Part 5
“Hertfordshire farming,” observes a recent writer, “has undergone little material change since Ellis’s description of it in 1732; the hay-crop has become a more prominent feature perhaps, potatoes on the lighter soils have gained a leading place in the rotation, and the standard of fertility has been raised all round; otherwise a farm on the high chalk-plateau was farmed in 1732 pretty much on the same lines as it is to-day. Ellis gives a list of the chief weeds, ‘crow-garlick, wild oat, carlock, poppy, mayweed, bindweed, dock, crow-needle, black bent’: they are not less troublesome nor any nearer extinction at the present time, the last grass in particular being very characteristic of corn-land on the ‘clay with flints’.”
Every year the Board of Agriculture publishes a return in which the number of acres in each county devoted to each particular kind of crop is duly recorded, the classification adopted being as follows, viz.: corn crops; green crops; clover, sainfoin, and grasses for hay; grass not for hay; flax; hops; small fruits; and orchards. Such land as produces none of these crops is classed as bare fallow, of which Hertfordshire in 1905 possessed 14,275 acres.
Of the total of 402,856[2] acres in the county, 329,641 were under cultivation in that year; 1917 were orchards, 26,568 were woodland, while 1657 acres consisted of heaths and commons used as grazing-grounds. At the same date there were 116,700 acres under corn-cultivation; that is to say, something approaching one-fourth the total acreage, against about one-seventh in Kent. Green crops accounted for 32,702 acres, while of the remainder there were 36,831 under clover, sainfoin, and grasses, 3315 under lucerne, meadows claimed 54,589 acres, pasture 70,678, and small fruits 544. Of the corn-grazing area, wheat occupied 51,691, oats 36,946, and barley 27,960 acres.
[2] See page 8 and footnote.
It is thus apparent that out of the 329,641 acres of cultivated land no less than 200,000, or more than half the whole area of the county, and about 60 per cent. of the total farming land, was still under the plough; this large proportion being at the time exceeded only in six English counties. The increase in permanent pasture has, however, been steadily progressing since the great fall in the price of cereals in the seventies; this being aided by the improvements in the means of communication throughout the country, which have tended to rob Hertfordshire of its original special advantage (owing to its proximity) in the matter of supplying the metropolis with corn and straw.
The subject of Hertfordshire agriculture cannot be dismissed without mention of the fact that the world-renowned agricultural station at Rothamsted, in Harpenden parish, founded and endowed by the late Sir J. B. Lawes, is included within its limits. This includes a laboratory, under a Director, situated on the west side of Harpenden common, and certain plots of land in the park at Rothamsted where agricultural experiments have been carried on for more than sixty years. The whole station is administered by a committee, mainly appointed by the Royal Society.
Fruit is grown only to a comparatively small extent in Hertfordshire. Very characteristic of the county are, however, the orchards (now for the most part more or less neglected) of small black cherries, known as Hertfordshire blacks, and also as “mazzards,” which are situated near the homesteads of most of the older farms. These are probably a cultivated variety of the wild black cherry of the neighbouring woods.
On the rich-soiled, low-lying lands of the Lea valley on the south-eastern side of the county are situated numerous market-gardens and nurseries. The growing of tomatos (at Harpenden), cucumbers, and grapes under glass is carried on in several parts of the county on a more or less extensive scale.
Elm, oak, beech, and ash form the most common timber-trees of the county, but the predominance of each kind in particular districts depends, as already mentioned, on the nature of the geological formation. The undergrowth in the woods, which should be cut every 12 or 13 years, consists mainly of hazel.
As regards the number of the larger and commoner kinds of domesticated animals, sheep in 1905 reached a total of 94,461, or about 234 to every 1000 acres; the average for England generally being 445 per 1000 acres. The prevailing breeds are the Hampshire Down, the South Down, and the Dorset; the latter being favoured on account of their early lambing.
Hertfordshire is not a great horse-breeding county, and in 1905 the number of these animals was only 15,070. Cattle numbered 38,636, and pigs 25,338. Shorthorns are the favourite breed of cattle among the farmers; and although in the chalk districts the soil is not specially well suited for dairy purposes, farms near the main railways despatch a considerable amount of milk to London. The number of horses was nearly the same as in 1901, but cattle showed an increase of nearly 2000 head. Sheep, however, had decreased by over 2000 and pigs by more than 6000.
11. Special Cultivations.
The most important special cultivation in Hertfordshire is undoubtedly watercress, which is very extensively grown in the river-valleys over a broad belt of country extending from the Welwyn district, through the parishes of Harpenden, Wheathampstead and Redbourn, and thence to Amersham and Rickmansworth, as well as to the Vale of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire; this district being reported to be the best in England for this particular crop. The cress is grown in beds cut through the low-ground from one bend of the river to another, so that a constant, but regulated stream of water is continually flowing through. The seed is sown in special beds, and the young cress carefully planted out in regular rows in the mud of the permanent beds during the autumn. Much care has to be exercised in tending and weeding the crop, from which two prolonged cuttings are obtained annually; the spring cutting being, however, much larger and better than the autumn one.
