Comings and Goings on the Farm
Jonathan Brown
In this paper I shall give an introduction to the movement of farmers in and
out of farming and from farm to farm.
It is not uncommon to read of a farming family that traces its occupation of its
present farm back over three or four generations, to the 1920s or 1930s, when
grandfather or great grandfather bought the farm.
Three examples from Rex Sly, Soil in their Souls: a history of fenland
farming (2010):
The Newling family of Gorefield, Cambridgeshire. Michael Newling
bought 60 acres of Richmond Hall in 1926.
The Wheatley family of Coates, near Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire. J. H.
Wheatley came to Whittlesey from Saxilby, then on to Coates in 1883 as
a blacksmith. He changed to farming 13 acres in 1911.
The Allpress family of Chatteris. They have been in the area for four
generations. Theirs is a much larger farming business now. See their
website www.allpressfarms.co.uk/
Such statements are often made to show the longevity and stability of
the farming population, but you could as easily argue that they show the
opposite. After all, if there were people moving in to farms, there ought to
have been others moving out.
The more you look at farming society, the less static it seems. For every
family that has been in the same farm for 200 years, there are probably four
that have moved. Farmers moved out, they moved in, they moved on, and they
moved about a bit. Together these movements make up what are referred to as
tenant turnover and the ‘farming ladder’.
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What were the reasons behind this? It could simply be a natural cycle of
generations: a family can expect to last three or four generations and then run
out of direct heirs or otherwise transmogrify. There is plenty of evidence of
that when we look at the lists of tenants on a farming estate.
But the number of changes reported for the 1920s suggests there is
something more going on here, and so there was. Before looking at the details,
it is worth considering the bigger picture of the farming population.
The number of farmers
The really big picture is the decline in the numbers of farmers since the midnineteenth century. The census figures show this. These are for England and
Wales, taken from the occupational tables of the published census reports:
1851: 249,431
1901: 223,610
1911: 208,761
But then the numbers increase in 1921 before a fall again in 1931:
1921: 244,600
1931: 230,900
Perhaps there was more stability than we think.
After the Second World War the fall in numbers is more rapid. The
figures do not compare directly with the ones above – they are farmers and
family rather than farmers only. But these show the scale of change, figures for
Great Britain:
1966: 260,000
1980s: c180,000
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The economic cycle
Much of the change represented by the anecdotal evidence of farming families
moving in the 1920s can be attributed to the economic cycle. During the 1920s
and 1930s agriculture was in a recession – a depression, even – and these
were times that encouraged movement both in and out of the industry.
Going back further, the 1880s-1890s were another depression – known
as the Great Depression – and another time of movement. And even further
back, the period from about 1815 to the early 1830s was another recession.
Parliamentary enclosure was another change that affected movement of
farmers in some places.
Bad times are unsettling. The troubles of late-nineteenth-century
agriculture began in the 1870s, and here we have the agent for Lord Monson’s
estates in Lincolnshire reporting on farmers’ reactions to a poor year in 1879:
‘farms [were] being given up in every direction, but it is certain that in many
cases the outgoing tenants will be looking for farms elsewhere’. (Toynbee 8
Oct 1879).
The result of such unsettled times was an increased turnover of tenants
as farmers moved out or moved on. Measuring the extent of that turnover is
not straightforward.
There is a lot of impressionistic evidence. The Royal Commission on
Agriculture of the 1890s appointed assistant commissioners to investigate
different districts. Dr Fream reported on the Andover district of Hampshire.
He declared that there had been many changes in tenure since 1880. Among
the examples he cited was a farm which had had three changes in tenant since
1882; on another of 600 acres there had been 8 tenants in 40 years.
John Orr in his book Agriculture of Oxfordshire (1916) p. 5, wrote of
the Chilterns: ‘There is no part of Oxfordshire from which so many of the old
farming families have disappeared.’ The 1850 directory, he said, listed 130
farmers in the area bounded by Caversham, Goring and Stokenchurch. In 1916
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no more than 6 or 7 of those families were left, and all except two families had
moved from their ancestral homes.
A look at the directories for one or two parishes might help, comparing
1907 with 1931.
