1118 



STATISTICS OF AGRICULTURE. 



Part IV. 



leases. Usual mode of letting farms, is to fix a rent six or 

 twelve months before the expiration of the lease ; but upon 

 one of the largest estates in the county (the Earl of Tank- 

 erville's), the tenants have an offer of their farms'two years and 

 a half or three years before the expiration of the lease, which 

 is a mutual benefit to both landlord and tenant, and is at- 

 tended with so many advantages, that it in in a fair way of 

 being generally adopted. 



3. Buildings. 

 Farmeries formerlv very shabby and ill con- 



trived, now totally different. The most approved 

 form of distributing the various offices is, on the 

 cast,, west, and north sides of a rectangular paral- 

 lelogram, ifig. 797.) which is generally divided into 

 two fold-yards for cattle of different ages, the south 

 being left open to admit the sun; and for the 

 same reason, and also for the sake of cleanliness 

 and health, the farm-house (a) is removed in front 

 thirty or forty yards; between which and the 

 south -wall of the fold is a small court for coals 

 and voung poultry ; the barn (h), is 18 feet by 60, 

 with threshing machine driven by horses, water, 

 wind, or steam ; on each side are sheds (c c), 

 over which are granaries; beyond these, as wings 

 to the main square, are sheds (rf d), upon which 

 are built corn stacks. One of these sheds is for 

 wintering yearling calves, the other for holding 

 implements of the larger kind. On the east of 

 the main Mjuare is the stable {e), and in the west 

 ahousefor cows and fatting oxen {f), each 16 feet 

 by 48 feet. Over the pig styes (), are poultry 

 houses which open into the court-yard of the 

 house, as the piggeries do into the fold-yards for 

 wintering young cattle, (A h) 



Cottages "of stone and lime and tiled ; floor of 

 lime and sand ; the living room fifteen feet by six- 

 teen, and the cow-house nine feet by sixteen. 



4. Occupation. 



Fartns generally large in the north, some from 200/. to 4000/. a- 

 year ; in various parts farms from 50/. to 100/., and from 100/. 

 to, 1000/. or 1500/. a year. The capital necessary for such farms, 

 entitles the farmers to a good education, and gives them a spirit 

 of independence and enterjwise, that is rarely found amongst 

 the occupiers of small farms and short leases. Their minds being 

 ojien to conviction, they are ready to try new experiments, and 

 adopt every beneficial improvement that can be learnt in other 

 districts ; for this purpose, many of them have traversed the 

 most distant parts of the kingdom to obtain agricultural know- 

 ledge, and have transplanted every practice they thought supe- 

 rior to those they were acquainted with, or that could be ad- 

 vantageously pursued in their own situation ; and scarcely a 

 year passes without some of them making extensive agricul- 

 tural tours, for the sole purpose of examining the modes of cul- 

 ture, of purchasing or hiring the most improved breeds of stock, 

 and seeing the operations of new invented and more useful im- 



without a moiUd-board, he divided the field into small square^ 

 of equal magnitude, and directed the boys and girls to leave a 

 certain number of plants in each square. In a short time thev 

 became accurate, regular, and expert hoers; and, in a few 

 years, all the turnips in the county were hoed by women and 

 "boys, at half the expense, and better than l.y men". 



797 



a. o (, \ o \ a 



ka_M^ 



5. Implements. 



Of the most approved kind ; and some of these, as the plough, 

 drill, horse hoe, &c. owe their chief merits to the improvements 

 of Bailey. A pair of pruning shears recommended as preferable 

 to those in common use for cutting hedges. They consist of a 

 strong sharp knife, six inches long, moving betwixt two square 

 edged cheeks; the upper handle is twofeet six inches long, and 

 the other two feet three inches. (Set Encydopadia of Garden- 

 ing, 1334. fig. 122.) 



6. Enclosures. 



Size of fields varies with the size of the farms ; in some parts 

 from two to six or eight acres : 'in'the northern parts, where the 

 farms are large, from 20 to 100 acres. The quicks should 

 never be planted nearer each other than nine inches, and, upon 

 good land, a foot. Quicks four or fi ve years old, with strong 

 clean stems, are always to be preferred to those that are 

 younger and smaller. It is a custom in some parts to clip 

 young quicks every year : this makes the fence look neat and 

 snug, but it checks their growth, and keeps them always weak 

 in the stem, and, when they grow old, open at bottom ; while 

 those that are left to nature, get strong stems and side 

 branches, which, by interweaving one with another, make a 

 thick and impenetrable hedge, and if cut at proper intervals 

 (of nine or ten years), will always maintain its superiority over 

 those that have been clipped from their first planting. In point 

 of profit, and of labor saved, there is no comparison ; and for 

 beauty, we prefer nature, and think a luxuriant hawthorn, in 

 full bloom, or laden with its ripened fruit, is a more pleasing, 

 enlivening, and gratifying object, than the stiff^ formal same- 

 ness produced by the shears. 



7. Arable Land. 



Trench ploughing practised by a few in breaking up grass- 

 lands. About 1793, when horses were scarce and dear, a good 

 many oxen were used for ploughing and carting about the 

 farm, but after a few years trial, they were given up ; they 

 were harnessed both with yokes and collars, and only ploughed 

 half a day at a time. 



