Agricultural Response to a Changing Market during the Napoleonic Wars

Agricultural Response to a Changing Market during the Napoleonic WarsAuthor(s): Stuart MacdonaldSource: The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Feb., 1980), pp. 59-71Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Economic History SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2595544 .

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Agricultural Response to a Changing Market during the Napoleonic Wars

BY STUART MACDONALD

TANDuse is a product of the times; even agricultural land use, dependent on the fickle nature of both farmer and weather and encumbered by the dictates of

_ tradition, responds ultimately, if not initially, to changing circumstances. This response is frequently described in terms of a polarization of land use, of a change to either pastoral farming or to arable farming. The early nineteenth- century concept of "up horn, down corn", with its implication that prosperity was to be found in one or the other form of land use, but not in both at once, accords well with this approach. Less appropriate is the high farming of the third quarter of that century when exceptional circumstances allowed both modes of agriculture to flourish not only together, but also interdependently. Of course, the purist could argue that crops had always been dependent on the manure from stock, and that stock numbers had been influenced by cropping since at least the first crop of field turnips and probably long before. But niceties apart, there is a generally accepted relationship between prevailing market conditions and the broad definitions of agricultural land use. For example, during the periods of high grain prices of the Napoleonic Wars it is traditionally held that farmers concentrated on arable agriculture and expanded their grain acreage, only to reverse the process when grain prices slumped after the Wars.'

While no one suggests that wholesale conversion was made by all farmers, such a pattern of land use change fits well the requirements of the economic historian trying to detect response to changing economic conditions. It is also agreeable to the historical geographer concerned with tracing change in land use. The agricultural historian is perhaps rather less comfortable with the thesis. It is an expensive and protracted business to convert a farm from one function to the other. Indeed, much land would fail to respond to such radical change. So, too, would manyfarmers, for "agricultural man" is not "economic man". He has his own particular skills and preferences and capital tied up in the existing form of land use. While wholesale change in agricultural land use may be something that is detectable over time, it was probably not an immediate response of even the most alert farmers during even the most auspicious years. This is not to say that farmers are particularly slow-witted and unwilling to change with the times-just the reverse. It is to suggest that farmers were unwilling to make sudden commitments to long-term changes in land use. Rather they chose to cater for variations in the market in the same way that they compensated for unseasonal changes in the weather-by effecting ad hoc land use alterations that

1 E.g. Lord Ernle, English Farming Past and Present (6th edn. i96i), pp. 267-9, 322-3; P. Deane and W. A. Cole, British Economic Growth, i688-1959 (Cambridge, I962), p. 75.

59



6o STUART MACDONALD

were as easily implemented as they were reversed.' Excessive commitment to either pastoral or arable farming made such adjustments unnecessarily difficult. Using Northumberland evidence, this paper suggests that many farmers sought an agricultural system which facilitated ad hoc change, and this they found not by entrenching themselves in either arable or pastoral farming, but by placing greater reliance on convertible husbandry.

Recent work which suggests that English farmers responded to the peculiar market conditions of the Napoleonic Wars by increasing their production of meat does so at the expense of sacrificing one of the fundaments of improved agriculture in many areas during this period.2 In such areas by i8oo it would have been meaningless to talk of increased meat production as an alternative to increased grain production because the two were inseparably bound up in that system of turnip husbandry by which the same land yielded turnips, temporary grass, and grain crops.3 Consequently, if market conditions during the Napoleonic Wars did entice farmers to produce more meat, this need not have been at the expense of grain cultivation. Similarly, under such a system, a new interest in high-priced grains need have had little effect on meat production. Indeed, where turnip husbandry replaced either older grain-oriented rotations or permanent pasture, it was quite possible to produce both more grain and more meat. In Northumber- land by the late eighteenth century, for example, it seems that there had been a considerable increase in sheep numbers, ". . . tho' more and not less ground is under the Plow. I speak of the Increase in the Low Country, & long Wooled Sheep, as its probable little alteration has or can be made in Nos in the Hill Country" .4

Within the overall category of turnip husbandry, the distinction between convertible husbandry and alternate husbandry is an important one and will be explored in more detail later. By the late eighteenth century, Norfolk had become the doyen of agricultural improvement based on a four-course rotation which alternated grain crops with turnips and grass. The rotation, with its advantages of avoiding a bare fallow and allowing arable to feed stock and stock to manure arable, spread widely on lighter land, but as a fixed rotation. Farmers deviating from the Norfolk or any other rotation offended against the collective wisdom of the agricultural community and risked the ire and penalties of their landlord.5 Convertible husbandry, on the other hand, though based on the same

1 G. E. Mingay, 'The "Agricultural Revolution" in English History: A Reconsideration', Agricultural History, xxxvii (I963), 129.

