of the recent past. Fast ‘Flyboats’, crewed by four men with two working while the other two slept and a system of changing horses, carried urgent cargo and passengers at relatively high speed day and night. Raw materials, fuel and produce could now be moved internally round the country with ease. Heavy cargoes for export, transported along the network linking the coastal port cities such as London, Liverpool, and Bristol, could be exchanged with sea-going ships and imported goods brought back on the return journey. The canals fell into decline as the rail network developed in the mid-nineteenth century, leaving us a legacy of 4,000 miles of waterways, both for recreational use and as a habitat for urban and rural wildlife.
CHANGING THE HIGHWAYS
Although intensely unpopular, income raised by the turnpike trusts was radically improving the condition of Britain’s highways. ‘Turnpike’ alludes to the similarity between the gate used to control access to the road and the weapon used by infantry to deter cavalry in the wars of the Middle Ages. The turnpike consisted of a row of pikes or bars, each sharpened at one end and attached to horizontal members, secured at one end to an upright pole or axle, which could be rotated to open or close the gate. The name expressed the resentment of people who had previously used the roads freely suddenly finding them barred.
During the first three decades of the eighteenth century, sections of the main radial roads into London were put under the control of individual turnpike trusts. The pace at which new turnpikes were created picked up in the 1750s as 150 trusts were formed to maintain the cross-routes between the Great Roads radiating from London. At this time, roads leading into provincial towns, particularly in western England, were put under single trusts and key roads in Wales were turnpiked. In South Wales, the roads of complete counties were put under single turnpike trusts by the 1760s. A further 400 were established in the 1770s, with the turnpiking of subsidiary connecting roads, routes over new bridges and new routes in the growing industrial areas in Scotland. This had doubled by 1800, and in 1825 about 1,000 trusts controlled 29,000 miles of road across the country. The trusts were required to erect milestones indicating the distance between the main towns on the road, many of which still survive as do the old toll houses, such as the one at Stanton Drew, in Somerset, or Honiton, in Devon.
The improved road system heralded the Golden Age of Coaching, with fast mail coaches and passenger stagecoaches hammering along the new highways at what were considered unbelievable speeds. The excitement of driving a coach and four fascinated members of the Regency set, who competed with professional coachmen in the skill of handling a team of ‘cattle’ and often bribed professionals to let them take over the ‘ribbons’ on one of the regular coach routes, to the alarm and discomfort of the passengers. Most notable among the amateurs were Sir St Vincent Cotton, who bought the stagecoach The Age with the last of a fortune he had gambled away and ran a passenger service between London and Brighton. There was also Sir John Lade, who caused a scandal by marrying the wife of the highwayman ‘Sixteen String Jack’ Rann shortly after he had been hanged for robbing the Royal Chaplain; Harry Stevenson, a Cambridge graduate and a genius with coach horses; Lord Worcester; Lord Sefton; Colonel Berkeley; and Lord Barrymore, known as ‘Hellgate’ for his outrageous behaviour. As the turnpike roads spread across the country, coaching inns became a feature of many villages as the existing ale houses were upgraded to accommodate passengers whilst the coach horses were changed. These survive as the ever-popular village pub.
A new generation of agricultural improvers emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century with ideas to meet the challenge of a population that had risen to around nine million, the rapid development of industrial towns, expanding colonisation and an army and navy on active service of about 160,000.
THE BIRTH OF NEW BREEDS
With improved feeding, livestock were growing better carcase qualities, but Robert Bakewell from Derbyshire experimented with selective breeding to standardise the best characteristic, within a breed. He started with the old Lincolnshire breed of sheep that he turned into the New Leicester. These sheep were big and delicately boned and had good-quality fleece and fatty forequarters, in keeping with the popular taste for fatty shoulder mutton. He also began the practice of hiring out his prize rams to farmers to improve their own stock.
One of the many advantages of the new communication system of roads and canals was the opportunity for farmers to exchange quality livestock amongst each other. These sheep were exported widely, including to Australia and North America, and have contributed to numerous modern breeds, despite that fact that they fell quickly out of favour as market preferences in meat and textiles changed. Bloodlines of these original New Leicesters survive today as the English Leicester, or Leicester Longwool, which is primarily kept for wool production.
Robert Bakewell was also the first to breed cows primarily for beef. Previously, cattle were first and foremost kept for pulling ploughs as oxen. Bakewell had noticed that the Longhorn breed appeared to be the most efficient meat producers; they ate less and put on more weight than any other breed. As with the sheep, he began breeding in-and-in to enhance their characteristics and enable him to ‘grow’ a better carcass more efficiently. By the time he had finished, his cattle were fat, meaty and had doubled in carcass weight, and as more and more farmers followed his lead, farm animals increased dramatically in size and quality.
John Ellman then produced the stocky Sussex sheep, noted for its carcass and meat quality, which were soon being bought by improvers across Britain and exported to Russia.
THE DRIVE FOR CHANGE
Every department of agriculture was permeated by a new spirit of energy and enterprise. Rents rose, but profits outstripped the rise. New crops were cultivated – swedes, mangel-wurzel, kohl rabi, prickly comfrey, all were readily adopted by a new race of agriculturists. Breeders spent capital freely in improving livestock. New implements were introduced; Meikle’s threshing machine (1784) began to drive out the flail by its economy of human labour. Numerous patents were taken out for drills, reaping, mowing, haymaking and winnowing machines, as well as for horse-rakes, scarifiers, chaff-cutters, turnip-slicers and other mechanical aids to agriculture.
To one degree or another, virtually every landowner and farmer was caught up in the fever for improvement, fuelled by rocketing food prices. One of the most famous was Thomas Coke of Holkham, 1st Earl of Leicester. When Coke inherited the enormous estates at Holkham, in Norfolk, not an acre of wheat was to be seen from Wells-next-the-Sea to King’s Lynn. At best, the thin sandy soil produced scanty yields of rye, the poorest of the grain crops. Naturally short of fertility, it was further impoverished by a barbarous system of cropping. No manure was purchased, the ground only carried a few Norfolk sheep with backs like razors and, here and there, a few half-starved, semi-wild marsh cattle. Despite what anyone would have considered a hopeless task, Coke was determined to grow wheat. He marled and clayed the land, purchased large quantities of manure, drilled his wheat and turnips, grew sainfoin and clover, and soon trebled his livestock. He also introduced into the county the use of artificial foods like oil-cake, which, with roots, enabled Norfolk farms to carry increased stock. Under his example and advice, stall-feeding (wintering inside) was extensively practised.
EVERY DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE WAS PERMEATED BY A NEW SPIRIT OF ENERGY AND ENTERPRISE … TO ONE DEGREE OR ANOTHER, VIRTUALLY EVERY LANDOWNER AND FARMER WAS CAUGHT UP IN THE FEVER FOR IMPROVEMENT, FUELLED BY ROCKETING FOOD PRICES.
Within nine years he was growing a vast acreage of wheat, breeding prize-winning shorthorn cattle and Southdown sheep which
