A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside

In the early part of the nineteenth century a splendid, hard-drinking Georgian character called Mad Jack Fuller commissioned Humphrey Repton to landscape the gardens at Rosehill, his estate at Brightling, and the architect Sir Robert Smirke to design a variety of different follies positioned to draw attention to areas of natural beauty, including a mock ruined tower, a beautiful Rotunda Temple, an observatory, a 20-metre-high obelisk built on the second highest hill in East Sussex, a beautiful arched summerhouse made of Coade stone, a mausoleum in the shape of a pyramid and a conical building, similar to a dunces’ hat, on a ridge in front of his mansion. Folklore insists that the Sugar Loaf was built as a result of a drunken bet made at a dinner in London, when Mad jack claimed to be able to see the spire of Dallington Church from his drawing room. Upon returning home, he discovered

FOLKLORE INSISTS THAT THE SUGAR LOAF WAS BUILT AS A RESULT OF A DRUNKEN BET MADE AT A DINNER IN LONDON, WHEN MAD JACK CLAIMED TO BE ABLE TO SEE THE SPIRE OF DALLINGTON CHURCH FROM HIS DRAWING ROOM … THE WAGER WAS TO BE JUDGED IN A MATTER OF DAYS, AND TO WIN THE BET FULLER EMPLOYED EVERY MAN ON THE ESTATE. HE WAS ENTIRELY WRONG AND THAT A RIDGE OBSCURED HIS VIEW OF THE CHURCH. THE WAGER WAS TO BE JUDGED IN A MATTER OF DAYS, AND TO WIN THE BET FULLER EMPLOYED EVERY MAN ON THE ESTATE TO BUILD WHAT APPEARED TO BE, FROM A DISTANCE, THE CHURCH SPIRE.

It is sad that this story is universally accepted as fact, when no Regency gentleman would have risked the social disgrace of reneging on a bet, least of all Mad Jack, who was a noted philanthropist. He was a founding member of the Royal Institution, built the Belle Touche lighthouse on the cliffs above Beachy Head and provided Eastbourne with a lifeboat, bought Bodiam Castle to save it from demolition and bestowed the nation with the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry and, a little later, the Fullerian Professorship of Physiology.

I am sure the Sugar Loaf was built for no other reason than Mad Jack thought a mock spire would make the ridge in front of his house stand out nicely. The unusual style of the construction is easily deduced; Fuller’s fortune was derived from iron foundries and sugar plantations. He had already constructed two massive pillars topped with cast-iron sculptures depicting cannons, flames and anchors, representing that side of his fortune; the Sugar Loaf represented the other side.

The last of the follies was Faringdon Folly Tower, built in 1935 on Faringdon Hill in Oxfordshire on the site of an ancient hill fort. Faringdon Hill was already a historic landmark before the superbly eccentric 14th Lord Berners, famous for dyeing fan-tailed pigeons vibrant colours and keeping a pet giraffe in the house, decided to commission the architect Lord Gerald Wellesley to design a 43-metre-high brick monument. Asked why he was doing it Lord Berners replied, ‘The great point of this tower is that it will be entirely useless.’ This was the sort of double entendre for which he was famous. He was in effect saying, if the questioner was so blind to beauty he failed to appreciate that Folly Tower would become the focus of attention for miles (it can be seen from five different counties) highlighting the rolling hills above the Vale of White Horse, then it becomes a futile structure providing nothing more than a panoramic view to the minority who climb to the top.

Lord Berners’s real feelings about the tower are revealed by the fact that he actually had it built as a birthday present for his adored companion, Robert ‘Boy’ Heber Percy. At the unveiling ceremony, ‘Boy’ appeared visibly upset and was heard muttering tearfully that all he had ever wanted for his birthday was a white pony and some pink dye.

HISTORY IN A NAME

The curious intimacy with the land which seems to me to be an exclusively British characteristic is expressed by the way every geographical feature, however insignificant, has over the long course of history been personalised with its own name. Every wood, copse, spinney, dell, dene, gully, knowe, field, meadow, stream, bog or pond has been christened after a person, a local or national event, the type of growth in the immediate area, an animal or an interesting landmark. Rural place names are the narrators of the countryside, giving it identity and a feeling of companionable familiarity.

