The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Victorian Homes Changed Everything

by Ruth Goodman

No single invention epitomizes the Victorian era more than the black cast-iron range. Aware that the twenty-first-century has reduced it to a quaint relic, Ruth Goodman was determined to prove that the hot coal stove provided so much more than morning tea: it might even have kick-started the Industrial Revolution. Wielding the wit and passion seen in How to Be a Victorian, Goodman traces the tectonic shift from wood to coal in the mid-sixteenth century—from sooty trials and errors during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I to the totally smog-clouded reign of Queen Victoria. A pattern of innovation emerges as the women stoking these fires also stoked new global industries: from better soap to clean smudges to new ingredients for cooking. Laced with uproarious anecdotes of Goodman’s own experience managing a coal-fired household, this fascinating book shines a hot light on the power of domestic necessity.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Historical, Microhistory, Food, 19th Century

352 pages, Hardcover

First published April 16, 2020

About the author

Ruth Goodman is a social and domestic historian working with museums, theatre, television and educational establishments. She has presented (and consulted on) several highly successful television series including “The Edwardian Farm”, “The Victorian Farm”, “Victorian Farm Christmas” “Tales from the Green Valley” and “The Victorian Pharmacy” (all for primetime BBC Two) as well as presenting a variety of films for The One Show and Coast. “The Victorian Farm” was one of BBC Two’s biggest hits in 2009 and was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award. The book of the series, also called “The Victorian Farm” went to No. 1 in The Sunday Times’s best seller list. These were followed by The Wartime Farm which regularly attracted up to 3 million viewers per week and was also accompanied by a successful book of the same title. In 2013 she presented Tudor Monastery Farm and earlier in the year ‘The Wonder of Dogs’ (BBC 2). She was the Judge on BBC 1’s ’24 Hours in the Past’ and is the historical expert on BBC 2’s “Inside the Factory: How our Favourite Foods are Made (now in its 8th series). Ruth is currently Presenter on Channel 5’s “On the Farm”.

As well as her tv tie-in books, she has published “How to be a Victorian” and “How to be a Tudor” (Pub: Penguin Viking) both critically and commercially successful in the UK and abroad including the US and China. Her most recent books are “How to Behave Badly in Renaissance Britain” was published in 2018 by Michael O’Mara and “The Domestic Revolution – How the introduction of Coal into our homes changed Everything” was published in 2020.

As well as her television work, Ruth offers advisory services, lectures and holds practical workshops around the country. As a social historian she works with a whole range of people, institutions and museums such as The Weald and Downland, The Globe Theatre, Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust, the National Trust and the heritage and drama departments of several universities.

Her particular interest is the domestic; how we lived our daily lives and why we did the things we did. Also how seemingly little things change the world. Our day to day routines have a huge cumulative effect on the environment; our shopping habits can sway the world’s patterns of trade and how we organise and run our family life sets the political tone of nations.

As Ruth says “We matter. How our ancestors – ordinary men, women and children – solved the nitty gritty problems of everyday life made the world what it is today”.

Ruth’s consultancy work covers media (including assisting make up artists with Elizabethan cosmetics in ‘Shakespeare in Love’, information on personal hygiene practices for Channel 4’s Colonial House), interpretation for museums and heritage sites, designing exhibitions and training staff. Her courses and lectures cover everything from ‘History of Eating’, ‘Victorian Cleaning’, ‘The Cycle of Life’, ‘Babies and Birth’, ‘Medicine – A Consumer’s Guide’ and ‘A Good Death’. Her favoured periods are Tudor, Edwardian, Elizabethan and Victorian.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the information mostly quite interesting and especially enjoyed the chapter on Cook's Tools from which the following quotes comes from:

"It is perfectly possible with the requisite skill, ingenuity and equipment to cook any food stuff or recipe with any fuel. You can produce an edible oatcake in an electric oven, deep fat fry your chips over dung or toast your bread on an induction hob. I have even cooked salmon successfully in a dishwasher." Something to try perhaps?!

I also enjoyed the story of the evolution of soap, which was quite fascinating.

From the conclusion: Technological and social cultural "changes were driven bit by bit by the hidden people of history the voiceless, the unregarded and the uncelebrated. They have constituted a vast army of practical unintentional radicals. Many of them were women operating primarily within the domestic sphere, together they laid the foundations of the industrial expansion and shaped the nature of Britain's cultural impact worldwide."

Basically, the way ordinary people run their individual homes and how their neighbors run their homes and so on matters. Our habits "create a mindset that will touch future generations and shape their decisions."

