Journal of Maps ISSN: (Print) 1744-5647 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tjom20 Forgotten fields: mid-nineteenth century land use and characterisation in the South Downs National Park using the tithe surveys of England and Wales. Alastair W. Pearson, Philip J. Soar & Paul Carter To cite this article: Alastair W. Pearson, Philip J. Soar & Paul Carter (2019) Forgotten fields: mid-nineteenth century land use and characterisation in the South Downs National Park using the tithe surveys of England and Wales., Journal of Maps, 15:1, 58-68, DOI: 10.1080/17445647.2019.1600591 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2019.1600591 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of Journal of Maps View supplementary material Published online: 25 Apr 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 46 View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tjom20 JOURNAL OF MAPS 2019, VOL. 15, NO. 1, 58–68 https://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2019.1600591 Social Science Forgotten fields: mid-nineteenth century land use and characterisation in the South Downs National Park using the tithe surveys of England and Wales. Alastair W. Pearson , Philip J. Soar and Paul Carter Department of Geography, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY The map and underlying geodatabase presented here at a scale of 1:25,000 (Main map) covers Received 29 August 2018 approximately 300 km2 of the catchment of the lower Rother valley in West Sussex, within the Revised 25 March 2019 South Downs National Park, southern England. It offers a unique view of land use based on the Accepted 25 March 2019 Tithe Surveys created during the early part of 1840s. This new and rigorously compiled empirical KEYWORDS material serves as an exceptionally robust research resource to inform river catchment Land cover; land use; tithe management planning, with potential to guide landscape restoration, steer sustainable farming map; tithe surveys; South activities and, conceivably, to facilitate scenario modelling of plausible land use futures during a Downs National Park; GIS period of great uncertainty regarding rural land management in the United Kingdom. The current map and geodatabase are the products of the Forgotten Fields Project, the intention being to extend the coverage to neighbouring catchments and thus provide a large-scale mapping resource and information portal for wide-ranging land management applications. 1. Introduction exception) is unique among Britain’s 15 National Re-envisioning the historical landscape provides Parks in that it is an extensively and intensively farmed insights into the cultural, economic and physical pro- and managed rural landscape. This brings many socio- cesses that have shaped the contemporary geography economic benefits but also a range of challenges in of an area, enabling lost, marginalised, emergent and meeting strategic goals of land management and wild- proliferating features to be recognised and investigated. life conservation policies, including preserving and, Moreover, mapping and characterisation of historical where possible, restoring significant features of the his- land use and analysis of the changing nature of land torical environment, resilient to the impacts of climate cover can provide critical baseline data to inform change and ever-demanding pressures on the land- river catchment management planning, with potential scape. The current vista of the Rother valley reveals to guide landscape restoration and sustainable farming only remnants of the Victorian countryside where activities. The ‘Forgotten Fields’ project aims to con- fringe habitats, grasslands and meadows, hedgerows struct, for the first time, a seamless map and geodata- and seasonal habitats have made way for larger fields base of past land use and land ownership based on with poor conservation value and supporting low bio- the manuscript maps and accompanying documents diversity with crop types and tilling practices prone to of the tithe surveys of England and Wales (c. 1840s). soil erosion, particularly within the characteristic sandy The intention is to extend coverage across the Arun and loamy soils developed in the Lower Greensand and Western Streams catchments of the South lithologies of the valley (Boardman & Favis-Mortlock, Downs National Park (SDNP), southern England. 2014; Boardman, Shepheard, Walker, & Foster, 2009). The first phase of the project, reported herein, focuses As large arable fields are connected hydrologically to on the valley of the River Rother through West Sussex. watercourses by field drains, ditches and roads, sediment Situated at the western edge of the Weald, the lower runoff can remain largely unchecked without the field Rother catchment that comprises the study area boundaries and depositional sites afforded by small (approx. 