A glance at an Ordnance Survey map of the district immediately around Wingates, in Northumberland, where we owned family farms when I was a child, is a typical example; one that is replicated in similar density across the whole of Britain. Interspersed among ancient earthworks, cairns, sites of Iron Age settlements, traces of a Roman road known as the Devil’s Causeway, remnants of Cistercian monastic granges and the ruins of a sixteenth-century castle are place names which give an indication of their history. Doe Hill was presumably a piece of good, sheltered land where does calved in the spring; Heron’s Close, perhaps a wood where herons nested; Harelaw, a grassy hillock frequented by hares during the rut and Haredene, the little wood adjacent to it. Garrett Lee Wood and Geordie Bell Plantation are named after people long forgotten, but whose names live on in history; Todburnis a small stream near a fox earth; Whinney Hill, where gorse would be encouraged to grow for winter feed; Linden Hill Head, the hill above a wood of lime trees; the Birks, a birch wood; and Gallows Shaw, a wood where there was once a gallows or a hanging tree. Beggars’ Bush denotes a hawthorn spinney; a hawthorn was known as a beggars’ bush because vagrants often slept under them, the dense branches offering some weather protection. ‘Who shall never tarry with master, but trudge from post to pillar, till they take up beggars’ bush for their lodging.’ The saying ‘go to the beggars’ bush’ was subsequently usually applied to people who had brought about their own ruin. Ewesleys was a productive pasture for pregnant ewes; and Sheep Wash a field adjacent to a stream where sheep used to be washed before shearing, to remove the sulphur grease rubbed into their fleece to prevent parasites and maggot fly. The Chirm (as in charm) was a copse noted for little birdsong; Pie Hill, from its circular shape and round, flat top; and Whitham’s Hole, a bog.

Place names are the windows that give us an insight into our most precious historic document; the landscape contains most of the evidence of our past and provides unparalleled revelations about our ancestors’ way of life, their hopes and aspirations. The intricate pattern of farmland, woods, forestry, villages, market towns, follies, sites of ancient settlement, earthworks and chalk carvings all play their part in the complex story of these islands.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BRITISH LANDSCAPE

The landscape today is like a complicated, multi-layered puzzle where ancient and modern places exist side by side, with natural and man-made features inextricably interwoven. It is the variety of patterns created by historic and contemporary methods of land use which gives the countryside its infinite diversity and endless fascination, and it is the analysis of the way these fit together that enables us to map its evolution.

The character of the countryside depends on a number of different factors, but geology and soil fertility are the two determining influences on the way people have interacted with nature to establish the detailed individualism of different areas. The human imprint is fundamental, either through good management practices or by ruthless and destructive exploitation. In some counties the process of change has been continuous for many centuries, escalating rapidly within living memory until the landscape became unrecognisable to those who grew up there. In others it has remained largely unchanged since the Agricultural Revolution, and in a very few places, such as our farm, the present-day surroundings would seem quite familiar to our pre-Roman forebears.

Throughout history farmers have been responsible for the shape of the countryside, gradually clearing the forests of wildwood and breaking in the land. When populations expanded, they extended farming into areas normally considered marginal and unproductive and even reclaimed land from the sea – in Norfolk and Lincolnshire, for example, or the coastal marshes of Kent and Essex. When the population was periodically in decline, as it was after the collapse of the Roman Empire, they abandoned the reclaimed land and allowed it to revert.

For many centuries this trend was cyclical and subject initially to the movements of prehistoric people across Europe to Britain, bringing improved agricultural methods. It was influenced by changing weather patterns, periodic famines, pestilence and war; particularly during the Anglo-Saxon era and later by the conflicts with Wales, Scotland and interminable hostilities with France. Since the Norman Conquest, trends in agriculture have been highly dependent on market demand for certain commodities and the investment response by landlords. Our chalk and limestone uplands were heavily farmed by early agriculturalists but reverted to grass when better land was reclaimed by the Romans and Anglo-Saxons. With the arrival of the Normans these uplands became highly valuable to landlords as sheep grazings and remained so until the twentieth century, when much of it was ploughed out for arable crop production to meet consumer demand. Similarly, the land round my farm had been occupied by Bronze and Iron Age people, was largely abandoned by the Romans and Anglo-Saxons and then became highly sought-after by the wool-producing Cistercian Abbeys. With the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the huge monastic flocks went and the land was crofted by little pockets of subsistence farmers until it became valuable again, when good-quality low-ground acres on which sheep had been grazed were needed for grain.

