Farming in Barwick a century ago. Back to the Main Historical Society page
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Farming in Barwick a century ago.


from The Barwicker No.70
June 2003



Frederick Selincourt Colman was rector of Barwick from 1899 to 1910. This article is taken from his 'The History of Barwick-in-Elmet' published in 1908. It paints a detailed picture of farming in the parish at that time, contrasting it with the situation a hundred years before. As a landlord himself and a fine historian he is well able to make this analysis.


The parish is almost entirely agricultural. On the western side it is mostly grass land, and there is a great deal of dairy farming for the supply of milk to Leeds. Here and there are small market gardens ranging in size from one or two to ten or twenty acres, the produce of which finds its way to Leeds Market and the hotels and restaurants of the city.

The forcing of rhubarb is a prosperous industry. The roots are grown outside in the fields and then removed into roughly-made forcing houses, where by means of artificial heat the vegetable is brought into the market as early as January. These gardens might be very much extended were it not for the heavy valuation for which, under the Market Garden's Compensation Act of 1895, the landlord is liable upon a tenant quitting the land, such valuation having in some reached a greater sum per acre than the actual value of the land itself.

Apart from this western side there is rather more arable than grass land. On the arable side the four course system of farming is mainly followed, varied or extended into a five or six course by leaving the clover or clover seeds for two years, in some cases three. This system again varied, more particularly on the limestone land, by growing a certain amount of potatoes, and also peas which are picked green for town consumption.

Farmers are here allowed practical freedom of cropping, and the entire control of their produce, so long as the fertility of the soil is maintained, and the land is left at the close of the tenancy in the proper state of cultivation. The proximity of Leeds enables the farmer to sell his hay straw and roots advantageously, and to buy good stable manure cheaply, so that he can put on the land an equal and frequently greater quantity of manurial elements than have been removed, and makes a good profit besides.

Speaking generally the land is reasonably rented and well farmed, the rents promptly paid, and there is an excellent relation between landlords and tenants. The farms have in many cases been in the same hands for a great number of years, even for generations; the changes in tenancy are not frequent, and when it does happen that a farm is vacant there are usually several applicants. The land is mostly held under yearly tenancies which terminate on Candlemas Day (2 February. Ed.).

In connection with changes in tenancy there is an interesting and very old custom known as 'Ploughing' or 'Booning', when the neighbouring farmers will send a plough team, sometimes two, to help the new farmer in his work. On such an occasion as many as twenty or thirty ploughs may be seen in a field at one time.

Farms in this district are not large as size is sometimes reckoned, but the number of small holdings is less than it was sixty or seventy years ago. It is however quite possible that the tendency today is to encourage small holdings. A century or so it was considered best for landlord and tenant that land should be farmed in large areas, and though many of the arguments put forward may have force at the present time, other considerations have come in to demonstrate the advantages that accrue from small divisions of agricultural land.

Land probably commands as good a rent as it did a hundred years ago, though money has not now the same purchasing power, and the rent is not worth as much to the landlord. It is at first sight strange that rents should have been as well maintained when one sees the vast difference in the prices of produce. Wheat now fetches only about one-third, barley and oats little more than half. It is on record that in 1795 wheat actually sold in Wakefield Market at 180 shillings (£9) a quarter. Against this change we have, however, to set the general improvement of methods and the decreases in local financial burdens. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the amount paid by the farmer in land tax, tithe, maintenance of roads, poor rates and other dues would be as great as the rent paid to his landlord.

One of the most serious hardships to a farmer in the early 19th.century was that known as 'Statute Labour'. This was his contribution to the up-keep of the roads, six days labour of a team of three horses with two men for each fifty pounds of rent, together with an assessment of sixpence in the pound that might be more if the justices consider it necessary.

The system of statute labour was an irritating burden to the farmer, in practice it was extravagant and inefficient, and the roads were so badly kept as to be a hindrance to the marketing of produce. A study of the conditions of country life a century ago reveals nothing more clearly than the vast improvement in the conditions under which agriculture is pursued.

FREDERICK SELINCOURT COLMAN


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