A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



one farm to another, which formerly were separate hires. The trend of low 

 prices and reduced demand for agricultural land is all in this direction. The 

 farmhouse which would cost the landlord a heavy outlay to satisfy a new- 

 comer is easily made good enough for a bailiff or head horseman, and so the 

 farm is added to the adjoining holding of a tenant already on the estate, who 

 has shown his landlord he knows how to cultivate the land, and has the capital 

 to do it. The small holder, who has no bank reserve, and has all his 

 available savings invested in tenant's capital, is the first to go under when the 

 wave of bad seasons and low prices sweeps over the land. Many such have 

 succumbed in this manner in Suffolk during the last twenty-five years. And 

 this is yet another cause why the landlord sees his interest in letting his land 

 in large farms. It is, in fact, the history of what many regard as the evil of 

 the small occupations being swallowed up in large ones. There can, however, 

 be no possible doubt that the best cultivation and the most successful farming 

 in Suffolk is found in the largest occupations. 



The small holding, as such, does not gain ground in Suffolk. Suffolk is 

 not a grass county, and the tilling of a little piece of arable land is simply 

 pitting retail against wholesale, without the advantage of labour-saving 

 machinery. The small holdings in this county are generally in the hands of 

 those who have resources other than cultivating their five- or ten-acre plots ; 

 the dealer, the butcher, the rat and mole catcher — anyone but the agricultural 

 labourer. As such he may have risen through the grades of rabbit, poultry, 

 or pig-dealer ; but the cases where a labourer still on the farm cultivates 

 three, six, or ten acres of ground in his own hire are extremely rare. 



The allotment system is a more flourishing element in the village 

 community. But the allotment is not by any means a modern innovation 

 in Suffolk. On one occasion as far back as the eighties the writer remembers 

 taking a 5-r. rent for an allotment — a jubilee year of the little hire of an 

 agricultural labourer — nor was this the only instance. Allotments had been 

 held from the time of the enclosures of the common land about seventy-five 

 years ago. In another parish there were small fields cut up into twenty-rod 

 allotments, of which there are records of rent-paying eighty years back. But 

 the system as applying to the agricultural labourer is not extending. The 

 reason is not far to seek : few cottages are now built in Suffolk where ample 

 ground for garden is not attached. After all, the allotment at a distance 

 from the cottage is but a poor substitute for the garden close by the back- 

 house door. The allotment is given up when the labourer gets into the new 

 cottage where he has forty rods of ground surrounding the house. There 

 are many well-cultivated allotments in the outskirts of the provincial 

 towns in Suffolk, or in the immediate vicinity of the factory. 



The system of valuing between the outgoing and incoming tenant 

 in Suffolk fortunately does not extend beyond the county borders. There 

 is little to be said for the practice to which the professional valuer still 

 adheres. It is not a custom which is in his power to alter without 

 the co-operation of the landowner. As a tenant goes in, so he must go 

 out. But it is time an alteration should be introduced. One of the 

 largest owners in East Suffolk has made a move in the desired direction. 

 In a change of tenancies he paid the outgoing occupier the sum for 

 cultivation of roots under the same system as when he took the farm. 



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