We have a far wider influence than we realize. "The domestic past charts how we have changed the world before. The domestic present has the power to change it right now."

[Louise Culmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting account of how and why, starting in the 16th century, coal replaced wood as our main fuel, and how that affected everyone’s lives. Changes included the use of the countryside, since when wood and peat were no longer being used as fuel the land was put to other uses. The kind of food we ate changed when we began cooking with coal rather than wood,changing us eventually from a nation of pottage lovers to a nation of toast lovers. And far more housework was needed, since coal fires make houses much dirtier than wood fires do. The rise of soap as a cleaning agent accompanied the rise of coal as a fuel, and that is an intriguing subject in itself - other older cleaning methods that were just as effective, if not more so, than soap, being abandoned. The book is full of surprising and fascinating facts. Ruth Goodman has an amazing amount of knowledge about domestic history, the importance of which is often overlooked. Anyone who is interested in the history of ordinary people’s daily lives should read this.

[Edith · Rating 5 out of 5]

It did. It changed everything.

Actually Goodman is not talking just of Victorian homes, but also of the far-off beginnings of coal usage in Britain, and the wood-fuel patterns it replaced. Thoroughly researched by a woman who has used most of the archaic household practices she writes about, it's a very enjoyable read. Ms. Goodman has a lively prose style--it's as if she's talking to you.

One of the things I will carry away from this book is the reminder that, as Goodman says, the domestic matters. The future of the world will be determined in large part by the actions of millions of ordinary people, just as they determined this influential and large scale change in fuel usage. It's worth quoting a paragraph which appears at the end of the book:

"We live in a world cleaned according to methods and principles that were hammered out in the seventeenth century. by a generation of Londoners who made a largely economic decision to switch to coal as their daily fuel. Their coal use lead to the rise of soap. Together, coal and soap forged a new way of living, with new patterns of domestic expectations, gender divisions and class prejudices. When Britain exported these ideas through the Empire, the concept of soap as a mark of social and societal superiority was seeded and planted around the globe. In some places, coal and soap followed conquest and colonization; in other places, the influence of a seemingly successful and confident nation was sufficient to alter people's perceptions and practices."

Ordinary people weren't imagining how much it would change the world when they made the change from burning wood to burning coal, but it had enormous consequences. They were just thinking that it might be cheaper to burn, and more "modern" too. It's worth remembering how the actions of ordinary people, living their daily lives, and trying just to get the house warm and the food cooked changed their land and their planet.

Well worth reading.

[Irene · Rating 5 out of 5]

You would think that a 350 page book entirely about the advent of domestic coal usage in the UK during the Victorian era would get a little boring, but not this time!

Goodman writes not only about the historical facts, going over detailed records of household goods and how coal became the default fuel for poorer people, but she adds her own experience with using wood and coal for cooking in the different reenactments she's done, which answers a tremendous amount of practical questions that would be hard to guess unless you'd seen how it was used. It explains why the recipes, the pots and the cooking utensils changed. Also fascinating the chapters about cleaning, the adoption of soap as the norm. Brilliant.

[Frankie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book instantly caught my attention, not only is it written by the amazing Ruth Goodman, but it covers a subject which I am not only interested in, but I feel a huge connection to. I have lived with a coal fire in the home for as long as I can remember, coal runs through my very veins. The number of times I have toasted bread on long-handled forks in front of the fire, or boiled water when the cooker failed us, our coal fire kept us warm, fed us, kept us in hot water and brought the family together.

I may be one of the very few in the world to say this, but I miss my coal fire, I miss the burning smell of hot coals swirling through my home, I miss going out in all weather to lug back in a bucket of filthy coal – I even miss my cheeky coalmen and if I had the chance to have another I would in a heart beat.

Hmm, I went a wee bit of track there…

I am passionate about sharing the stories of those who not only risked their lives by going deep into the earth to retrieve the previous black gold but passionate about the history of those ordinary men and women (and children) who relied on coal. But, also I am interested in the history of using coal within the homes and the history behind how that came to be, this book was like the holy grail to me, I needed to read it, and I am pleased to say Domestic Revolution didn’t disappoint.

Domestic Revolution is a fascinating fully engaging read, written by an author who not just knows her history, but really loves it. Ruth Goodman is an incredibly skilful writer, the way she lays out the history and facts it’s like she is actually telling you face to face, if you have watched her amazing TV history docu-drama’s where she lives in a specific era for a year then you know how knowledgeable and what a fabulous educator and narrator she is.

