Pootler

Previous posts sketched the history of the rocks and roots that shaped the regions' landscape. Now I want to hurry through more recent changes, reckoning that many will be familiar to you.  Between the latter part of the Enclosures, through the Industrial Revolution to today, t he population of England has risen, from around 10m in 1800 to perhaps 30m in 1900 and 55m today. A lot more people needed feeding, housing and a place to work.  The medieval transport network was threadbare.  T he  responsibility for maintaining the roads rested with the parishes, so they were usually just rough tracks.   Things got better from the 1600s. The Enclosures and other innovations in farming increased trade and this, coupled with the increasing use of wheeled vehicles, demanded new or improved roads.  Many fords were replaced by bridges and turnpike roads were introduced, run by trusts established by Parliament. The first, in 1663, is now part of the Great North Road...

'Ancient' in this context doesn't mean 'dead and gone'. Rather, like me, Ancient countryside shows definite signs of antiquity, but is still very much alive. It suffered less from planned Enclosures. A mong the hills, valleys and woods, the terrain often made the creation of large, contiguous fields impractical, both before or after the Enclosures elsewhere. Now, it can be hard to understand how what we see, the random pattern of fields, woods and paths seemingly leading nowhere, can have  emerged from the tumble dryer of history.  It all makes for better pootling.  In the last post I said the distinctions between the Planned and Ancient countryside could be blurry. (Apologies. One result might be duplication between the notes here and in previous posts).  In both cases farming had to make some accommodations with practical and legal realities. But surprisingly, the  difference between the two is often clear(ish) on OS Maps. I illustrated this in the previous po...

  At the end of the last post, I described the failing agriculture and the dramatic fall in population in the 1300s. Recovery took a long time but  led to the demise of the open fields of the 'Champion' countryside and both positive and negative changes in rural society.  Firstly, the reduced workforce was in a position to demand better wages. There is a visible impact of that. If you look at the oldest timber-framed houses in the villages, they usually only date back to the 1400s -1600. You see very few ordinary houses older than that. (See my post on Cottages. Link:  The Olde Country Cottage ). Secondly, many landlords found that they could no longer profit from using the peasantry to farm their land. Instead, it was more profitable to rent the land out to others,  often their former serfs. The word 'farmer' is derived from the medieval Latin 'firmarius', someone who rents, not farms, and the new farmers had more incentive to work to improve their lot. ...