Welsh Journals

HANES PLWYF CRAI* RHAN III HISTORY OF THE PARISH OF CRAYt PART HI VII. THE HOME By MARGARET PRICE FOOD Among the changes that have taken place in the district of Cray within the last century, more particularly in the last fifty years, those in food have been among the greatest. Country people were much more self-support- ing than they are nowadays, but there was much less variety in their diet, and this was largely due to the difficulties of transport. The farmers of Cray grew wheat, oats and barley, and these crops provided food for man and beast. After being threshed, some of the corn was kept as grain for the animals, and some was sent to mills in the neighbourhood to be ground into flour, oatmeal and barley-meal. It was to the mill in Cray that the Cray farmers sent their corn-until about fifty years ago. The name still remains, but of the mill itself, little is left except ruins. The housewives made bread from the wheaten flour, baking their loaves in big brick ovens which were heated with wood. After a good harvest, the bread was excellent, but after a wet summer and autumn, when the grain had perhaps sprouted before being gathered in, the bread was inclined to be sticky and heavy. Indeed, Cray, with its heavy rainfall is not suitable for growing wheat, and it is now many years since home- grown wheaten bread has been made in the district. Housewives, however, still continued to make bread from 'shop' flour, but now even this practice has ceased, and for the last ten years or more most of the people of Cray buy their bread from the vans which come out from the nearest villages and towns. Oats played an important part in the family diet. There were two grindings of this cereal, one much coarser than the other. The coarser, called bwyd sucan, was soaked in water for some days, and the liquid, strained off, warmed and sweetened with brown sugar, was a favou^te *Parhad o Brycheiniog Cyfrol ix. (1963) a Chyfrol x. (1964) fContinued from Brycheiniog Vol. ix. (1963) and Vol. x. (1964)