Little Dorothy would visit the farmhouses of the Yorkshire dales to see sheep sheared, oatcakes baked and scoff huge Yorkshire teas.

I’ve had a copy on my bookcase at Hampton Court for years, because it’s a treasure trove of odd facts and recipes. Where roasting meant cooking with a heat source coming from a fire and the roast was twisting on some twine with the drippings falling into a pan below. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach.g., few people make sea holly toffee anymore, or gather cowslips or English laver or maidenhair ferns and know how they were combined with dozens of other herbs and flavorings); describing fuels, hearths/ovens, and other kitchen technologies, not to mention food sources, that were altered or lost in the Industrial Revolution and in times of war (how much of English cooking survived WWII and rationing? It’s a combination of food history, recipes, general household advice, bits of personal memoir, opinion, and amusing or interesting quotes from old books. It ranges from Saxon cooking to the Industrial Revolution, with chapters on everything from seaweed to salt. Have you ever wondered where old saying's come from, for instance, "Hook or by Crook" or how chimneys were cleaned of soot,using a Holly Bush and a horse or bullock, No, well I had the first but, not living in the country,didn't even know a thing about the second one.

I've tried the Christmas pudding recipe that she gives as being "The Royal Family's Christmas Pudding". This vessel might be used to cook a whole dinner, including a bacon joint, jars of poultry and multiple "bag puddings" of cereals and beans. I was startled to discover that almost all of the 676 pages are taken up with practical recipes and techniques, with very little historical narrative. Most of the chapters address aspects of English food, whether types of food such as meat, eggs, fungi, and bread, or ways of dealing with food such as salting, drying and preserving. The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time.It really does conjure up a whole lost world: not just because of the foods which have fallen out of favour, like mutton or parsnip wine, but because the recipes pre-date a whole raft of exotic ingredients like aubergine and yoghurt. Each recipe has a heading in italics; some have an illustration, drawn by Hartley, or else a quotation or proverb. Redcurrant jelly for valley breeds; barberry jelly for upland breeds; rowan jelly for Welsh and mountain mutton.

The Historic Royal Palaces curator Lucy Worsley presented a BBC film, 'Food in England', The Lost World of Dorothy Hartley, on 6 November 2015. It was during the acute rationing period that all these ‘teas’ were used in England to adulterate the imported teas. I'd remembered it as being an epic account of English cooking, from medieval times onwards, interspersed with recipes.Registered office: WSM Services Limited, Connect House, 133-137 Alexandra Road, Wimbledon, LONDON SW19 7JY. Hartley wrote wonderful stuff about the agriculture, husbandry, cooking, homemaking, and eating of England from the Neolithic Age onwards, concentrating mostly on medieval and early modern food practices that continued and/or were adapted, mostly in country foodways, through the 19th and 20th centuries. As well as visiting the rambly old house with its garden full of fruit where the adolescent Dorothy first began writing and drawing, we visited a restaurant run by an old schoolmate of mine who restricts himself to ingredients from within a twenty mile radius, just as the Tudors did. A contemporary of folk historians Cecil Sharp and Florence White, Hartley was part of an active movement to record disappearing English customs, and the oral history she recorded provides the richest part of this work.