Читать книгу A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside - Johnny Scott - Страница 17

There was a major decline in living standards as the population continued to grow, and this coupled with high unemployment meant a large proportion of the population survived through charity, Parish Poor Laws and scavenging for wild fruit and vegetables. There was a significant migration of desperate people seeking work in the towns, and by the end of the century, the State found itself both distrusted and ill equipped to deal with the social consequences of population growth and inadequate food.

They hang the man, and flog the woman, That steals the goose from off the common; But let the greater villain loose, That steals the common from the goose.

Agricultural improvers were thin on the ground during the sixteenth century, and the handful that existed stand out as voices in the wilderness, including John Fitzherbert, who wrote Master Fitzherbert’s Boke of Husbandrie in 1531, and the great Thomas Tusser, author of the instructional poem Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, published in 1557. At the end of the century, two people came up with ideas for improving soil fertility. Roland Vaughan, a Herefordshire landowner, experimented with using water from local streams to deposit silt on the fields through the winter on his estate in the Golden Valley, beside the River Dore. Vaughan is reputed to have got the idea of ‘water meadows’ from noticing water running from a piece of ground where a mole had tunnelled too close to a stream. This rivulet was ‘onepace broad andsome twenty in length’, and the grass where the water flowed over it was considerably greener than that on either side. He subsequently dug a channel, called the Royal Trench, from the River Dore across his estate and back to the Dore. Open conduits ran from the main channel to various fields and by using a system of sluices fields could be flooded either during dry periods or through the winter to both protect the grass from frost and provide fertiliser in the form of silt. Vaughan’s invention was a demonstrable success, increasing the value of his land from £40 to £300nd moving his kinsman, John Davis, to verse:

‘His royall trench (that all the rest commands Andholds the Sperme of Herbage by a Spring) In fuseth in the wombe of sterile Lands, The Liquidseede that makes them Plenty bring. Here, two of the inferior Elements (Joyning in Coïtu) Water on the Leaze (Like Sperme most active in such complements) Begets thefull-panche Foison of Lncrease: For, through Earths rifts into her hollow wombe, (Where Nature doth her Twyning-Issue frame) The water soakes, where of doth kindly come Full Barnes, to joy the Lords that hold the same: For, as all Womens wombes do barren seeme, That never had societie of Men; So fertill Grounds we often barren deeme, Whose Bow ells, Water fills not now and then.’

Water meadows were brilliant in their simplicity and supplied the earliest hay, fed the best sheep and produced the finest milking cows. Following the publication of his seminal work in 1610, Most Approved and Long experienced Water Workes containing The manner of Winter and Summer drowning, Vaughan’s discovery was soon widely adopted along river valleys across the country. Remains of old water meadows and their irrigation systems can be seen at Harnham Water Meadows, in Salisbury; Fordingbridge, in Hampshire; the River Kennet Meadows, near Reading; Hurst, near Dorchester on Thames, Oxfordshire; Britford, in Wiltshire; Mere, Gillingham, Blandford Forum and Shaftesbury, in Dorset; Riddlesworth and West Lexham or Appleby, Measham and Austrey in Leicestershire, to name only a fraction.

FERTILISER, OR THE LACK OF IT, WAS ONE OF THE MOST INHIBITING FACTORS IN MAINTAINING CROP PRODUCTION AND ON EVERY FARM A GOOD DUNG HEAP WAS REGARDED AS ONE OF THE MOST VALUABLE ASSETS, WITH ANYTHING DEGRADABLE ADDED TO IT.

At much the same time, Sir Hugh Plat, one of Queen Elizabeth I’s courtiers and a keen horticulturalist, was advocating the more scientific use of marl (calcium-carbonate-rich clay) to fertilise fields. Fertiliser, or the lack of it, was one of the most inhibiting factors in maintaining crop production, and on every farm a good dung heap was regarded as one of the most valuable assets, with anything degradable added to it. On the chalk and limestone downs, chalk was dug, crushed and scattered on the loam. Near the coast, farmers gathered the seashell-rich sand that collected along the front of a shingle beach and mixed it in with manure. When a grass pasture was being ploughed out in counties such as Sussex or Surrey, the matted turfs were first shovelled off and burnt, and the ashes scattered in with the ploughing.

