41- TUKNIP TOWNSHEND AND THE NORFOLK SYSTEM 



Little effort was made to restore the fertility of the soil : 

 roots were practically unknown ; artificial grasses seldom, 

 if ever, sown : scarcely any manure was used. Under a 

 lease of 1753 a tenant on the manor ofHawsted was allowed 

 two shillings for every load of manure which he brought 

 from Bury and laid upon the land. But during a tenancy 

 of twenty years only one load was charged to the landlord. 

 The impoverished land was left to recover itself as best it 

 could to grass. In the north-west corner of Suffolk tracts 

 of moor and heath, alternating with blowing sands and 

 rabbit-warrens, were interspersed with scanty patches of 

 arable land, choked with weeds, in various stages of 

 exhaustion. 



Lord Townshend's estates were situated in Norfolk, 

 then covered with rush-grown marshes, or sandy wastes 

 where a few sheep starved, and ' two rabbits struggled for 

 every blade of grass.' The brief but exhaustive list of its 

 productions is ' nettles and warrens.' Six hundred thou- 

 sand acres of Lincolnshire were either fen or wold. From 

 Sleaford to Brigg, ' all that the devil o'erlooks from Lincoln 

 town ' was a desolate moor over which a land lighthouse, 

 Dunstan pillar, guided travellers. There were no fences 

 for miles, but the furze-capped sand-banks which enclosed 

 the waiTens. The high ground running from Spilsby to 

 Caistor was similarly a bleak unproductive heath. From 

 the edge of the wolds to the sea was a boggy wilderness. 

 Both counties were as much additions to the profitable 

 dominions of England as any warlike conquests. Young, 

 in 17G0, describes the effect of Townshend's Norfolk hus- 

 bandry on a district near Norwich : — 



' Thirty years ago it was an extensive heath without 

 •either tree or shrub, only a sheep-walk to another farm. 

 Such a number of carriages crossed it, that they would 



^ 



