Making a tour of any old house is fascinating. But that fascination is greatly enhanced, whether you are undertaking research into your family history or the history of a particular house, if you can pore over a detailed document itemising almost every object in that house at a particular date in the past. And that is exactly what you can do if you read a probate inventory which has been deposited in a record office.

A probate inventory is a list of goods belonging to a recently deceased person, valued on oath by neighbours or executors as part of the process of obtaining administration of the movable estate, that is all the possessions with the exception of the property. Such a record of belongings was required by the ecclesiastical courts in England and Wales from the early 16th to the mid-18th century (and in some districts until much later), especially when a person had died intestate. Thousands of probate inventories have survived in diocesan record offices. The one used here (‘A true & perfect inventory of all the goods and Chattels of Thomas Yardley, yeoman…’) is deposited in the Borthwick Institute in York.

Thomas Yeardley (also spelled Yardley) was a yeoman farmer who had lived at a farm of 67 acres called Kimberworth Park Gate, near the village of Scholes in South Yorkshire, and who died at the early age of 37 in 1694. He was baptised in Rotherham parish church (now Rotherham Minster) on 12 July 1656 and married Mary Barnsley some time before 1683. They are known to have had four children, Mary, Joseph, Martha and Margaret. Mary Barnsley’s father, Thomas Barnsley, was tenant of Kimberworth Park Gate Farm. No records of Thomas Barnsley have been found after 1687 and it is assumed that Thomas Yeardley took over the tenancy from his father-in-law. Thomas and Mary’s son Joseph eventually came into possession of the farm and farmed there until his death in 1748. Yeardleys were in possession of the farm tenancy until the 1850s.

The farm buildings, including the farmhouse, were in one long range, with the farmhouse at the south end and the farm buildings including cowsheds and barns extending to the north. In the north of England these are called laithehouses, ‘laithe’ being the Old Norse word for a barn. The whole range, which still survives to this day converted into four separate residences, is built of local sandstone, mostly roughly-shaped blocks called rubble. The roof is made of sandstone slates. The doorway surrounds, window sills and lintels are made of fine-grained sandstone including the pink-stained Mexborough rock. Old drawings and photographs before the renovation of the farm buildings in 1900 by the landlord (the Earl of Effingham) show a large chimney stack rising from the ground on the outside of the wall of the farmhouse.

The appraisers’ itinerary
Before discussing what the appraisers found, it is worth describing the layout of the house. On entering the southernmost of the round-headed doorways they entered what they called ‘the house’. This is still a term sometimes used in South Yorkshire to describe the front room where today a family sits to watch television. In the late 17th century this was the room where the family, cooked, ate and sat. And living in the house before his death, would have been Thomas Yeardley, his wife and four children, and possibly his wife’s widowed mother and one or two farm servants. This would be the warmest room in the house. North of this room on the ground floor was the kitchen facing the front of the farmhouse (east) which they walked through to the buttery, a cool storage place, at the back facing west. From there they climbed the stairs to the stairhead chamber, the great chamber and the little chamber. They then came back downstairs to inspect the kitchen. They completed their survey by inspecting the outbuildings and the farmyard.

The house
The appraisers began their inspection at the focus of family life: the fireplace, which would have been of the large inglenook kind (one still survives into the 21st century upstairs in the ‘great chamber’). Here they enumerated all the paraphernalia for cooking: ‘ffrogs’ which were horizontal bars on which firewood was placed; the rackings and pot hooks from which pots were suspended; a grid-iron which was a platform of iron bars for cooking meat over the fire; a spit on which cooking meat was turned, supported in a pair of cob-irons; together with two dripping pans to catch the fat and juices.

There was also an iron ladle, a beef fork and a container for salt (a ‘salt pitch’) which would have been hung on the wall near the fire to keep the salt dry. There were two smoothing irons on the hearth. For looking after the fire there were a pair of tongs and a fire shovel. There was also an assortment of pots and pans including a warming pan and two skellets (small cooking vessels with three short legs and a long handle).

Meals were taken at a long table with the diners sitting on long forms on either side. There were three buffet stools, a little table, four chairs and five quishions (cushions). There was also a ‘cieled cupboard’. In the 17th century a ‘cup-board’ was exactly that: a long table placed against a wall with one, two or three shelves, without doors and used for storing and displaying family pewter and earthenware. ‘Cieled’ probably means with a broad flat top, ie with a ceiling. It was probably on this cupboard that the nine pewter dishes, two tankards, four pottingers (bowls with ear-shaped handles for porridge or soup), a salt pot, a mustard pot and an iron pestle and mortar were displayed. In this room there was also a candlestick, a wool wheel (spinning wheel) and an old chest.