It is the same story with the great, medieval, open-field, strip-farming systems in the West Midlands and parts of East Anglia, which were converted from arable back to grass in the sixteenth century. An early act of enclosure enabled Elizabethan landlords wishing to benefit from the boom in the wool price to create sheep walks by hedging and walling. By the time the wool price collapsed, the urban population had increased and the land was ploughed out for arable cultivation, removing most of the traces of ancient strip farming.

Equally, if agricultural expansion was influenced by war, famine and market growth, it in turn controlled population growth. By 1750, the population in Britain had reached nearly six million. This had happened before: in around 1350 and again in 1650. Each time, the appropriate agricultural infrastructure to support a population this high was not present, and the population fell. However, by 1750, when the population reached this level again, developments in agricultural technology and new methodology allowed the population growth to be sustained.

OLD FARM BUILDINGS, SIMILAR TO THE EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY STEADING ON MY BORDERS’ FARM, HAVE A SIGNIFICANT TALE TO TELL, AS DO THOSE WHICH WERE ABANDONED AT AN EARLIER TIME AND ARE NOW NO MORE THAN AN UNDULATION IN THE GROUND … THESE TRACES OF LAND USE HELP TO INTERPRET OUR PAST AND UNDERSTAND OUR LANDSCAPE HERITAGE.

What are now recognised as historic landscape features were created by agriculturalists over this long period of fluctuations in farming methods and population growth. Heaths, of which there are 58,000 hectares in places such as Ashdown Forest in Sussex, Delamere Forest in Cheshire, Clashindarroch Forest (one of many in Scotland) or Exmoor in Somerset, were created by long-term overexploitation of poor soils by prehistoric farmers. There are 23,000 hectares of surviving wood pasture in places such as the Savernake Forest, and traces of early soil tillage can be found dotted across Britain, particularly in the Midland counties; reeves, cord rigs, lazy beds and lynchets. Old farm buildings, similar to the early nineteenth-century steading on my Borders’ farm, have a significant tale to tell, as do those which were abandoned at an earlier time and are now no more than an undulation in the ground. Ancient trees are fundamental to the landscape; their presence often indicates an old parish boundary, the remains of parks and wood pasture or the existence of a field. Individually or together, all these traces of land use help to interpret our past and understand our landscape heritage.

About 6,500 years ago, the nomadic Neolithic hunter-gatherers began to establish semi-permanent settlements, clearing the native wildwood and converting the land to agriculture. Trees were killed by copying the damage done by wild animals chewing off the bark; ‘ringing’ with a stone axe or knife prevents sap flow and eventually the tree died, the stumps rotted away, the undercover was burnt and tillage could begin. The population at that time was probably about 80,000, made up of small farming families organised into farmsteads and hamlets along similar lines to that we see today – namely that the lowland valley of the south east of the country was best suited to the production of crops while the more upland areas elsewhere were suited to pastoral farming. The new land, cleared so laboriously, was farmed for about twenty years until fertility was exhausted and production dropped below a level sufficient to sustain the settlement, at which point the community moved on to clear new land and start afresh. Land that was abandoned then reverted to scrub and woodland, before the cycle started again and it was cleared once more.

The climate was warm and wet, and primitive species of wheat – emmer and einkhorn – were easily grown, as were barley, beans and pulse. Neolithic man was also heavily dependent on the early spring growth of wild plants that thrive near human habitation, such as nettles, orache, fat hen and Good King Henry. Soil preparation involved scratching the ground with an ard – a primitive plough consisting of a frame mounting a nearly vertical wooden spike, dragged through the soil by human effort. Rather than cutting and turning the soil to produce furrows, it breaks up a narrow strip of soil, leaving intervening strips undisturbed. Cross-ploughing was often used, where the soil is ploughed again at right angles to the original direction. Harvested crops were stored in pits which allowed surplus produce to be used in times of need.

