213 



Farming of Cumberland. 



tenant, is sometimes urged as a reason for ploughing land which 

 ought to remain in grass, for all high lands should be very cau- 

 tiously dealt with in breaking out of old sward, and it should 

 never be permitted unless the tenant is of ability and prepared 

 by lease, &c., to stand by the consequence for some years after, 

 when the land is again restored to pasture. 



IV. Description of the Ancient and of the Improved 

 System of Farming. 



Modern Farms and their Occupiers. — The average size of 

 farms in Cumberland is less than in most of the northern 

 counties, except, perhaps, Westmoreland and part of Lancashire. 

 There are certainly several large farms, both arable and pasture, but 

 these form the exception rather than the rule : as the sheep-farm 

 of Brotherilkeld, in Eskdale (south) of 14,000 acres ; Kershope, 

 in Bewcastle, 5000 acres ; Gatesgarth, in Buttermere ; Coves, in 

 Ennerdale ; Askerton Castle and Winter Shields, in Lanercost ; 

 and others of the pastoral kind, in various parts of the county, 

 containing a few thousand acres each. There are also some 

 arable farms* of 500 and 600 acres each, or more. The smallest 

 farms are found in villages, in the vicinity of collieries, iron- 

 mines, and other public works at a little distance from railways 

 and shipping, where employment in carting becomes a temptation 

 to numbers of small farmers and poor men to congregate and 

 compete with each other in the daily struggle for maintenance ; 

 these men overbid one another for the occupation of single fields 

 and small parcels of land, on which to maintain their over- worked 

 horses, and, having horses, and depending on their exertions for 

 the support of themselves and families, underbid each other in 

 the price of labour until the utmost efforts of man and horse are 

 requisite to gain even a scanty livelihood. Very little time is 

 spared from their daily or contract labour to cultivate their re- 

 spective holdings of from 3 and 4 to 20, 30, or more acres. 

 Horses and men are alike exhausted by their continued toil ; the 

 horses in the most abject condition from overdriving and over- 

 burthening, and the men forming the habit (in some measure 

 pardonable) of attending well to nothing but the employ that is 

 followed by most welcome payment at the end of the week or 

 fortnight. This class can hardly be termed farmers, though they 

 are occupiers of land ; they are mostly persons who have been 

 unsuccessful in other pursuits, some of whom, with the energy, 

 constancy, and self-denial their necessities now compel them to 

 adopt, might have retained their former more respectable occu- 

 pations. Others are young men who have been servants, and 



* The arable portion of "Westward Parks Farm is 700 acres. 



