AYRSHIRE MONOGRAPHS 27 Ayrshire in the Age of Improvement contemporary accounts of agrarian and social improvement in late eighteenth century Ayrshire edited by David McClure published by Ayrshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Ayr, 2002 printed by The Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire 2 Ayrshire Monographs 27 Copyright © 2002 by David McClure Copyright © 2002 “Colonel William Fullarton of Fullarton” by Rob Close All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. designed and typeset by David McClure ISBN 0 9542253 0 9 Ayrshire in the Age of Improvement 3 Contents Introduction........................................................................................4 Sketch Map of Ayrshire Parishes.......................................................8 Present State of Husbandry in Scotland..........................................12 List of the Honourable, The Commissioners of the Annexed Estates. ........12 Preface.........................................................................................................13 A note by Andrew Wight concerning measures...........................................14 Extracts from Andrew Wight’s surveys .......................................................15 AYRSHIRE .................................................................................................15 Second Survey in the Shire of AYR, 1778...................................................46 Colonel William Fullarton of Fullarton: A biographical note......66 General View of the Agriculture of the County of Ayr....................72 Statistics of the Valuation and Contents of Ayrshire..................................142 Appendix 1......................................................................................148 Publications of Colonel William Fullarton of Fullarton ............................148 Appendix 2......................................................................................149 Weights, measures and money...................................................................149 Appendix 3......................................................................................153 Lime ..........................................................................................................153 Limekilns...................................................................................................154 The economics of limestone burning (Cessnock)......................................155 Appendix 4......................................................................................156 Cost of enclosing and improving land (Cunninghamhead) .......................156 Endnotes .........................................................................................159 Index ...............................................................................................181 AANHS Publications .....................................................................192 4 Ayrshire Monographs 27 Introduction The two works reproduced in this book, by Andrew Wight – published in 1778 and 1784, and William Fullarton – published in 1793, are vivid and informative records of the condition of Ayrshire during a time when Scotland became “the most dynamically modernising society in Europe.”1 Against the background of the Enlightenment – a revolution in all fields of thought – came the improvement, a practical revolution founded in agriculture, but leading to new roads, better housing, growth of towns and villages, the burgeoning of old industries and the foundation of new ones. By the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, improvement of agriculture in Scotland had become a national obsession. This was a pivotal point in the great transition between a peasant, subsistence agriculture – unchanged in 1750 in most of Scotland – and the productive, market–orientated agriculture that became the envy of Europe. It was then that improvement ceased to be the concern of a few pioneers risking their own fortunes, and of gentlemanly societies that debated much and improved little, and became a necessity for every self–respecting landowner. Before improvement, agriculture in Scotland was characterised by short leases, giving no incentive to the tenant to improve either the land or the buildings; rack rents and servitudes, which kept the tenants at best just above starvation; and overcropping and absence of fallowing, which impoverished the soil and kept yields low, again maintaining the tenant at a bare subsistence level at best. Fullarton pictured the county as it was around 1750: “farm–houses were mere hovels, moated with clay, having an open hearth or fire–place in the middle; the dunghill at the door; the cattle starving; and the people wretched.”2 Mere tracks served for roads, and there were few wheeled carts. With improvement came long leases, usually 19 years and often with renewal at the same rent guaranteed, so that the tenant would remain to enjoy the benefit of his labour; enclosed fields, so that the cattle could be kept off the land when wet or during the growing season; the introduction of turnips for feeding cattle and sheep, and of potatoes for feeding people; use of grass seed, to improve pasture; rotation of crops, interspersed with fallow years, so that the ground was not impoverished, and crop yields became higher; selective breeding, to raise the quality of stock; use of lime and dung to improve the soil. These and many other concerns will be seen in the words of Wight and Fullarton as they travel around Ayrshire, praising here and criticising there. After Culloden, and the brutal suppression of the Jacobites, the government moved to improve the circumstances of the Highlanders, to make them less likely to be rebellious in future. This was the work of the Commissioners of the Annexed Ayrshire in the Age of Improvement 5 Estates, who administered those estates, mostly in the Highlands, which were confiscated after the 1745 rebellion from landowners who had supported the Young Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie.3 It was many years later and with much, they thought, already achieved in this direction, that the commissioners instructed an East Lothian tenant farmer, Andrew Wight, to tour Scotland and report back on the best farming practices, so that they could be applied in the Annexed Estates. Wight owed his nomination for the task to Henry Home, Lord Kames, one of the commissioners and the author of a recent work on improvement, The gentleman farmer, Being an attempt to improve agriculture, by subjecting it to the test of rational principles, published in Edinburgh and London in 1776. So useful were Wight’s reports that, before his work was half done, it was decided that they should be published, in order that the knowledge could be spread throughout the Kingdom, for the instruction of all. Wight surveyed all the mainland counties of Scotland, with the exception of Argyll, and his surveys appeared, in six books, in 1778 and 1784. In 1718, the then proprietor of the Ormiston estate in East Lothian, Lord Cockburn, had granted Andrew Wight’s grandfather, Robert, a 38 year lease of Muirhouse farm, on which he was already a tenant, renewable on certain terms for further periods of 19 years.4 Cockburn was one of a select few later accorded the title “father of Scottish agriculture.” He was certainly a pioneer, and corresponded with his gardener and tenants on the latest ideas in agriculture. In 1724, Robert Wight was probably the first tenant farmer in Scotland to cultivate turnips in drills. Cockburn sent the sons of his tenants, among them Alexander Wight, to England to learn from the improvements already introduced there. Later, in the 1750s, Alexander was brought over to Ayrshire by Alexander Montgomerie, 10th Earl of Eglinton, so that the successful practices of East Lothian could be transferred to his estate; as Fullarton put it, “to introduce the proper mode of ploughing, levelling ridges, fallowing, drilling, turnip husbandry, and rotations of crop.”5 Cockburn was an unhappy exemplar. He over–reached himself with the creation of the village of Ormiston, and had to sell his estate. The purchaser, the Earl of Hopetoun, the Wights’ new landlord, became one of the Commissioners of the Annexed Estates and, if not instrumental in the selection of Andrew Wight, would have been in a good position to know his worth. Andrew Wight surveyed and reported with all the confidence of one born and raised on a farm that had been in the forefront of improvement in Scotland for fifty years. He commented on practices good and bad, and stated his conclusions and opinions in a plain fashion: “The operations of William Jackson, another of Sir Adam’s tenants, have every appearance of good husbandry, regularly conducted.”6 He thought that progress required the close interest of the landowner: “Every operation depending on activity of servants, will be expeditious in proportion to the activity of the master. This gentleman makes it a rule to be at the head of every 6 Ayrshire Monographs 27 thing himself.”7 He sympathised with local difficulties: “the water of Lugar is a troublesome neighbour.”8 He gave praise where praise was due: “Lady Dumfries … is the very soul of husbandry and manufactures in that