WASTE LANDS IN ENGLAND 153 



Arthur Young, 1 twenty years before (1773), had called attention to 

 the extent of land lying waste in Great Britain. " There are," he 

 says, " at least 600,000 acres waste in the single county of Northum- 

 berland. In those of Cumberland and Westmoreland, there are 

 as many more. In the north and part of the West Riding of York- 

 shire, and the contiguous ones of Lancashire, and in the west part 

 of Durham, are yet greater tracts ; you may draw a line from the 

 north point of Derbyshire to the extremity of Northumberland, of 

 150 miles as the crow flies, which shall be entirely across waste 

 lands : the exception of small cultivated spots very trifling:" It 

 was across this district that Jeanie Deans travelled in the days of 

 George II., when great districts of Northumberland were covered 

 with forests of broom, thick and tall enough to hide a Scottish army. 

 Lancashire in 1794 still had 108,500 acres of waste, and Rossendale 

 remained a chace. As late as 1794, three-quarters of Westmoreland, 

 according to Bishop Watson, lay uncultivated. In 1734 the forest 

 of Knaresborough had surrounded Harrogate so thickly that " he 

 was thought a cunning fellow that could readily find out those 

 Spaws." Even in the last decade of the eighteenth century, 

 265,000 acres of Yorkshire were lying waste, yet largely capable 

 of cultivation. Up to the accession of George III., that part of the 

 East Riding which was called the Carrs, from Bridlington Quay to 

 Spurn Point, and inland as far as Driffield, was an extensive swamp 

 producing little but the ague ; willow trees marked out the road 

 from Hull to Beverley, and the bells rang at dusk from the tower 

 of Barton-upon-Humber to guide belated travellers. Great tracts 

 of Derbyshire were " black regions of ling." From Sleaford to 

 Brigg, " all that the devil o'erlooks from Lincoln Town," was a 

 desolate waste, over which wayfarers were directed by the land 

 lighthouse of Dunstan pillar. No fences were to be seen for miles 

 only the furze-capped sand-banks which enclosed the warrens. 

 The high ground from Spilsby to Caistor was similarly a bleak 

 unproductive heath. Robin Hood and Little John might still 

 have sheltered in Sherwood Forest, which occupied a great part of 

 Nottinghamshire. The fen districts of the counties of Cambridge, 

 Huntingdon, Lincoln, and Northampton continued to defy the 

 assaults of drainage. Even in the neighbourhood of London similar 



1 Observations on the Present State of Waste Lands of Great Britain, 1773. 

 Young's calculations are also based on an exaggerated estimate of the acreage 

 of England and Wales. 