2 Glenn Hueckel, 'Relative Prices and Supply Response in English Agriculture during the Napoleonic Wars', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. XXIX (1976), 401-14. See also idem, 'English Farming Profits during the Napoleonic Wars, 1793-1815', Explorations in Economic History, XIII (1976), 331-45, in which, referring to the early nineteenth-century economy, it is claimed that "the direction of investment could be altered between sectors reasonably quickly in response to change in relative rates of return". It is unrealistic to allow investment such sensitivity while permitting farmers only the comparatively crude response of turning to more arable or to more pasture.

3 A. H. John, 'Farming in Wartime: 1793-i815', in E. L. Jones and G. E. Mingay, eds. Land, Labour, and Population in the Industrial Revolution (i967), pp. 37-8; R. Trow-Smith, Lifefrom thle Land (i967), pp. 152-3.

4 George Culley to Arthur Young, 8 Dec. 1790, Northumberland County Record Office (NCRO)/ ZCU/3.

5 The form of words used by one steward was quite explicit. "I am directed by Sir Charles Monck to declare to you that, because you have this year cropped out of the course agreed upon on your farm held of him at he puts upon you of additional rent to begin from the I 2th day of next May." NCRO/ZMI/B41/7.



AGRICULTURAL RESPONSE 6i

rotation principle, was a much more pragmatic arrangement, allowing the farmer far more operational freedom. George Culley summed up its practical advantages for north Northumberland in I 790:

The general arrangement of the farms, in these Borders, is in the rotation, of grain, turnips, grain, clover; varying these crops, as circumstances dictate; which course, or courses, by throwing up such a plentiful produce, enable the farmers to keep a very increased quantity, both of neat cattle and sheep. .. Besides, the ground is so improved by these valuable animals, depasturing upon it, that it throws up prodigious crops of Dutch or Poland oats, which sometimes induces the farmers to take a crop of wheat after the oats, before fallowing for turnips.'

How, then, did farmers react to changing market conditions in an area in which convertible husbandry was of considerable and growing importance? Unfortunately, few details of Northumberland stock numbers survive. What does survive is an interesting series of crop returns for the county from the first half of the Napoleonic Wars. Use of such figures avoids over-reliance on what few statistics there are for individual farms, the very existence of which suggests a measure of individual eccentricity. The Northumberland figures do show changes in land use, but certainly no move either to or from arable or pastoral exploitation. Instead, change was of two sorts; an immediate reaction to market conditions which took the form of cropping changes, and adaptation of the best land-either arable or pastoral-to convertible husbandry to take advantage of both high grain prices and high meat prices. By adopting an agricultural stance that was neither wholly arable nor wholly pastoral, many Northumberland farmers equipped themselves to take full advantage of changing times without resorting to drastic change in land use. There is, perhaps, no more poignant evidence of this reluctance to be committed to a single new land use than the fact that the hills and marginal land of Northumberland, covering about a third of the county, survived the high grain prices of the Napoleonic Wars with few additional scars.2

I Change from pastoral land use to arable does seem to have taken place in Northumberland, but before the Napoleonic Wars rather than during them.3 Typical newspaper farm advertisements of the period contain such lines as "the whole Farm is now in Grazing, but Liberty will be given to plow a Part thereof", or "great Encouragement will be given to entering Tenants to plow out fresh Grounds".4 No doubt these fresh grounds and much of the other land to be ploughed had recently been moorland, but it would not be correct to imagine a situation in which, by the end of the eighteenth century, the moors were being

1 Annals of Agriculture, xiv (I 790), 473. 2 It is estimated that 38 - 8 per cent of Northumberland is "poor quality" land.-D. B. Grigg, 'An Index

of Regional Change in English Farming', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, XXXVI (1965), 62.

See also Stuart Macdonald, 'The Development of Agriculture and the Diffusion of Agricultural Innova- tion in Northumberland, 1750-i850' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1974), pp. 200-33.

3 See J. D. Chambers and G. E. Mingay, The Agricultural Revolution, 1750-1880 (New York, I966), p. III.

4 Heighlaws, Hartburn, Newcastle Courant, 4 Jan. 1755, Well House, Chollerton, ibid. 25 Nov. 1758. The paper carried 2 such advertisements in the period 1750-90, but only I I during 179 -I 85o, a much longer period of much heavier advertising. See also Gentleman's Magazine (Jan. i807), pp. 38-9.



