Life as an Essex Agricultural Labourer 1840-1920 (Part 1)

Part One: A General Introduction

Preface

Like many people, I descend from a family of agricultural labourers. I wondered what life was like for my ancestors and began to read the few books available on the subject and original documents held at the Essex Record Office. I considered the general context of farming in nineteenth and early twentieth century Essex (taking 1840 to 1920 as the period of study) and how it affected the lives of the agricultural labour - the ordinary family - in terms of health, housing etc .. This is a series of extracts from a 44 page book that I have written.

Introduction

It is easy to assume that life changed very little during the Victorian and Edwardian era. Villages were largely self-sufficient. In most country parishes there was a network of trades built up to serve the farmer and farm labourer: the butcher, baker, wheelwright, blacksmith as well as the doctor (for those who could afford treatment), and publican (where men might spend what little leisure time they had). The talk around villages was about the weather, crops and prices. It was an era of oil lamps, large families, wash-days and home baking from meagre resources. There was no running water and the privy was up the garden.

The horse and plough was a common sight with groups of labourers working in the fields. The countryside, unlike today, must have been a busy place. The labourer supplied his own tools for the job. It took a man one day to plough an acre of land with a horse. By dusk he had walked eleven miles.

To suggest that the work was unskilled performed by ignorant and simple people could not be more untrue. Great skill was necessary, for example, in the use of the scythe and, with a team of horses, ploughing a straight furrow.

This was a very different age to our own, but still one of great change.

Farming from 1840 to 1920 - A brief chronological history

Throughout the era, and indeed probably in every age down to 1945, those who lived in country parishes were engaged directly or indirectly in the 'agricultural industry'. Lives revolved around tending animals or the planting, growing and reaping of crops.

To understand rural life at the beginning of the Victorian era we need to sketch the economic situation in Britain. In 1840 the lives of many were affected by the Corn Laws. During the Napoleonic War, England was effectively blockaded and became reliant on producing its own food. Britain was on the verge of famine by 1812. The price of wheat rose steeply. There followed two good harvests in 1814 and 1815 and, as hostilities ceased, food imports resumed. The price of wheat halved between 1813 and January 1815 which threatened the livelihoods of farmers. Parliament passed the Corn Laws to keep the price of wheat artificially high by banning grain imports until the price of wheat rose above £4 per quarter. It was in effect a self-imposed blockade on foreign grain.

While the Corn Laws helped ensure employment for the agricultural labourer, it also affected the price of a loaf of bread, a basic foodstuff. There were many protests but the ordinary working man had no say because he had no voting rights. A working class movement in the late 1830s (Chartism) failed to make any impact. It was not until 1846 that the Government were forced to repeal the Laws because of the Irish Potato Famine.

William White (1848) described the soil and produce of Essex as having "Every species of loam, from the mildest to the most stubborn ... The county is on the whole fertile, and possesses some particularly fine land. The greater part is well enclosed, and rendered highly productive by the skilful management of agriculturalists. The farmers of Essex are reckoned among the best in the kingdom, and many of them hold farms in different parishes. ... Besides the usual crops of wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, potatoes &c., a considerable quantity of rape seed is grown, and also mustard, rye-grass, trefoil, and all sorts of garden seeds and vegetables". Today farmers will still testify that the Rodings "strong wet loam" grows the best wheat in the whole of East Anglia. Miller Christy (1887) wrote, "their soil is a heavy clay, good for wheat-growing, and offering difficulties to horseman well recognised by those who ride to hounds"⁴. Thomas Wright (1836) noted that without drainage and good management the land "yields very little"³. In this respect, Essex farmers were innovative and ahead of their time.

Around Chelmsford was "very good turnip land" and between the Hanningfields and Waltham Abbey there was "every sort of soil to be met with". Growing peas was also common around the Chelmsford area, as was market gardening.

White records that the Epping area was "famous" for its cream from cattle, and pigs were fattened for the London markets. Livestock fairs existed until the end of the nineteenth century. Two of the most well-known locally were at Ingatestone (on 15 December) and at Bush Fair, Harlow. In 1880, David Smith's grandfather, who farmed at Liok House, West Hanningfield, "went to Ingatestone Fair and, after baving bis pocket picked, bought twelve bullocks",

The proximity of the county to London helped the county's fortune. The coming of the railways, locally to Brentwood in 1839. Chelmsford in 1840, then via another route to Ongar in 1865, had a major impact on the nation's prosperity. It was "the most stupendous social tevolution that has occurred in Engiand at any time"". Markets opened up because goods could be moved with relative ease. By the end of the century there were very few parishes in Essex more than ten miles from a railway station.