300 km2) lies to the north of the chalk escarp- fields of the historical farming system. As a result, ment of the South Downs and includes the market rates of soil loss monitored by Boardman et al. (2009) towns of Midhurst and Petworth (Main map). The are exceptionally high in comparison with records physical character of the area is detailed by Cox and from other UK. sites and it is no surprise, therefore, Soar (2017) and the historical context of the river that periodic muddy flooding is a contributing factor and floodplain is discussed by Pearson and Soar to siltation, fisheries and water quality problems within (2018). The SDNP (and the Rother catchment is no the Rother channel network (Cox & Soar, 2017), CONTACT Alastair W. Pearson [email protected] Department of Geography, University of Portsmouth, Buckingham Building, Lion Terrace, Portsmouth, UK, PO1 3HE © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of Journal of Maps This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. JOURNAL OF MAPS 59 presenting numerous challenges for sustainable river, in kind in the form of one tenth (tithe) of the profits of floodplain and catchment management. the land (a tenth of wheat, barley, oats etc.) for his living In September 1991, a UK Government White Paper, and the upkeep of Church assets. Large tithe barns were ‘This Common Inheritance’, invited English Heritage built to accommodate the produce prior to sale at mar- to create an inventory of landscapes of historic impor- ket. Tithe payments would be adjusted in line with the tance in order to conserve and manage England’s his- prevailing market price of grain, though more closely toric landscape assets (Edwards, 2007). Subsequently, when prices rose than when they fell (Barber, 1992). local authorities, in partnership with English Heritage Tithes were viewed as an iniquitous tax, an (later Historic England), have employed landscape unnecessary burden on farmers who viewed payments characterisation as a planning tool. Similar pro- as a disincentive for land improvement. Prior to the grammes have been initiated in Scotland, Wales and turn of the nineteenth century, the tithe had been grud- the Republic of Ireland. The systematic classification gingly but nevertheless routinely paid by farmers (Kain of historic landscapes has resulted in the creation of a & Prince, 2000). The early part of the nineteenth cen- Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) dataset, tury, however, was a period of considerable social and available in a GIS-ready form. The HLC provides economic change in Britain and Europe. Despite the broad estimates of period and antiquity of identifiable brief expansion of farming and high grain prices during landscape units based on desktop studies of key historic the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) agriculture fell into attributes that have shaped the landscape (Bannister, a deep depression. Between 1820 and 1836 Parliamen- 2010). As such, it offers a first step to understanding tary select committees heard evidence of distress in the evolution of the landscape and is designed to be rural areas, where farmers were overtaxed and used in conjunction with other data sets. It is not to oppressed by poor-rate assessments and tithe pay- be taken as definitive, it simply offers ‘an interpret- ments to the Church (Evans, 1976). Rural poverty ation’ that can be modified in the light of new research. became a focus for radical left-wing politicians such The tithe surveys offer a rich supplement to the as William Cobbett (1763–1835) who encouraged the HLC. Conducted between 1836 and 1850, they provide impoverished agricultural workers to rise up in protest a comprehensive inventory and picture of agricultural at their own plight (Cobbett, 1830; Nattrass, 1995). The land in over 11,000 parishes across England and ‘Swing’ disturbances of 1830–31 swept across the rural Wales (Kain & Prince, 1985, 2000). The surveys offer counties of Southern England, spreading to East Anglia the most complete characterisation of past land use and as far as Carlisle, fuelled by the anti-clerical, anti- of any period and therefore significant potential as a aristocratic and anti-corruption sentiments of the rad- benchmark dataset for analysis of land use change icals (Hobsbawm & Rudé, 1969). Such disturbances, and exploring implications for land degradation and though, were minor in comparison to the so-called ecological quality. In completing the seamless tithe ‘Tithe Wars’ between 1830 and 1836 in Ireland in map of the lower Rother Catchment, a citizen science response to the imposition of tithes on the Roman approach was employed with GIS students digitising Catholic majority for the upkeep of the established pro- tithe parcels as integral to their university coursework, testant Church of Ireland (Owens, 2004). The payment with student work then assimilated and meticulously of tithes thus became a focus for serious levels of dis- checked and corrected for consistency and quality.