A Quick History of the British Landscape

Aerial view of East Anglia by Tony Boon.

From the website, CountryLovers -

Long ago…
Nearly every part of Britain’s countryside has been touched by man at some stage in history – from the barren deforested Peak District cleared by slash-and-burn in neolithic times, to the New Forest created as a hunting ground by William the Conqueror in 1079, to the Fens, watermeadows of Hampshire, and the Broads of Norfolk which are the result of peat extraction during the Middle Ages. Our landscape is also littered with old communication routes like the ancient Icknield Way, Roman roads such as Watling Street, and pack-horse routes which straddled the hill ranges between Pennine towns. And then there are tell-tale signs of woodland industries – like the coppiced oaks in the Quantock Hills, and pollarded beeches of Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire. Neolithic people cleared many areas of Britain of their forest. For example, prior to the arrival of folk on the scene in East Anglia there was a large amount of oak, elm, lime and alder forestation in that area, as analysis of pollen taken from Hockham Mere has shown. The Yorkshire Wolds, South Downs and Salisbury Plain were also cleared of their forestation by man.

From the Iron Age until the arrival of the Romans farming was pretty subsistence-like. A farmer would raise cattle or, to a lesser extent sheep and pigs, grow ancient varieties of wheat [such as spelt, emmer and einkorn] and other grains, and complement these with berries and fruit when in season. Perhaps a not unfamiliar story to countless generations of farmers and countryfolk who have done likewise ever since.

Italian influences…
Much of pre-Roman Britain was composed of an ‘open field’ system of agriculture; each field being unenclosed and subdivided among farmers, rather than being cultivated in ‘common’. Fields were often square in shape, and in upland areas the boundaries sometimes became, or were, banked up with earth [a lynchet enclosure].

When the Romans appeared so, too, did new forms of farmstead: – the almost self-sufficient villa type [villa being the latin word for a country-house or farm], and holdings awarded to loyal army veterans who stuck it out in Britain’s rainy landscape. The invaders brought with them unknown animals and plants, while importing exotic goods such as olives (as archaeological evidence shows in places like Roman York). Among the plants believed to have been brought to Britain by the Romans are parsley, alexanders, cabbages, walnuts, vines and roses.

The Roman’s brought ‘a new degree of planning’ to their agricultural endeavours (well usually), and we began to see field systems that included more rectangular shapes. And being rather disciplined people they frequently laid out fields on a grid system with lanes for access.

Invasion…
After several hundred years Rome’s influence waned, to be replaced by new incomers – the Anglo-Saxons and Danes. To an Anglo-Saxon mind the word ‘field‘ meant a piece of ‘open country‘, which they had cleared of its trees by axe or fire. Indeed, the name of the Essex town of Brentwood means burnt wood. Like place names [see our on-line Place Names article], much of what we can learn about Britain’s landscape is to be found in field names; the name given to a field frequently identifying an ancient or early land usage or condition of the land. ‘Iron acre’ might indicate a place of iron ore extraction or manufacture, for example, and ‘breck’ cultivated soil.

Anglo-Saxon settlements were sometimes centered round a village green [although there are examples 'greens' even before the Romans arrived], or strung along an old road. However, the one common feature of all Anglo-Saxon communities was that they arranged their land usage communally. The arable fields were large open spaces and were divided into strips (ridge and furrow), with common grazing land and common woodland for other uses. The Anglo-Saxons also developed the ‘three field system‘ – wheat, barley, fallow – of crop rotation. They also drained Suffolk’s fenland area for arable farming – a legacy which enabled farmers in the middle-ages to graze the sheep that gave rise to the prosperous, wealth creating wool trade in the Suffolk area. Although it should be noted that the Romans had carried out some drainage during their stay.

As mentioned, lowland open fields in Anglo-Saxon times were divided into half to one acre strips and separated by gullies or trenches which gave the landscape a ‘ridge and furrow’ appearance. These strips (called selions), were usually bundled together in ‘furlongs‘ and each strip was cultivated by a single farmer.

