Book I. 



AGRICULTURE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. 



II s 1 



11. Improvements. 



rnderdraining clay by numerous parallel cuts filled with 

 straw, wood, or stones general: manuring well understood; 

 much brought from London of every sort ; bones, soot, sheep 

 trotters, nif*ht soil, oil-cake dust, rags, Itather clippings, fur- 

 riers' clippings, horn-shavings, malt-dust, hair, sticklebacks, 

 &c. Top dressings more frequent than in any o her county. 

 Chalk a ren- common manure on clayey soils; laid on un- 

 bumed, and 'left on the surface to be pulverised by heat and 

 rains, or frosts and thaws ; then harrowed with a bush harrow, 

 to spread it, and ploughed in. Some irrigated meadows at 

 Rickmansworth and other places ; but the frequency of nulls 

 is against the process. 



12. Live Stock. 



All the spare clover, hay, and straw carried to London, and 

 manure brought out in reium. Sir J. .Sebright prefers Suf- 

 folk cows and horses, and uses the Wiltshire sheep. A gor d 

 many house lambs suckled about Kickmansworth, ftd wiih 

 grains and malt-dust in winter. Folding sheep generally ap- 

 proved of. Soiing vidi clover and tares common. Grey works 

 Sutiblk oxen in harness, four to a team. Hon. G. Viliiers 

 prefers the GlamorgansMreoxen for work ; and thinks stall-fed 



oxen can hardly l>e kept too warm ; prefers oil-cake for finish- 

 ing to every thing else; Lady Salisbury has the wild breed of 

 pigs, which fatten to iorty-eight stone ; feeds on lettuces, which 

 is found to answer well. Stevenson, the bailiff, hred a gar- 

 dener, which renders him a sujterior cultivator of green crops. 

 Lord Clarendon feeds deer (7575.) and sells them. Poultry at 

 the Grove kept in wheeled coops about twelve feet long and 

 two and a ha:f wide, boarded on one side and open on the 

 other ; these are wheeled up and down the park, and a boy at- 

 tends them to keep away hawks. In the poultry. yard distinct 

 houses for all sorts of fowls ; the roosts so contrived that they 

 may not dung on one another. 



13. Rural Economy. 

 Ploughmen generally hired by the year. 



14. Political Economy. 



Good roads; few manufactures excepting plaiting straw, 

 which is very general in the county, specially about Dun- 

 stable, St- Albans, Redbum, See. Weak wheat straw from 

 chalky and white land, and such as grows under trees or near 

 hedges preferred. Tl e plaiters give from two-pence to four- 

 pence a pound for it, ana sort it themselves- Much malt made 

 about \\ are and Hertford for the London market. 



7783. BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. 478,720 square acres of hilly surface, and chiefly of clayey or loamy 

 soil ; a considerable part chalky, and the agriculture nearly equally divided between tillage and grass. 

 (Survey by St. John Priest, Secretary to the Norfolk Agricultural Society, 1810. Malcolm's Survey, 179K 

 Marshal's Review, 1818. Smith's Geological Map, 1820. Edin. Gaz. 1827.) 



1. Geographical State and Circumstances. 

 Climate, cold and winds on the Chiltern Hills- 



Soit, chiefly clay and chalk, with some gravelly loam ; 

 Chilterns wholly chalk ; vales generally clay. 



Mineral*. Some ochre, used in painting ; a quarry of good 

 marble at Newport, but too deep to be profitably worked; a 

 freestone quarry near Olney. 



Water. Numerous rivers and canals for sending produce to 

 market ; but often tilled with weeas, bushes, and other ob- 

 structions, which, after heavy rains, occasion frequent floods: 

 a ** commission of waters" proposed by the reporter as a re- 

 nit dy. 



2. Property. 



Some large estates, as those of the Dukes of Bedford, Buck- 

 ingham, &c. : tenure-- very various: a description of lands 

 here called yard lands [mrgata terra), which entitle the holders 

 to certain rights of common. 



