Book I. 



AGRICULTURE OF DURHAM. 



1159 



bridge across a narrow channel, serving as a drain to the adja- 

 cent country. It contains at present within the banks about 

 4700 acres and twenty-four families, and is continually increas- 

 ing in size, an extensive tract having been recently embanked, 

 with a probability of its being still further enlarged. 



Minerals. Chalk and a very hard shelly limestone, producing 

 a lime little valued either by the farmer or builder. Chalk of 

 the wolds much harder than that of the soutliern counties. 

 Marl in many places. Gypsum in some places, but no mineral 

 veins or coal, and in many places not even clay for bricks. 



2. Property. 



Less divided on the East Riding than in other parts of the 

 county ; ptrhaps less than in most parts of England ; which 

 JU-ises a good deal from the nature of the county : one half of 

 wolds where land is held in little estimation, and occupied in 

 larger tracts ; the other a flat low country, partly rich and 

 clayey, and partly sandy and barren. Most of the families 

 have possessed their estates for many centuries, and some from 

 the rsorman conquest : largest 15,000/. a year; ten at 10,000/. 

 a year. Only three noblemen have seats in this Riding. 



3. Buildings. 



Seventy-four manorial houses, of which twelve are going to 

 decay ; nineteen let to tenants, or remain empty ; forty-one 

 occupied by their owners {Temp. Eliz.) ; ninety-two families 

 bearing arms resident in the county. 



Farm-houses generally good, excepting on the wolds, where 

 they are built ot chalk, thatched, and miserably bad ; generally 

 in villciges, excepting those built lately. 



Cottages more comfortable than in many places ; generally 

 two rooms below and two bedrooms over thtm : a disposition 

 in the proprietors to let their cottages go to decay. 



Village com club. A plan for insuring cows having been 

 lately adopted on an extensive scale, and with striking success, 

 in the north of Lincolnshire, from which it appears that an 

 average payment of about three halfpence per cow per week (or 

 six shillings per year) is fully adequate to replace the ordinary 

 losses of cows by death, it is proposed to institute a similar club 

 in the contiguous parts of the East and North Ridings of York- 

 shire, with a view of securing to the labourer and his family, 

 at a trifling expense, the great benefits of that useful animal, 

 without his risking more than one sixth part of her value, upon 

 certain conditions. 



4. Occupation. 



Farms in general small ; one or two of 1200/. per annum, 

 but from 200/. to Wl. more common. Leases so rare that the 

 surveyor could not recollect of one, unless under suspicious 

 circumstances, where something incorrect is aimed at, some 

 advantage intended to be given or taken ; where either the 

 landlord wanted something more than customary from the 

 tenant, or the tenant was disinclined to trust his landlord : 

 great estates are let in full confidence in this Riding, where a 

 lease was never asked for, probably never wished for ; because 

 the tenure is equally secure, and more permanent without 

 than with one. Many estates have been occupied by the pro- 

 genitors of the present tenants, during two, three, or four 

 generations. 



5. Implements. 



Waggons here of a bad construction ; but well yoked in the 

 German manner. The four horses are yoked two a'oreast, in 

 the same manner as they are put to a coach, two drawing 

 by the splinter-bar and two by the pole ; those at the wheel 

 drawing also by a swinging bar, which the wheel-horses of 

 every carriage ought to do, as they thereby obtain considerable 

 ease in their draft, and are less liable to be galled by the col- 

 lar than those which draw by a fixed bar ; the driver then, 

 being mounted on the near-side wheel horse, directs the two 

 leaders by a rein fixed to the outside of each of their bridles, 

 they being coupled together by a strap passing from the inside 

 of each of their bridles to tlie collar of the other horse. In 

 this manner, when empty, they trot along the roads with 

 safety and expedition ; and when loaded, the horses being 

 near"their work, and conveniently placed for drawing, labour 

 with much greater ease and effect than when placed at length. 

 Were the waggon, indeed, of a better construction, the team 

 would be excellent. 



The peas-hook and the bean-hook, both made out of old 

 scythe-blades, and used in reaping peas and beans, are pecu- 

 liar to this Riding ; as was the lime-burner's fork till lately. 

 (See./?/?. 682. b, c.) 



Tlie moulding sledge is a useful implement for levelling the 

 small inequalities of meadow and pasture land, and spreading 

 the dung dropped by the cattle. It is a frame of wood about 



five feet square (the sides of which are about four inches thick 

 to give it weight and strength), having three bars of iron fixed 

 to the lower side, the points of which are thinned to sharp 

 edges. When in use, some thorns are drawn under the hinder 

 wooden bar, and above the middle one, to which they are fixed 

 by cords. If it is wanted to be removed from one field to 

 another, it is turned the other side up, which preserves the 

 edges of the bars from injury. It is drawn by two horses, and 

 will go over a great extent of land in a day. 



6. Enclosing. 



The taste for this has been carried too far, and land enclosed 

 which has not and probably never will repay the expense. 



7. Arable Land. 



Two thirds of the wolds, and one third of the rest of the 

 Riding, under the plough ; fallow, wheat, oats, or fallow, bar- 

 ley, beans, common rotations. 



8. Grass. 



The marshy meadows adjoining the Derwent, a few grazing 

 pastures in Holdemess and Howdenshire, and the small garths 

 or paddocks in the immediate vicinity of the towns and villages, 

 form the principal part of natural grass lands. 



