174 THE VALE OF EVESHAM 



The fruit farms in this district are not as a rule 

 very large ; some are as small as 3 to 5 acres, and 

 a man with 80 acres is in a big way of business, 

 20 to 40 acres being perhaps the most common 

 holding. Many are freehold, but in general they are 

 rented under the Evesham custom, which makes the 

 fruit trees the property of the tenant, and so great has 

 been the demand for land that rents run high, up to 

 3 and 4 per acre, especially for the smaller holdings, 

 on which a man with little capital may make a start. 

 The County Council of Worcester have acquired 

 several farms and cut them up, and where they have 

 had to make roads and erect buildings the rent per 

 acre naturally works out rather high. Still, the 

 demand increases, and it mostly comes from men who 

 are likely to succeed, because they began by working 

 for the other growers and had both the courage to save 

 money from their weekly wage and the ambition to 

 adventure for themselves. A large proportion of the 

 growers in this district has been thus recruited from 

 below, and this class contains some very intelligent, 

 hard-working folk ; but there is also another class of 

 young men drawn from the upper and middle classes, 

 possessed of a small amount of capital, which they 

 have sunk in a Worcestershire fruit farm instead of 

 carrying to the Colonies. And very successful has 

 been their enterprise ; there are enough of them to 

 form a society to themselves ; they have not been 

 afraid to take their coats off and use their hands ; they 

 have set to work as roughly as they would have done 

 in the Colonies, and at the same time they have made 

 their brains and education tell. On a small capital they 

 are earning a reasonable living, and their numbers are 

 sufficient to provide the relaxation and social inter- 

 course which keep a gentleman from dropping out of 



