UK Countryside history - 1850 AD
The industrial revolution transformed the landscape and led to Britain
becoming the world's first urban nation. Railways, new roads and an improving
transport infrastructure provided fresh food for fast growing towns while
imported produce from around the world provided a greatly more diverse diet.
Increasingly however, the countryside became a remote and distant environment
to an industrialised society.
- Population
By 1850 the population of the mainland UK had grown to 21 million with 2.3
million living in London. Over 50% of the population lived in towns which
were growing at an increasing rate. Britain was now unique in the world
in being essentially an urban nation. By 1900 the proportion of urban dwellers
had grown to 80%.
- Crops
Technological developments took place across the whole spectrum of mechanisation
with reaping and threshing machines, new ploughs and drills. Nitrogen fertiliser
(guano) was imported from Chile and widely used by the mid 19th century
with manufactured sulphate of ammonia and superphosphate in use in the latter
part of the century. Agricultural productivity also rose on the back of
the increase in the use of roots crops and potatoes and urban demand created
new markets for vegetables and salad crops.
- Livestock
Wool for centuries the foundation of the textile industry was declining
in importance with the advent of cotton. Textiles manufactured from cotton
were easier to mechanise which allowed higher output and greater profit
- albeit for only a brief period before the competitive advantage would
be lost to a new innovation elsewhere. The textile industry was however
a source of technology transfer and developments were quickly exported to
other industries where the advantages of mechanisation raised output. While
wool was of declining importance the market for meat and milk grew and farmers
responded with higher output beef and dairy systems founded largely on the
use of root crops.
- Farming Systems
The Corn Laws which had been introduced from the beginning of the nineteenth
century to protect British farmers from international trade, pushed up the
price of wheat and made bread expensive. This was unpopular with manufacturers
who wanted to be able to pay lower wages and who saw cheaper bread as a
way of achieving this. In 1846 amidst the potato famine and widespread pressure
for their removal, the Corn Laws were repealed and imports resumed. The
agricultural interest had been checked but in a period of technological
advance the industry was able to ride out the competition with improved
yields and lower production costs. Capital spending on drainage, buildings,
machinery and roads linking to the railways (8,000 miles by 1850) all fueled
the agricultural revolution with British farmers at least twice as efficient
as their European contemporaries.
As with all farming systems, such progress is often punctuated with crisis
as the potato blight of the 1840's illustrated. During 1845, 46 and 48 blight
decimated the potato crop in Ireland and up to a million died from malnutrition
and in the decade that followed a further 2 million emigrated. The inadequacy
of the British response to the calamity induced a bitterness in Ireland
that persists today. What price a fungicide? In 1860, 80% of food consumed
was still produced in the UK but by the 1870s after a series of bad harvests
and the arrival of imports from the prairies, farm gate prices fell dramatically
and the great agricultural depression ensued. Lasting for nearly thirty
years significant rural depopulation resulted and where previously the workforce
had known, understood and been involved in country ways, the new workforce
were migrants with only a transient interest. There were few to speak for
agriculture and as rural Britain became depopulated so the countryside became
a plaything for the rich. By 1900 the majority of food and raw materials
were imported.
- Woodland & Hedges
By 1800 charcoal use was declining in favour of coal and coppicing as a
method of woodland management declined. With a lower economic rationale
to woodland, a significant part of the area of ancient woodland that had
existed since the Black Death was cleared to make way for agriculture or
for modern forestry in the form of softwood plantations. Many new species
of tree and shrub were introduced and some of these now dominate the landscape.
Between 1750 and 1850 the enclosure of land had continued with some 200,000
miles of new hedge being planted. Often comprised of almost exclusively
hawthorn these new demarcations were unpopular as peasants were dispossessed
of their small holdings and in becoming landless forced to find work in
the cities. The search for efficiency was concerned not just with enclosing
new land - hedgerow removal was also leading to larger field sizes.
- Social Economy
The 19th Century was dominated by international trade, commercialism and
industrialisation with Britain's large urban workforce providing a huge
stimulus for the world economy. A large proportion of trade was based on
import and subsequent export and supported by service industries like banking
that improved the balance of payments with invisibles. Free trade also led
to an economic boom and by the 1880's a significant part of the population
were enjoying leisure time and rising prosperity. Wage rates had increased,
the birth rate fell and diets improved with meat, milk, veg, bread, potatoes
and beer all becoming more widely available. UK agriculture remained fundamental
in the supply of foodstuffs but its influence was waning in the economy
as a whole and land, once identified with power, became just another asset.
In 1850 agriculture accounted for 20% of national income but by 1900 this
had fallen to just 6%.
- Climate
From 1850 the climate warmed to that we know today.
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