The Lost Skills of Traditional Living

Cast your minds back to a handful of generations ago; rural communities were living simply and in tune with nature. We understood its seasons, its clues to incoming weather and local secrets of the land, properties of plants and ways to live as an integrated part of nature.

Now, after world wars, a surge in consumerism, a great change in resource use and geopolitics, there is a common yearning to live a slower and simpler life, rejecting commercialism and the hustle culture that appears to define success.

But do we have the skills to live as our ancestors did? The UK has no first nation people left today, so no direct oral communication with our ancestors that lived off the land. Nowadays, we are rediscovering our cultural heritage and roots by recalling stories from our grandparents, reading history books, and learning from rural communities who have worked in the country their whole lives. N.B. I will use the word ‘country’ to refer to the countryside and traditionally rural places in the UK. Here is a miniature catalogue of traditional skills and cultural crafts that have been half-forgotten, but now it’s time for them to be rediscovered!

Image description: a hand holds out two young plants to add to the vegetable bed behind. The veggie container is made from upcycled wooden pallets.

Make Do and Mend

We have been mending our own furniture, tools, equipment and clothes for centuries, but this classic slogan came about to encourage families to be more self-sufficient during the last world war. Taking this forward to now, there are so many skills that you could adopt to be more independent, or you could even join in the community spirit of your local repair café. These are wonderful pop-up or regular events where people come together to loan their skills and time or tools to others to fix household items, reducing waste.

Here are some useful mending skills: darning, sewing, knitting, crocheting, book binding, cycle repairing, battery fitting, watch making, wood work, fixing electrical items and toy repairing.

Image description: my little sister, an awesome human being, treating the wood of a large garden recliner which the neighbours were getting rid of. She is wearing a stripy top and long, black dungarees which have been patched on the knees. In the garden behind her is a red fox Labrador and a black and white Greek recue enjoying the sun.

Traditional Botany and Herbal Medicine

Land workers, wise women, ‘witches’, village elders, pagans and the like were sought after for their advice and natural remedies, based on plant knowledge. In the modern world, natural remedies and plant-derived medicines are becoming more popular with people who are eager to reconnect with their roots, reduce reliance on the synthetics of Big Pharma and become more self-sufficient.

There are still many wild flowers and plants in the UK that can be foraged for free, that have traditional medicinal uses. For example, the English marigold for insect bite relief, the elder for colds, the stinging nettle for anti-histamine uses and evening primrose for an assortment of malady reliefs.

Rural Skills

Rural skills refer to land management skills that have been used increasingly since the development of agriculture, but also includes animal tracking. Common skills used in traditional rural areas include dry stone walling, hedge-laying, coppicing, weaving and green woodworking. They have diminished in regular practice due to changes in land management such as agricultural intensification and urbanisation.

Not only have we reduced the number of hedges being laid, for the preference of low-maintenance walls and fences which has in turn reduced the demand for skilled hedge-layers, but we have wiped out local history. Traditionally, hedges and dry-stone walls were locally different in species and stone type respectively. Unfortunately, many people have wiped out this local uniqueness of their villages and counties by adopting landscapes they have seen in magazines, on television or social media. Consequently, local wildlife has dwindled as hedges are important ecosystems, and local quarries have suffered as stone walling is brought in from thousands of miles away.

Image description: a pair of blue and white bowls hand woven by myself, using a circular wooden loom and wool offcuts from the local scrap store. More woven goodies available on my Etsy shop, Wild Nurturing Home.

Traditional Crafts

The Heritage Crafts Association is devoted to documenting and attempting to keep traditional skills alive in the UK. Many skills were lost due to the World Wars (such as rush mat weaving), which prevented skills being taught to another generation as efforts were focussed on keeping the nation alive. Other skills, many of them categorised as endangered and critically endangered, are based on using natural resources and is a stark proof of our disconnection from the natural world. Such mediums include straw, wood and textiles. The HCA also suggest that a lack of access to raw materials and a lack of a demand for the finished products is often the reason for the diminished practice.

Crafts that made common household and rural living items such as hats, brooms and rope are threatened to be lost. Visit the link below under ‘sources’ to see if there are any traditional crafts that take your fancy, that you could offer the world. Luckily, there is a new dawn of consumerism where people are appreciating unique hand-made items over cheap and common industrially-made counterparts.

Food and Land Cultivation

Perhaps one of the easiest skills (in terms of accessibility, cost and time) to relearn is growing your own food! Although the norm once, convenience has taken hold of our busy lives, increasing food miles, carbon footprints and monthly costs. By learning which herbs can (or more importantly-not) be planted next to each other, how to grow food for free, which food can be foraged on your daily walk, which herbs or vegetables can thrive in small containers etc., we can develop this great skill again. Even if you are simply supplementing your food shop, instead of growing everything yourself, you are learning a great self-sufficiency skill!

Image description: an up close of salad seedlings poking out of cubes of soil from green seed trays which have been reused.

Sources:

UK National Association for Environmental Education, 2017: https://naee.org.uk/british-traditional-ecological-knowledge-wisdom/

Countryfile, 2022: https://www.countryfile.com/how-to/unusual-medicinal-plants-found-across-britain/

Cotswolds National Landscape, 2022: https://www.cotswoldsaonb.org.uk/looking-after/rural-skills/

Save Our Woods, 2011: http://saveourwoods.co.uk/articles/opinion/the-decline-of-traditional-skills-and-our-english-hedgerows/

Heritage Crafts Association, 2021: https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/redlist/