A HISTORY OF DORSET 



who was thereupon empowered to see that the repairs were carried out. 

 Upon one occasion in 1752 a single Dorset justice presented eight parishes 

 on this account."* 



The early years of the nineteenth century, however, saw considerable 

 alterations. In 1825 it was decided that Quarter Sessions should in future 

 always be held at Dorchester, instead of being continually transferred from 

 borough to borough,'^' and two years later the justices agreed to prepare and 

 publish an annual account of their receipts and expenditure. Yet earlier, in 

 1809, a regular engineer of the county bridges was appointed at a salary of 

 ;r5oo a year.^" 



In its agricultural methods also the county was slow to move. What is 

 known as the agrarian revolution, in other words the adoption of the Norfolk 

 four-course system, did not take place rapidly in Dorset. In 1793 Claridge 

 lamented the backward state of the tillage compared with other branches of 

 agriculture. This seems to have been due in a great measure to the immense 

 importance attached to sheep-farming, which was advanced for that time, 

 Dorset being rather a pioneer county in adopting improvements or even in 

 experimentalizing in that one department of agriculture.'" Second only in 

 importance to sheep-farming was the attention bestowed on cattle-grazing and 

 dairying which was centred in the rich vale of Blackmoor in the north. 



Very subordinate to sheep-farming, cattle pasturage, and dairying was 

 the tillage of the land. In Claridge's day, wheat, barley, and oats were 

 cultivated in succession without the intervention of any green crop.'*' In 

 addition to this crude rotation the ground suffered from insufficient plough- 

 ing : it appeared to be the farmer's object ' to put the seed in with as few 

 ploughings as possible,' ^*^ and those few so carelessly done that the ploughman 

 often varied three or four yards from a straight line. The Norfolk plough, 

 drawn by two horses, had by no means come into general use ; the old- 

 fashioned plough drawn by four horses, and with two men to attend to them, 

 being more usual.'** Comparatively little was done to improve the ground 

 in the way of manure ; and although draining was most successfully practised 

 with the water meadows, it was never applied to land under tillage.'*' A 

 considerable amount of flax and hemp was grown in the neighbourhood of 

 Bridport,'*' where in good seasons it formed a very lucrative crop. 



Claridge mentions that few parishes had recently been inclosed ; "^ 

 but with the nineteenth century inclosures became more numerous, though 

 until 1840 they were always inclosures of common land.'*' 



As the nineteenth century advanced, however, several improvements 

 were introduced and became almost universal throughout the county ;'*^ it was 

 about the middle of the century that most of the changes took place 

 which brought Dorset to the epoch of its greatest agricultural prosperity — 

 the adoption of artificial manures, the inclosure of what had hitherto been 

 regarded as waste land, and the use of improved agricultural implements."" 



"* Webb, Eng/. Local Govt, i, 475. "' Ibid. 433, note 2. "" Ibid. 445, note 2, and 520, note 3. 



■*' Stevenson, General Fietv of the jigric. of Dorset, 461. 

 -" Claridge, General Fiew of the Agric. of Dorset, 16. '" Ibid. 



-" Ibid. 20. *" Ibid. 26, 34. 



"MbiJ. 26, 27. »'Tlid. 46. 



'*' Joum. of the Bath and West 0'' Engl. Agric. Assoc. (Ser. 2), 1 861, ix, 52. 

 '" See article on ' Agriculture.' 



'*' Joum. of the Bath and West of Engl. Agric. Assoc. (Ser. 2), 1 861, viii, pt. i, Essay by Mr. Ruegg ; ix, 52. 



256 



