HERTFORDSHIRE FARMING 191 



contained, at the close of the eighteenth century, few open-field 

 farms and an inconsiderable area of commons, which were practi- 

 cally confined to the chalk districts in the north of the county. In 

 Middlesex, on the other hand, 17,000 acres, or one-tenth of the 

 county, were commons, and, out of 23,000 arable acres, 20,000 were 

 cultivated in open-field farms. The neighbourhood of London 

 probably accounts for the predominance of pasture. Hertford- 

 shire had been, for many years, an enclosed county, divided into 

 small estates, and small farms conveniently varied in size. Unlike 

 Middlesex, it was almost entirely arable. Its farmers had at once 

 appreciated the value of turnips and clover, for which the soil was 

 well adapted. Both crops must have been adopted within a few 

 years after their first introduction into the country, if there is any 

 truth in the tradition that Oliver Cromwell paid 100 a year to a 

 Hertfordshire farmer named Howe for their successful cultivation. 1 

 Other useful practices were established at an early date. William 

 Ellis of Gaddesden* (died 1758), a Hertfordshire farmer whose 

 writings enjoyed a short-lived popularity, attributed the reputa- 

 tion of " this our celebrated county " to four principal means of 

 improvement : " good ploughings, mixing earths, dunging and 

 dressing, resting the ground with sown grasses." The Hertford- 

 shire men were clean farmers. Their ploughmen were so celebrated 

 that the county was " accounted a Nursery for skill in that Pro- 

 fession." Chalk was largely used on heavy clays, and red clay on 

 sandy or gravelly soils. Nor were the advantages gained by neigh- 

 bourhood to a great city neglected. London refuse was liberally 

 bought and freely employed. Large quantities " of soot, coney- 

 clippings, Horn-shavings, Rags, Hoofs-hair, ashes " were purchased 

 from " Mr. Atkins in Turnmill-Street near Clerkenwel." To these 

 were added, when Walker 3 wrote his report on the county, bones 

 boiled or burned sheep-trotters, and malt-dust. Great numbers 

 of sheep were also folded, mostly bought at Tring Fair from West- 

 country drovers. But the peculiar practice of Hertfordshire 

 farmers, in which Ellis took the greatest pride, was the sowing of 

 tares on the turnip fallows as green fodder for horses in May. 



1 General View of the Agriculture of Hertfordshire, by Arthur Young (1804), 

 p. 55. 



* E.g. Chiltern and Vale Farming explained (1733) ; The Modern Husband- 

 man, 8 vols. (1750). 



* General View of the Agriculture of the County of Hertford, by D. Walker 

 (1795). 



