The Birth of Modern Britain: A Journey into Britain’s Archaeological Past: 1550 to the Present. Francis Pryor

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      FIG 2 Map showing the farming regions of early modern England (1500–1750).

      The principal difference between the two maps is the far greater complexity of the second, later, one. Take just two regions. Post-medieval innovations are perhaps most marked in my own area, the Fens, which are shown in the earlier map (and indeed in the simplified one reproduced here) as a single region, given over to open pastoral farming involving stock-fattening with horse-breeding, dairying, fishing and fowling. After 1640, and the first phase of widespread, though still incomplete drainage, the earlier style of farming has been confined to a narrow area of marshland around the Wash, whereas the bulk of Fenland now comprises two broad areas, one to the north of silty soils that are devoted to stock- and pig-keeping, fattening, and corn-growing, while to the south the more peaty land is still mainly used for grazing and, of course, no cereals are grown. Incidentally, somewhat later, in the earlier nineteenth century, following the introduction of steam pumps, we see a further near-complete transformation of this particular landscape.

      In Kent and Sussex, although the distinctive oval shape of Wealden geology continues to exert an influence (as indeed it does to this day), the varieties of farming become very much more complex in the period covered by the later map. This in part reflects the arrival of entirely new ideas, such as the introduction of fruit orchards and hop fields. The point to emphasise here is that early modern farming was a dynamic and increasingly specialised business which was becoming ever more dependent on the growth of towns and cities. Nowhere was this more important than around the two principal capitals of Edinburgh and London, which by the end of the Middle Ages had come to dominate the region and countryside around them. The areas peripheral to the large towns and cities not only provided food and raw materials for the growing urban population, but perhaps as significantly, they also provided a constantly renewing pool of labour, especially following the recurrent waves of plague that bedevilled many of the larger cities in later medieval and early post-medieval times.

      We are still in the realms of general economic history and I want soon to come down to earth and see how individual farms and fields were adapted as economic conditions changed around them. But first we must briefly examine the idea of the ‘Agricultural Revolution’ which is traditionally thought to have happened between 1760 and 1830. A slightly longer view (1700–1850) would allow the main events to have happened in three stages, the first stage being completed sometime around 1750–70. These initial developments involved the introduction of new crops, especially root crops such as turnips, which we now know were pioneered not in Britain, but in the Low Countries, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.¹⁴

      As early as 1600 growing Dutch influence had seen the introduction of cabbages, cauliflowers, turnips, carrots, parsnips and peas to market gardens around London. Turnips were introduced to East Anglia from Holland in the mid-sixteenth century and they then formed an important element in the famous Norfolk four-course (crop) rotation of wheat, turnips, barley, clover and/or grasses.¹⁵ The Norfolk four-course rotation required the land to lie fallow for less time (if the land had become too depleted the final crop of clover and/ or grass could be extended for an additional season).This cycle of crops produced more grazing and fodder in the form of turnips which in turn resulted in more and fatter livestock and, perhaps just as important, more manure to be spread on the fields. I also believe it must have given livestock farmers greater security and peace of mind.

      As I have discovered to my cost, in seasons when late winter rains continue into March and April it can be unwise to turn young animals out onto muddy fields and waterlogged pasture. As any livestock farmer knows to his cost, fast-grown grass is deficient in minerals and both ewes and lambs can soon develop ‘grassland staggers’. So you house them for longer, but the next thing you discover is that the hay and straw they have been happily consuming over winter simply lack the nourishment that growing lambs so desperately need and soon they start to look thin, lanky and bony. They also lack vigour and don’t rush about in that wildly enthusiastic, but completely mad and pointless fashion that can make them so endearing. In such situations today one buys in (expensive) supplements usually in the form of ‘cake’, but as farmers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries knew only too well, the sprouting heads of growing parsnips and the roots themselves were almost equally nutritious – and a lot cheaper.

      Perhaps the most significant reform that enabled changes to happen in the British countryside was the concept of enclosure. Having said that, we shouldn’t go overboard in our enthusiasm. For a start, huge areas of the later medieval landscape had never come into collective ownership and large estates, both private and owned by ecclesiastical authorities, were already in existence in the Middle Ages. As we saw at Shapwick, the latter could readily be transferred СКАЧАТЬ