This book not only talks about the ways coal was used in homes but of its origins too we travel back to the 16th century as Goodman walks us through the first stages of how and why people began using coal and turning away from wood to heat their homes, how and what they fed their families and the link with the soap and its usage in the country is enlightening, it makes perfect sense that the more coal we use the more soap is needed but it’s not the first thing you think of when your think of solid fuel is it?

What I particularly love about this, and it is another reason I was so keen to read it is that it really focusses on the ordinary person’s lives, we see how coal changed the life of ordinary hard-working people how the occurrence of coal to fuel their homes that it was far cheaper to get their hands on the good wood.

As Goodman says throughout the books and what she continually hints at as you read, the ordinary domestic history of those who came before us and their stories, how they lived and survived are important, knowing the unnamed persons of history and their tales is important. As some who is passionate about learning more about my own ancestry and how my ordinary, coal mining ancestors lived this book really speaks to me.

Domestic Revolution is a must-read for any who has a passion for their own history, it’s fully engaging and very easy to read and one I would recommend everyone to read.

[Mary Catelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

In London, they were using coal for heating and cook during the Elizabethean era. It appears to have started then, too, and been very quick; a Star Chamber proceeding calmly states that "sea coal" (coal brought by sea) is the ordinary fuel of everyone. And it spread throughout the land. It had a lot of consequences.

This opens with two chapters discussing the prior fuels. One about peat and the art of digging it and firing it, dung with the problem that you could not use it for fertilizer at the same time (along with the beasts' higher-fiber diet making it more feasible), thistles that you had to weigh down first to avoid the hollow center that would act like a chimney.

One about wood, and coppicing, and how fireboxes exactly matched the legal prescriptions for selling firewood.

And then -- off into coal. And dealing with it. Such as smoke. Chimneys were innovations at a standard part of the house -- they drew off a lot of heat, but they made it possible to have upper floors, which you couldn't do if the roof area was filled with smoke. (You could guess whether a home had a chimney based on the furniture -- low to avoid the smoke, or high to avoid the inevitable draught induced by the chimney.) But coal accelerated this because of the noxious smoke.

Many innovations in iron to make pots and other fire tools that could stand up to that smoke. (You really needed a grate to burn coal.) They were to be of later importance in the Industrial Revolution.

The vast changes to cooking. Including the invention of "perpetual ovens" -- ovens where the heat source was applied to the oven while baking, as opposed to building a fire, letting it burn out, and using the residual heat to bake -- and then "integral ovens" -- built into the grate. The fall of thick dishes that needed to be stirred. The change from roasting to baking meat. Baking not bread but pastries and cakes. The attempt to export cooking. This did not affect the United States so much because it was chiefly settled from the regions still burning wood, but trying to cook British cooking on wood fires was as much a problem as the reverse.

And then into cleaning. Big problem. The first and more obvious is that coal smuts are much more sticky than woodsmoke. The second is that wood ash was a common cleansing material, and now you had to buy if you wanted it. Soap rose instead. It affected cleaning your dishes, your home, and your clothes. (And may have affected the rise of pottery.)

Lots of stuff.

[Anne Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The lives of ordinary people can change the world. The domestic lives of those who history tends to ignore in favor of battles and grand conquests can, and does, influence far more than one might imagine. This is Ruth Goodman's premise in The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Victorian Homes Changed Everything. And she makes a more than convincing argument that the switch from wood burning to coal burning in England, starting around 1600 (despite the subtitle crediting the Victorians) did in fact change everything in Britain. Goodman specializes in living history and has decades of personal experience in wood burning and coal burning- how to burn, how to cook, and how to clean- that she shares to help flesh out the changes she describes.

Goodman introduces readers to the changing methods of heating homes and cooking by describing how peat, animal dung, wood, and coal all burn differently in a slightly tedious (yet still surprisingly interesting) beginning chapter. Things pick up after that as she explains how homes and furniture changed due to changing heating methods, from rushes and pallets to high standing beds and chairs. The unique British foods like puddings, boiled everything, and mushy peas are explained through a surprisingly simple answer: coal fires and wood fires cook foods differently. Cleaning homes and laundry are gone into in fascinating detail. This all might sound boring to some, but I found it fascinating. This detailed look into the lives of ordinary people- especially the women and servants who rarely left written accounts and whose lives must be guessed at through different approaches- gave me a great appreciation for what it would have been like to live in Britain in the past few centuries.

