The Agriculture of Staffordshire. 
287 
of Lord Lichfield's estate in Dunston, Acton Trussell, Walton, Bas- 
wich, Shugborougli, and Haywood ; a part of Lord Shrewsbury's 
estate in Tixall, Ingestre, St. Thomas, and Weston, and up to 
and including some of Lord Harrovvby's estate in Sandon, and 
two farms belonging to Mr. Twigg and Mr. Grindley. This 
agricultural district, extending about eleven miles, shows very 
superior management. The stock is good, and the Shropshire 
sheep the best of the breed. The tenants' houses and the farm- 
buildings are sufficient and substantial, and some of them are 
admirable. Brancott, a farm of about 500 acres, was a remark- 
able example-farm, under the tenancy of Mr. Hartshorn, who, 
with the encouragement of the late Lord Shrewsbury, then Lord 
Ingestre, and the son of Lord Talbot, the great agriculturist, made 
it a place of note and general resort before the great levelling up 
in the agriculture of the country, which has deprived Brancott, 
and other noted farms, of their eminence. 
This central part of the county is the best part of it for general 
agriculture and for residence. The soil on the sandstone is 
generally good sound corn-land, and, when of good depth, it is 
often exceedingly productive. The red-sandstone rock is not a 
good subsoil for pasturage, but it is good for everything else. It 
is not so rich as the fat marls, but the surface is drier, Avarmer, 
more broken, and picturesque, and better covered with timber 
and natural vegetation in hedge, wood, and lane. From this 
central district a tract of light land, of varying fertility, and 
sometimes consisting of a poor gravel-drift, extends in a south- 
eastern direction through Rugeley and Lichfield to Tamworth ; 
and a narrower strip extends from Sandon northwards, through 
Stone and Swinnerton, to Trentham and Tittensor ; southwards 
it extends, with little interruption, from Teddesley, through 
Penkridge, to Wolverhampton, and thence to Stourbridge and 
Enville. The light land seldom crosses the Trent, which is, 
with few exceptions, its eastern boundary. The rivers Penk, Sow, 
and Trent, with many streams and brooks rising in the hills of 
Cannock Chase, water the district and enrich the meadows on 
their banks ; otherwise there is far more arable than pasture 
land. 
These natural advantages — the rich land, the wood and planta- 
tion, the undulating ground, with the wild, elevated tract of 
Cannock Chase, in the centre of the district — are shared almost 
entirely, so far as the possession of the soil goes,' between several 
great estates owned by noblemen. 
Perhaps nowhere in England have the example and patronage 
of the great proprietors had a greater and more beneficial influ- 
ence on agi'iculture than in the case of the great Staffordshire 
landowners, whose estates — comprising more than 100,000 acres 
