Visiting the town	Territory and art	History	Traditional occupations
Bagno a Ripoli	How to get there
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Traditional occupations Bleachers and Washers The "Gualchiere" Share Cropping

TRADITIONAL OCCUPATIONS

All of the inhabited towns in the territory of Bagno a Ripoli are characterized by whatever craft or trade was predominant there in the past. There were builders and carpenters at Antella, painters and decorators at Bagno a Ripoli, launderers at Grassina and printers at Nave a Rovezzano, while shoemakers and carters could find work at Meoste, Croce a Varliano, Arco del Camicia and La Fonte. Little changed until just after the war, when mechanization led to a decline among many crafts and trades.

The old Peruzzi pottery

Most of the brick potteries were concentrated in the clay areas lying in the hydrographic basin of the Ema, near Capannuccia, and along the Arno, where they could exploit the deposits of water left by the river in flood; vast areas of the territory also contained limestone which explains the presence of the many lime-kilns here, used periodically, as required, by the farms.

The bleaching and washing of linen and hemp cloth was another activity that flourished in Bagno a Ripoli in the past, favoured by the important industrial plant of the Gualchiere or Fulling Mills at Remole. Individual handcrafts were varied: carpenters could make a wide range of articles and supplied all the needs of the inhabitants of the towns or rural villages.
Ironsmiths could be found in almost all the villages in the council borough and concentrated mostly on making farm implements: ploughshares, picks, scissors, knives, bill-hooks, keys ... as well of course carrying out any repairs needed or periodically sharpening the various utensils and cutting tools.

Millers carried out another very important activity in the watermills, transforming bags of corn into flour, the main source of nourishment for the peasant families. There were a great many mills here, powered by the strongly flowing waters of the many rivers and streams in the district.
However farming was always the principal economic occupation in the area. The main crops were grapevines, olive trees and wheat. Wheat was once grown throughout the district but is now very rare, while the flood plain of the Arno, and especially the Vale of Ripoli, before being attacked by housing developments, was famous for its orchards.

Vineyard near Via del Carota

The production of wine was once of primary importance in the district of Bagno a Ripoli; the "sweet wild violet" wines of Montisoni and "the deep red drink" of Lappeggi were celebrated by Redi in his Bacchus in Tuscany. However these plants were not staked as today but grew onto other plants, such as poplar, olive or fruit trees, which were planted at regular intervals along the rows of vines. This was not a very economical or profitable method and forced the farmers to re-utilize their murc to produce their famous "acquerello", a fizzy drink, containing very little alcohol, which was drunk in the winter in order to consume less wine and sell a few extra demijohn.

Pruning the olives in the hills above Antella

Farming activity was organized around the typical Tuscan share-cropping system. The life of the sharecroppers was a hard one, not only because it almost all the work was manual (using implements like planting spades, hoes and sickles) but also because many proprietors expected them to hoe about one third of the farmland by hand in spite of the fact that it was possible - ever since the modern plough was introduced in the mid 19th century - to obtain the same if not better results with an oxen-drawn plough. This form of agriculture also included the construction and maintenance of the hydraulic-farming systems that were formed, at Bagno a Ripoli, either by terraced hillsides (where there were plenty of stones for the walls) or by embankments (in areas of sandy soil that permitted the growth of vegetation). An ingenious hydraulic system was used on almost all the farms, composed of underground drainage and stone aqueducts, that ensured the defence of the soil and protected it from all forms of flooding.

BLEACHERS AND WASHERS

Hanging out lengths of cloth at Rimaggio

Bleaching was a fairly common occupation among the inhabitants of Bagno a Ripoli towards the end of the 18th century. This particular type of work was commissioned by the Florentine merchants and consisted in the bleaching of linen cloth with lye, made by filtering boiling water through some wood ash spread out on a piece of material. ÒLe CureÓ, as the Villa di Rimaggio was formerly called, is one of the few surviving reminders of this ancient occupation which was once carried out in the villaÕs outbuildings. This form of work gradually changed over the years and was eventually replaced by a new occupation, the washing of linen, though this did not become an important element in the area's economy until the second half of the 19th century. On Monday mornings the laundrymen would set out for Florence in their light carts and go from house to house to collect the dirty linen. The next day they would set the washing to boil up in huge tubs with some lye or, in later years, some buck; the laundry was then placed in a special tubs, covered in soap, and scrubbed with a scrubbing brush to remove the more difficult marks; after this it was beaten with a wooden mallet and the whole process continued on the following day, when it was rinsed out thoroughly in the river or the streams. This lengthy operation was carried out at all times of the year and always out of doors. The final operation was when the washing was hung out on the lines in the fields: it gave the countryside a singular and extremely characteristic aspect. This type of work, carried out in the area around Rimaggio, soon spread, especially in Grassina which, as the activity developed, gradually took on many of the characteristics of a small town; this is why it looks rather different from the other villages that can be found in the surrounding countryside.