The Domestic Revolution is a fascinating, well-researched, and well-written book that will appeal to historians, students, casual readers, and anyone interested in how the lives of ordinary people changed with the popularizing of coal burning fires.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

[Christina O. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ruth Goodman’s books are amazing not only because she’s done the research, but because she’s lived the history. No, she’s not immortal or a time-traveler, Goodman’s spent her career trying out historical methods of living to see how they work. Because of her unique perspective, Goodman adds to the conversation about the domestic revolution and how it influenced all of society.

The choice made by regular people to switch from wood-fire to coal had multiple domino effects in society. Reading nonfiction does not come naturally to me, so I struggled through the first half, but I stayed with it because of the amazing anecdotes Goodman writes which give a practical human account of what it’s like to cook with over a dung fire or to clean laundry with wood ash and lye. The second half of the book pulled me in more and I was fascinated by the effects switching to coal had on cooking and what meals and methods were used, and the impact it had on cleaning. The Domestic Revolution shows that Goodman’s practical knowledge about history goes beyond telling readers how people lived in a certain era, it also can add to academic conversations by elevating the perspectives of everyday men and women in history whose choices in daily life affected society, but whose voices are rarely heard.

[Janet Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

The History of Home Fuel in Britain
The is a wonderful history of fuel in Britain. The different substances; dung, peat, and wood, and how they were managed. It is hard to imagine how forests, bogs, and pastures have been managed for the last 4000 years so that they still exist today. But the uneven heat for cooking made that endeavor difficult. Many times you had to choose between a cooked meal and a warm house. With the advent of coal, it was easier to maintain constant and long-lasting heat. Not only could one cook well and often, but the house could also be kept warm. This is an excellent source for those wanting a primer on how to cook what over different kinds of fuel and what sorts of cookery to use. It is a fun story to read and imagine living in those times. Plenty of this information will be handy to preppers or those new to camp out cooking. There are plenty of drawings and a few photos that really add to the story. The author goes into great detail about how the source of heat changed the architecture and layout of buildings. It is very surprising how many parts of life in addition to cooking were influenced and changed by the source and usage of fuel. It also provides a woman's point of view that is seriously lacking in that era. I received this ARC book for free from Net Galley and this is my honest review.

[Doro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might be my favorite book by Ruth Goodman! She explains the changes the domestic coal use made in the UK, from woodland management to the cleaning industry, from cooking to interior design. She also questions if it had an impact on gender roles. It's definitely worth a read. The topic might sound very boring but it's a real page turner.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even as a fan of Goodman's other work, my expectations of this book were misplaced. I thought it would be a sort of microhistory, but as you work through it, you realize that this change in fuel preference changed everything... no really, everything about their homes and lives. And, with climate change, we continue to live in the world that coal created.

It's hard to choose an example to illustrate this, but let's take the portfolio of women's work. In, say, the Tudor era, rural women would have a variety of "jobs" just like men did, including not just cooking and sewing but also making cheese to sell and beer to sustain the household and pay farm laborers in, and keeping a kitchen garden and raising some of the animals. But the coal transition fundamentally changed both the economy (don't need farm laborers drinking beer if you have a tractor; workers specialized more) and the home (a perpetual fight against coal smoke and smuts). And so women's work devolved into the cooking and endless cleaning that we picture today. This book takes a lot of rather vague ideas we might have about how people used to live and teases them out into much more specific times. As always, Goodman reveals how past practices were surprisingly clever and optimal given the supplies and technology of the time.

[Cassie Dishman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, I did enjoy this book. There’s was a lot of fascinating information, the argument was well presented, and I enjoyed that there was practical experience coupled with the historical record.

My problem is this book isn’t what the title advertises. If you state in the title that your book takes place in the Victorian Era, then I expect to spend the majority of my time in the 19th century. The majority of this book takes place in the Elizabethan Era, 16th and 17th centuries, and understandably so as that is when the switch from wood fires to coal fires took place. I don’t know what editor or publisher doesn’t know the difference between these eras, but I find it misleading and infuriating.

TLDR: This book should be titled, “Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Elizabethan Homes Changed Everything.”

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, rich with historical life. My friends have suffered through the many anecdotes I was excited to share from this. Goodman is now on my list of people I'd most like to sit next to at a dinner party.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed history of how and why “the domestic matters”. I love Goodman’s style of combining her many personal experiences in immersive living history with research and contemporary sources. She examines how the switch from wood to coal influenced everything from menus to laundry, noting that what is often credited to heavy industry started in the home. (However, unless you’re very interested in the vagaries of firewood, the first chapters are a bit of a slog!)