Determining the exact size of a farmers ‘strip’ was an inexact science since a furlong (a furrow’s length) was measured as the distance a plough team could pull before they ran out of puff and came to a standstill – before being turned by the farmer to plough the return furrow – while an acre was the amount of land which could be ploughed in a single day by a plough team of oxen. However, the amount of work able to be done by the plough team was obviously dependent upon the nature of the soil – whether it was stony, loam, or clay based.

Communes…
Being a communally based society the Anglo-Saxons ensured that each farmer and his family got a fair deal; farmers having several strips spread across both good and bad land so that the burdens of poor soil were shared. Sometimes the empty spaces between the furlongs became lanes, and in later times would become the boundary line on which ‘enclosure’ hedges would be planted, thereby fixing the shape of the original furlongs and field systems.

Land then, as it still remains today, was a way of determining a person’s wealth and status. In more northerly territory occupied by the Danes a ‘thane’ would have owned five or more hides of land (a hide being about 100 acres of land), a freeman churl had a least one, while geburs and cotsetlans were tied to their lord even though they may have had land to farm.

In some areas such as Scotland and northern England an ‘infield-outfield‘ system of land use occurred. Fields nearest to a village [the 'infields'] were permanently used for cropping while those beyond [the 'outfields'] were grazed. Beyond the ‘outfields’ there would be waste land for common pasture, or moorland in the case of upland areas. These waste lands (in both highland and lowland situations), were the only source of new land and were frequently reclaimed [a process called 'assarting'] to form new enclosed farm holdings. Many of these holdings eventually became split up over time – through communal sharing out of land strips (where clearing of the waste had been a group effort), or through the inevitable breaking up among heirs and successors.

As with all land – the way a village farmed the surrounding land was based on how the land was best suited, but also on local inheritance customs. At it simplest level there were two field systems, but there were also three and four-field systems, and some even larger ones. The result of this was a huge amount of variation in land use and rights around Britain.

Although we think of hedges as being a natural part of Britain’s landscape in the middle ages it is likely that there were few hedges in our landscape; the terrain being composed of large open fields which were also known as ‘champion’ fields – derived from the french word ‘campagne’ [meaning countryside]

One of the inevitable consequences of breaking land into ever smaller holdings, as the population grew, was the impracticability of farming small plots, and so ‘Common field‘ systems developed, becoming a well established feature of land management by 13th century.

Closing act…
The Black Death provided the catalyst for a major change in land usage and appearance. Individuals had frequently settled parts of the communally held waste lands, pasture and grazing, as well as the land beyond, but after the depopulation of rural communities following the Black Death, many landowners took the opportunity to ‘enclose’ pastureland and consolidate land holdings. However, the level of ‘enclosure’ of this period was nothing in comparison to devastating acts of the 18th and 19th century.

At the same time there was a switch from grain to sheep and, more importantly, higher value wool production. Enclosure provided another benefit over ‘champion’ (open) fields – control of sheep. The growth of the cloth industry in medieval times also meant that farmers could grow dye crops such as madder and dyer’s rocket on a commercial basis.

The 16th century saw the dissolution of the monasteries [1538] which released huge tracts of land previously held by the Church, and gave fresh impetus to enclosure and consolidation. This consequently lead to an increase in arable farming; landowners able to fulfil the grain requirements of a population which was only just returning to levels prior to the Black Death [1348].

‘Specialisation’ began to take place as cities like London grew in size – Norfolk produced malt, Sussex grew wheat, Suffolk specialised in dairy produce, Hampshire raised sheep, and Kent provided fruit, vegetables and hops. In the Weald, the iron industry boomed, huge quantities of timber being felled to provide charcoal for smelting, while many villages constructed ‘ponds’ to store the water which powered machinery used in the iron-making process.

Economics…
However, in typical ‘supply-demand’ fashion that every student of economics knows, grain prices fell in the latter part of the 17th century, and farmers turned to other produce such as meat, fowl, fruit, vegetables, and dairy produce (‘diversifying’ as we would call it these days). Today, some farmers are turning to exotic salad crops, llama farming, and even tourism.

But this was also an age of improvements in agricultural techniques, ploughing equipment, livestock breeding and plant selection. Essentially one can say that by 1700 agriculture had generally been reorganised from a subsistence-based occupation into something more akin to an industry; a rising population also making it economically viable for landowners to drain and reclaim water-laden areas such as the Lincolnshire fens for grazing (although it was not until the 20th century that this area was used for arable farming). In the 17th and 18th centuries ‘watermeadows‘, which provided grass when winter feed ran out, were developed; many of them using carefully controlled flooding of grassland through systems of sluices. Many watermeadows are now subject to environmental legislation because of their unique place in our rural landscape.

