evolving patterns of farmyard layout are important as they illustrate the changing attitudes and outlook of the great landowners, and those who served and advised them. Sometimes, but not always, these shifts in emphasis mirror developments in the design of the great parks and gardens they helped to finance. More often than not, however, they reflect wider changes in the worlds of politics, trade or economics and latterly, too, of agricultural science. The recent survey of model farms by English Heritage has revealed that four broad phases can be discerned, beginning with the philosophy of ‘Improvement’ whose underlying principles could be defined as beauty, utility and profit. This phase, which I’ve discussed in Chapter 1, lasted from 1660 until 1790 and was followed by one of ‘Patriotic Improvement’ (1790– 1840). During these years farming and profitable estate management were seen as patriotic duties at a time when Britain was often at war with France, and food prices generally remained firm. George III set an example to all by employing the well-known land agent Nathaniel Kent to manage the farms and other resources of Windsor Great Park profitably.
The third phase (1840–75) was characterised by ‘Practice with Science’ and coincides with the time of Victorian high farming. The final phase, ‘Retrenchment’, from 1875 to 1939, saw estates hit by the collapse of prices and the farming depression of the 1870s. This was a result of many factors, including the import of cheaper food, especially grain, shipped in bulk from overseas. It could also be seen as a much-delayed after-effect of Peel’s repeal of the protectionist Corn Laws of 1846.
In the 1850s and 1860s, British farming was able to cope with the freed-up market, but the large-scale importation of grain, made possible by the introduction of larger ocean-going vessels from the 1870s, caused major problems. After that, British farming entered a prolonged recession which continued, with a few relatively minor ups and downs, until the Great Depression of the 1930s, followed by the Second World War, when many of the great estates started to disintegrate – a process that was hastened in the post-war years by the introduction of death duties and other taxes on inherited wealth.
This brief history of the development of later post-medieval estates could readily have been derived from historical sources alone, but what makes the recent survey of model farms so important is the large number of buildings that were measured and photographed right across England. The owners and workers were also able to provide the surveyors with information on how the different spaces were actually used within living memory. The result is a hugely important body of information which will undoubtedly form the basis of many studies in the future. But to give an idea of its general scope, they have provided English Heritage with brief county-by-county summaries of the principal estates, their best surviving farms and a glimpse of their histories.22 It makes fascinating reading as it stands, but the information behind it has also been used to construct four plans of typical farm layouts between 1750 and 1900, which I have reproduced here.23
All farm buildings, whether on large lowland estates or on small upland family farms, were constructed to provide shelter for livestock and to keep stored crops dry. They could also be used for threshing and other crop-processing tasks, and for the preparation of fodder (e.g. hay and straw) or feed (e.g. grain or turnips) for livestock. Other uses, such as specialised milking parlours, became increasingly popular later, especially in farms near large cities. One additional important function of a post-medieval farmyard was the converting of chemically ‘hot’ raw animal dung to benign, nutrient-rich manure for spreading on fields. This is a biological process that involves the storage of the material in a muck heap, or midden, in well-drained conditions, with or without a roof.
The earliest estate farms (1750–1800) were based on a courtyard plan with the house on one side and the barn opposite. On either side of the yard were stables and animal sheds with a muck heap at the centre of the yard. In this layout the house was an integral part of the farmyard as nearly all the labour, including threshing, was carried out by hand. In the next period (1800–40) the house has been completely detached from the yard, which has now become E-shaped, with a main two-storey threshing barn at right angles to the long range, from which sprang three parallel ranges (the arms of the ‘E’), where the horses and livestock were housed and fed. By this period many tasks were now mechanised, the power being provided either by horses or water. On many farms you can still spot the circular walls that surrounded a horse ‘gin’, where a horse or horses pulled or pushed a long arm, rather like a treadmill.
FIG 6 The layout of typical model or estate farms in England around 1750–1800 (left) and 1800–1840 (right).
FIG 7 The layout of typical model or estate farms in England around 1840–1860 (left) and 1860–1900 (right).
The plan of earlier Victorian estate farms (1840–60) remained essentially E-shaped, but now the layout had become increasingly industrial, with the functions of the barn moved closer to the livestock accommodation. By this time, too, imported feeds were becoming more important and machinery previously used to thresh home-produced corn was now used to process the new feeds. The fattening of livestock was also becoming better understood and animals were separated into individual stalls or smaller groups to prevent undue competition. Some of these stalls were serviced by way of a central feeding passage. These better designed and more compact yards were often roofed over to keep the middens dry, thereby speeding up and improving manure production.
In the final decade of Victorian high farming the builders of model farms turned their attention to livestock units when the earlier plan with a central barn at right angles to the other ranges reappeared, but this time the building functioned more as a feed-processing factory than a barn. In the late nineteenth century (1860–1900) all livestock was housed in stalls that were conveniently accessed by feeding passages. By this time labour was becoming more expensive and routine tasks such as feeding and mucking out were made as straightforward as possible, with feed in some instances being moved on trolleys and tramlines. The two central covered yards continued to be used for the maturation of muck into manure.
I can well recall sitting down to watch television on freezing winter nights when I was working at the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto, in the 1970s. Inevitably I sometimes felt rather homesick, which is probably why I watched repeats of all the episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs, a British TV series then being shown in Canada. I still think it was a fabulous series, beautifully researched and acted, and quite rightly hugely popular in Britain and North America. What I didn’t realise at the time was how remarkably archaeological the approach of the programme makers was, because they showed precisely how a great house was serviced and operated; this is not something one can generally read about in novels of the period, which tended to focus on the goings-on of the great and the good ‘upstairs’.
Television costume dramas have played an important part in the way that country houses are now shown to the public, with greater attention at long last being paid to the servants’ hall, the cellars, the kitchens and the butler’s pantry – not to mention the stables, carriage house and scullery. I for one would far rather look at a nineteenth-century kitchen range than a display case stuffed with Meissen porcelain – or, indeed, some luckless volunteer dressed up rather awkwardly as a Georgian ladies’ maid or a footman. I find that the practical things of daily life, such as tools and implements, especially if they still retain the patina and scars of repeated use, have a power to re-create the past, something that fine objects often lack.
The service ranges of large country houses were where the work took place. Often they were of comparable size to the space occupied by the family itself. It was not uncommon to find that several entire storeys, or sometimes complete wings, were occupied by the domestic servants and there was a network of stairs and passages that allowed them