Wheat was an important crop in Essex, evidenced by rent levels levied to farmers which changed according to the price of the commodity in the local market. After poor harvests the tithe (payment to the church) was sometimes reduced; for example, in 1835 at Patch Park, Stapleford Tawney.

Growing industrialisation abroad meant that by 1875 England was being inundated by cheap grain from overseas, mainly America. There were also a series of bad harvests, especially in 1878 and 1879. The Government chose not to place a tariff on imports. Consequently there began an agricultural depression.

Lord Ernle wrote that. "Land deteriorated in condition. The counties which suffered most were the corn-growing districts, in which high farming had won its most signal triumphs. On the heavy clays of Essex, for example, thousands of acres which had formerly yielded great crops and had paid high rents, had passed out of cultivation into ranches of cattle or temporary sheep-runs"". These heavy clay soils required 'three horses' to plough and were therefore more expensive to cultivate.

Land to the east of the London to Colchester railway was badly affected. "Many farmers were unable to bear this continued loss, farms began to stand empty ... which, in many cases, had been farmed by the same family for hundreds of years" ⁹. Farms went out of business and work in rural parishes dwindled. Nationally a third of the labouring population left the land in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

The price of wheat was especially low in 1894 and 1895 but showed signs of improvement in 1897. It was not until 1907 that the price rose above 30 shillings (£1.50) per quarter but by then the acreage farmed had declined. In Essex in 1904 there was a reduction of over 21,000 acres of wheat (20.9%) against the previous year.

As our era drew towards a close it was observed, "Dairy farming is the only kind that is really profitable, and yet Essex is far more suited climatically for wheat-growing, being sunny and dry in the summer - too dry for the best pasture"¹¹.

The Essex Chronicle took a more upbeat view. "If anybody has lingering in his mind the word 'derelict' in connection with the county of Essex, he would well run though the returns just received for produce of crops in Great Britain issued by the Board of Agriculture"¹². This is summarised in the table below. Comparative figures for 1848 are given, showing that the yield in wheat per acre had dramatically increased.

aaaet markets for

In Edwardian Essex, the county had one of the strongest markets for selling corn. In Tindal Square, Chelmsford, was the Corn Exchange, "a large, handsome, glass-roofed building, 100ft. by 45, with offices &c., ranged round it, erected by a company in 1856, at a cost of £10,000. The busy scene to be witnessed in it on Friday afternoons resembles the more widely known one at Mark Lane. The building is also largely used for theatrical performances, chrysanthemum and poultry shows and other entertainments"¹⁵. There was also a sizeable market for livestock, "one of the best in the Eastem counties"¹⁶, which moved from the High Street in 1879 to occupy several acres behind the Corn Exchange. The building was demolished in the late 1960s to make way for a shopping precinct.

Reginald Beckett (1901) observed that, "There is no busier place in the world than Chelmsford on a market-day. Here the broad-shouldered husbandmen, clad in tweed and homespun, whom you may have met on their lonely farmsteads or in the warm parlours of village inns, bring samples of their produce, and in a babel of homely speech determine for the rest of the world the price of its daily bread"¹⁷.

Chelmsford market in 1913 was the third largest in the country selling 106,831 quarters of wheat, after Norwich (123,859) and Cambridge (107,440).

The increased use of transport also had an effect of the rural economy towards the end of our period. Comn could be sent by lorry outside the village. The role of the miller diminished. In 1940 C Henry Warren wrote, "From being a friendly focus of village life, the wind-mill has dwindled to an 'ancient monument""¹⁸.

The outbreak of the First World War (1914) again raised the possibility of a food shortage. The Com Production Act 1917 set minimum wages for agricultural labourers (nationally 25s per week) and guaranteed a minimum price for wheat (60s per quarter) and oats (38s.6d). A survey was carried out, demanding that where production was deficient that this be remedied by the ploughing up of meadow land. Stringent state control lasted until 1922, when legislation was repealed.

But there was another landscape which changed forever. Many skilled agricultural labourers were called up to serve in the War. Some did not return.