m i' VOLUME 42 I994 PART I Land Use and Management in the Upland Demesne of the De Lacy Estate of Blackburnshire, c [300 M A ATKIN Floated Water-Meadows in Norfolk: A Misplaced hmovation SUSANNA WADE MARTINSand TOM WILLIAMSOM On Georgics and Geology: James Hutton's 'Elements of Agriculture' and Agricultural Science in Eighteenth-Century Scotland CHARLES W J WITHERS Peasants, Servants and Labourers: The Marginal Workforce in British Agriculture, c [87o-I 9 [4 ALUN HOWKINS Annual List and BfiefIkeview of Articles on Agrarian History, 1992 RAINE MORGAN Work in Progress Conference Keport Obituary Book lkeviews THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW VOLUME 42 PART I I994 Contents Land Use and Management in the Upland Demesne of the De Lacy Estate of Blackburnshire, c 13oo M A ATKIN I Floated Water-Meadows in Norfolk: A Misplaced SUSANNA WADE MARTINS Innovation and TOM WILLIAMSON 20 On Geor~cs and Geology: James Hutton's 'Elements of A~iculture' and Agricultural Science in Eighteenth-Century Scotland CHARLES W J WITHERS 38 Peasants, Servants and Labourers: The Marginal Workforce in British Agriculture, c 187o-1914 ALUN HOWKINS 49 Annual List and Brief Review of Articles on Agrarian History, 1992 RAINE MORGAN 63 Work in Pro~'ess PETER EDWARDS 74 Conference Report: 'Agriculture and the Landscape' Winter Conference I993 JOHN R WALTON 8 1 Obituary: Lord Murray of Newhaven, KCB (19o3- 1993) RICHARD PERREN 82 Book Reviews: The Image c~ Aristocraq in Britain 1000-1300, by David Crouch PHILIP MORGAN 83 The WarM&shire Hundred Rolls of 1279-80. Stoneteigh aM Kineton Hundreds, edited by Trevor John JEAN BIRRELL 83 The English Heritage Book of Wharram Percy Medieval Village, by Maurice Beresford and John Hurst H S A FOX 84 The Estates qf the English Crown, 1558-164o, edited by P.. W Hoyle CHRISTOPHER CLAY 85 Town and Countryside in the English Revolution, edited by 1k C Richardson J R WORDIE 86 d Land of Pure Delight: Selectionsfi'om the Letters of Thomas Johnes of Hafod, Cardiganshire, 1748-1816, edited by P,. J Moore-Colyer; and A Pocket Guide to &e Customs and Traditiorls of l/Vales, by Trefor M Owen DAVID W HOWELL 87 Amongst Farm Horses. The Horselads of East Yorkshire, by Stephen Caunce ALUN HOWKINS 88 Towards a History of Agriadtural Science in Ireland, edited by P L Curran NICHOLAS GODDARD 89 Land Use and Management in the Upland Demesne of the De Lacy Estate of Blackburnshire c 13oo By M A ATKIN Henry, son of Kitte renders his compotus of 42 cows and I bull of remainder, and 6 of addition and I received from the Instaurator; total 49 cows and I buU, alSO one bull of addition. Of which he counts 3 delivered to S. le Geldhirde, and 2 to the Instaurator: 44 cows, ~ bulls remain. Also I ox of addition delivered to G. the parker. Also IO yearlings of the remainder; 3 steers and 7 heifers remain. Also 13 calves of the remainder: of which I in tithe: I2 yearlings remain (5 males). Also 19 calves of the year, and I received from the Instaurator: total 2o: of which 3 in murrain, hides Id.; 2 delivered to the Instaurator: IO [sic] calves remain. Total of the catde remaining in this vaccary; 44 cows, 2 bulls, 3 steers, 7 heifers, I2 yearlings (5 males) and I5 calves. Afterwards one cow is allowed to him because it was taken away by robbers; it is forgiven him by the Earl (De Lacy compoti, 1295-6)) Abstract This paper attempts to reconstruct the patterns of seasonal land management in the granges, forest vaccaries and central 'pools' of the earl of Lincoln's Ightenhill demesnes in upland Lancashire. Two of the estate's Michaelmas accounts survive, dating to a period now seen as a watershed between the prosperous 'High Farming' period of the thirteenth century and the 'Crisis years' of the first quarter of the next. This relatively remote estate was geared to a cash economy, and the products were such as could well be produced under local conditions of climate, terrain and transport. 'T is now generally thought that the conditions and population growth which population of England reached a peak becomes very apparent in the 'Crisis' years I . about 13oo and thereafter declined. The and especially those of the 1315 and I316 relative significance of factors which have famines, and the widespread cattle murrain been invoked to explain this population of I319-2o. Lancashire shared in these increase is still under discussion. There is, disasters, but in the same period suffered however, agreement that a long period of also from local faction and anarchy which good harvesting conditions; a sufficient culminated in widespread disruption after workforce to intensify production on pre- the execution of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster viously under-used areas; and favourable in I322 and, in the following year, a financial and administrative policies are all damaging raid by the Scots under Robert likely to have played a part, though to a Bruce. 