As it's quiet... By chance recently, I stumbled across the poem "Leady-Day, an' Ridden House" by William Barnes which gives a quite detailed inventory of the household of a labouring man. I found it while looking for another of his poems "The Settle an' the Girt Wood Vire" which describes changes in household life, centring round the change from wood to coal as a fuel. William Barnes wrote nostalgically about the life of his youth in early 19th century rural Dorset; life in the Somerset countryside would not have been very different, and his verses provide a concentrated and personal view which books of social history struggle to match. His verses are available freely at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21785/21785-h/21785-h.htm Do others on list have favourite, less conventional sources of background on our ancestors' way of life? Ian