The upstairs chambers
From the buttery the appraisers climbed what was probably an open stairway leading to the upstairs rooms. They immediately entered what they called the stairhead chamber which occupied the space nearest the adjoining animal accommodation. This was not a bedroom but a storage area. It contained wheel spokes, the outer rims of wheels (the appraisers used the Yorkshire dialect word felks to describe these items) and unnamed items of farming equipment which were referred to collectively as ‘husbandry geare’.

They then moved on through the next upstairs room (the little chamber) to the great chamber that occupied the area at the southern end of the farmhouse immediately above the ‘house’. And in the late 17th century this room, like the two other upstairs room, had no ceiling, but was open to the roof with the massive oak beams of the king post roof structure in full view. This was the family bedroom. It would have been warm in this room because not only would there have been a fire burning for most of the time in the room immediately below but also because this room contained an inglenook fireplace which still survives. The appraisers refer to it simply as ‘a range’. The room contained three beds complete with their bedding and linens. There were two ‘cieled beds’ and one ‘truckle bed’. A ceiled bed was a bed with a ceiling or canopy, that is a two-poster or four-poster

bed. The two ceiled beds were complete with their ‘furniture’ which probably means not only the coverings but also a canopy and curtains. A truckle bed was a low bed on wheels that could be stored under a bigger bed. The room contained two ‘presses’ (cupboards), a chest, a table, two desks, four old chairs and an old trunk. The appraisers then retraced their steps to the little chamber which contained a half-headed bed, again with its furniture, a pair of weight scales, a meal chest and a yarn windle (spinning wheel).

The kitchen
The appraisers then descended the stairs and listed the items in the kitchen. The contents of the kitchen indicate that this was the space where baking was done, where butter was made and where clothes were washed. It contained a ‘water kitt’ that was a water tub that probably contained a supply of fresh water brought from an outside well. Nineteenth century maps show a well in the orchard to the south of the farmhouse. There was a ‘flaskett’ which was an oblong or oval tub for washing clothes. The kitchen also contained a ‘milking kitt’ and a churn for making butter. As far as baking was concerned, it must be remembered that outside the kitchen was a large chimney stack rising from the ground up above roof level. This would almost certainly have been associated with a bread oven in the kitchen. This would have been of the beehive type of domed construction built into the kitchen wall. The walls of the farmhouse are almost 36 inches (one metre) thick. The appraisers also mention a ‘leaven kitt’, a container in which bread was kneaded and left to rise. There was also a ‘great ark’, a domed meal chest in which oats and flour were stored and a dresser. Finally, and most surprisingly, there was a ‘hen call’ in the kitchen. This was a hen coop where laying hens would spend the night and lay their eggs. In some parts of Britain hens would spend the night on a rope or pole strung across the kitchen and lay their eggs in baskets of woven straw. I have a postcard of the farmhouse taken in 1907 and there are still hens pecking the ground around the kitchen door!

Farm equipment and farmstock
Thomas Yeardley’s farm equipment was exactly what one would expect. He had two ploughs, a pair of harrows, a cart-wayn (a wain was a cart), a ladder, a stand heck (a rack for fodder that stood on four legs for use in the farmyard), and a sledge, which was a wheel-less cart used for moving harvested grain and hay on steep slopes and broken ground. His livestock consisted of a pair of oxen (used for ploughing as well as for serving the cows), two kine (cows), three calves, four horses, ten sheep and two pigs. Altogether the appraisers reckoned that Thomas Yeardley’s possessions were worth just over £61 of which more than half (£32) was the value of his livestock and farm equipment.

Conclusion
In many ways the picture painted by the probate inventory is of a well furnished and busy farmstead. One can well imagine the family moving from the fields, farmyard, farm buildings and kitchen to gather round the dining table in the evenings and then around the fire before ascending the stairway for a well earned night’s rest. But there are also some omissions which raise interesting questions. There is no mention of floor coverings. Does this mean the downstairs rooms were made of beaten earth or flagstones and the upstairs rooms of bare boards? No knives, forks and spoons are mentioned. Forks were uncommon at this period, but were knives and spoons simply overlooked or were they included in the last item in the inventory – ‘husslement in and about the house’, by which they meant odds and ends? No books are mentioned, not even a bible. Were the Yeardleys illiterate? And there is no mention of toilet facilities. But there is an alcove in the ‘house’ which is believed was a medieval garderobe (latrine) and there is a small building, stoutly constructed of stone in the garden to the south of the house which used to be an outside privy.