Stoke Row, one of the Chiltern parishes. Those described as farmers:
1907
W. Owen, farmer & contractor
T. Brazil
1931
J. Delafield
W. J. Biggs
W. Hayward
S. Delafield
R. Hayward
J. Hayward
W. Page, farmer & timber merchant
H. M. Oliver
Second, Hambleden, Buckinghamshire:
1907
1931
Thomas Clark, Rockwell Farm
Mrs Dorothy Armstrong, Huttons
Louis Deane, Colstripe Farm
Farm
Mrs A. Keene, Rockwell End
W. Cave, Little Parmoor
C. D. Keene, Chisbridge Farm
T. G. Clarke, Rockall End
J. Reynolds, farm bailiff to Hon. W.
Mrs Deane, The Beeches
F. D. Smith, Yewden Manor Farm
Alfred Keene, Colstripe
Arthur Keene, Rockwell End
Percival Keene, The Roost
William Keene, Russell's Farm
Geo. King, Flint Hall
Robert Walker, Rotten Row
The results are mixed. Although the comparison is over a much shorter
time than John Orr’s, it does not show wholesale change. But it does
demonstrate something of the changes going on in the 1920s. It also shows us
something of the nature of the directories, for the lists of farms for the two
dates are not directly comparable. Some farms or farmers might be entered in
different parishes from one edition of the directory to another.
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Returning to the more descriptive sources, we find some suggestion
limited change during the depression of the late nineteenth century. John Orr
said that north east Oxfordshire, east of the Cherwell experienced less
movement and fewer changes among the farmers than in the Chilterns
(Agriculture of Oxfordshire, p. 43). The Royal Commission on Agriculture
reported little change in turnover in the West Country.
Moving out
If we take some of the comments about the Great Depression at face value, the
1880s was a period when farmers moved out wholesale. Times were too tough;
they couldn’t cope; they failed in business.
While this was true for some farmers, most tried their best to hang on,
trying to reduce their costs, especially the cost of rent.
One thing that did not do was go bankrupt, not in any great numbers,
at least. The peak year in the late nineteenth century was 1881, when 700
farmers were declared bankrupt. This was a tiny fraction of the total number
of farmers; even at the rate of a few hundred a year the total was very small.
The same was true of the 1920s-30s. The peak was 600 farm bankruptcies in
England and Wales in 1932 = 0.26 per cent of the total number of farmers.
Who were the unlucky ones? Witnesses to the Royal Commission on
Agricultural Distress 1879-82 gave general statements about large farmers
who speculated with their capital bankrupting themselves, but these do not
amount to very much. The work of P. J. Perry suggests that many, if not most,
bankrupts were small farmers.1 A high proportion of them were in the Fens.
Most bankrupts reported in newspapers failed for small sums, which suggests
that most were small farmers with limited capital. In 1930s bankrupts failed
on average with liabilities no greater than £2000.
Borrowing to start farming, especially to purchase land, was among the
more frequently cited causes of failure. There was Mr Allen, owner of about
P. J. Perry, ‘Where was the Great Depression? A geography of agricultural bankruptcy’. Reprinted in
P. J. Perry, ed, British Agriculture 1875-1914 (1973) pp. 129-48.
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300 acres of land at Surfleet, in the Lincolnshire Fens, who failed in the 1880s
with his land worth less than the mortgage. Failure in this way was more
common in the 1930s, by which time there were more owner-occupiers.
Others simply lost money on their farming, but some of the newspaper
reports add further detail. A farmer at Long Sutton was asked by his creditors
in 1879 why in the past year he had ‘fitted up a new residence in a style fit for
any gentleman of independent means’, to which he replied he had been
deceived and blamed his failure on farming losses. Another man in 1886 said
his failure was due to ‘losses in agriculture, bad seasons and a large family.’2
So, the London Gazette and other records relating to bankruptcy are
not going to figure largely in sources for tracing the movement of farm
families.
Instead of bankruptcy, most failing farmers made arrangements with
their creditors enabling them to leave farming. Others got out while the going
was sufficiently good to enable them to retrieve enough capital to move on.