62 STUART MACDONALD

enclosed and ploughed purely or even largely to create more arable land. Such enclosure was sometimes carried out for pasture and nothing else.' Much more frequently inauspicious hill land was pared and burned, and sometimes limed as well, to yield several arable crops before being seeded for permanent grass, a process only slightly more refined than the traditional custom, heartily and pre- cdictably condemned by Young, of taking crops on patches of new land for as long as it was productive and then abandoning them.2 Given favourable weather, such virgin land could be extremely productive for a season or two, even without manure. This sort of land use explains the enormously high grain yields reported from some of the least promising land in the county in the eighteenth century.3 In i8oi, the lofty and exposed parish of Kirkwhelpington recorded one of the highest wheat yields in the county, 32 bushels per acre from a total of only 30 acres; and of Ovingham it was said that, "this present year the higher Grounds, which are three parts out of four of the parish have produced double crops,.4

It appears that at least some of this "arable" invasion on to the moors was effected without benefit of enclosure. When Lord Tankerville complained to his land agent in I 777 that Wooler Common was being ploughed, he was told that stopping it would be difficult as his tenants had been ploughing 200 acres of it for the previous ten or twelve years and because "this Comon or moor has been Ridg & Furror Plowd some Hundred Years egoe".5 Such encroachments were so usual that they were sometimes given legal standing by the payment of "acre money" to the lord of the manor. One such case was Nubbock, near Hexham, where it was explained that, "some of the enclosures are in Tillage and others in pasture and have often been changed from one to the other".6

It cannot be overemphasized that such temporary arable exploitation of land in no way represented permanent change in land use or permanent extension of the margins of arable cultivation. Often it is assumed that evidence of ploughing on high land is likely to have been produced as a result of such extension during times of high grain prices, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars.7 The Northumberland material conflicts with this assumption. Certainly pockets of wheat were grown at i,ooo feet during the Wars, some barley at I,500 feet and even a few oats at 2,000 feet, but at the very time when there would seem to have been incentive to make arable all that land which could be made arable, the high ground was largely ignored.8 Indeed, so unprofitable was the arable cultivation of high ground then deemed to be that men gazed in awe, as they do now, at the height of former cultivation. "The ridges and furrows, apparent in various parts of Kidland [in the West], plainly show that the feet and sloping sides of these finely-formed hills have, at one time, been more accustomed to cultivation than at present".9 In south Northumberland, it was much the same; ". . . here

lJohn Naismith on enclosure in the Cheviots, Annals Agric. xxvii (I797), i98. 2 Arthur Young, Northern Tour (I770), III, I 5. 3 Ibid. 104. 4 PRO/HO/67/8. 5Joseph Hutchinson to Lord Tankerville, 26 Nov. 1777, NCRO/Tankerville, Box I/D/2. 6 Case outline, 3 April 1775, NCRO/Allendale MSS/CS/15/a. 7 E.g. Ernle, op. cit. pp. 2io-I I; Chambers and Mingay, op. cit. p. I i7; Mark Overton, 'The i8oi

Crop Returns for Cornwall', Exeter Papers in Economic History, VIII (I 973), 49. 8 N. J. Winch, An Essay on the Geographical Distribution of Plants through the Counties of Northumberland,

Cumberland, and Durham (Newcastle, I 8 I 9), pp. I 9-20. 9J. Hodgson and F. C. Laird, The Beauties of England and Wales (I813), XXII, i i6.



AGRICULTURAL RESPONSE 63

the surface has been cast into equal ridges by the plough, though the land is now covered by heath, and agriculture has formerly flourished in situations so ele- vated as to preclude the possibility of obtaining corn crops from them at the present day. Record and tradition are alike silent respecting the era when, and the people by whom, these districts were subject to tillage".' In Northumber- land, and perhaps elsewhere,2 the immediate response to increased demand for agricultural produce was not to plough the hillsides. Rather it was to adapt existing agricultural land to the demands of the times. Convertible husbandry suited these demands admirably.