There is evidence that lime was being burnt for fertiliser towards the end of the sixteenth century, a practice which was to become common two centuries later. The limitation with chalk, lime and seashells was transportation, and even dung was rarely seen in fields other than those immediately conterminous to the farmhouse. Marling was more feasible since it was simply a matter of digging a pit in the vicinity of the field or fields to be fertilised and extracting the clay. ‘Marl’ or ‘Marl Pit’ are common in field names across the country and many of the ponds seen where the corners of three or four fields meet are old flooded marl pits.

The problem with any fertilising in those days was that farmers did not appreciate the difference in soil types relative to the quantity of fertiliser, or the duration of effective applications before it had a detrimental effect. Barnaby Googe, the Elizabethan pastoral poet observed, ‘In some counties they make their land very fruitful with laying on of Chalke … But long use of it in the end, brings the ground to starke nought, whereby the common people have a speech, that ground enriched with Chalke makes a rich Father and a beggarly Sonne.’ This comment is as true today when farmers force a succession of crops from the same field by increasing the application of fertiliser. Plat, who was a prolific author on such matters as making candied fruit or ‘suckets’ and the art of distilling scented water, wrote a detailed treatise in 1594 entitled Diverse new sorts of soyle not yet brought into any publique use, for manuring both of pasture and arable ground, which was the first textbook on the correct proportion of fertilisers for different soil types. The pressure to create more arable hectares led Charles I to commission Cornelius Vermuyden, the Dutch drainage engineer, to reclaim around 40,000 hectares of the Royal Forest at Hatfield Chase in the Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire, in 1626. This was spectacularly unpopular among the local people who stood to lose their common rights and led to vigorous opposition. Dykes were destroyed and, until troops were sent to protect them, the camps of the Dutch and Walloon workmen were attacked at night, and several workmen killed.

Much more damaging to the sinking status of the King was granting the Earl of Bedford a charter in 1632 to undertake the immensely ambitious project of draining 750,000 acres of the Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire fens, round the Ouse Wash, River Welland and River Nene. Bedford and thirteen ‘Gentlemen Adventurers’, as venture capitalists were called in those days, were promised 40,000 hectares each for funding the project, with the King taking a backhander of 5,000 hectares. Drainage was met with furious resistance from the local population, many of whom made their living from grazing the marshes or by fishing and wildfowling. ‘The Powte’s Complaint’ (a powte being a lamprey) was a popular protest song lamenting the loss of the wild marshland landscape, sung by the ‘Fen Tigers’, marsh men who sabotaged the construction work whenever they could.

Come, Brethren of the water, and let us all assemble, To treat upon this matter, which makes us quake and tremble; For we shall rue it, if it be true, that Fens be undertaken And where we feed in Fen and Reed, they’ll feed both Beef and Bacon. They’ll sow both beans and oats, where never man yet thought it, Where men did row in boats, ere undertakers brought it: But, Ceres, thou, behold us now, let wild oats be their venture, Oh let the frogs and miry bogs destroy where they do enter. Behold the great design, which they do now determine, Will make our bodie spine, a prey to crows and ver mine: For they do mean all Fens to drain, and waters overmaster, All will be dry, and we must die, cause Essex calves want pasture. Away with boats and rudder, farewell both boots and skatches, No need of one nor th’other, men now make better matches; Stilt-makers all and tanners, shall complain of this disaster, For they will make each muddy lake for Essex calves a pasture. The feather’d fowls have wings, to fly to other nations; But we have no such things, to help our transportations;

We must give place (oh grievous case) to horned beasts and cattle, Except that we can all agree to drive them out by battle. Wherefore let us entreat our ancient water nurses To show their power sogreat as t’help to drain their purses, And send us good old Captain Flood to lead us out to battle, Then Two penny Jack with skales on’s back will drive out all the cattle.