Lord Petre’s agent commented in 1891 of a farmer in Essex who left while he
was losing money: ‘Mr Attenborough was, it should be stated, a man of means
and not therefore in any way hampered for want of capital’.3
We do not usually know what became of the farmers who left. Some
former tenants reappeared as farm managers or bailiffs for landowners or
large farmers, having exchanged the risks of farming on their own account for
the security of a salary. R. Hunter Pringle, one of the assistant commissioners
for the Royal Commission on Agriculture, must have written melodramas in
his spare time, for he gives us a number of harrowing tales. One example from
Huntingdonshire: farmer M, who had made a lot of money in trade. He took a
farm, was ruined and hung himself.4 The serious part of this is that it points us
towards one of the sadder aspects of farming – the high suicide rate.
2
Lincoln Rutland and Stamford Mercury, 21 February 1879, 10 December 1886.
Essex Record Office D/DPE17.
4
Royal Commission on Agriculture (1894-6), R Hunter Pringle, Report on Bedford, Huntingdonshire
and Northamptonshire, p. 20.
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Most of the farmers who left the business, even in the times of
recession, did so for the family reasons – old age, ill health, retirement. For
some there were more attractive prospects. Some left the land for industrial
and commercial opportunities.
Some farmers emigrated. Farmers, and especially younger sons, sought
better prospects abroad. In the early nineteenth century there were
implement-makers offering ‘emigrants’ packs’ to help the departing farmer set
himself up in his new land. The economic cycle affected emigration as it did
other aspects of movement in farming society. There was an increase in
farmers emigrating immediately after the repeal of the Corn Laws (there was a
short-lived recession in agriculture then). Thus 475 farmers left for America in
1875. Newspapers described emigrant farmers as small ‘industrious’ folk going
to get a secure living.5
Moving in
If farmers have left, who replaces them?
Most farmers come from within the farming population. Sons do follow
fathers, nephews follow uncles, and so on. It was when the supply of relatives
ran dry that the family left the land. It was not only direct succession that
accounted for new farmers from a farming family. Take the Sanders brothers,
for example. They took Moorburns Farm, Lutterworth, Leicestershire, in 1921,
a farm which had been through difficult times since the 1870s. One of the
brothers was an electrical engineer, the other a trained lawyer. But they were
sons of a farmer, returning to the land.6
If they were not from the farming population, new entrants were likely
to come from country society. Percival Keene, recorded as a farmer in the 1931
directory for Hambledon (see above, p. 5) was the local Highway Surveyor
according to the 1907 directory.
W. E. van Vugt, ‘Running from Ruin? The emigration of British farmers in the wake of the repeal of
the Corn Laws’, EcHr, 2 ser, v. 41, 1988, pp. 411-28.
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Farmer’s Weekly, 10 January 1936.
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There were many more examples, such as John Butler of Scotter, north
Lincolnshire. He was a grocer and draper in 1889 according to the directory.
In 1896 he had become a grocer and draper, farmer and potato grower, and by
1903 he had four farms. His business letter head then declared that he was a
‘celery, carrot and seed potato grower’. The next year he had nine farms.
Butler had made money made in trade, and there were others who
came from careers in business to farming without the agricultural or rural
background. There were several examples of men putting money earned from
successful careers in the drapery trade in London and Manchester into
farming.7 Of celebrity status in the mid-nineteenth century was Alderman
Mechi. He made a fortune in London selling a patent razor strop, and he
invested a good deal of it in a farm at Tiptree, Essex, where he set out to
demonstrate what highly capitalized farming could achieve.
People successful in other walks of life still want to invest in farms, as
the number of investment bankers, pop stars and racing drivers on the land
testifies.
Men returning from wartime service were among the new farmers of
the 1920s. County council smallholdings were the way in for some of them. W.
H. Owen was born in Sleaford in 1892, and went to Western Australia in 1912,
where he cleared 200 acres for farming. He volunteered for the Australian
army in 1914. He returned to Lincolnshire to visit his parents 1919 and stayed
because father was ailing. He took Bridge End Farm, in nearby Horbling in
1920; this was a farm of 120 acres owned by the Crown Estate.8
Landlords and tenants
Most farms were rented from a farming estate. Landlords preferred tried and
tested methods. Succession of a farm from father to son or other member of
the family was usually their first thought. They aimed at least to keep a good
family on the estate, if not necessarily at the same farm. Thus there were
7
E. J. T. Collins, ed., The Agricultural History of England and Wales, v. VII, 1850-1914 (2000) p. 174.
Joanna Loxton, ‘How Walter Henry Owen avoided the bailiffs: a Lincolnshire farmer between the
wars’, Local Historian, v. 40, 2010, pp. 224-34.