Storage, more than anything else, allowed the development of farming and, ultimately, civilisation. Sheep, goats and cattle were kept as well as domesticated wild pigs. Within the limitations of stone knives and axes, the wildwood conterminous with settlements was coppiced. Towards the end of the Neolithic period, settlements became permanent enough for causeway enclosures to be built as communal meeting places, for example at Coombe Hill, near Jevington in Sussex, or Flagstones in Dorset. Chambered long barrows were also constructed to house the dead, such as the one on Gussage Down in the Cranborne Chase area of Dorset, Barclodiad y Gawres in Anglesea, Belas Knap near Cheltenham, Maeshowe on Orkney, or Stoney Littleton Long Barrow. The first of the henges were painstakingly erected – testaments to Neolithic man’s commitment to settling where these were built, including Ballymeanoch, in Kilmartin Glen, Scotland; King Arthur’s Round Table and Mayburgh henge, near the village of Eamont Bridge, Cumbria; the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney; Thornborough Henges, near Masham in North Yorkshire; Maumbury Rings, near Dorchester in Dorset and, of course, Stonehenge in Wiltshire.

During the 1,500 years of the Bronze Age, from roughly 2100 to 750 BC, there was significant population growth as agriculture expanded throughout most of the country. Recent research suggests that the population may have exceeded a million by 2,000 BC. However, within the huge time period of this age, population growth and subsequent decline could have occurred many times as the fertility of farmland became exhausted and food production fell. In the 2,000 years since the first farmers arrived, large tracts of the wild wood had been cleared and agriculture was transforming the landscape.

For much of the Bronze Age the climate was considerably warmer than today – probably by as much as 2 degrees Centigrade. This warmth had a significant effect on agricultural land use and farming was able to extend into the moors and uplands of Britain. Wheat and barley were the main crops, grown for flour, straw, animal feed and, for the first time, malt for alcoholic drinks. Oats, rye, peas and beans and some hay for animal feed were grown, while straw was used for bedding, thatching and winter fodder. Cattle had always been important to prehistoric farmers, but there was an increase in the importance of sheep through the Bronze Age as people had learnt the art of weaving and basic woollen clothing was becoming commonplace. Large livestock farms developed in the lowlands and appear to have contributed to economic growth and inspired increasing forest clearances. Goats and pigs both had an important place in Bronze Age communities, because they were foragers and easy to keep. Evidence shows that large areas of the countryside were laid out in unenclosed square fields, reflecting ploughing in two directions, whilst in other parts of Britain fields were enclosed by earthen banks. Traces of Bronze Age field systems and their ‘reeves’, or earth banks, and raised parallel boundary banks are particularly visible on Dartmoor or the Lizard and Land’s End in Cornwall. Tracks and ways across the countryside allowed localised trade and some exchange of animals to prevent in-breeding. The Ridgeway, Britain’s oldest road, which can be followed from Overton Hill, near Avebury, and Ivinghoe Beacon, in Buckinghamshire, is a surviving example and was almost certainly used to traverse the entire chalk escarpment that runs from Dorset to Lincolnshire.

Many famous henges that date from this period show society was well structured and able to call upon a significant population resource to build the many public monuments, where religion or ritual was an inseparable part of everyday life. Pottery was now decorated and noticeably finer and the arrival of metallurgy and the production of bronze led to new tools as well as ornaments and symbols of status. Late in the Bronze Age, around 1000 BC, the climate cooled and became wetter and many of the farming settlements of the upland areas were abandoned, not to be resettled for some 2,500 years. The Bronze Age was a peaceful and very prosperous period. Society was well structured and able to call upon a significant population resource for building projects such as enlarging Stonehenge and the erection of many other monuments: Seahenge, just off the coast of Norfolk at Holme-next-the-Sea; Achavanich, near Loch Stemster in Caithness; Beckhampton Avenue, in Witshire; Birkrigg, in Cumbria; Doll Tor and the Nine Ladies, in the Derbyshire Peak District; Rollright Stones, on the borders of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire; Tregeseal East and Men-an-Tol, in Cornwall; Gors Fawr, Meini Gwyr, Cerrig Duon, Maen Mawr, Nant Tarw Group and Grayhill in Wales. There are hundreds and hundreds of Bronze Age megaliths across Britain, and Northern Ireland has over sixty, all indicating a cosy and settled population.

