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Alternate Husbandry and Permanent Pasture in the Midlands, 1650-1800 by JOHN BROAD

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Alternate Husbandry and Permanent Pasture in the Midlands, 1650-1800 by JOHN BROAD Alternate Husbandry and Permanent Pasture in the Midlands, 1650-1800 By JOHN BROAD ECENT discussion of agriculture in of England. By alternating arable and pasture the period 1500-1800 has been much on a given piece of land farmers almost R influenced by Dr Kerridge' s eliminated the need for fallows between their Agricultural Revolution which, in his own grain crops and were able to control the words, consisted of 'the floating of water- quality of their pasture by sowing grass seeds. meadows, the substitution of up-and-down Such systems have a faultless intellectual husbandry for permanent tillage and pedigree: historically they were consistently permanent grass or for shifting cultivation, advocated by agricultural writers from the introduction of new fallow crops and Fitzherbert onwards, and have been shown by selected grasses, marsh drainage, manuring, Slicher van Bath to have played an important and stock breeding' .1 The importance of these part in agricultural improvements on the changes has been generally accepted by his North German Plain and in the Netherlands; critics, but they have stressed the slow agriculturally they have been extolled by diffusion of these techniques and have twentieth-century soil scientists as the best doubted the quantitative effect on the way to keep high fertility on both arable and economy before the eighteenth century at the pasture and to retain excellent soil texture and very least. This paper examines 'the backbone composition. 3 of the agricultural revolution', 'up-and-down In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century husbandr'y (otherwise known as alternate England there is plentiful evidence that husbandry or ley farming), in the midlands, despite rising grain prices and land hunger, where Dr Kerridge found its introduction new arable/grass rotations were introduced 'revolutionary'.Z It argues that while up until quite widely. Mr Havinden and Dr Thirsk about 1650 Dr Kerridge is probably right in have shown how portions of the open fields stressing the role of up-and-down husbandry, were turned over to temporary grass, making economic considerations and technical possible the rise in livestock numbers found in changes and difficulties after that date tended Oxfordshire and Lincolnshire farm to encourage the development of a new brand inventories by the late seventeenth century. 4 of permanent pasture farming in many parts Dr Kerridge argues that a move towards of the southern and eastern midlands at the mixed farming was also taking place on the expense of convertible systems. old enclosed permanent pastures of the later middle ages, and on the increasing number of I sixteenth- and seventeenth-century en- The use of leys and alternate husbandry was closures. This was particularly important in part of the process by which a higher the midlands because there the rising proportion of land was used to support sixteenth-century population caused economic increasing numbers of livestock in many parts 3 B H Slither van Bath, Agrarian History of Western Europe, 1963, pp 249-54. R. G Stapleton and W Davies, Ley 1 E Kerridge, The AgriculturalRevolution, 1967, p 40. Farming, 1948~ 2 Ibid, pp 39, 180. I would like to thank Dr Peter Brandon, 4 M Havinden, Agricultural Progress in Open-Field Oxford- Dr Carolina Lane and Dr Joan Thirsk for their comments shire', Ag Hist Rev, IX, 1961, pp 73-83. J Thirsk, English and helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper. Peasant Farming, 1957, chs 4, 8, 13. 77 i, '~L;b."~':":'',_ -, • , - 78 THE AGRICULTURALHISTORY REVIEW and social tensions. The density of factor in forcing up agricultural prices, and settlements, lack of wastelands into which although the basic grains rose most, demand cultivation could expand (except in forest for livestock rose only slightly less rapidly,s areas like Arden, Barnwood and the Market forces certainly shook up the late Leicestershire and Northamptonshire forests), fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century and fifteenth-century enclosures for sheep all tendency to farm large sheep runs for wool, contributed to a situation in which whose relative price was falling. Cattle governments had to regulate the tillage laws, fattening, dairying, and mutton rearing began send intermittent commissions to examine the to have a more important part to play, and enclosure problem, and, on occasion, deal with required different management techniques, popular disturbances. The introduction of up- and sometimes smaller farming units. These and-down husbandry, Dr Kerridge suggests, needs account for much of the disparking of helped solve the problems of the midlands by the seventeenth century. At the same time providing a measured pasture and arable farmers were unwilling to over-specialize in rotation which not only produced the same livestock. Grain prices were generally amount" of grain on a much reduced area, but relatively high and fluctuated substantially as broke the agrarian cycle of diminished