The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

The industrial revolution
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Agriculture
Two major changes transformed the agricultural landscape between the middle of the eighteenth
century and the end of the nineteenth century. The first was the process of enclosure of the
former open fields as a result of privately sponsored parliamentary Acts (placed in the wider
context of rural changes in the previous chapter); the second was the industrialization of agriculture
itself. Both are clearly visible in the archaeological record. The increased productivity of the land
was needed to feed the growing industrial populations.
In the late eighteenth century, consolidated holdings and capital investment, as well as an
interest in improving farming, seem to have resulted in fine model farms. This was particularly
the case in Scotland, where sweeping changes after the Jacobite rising of 1745 and the systematic
enclosure by large estates, led to a programme of farm improvement. George Meikle, from East
Lothian, experimented with applying horse power to threshing; steam was introduced early in
areas such as East Lothian and Yorkshire where coal was cheap.
One way of increasing productivity was through the application of fertilizer, and much of the
industrial archaeology of agriculture can be seen to relate to fertilizer production and distribution.
During the 1850s, a boom in agricultural prices and new research into the science of farming
created an optimism that is translated in some extraordinary groups of buildings. Cattle were
brought in and fed for much of the year on new feed compounds, their manure collected and
taken to the fields. At Leighton, Powys, during the 1850s, John Naylor erected cattle sheds, circular
piggeries, a root house, engine houses, and other buildings. Manure was collected from the
stockhouses, mixed with bone meal ground on the site, and pumped up to an enormous slurry
tank where it was then fed onto the fields. There was a funicular railway, a decorative poultry
house, a saw mill, gas works and brickworks and a broad gauge railway taking ricks directly into
the huge barn (Figure 16.8). Archaeological investigation shows the way in which the systems
were designed to work together on the steep hillside, and also suggests that the scheme was very
short-lived (Wade Martins 1991).
The elaborate tramways of the Brecon Beacons also relate to this period of high agricultural
optimism. Archaeological survey has shown how a network was originally constructed to bring
lime to the uplands as part of a large
scheme of agricultural
development, but the enterprise
failed, and the tramways were
adapted in order to serve the
industrial areas of the Swansea
valley (Hughes 1990). Lime was very
important as a source of fertilizer,
and the kilns at Calke Abbey,
Derbyshire, illustrate the
importance of lime as part of the
workings of a large estate (Marshall
1992).
Consumer goods
Probate inventories, compiled
when people died, were lists of
possessions that are often used by
historians to explore changes in
material culture. Archaeology,
Figure 16.8 The great barn at Leighton, Wales, constructed in the 1850s and
designed so that hay ricks could be brought in on a broad gauge railway.
Source: Kate Clark