HOW FARMING ALTERED THE LANDSCAPE

The Celts started to migrate to Britain in the eighth century BC, bringing with them advanced agricultural techniques in both grain and livestock farming, and within a hundred years many parts of the country were already owned, managed and planned in much the same way that they are now. Little wildwood remained in southern Britain and the land resource was well planned with field systems in rotation, pasture and coppiced woodland. Hill forts became common and acted as local centres of administration, power and refuge.

The range of crops grown had widened considerably since the early Bronze Age and although the most important were emmer, einkorn and spelt, varieties of wheat, barley, oats, tic beans, vetch, peas, rye, flax, wode and fat hen were regularly grown. The earliest written information about Britain records that the Celts of southern and eastern Britain were skilled arable farmers. Archaeological evidence indicates that a mixture of pastoral and arable farming was practised throughout the country. Nevertheless, the balance between these farming methods in any given area would have been dependent, to some extent, upon the geographical location and trading relationships of the different tribes. As grain farmers theyin among the Bronze Age reaves were surprisingly advanced; according to the Roman reporter, Pliny the Elder, British farmers invented the practice of manuring the soil with various kinds of mast, loam and chalk. He described how chalk was dug out from ‘pits several hundred feet in depth, narrow at the mouth, but widening towards the bottom’. In 70 AD he wrote: ‘The chalk is sought from a deep place, wells being frequently sunk to IOO foot, narrowed at the mouth, the vein spreading out within as in mines. This is the kind most used in Britain. It lasts for eighty years and there is no instance of anyone putting it on twice in his lifetime.’ There are hundreds if not thousands of the remains of ‘Deneholes’ in the chalk uplands of Kent, where chalk had been extracted to spread on local fields as top dressing.

Until destroyed by modern agriculture, small, irregular, squarish, Celtic fields covered thousands of square kilometres of chalk downland and other terrain which had escaped medieval and later cultivations. Although often less than half a hectare, they were surrounded by great earth banks, the product of countless man hours. The square shape expresses the custom of ploughing in two directions at right angles. On slopes, the action of the plough tended to move earth downhill, forming terraces called lynchets. Very good examples of these can be seen near Bishop stone and Great Wishford in Wiltshire; the Chess Valley near Rickmansworth; in among the Bronze Age reaves systems on Dartmoor, and anywhere in the vicinity of Iron Age hill forts, of which the remains of any number are still visible: Bindon Hill near Lulworth Cove, in Dorset; Tre’r Ceiri and Castell Henllys, in Wales; Castle an Dinas and Chun castle, in Cornwall; Danebury, in Hampshire; Wincobank, near Sheffield; Sutton Bank, in Yorkshire; Yeavering Bell, Traprain Law in East Lothian; and, of course, the one on my farm. Storage of crops was either in pits or in raised stores and harvest was over several months: weeds, some hay, grain and then straw.

THERE WERE CONSIDERABLE FLOCKS OF PRIMITIVE DUAL-PURPOSE SHEEP KEPT FOR MILK AND WOOL. WOOLLEN GARMENTS SUCH THE BRITISH HOODED CLOAK-THE BIRRUS – WERE A MAJOR EXPORT IN THE IRON AGE. SHEEP WERE SIMILAR TO THE SOAY, MANX, HEBRIDEAN AND SHETLAND BREEDS OF TODAY, KEPT FOR MILK AND WOOL.

Cattle were king in the Celtic world and a man’s wealth was measured by the number of his herd. The Celts introduced the now extinct Celtic Shorthorn cattle to Britain, from whom the Dexter and Kerry are descended. There were considerable flocks of primitive dual-purpose sheep kept for milk and wool. Woollen garments such the British hooded cloak – the birrus — were a major export in the Iron Age. Sheep were similar to the Soay, Manx, Hebridean and Shetland breeds of today, kept for milk and wool; unlike modern breeds of sheep their wool can be pulled – ‘plucked’ – from their backs without shearing. Goats and pigs were important to settlements for their ease of keeping, and poultry, geese and ducks were introduced for the first time. Horses were a new arrival in the wealthier farmsteads but they were not used for work (oxen were the beasts of burden) so much as symbols of status and for driving in the Celtic war chariots.