II Convertible agriculture is a system in which land can be converted from pastoral to arable and vice versa. An example of such a system would be the Northumber- land five-course rotation, with a field producing corn for two years, turnips for the third, and being turned to temporary pasture for the remaining two years.3 By the late eighteenth century, such a system was far from unique to Northumber- land, but it would have been rare in that county and probably anywhere else very much earlier in the century. In i8oi rotations based on temporary grass were considered the bulwark of Northumberland farming, and the main difference between it and "that system of husbandry which is pursued in many parts of the kingdom, to the southward of us, and which appears to proceed from a greater attachment to the opinions and customs of our ancestors, than we can here afford to entertain".4 The Northumberland system, like the Norfolk rotation, was, of course, alternate husbandry, but while the Norfolk's single year of clover gave a bias towards grain, the Northumberland's several years of temporary pasture made it truly convertible as well as alternate. Convertible husbandry had evolved from traditional three- or four-course rotations during which the land grew crops for two or three years and recuperated in fallow for the remaining year. Pasture land was distinct and rarely involved in rotations. Whatever advantages the older systems had did not include flexibility. They could be gradually adapted to cater for increased long-term demand for either pastoral or arable products, but in no way could they respond to rapid change. When the Napoleonic Wars brought periods of sudden increased demand for both arable and pastoral products, farmers using systems of convertible husbandry were able to benefit from both and to depend on neither. Farmers in such

1 Winch, op. cit. pp. i9-20. See also Naismith, loc. cit. I79 and Seymour Bell's Notes, c. i86o, NCRO/ ZHE/34/I1

2 K. G. Davies and G. E. Fussell, 'Worcestershire in the Acreage Returns for i 8o i', Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society, XXVII (I95I), 22-3; R. A. Pelham, 'The Agricultural Geography of Warwickshire during the Napoleonic Wars as revealed by the i8oi Acreage Returns', Transactions and Proceedings of the Birmingham Archaeological Society, LXVII (I952), 92.

3 A concise account of the stock-rearing potential of such a rotation occurs in J. Caird, English Agricul- ture in ?850-I (2nd edn. I968), pp. 373-4.

4 A Northumberland Farmer, Farmer's Magazine, II (i 8o I), 307-8. 5John Bailey, author of General View of the Agriculture of Durham (i8io), seems to have appreciated this

point rather more than William Marshall in his Review and Abstract of the County Reports to the Board of Agriculture (i 8o8-i 8), 1, 5 1. Further confusion over the term is admitted in G. E. Fussell, 'Poor Times and Good Farming', Bedfordshire Magazine, IV, 28 (I 954), I 5 I . See also G. E. Fussell and M. Compton, 'Agri- cultural Adjustments after the Napoleonic Wars', Economic History (Feb. I 939), p. I 93; and E. L. Jones, 'English Farming before and during the Nineteenth Century', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xv ( I962), I 50o



64 STUART MACDONALD

a position revelled in their good fortune, ". . . we meet with much more money than we had expected. The farmers in ye district are full of money, and indeed it is not to be wondered at, as every thing the farmers have to sell are at a higher price than I ever knew before".' When, for example, corn prices rocketed, it was a relatively simple matter to delay seeding the ley for a year while another corn crop was taken. While this might technically infringe the conditions of the lease, it was never the obvious affront to both contract and good husbandry that the seizure of three or even four corn crops in succession under the older system always was.

What distinction there was between arable and pastoral land use was also made much less clear with the widespread adoption of the turnip. The traditional system of three- or four-course rotations exploited turnips, where they would grow, as a fallow crop-better than a naked fallow, but in no way a rival to grain crops. In areas of convertible husbandry, the turnip played a vital role, was an essential part of the rotation and sometimes more important than any grain crop.2 More turnips permitted more stock to be wintered and fed, the manure from which allowed more crops, including turnips, to be cultivated. Under such conditions, arable and pastoral agriculture were interdependent and, whatever the market, it would have been impossible to sacrifice the one in favour of the other. Stock, of course, was always a reasonably flexible commodity, to be sold lean or fat as the market or necessity seemed to suggest. Grain, on the other hand, meant a much more definite commitment which started immediately it was sown, and which lasted until after threshing, when the crop was sold. Sale could be delayed, sometimes for months, but only at the risk of worsening markets and deteriorating produce. How then did the convertible farmer of the Napoleonic period choose to cope with a variable grain market and still retain the essential turnip and stock ingredient in his husbandry?

The price of all grains fluctuated remarkably during the Napoleonic Wars, but wheat was outstanding in always fetching the very highest prices.3 Such price levels tempted farmers to play the wheat market as they had never done before. George Culley, a tenant farmer in north Northumberland, wrote in i802, "I believe we never sold so much Wheat by this Season, in any year I recollect since we grew so much? And not only us but most people I believe in this District, led by the same Idea Viz that Wheat could not hold the price it began with? sold more than usual. Besides it raised so much money."4 Indeed it had; though the county was generally one in which the people ate barley and in which oats grew best, by the late eighteenth century wheat was extensively grown. Table i

gives some idea of the Culley brothers' relative financial dependence on wheat,

1 George Culley to Mr Darnell of Newcastle, 6July I 795, NCRO/ZCU/3 I . See also J. R. McCulloch, Statistical Account of the British Empire (i 837), I, 469; G. E. Fussell, 'Impressions of SirJohn Sinclair', Agric. Hist. xxv (I95i), i67.

