Mechanisation and Society in English Agriculture: The Experience of the North-East, 1850–1914

Abstract

This article examines three linked assumptions relating to English agriculture between 1850 and 1914. First, that the north devoted its energies to industrialisation. Second, that mechanisation made steady progress, based largely on southern initiatives. Third, that this took farming towards large, capital-intensive and steam-powered operations. This conventional wisdom is inherently weak given the high reputation of Northumbrian farming in 1850, its tight, expensive labour markets and easy access to coal, iron and engineering expertise, which contrasts with the south's cheap, plentiful labour, no coal and few engineering firms. A database of all implements advertised in a thousand farm sales from the relevant period in Northumberland, Durham and northern North Yorkshire reveals a regional agriculture that prospered by developing the traditional and highly effective mix of carts, harrows and ploughs. Mechanisation occurred very unevenly across departments, with harvesting very atypical. Large farms were neither more inherently machine-oriented than small ones, nor better users of machinery. Farmers are revealed as pragmatic about mechanisation, and not conservative when it paid. Steam played little part, whereas horses remained an ideal power source for the farming that suited these times.