Farming typically revolved around small hamlets and farmsteads with enclosed rectilinear fields, each having areas of pasture, arable and wood. Ploughing became more efficient with the arrival of the iron ‘share’ plough point and a ‘mould board’ which turned the sod, making the cultivation of heavy, clay soils possible, and a two-field rotation was introduced: cropping one year followed by a fallow that was grazed by livestock. This led to surprisingly high yields and fuelled a growth in the population, believed to have exceeded three million.

The clearance of woodlands and opening up of areas with heavy clay soils, moreover, spread bread-wheat farming throughout much of lowland Britain – one of the reasons for the attraction of Britain to the later Roman invaders. Indeed, when Pytheas of Massilia (modern-day Marseilles) circumnavigated Britain around 330 BC, he described the people he encountered on his voyage as skilled wheat farmers. Other commentators, such as Strabo, the geographer, observed that ‘Britain produces corn, cattle, gold, silver and iron. These things are exported, along with hides, slaves and dogs suitable for hunting. The Gauls, however, use both these and their own native dogs for warfare also.’’

Under the Romans, farming methods changed through a combination of technological advances and planned field systems, producing an order and regularity to the countryside that increased output and aided communication. A range of innovations in agricultural equipment, plant types and animal species were introduced, amongst which were a variety of different ploughs to suit different soil types. In particular, a symmetrical share that turned the sod simultaneously to right and left and an improved version of the existing Celtic plough with its metal share and moulding board, to which was added a coulter – a blade cutting through the soil vertically ahead of the plough which enabled previously unworkable land to be broken in. They also introduced a number of new agricultural tools: sickles, mattocks, hoe rakes, turf cutters, iron rakes, two-handed scythes, mower’s anvils, forks, slip-eye axes and metal spades. The most important of these was the two-handed scythe, making close cropping of hay, other fodder crops and grain possible, and the metal spade, which had an important impact on field drainage. Improved methods of grinding corn were brought in from the Continent along with the novel idea of drying corn in purpose-built heated granaries.

UNDER THE ROMANS, FARMING METHODS CHANGED THROUGH A COMBINATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES AND PLANNED FIELD SYSTEMS, PRODUCING AN ORDER AND REGULARITY TO THE COUNTRYSIDE THAT INCREASED OUTPUT AND AIDED COMMUNICATION.

All these were of secondary importance to the development of a demand-led economy that pushed agricultural production to new peaks. Towns such as London, Bath, Colchester, Newcastle, Corbridge, York and Carmarthen, to name only a few, were a new feature in the landscape and both a catalyst for further agricultural production and consequence of it. There was also the Roman army which became a major purchaser, encouraging farmers to grow produce for sale rather than primarily for subsistence. The existing cultivated plants continued to be grown and new species of vegetable were introduced: cabbage, broad bean, parsnip, peas, radish, turnip, celery, carrot, mustard, tares and corn spurry. They also brought fruit trees and established orchards of cherry, plum, medlar, damson, bullace, apple, mulberry, figs and grapes.

There is evidence that existing sheep and cattle were improved by cross-breeding with Roman stock. I have always understood that the Romney Marsh sheep are descended from those belonging to the large Roman settlements on the fringes of the Kent and Essex salt marshes. Apart from the excellent grazing, the attraction of marshes was the absence of liver fluke in salt water, which today still causes numerous deaths among sheep. Although wheat was the staple diet of the army, beef was the preferred ration and numerous large cattle ranches were established in the south and near places such as Hadrian’s Wall and other military depots or legion bases. Livestock farmers prospered as much as grain producers; apart from meat and textiles there was a huge demand for hides to supply the army’s need for leather.

