On paper the forestry service of Old Regime France looked impressive. Backed by wide-ranging legislation, officers of the Eaux et Forêts enjoyed extensive powers; like other public officials of the time, they exercised both judicial and administrative functions. Their rich records of offences and disputes have attracted the attention of forest historians, although we know much less about their other role, as overseers of a national plan for woodland management. This article seeks to remedy that neglect by focusing on the effectiveness of the forest administration in south-western France, where most of the woodlands were private property. Evidence is drawn from the forms used by landowners to notify the Eaux et Forêts of an intention to cut mature timber. Various details suggest that the forestry officials' information was far from complete, especially given the problems of distance and a lack of standardised units for measurement. Examination of marginal comments provides a closer insight into landowners' attitudes. Overall, increasing numbers of woodland proprietors may have complied with the foresters' reporting regime, but many relied on misinformation to prevent the central state and its agents from interfering in the exploitation of their timber.

It is increasingly recognised by those engaged in the debate concerning the standard of living of workers during industrialisation that all forms of household income need to be assessed, not just male waged work. A more holistic approach also considers women and children's earnings, poor relief, and the wide range of self-provisioning activities and resources available through the ‘economy of makeshifts’. Over one hundred household budgets of agricultural labourers and their families have been analysed from the Ampthill Union, Bedfordshire, just before and during the implementation of the new poor law in order to further explore and quantify all components to the household income of labouring families in this key transition decade. The article finds that poor relief to families was cut in the wake of the Poor Law Amendment Act. It also finds that the low incomes of families necessitated supplementation through making shift. When the makeshift economy is quantified, it becomes clear that such activities could significantly supplement incomes.

The rich data provided by the 1851 Census of Religious Worship make clear that very different processes were governing churchgoing rates in rural parts of England compared with the more urban parts. The clear rural-urban differences provide important clues that help to explain the rise and fall of English churchgoing rates over the modern historical period, and are relevant to a major and ongoing sociological dispute. My conclusion is that, in rural areas, the additional ‘supply’ recently introduced by the dissenting denominations had boosted attendance rates. This was largely because distance between home and worship was a key check on regular observance and new chapels tended to reduce this distance. In urban parts of England a very different pattern emerges: the greater the degree of urbanisation, the lower the churchgoing rate, despite the great choice of religious alternatives on offer. These rural-urban differences offer some important observations regarding the sociological theorisation of religion and modernity. In the economic language increasingly employed by sociologists of religion, both ‘supply-side’ and ‘demand-side’ processes were influencing English churchgoing rates. However, the former were much more limited and transient in their effect, being restricted to geographically isolated rural areas, while in the more urban places, where most people lived, and to which many more were migrating, urbanisation was eroding demand as predicted by secularisation theory.

This article comprises the annual Birthday Lecture of the Richard Jefferies Society as it was delivered in October, 2004. The text sketches the economic, social and environmental history of Jefferies' period (the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s), drawing inter alia on his works and referring especially to his home district in north-east Wiltshire. It alludes, firstly, to the fortunes and environmental effects of both intensive and ‘tumbledown’ arable farming. Second, it describes the creation of sporting estates and the letting of sporting rights as swift responses by some landowners to falling cereal prices. Third, the text points to under-investment in education and non-agricultural activities as hampering adjustment to the depression, and shows that Jefferies was a free trader who grasped that rapid and extensive food importation and labour emigration would have been a proper response. A related paper, Eric L. Jones, ‘Richard Jefferies’ Writing Criticised and Defended', is to appear in the Richard Jefferies Society Journal in April, 2005.

Despite the demise of many landed estates in the twentieth century, the creation of the Forestry Commission and consequent massive afforestation, over two-thirds of British woodland remained in the hands of private land owners at the end of the century. Little research has been carried out into the changing role of landed estates in forming and maintaining woodland landscapes in this period. This paper examines forestry on the Thoresby estate, Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire using a wide range of sources. It demonstrates the dynamic nature of this landscape during the twentieth century. Rather than being a slowly changing woodland landscape, it has been transformed through interventions by land agents and landowners in response to changing social, economic and government policy pressures.

This paper examines the decline in the use of one Herefordshire common and how this is reflected in changes in the common's ecology. Direct field observation and biological evidence have been combined with oral histories and documentary sources, particularly the records of the Commoners Association and the National Farmers Union Branch Records, photographs, and maps in reconstructing these changes. The paper explores how the common has been recursively valued as its diminished productive use has been accompanied with increased recognition, although without formal designation, of its importance as a refuge for wildlife and as an amenity resource. These changes, however, present challenges for the traditional structures for the governance of the common as, in post-war years, the number of active graziers has declined and the community of commoners has become increasingly gentrified.