[Tristan Shropshire · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most unique books I’ve ever read. It’s a survival guide, agricultural history, culinary history, and more all wrapped up into one thing. Onto spooky season reading!

[Maynard Handley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books covering this sort of material (homes, cooking, everyday life) tend to come in two forms:
- almost all of them are "craft" books. They are particular, unsystematic, incapable of seeing the big picture or non-trivial patterns. They are very big on spirituality and similar woo.

- then there are the delightful (but far far too rare) "engineering" books; systematic organized, careful to explain all important points that go into each step of the thesis, why those points matter and are non-obvious, and what the consequences are of all these points. If the authors care about woo and spirituality, they keep it to themselves.

Ruth Goodman writes as an engineer -- an engineer with a deep knowledge of British history and some knowledge of other history. It's a superb combination, and results in a superb book.

We start with a detailed explanation of the various pre-coal fuel options available in Britain -- how peat and various woods were gathered (both in terms of labor, and in terms of the business/legal arrangements that allowed for this) along with how they burn, how they can be organized to burn in different ways, and the consequences of this for house design, everyday living, and cooking. (There's a fair amount of, surprisingly interesting discussion of both how different woods burn, and how even as early as the 16th century things like how firewood was bundled and sold were standardized and legally described, with consequences for how fireboxes in turn met standard sizes.)

We then move on to how coal differs from peat or coal in these particulars, both extraction and sale, then how it burns and those different consequences for how to organize the house, kitchen, and cooking. I especially like the way that nothing is omitted as either ignored or considered obvious with respect to these changes. The author goes into substantial detail as to the real-world practicalities of how one cooks upon a wood fire (given the actual equipment available to people at the time, without assuming 21st century people who just happen to be slumming it with some fire logs), how every aspect of this (size and shape of pans, what the pans are made of, how easily they can be moved around) changes given the hotter and more difficult to modify coal fire, and how this in turn resulted in substantial changes in cooking practices, for example the prevalence of long-duration boiling.

If you like both engineering (broadly understood) and history, this is a no-brainer; you will find few other books this year that appeal to you as much. Just ignore the last chapter and afterword, which feel a compulsion to switch from engineering and evidence-based history to the usual boring and utterly unoriginal grievances about this, that and the other.

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Ruth Goodman

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

The combination of meticulous research using primary resources, intelligent observations, fascinating tidbits and a most readable writing style using a wide vocabulary makes this book a winner. Thank you, Ruth Goodman, for another fascinating study of everyday life in the past, a precursor of our means and methods today.

[Coffee & books · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It offers a very unique view in why and how London changed in Tudor times with the use of coal for domestic needs. I recommend this book to both historian and non-historians. Ruth's writing is superb and the book is very entertaining.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of Ruth Goodman's books. Every single one that I have read has proved to be interesting and educational, while being hugely entertaining at the same time - not an easy feat, dear reader. If you have not come across her books before, I can highly recommend them all, although How to be a Tudor is my favourite, being more than a little obsessed with the Tudors as I am. So I was really looking forward to diving into The Domestic Revolution and seeing what Ruth could teach me once more.

This time, Ruth sets her sights on examining how the introduction of coal into our homes sparked a complete revolution in the way we live, bringing about unprecedented changes that have helped create the world we know today.

She starts by looking at the former reliance on wood as a fuel, including going into detailed explanations of how woodland was managed to supply the demand for heating our homes, cooking our food and a variety of industrial uses for hundreds of years.

Around 1570, London's households began to change to burning coal instead of wood, as it was becoming increasingly more difficult and expensive to proved enough wood for the rising population. In just 30 years, London became a coal-fired city, and this brought about a complete change in not only the way people lived, but also the rural and urban landscapes.

What seems a simple domestic change in terms of the fuel people used brought about enormous social change, and as is Ruth Goodman's forte she guides the reader through what came next in a way that keeps you glued to the page. Coal not only served to become a new way of heating, but influenced structural home design; the way people interacted with each other within the home; the furnishings and furniture they used; the kind of food they ate and the way they cooked it; and even the way they cleaned their homes and did their laundry. There were also much wider ramifications leading to changes in the rural landscape as the demand for wood decreased; the development of a better transport network to get coal from mining areas to where it was needed; a whole different look and feel to the urban skyline as building design transformed; and even an improved Naval force (bizarre, but true)!

