Details of the society at play rather than work essentially follow gender lines.  If women are involved, then the activities rotated around tea parties of one sort or another.  For the men, leisure meant sport, either hunting or playing cricket.

For those taken with an idyllic and rustic picture of society at this time, Charlotte Workman’s letter of June 16^th, 1840 presents a perfect image.

The farmers are very busy with the hay.  It is delightful weather. We have carried our orchards well.  Yesterday, Martha Fuller, Kezia, Doctor and me drank tea at our clergyman’s Mr Noad.  We had fine fun in the hay field behind the house, making large haycocks and seating ourselves in a circle on them.  There we drank tea and Mr and Miss Noad sang to us.  She sings delightfully.

Kezia found this event also sufficiently remarkable for report, for in her letter of the same date she provides more details.  Out in the meadow they sang “Tales of Beauty”.  The Noads found that tea parties provided a good way not only to relax but also to hunt for souls.  We hear about a tea party for Sunday School children, held in a meadow.  Once again, singing occurs.  The Noads gave an extended tea party the day before Miss Noad left the parish.  It lasted until midnight.  Everybody found plenty to amuse themselves: bagatelle, piano playing, and, of course, the inevitable singing.  Of course, one could always have tea with Mrs Fuller, although that might prove more testing than desired.

Gypsy parties offered a rather more developed social event than the sedentary tea party.  A very full description of these activities appears in the contemporary village account written by the children of the Dissenting Minister.

We must now mention the Gypsy parties; though we should not like to be Gypsies all the year round yet for one day it is delightful.  The farmers lend their waggons for the occasion and respectable residents assemble in parties and two waggon-loads go off to the woods consisting of parents, children, neighbours, and servants.  Early in the afternoon, the cavalcade sets forward, attended by out-riders and pedestrians, and in a short time they encamp up upon the hills, where there is amusement to suit all parties.  And, while the young people roam about and perhaps fancy themselves new settlers in the wilds of America, their fathers and grandfathers converse and think of bye-gone days: and here this spot gives back the joys of youth, warm as the life and with mirrors truth.

Of course, while people were lying back, relaxed after a glass or two of wine, and thinking of bye-gone days, matters might get out of hand, particularly on a hot day.  Charlotte found that a campfire she had built got the better of her.  The fire spread frighteningly quickly across the grass.  Luckily they could use the empty wine bottles to carry water from the nearby Keeper’s Cottage and so put out the fire.  We hear of plans for other gypsy parties.

Other leisure activities could consist of the theatre in Wallingford or pond bathing to keep cool, or maybe even paying a visit to Blewbury Club.  If you stayed at home on a Saturday, then you could spend the evening at chess or merry-peg.  It was important not to let the levity that such events might induce carry over in your thoughts for Sunday.

Outside the invisible walls thrown around these idyllic settings, we hear little if anything of how the majority of the villages’ population spent their time.  The Marris children remind us of their mud and thatched mean dwellings.  On Saturday nights, the men spent their wages in the public house and the women, being for the most part ‘uncouth and vulgar’, probably stayed at home.

The classes seem to have come together at Aston Feast, probably a version of harvest festival.  The Slades provided largesse for the workers.  Usually this consisted of ‘harvest home’, but in 1841 the harvest had not been taken in by the time of the feast, so they jointed a couple of sheep instead, accompanied by cheese and beer.  We next hear of Aston Feast in October 1844.  There we learn that it lasted at least two days. No mention of agricultural workers occurs in this passage.  All the attendees belong to the Slade circles, both family and friends.

The Marris children paint a thumbnail sketch of how the young males from the better families spent their time.

The young men are early taught the use of the gun, riding, coursing &c and are particularly fond of the game of cricket, they generally associate together in their evening parties, but seldom in Harvest-Time.

The letters contain endless references to coursing and shooting or hunting of some nature.  Almost always the participants belong to the Slade or Fuller families, but occasionally other friends join them, for example William Parsons.  The two letters written by Welly and by Fred both provide exceptional detail on the number and type of animals killed, mostly birds.  The boys themselves would go out coursing or sparrowing whenever they could, but the Slades also offered shooting as a source of revenue.  The main shooter was young Valpy, the son of the Slades’ landlord.  He would come with his friends and shoot for a couple of days.  During the shooting season of 1841, the kill counts for young Valpy rose to eighty brace of partridge, four brace of hares, and three quails.  John and Wellingham Fuller apparently equalled this, but even this level of slaughter did not decimate the population.  Even though young Valpy once made Fred the gift of a splendid London gun, we receive the impression that he regarded the shooting grounds as his private domain.  He became rather insistent about his bookings, insisting that the Slades cancel a prior booking they had made for someone else.  Constantly out and about, sparrowing and coursing, must have kept the boys supple and fit.  Shooting could prove quite debilitating.  One of young Valpy’s friends, Mr Tickell, finds it all too much, taking himself (and his horse) back by train.

During the summer, the boys all do, as the Marris document suggests, play cricket.  The letters make a number of references to it.  Again, capturing idyllic snapshots, we can see the boys playing and Henry Slade senior quietly walking about nearby, keeping score and smoking his pipe.  Of course, as they grew older, all this would have to stop.  They would find attending tea parties and talking to girls a required form of behaviour.  Fred and Kezia fell into a good method of keeping in touch with people their own age: phonography.  They founded a Phonographic Society and produced a variety of magazines.  The magazines passed from one reader to another rather as a chain letter.  The recipient had to write something before passing it on.  We have the names preserved of their publishing endeavours: The Lamp, The Draytonian, The Royal Berkshire Tourist.  The latter lived up to its name, for it went to correspondents in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Isle of Man, Guernsey and several other places.  Publishing had also attracted the adults as a form of leisure.  We hear of the Thorpe Journal and the Aston Gazette, published in 1840.  Perhaps the strain of running a busy newssheet proved overly taxing, for we hear no more about these publications.