Technology and Ferment…
The 18th century saw the further march of progress in agriculture – but not all of it welcomed. Jethro Tull designed his seed drill [1701], Meikle a winnowing machine [c1720], Menzies a water-driven threshing machine [1732], and ‘Turnip’ Townshend developed a four-course crop rotation [roots such as turnips in year one, followed by barley in year two, then seed crops like clover and rye grass, followed by wheat in the final year], among many inventions which pushed agriculture’s technological envelope. There also developed agricultural Societies and Shows which ‘communicated’ these technological advancements throughout agricultural and rural communities. Indeed, by the mid-18th century Britain was producing surpluses of farm produce. Still, more than three quarters of the population were involved in agriculture, or worked in the countryside employed in work in the wool industry [Britain's main export at the time].

Remember too, that the 18th century was also a time of canal building across Britain – and made the transportation of bulk goods like coal, pottery and grain over long distances, and to urban populations more practicable. For instance the Llangollen canal was specifically built for transporting produce from the hinterland.

By this time also, more sophisticated equipment and land management techniques seemed to indicate that ‘enclosure’ was a better way of farming the land, and subsequently thousands of ‘Enclosure Acts‘ passed by Parliament from 1750 to 1850 changed the face of Britain’s rural landscape. In the rapacious quest for land consolidation by large and often unscrupulous landowners these Acts frequently forced smaller farmers and allotment owners to sell to the big landowners – creating large numbers of landless and dispossesed people who eventually migrated to the cities in search of a living. There were frequently riots and civil disobedience against the Enclosures in the countryside.

In fact this period of rural history was one of the grimmest and most brutal. Many of the poorest labourers in the countryside were only able to ‘make ends meet’ because they could keep a cow, pig or geese on the ‘common’ land by right of renting a cottage within a village. They might also raise a few vegetables in the common fields, and gather fuel too. When the ‘common’ land became enclosed it destroyed the economic independence of these cottagers who now had to depend on their wages alone, being forced, as they were, to sell their livestock – the very means which had kept them from sinking into absolute poverty.

The value of real wages had fallen though. In ‘Notes on the Agriculture of Norfolk‘ [1796] Nathaniel Kent noted that the price of provisions had gone up by 60% in the previous forty to fifty years, but wages by only 25%. Another authority suggested that between 1760 and 1813 wages rose by 60%, but the price of wheat by 130%. These figures need to be seen in context with the importance of common land usage… One writer in 1798 stating that out of 23,000 arable acres in Middlesex 20,000 were cultivated on the common-field system, the same writer also informing us: ‘I have known thirty landlords in a field of 200 acres, and the property of each so divided as to lie in ten or twenty places.’ The damaging impact of Enclosure was therefore potentially huge on the rural way of life.

One of the best documented cases of defiance to Enclosure was at Otmoor in Oxfordshire. There Lord Abingdon claimed rights of soil and sport on the public common. In his ‘History of Oxfordshire‘ Dunkin gives an insight into Otmoor’s usage: ‘Whilst this extensive piece of land remained unenclosed, the farmers… estimated the profits of a summer’s pasturage at 20s per head…. But the greatest benefit was reaped by the cottagers, many of whom turned out large numbers of geese, to which the coarse aquatic sward was well suited, and thereby brought up their families in comparative plenty’. Then came the Petition for enclosure.

Before 1774 a landowner did not even have to notify his neighbours that he was petitioning Parliament to redistribute their property. The landowner would simply petition – setting out the disadvantages of the current system and advantages of the alternative in the petition. You would simply wake up one morning to find your land was being taken from you. Such was the backlash to this iniquitous state of affairs that the House of Commons [HoC] eventually insisted that notice of any such petition should be pinned to the doors of churches of parishes concerned – but only for limited periods.