Parts of this book are necessarily information heavy, especially in the first couple of chapters, but they serve a useful purpose in providing a foundation for what comes later, and what comes later is utterly fascinating. Yet again, Ruth Goodman takes a subject and transforms what could be a boring litany of facts into an informative and engrossing account of something that could be considered a trivial domestic alteration by some, but was actually a catalyst for real social change for everyone.

[Martin Whatmough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting. If you love social history this one’s for you

[CatBookMom · Rating 3 out of 5]

June 7 - I stopped reading a while back. I WILL get back to this, but not soon. This is probably a 4-star book.

Feb? Near pub date. GoodReads seems to have lost my earlier dates.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Wow. Having already read several of Ruth Goodman's books, I looked forward to this. But this is dense. A bit of a challenge.

It's well-written, of course, but it goes way back, to the ways that wood was farmed/coppiced/gathered, etc., back to the 1500s and earlier. Which takes a while to read through. Truly, the coppicing and pollarding were hugely successful in providing more wood, without having the devastation of clear-cutting (as we have done in so many places in the USA). And the coppicing seems to be far better at bringing up new wood supplies than the arrogance of clear-cutting and then re-planting.

But - having said all of that, it's just barely to stoves, at >25% of the book. Bear with it. I am doing so, having started 2 days ago. It's not a book to read continuously, from front to back.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone fascinated by the practical aspects of history, by how ordinary people lived their lives and by the minutiae of what most historians consider unimportant in most historical reportage will appreciate Ruth Goodman. She has done more for my understanding of the past than most of the history shows and books I've consumed - and this book is good example of her keen eye for the important but overlooked aspects of the past and her naturally friendly way of sharing her interests. Might be too detailed for people who prefer a grand vista or sweep of a historical story, but for someone who is fascinated by older technologies and the history of the home and hearth it's a great read.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

My mom took one look at this book and said, "How can you have a whole book about the change to using coal? It seems like that should take about a chapter." Well, Ruth Goodman, who has spent much of her life participating in historical reenactments of domestic life, managed to fill 300 pages with very interesting details about "the coal revolution." I never realized this before, but England alone switched to nearly exclusive domestic coal use in the late 1500s, while continental Europe and the New World continued with wood-burning for another 200+ years. It may seem a small change, but it drastically impacted British cuisine, cooking implements, laundry, and general cleanliness in radical ways.

Having only done simple campfire cooking over a fire, I didn't realize there was a whole art to regulating temperatures and preparing a variety of foods over wood embers. Nor did I realize the huge change caused by the substitution of more diffuse and hotter-burning coal, which required completely different techniques, and led to the popularization of different types of dishes, ultimately producing what is thought of as "English Cuisine." Different types of brass and iron cookware were required and new "fire furniture" was needed to hold and manage the coals.

I think the biggest change, though, came with cleanliness, or lack thereof. While wood fires can be smokey, coal burning gives off greasy particles that create a film on everything they touch. Traditional cleaning with brushes and ash, with very little water, was ineffective at removing this new dirtiness. Thus came the rise of soap, and with it the gradual connection of British soap-led sanitation with superior moral and ethnic cleanliness. As the British led the Industrial Revolution and expanded their Empire, use of coal and soap were proselytized, adding customers to burgeoning British industries.

Methods for doing laundry changed as well, with large quantities of soap and hot water and scrubbing now replacing lye (from wood ash) and cold rinse. Overall, Goodman comments that the switch to coal created much more work for women, and likely contributed to Victorian ideas of "a woman's place" in the home, as she now had little remaining time for outside chores. I can't imagine a change that presented us with MORE work for the same basic result being embraced today, but that just goes to show how little influence women had in the 15- and 1600s. Still, I suppose it was overall a good thing that we stopped burning wood, or there would be no trees left....

Goodman makes some interesting points regarding the current transition underway as we move from the use of fossil fuels toward new greener energy. How will this change shift our domestic chores and behaviors? And what other modifications to our lives will a seemingly simple fuel change bring?

3.5 stars.

[Jace · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Domestic Revolution by Ruth Goodman is about the changes of household fuels from peat and wood to coal, and how it changed people's lives.

