A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside. Johnny Scott
geographer, observed that ‘Britain produces corn, cattle, gold, silver and iron. These things are exported, along with hides, slaves and dogs suitable for hunting. The Gauls, however, use both these and their own native dogs for warfare also.’’
Under the Romans, farming methods changed through a combination of technological advances and planned field systems, producing an order and regularity to the countryside that increased output and aided communication. A range of innovations in agricultural equipment, plant types and animal species were introduced, amongst which were a variety of different ploughs to suit different soil types. In particular, a symmetrical share that turned the sod simultaneously to right and left and an improved version of the existing Celtic plough with its metal share and moulding board, to which was added a coulter – a blade cutting through the soil vertically ahead of the plough which enabled previously unworkable land to be broken in. They also introduced a number of new agricultural tools: sickles, mattocks, hoe rakes, turf cutters, iron rakes, two-handed scythes, mower’s anvils, forks, slip-eye axes and metal spades. The most important of these was the two-handed scythe, making close cropping of hay, other fodder crops and grain possible, and the metal spade, which had an important impact on field drainage. Improved methods of grinding corn were brought in from the Continent along with the novel idea of drying corn in purpose-built heated granaries.
UNDER THE ROMANS, FARMING METHODS CHANGED THROUGH A COMBINATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES AND PLANNED FIELD SYSTEMS, PRODUCING AN ORDER AND REGULARITY TO THE COUNTRYSIDE THAT INCREASED OUTPUT AND AIDED COMMUNICATION.
All these were of secondary importance to the development of a demand-led economy that pushed agricultural production to new peaks. Towns such as London, Bath, Colchester, Newcastle, Corbridge, York and Carmarthen, to name only a few, were a new feature in the landscape and both a catalyst for further agricultural production and consequence of it. There was also the Roman army which became a major purchaser, encouraging farmers to grow produce for sale rather than primarily for subsistence. The existing cultivated plants continued to be grown and new species of vegetable were introduced: cabbage, broad bean, parsnip, peas, radish, turnip, celery, carrot, mustard, tares and corn spurry. They also brought fruit trees and established orchards of cherry, plum, medlar, damson, bullace, apple, mulberry, figs and grapes.
There is evidence that existing sheep and cattle were improved by cross-breeding with Roman stock. I have always understood that the Romney Marsh sheep are descended from those belonging to the large Roman settlements on the fringes of the Kent and Essex salt marshes. Apart from the excellent grazing, the attraction of marshes was the absence of liver fluke in salt water, which today still causes numerous deaths among sheep. Although wheat was the staple diet of the army, beef was the preferred ration and numerous large cattle ranches were established in the south and near places such as Hadrian’s Wall and other military depots or legion bases. Livestock farmers prospered as much as grain producers; apart from meat and textiles there was a huge demand for hides to supply the army’s need for leather.
The Romans introduced the revolutionary three-year or three-field system of cultivation to their arable farms, which improved soil fertility and increased productivity by rotating rye or winter wheat, followed by spring oats or barley, then leaving the field fallow during the third stage. The average size of arable farm was between 100 and 142 hectares, made up of regular-shaped oblong or square fields of around five hectares. Eastfield and three other villas near Andover, for example, North Warnborough and Stroud in Hampshire, East Grinstead and Wigginholt in East and West Sussex, and Rodmartin in Gloucestershire, were all about the same size. There were also some substantial estates and cattle ranches: Ditchley in Oxfordshire was over 400 acres; Bignor in Sussex and Cromhall in Gloucestershire were both 800 acres. Woodchester, the most magnificent of all the villas outside Rome, would have been the centre of an even more substantial hectarage. There are over a hundred major Roman sites in England, twenty in Wales and six in Scotland, plus literally hundreds of minor ones. For example, in Southern Scotland alone there are any number of farms with the name ‘Chesters’, indicating that there was Roman occupation and agriculture of some sort on that site.
By the fourth century AD, the population had risen to nearly five million with a substantial urban population engaged in trades and crafts, enjoying a civilised life with baths, sanitation, culture, education and entertainment. Agriculture was booming, buoyed by a money economy, efficient transport and urban markets. Unfortunately it was not to last; the Empire was overstretched and the barbarian hordes were at the gates of Rome. The legions were hurriedly recalled and within a few decades life for the population would change dramatically. The order and sophistication of the Roman period would not be seen in Britain for another thousand years.
During the fifth and sixth centuries, the endless upheaval of wars, famine, disease and political uncertainty led to a massive depopulation of Britain. By 700 AD, numbers had fallen to substantially less than two million as droves of migrants fled to north-western France, forming what is now Brittany, or Northern Spain, to create Britonia. By the beginning of the eighth century, trade that had driven the growth of agriculture in late Iron Age and Roman times had long since collapsed and farming was purely for subsistence.
Initially, the magnificent Roman villas were occupied by communities of squatters, but as the buildings collapsed through lack of repair, the majority of the population lived on small farmsteads made of wood, wattle and reed thatching. In the chaotic social structure of the time there were two classes of freemen below the king and above slaves: thanes at the upper end and ceorls (churls) at the lower. A man could only be a thane if he owned at least five hides of land – a hide being roughly fifty hectares – and a ceorls was literally ‘a non-servile peasant farmer,’ who farmed land under obligation to a succession of landlords, who changed according to the outcome of various territorial squabbles.
INNOVATIONS IN AGRICULTURE WERE NON-EXISTENT AND IT WOULD BE SOME TIME BEFORE THE OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM WAS ADOPTED … A CHANGE THAT WOULD DEVELOP OVER THE NEXT TWO CENTURIES AND AGAIN ALTER THE FACE OF THE COUNTRYSIDE FOR GENERATIONS TO COME.
The standard cereal crops were grown but the area under arable production had fallen considerably, with much of the land previously under cultivation reverting to rough pasture, scrub and woodland. Ceorls resumed the Iron Age practice of a simple two-field rotation, typically farming one or two hides of land in small irregular-shaped fields with rough hedging or earth banks. Innovations in agriculture were non-existent and it would be some time before the open-field system was adopted, where ceorls worked co-operatively, sharing the expense of a team of oxen to plough the large common fields in narrow strips that were shared out alternately so that each farmer had an equal share of good and bad land – a change that would develop over the next two centuries and again alter the face of the countryside for generations to come.
Livestock would have generally been farmed in small numbers sufficient only for the farmsteads’ needs and dependent on how much could be grown to feed them through the winter. Cattle were kept primarily for milk, or as beasts of burden, and eventually for their meat and hides. Sheep were kept for milk and wool. All settlements had a few self-sufficient goats producing milk, even from the poorest diet, and large herds of pigs browsing in the adjacent woods.
When they weren’t fighting, hunting was an important part of the lives of Anglo-Saxon thanes, with horses and hounds regarded as valuable status symbols, often being buried with their owners, such as the one at Lakenheath, in Suffolk. Later much of this land was consolidated into the large estates of wealthy nobles and the Church. Ceorls might work the land in return for service or produce, or they might work the lord’s land a given number of days per year. As time went on, more and more of these large estates were established as integrated commercial enterprises, complete with sophisticated water mills to grind grain, such as the ones at Corbridge in Northumberland, Tamworth in Staffordshire, or Old Windsor in Berkshire.
By the end of the Anglo-Saxon period an increasing number of lords had led to a division of the landscape into smaller blocks, more akin to today’s parishes, often with a single large manor and its associated church. Trade with Europe and Scandinavia in hides, wool and slaves was picking up and craftsmen were beginning to form themselves into guilds,