The Romans introduced the revolutionary three-year or three-field system of cultivation to their arable farms, which improved soil fertility and increased productivity by rotating rye or winter wheat, followed by spring oats or barley, then leaving the field fallow during the third stage. The average size of arable farm was between 100 and 142 hectares, made up of regular-shaped oblong or square fields of around five hectares. Eastfield and three other villas near Andover, for example, North Warnborough and Stroud in Hampshire, East Grinstead and Wigginholt in East and West Sussex, and Rodmartin in Gloucestershire, were all about the same size. There were also some substantial estates and cattle ranches: Ditchley in Oxfordshire was over 400 acres; Bignor in Sussex and Cromhall in Gloucestershire were both 800 acres. Woodchester, the most magnificent of all the villas outside Rome, would have been the centre of an even more substantial hectarage. There are over a hundred major Roman sites in England, twenty in Wales and six in Scotland, plus literally hundreds of minor ones. For example, in Southern Scotland alone there are any number of farms with the name ‘Chesters’, indicating that there was Roman occupation and agriculture of some sort on that site.

By the fourth century AD, the population had risen to nearly five million with a substantial urban population engaged in trades and crafts, enjoying a civilised life with baths, sanitation, culture, education and entertainment. Agriculture was booming, buoyed by a money economy, efficient transport and urban markets. Unfortunately it was not to last; the Empire was overstretched and the barbarian hordes were at the gates of Rome. The legions were hurriedly recalled and within a few decades life for the population would change dramatically. The order and sophistication of the Roman period would not be seen in Britain for another thousand years.

During the fifth and sixth centuries, the endless upheaval of wars, famine, disease and political uncertainty led to a massive depopulation of Britain. By 700 AD, numbers had fallen to substantially less than two million as droves of migrants fled to north-western France, forming what is now Brittany, or Northern Spain, to create Britonia. By the beginning of the eighth century, trade that had driven the growth of agriculture in late Iron Age and Roman times had long since collapsed and farming was purely for subsistence.

Initially, the magnificent Roman villas were occupied by communities of squatters, but as the buildings collapsed through lack of repair, the majority of the population lived on small farmsteads made of wood, wattle and reed thatching. In the chaotic social structure of the time there were two classes of freemen below the king and above slaves: thanes at the upper end and ceorls (churls) at the lower. A man could only be a thane if he owned at least five hides of land – a hide being roughly fifty hectares – and a ceorls was literally ‘a non-servile peasant farmer,’ who farmed land under obligation to a succession of landlords, who changed according to the outcome of various territorial squabbles.

INNOVATIONS IN AGRICULTURE WERE NON-EXISTENT AND IT WOULD BE SOME TIME BEFORE THE OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM WAS ADOPTED … A CHANGE THAT WOULD DEVELOP OVER THE NEXT TWO CENTURIES AND AGAIN ALTER THE FACE OF THE COUNTRYSIDE FOR GENERATIONS TO COME.

The standard cereal crops were grown but the area under arable production had fallen considerably, with much of the land previously under cultivation reverting to rough pasture, scrub and woodland. Ceorls resumed the Iron Age practice of a simple two-field rotation, typically farming one or two hides of land in small irregular-shaped fields with rough hedging or earth banks. Innovations in agriculture were non-existent and it would be some time before the open-field system was adopted, where ceorls worked co-operatively, sharing the expense of a team of oxen to plough the large common fields in narrow strips that were shared out alternately so that each farmer had an equal share of good and bad land – a change that would develop over the next two centuries and again alter the face of the countryside for generations to come.

Livestock would have generally been farmed in small numbers sufficient only for the farmsteads’ needs and dependent on how much could be grown to feed them through the winter. Cattle were kept primarily for milk, or as beasts of burden, and eventually for their meat and hides. Sheep were kept for milk and wool. All settlements had a few self-sufficient goats producing milk, even from the poorest diet, and large herds of pigs browsing in the adjacent woods.

When they weren’t fighting, hunting was an important part of the lives of Anglo-Saxon thanes, with horses and hounds regarded as valuable status symbols, often being buried with their owners, such as the one at Lakenheath, in Suffolk. Later much of this land was consolidated into the large estates of wealthy nobles and the Church. Ceorls might work the land in return for service or produce, or they might work the lord’s land a given number of days per year. As time went on, more and more of these large estates were established as integrated commercial enterprises, complete with sophisticated water mills to grind grain, such as the ones at Corbridge in Northumberland, Tamworth in Staffordshire, or Old Windsor in Berkshire.