THE "GUALCHIERE" OR FULLING MILLS AT REMOLE

The fulling mills at Remole

The Gualchiere or fulling mills, near the village of Remole, are mediaeval factories that once belonged to the Wool Guild or Arte della Lana, and which specialized in the treatment of woollen cloth by exploiting the strong flow of the waters of the Arno. Several other constructions were attached to this ancient building and connected to the various stages in production: a fish weir, a dam, sluice gates and a little harbour for the boats that carried the bales of cloth up and down the river. Although the fuller's trade no longer exists, it was carried out at Bagno a Ripoli from ancient times. This fulling, milling or felting marked a very important stage in the preparation of wool. The cloth was soaked in acids and placed in large stone containers or tubs which had a pole on top that ended in a heavy mallet: the stong pressure of the water kept forcing the mallet down onto the pieces of material until they became thicker, stronger and more compact in texture. While they were still damp, the lengths of cloth were carried downstream by boat to Florence for other finishing processes. One of the many tasks connected with the fullers' job included the general maintenance of the fulling mill itself and this duty was passed down from generation to generation; they were also members of the Wool Guild and therefore had to obey all the rules laid down by the Corporation or, at least, until 1782, when it was suppressed. The little that remains of this ancient building is in now very poor state of repair though plans to restore it are already under way.

SHARE CROPPING

Farming family at Montauto (1930)

From the late Middle Ages until only a few years ago, sharecropping was one of the most common systems of farming in the district of Bagno a Ripoli. The sharecropping economy was based on the family, which was principally thought of as a productive nucleus and closely tied to the harsh forms of self control enforced by an isolated life in the country. This isolation was helped by the fact that all the members of the family had to work long hours and extremely hard, making it naturally very difficult to have any kind of social life or education (in the 1861 census, as many as 11.982 of the 14.607 inhabitants were illiterate). The share cropping system completely conditioned the life of the peasant: every single thing was strictly linked to the needs of the moment and the future of the family (which was often formed of several families that were not always even closely related. The farm holding had to be large enough to ensure the family's survival and this therefore had to be large enough to work it; it was not at all easy to maintain the right balance because of the strictly limited organization while changes were virtually impossible.

Ploughing with oxen in the hills around Quarto (1971)

Therefore peasant families earned only just enough from their work in the fields to survive and quite often they were forced to find other sources of revenue; the women wove cloth, raised silk worms and plaited straw for hats. In more recent years they would stay up all night embroidering sheets and pillow slips or spend hours bent over a small embroidery loom (the school set up by Signora Clara Onori in Antella in 1903 is famous), while the men learned various trades like building, carpentry or worked as barbers. Agricultural work was not simply limited to the fields but continued inside the farmhouses. Stables, barns, cellars and storerooms, as well as terraces, courtyards and loggias, were built to house both animals and farm implements and were used to carry out various jobs undercover in wet weather; the living quarters in the farmhouses were not just for sleeping in but also used for preparing work for the next day. In 1770, Morozzi, an architect and aristocrat who lived in the hills, wrote out a series of "precautions", saying that the head of the family's bedroom should be situated where he could see and hear whether his "underlings" were working hard at their chores "in order to protect them should they happen to slow down". Thanks to this "advice", farmhouse bedrooms were usually directly linked to each other, without a corridor.

Wheat threshing at Villamagna (1941)

Share cropping developed as a result of the various innovations that brought an increase in agricultural productivity and also because the share croppers themselves had a joint interest in production. Moreover, as they had to be able to ensure their family's survival on half of what they produced, they were forced to work well and very hard; this meant that the proprietors did not have to be physically present or oversee them and could therefore carry on living in their city palaces, proceed with their business affairs and maintain their power, only going to stay in their fine "gentleman's residences" in the country during the summer months. This is probably why the farmhouses were built as the central unit on the smallholdings and formed part of the peasant's working equipment. The landowners usually owned several smallholdings, which were grouped together and organized as a proper farm. These farms also possessed all the necessary equipment (cellars, oil mill, storerooms) for transforming the various agricultural products which they conserved, refined and marketed. In more recent years they would hire out the farm machinery - tractors and threshing-machines - to the individual share-croppers. The farms usually grew up around the great villas, which is why, environmentally, they are often called villa-farms, with estates that often cover enormous areas of land. The farm manager and his undermanagers lived on the farm and were charged with overseeing the share croppers and, to a lesser extent, keeping the farm accounts and the owner's economic interests with his tenants.