MAUNDS & PANNIER MARKETS: NORTH DEVON
Above Picking potatoes, Westacott, Riddlecombe. October 1980.
Photograph by James Ravilious. Copyright Beaford Arts digitally scanned from a Beaford Archive negative.
Stave baskets were made in 8 sizes. Sizes 1 – 5 had a central handle, the larger ones, called maunds, had integral hand holds at both ends. Some were closeboarded, In others wider spacing allowed earth to fall through.
Above The handles and bonds of the stave baskets are made from coppiced ash strips, cleft using a brake and froe, shaved down, then moulded around wooden formers while semi green and left to dry in shape.
The cleft and shaved ash hoop for the rim of the stave basket which is bent round the former. Pegs hold it in place.
Image:.Stave basket. Copyright Museum of English Rural
Life, University of Reading. MERL 96/11 Large size stave basket made by Jack Rowsell, the last agricultural worker making these baskets.
Image:.Stave basket. Copyright Museum of English Rural
Life, University of Reading. MERL 91/38. A size 2 stave basket made by Jack Rowsell.
The word ‘maund’ or ‘mawn’, dating from c.1500 and meaning a basket used as a measure, was commonly used in Devon and Cornwall when
referring to an agricultural basket used for planting, harvesting and selling produce.
In northwest Devon, making ‘stave’ or ‘splint’ baskets was winter work for some farm workers. These durable baskets, unique to the area, had ‘staves’ of milled timber. These were nailed onto a planked wooden bottom, usually elm. The handles and ‘bonds’ were of cleft ash.
Bideford, Ilfracombe and Barnstaple had large indoor pannier markets. At Barnstaple on Fridays, several hundred farmers’ wives from the surrounding countryside would bring their produce to sell, by horse and cart, and later by car. The would bring it in a ‘market’ maund, also called the ‘north Devon maund’, These white willow baskets could be quite large, with thick ash or hazel posts worked in to form the feet. They had an oval base but the top was oblong so that a heavy cover (lid) could be hung on with split hazel hinges known as ‘oozes’.
This was folded back, resting on a forked stick or leg, to form a shelf on which to display the goods for sale.
The two biggest buyers of baskets in the area were the rabbit merchants and the church bazaars.
There was a big trade supplying the London and Midland markets with hundreds of rectangular rabbit hampers. Finger holes either side held two stout poles across which the rabbits were hung in pairs.
Men using apple crusher. Hacknell, Burrington. December 1975. Photograph by James Ravilious. Copyright Beaford Arts digitally scanned from a Beaford Archive negative.
Stave baskets were used for all sorts of farm work, from planting and harvesting to taking feed, such as chopped turnips, to the animals.
Image: Fowl crate. Copyright Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading. MERL 60/44
Commissioned by the British Council from Blackwell’s Barnstaple, for an exhibition that toured Australia and New Zealand in 1946.
Image: Fowl crate. Copyright Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading. MERL 60/44
One cover (lid) was fixed the other could be hinged open while putting the fowl inside.
Three modern copies of the north Devon ‘market maund’. These were generally made in white willow. The one on the left shows how the lid becomes a shelf, propped on a forked stick, for displaying produce such as butter, cream, raspberries or ‘mazzards'(a north Devon cherry)
Olive and Jack Lee’s produce stall Bideford Pannier Market, July 1983. Photograph by James Ravilious. Copyright Beaford Arts digitally scanned from a Beaford Archive negative.
Farmers’ wives used a variety of different baskets – butter flats, egg baskets, baskets for laver (seaweed) and vegetable sieves (round baskets with straight sides without handles).