Thoughts while reading:
-I’ve never really given fuel sources this much thought
-I was aware that modern cow pats are really soft and runny but I never thought that it was because of the change of diet and the high nutrition (I was aware that people used to burn dung for fuel though)
-it’s pretty unfortunate that although peat burned for a long time and was ‘less maintenance,’ it also releases more fine particles so its worse for your lungs
-This book makes me feel very ill-equipped for survival-type situations. I didn’t realize that burning certain types of wood, like willow, could result in acrid types of smoke that hurt to breathe
-It makes sense that the technology that people used were made to optimize the burning of their preferred fuel, like wood
-The issue of dealing with smoke from fires must have been unpleasant. I had never considered how there was sulphur in coal, which reacts with water, so if it made people tear up, their eyes would burn
-I never considered the innovations in smoke management before chimneys (which were expensive), or that having your heat source at one side of the room would be far less efficient than a fire in the middle
-This book is so much more interesting than I imagined it would be. I never thought about how fuel sources, and the different way that they burn, would affect cooking so much, or how the introduction of coal into households influenced recipes that focused more heavily on boiling, which coal cooking did well
-I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that people in Britain stubbornly held on to old dishes like roasting meat, even if it was inconvenient with coal, as a matter of status and tradition
-I liked learning about the different ways people washed their homes and their kitchenware, with wood ash being easy to sweep away since it didn’t stick to anything, in contrast to coal smut, which was sticky and left a mess if you tried to wipe it. It sounded very effective for people to wash their wooden bowls with cloth and bits of sand, which effectively ‘sanded’ the bowls clean
-The poems about the slovenly women, who used dogs’ tongues to wash dishes, and dogs’ wagging tails to dry them, was funny
-Interesting to learn about the dominance of soap, and how it was equated with morality

The book ended up being far more interesting than I thought, with a lot of insightful details that I never would have considered. I also like how the author had first hand experience with using the different fuels and cleaning devices. I would give this a 4.5 out of 5

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Domestic Revolution is such an interesting and very readable book looking at how using coal changed the way people in Britain lived. It’s a comprehensive account beginning with what people used to use for heating or to cook with (in general wood) and detailing the pros and cons of each method. I kept reading out little facts which caught my attention to my husband, such as when London first started using coal more widely in the 16th century, it was cheaper to bring it by sea from Newcastle than over land from closer coal producing areas.

I was really fascinated to find out the difference chimneys made. Did you know that they enabled us to have more than one floor in a house? Previously all the smoke gathered, of course, at the top of a dwelling so people basically lived at floor level. This in turn led to multi storey living and therefore higher density populations in cities.

I was also surprised to learn that in 17th century London many people may have chosen to eat out or get a takeaway from a pie shop. This may seem odd if you consider that many people were very poor. But it may well have been cheaper to do this than cook yourself when this would involve fuel costs, time to cook which could have been spent working (and therefore earning) and also because people may not have had much by the way of cooking facilities in crowded accommodation. In wealthier households, dirtier coal would have been used in servants areas and kitchens, while more expensive but cleaner wood would have been used in the householder’s area – a sign of status.

I was particularly interested in the changes the switch to coal made to how we cooked and what we ate. Cooking vessels and ovens were adapted and food was cooked in a different way. Food we may consider traditionally British such as roasts and steamed puddings all became possible because of coal. It affected how dishes were cleaned as different kinds of food were able to be prepared but pots etc needed cleaning in different ways. It affected the way people cleaned their houses as coal produced a different kind of dirt. It even changed the way people decorated and furnished their houses.

Ruth Goodman’s obvious enthusiasm shines through and her personal experiences of trying out the various methods spoken about in the book really add credibility to her writing. She brings history to life in this fascinating and accessible read.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a truly brilliant book!!! Ruth Goodman adds another layer to the research she does through actually implementing the methods and practices which she discusses in her work. This is one of the many things that make her work even more interesting, as she is able to add her own experience of practicing these historical methods. This action seems to add credibility to the facts and even makes it clearer to visualise how they would have been done. Goodman writes in a way which draws the reader in, she has an easy style which captivates the reader, through her discussion and analysis of each aspect. As someone who is interested in the social history of England, yet by no means claiming to be an expert, I felt I was in safe hands reading this book. The engaging way she writes does not detract from the content of what she writes. I found her examination of different fuels used in England before coal became universal to be highly interesting. From learning about the history of peat which I knew barely anything of to coppicing and pollarding the first few chapters alone give you are wealth of information to ponder for an extensive period of time. This is all before we get to coal and how it burned, or even how it became to fuel of choice. They depth of the research, the quality and quantity of information is truly great. It only goes to show that Goodman, of course, an expert in the field is able to create incredible work such as this whilst making it accessible, and fun to read without sacrificing the quality of her work. She shows that the introduction of coal had a huge impact on society as a whole, as well as individuals day to day life. In the latter part of the book she explores the impact of the change to coal on cooking and cleaning, which shed a new light and perspective on the daily lives of ordinary people - a topic which is discussed and examined less often. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in British or social history.

