Food & Drink 1

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A		is for afternoon tea. The sheer diversity of social interaction of the collection is beautifully depicted in these two contrasting images. The first was taken in Altrincham at the turn of the twentieth century while the second (below) shows a working class interior in Belle Vue (this image is not dated). ‘Taking tea’ was an established part of the social routine of the upper classes in Georgian England and admired in Europe as the epitomy of style. This ritual spawned everything from the most delicate china tea services and slices of bread ‘as thin as poppy leaves’ to the ‘tea poy’ – a small table fully equipped for tea blending by the mistress of the house.
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B		is for butchers. With the cellophane-wrapped convenience of today’s supermarkets, many people today are completely removed from the source of their food. Not so in the past. As the first picture reveals, butchers’ shops used to be full of carcasses. This picture was taken for a Christmas postcard in Horwich in 1900. At Christmas the butchers would send each other photographs of their shops and Christmas goods. The second image (below) shows that you’re never too young to work in the family business, in this case a butcher’s in Hulme.
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C		is for cabbage. In this case a prize winning cabbage (or worte as it was called in earlier centuries) snapped during the First World War. For many centuries it was believed that green vegetables were bad for the digestion and induced melancholy. Consequently, such food was considered fit only for the poorest in society Nevertheless, fruit and vegetables have always played key role in the British diet. Commercial markets for fruit and veg first appeared in the late medieval period, stocked by the surplus produce of noble households and monasteries. By 1887 Kelly’s Directory listed over 700 fruiterers and grocers for the city of Manchester alone.
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