Page 18 - Life in Langham 1914-1919

Food and Rationing

By the time war broke out in 1914 Britain was importing large

quantities of food. This led to shortages once German U-boats

gained a hold over shipping.

In February 1917 voluntary

rationing was introduced and by

1918, butter, margarine, lard,

flour, meat and sugar were

rationed. Fresh fruit and

vegetables became harder to

come by, with bread and flour

in particularly short supply.

Langham villagers were

certainly growing their own

produce where possible as the

letters to the parish council Langham Parish Council minutes 16 April 1915

requesting allotments show.

They could also obtain food from

the local butcher, baker and

grocer, although Ben Walker was

certainly unimpressed with the

dripping substitute sold in Tidd's

Shop: my mother made some pastry

with the dripping. Anyway, that was the

intention; the resulting pie was just like

concrete. It turned out that the

substitute was mainly potato and

gravy salt.

Mr Tidd’s shop, Church Street Langham

As the war progressed and staple foodstuffs became ever harder to

come by, much ingenuity was employed in stretching the rations such

as adding maize or barley to bread and economizing on butter by
whipping in warm milk.

Despite the obvious difficulties, people made the best of what they had

as a Christmas dinner of 1918 shows: I think this was rather a wartime

Christmas although we had a right good dinner, but not the usual calculated to

make one ill for a week after. This was the menu. Roast pork over Yorkshire pudding

with two vegetables, one mince pie added. The usual plum pudding was

conspicuous by its absence. This was the first Christmas we have

passed since our marriage that we have not had a plum pudding for

dinner. This year we could not get the material that a plum

pudding is composed of.