The salt-marshes on the outside of the embarkments are of 

 no great extent. Unless the mud is so elevated as to be con- 

 stantly above water for a few days at neap tides, no plants take 

 possession of the surface ; but when vegetation can go on, the 

 first plant which takes possession is the Salicdmia or samphire, 

 and next the Pba. marftima, which in a short time covers the 

 surface with a close short sward. A few sheep are occasionally 

 put on it when not too much dirtied by the mud of the spring 

 tides. 



In laying land to grass, caraway and parsley sown amot>g it 

 by sonie, to preserve the health of the sheep. 



9. Gardens and Orchards. 



Almost unknown, excepting among the higher classes ; farm- 

 ers rarely use any other vegetable than potatoes and turnips ; 

 cottagers cultivate their gardens with more care than the 

 farmers. 



10. Woodlands. 



Of no great extent in proportion to the Riding ; extensive 

 plantations made on the wolds. 



11. hnprovements. 



Holdemess drainage an extensive work of the kind, on the 

 east side of the river Hull ; it extends over nearly 12,000 acres, 

 and is managed by commissioners. Various other extensive 

 drainages. 



12. Live stock. 



Holdemess cattle, remarkable for their large size and abun- 

 dant supply of milk, prevail universally. This breed is supi>osed 

 to have been introduced from Holland about a century ngo, 

 and improved by attentive management. The late Sir George 

 Strickland the greatest modem breeder in the district. IJreed- 

 ing a principal object in most parts of the Riding, and feeding 

 in Holdemess when the pastures are rich. 



Sheep formerly the Holdemess breed, resembling that of Lin- 

 colnshire and the Wold sheep ; now the Leicester and various 

 other breeds. 



Horses for the coach and saddlp, the grand branch of breeding 

 in this Riding, and as many or more produced, in proportion 

 to its extent, than in any other. But it is allowed by all that 

 the breed has of late much degenerated, owing to the inatten- 

 tion of the farmers. About twenty years ago, a cross of blood 

 was introduced, by which, though good saddle horses were pro- 

 duced, the coach horse was lost. This error discovered, an 

 opposite and still more pernicious one was produced by the in- 

 troduction of heavy black stallions from Lincolnshire. These 

 produced a mongrel breed, which will not be got rid of for 

 several generations. In breeding, some castrate the foal while 

 sucking, and think it a preferable practice to that of the North 

 Riding. 



Rabbits. About twenty warrens, containing together probably 

 10,000 acres. 



13. Political Economy. 



Not more than 140 miles of turnpike road in the whole 

 Riding ; few of these good, and the cross roads and lanes very 

 bad ; manufactures few ; white lead, glue, glass, iron-foundry, 

 oil-mills, cordage, sailcloth, patent whalebone, brick, tile, pot- 

 tery, &c. at Hull. White-lead and Spanish-white for whitening 

 prepared from chalk, at Hessel. Howden coarse canvass for 

 mail bags ; near Drillield spinning and weaving tow ; other ma- 

 nufactures near York. Several agricultural societies; one for 

 books and implements at Howden. 



7808. DURHAM. 582,400 acres of surface, in some places mountainous, and in most places hilly; the 

 soil in great part poor ; the agriculture generally approaching the best model, that of Northumberland ; 

 and the county distinguished by the Durham or Teeswater breed of cattle, and by its lead and coal mines. 

 The celebrated farmer and breeder Culley was a native of this county, and farmed here as well as in 

 Northumberland. {Granger's General View, 1794. Bailey's General View, 1810. Marshal's Review, 1818. 

 Smith's Geological Map, 1824.) 1010 fc 



1. Geographical State and Circumstances. 



Climate fine and mild in the lower districts ; but on Crossfell, 

 the highest land in England, teing 3400 feet above the level 

 of the sea, snow frequently lies from November till the middle 

 or end of June. General time of harvest from the beginning 

 of September to the middle of October. 



Soils principally clay loam and peat ; the latter prevails in 



a tract of calcareous soil in the interior of the county. 



Minerals: coals found over a considerable portion of the 

 county, workable to the extent of 100,000 acres; those in 

 the northern parts of the county wrought for exportation, in 

 the western and southern parts for land sale only. In various 

 parts of the coal districts are dykes or fractures (fg. 1010. 

 a, b), and consequent derangement of the strata, which throw 

 the beds of coal (c c) on one side of the dyke often many feet up 

 or down. The fissure between being commonly filled with 

 clay, stops the water in its course along the d'iflferent beds 

 Id, e), interrupts the drainage, and greatly damages the work- 



mostly in vertical fissures of limestone and other rocks like 

 the dykes. 

 Millstones, grindstone^ freestones, slates of the grev or free- 



4 



stone kind, silver sand, 

 limestone, whinstone, clay 

 stone or black metal stone, 

 and yellow ochre, also 

 found. 



Water. Salmon fishery 

 on the Tyne has greatly 

 declined, owing to the 

 building of wears, which 

 prevent their getting up. 

 Bailey remarks, that if 

 dams of this description 

 were put across the river 

 Tweed, a revenue of 

 nearly 16,000/. per year, 

 received for rents of fish- i 

 ings, and 60,000/. a year, "': 

 the value of the fish taken 

 in that river, would be ] 

 reduced to a mere trifle, 

 in a few years. C 



Salt springs, from which 

 salt is made near Britt 

 and other places. A spa 

 E 4 