2 For example, in the parish of Carham, in north Northumberland, turnips occupied a greater acreage than any single grain crop in i80 I.-PRO/H/067/8.

3 "The general word Corn, is here substituted for Wheat, because it appears that all sorts of bread-corn have in all times borne a price very nearly proportionate to each other... ."-Edward Wilson, Observations on the Present State of the Poor (Reading, I 795), p. I 3. Northumberland figures give a wheat : barley : oats price ratio for the period I79i-i8io of about i'O: 54: 42, a ratio almost identical to that for the whole period I760-i840. Macdonald, thesis, pp. 282-7.

4 George Culley toJohn Welch, 30 March i802, NCRO/ZCU/6.




oats, and barley.' Of course, Culley knew full well that such a situation could not last. When grain prices began to fall in the April of I 8o2, he wrote, ". . . let us be thankful, that we have had our share of wonderful good times; what is more, we made good use of them, so, as we can bear a brush?"2

Table I. George and Matthew Culley's Grain Receipts

% of total Total receipts grain receipts

Oats Barley Wheat for all grain earned by wheat

1797 1,117 195 4,477 5,789 77 1799 2,149 292 5,706 8,147 70 i8oo 635 376 5,973 6,984 86 i8oi 1,990 727 10,937 13,654 8o I 802 1,121 596 6,045 7,762 78

Source: NCRO/ZCU/33.

Where, then, was all this extra wheat grown? As we have seen, there is no evidence of any arable exploitation of the wastes and hillsides that had not been going on sporadically for generations. Nor is there much evidence of better quality pasture land being immediately converted to arable. What there is is a fairly strong suggestion that the farmer's response to high grain prices did not affect stock at all. High grain prices meant even higher wheat prices and the farmer responded by simply taking extra crops of wheat. As Culley said in I 790, well before the highest wheat prices, the great fertility of arable depastured by sheep "sometimes, induces the Farmers, to take a Crop of Wheat, after the Oats, before Following for Turnip. And I think it is the more excusable, while Wheat sells so well, & the land is in high Spirits".3

The poor harvests of some of the Napoleonic War years engendered both high corn prices and sufficient panic to persuade the central government to investigate the situation. Parts of the Northumberland inquiries of I 795, I 8o I, and I 803 remain. The I8oI returns are well known and documented and require no explanation here.4 Those of I795 were prompted by the poor harvests of I793 and I 794 with the object of discovering how the I 795 harvest compared. The Lord Lieutenant of the county canvassed the magistrates in each of the 629 town- ships of Northumberland and the returns were sent to the Home Office where, unfortunately, they survive as only the total expected produce of each crop for the whole county and an indication of how the yield compared with other years.5 More fortunately, there survives in Northumberland pencilled scribblings made at some earlier stage which give the acreage under each crop, the actual yield, and how this compared with normal yield for every township of Glendale and

1 See also D. J. Rowe, 'The Culleys, Northumberland Farmers, I 767-i8I3', Agricultural History Review, XIX (I97I), I72-3.

2 George Culley toJohn Welch, I4 April I802, NCRO/ZCU/6. 3 George Culley to Arthur Young, 8 Dec. I 790, NCRO/ZCU/3. 4 E.g. W. G. Hoskins, 'The Leicestershire Crop Returns of i 8o i', in Leicestershire Archaeological

Society, Studies in Leicestershire Agrarian History (I949); D. Williams, 'The Acreage Returns of i8oi for Wales', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, XIV (I 950-5 I ), 54-7.

5 PRO/HO/42/37/I I9.



66 STUART MACDONALD

Tindale Wards, nearly half the area of Northumberland.' Hence it is possible to determine the actual I 795 yield of the chief grains for much of Northumberland, and as Tindale contained some of the poorest arable in the county and Glendale some of the best, it is also possible to deduce figures for the I 795 yield that are representative of the whole county. Table 2 provides a check on the accuracy of the calculation by comparing the Glendale and Tindale yields for I795, derived from local sources, with the I 795 county yield from national sources. The figures are close enough to allow calculation of the actual acreage under the chief grains in the whole of Northumberland in I 795.