2 greater or lesser degree in different parts of the country. Even before the end of the :J z Titow, English Rural Sodety 1~oo-135o, I969; H H Lamb, The Cha.ging Climate, I966, chapters i and 7; M L Parry, Climatic century poorer climatic conditions, poorer Change, Agriculture a.d Settlement, Folkestone,I978, pp I 13-I7 and harvests, malnutrition and increased risk of I22-25; M M Postan, 'Medieval agrarian society in its prime: England', pp 548-632 in M M Postan, ed, The Cambridge Economic disease in man and animals may have Flayed History of Europe, I, Cambridge, 2nd ed, I966; B Harvey'sintroduc- a part in starting the decline in living tory survey in B M S Campbell, ed, Before the Black Death: Studies in the 'Crisis' of the Early Fourtee.th Century, Manchester, 199I; C Dyer, 'Documentary evidence: problems and enquiries' in G G 'P A Lyons, 'Two compoti of the Lancashire and Cheshire manors AstiUand A Grant, eds, Tke Countryside of Medieval Engla.d, Oxford, of Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln', Chetham Sodety, OS, I12, 1884 I988, pp I2-35; G H Tupling, ed, 'South Lancashirein the reign [hereafter De L.C.], p 24(131). of Edward II', Chetha., Society, 3rd Series, I, I949. Ag Hist Rev, 42, I, pp I-I9 I 2 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW The demesnal estate of Henry de Lacy, Blackburnshire was the alternative title Earl of Lincoln, was centred on Ightenhill for the hundred or wapentake of in upland Blackburnshire in north-east Blackburn, and as lord of a private hundred, Lancashire (Fig I). Of the few surviving Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln had full Michaelmas accounts of this estate those jurisdiction in the hundred court at for the years 1295-6 and 13o4-5 fall into Clitheroe of the sixty rills which comprised the period just prior to these disasters, and the hundred. However, he retained in hand may portray a northern demesne when at this time only the four forests (strictly some adjustments had already been made chases) of Trawden, Pendle, Rossendale to the estate economy, but before the and Accrington, and eighteen vills, all of harshest years of the 'Crisis'. Ightenhill lay them in the upland half of the hundred. some forty miles from the earrs principal R B Smith in his study of the origins of Yorkshire estate centred on Pontefract, and Blackbumshire suggested that the term offers an example of a distant estate which manor 'is best abandoned altogether'. The did not supply the household but was hundred was a discrete estate with a villar largely geared to a cash economy) structure in which the bondmen of the Matilda de Percy in 1189 said of Salley 'demesne vills' owed service (bovate by (Sawley) Abbey, close neighbour to the bovate) at one or more central demesnal Ightenhill estate, that it stood 'in a cloudy establishments (the granges), and the other and rainy climate so that crops, already vills, originally held in thanage, but by white in the harvest, usually rot in the stalk; now also by knight service and 'homage', and the convent, for forty years or more, owed little more than attendance at the has been oppressed by want and lack of hundred court. Boonworks at the central all necessities through the intemperate grange were owed by the bondmen of the weather'.* It is an area where grass is the demesne rills at times of ploughing, hay- crop with the best potential, and like the making and harvest, but with some carry- upland estates of Fountains and Sawley ing services they amounted to a relatively Abbeys and Bolton Priory in the adjacent small number of days in a year. 6 district of Craven the emphasis on the By 1295-6 the commimaent of the Ightenhill estate by the end of the thirteenth Ightenhill estate to a money economy is century was on the production of stock. especially noticeable. In four demesne vills The former estates with the advantage of such labour services had been remitted for limestone pastures around Malham Moor cash, and in two others the limited areas increasingly concentrated on sheep for wool of demesne within the vills had been let: and food for the household; the latter, on so too had 'the demesnes under Salthill' in the lower, but poorly drained shales and Clitheroe; and eleven mills, the herbs and grits of the Upper Carboniferous, produced fruits of the Clitheroe Castle garden and mainly oxen for sale to the markets of the hall, grange and kitchen at Accrington. Bolton-le-Moors and Pontefract. ~ These produced about £5o in the year of each compotus.