A Feature by Dr Susan Arthure
From the 1850s through to the 1940s, Irish migrants and their descendants lived at Baker’s Flat near Kapunda, in the mid-north of South Australia. This was a long-lived settlement defined by its Irishness, about which recent historical archaeological research has revealed much.
Excavations at one area of the site uncovered a rectangular dwelling built in the Irish vernacular style. From the archaeological evidence, it appears that the occupant was an elderly woman living alone in her final years, during which time she apparently drank many cups of tea. Among the many ceramic artefacts recovered from the house are the remains of ten teapots. Two of these are quite large; one has a base diameter of 10 cm, and comparing it with a similar-sized complete teapot in the same style, would have held up to 2.4 litres of tea. You could get about ten cups of tea from a pot this size, enough to facilitate a decent conversation between friends, or to start the morning off well. Another smaller pot (Figure 1) has a shiny black glaze and a geometric gilt pattern, perhaps suitable for more formal occasions.
Figure 1 Teapot body and rim with enamelled gilt decoration. Photo: Brendan Kearns.
Accompanying the teapots were the remains of 21 teacups varying from decorated fine bone china to plain utilitarian pieces (Figure 2).
Figure 2 Teacup fragments. Photos: Brendan Kearns/Simon Hoad.
Perhaps the most interesting teacup is the artefact known as BFK/6035, part of a bone china cup with a date range of about 1800 to 1830. It has a red transfer print applied as an overglaze and a pattern of fine pointed stems and leaves, infilled with stippling (Figure 3). The fineness of the design and the stippling indicate a manufacture date in the early nineteenth century, suggesting that the teacup may have been brought to South Australia in an emigrant’s baggage rather than purchased locally in the years after arrival.
Figure 3 Fragment of bone china teacup with red print pattern. Photo: Brendan Kearns.
What can these artefacts tell us?
When tea was introduced to Ireland in the middle of the seventeenth century, it was drunk only by the wealthy residents of Dublin and the provincial towns, before spreading out to the rural nobility and gentry during the eighteenth century. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, tea consumption had diffused to the farming communities in the north-east of the country, but only as a luxury item saved for Sunday breakfasts, Christmas and Easter. Later, it began to be drunk at suppertime and then several times a day, especially by the old and by women. By the 1880s, tea was drunk on a daily basis by all classes, even in the poorer western areas, and was considered a necessity (Lysaght 1987:46–49). The Irish who migrated to Baker’s Flat, therefore, would have been very familiar with tea-drinking.
None of the excavated artefacts are particularly good quality, although some of the teacups are highly decorated and would have gleamed attractively if placed on a shelf or table near the hearth. Looking at them broadly, some might dismiss them as merely standard issue of the nineteenth-century ceramics trade.
However, they are more than that. The archaeologist Charles Orser (2012:671) reminds us ‘that the most significant social and cultural changes and adaptations may be visible through our commonly used objects’. Taking tea as an example, he describes how, from its origins in Asia, it became a worldwide commodity under seventeenth-century, European, colonial-based capitalism. Over the course of two centuries, tea drinking filtered down through all social classes, facilitating the creation of a European fine ceramics industry and an accompanying etiquette which detailed the right way to consume it. It can be used—along with coffee, chocolate and sugar—to chart the spread of globalisation since the seventeenth century.
Across colonial Australia, tea was consumed in large quantities. In the 1890s, compared to Britain where the average consumption of tea per head was 5½ lbs, in the east coast colonies of New South Wales and Victoria it was 7–8 lbs (Dingle 980:243). Why might this be? As a thirst quencher, it was an effective substitute for beer. It was simple to prepare, cheap and easily transportable. Throughout the nineteenth century, tea, mutton and damper formed the standard meal for bush workers.
And in the Irish settlement of Baker’s Flat? Ten teapots might be considered a lot for one woman, even accounting for breakages over time and even if there were other family members living in the house in earlier days. That gigantic pot that could hold 2.4 litres appears to have been designed for company rather than for a single person. However, it may not be that unusual. Writing about the consumption of tea by Australian squatters and graziers, Cannon (1973:26) notes that it was common to make ‘a pot of black tea, which was drunk very hot, sweet and strong, in great quantities’. A grazier in rural Victoria was famous for drinking three quarts (3.4 l) of tea at breakfast every day and the same quantity again at dinnertime. His teapot was said to be ‘the size of a garden watering pot’ (Cannon 1973:26).
And then there’s the red transfer-printed porcelain teacup (BFK/6035) with finely stippled foliage. With an end date of 1830, six years before the South Australian colony was established, it seems reasonable to think that it might have been brought out in an Irish emigrant’s luggage, a small cup, easy to pack and carry, redolent of memories and love and cups of tea shared by the fire.
In summary, it seems fair to say that these tea-related artefacts tell us a lot. They represent global trade and capitalism in the new colony of South Australia. They are consistent with the heavy consumption of tea in the Australasian colonies. The variety of forms and decoration possibly reflect ‘manners’ and using the right vessels at the right time of day – a large breakfast cup and robust teapot to start the day, smaller porcelain cups and gilt teapot for tea with friends or to entertain the local priest or doctor. Most importantly, these artefacts are about people, especially that nameless older woman who lived in a small house on Baker’s Flat. For me, they’re about the desire for a home of your own, the comfort of your own fire and delph, a place to be warm and content. Being able to say to a caller, ‘You’ll take a cup of tea?’
References
Cannon, M. 1973 Life in the Country: Australia in the Victorian Age: 2. Melbourne: Thomas Nelson Australia.
Dingle, A.E. 1980 ‘The truly magnificent thirst’: An historical survey of Australian drinking habits. Australian Historical Studies 19(75):227–249.
Lysaght, P. 1987 ‘When I makes tea, I makes tea …’: Innovation in food—the case of tea in Ireland. Ulster Folklife 33:44–71.
Orser, C.E., Jr 2012 Historical archaeology. In N.A. Silberman (ed.) The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, vol. 1, ACHE-HOHO, pp.667–673. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dr Susan Arthure, from Trim, County Meath, lives in Adelaide, South Australia and is a lecturer and tutor in Archaeology at Flinders University. Her essay ‘Remembering the Women of Baker’s Flat’ won the Wakefield Press Essay Prize at the South Australian History Council awards in May 2023. More of the Kapunda story will feature in an upcoming Wakefield Press publication Irish Women in the Antipodes: foregrounded.
Tinteán 