Table 2. The Degree to which rieldfor Glendale and Tindale Wards is Representative of County rield

A B Normalyieldfor I795yieldfor Glen- Proportion by

Glendale and Tindale dale and Tindale which 1795 county A adjusted by B Wards (Winchester Wards (Winchester yield differedfrom (Winchester bushels bushels per acre)* bushels per acre)* normalyieldt per acre)

Wheat 2I10 *6.3 c7/25ths less" 15* I Barley 25 0 23-5 "4I/9thless" 22,2 Oats 24-9 24.2 "crop equal" 24.9

Source: * NCRO/QSB/89/32 . tPRO/HO/42/37/I 19.

Such figures, valuable enough in themselves, become much more so when they are compared with similar figures for a period after some years of excep- tionally high grain prices-especially wheat prices. The i 803 returns were initiated as a precaution when it was feared that invasion by the French was imminent. Plans were made to withdraw the civilian population from coastal areas and to institute a scorched-earth policy to worry the invader.2 Again the Lord Lieutenant sought information from the magistrates, though this time largely about quantities of deadstock, grain threshed and not threshed, and numbers of carts and horses available to move it all. Conveniently, he also asked for an account of the acreage under the chief grains. Some of the early county histories give the i803 figures for individual parishes, but most of these have been lost.3 The abstract for the whole county, however, can still be found in Alnwick Castle.4 Table 3 can, therefore, compare the acreage under the three main grains in I795 with that in I803.

It is unfortunate that the total grain acreage of I 795 and that of I 803 should appear so very similar in Table 3; the method by which they were derived cannot support such precision. It does, however, suggest that there may have been

1 NCRO/QSB/89/32. Figures are given for unnamed sub-divisions, though it is made clear that these cover all of both wards. There are 2 I 3 entries for wheat, 287 for barley, and I 89 for oats. The wide variety of local measures used indicates that this document was compiled direct from original returns.

2 Stuart Macdonald, 'Northumberland during the Napoleonic Wars', Bulletin of the Northumberland Local History Society, xxiv (I 974), 2o-I. See also G. H. Kenyon, 'The Civil Defence and Livestock Returns for Sussex in i8o i', Sussex Archaeological Collections, LXXXIX (I950), 57-84.

3 There are individual parish returns in John Hodgson, History of Northumberland (Newcastle, i832), for Morpeth and Ulgham, Stannington, Kirkhaugh, Knaresdale, Whitfield, Haltwhistle, and Warden. Most of the county abstract appears in E. Mackenzie, History of Northumberland (Newcastle, i825), pt. 2, I, 22i-2, though Mackenzie has made some mistakes in copying from the original.

4 Alnwick Castle, Record Tower, Y/iv/2/b/5.




Table 3. Acreages of Wheat, Barley, and Oats for Northumberland and Berwick (excluding Durham), i795 and I803

B A Supposed countyyield County acreage under

1795 county produce* in 1795t (Winchester chiefgrains in 1795 1803 county acreage (Winchester quarters) bushels per acre) derivedfrom A and B under chief grains

Wheat 68,62o5 i6.3 33,68i 39,236 Barley 64,741 23 5 22,039 2>1,882> Oats 20320,7I8 24-2 76,932> 71,803

Total I 32,6520 I 32,92 I

Source: *PRO/HO/420/37/I19. tNCRO/QSB/89/32. ~AC/Y/iv/2/b/5.

little increase in arable even in response to the highest grain prices. What is most evident is the switch to the most expensive grain-wheat-at the expense of the cheapest-oats. In fact, the Northumberland Quarterly Reports, though they confirm a cropping change rather than a shift from pastoral to arable land use, suggest that it was barley rather than oats that was giving way to wheat.' Perhaps the peculiarly poor oat prices of i802 had turned farmers from it the following year.2 Whether it was oats or barley sacrificed in order to grow more wheat is not terribly important. What is significant is that short-run adjustments were clearly being made to take advantage of what opportunities an uncertain market offered. Long-term adjustments in land use in all probability awaited a period of much greater market certainty, and that did not occur until after I 8 I5.

While changes in cropping may have been the immediate answer to high grain prices, prolonged increased interest in grain did induce the conversion of some pasture. However, this pasture seems not to have been the poorer, marginal land, but rather the best pasture lands. Moreover, its conversion was to convertible husbandry and the temporary pasture that incorporated, rather than to the intensive grain production ofa three- or four-course rotation. This was the pattern noted by the investigators for the Northumberland estate of Greenwich Hospital when they commented upon I87 acres of excellent pasture land at Dilston in I8805.