A huge thanks to @lovesbooktours for allowing me to be part of this book tour and for this #gifted copy.

[Henry B · Rating 3 out of 5]

PSA: The decision to change the subtitle from "How the Introduction of Coal into Our Homes Changed Everything" to "How the Introduction of Coal into Victorian Homes Changed Everything" for the US edition was woefully misguided and misinformed. This is not a Victorian history by any stretch of the imagination; it is a history of the use of coal in British homes from roughly 1550-1900, with most of the book focusing on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I hope the the word "Victorian" in the title will be replaced with "British," or, better yet, "Tudor" in future printings.

As for the book itself, all the wit and charm of How to be a Victorian and How to be a Tudor are here. Ruth Goodman has a gift for making history fun and accessible without sacrificing detail or accuracy. However, it is Goodman's passion for detail that makes this book (in my opinion) weaker than her other books. The Domestic Revolution is somehow both more dense and less focused than How to be a Victorian and How to be a Tudor, and thus will probably bore many readers. Much of the text, especially the first half of the book, is focused on what life was like before the introduction of coal to domestic spaces. These sections, ironically, feel more detailed (and are frequently longer) than the sections on what life was life after the introduction of coal. These sections brilliantly highlight the important differences between life before and after the coal-burning era, but they do not need to be so long or so detailed. On the same note, the other great weakness of the book is Goodman's tendency to discuss how coal affected [insert item here] and then launch into a lengthy material history of the item itself. I found this to be especially glaring in the discussions of food texture and of soap.
Overall The Domestic Revolution is interesting, particularly in its minutiae, and many will find it enjoyable. But there is much material that could have been cut out or put in an appendix.

[Peter Burns · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goodman describes how switching to coal for cooking transformed England. She goes into detail about other cooking fuel including wood and peat. Being rich in coal England switched from other fuel earlier than other European countries and it affected many areas of domestic life including cooking methods, cleaning and even wallpaper. I used to teach public speaking classes in which I would ask participants to talk without pausing, for a minute, on a topic I selected. One of my topics was the history of wallpaper. Little did I know that there are actually many books written on the subject! I have done very little cooking over an open fire. When I was 14 I did a sleepover at a summer camp and I used my own money to buy a steak. Steak was something we rarely ate at home. I used a frying pan over an open fire to cook the steak, but I did not use any oil, butter or seasonings. It was disappointing. When I was in college on the north shore of Long Island, I put together a meal of just things I could forage. I harvested mussels from the ocean and cooked up some peaches from a tree on campus. It wasn’t great but it wasn’t too bad either. I cooked both the muscles and the peaches over an open fire in a pot. When I was growing up in Providence we had a gas stove that included a heating unit. It was the only source of heat in the house. We had a gas heater on the second floor but we never turned it on. Every once in a while it got really cold outside. On those days I sat on a chair, huddled next to the stove. There was a square grate in the ceiling of the kitchen to let the heat go into the second floor. It was useful for eavesdropping on my parents, who often argued. When I was 14 I moved up to the third floor of my house, far from any heat source. On winter nights I covered myself with layers of blankets and coats.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't understand why publishers change book titles when they are published in another country, more specifically why British publishers do this. Would I have read this book if the subtitle had said, "How the Introduction of Coal into 'Our' Homes?" Probably, if only b/c I have read two of Ruth Goodman's other books, but I can say I was pretty disappointed that there was very little about Victorian homes - very little.

I had just re-watched 1900 House that had been on PBS back in 2000 and the narrator had mentioned what a difference coal burning ranges made to the middle class. I was looking for another of Ms. Goodman's books when I saw The Domestic Revolution come up in my search at Barnes & Noble's website, and I requested it from my local library because it said "Victorian Homes" in the title. I thought, "Oo! Now I can find out more about what that narrator was talking about!" And I did, to a degree.

I can say that this is a very interesting history book that has nothing to do with politics or wars, etc. but is instead, my favorite kind of history book - cultural. Just like in "How to be a Victorian" and "... a Tudor" there are countless tidbits of information that leave you saying "So that's why we do that" or "that's where that comes from."

I gave it three stars b/c Ms. Goodman likes to give detailed descriptions of things that are hard for the modern reader to fully appreciate. The detail comes from her own personal experience as a living history enthusiast but sometimes more is just more. She lost me on fire building, washing linens/laundry using lye and wood ash, and other things I can't remember now. That said, she has some fascinating insight to how coal and even soap has shaped modern Western civilization.