Book I. 



AGRICULTURE OF BEDFORDSHIRE. 



1089 



9. Gardens and Orchards. 



Few of either worth notice: cherries ^re erown at Hack well 

 Heath, for the London and Aylesbury market. 



10. Woods and Plantations. 



Willow pollards planted round the margins of fields, on soils 

 suitable for hurdle woofl. Birch, the most common timl)er, very 

 abundant; chiefly used for manufacturirg chairs: woods con- 

 stantly ftiU of vounj? plants from the mast, which ^ow up and 

 succeed those' which are felled ; thus the same timber on the 

 same soil and surface for ages. At Shardeloes, a beech seventy - 

 five feet from the irround, to the first bough : oak and l)eech 

 trees in Ashridge Park, containing from three to six loads of 

 timber : very fine beeches at Missenden ; mast given to pigs. 



11. Impruvements. 



Draining much wanU d ; well performetl on some bogs on the 

 Marquis of Buckingham's estates by digging a well and boring 

 in the bottom till the spring was tapjjea, and then leading it off 

 in an underdrain; paring and burning in general use for 

 bringing grass land to tillage : chalk much used as a manure, 

 sixty or seventy loads per acre, once in twenty-one years, or 

 forty once in twelve years ; allowed to lie on the surface for one 

 winter at least before being ploughed in. Only one Instance of 

 irrigation worth notice, which is at Cheynies, by a tenant of the 

 Duke of Bedford. 



12. Live Stock. 



Cattle kept chiefly for beef and butter, seldom for cheese or 

 work ; Hereford oxen preferred, and next the Devon ; Holder- 

 ness cows for the dairy ; some prefer the long homed Lancas- 

 ter, and others the Sulfblk ; many of the Holdemess cows, 

 after being kept a few years, are sold to the London cow- 

 keepers ; men are generally the milkers ; only one instance 

 found of women performing that operation, fcarl of Bridge- 

 water keeps eight teams of Welsh, one of Sussex, and one of 

 Durham oxen, all yoked as horses ; five used in the cart, and 

 four in a plough ; a few other gentlemen have ox teams ; cattle 

 generally fed off in summer ; cows kept during winter fed on 

 straw, hay, and oil-cake; little herbage or roots in use; milk 

 generally kept in flat vessels of lead; some wooden travs, 

 tinned, 'in use ; skimmed every twelve hours ; in some few 

 places three times a day ; cream from first two skimmings kept 

 by itself; the third skimming makes what is called after-but- 

 ter ; skimming dish, if tin, circular, a foot in diameter, with 

 holes in it, and a handle upon the top of it ; butter made twice 

 a week, in chums of the barrel kind, usually turned by a horse ; 

 time allow^ed for the butter to come, an hour and a half; butter 

 made up in lumps of two povmds each, and sent to London in 

 square flat baskets, eleven inches deep, holding from thirty-six 

 to 120 pounds. Thev have each on three of their sides three 

 marks,thenumberof pounds the basket holds ; a letter, denoting 

 the farmer's name from whom it is received, and the name and 

 residence of the carrier. The baskets and butter cloths are the 

 property of the carrier; all that the farmer has to do is, to 

 carry his butter to the nearest point where the carrier passes, 

 and 'to make his agreement with his butter-factor in London, 

 and receive monthly, or otherwise, the payment. Quantity of 

 butter made, six pounds per cow per week, at an average, 

 when in good ktep, and not nearly dry. Calves generally 

 sold to sucklers ; a few suckled in the county, and a few brought 

 up as stock. 



Sheep. Culture directed to the fattening of lambs, and the 



Berkshire. 



Horses generally soiled; five or six put to a plough In many 

 places, and never less than three. A team of asses kept by 

 the Marquis of Buckingham for the use of his garden ; many 

 used at the potteries at Amersham. 



Hoen, an important article on account of the milk from 

 the dairies; breed the Berkshire, and next, the Chinese and 

 Suffolk. 



Ducks, a material article at Aylesbury and places adjacent ; 

 breed white, and of an early nature. They aie bred and 

 brought up by ])oor peciple, and sent to London by the weekly 

 carriers. One poor man had before his door a small pit of 

 water, about three yards long and one yard broad: at two 

 comers of this pit are places of shelter for the ducks, thatched 

 with straw ; at night the ducks are taken into a house. In 

 one room belonging to this man (the only room he had to live 

 in) were on the 14th of .January, 1808, ducks of three growths, 

 fattening for the London market ; at one corner, about 

 seventeen or eighteen, four 'weeks old ; at another comer, a 

 brood a fortnight old ; and at a third comer a brood a week 

 old. Ducks six weeks o!d sold at that time for twelve shillirgs 

 a couple. Besides the above, there are other persons who 

 breed many more ducks than the jierson now mentioned, and, 



far as it was possible to discover. 



this person sends 400 

 ty 

 to send only as many, at an average of five shillings per 



ducks in a year to London. Allowing 



persoi 

 then i 



forty 



persons 



dnck, the return of ducks from Aylesbury alone will amount 

 to 4000/. per annum. This retuiii has been magnified into 

 20,000/. per annum. 