A considerable part of this Haugh would make an excellent feeding pasture, and in that state, we have no doubt, similar land would be used in the South of Eng- land, and we were at the first view of it inclined to think that the tenant should be restrained from breaking it up; but as it is also exceedingly good arable land and well adapted to the growth of turnips and artificial grasses as well as corn, and being moreover the sort of land most sought after in this part of the country, and producing the greatest rent, we were soon convinced that a restriction of that kind would be injurious to the Hospital.3

Inferior pasture land was not ploughed. As the Reporters commented, "...it is as we have before said the custom of the country to neglect the pasture lands, and will probably continue as long as the plough is so great a favourite".4 This

I Farmer's Magazine, Jan. I8oo to April i8 i9, with few interruptions. See particularly April i8o i, Jan. i804, and April i807. See alsoJohn, loc. cit. p. 30.

2 "Oats are now ... scarcely saleable to the Merchants at these prices!" George Culley toJohn Welch, 30 March i802, NCRO/ZCU/6.

3 Greenwich Hospital Report, i805, NCRO/NRO/467/42/2. 4 Ibid, p. i63.



68 STUART MACDONALD

was exactly what Culley meant in i8oi when he wrote, "The Plough has paid well of late certainly, especially upon good land ?"1

It may seem rather strange that, in a county like Northumberland with its hundreds of thousands of high and marginal acres, farmers should respond to high grain prices initially by changes in cropping and ultimately by converting the very best land from permanent to temporary pasture. Table 4, however, lends further weight to these conclusions. It shows acreage figures of the three main grains for those areas of Northumberland covered by the I 795, I 8o i, and i803 returns. As it happens, the available statistics relate to two very different areas of the county: Glendale in the north-west, though including some high land, was the heart of Northumberland convertible husbandry, the seat of turnip agriculture and one of the most progressive farming areas in the country. Tindale, on the other hand, covered a third of the county and nearly all the extensive moorland of the West. If arable agriculture was to be extended during the Napoleonic Wars by ploughing out marginal land, there was opportunity aplenty in Tindale.

Table 4. Changes in Grain Acreage, i795-i8oi/3,for Parts of Northumberland Acreage

Wheat Barley Oats under three (acres) (acres) (acres) chief grains

Tindale Ward I795 3,378 2,301 6,577 12,256 (East Division) i8oi 3,156 2,872 6,679 12,707

change -7% +25% +2% +4%

Tindale Ward 1795 6,8oi 8,328 20,337 35,466 (Whole) i803 8,136 9,103 20,I37 37,376

change +20% +9% -1% +5%

Glendale 1795 1,507 1,049 3,8i I 6,367 (East Division) i8oi 2,504 1,565 3,955 8,024

change +66% +49% +4% +26%

Glendale 1795 1,313 1,421 4,177 6,91 I (West Division) 1801* 2,358 2,053 4,458 8,869

change +80% +44% +7% +28%

Glendale 1795 2,820 2,470 7,987 13,277 (Whole) 1801* 4,862 3,6 I 8 8,413 I6,893

i803 4,302 2,927 7,66i 14,890 change I795-I80I +72% +46% +5% +27% change I795-I803 +53% +19% -4% +12%

Source: 1795, NCRO/QSB/89/32; i8oi, PRO/HO/67/8; I803, E. Mackenzie, History of Northumberland (Newcastle, I825), pt. 2, I, 222.

*Branxton Parish, in the West Division of Glendale Ward, was included with Cornhill Parish, then in Durham, in the i8oi Returns. Approximate figures based on this joint return, have, therefore, been used for Branxton.

Table 4 shows virtually no change in oat acreage between I 795 and either i8oi or I803. As oats were the easiest grain to cultivate on poor, marginal land, this is significant. Acreage devoted to barley grew, but much more in Glendale where it was associated with turnips in a five-course convertible rotation. Much more marked is the massive expansion of wheat acreage in Glendale, particularly between I 795 and i8oi, when wheat prices reached a notable peak. In Tindale,

1 George Culley toJohn Welch, I4 Aug. i8oi, NCRO/ZCU/6.




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70 STUART MACDONALD

where marginal land abounded, increase in wheat acreage was very much smaller. It is surely significant that increased cereal acreage at a time of high grain prices should be so much greater in an area of convertible husbandry than in an area comprising most of the hills and marginal land of Northumberland.