returns grain production rose only slowly to by allowing more sheep and cattle to be kept, accommodate the increasing population, and animals whose dung maintained the fertility marketing inefficiencies were slow to of the arable. Long leys of perhaps seven to disappear. The risk of local grain shortages, twelve years were particularly relevant to the the cheapness of labour, and the higher yields midlands where, within considerable soil claimed for both arable and livestock under variations, there are large areas of heavy clays the system, all favoured a relatively intensive whose suitability for arable or pasture is fairly mixed farming. In addition the gradual equal, and whose natural productivity is not transition from open-field farming favoured particularly high. mixed systems, for the skills necessary to Dr Kerridge's arguments assume that this manage permanent grassland systems were process gathered momentum in the sixteenth only slowly acquired. and early seventeenth centuries and was What is worth examining more closely is completed by the eighteenth. However, his the extent to which the 'progress' which had interpretation lacks an economic dimension. been made by 1650 was actually maintained in As far as the midlands are concerned, there are the succeeding 150 years. Dr Kerridge himself good arguments for the spread of alternate explains the difficulties of identifying husbandry on the kinds of lands indicated by alternate husbandry from the variety of Dr Kerridge up until about 1650. The slow mainly legal documents that constitute his transition from a mainly open-field, semi- major source. Legal jargon had no word to subsistence farming in which market describe alternate husbandry, so the existence influences were largely local, to a market of temporary or permanent fences in old economy whose prices were dictated by the enclosures, crops listed in enclosed fields, and needs of urban populations, was not a painless the existence of covenants against ploughing process. The simultaneous pressures of a in leases are all used by him as evidence of up- growing rural population on the scarce land and-down land.6 Now while it is possible to resources of the midland plain, and the desire show cases where they indicate exactly that, of landowners to rationalize land us~ by such detective methods are not foolproof, and enclosure and by installing farmers who in many cases the evidence he seeks might produced for the market and would pay sj Thirsk (ed), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, higher rent for large farms, both affected IV, Cambridge, 1967, pp 602-3. farming systems. Population was a major e Kerridge, op cit, pp 181-91. )).. • ii. /,i ALTERNATE HUSBANDRY AND PERMANENT PASTURE 79 also be found where alternate husbandry was sites. The ploughing was shortlived and may not practised (for instance great sheep amount to as little as a single year's enclosures later divided into more practicable cultivation. Literary evidence for a number of smaller fields,) or indeed where it was no the sites suggests that they were in permanent longer practised. One also wonders whether pasture before 1547, and have probably in discovering ploughed-up pasture land Dr remained so since at least 1700.8 Microscopic Kerridge has necessarily found alternate work at parish level could undoubtedly husbandry, which needs to be applied as a provide more examples. system of careful management to bring about Secondly, the agricultural reports and crop the kind of agricultural improvement that is returns of the period around 1800, despite claimed for it. their deficiencies, provide good evidence of The problems of identifying alternate the extent of permanent grass farming and husbandry in the absence of very full farm give some estimate of the importance of such accounts are daunting, yet there is good husbandry to the southern midlands. Instances evidence to suggest that by about 1800 of parishes like Pitchcott (Bucks) and Fawsley large areas of the southern and eastern (Northants) without a single blade of corn,, midlands, particularly Leicestershire, War- being wholly on grass and applied to feeding wickshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, stand at the extreme end of the spectrum. ° Buckinghamshire, and Bedfordshire, had Examples of whoUy pasture farms for both evolved a system of specialized livestock dairying and fattening are also given in farming on improved permanent pasture in Northamptonshire by Donaldson, and these preference to alternate husbandry. The were common in Buckinghamshire parishes evidence is of two kinds. Firstly, thorough such as Hogshaw, Middle Claydon, knowledge of local circumstances may make it Quarrendon, Hardwick with Weedon, and possible to demonstrate a shift from alternate Fhet Marston in the late seventeenth and husbandry to permanent pasture. In early eighteenth centuries. 1° Looking at the Buckinghamshire two examples can be given: midland counties as a whole, several reporters the parish of Middle Claydon (quoted three made estimates which specify the percentages times by Dr Kerridge, using evidence from of permanent grass and convertible husbandry the 1650s) included a measure of up-and- land around 1800.
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