Fcdlmving on all soils once in three or four years, was general 

 through the county, till the introduction of "turnips. On soils 

 improper for this root, the naked fallow still prevails ; but the 

 quantity of fallow probably on all soils will, after a long 

 series of good culture, become less necessary, and;may in many 

 cases be finally dispensed with. 



Turnips were first grown in the northern parts of the countv 

 about 1723. Proctor, the proprietor of Roch, brought Andrew 

 Willey, a gardener, to cultivate turnips at Roch, for the pur- 

 pose of feeding cattle; that Willey afterwards settled at Les- 

 burv, as a gardener, and was employed for many years to sow 

 turnips for all the neighborhood ; and his busine'ss this way 

 was so great, he was obliged to ride and sow, that he might 

 dispatch the greater quantity. 



Hoeing turnipt was introduced at the same time, and at first 

 practis^ by gardeners, and other men, at extravagant wages, 

 lldeston, about thirty years since, had the merit of first re- 

 ducing the price of hoeing, by teaching boys, girls, and women 

 to perform the work ecjually as well, if riot better than men. 

 The mode he took was simple and ingenious : by a light plough. 



I ) I .1 ,.l. 1 .1 J 



J_L_.^/'* 



The broadcast culture of turnips, in the northern parts of the 

 county, was not inferior to any we ever.saw ; and in respect to 

 accurate, regular, clean hoeing, superior to what we ever ob- 

 served in Norfolk, Suffolk, or other turnip districts which w 

 have frequently examined. {Bailey.) 



Drilling iimiips was first introduced to the county about 

 1780. Drilling this, as well as other crops, evidently originatetl 

 with Tull, whose first work. Specimen of a work on 

 Horse-hoeing Husbandry, appeared in 1731. It appears that 

 Craig, of Arbigland, in Dumfrieshire, began to clril turnips 

 about 1745 ; and next we find Philip Howard, of Corby, drill- 

 ing in 1755 ; and Pringle drilling " from hints taken fiom 

 Tull's book," in 1756 or 1757. William Dawson, who was 

 well acquainted with the turnip culture in England, having 

 been purposely sent to reside in those districts for six or seven 

 years, where the t)est cultivation was pursued, with an inten- 

 tion, not onlv of seeing but of making himself master of the 

 manual operations, and of every minutise in the practice, was 

 convincetl of the superiority of "Pringle's mode over every other 

 he had seen, either in Xortblk or elsewhere; and in 1762, 

 when he entered to Froi;more farm, near Kelso, in Roxburg- 

 shire, he immediately adopted the practice upon a large scale, 

 to the amount of 100 acres yearly. Though none of Pringle' 

 neighbors followed the example, yet, no sooner did Dawson, 

 an actual or rent-paying farmer, adopt the same system, than 

 it was immediately followed, not only by several farmers in his 

 vicinity, but by those very farmers adjoining Pringle, whose 

 crops they had seen, for ten or twelve years, so much superior 

 to tneir own: the practice in a few years became general. 



8. Grass. 



Not much old grass in the county. 



9. Woods. 



Not very numerous, though a considerable demand for small 

 wood by the proprietors of the collieries and lead mines. 

 Artificial plantations rising in every part of the county. 



10. Improvements. 



Embanking and irrigation practised in a few places which 

 require or admit of these operations. 



11. Live Stock. 



Cattle the short homed, long homed, Devonshire, and wild 

 cattle. 



Sheep, the Cheviot, heath, and long woolled. The modern 

 maxims of breeding were introduced into the county by one of 

 Bakewell's first disciples, Culley, of South Durham, well known 

 for his work on Live Stock, previous to which, " big bones" 

 and " large size" were looked upon as the principal criterion 

 of excellence, and a sacred adherence to the rule of never 

 breeding within the canonical degree of relationship ; but 

 those prejudices are at this period, in a great measure done 

 away; and the principal farmers of this district may now te 

 classed amongst the most scientific breeders in the kingdom, 

 who have pursued it with an ardor and unremitting attention 

 that have not failed of success. 



Horses for draught brought from Clydesdale. 



Goals are kept in small numbers on many parts of the Che- 

 viot hills, not so much as an object of profit, but the shepherd 

 asserts, that the sheep flocks are healthier where a few goats do 

 pasture. This probably may be the case, as it is well known 

 that goats eat some plants with impunity, that are deadly 

 poison to other kinds of domestic animals. The chief profit 

 made of these goats is, from their milk being sold to invalids, 

 who come to Wooler in the summer season. 



12. Political Economi/. 



Roads of whin or limestone, and mostly good. Manufac- 

 tures, gloves at Hexham, plait straw for cottagers' and labor- 

 ers' hats, and also for those of the higher classes. Woollens in 

 a few places ; and a variety of works connected with the coal 

 trade and mines at Newcastle. No agricultural societies, these 

 Bailey holds in little estimation ; but thinks if public farms 

 were established in each county, and supported by a rate on the 

 income of its proprietors, they would be the moiit effectual 

 means of promoting agricultural improvement. 



