers would also have needed lots of flints to improve the surface and fill in the ruts made by all the carts, so many women and children were possibly earning extra money by collecting up baskets of flints from the farmers’ fields.
The farmer would pay a few pence for each basketful.
Even toddlers and babies went with the mothers to do this work, especially when the fields had just been ploughed.
Look at the etching of the church depicting the consecration on 10 October 1838. What an exciting day for the villagers.