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Grummitts on Lord Ancaster’s estate in 1900 as there had been in 1875, and
similar tales were told of estates throughout the land.
Landowners worked through their agents, and when a farm was vacant
relied on them to make discreet enquiries and handle any applicantions for
the tenancy. Most avoided advertising vacant farms: it looked bad. A great
landowner, it was said, ‘would have as much thought of advertising a vacant
farm as he would a marriageable daughter’.9
An increase in farmers giving notice to quit during the hard times of the
Great Depression forced more landowners to resort to advertising. And it
worked: advertisement could attract a respectable list of applicants. One agent
in mid-Lincolnshire in 1889 received enquiries from Sussex, Chester and East
Lothian as well as locally when he advertised.10 By the twentieth century
advertising in the local and farming press was becoming more usual.
Moving on
While some farming families stayed in the same farm for generations, there
were others who moved – farmers looking for a bigger farm, a smaller farm, a
farm with better land, or land better suited to how they wanted to farm.
Most moved a short distance. W. H. Owen left Bridge End, Horbling, in
1937 and moved to North End Farm, Swaton, only a couple of miles away. This
was a larger farm, 290 acres. It was also on the Crown estate, and this again
was a common practice. On a large estate this might give considerable scope to
move between villages, but farmers mostly moved within a fairly restricted
range. The landlord might be found suggesting a move – rewarding a good
tenant with a better farm on the estate.
Familiarity with the farming and soils was a big determinant. Farmers
on light chalk soils of the Downs and Wolds wanted to keep to them, and so
on. Landlords took a similar line, preferring a new tenant from the locality
over an applicant from further afield. Lord Heneage, owner of land in the
9
Agricultural Gazette, 9 May 1881.
Lincolnshire Archives Office, 2TGH 1/12/13.
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Grimsby area of Lincolnshire, was advised by his agent to prefer a particular
applicant ‘as he is a native and much more likely to know what he is taking’.
This limited movement was a form of risk management for both farmer
and landowner. Detailed knowledge of the locality its soils and farming gave a
sense of security when changing farm. For the landlord it acted as insurance in
choosing tenant. Some examples of unhappy moves to new territory served to
reinforce those preferences.
But some farmers did move great distances. There was a film released
by British Transport Films in 1952 called Farmer Moving South. It shows a
farm being moved by train from Stokesley, Yorkshire, to Hartfield, Sussex on
31 December 1950. It can be seen on You Tube.
Robert Wales moved from Northamptonshire to Winterbourne Stoke,
Wiltshire, taking 1000 acres of Salisbury Plain in 1926. Why? 'Because I could
see that agriculture would have to pass though a period of deep depression'.
So, he left an intensive farm in Northamptonshire for a low-cost, ranch-style
farm, on which he employed only 2½ men.11
Migrant farmers.
In the Great Depression of the late nineteenth century there was a more
significant migration of farmers from the south west of England and Scotland
to southern England. The attraction for those moving was the availability of
farms at low rents, while in the places they left there was competition for land.
Many who moved were young men unable to get started in farming in their
home districts, but established farmers also made the move.
The movement of Scots to Essex was the best known of aspect of this
migration – partly because they had a publicist in Primrose McConnell, who
wrote about his experiences, and those of other Scots. They have also been
more thoroughly studied than other migrants. The newcomers were
concentrated on the Essex clays round Ongar, Brentwood and Chelmsford.
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Farmer’s Weekly, 3 August 1926.
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They also went to Hertfordshire and other areas. Oxfordshire attracted
migrants – there were some Scots on the Mapledurham estate.
They were not the only migrants: farmers from the south west also
moved to central southern and eastern England. Thus 40 per cent of farming
migrants into Essex were from Scotland, 50 per cent from Devon, Cornwall
and Lancashire. John Orr (Agriculture of Oxfordshire, 1916, p. 5) wrote of the
Chilterns that farmers who in earlier periods came from Wiltshire and
Somerset had recently been coming from Devon, with active encouragement
from landowners.
