DERELICT FARMHOUSES 



Even in his days, the good farmer was following King 

 Alfred's directions. About 1830-1850 most of the land 

 was in good bearing, and the roads were sufficiently good to 

 admit of the stage-coach with four horses. But they after 

 all lasted but a very short time before the railways again 

 entirely altered the conditions of country life. 



As we have seen, rents were in places, five times as large 

 in 1820-1830 as they had ever been previously.^ Therefore 

 it was that about this time the gentlemen's houses were in 

 many places rebuilt on a more magnificent scale. Then also 

 were begun those circles and strips, or belts of plantation, 

 which are now conspicuous features of the Scotch lowlands. 

 An enormous majority of these plantations are not more 

 than eighty years old. I think avenues were planted in the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fashion about 

 1820 was to destroy them as unnatural, at least in England. 

 Unfortunately no respect was paid to the economic practice 

 of forestry, with very unfortunate results for the proprietor. 

 The rest of this chapter is necessarily unpleasant and dis- 

 tressing reading, but it is necessary if we are to understand 

 the romance of the fields. As one wanders over the grassy 

 pastures of Southern Scotland, where the black-faced sheep 

 foolishly start away, and where one's ears are irritated by the 

 scolding complaints of the curlew or whaup, it is no rare ac- 

 cident to find a few broken-down walls, a clump of nettles, 

 and badly grown ash trees. That was once a farm steading, 

 where a healthy troop of children used to play together 

 after walking three or more miles barefoot to school. The 

 ash trees were planted at every farm " toon," for the Scottish 



^ The agricultural rents in Dumfriesshire were valued in 1656 at 

 £13,225, in 1790-1800 as £109,700, in 1808 £219,037 10s. 8d. In 1905 the 

 value per acre was from £1 to £2. 



IS4 