By the end of the Anglo-Saxon period an increasing number of lords had led to a division of the landscape into smaller blocks, more akin to today’s parishes, often with a single large manor and its associated church. Trade with Europe and Scandinavia in hides, wool and slaves was picking up and craftsmen were beginning to form themselves into guilds, such as the Fellmongers, Horsemongers, Flshmongers, Shieldwrights, Shoewrights, Turners and Salterers. A new socioeconomic order was becoming established which was centred on the church and monasteries, the climate entered a warm cycle and Britain started to become prosperous again. This prosperity is reflected by the periodic discovery of rich hoards of Anglo-Saxon treasure, such as the priceless discoveries at Sutton Hoo or the 1,500 pieces of gold objects found by a metal detector in a Staffordshire field in 2009. Nor is there any shortage of archaeological sites: Spong Hill at North Elmham in Norfolk, the largest Anglo-Saxon cemetery, with associated field boundaries, enclosures and sunken huts; or West Stow, where an entire village has been excavated. There is also an extensive site at Cheddar, in Somerset, where King Edmond had his palace and settlements in the Yorkshire Wolds, such as Wharram Percy and Cottam; sites at Loughborough, Barrow and Rothley in Leicestershire; Yardley and Kings Norton near Birmingham and Langford in Oxfordshire, which formed part of a large comital estate, probably including Broadwell and Great Faringdon.

ADVANCES IN FARMING

The Normans arrived in an aggressive blizzard of super-efficiency. Within a matter of years, rebellion was quashed and the old Anglo-Saxon aristocracy eliminated. The estates of the 4,000 or so principal Anglo-Saxon landowners were confiscated and divided among just 170 Norman knights. By 1096, all Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics had been replaced by Normans and the extensive church lands were in Duke William’s hands. Fifty per cent of Britain was now owned, subject to their obligation to the King, by the 170 ‘tenants in chief, whilst William and the Church owned the rest. Because he was able to grant his followers vast tracts of land at little cost to himself, William’s prestige increased tremendously. His awards also had a basis in consolidating his own control; with each gift of land and titles the newly created feudal lord would have to build a fortified manor or castle and subdue the local Anglo-Saxons. The social structure of the country was organised round the system of feudalism, which was built upon a relationship of obligation and mutual service between vassals and lords, with everyone owing fealty to the King. In practice the country was not governed by the King but by individual lords, or barons, who administered their own estates, dispensed their own justice, minted their own money, levied taxes and tolls, and demanded military service from vassals who held land as a grant from a lord. As the country settled down after the Conquest, small farmsteads started to nucleate, hamlets formed and the familiar landscape of villages, manor houses and churches took shape.

A typical Norman estate consisted of a manor house, one or more villages and up to several thousand acres of land divided into meadow, pasture, forest and cultivated fields. Fields were further divided into strips: a third for the lord of the manor, less for the church, and the remainder for the peasants and serfs who worked the land. This land was shared out so that each person had equal portions of good and poor. At least half the working week was spent on the land belonging to the lord and the church. Time might also be spent doing maintenance and on special projects such as clearing land, cutting firewood, and building roads and bridges. The rest of the time the villagers were free to work their own land.

The open-field system developed by the Saxons was widely adopted by 1100 AD; land was divided into strips and allocated amongst the community on a changing basis. This gave rise to a ridge and furrow effect across the field where the soil in the strip was continually ploughed back into the centre of itself and away from adjoining strips. Ridge and furrow often survives on higher ground where the arable land was subsequently turned over to sheep walks in the fifteenth century and has never been ploughed out since by modern ploughing methods, today surviving as pasture and grazing for sheep where the effect is clearly visible, especially in certain lighting conditions. A defining feature of medieval ridge and furrow is the curved ends making the overall shape of an elongated reverse-S. This arose because of the tendency of the team of oxen ploughing with the primitive single furrow ploughs to pull to the left, in preparation for making the turn.