A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



1 being scarce at all used for bread,' but a con- 

 siderable quantity of barley was, and oats of 

 various kinds, of which the chief were ' the 

 Poland ' and ' the Friesland Holland ' ; 80 

 bushels per acre of the latter being sometimes 

 obtained, though the average crop was 32 to 

 56 bushels. Hops in 1798 were a considerable 

 article of produce, principally about Retford 

 and Southwell. They were known by the 

 name of North Clay Hops, and were much 

 stronger than the Kentish, but many said their 

 flavour was too rank. Although the quantity was 

 said to have diminished in the previous thirty 

 years there were then from 1,100 to 1,400 

 acres of hopyards, chiefly on the strong clay and 

 bog or black earth, in valleys and wet lands not 

 very valuable for other purposes. The yield, 

 however, was small : in the best years only 8 

 cwt. per acre, owing, however, not to the quality 

 of the land but to the ignorance and poverty 

 of the small planter. In 1905 there was not 

 an acre of hops in the county, because foreign 

 competition has stopped the growth of any but 

 the best sorts. 



The grass land was used more ror grazing 

 than dairying, yet most farmers kept a few 

 milking cows of no particular breed, and there 

 was a considerable amount of dairying along the 

 Soar and in the towns on the south bank of the 

 Trent, cheese being the chief product in the 

 latter district. The cattle were of various kinds, 

 Irish for feeding in some places, black cattle, the 

 Longhorns, and some people had improved their 

 stock by the famous Dishley breed, as much as 

 400 guineas having been given fora bull, 19 a very 

 high price then. The beasts reared in the clay 

 district were generally of a poor coarse kind 

 called the ' woodland beasts, ' which some of the 

 gentry and principal farmers were trying to 

 improve. The chief sheep were the old forest 

 breed (some horned), with grey faces and legs, 

 whose wool was fine and averaged about 2 Ib. 

 to the fleece. They weighed about 8 Ib. a 

 quarter fat. In the vale of Trent sheep had 

 been much improved by the introduction of 

 rams of the Lincolnshire and New Leicestershire 

 breeds, 20 and many breeders were spreading the 

 improvement by letting out their rams. In the 

 North Clays the sheep were a poor lot, a 

 mixture of the forest and the Lincolnshire, 

 though here too the New Leicestershire was 

 being introduced with good results, which had 

 also followed the same innovation in the vale of 

 Belvoir. Pigs were little attended to, only 

 enough being kept for home use, of the 'old 



J * Bakewell was not so successful with cattle as with 

 sheep ; the Dishley breed of the former has disappeared. 

 In 1795 Charles Ceiling's famous Durham ox weighed 

 3,024 Ib. and sold for .140. 



w The New Leicestershire, Bakewell's production, 

 was based, it is supposed, on the old Leicestershire or 

 Warwickshire crossed with the Ryeland. 



lop-eared sort ' for bacon, and ' the Chinese 

 dunky or swing-tailed sort ' tor pork. Poultry- 

 rearing was also greatly neglected : fowls were of 

 a bad breed, generally the game sort, reared as 

 much for cock-fighting as for the table, and few 

 turkeys or geese were kept. 



The period of the great French War, 1793-1815, 

 witnessed considerable inflation of prices ; land 

 sold far above its real value, the standard of living 

 became unduly extravagant, rents were raised ex- 

 cessively, there was undue expenditure on build- 

 ings, and invaluable pasture was broken up to 

 grow wheat, which sometimes sold for a guinea 

 a bushel. 21 With peace came the inevitable re- 

 action from artificial prosperity, which however 

 had been considerably discounted by the heavy 

 taxation, and there was widespread distress among 

 landlords, tenants, and labourers, though the last- 

 named had had little share in the good times. So 

 sudden was the change that in Nottinghamshire 

 in 1816 rents had fallen from 10 to 30 per cent., 

 and on one farm in the parish of Averham there 

 had been a reduction of 50 per cent. The labourers 

 were reported by various parishes to be in great 

 distress for want of employment, and many were 

 employed by overseers at low wages, and this 

 raised the rates still higher than they were. Yet 

 the farmers were saying that the labourers' wages 

 were too high, though from 1811 to 1814 the 

 average was 12s. gd., and in the next four years 

 they sank 17 per cent., whereas prices of provi- 

 sions had risen enormously. Blacksmiths, white- 

 smiths, collar-makers, ropers, and carpenters, had 

 during the war raised their prices threefold, and 

 farmers now could not afford to pay them. In 

 some parishes labourers were working for the 

 farmers for is. a day, but as the overseer paid any 

 further sum required for the maintenance of his 

 family, the farmer gained little or nothing by 

 this. In other parishes, men who had applied to 

 the overseer for relief were let out by him to 

 farmers for little more than their meat. Accord- 

 ing to the law of the time, some farmers were ' in 

 confinement at the instance of their creditors.' 23 

 The remedies proposed by various farmers in 

 the county, in answer to queries sent them by the 

 Board of Agriculture, were to lower the rents 

 still further, and the taxes, which during the war 

 and for some time after were a most grievous 

 burden, to prohibit imports, give a bounty on 

 exports, and one recommends the nobility to stay 

 at home, and presumably spend their income 

 there. The distress lasted about twenty years, 

 and the foundation of the Royal Agricultural 

 Society in 1838 marks the turn of the tide, when 

 a period of great progress commenced, in which 

 the chief feature was the application of science to 

 practice. 



11 The highest price of wheat in England in modern 

 history is that of Dec. 1 800, 6 1 3/. ^d. a quarter. 

 Thorold Rogers, Hist, of Agric. and Prices, \, 198. 



" jfgric. State of the Kingdom, 1816, p. 250. 



376 



