T,yS History of the English Landed Interest. 



advocates its adoption, and the Hertfordshire writer suggests an 

 insulated barn built on piers or pillars, by which description he 

 evidently means the same construction. The great drawback to 

 improvements in this line was not so much any reluctance on 

 the landlord's part to add fresh buildings where necessary, but 

 to make a clean sweep of badly situated homesteads and com- 

 mence de novo. The Shropshire correspondent recognises this, 

 but he points out that homesteads were originally built in low- 

 lying localities for the convenience of a water supply, and that 

 if the health of the farmer's family is to be considered, and the 

 best products of his manure utilised, the proper site should be 

 some high ground, where the rain and melted snow would 

 wash the waste liquors of the fold yard away in to the land. 



Perhaps we could hardly expect to find that a landlord 

 would thus cripple his means at a period when he was, as a 

 rule, not expected even to repair buildings. After he had once 

 made them tenan table his obligations on this score, in the 

 majority of districts, terminated. In the extreme north, land- 

 lords, save such as the Dukes of Northumberland and Norfolk, 

 Lord Derby, etc., did nothing to the buildings, though in Durham 

 most of them were exceptionally generous. In many parts of 

 the Midlands the tenant was entirely responsible. In Norfolk, 

 on the other hand, the landlord was generally liable. In 

 Wiltshire he did all the work except that of thatching and 

 glazing. In Sussex, Berks, Somerset, etc., he found timber and 

 other materials in the rough, also the labour of the thatcher, 

 and in a very few districts, such as Durham, he held himself 

 responsible for the repairs to main walls, timbers and roofs. 

 It does not follow that, in localities where the tenant alone 

 was liable, the buildings were most deficient, for the report 

 from Berkshire eulogises the condition of the homesteads, 

 while in another paragraph it mentions that the onus of 

 repairing entirely lay upon the occupier. 



There seems to have been very little co-operation between 



the landlord and his tenantry at this period of their history. 



When a farm fell vacant it was generally proclaimed in open 



court ^ or put up to auction ; sometimes it was advertised 



^ Norden's Surveyor's Dialogue. 