13. Political Economy. 



Bye-roads extremely bad and dangerous ; difficult to be dis- 

 covered from mere drift wavs; tumpike-roads not to be com- 

 mei-jded ; canals various and useful ; grain sent to London at 

 two shillings per quarter. Box clubs generally established for 

 the poor ; no agricultural society in Bucks. Principal manu - 

 factures paper and lace. 



14. Miscellaneous. 



In calculating the number of acres Priest the Reporter tried 

 the mode, first shown by the Bishop of Llandaff, of weighing 

 the portion of paper containing the map ; he next took an 

 exact copy of Cary's map upon paper, by tracing its outline, 

 after the map was strained upon a canvass blind at a w indow. 

 This copy was cut out with great exactness by a sharp pointed 

 knife, and then divided into pieces, which were so neatly laid 

 together, as to form a right-angltd parallelogram: another 

 piece of paper was cut into the form of an assumed parallel- 

 ogram longer than necessary, upon which the pieces of the 

 copy were laid, and cemented by gum-water, so as to fill all 

 parts of a right-angled parallelo'gram shorter than that as- 

 sumed ; the difference between the assumed parallelogram 

 and that formed by the pieces of the copy of the map, was ac- 

 curately measured and subtracted from the assumed parallel- 

 ogram, and the remainder gave 391,040 acres, the measure of 

 the number of acres in Bucks. Thus then we have the num- 

 ber of acres taken from Cary's map, by weight 396,013, by 

 measure, 391,010. From which, if we take an average, we 

 shall probably state it as accurately as it can be found to be 

 393,526 statute acres, which, for the sake of roimd numbers, 

 we wiU call 393,600 statute acres. 



6999. BEDFORDSHIRE. An irregular parallelogram of 290,000 acres, not much varied in sur- 

 face, and for the most part of a clayey soil. The agriculture chiefly directed to the raising of wheat, 

 barley, and bean.s, but of an inferior description in many respects. Little pasturage ; scarcely any 

 market orchards, but good vegetable gardens established at Sandy, on the east of the county, from time 

 immemorial. Great exertions made in every department of culture by the late and present Duke of 

 Bedford, by whom were employed many valuable men in conducting improvements, as Farey, Smith, 

 Salmon, and Pontey. A valuable set of experiments on grasses, conducted by Sinclair under the direc- 

 tion of the present Duke. {Stone's Bedfordshire, 1794. Batchelo)''s Bedfordshire, 1808. Marshal's 

 Review, 1818. Smith's Geological Map, 1820.) 



1. Geographical State and Circumstances, 

 Climate, mild, genial, and favorable to the growth of ve- 



r tables; rather later than Hertfordshire; prevalent winds 

 W. ; coldest winds N.E. 



Soil, chiefly clay, next sand, and lastly in the southern ex- 

 tremity embracing Herts, ^chalk. Some of the sands gray 

 silts, and producing nothing but heath, others more loamy, 

 as about Sandy, which is supposed to contain the best garden- 

 ground in the "county. 



Minerals, some ironstone ; limestone abounding with cor- 

 nua ammonis and other shells, petrified wood, gryphites 

 beleiimites ; freestone, .chiefly lime, at Tattei nhoe. 



Wafer. Principal river the Ouse ; several mineral springs. 



2. State of Property. 



Duke of Bedford's estates the; largest, next Ix)rd St. John's 

 and Whitliread , united rental estimated at 40,000/. a year. 

 Estate mana{jers attomies and considerable farmers. 



3. Buildings. 



Several farm-houses were formerly the seats of gentle- 

 men who farmed their own estates. Farm-houses in general 

 badly sit uated, seldom at the centre of the farms to which they 

 belong, and generally consist of piecemeal erections. Francis, 

 Duke of Bedford, erected an octagonal farm house, on a most 

 commotlious plan. (jig. 772.) On the ground floor it cop. 



tained a large kitchen (a), bake and brew house, and washhouse 

 (6), a hall or master's room, with a cellar under (c), a good 

 parlour (rf), a dairy (), besides a pantry (/), closets, and 

 beer and ale cellar under. On the first floor were five, and on 



4 



the second (fig. 77."?.) two good bed-rooms. The expense of thU 

 house on the octagonal plan was 671/., had it been built in the 

 square form it would have cost 733/. It is built of brick, 

 slated, and was desifpied by Mr, R. Salmon, a well known 



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