As has been shown, grain was certainly grown in bleak, remote areas during the Napoleonic Wars, but in a way that was totally traditional and was no reaction to changing market conditions. Moreover, the quantities grown in such locations were so trifling as to be out of all proportion to the amount of comment they have engendered.1

Table 5 gives some indication of the massive decline in highland cultivation of grain between i8oi and the second agricultural census in i867. It should be noted that this decline bears no relationship whatever to the change in acreage under the chief grain crops in the whole county between i803 and i867. What was happening in the highlands was much more a rejection of traditional methods of shifting cultivation than a response to declining grain prices which the rest of Northumberland had yet to register. It could, of course, be argued that there is a threshold price below which it is not worth cultivating grain in upland areas. Assuming though that this threshold had been exceeded in the first years of the nineteenth century, it can be seen to have triggered a reaction by which 8 per cent of the county area was utilized to provide 3 2 per cent of the county's barley acreage, i * 8 per cent of the oat acreage, and o * per cent of the total wheat acreage. Clearly, compared with the immediate cropping changes made on existing arable, and the more gradual conversion of permanent to temporary pasture, what was happening on marginal land was utterly insig- nificant.

III The main emphasis of this article is on initial agricultural response to major price fluctuation in the grain market. It is not suggested that longer term price ten- dencies did not exert a more enduring influence on agricultural land use. Indeed, there is reasonable evidence that the arable acreage of Northumberland grew by something like a hundred thousand acres during the first half of the nineteenth century. Despite postwar depression, a gradual and fairly steady expansion to a mid-century peak seems the most likely pattern.2 By the time of the first agricultural censuses, however, there had been a contraction to the sort of arable acreage prevalent in I 803. It is instructive to compare the two.

Table 6 shows county acreages of the chief arable crops in I803 and in I867, the year of the second annual agricultural census. The difference in total arable acreage is largely attributable to the massive increase in turnip cultivation between these dates. Some of this increase was associated with the spread of convertible husbandry, as might be surmised from the marked expansion of the barley acreage. Barley, like turnips, is essentially a light-land crop and tradi-

1 E.g. F. M. L. Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (i963), pp. 2 i6-I7, 220-I; J. A. Hellen, 'Some Provisional Notes on Wheelhouses and their Distribution in Northumberland', Journal of the Geographical Society of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, XVIII (1970), 24.

2 E. L.Jones, 'The Changing Basis of English Agricultural Prosperity', Agric. Hist. Rev. x (i962), I i0. See also M. C. Naish, 'The Agricultural Landscape of the Hampshire Chalklands, 1700-1840 (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of London, I 96 I), p. 307.




Table 6. Stock Numbers and Acreage of Chief Crops in Northumberland

1803* 1867t (numbers) (numbers)

Sheep 451,547 837,I01 Cattle 75,840 70,607 Pigs 27,987 i8,769

(acres) (acres) Wheat 43, I 34 38,357 Barley 24,o89 28,743 Rye 1,527 251 Oats 77,277 69,798 Beans & Peas 5,713 9,954 Turnips 26,741 50,88 I Potatoes 4,639 4,934

Total acreage 183,120 202,918

Source: * Alnwick Castle Record Tower, Y/iv/2/b/s. Acreages from the i8oi Returns are used for most parts of Northumberland included in Durham in i803. Stock numbers are those for old Northumberland.

t Agricultural Census, I1867, PRO/MAF/68/139.

tionally followed turnips in a convertible rotation. But barley acreage in i803 was go per cent of turnip acreage and only 56 per cent in I867, an indication that turnips were no longer inalienable from convertible husbandry and were being grown on heavier, and often newly drained, land as a fallow crop. Wherever they were grown, turnips served a single purpose; they fed stock. Table 6 also shows Northumberland stock numbers in i803 and in i867. The significant point is that even such a huge increase in sheep numbers did not mean less arable than there had been in I8o3. The turnip, of course, was largely responsible. While turnip acreage expanded by go per cent over the period, sheep numbers grew about 85 per cent. A mid-century commentator noted that ". . . the increase in cattle [stock] is in the face of many thousand acres of grass land having been brought under the plough: thus proving the striking fact, that we now can, with much less grass land than formerly, actually feed more cattle as well as grow more corn".1

It is certainly no revelation that arable and pastoral farming were fairly interdependent during the years of Victorian high farming. It is no secret that the arable side of this partnership was to suffer greatly during the last quarter of the century. Long-term market changes had probably always tended to favour one rather than the other and such changes were no doubt eventually reflected in the alterations occurring in agricultural land use. But to assume that land-use change was an initial response by the farmer to the market seems quite unjustified. The farmer first took the practical course of altering his cropping, particularly when he was able to rely upon the flexibility of convertible husbandry, before per- sistently altered markets drove him to make permanent changes in agricultural land use.

University of Queensland

1 T. Colbeck, 'On the Agriculture of Northumberland', Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, ix (I847), 437.



Agricultural Response to a Changing Market during the Napoleonic Wars

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