3. Buildings. 



Stowe, and Ashridge (the latter partly in Herts), the first of 

 Grecian, the other of Gothic architecture, the two noblest 

 mansions in the county. Tyringham, Wycombe Abbey, &c. 

 also very good houses," and many others: some good farm- 

 houses, and the dairies very clean and neat : churning often 

 iterformed by horse machinery : the chums of the barrel kind, 

 .ord Carrington has built "some go- d fa meries, and the 

 Duke of Buckingham some very complete cow-houses. Drake 

 has a good circular pigeon-house, with brick cells or lockers in 

 rows, with shelves before for the pigeons to light upon; fre- 



quently white- washed, to keep them free from bug*. A foot 

 bridge at Fawley Court, moveable upon two pivots at its ends, 

 and being heavier on one side than the other, always hangs 

 perpendicularly, excepting when any one walks upon its light 

 side, when the weight of the person keeps it flat: hence it 

 admits the passage of men, but not stock : cottages good, and 

 mostly with gardens attached: some at Brickhill worse than 

 piggeries. Sir J. D. King gives premiums for the best culti- 

 vated gardens ; also gives clothing and other rewards for good 

 conduct in servitude. 



4. Occupation. 



Size of farms moderate: number in the etmntv 2039; one 

 of 1000 acres, one of 900, four or five between flOO and 70(1 

 acres, ten between 500 and 600, twenty-four between 400 and 

 500, and the rest from 400 down to ten acres; average, 179 

 acres. Westcar, of Kres ow, a celebrated grazier, occupies 

 900 acres, of which onlv between sixty and seventy are arable. 

 Very few leases, and those given with very objectionable cove- 

 nants. Lord Carrington and other more enlightened pro- 

 prietors grar.t leases. 



5. Implements, 



Swing ploughs and four horses in a line common. 



6. Enclosing. 



Has gone on rapidly ; old hedges mixed, and with many ash 

 and oak polards. 



7- Arable Land. 



Ridges high, crooked, with waste spaces between, around, or 

 at the ends {.fig. 9S5 ). Fallow in general every third year, 



985 





most common rotation fallow, wheat, beans : chief grains, 

 wheat and barley ; beans drilled and hand-hoed : wme turnips 

 on the light lands. 



8. Grass. 



Pastures a prominent feature; those in the vale of Aylesbury, 

 especially thence to Bicester, very rich; generally fed, but oc- 

 casionally mown. Removing ant-hills called banking, a piece 

 of management to which the renters of grass lands are gene- 

 rally bound in their leases. They art- removed by skinning, 

 gelding, or gutting, and kept down by rolling; '.histles are 

 spudded ; size of grass fields from 10 to 500 acres- 



9. Gardens and 0rcha7'ds. 



Few of either worth notice: cherries are ctow-u at Hackwell 

 Heath, for the London and Aylesbury market. 



10. Woods and Playttations. 



Wj low pollards planted Tound the margin? of fields, on soils 

 suitable for hurdle wood. Birch, the most common timber, very 

 abundant ; chiefly used for manufacturing chairs : woods con- 

 stantly full of young pants from the m^st, which grow up and 

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

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

 five feet from the ground, to the first txHigh : oak and beech 

 trees in Ashridgt* Park, containing from three to six loads of 

 tinjber : lay fine beeclics at ML»endeu ; mast given to pigs. 



11. Improvements. 



Draining much wanted ; well performed on some hogs on the 

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

 in the bottom tili the spring was tapped, and then leading it off 

 in an underdrain ; paring and burning in general use for 

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

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

 forty once in twelve vears ; 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. 

 10. Live stock. 



Catt'e kept chieflv for beef and butter, seldom for cheese or 

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

 n-ss cows for the dairy; some prefer the long homed Lan- 

 caster, and others the Surlolk ; man of the Holderness cows, 

 after being kept a few years, are so'd to the London cow - 

 keepers; men are generally the milkers; only one instance 

 found of women performing that operation. Karl of Bnd-e- 

 water keens eight teams of Welsh, one of Sussex, ~nd one of 

 Durham twi n, .-II voked as horses; five used in the cart, and 

 four in aplomb; a few other gentlemen have ox te ams; cattle 

 generally fed ntt in summer ; cows kept during winter fid n;i 

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