Matthew Watt was one of the Scots who moved to Essex. He went to
Heath Place, Orsett, a farm of 350 acres. He brought his stock down by train.
His son, W. O. Watt, had 4 farms in Orsett plus Bush Hall Farm, Harlow by
1936. Robert Sellars moved from Ayshire to Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1900 'to solve
the difficulties of English farming.' He was the first Scot to arrive in this area:
within five years there was a little colony.12
Most of these farmers were entering upon a complete change, moving
from the pastoral west to the arable south and east. They introduced new
types of farming to the areas to which they came, especially dairying. But they
were not completely revolutionary, and most worked within mixed farming
traditions. However much they worked within tradition, they were not
universally popular. Locals often accused them of working the land hard and
employ no local labour.13
However, the families became established in new areas, farming for at
least three generations. Some become prominent – Primrose McConnell as a
writer; Colin Campbell, a Scot who moved to south Lincolnshire became the
first president of the National Farmers’ Union.
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Farmer’s Weekly, 20, July 1934, 11 September 1936.
H. Rider Haggard, Rural England (1902) v. 2, pp. 16, 99.
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Where do we look for information?
There is no book on farming society. Some general histories of agriculture
include something on movement of farming society. More detail appears in a
few two sociological studies of mobility in farm population in the mid-20th
century. Memoirs and reminisces by farmers also give some insight into the
nature of the farming population.
Estate records
For manuscript sources, the main ones are those of the landlords. Most farms
were tenanted, and estates generally kept good records, many of which survive
in record offices or private estate archives.
Rentals – lists of tenants – are the main category of record useful for
tracing movement. They record the name of the tenant, the farm he held (not
always named), its extent, and the rent paid for it. Sometimes they give the
date of entry to the farm. See Fig 1 for an example from an estate in
Lincolnshire. Many estate records include series of rentals, which enable the
researcher to build up a picture of change. Estate surveys are more detailed
records, which include information on the state of the farm as well, but there
are rarely series of these.
Among other estate papers useful for this type of study are tenancy
agreements, which record the tenant’s entry on to his farm, and the conditions
of tenure. Any changes in the conditions, such as his taking some extra land,
usually required a new agreement, so a good collection can give information
about the farmer’s career. Tenant right valuations drawn up on the change of
farm tenancy are another source.
Agents’ papers provide further information about farmers and their
moves. Some of these are included in estate records, but look also in the
papers of solicitors, auctioneers and valuers, who often acted as agents,
especially for small and medium-sized estates.
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Farm records
These are less abundant. Farmers often were poor at record-keeping, and the
survival of those that were created is not as good as estate papers. Some of
those that are available can be helpful – farm diaries and accounts might say
when the farmer entered his farm. Some might say something about his
neighbours’ movements.
Farm sale records become more important in the twentieth century. By
the late 1930s sales of farms from estates had increased the proportion of
farms in owner-occupation up to about a third. Information about sales can be
drawn from newspapers and magazines, and from the records of agents,
auctioneers and valuers.
Directories. These have featured already in this paper, and are a valuable basic
source. They have some drawbacks: for example, a farmer might be listed
under different parishes in different editions, not because he had moved, but
because his land straddled a boundary, or whatever.
Newspapers and farming magazines can be very useful, but time-consuming.
Official records. Parliamentary Papers. Agriculture has been the subject of a
number of Royal Commissions, Select Committees and other official
enquiries. The evidence presented in the reports, although some is discursive,
can help us understand the movement of the farming population.
The author
Jonathan Brown worked for many years at the Museum of English Rural Life,
for much of the time having curatorial charge of the archive collections. He is
now hon fellow at the museum. He has written more than a dozen books and
many articles on rural history, including The Rural World of Eric Guy (2008),
Steam on the Farm (2008) and Tracing Your Rural Ancestors (2011).
Caption for Fig. 1. An extract from a rental of the Heneage estate, north
Lincolnshire 1888. Lincolnshire Archives Office 2HEN2/1/4.
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