The project was seen by many people as a device for already wealthy men to benefit by dispossessing others and had much to do with hastening the Civil War. In the summer of 1637, the engineers announced that, despite all the difficulties, the work was complete. However, it proved to be a complete failure during the following winter, when the whole area flooded. Charles I went further down the route of his own destruction by stepping in to take control of a new project and appointing Vermuyden as his agent. East Anglia was a staunchly Puritan area and Cromwell was among the local farmers vociferously protesting against the drainage scheme. The King then proceeded to antagonise his own supporters by announcing to Bedford and the investors that his cut was to increase from 5,000 hectares to 20,000, effectively halving their shares.

By the time they had all stopped arguing, the Civil War had started and the project was not completed until 1653. To everyone’s astonishment, the land unexpectedly started to shrink at an alarming rate as the peat soil dried out. As the level of the land dropped, water could no longer drain into the rivers, which were by now higher than the fields. Wind pumps were introduced to pump water off the land, but their reliance on adequate wind and continued shrinkage saw the task become increasingly difficult.

BY THE TIME THEY HAD ALL STOPPED ARGUING, THE CIVIL WAR HAD STARTED AND THE PROJECT WAS NOT COMPLETED UNTIL 1653. TO EVERYONE’S ASTONISHMENT, THE LAND UNEXPECTEDLY STARTED TO SHRINK AT AN ALARMING RATE AS THE PEAT SOIL DRIED OUT.

Until steam power was introduced in the 1820s and the Fens were successfully drained (a procedure which again resulted in fierce local rioting and sabotage) the landscape was dominated by around 700 windmills, which were built in timber or brick to facilitate draining the land or milling the corn. Many have since disappeared but some still survive, including Denver Mill, near Downham Market; Haddenham, Downfield, Stevens, Wicken and Swaffham windmills south of Ely; Sibsey Trader Mill, north of Boston; and the seven-storeys-high Maud Foster Windmill in Boston itself, the tallest working windmill in Britain.

Today the fens are drained by electric pumping stations and contain over 50 per cent of the most productive land in Britain, producing vegetables, wheat, bulbs and flowers, and they are the only place where English mustard continues to be grown for Colman’s of Norwich. There are still places, out on the mud flats and saltings, where a man can look out towards the grey sea, breathe the iodine-laden air and, as he listens to the cacophony of waterfowl, imagine what once it must have been.

The Restoration of King Charles II was greeted with unbridled jubilation and hope that a new era of peace and prosperity would follow the grim years of Cromwell’s Commonwealth. Royalist landowners who had gone into exile with their king returned with innovative ideas for British agriculture and a determination to make farming profitable. Many of them had taken refuge in Flanders and had studied Flemish farming methods. Flanders was a densely populated country where every yard of agricultural land was utilised; the Flemish were skilled cattle and heavy horse breeders and had perfected a four-field rotation based on growing crops of wheat, turnips, barley and clover in sequence. This innovative advance on the old three-field system, where one field lay fallow and therefore unproductive for twelve months, not only meant that all the land was used throughout they ear, but also that turnips and clover provided an essential product which would revolutionise British agriculture.

Legumes such as clover have nodules on their roots which contain nitrogen-fixing bacteria which replace nitrates leached out of the ground by cereal crops. They therefore provide the role of a natural fertiliser, solving one of the great problems that had beleaguered farming in Britain. Clover was also a highly nutritious fodder crop for winter feed, and this added to turnips, which ripen in the autumn and remain fresh in the ground until the spring. This meant that farmers could keep stock all year round and fatten beasts through the winter, as an alternative to the centuries-old practice of slaughtering the majority of livestock except breeding animals in the late autumn.

In addition to improving soil fertility, greater grain output simultaneously increased livestock production. Farmers could rear greater quantities of livestock because there was more food of higher quality and the manure provided during overwintering added to the productive cycle. Britain was at the dawn of agricultural enlightenment, and although tenant farmers were suspicious of change and reluctant to implement them for fear of incurring rent increases, the agricultural revolution was on its way.

‘He that havocs may sit He that improves must flit? Philosophy of seventeenth-century tenant farmers

‘Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders? Contemporary view of tenant farmers