Such was the mood at Otmoor that on August 14th 1814 [reported in HoC Journal, Feb 17th 1815], those sent to affix the Notices on the Church doors of two Parishes involved were unable to do so because they were confronted by mobs armed with every description of offensive weapon, and prevented by violence and threats of immediate death. Local resentment about Otmoor simmered for years and, 15 years later, local inhabitants took to destroying all the fences. The Oxfordshire Militia were called and a troop of Yeomanry Cavalry, but the protestors failed to be moved, even when the Riot Act was read aloud. In the struggle which followed over 60 protestors were seized and 44 sent off to Oxford goal. As they were driven through Oxford’s streets – where St. Giles’ Fair happened to be taking place – the Oxford’s inhabitants turned on the yoemanry: ‘hurling brickbats, stones and sticks at them from every side‘. As they turned into Beaumont Street the yoemen were overwhelmed by the mob and the 44 prisoners slipped away – unfortunately to be re-caught.

Anyone who vented their anger by damaging partitioning fences could expect harsh teatment. In the ‘main features’ of the Haute Huntre, Lincs. – Enclosure Act, 1767 the penalties for wilfull and malicious cutting, breaking down, burning or demolishing of any division fence were a fine of £5 to £20 for the first offence [or 1 to 2 months imprisonment], a £10 to £40 fine [or a 6 to 12 month sentence], and ‘transportation for 7 years as a felon‘ for the third offence.

In the upland areas of Yorkshire and Derbyshire (but also in lowland areas), the great movement towards ‘enclosure’ is best exemplified by the miles of drystone walls which straddle the landscape; built by armies of wall builders who moved from job to job, landowner to landowner. At the same time an industry grew up in supplying the hedging shrubs such as blackthorn and hawthorn used for enclosure boundaries in other areas. Which lasts longest? Well, some hedges have been dated as 400 or 500 years old (many are much older), while the life of a drystone wall is reckoned to be about 200 years.

Appliance of Science…
The Victorians were to leave other lasting impressions on our countryside. Their quest for new machinery and mechanisation, the ‘appliance of science’ to agriculture, and increasing influence or organisations such as the Royal Agricultural Society [founded in 1839], had great impact upon rural environments and farming.

By the mid-1830′s steam ploughing was in use, and threshing took place in the fields rather than the farmyard by roughly the middle of the 19th century, which meant that the large barns required by earlier generations for storing unthreshed sheafs were no longer needed; modern intensive cereal farming has seen huge grain silos blossoming on the landscape.

Writing in the Kent Herald, in September 1830, a local landowner commented that there were 23 barns in his local parish. He calculated that 15 men would be employed until May in the task of threshing the corn from these barns, earning them from fifteen to twenty shillings a week. Unsurprisingly many of the rural population regarded threshing machines as a threat to their livelihoods and there were frequent outbreaks of civil disorder in which the machines were broken in protest.

From the 1870s until the commencement of the First World War British farming went through unprecedented turmoil. During the early part of this period there were many bad harvests, and the import of wheat, wool and meat from the overseas impacted on farm prices. Tenant farmers – the majority – unable to pay their rents abandoned the land, very much as today. By the time of WWI only a third of Britain’s food was produced on these shores, which prompted the government to encourage the nation to ‘Dig for Victory‘; and several million acres of under-utilised land were brought into production.

Modern times…
The inter-war years brought more misery as farm prices slumped in the 1920s, and many country estates were broken up. War, again, revived land usage, and since WWII farming has largely remained on a secure footing to become a true business – ‘agribusiness’. The latter has brought visible changes to the British countryside; the most noticeable being the removal of hedges to enlargen fields so that large-scale mechanised planting and harvesting can take place, aided by pesticides and fertilisers. A field that would once have taken a days to prepare, or sow, or harvest by hand, can now be achieved in hours. Such is the sophistication at the top end of the agricultural industry that computer aided technologies (sometimes GPS guided) can ‘map’ fields; allowing farmers to deliver extra fertiliser, nutrients or seed depending on the soil quality in different parts of the terrain, and thereby optimise output.

Now, when you next pass through our wonderful countryside on a drive, or explore its leafy lanes on foot, you can be sure that some areas of the landscape around you have played a part in the rich tapestry of social and industrial heritage of Britain. Almost every stone, tree and plant has a tale to tell. Enjoy it.