After cutting, the watercress is tied up in bundles and packed in flat, oblong, osier hampers, or baskets; of which, during the spring season, huge stacks may be seen at the local railway stations awaiting despatch, either to the metropolis, or to the great manufacturing towns of the Midlands. For ordinary purposes the land on which watercress is grown is almost valueless; but the watercress beds yield a big rental. To furnish material for the aforesaid watercress hampers, as well as for basket-work generally, osiers are cultivated in some of the river-valleys, as in the Lea a mile or so above Wheathampstead, where there are extensive beds.
Next in importance to the cultivation of watercress in the Harpenden-Redbourn district is that of lavender at Hitchin, where numerous fields on a spur of the chalk range near Windmill Hill are devoted to the growth of this fragrant plant. In late summer or early autumn the terminal spikes of blossom are nipped from their long stems, and garnered for the sake of their contained oil, which is distilled into lavender-water in Hitchin itself. Lavender-water has been produced at Hitchin for a period of fully eighty years. The growing of lavender as an industry is extremely restricted in England.
12. Industries and Manufactures.
As will be inferred from the statements in earlier chapters with regard to its essentially agricultural nature, Hertfordshire is in no wise a manufacturing county like Lancashire or Yorkshire; this being due, no doubt, in great part to the fact that it possesses no commercially valuable minerals of its own, or, at all events, none which are at present accessible to the miner.
During the last quarter of a century or so a certain number of manufacturing and industrial establishments have been moved from London and set up in various parts of the county, as at St Albans and elsewhere; but these cannot be termed Hertfordshire industries in the proper sense of the term, and do not need further mention.
One of the great industries of the county is the malting business carried on at Ware, as is indicated by the number of cowls over the drying-kilns, which form conspicuous objects for miles round. Ware was the greatest malting place in England. The method of malting is too well known and the industry too widely spread to call for any special notes on the subject.
In former years, say up to about 1865, the straw-plait industry afforded employment to a whole army of workers in north-western Herts and the neighbouring districts of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire; and at that date the women and children might be seen in summer plaiting the straw at almost every cottage-door in each village or town. As already mentioned, the chalk districts of the county grow wheat-straw specially well suited for plait. The straws to be used were selected and pulled one by one from the sheaves before the latter were threshed; and, after having the corn-ears cut off, were done up into bundles. The latter were in turn cut into such lengths as could be obtained free from knots, and tied up into smaller bundles ready for sale to the workers. Before being employed in plaiting, each straw was split longitudinally into several strips by means of a brass instrument, which consisted of a handle and a pointed, star-shaped head bent down at right angles to the former. The finished plait was sold at so much per “score” (that is to say twenty yards) for manufacture into hats and bonnets. Cheap Chinese labour has completely killed the local plaiting industry; but the manufacture of the finished foreign plait into hats still constitutes an important trade in St Albans and elsewhere, as well as at Luton and Dunstable in Bedfordshire; the sewing of the plait into hats being done mainly, if not entirely, in large factories. Tring was a great plait centre.
The manufacture of textile fabrics was formerly carried on in several parts of the county, but in most of these has either completely ceased or fallen into decline. About 1802 there were mills for the manufacture both of silk and cloth at Rickmansworth; and the occurrence of the name “Fuller Street” in the records of St Albans apparently indicates the existence at some unknown date of the latter industry in that city, and there were certainly cotton-mills at Sopwell, to the south of it. The Abbey silk-mills, on the Ver, are still working at St Albans, although with a much diminished output; but those at the neighbouring village of Redbourn have been recently closed. Tring had silk-mills, and canvas was also made there. Lace-making was probably carried on by some of the cottagers on the Buckinghamshire side of the county, where it flourishes to a certain extent at the present day, and may even still here and there survive.
Nowadays perhaps the most important manufacturing industry in the county is that carried on at the paper-mills at Abbot’s Langley, where a large amount of high class paper is turned out. Being on the canal, these mills have the advantage of water-carriage. Paper, it may be observed, is made nowadays from wood-pulp and esparto grass, as well as from linen rags.
Brick-making employs a considerable number of hands in various parts of the county; the glacial and other superficial deposits on the chalk area frequently yielding excellent brick-earth; while the London clay may be employed for brick-making anywhere in the south-eastern districts. Bricks from the London clay, which is naturally blue, turn yellow or white after burning in consequence of the combustion of the organic colouring matter; but many of those from the glacial clays are of a full rich red At Pepperstock, near Caddington, however, there are manufactured certain very hard, heather-coloured bricks, which are much favoured for house-building in north-western Hertfordshire, although their colour compares very unfavourably in the matter of effect when contrasted with the “brick-red” of the more ordinary kinds.
As we approach the Gault plain of Bedfordshire numerous cement works may be seen at the edge of the chalk-marl near the northern borders of the county, some of which may be within the county itself. Chalk is much worked, as at Hitchin and elsewhere, for lime; and, as already mentioned, is dug largely by the farmers for “chalking” their fields. It is to such diggings that the deep circular pits (now generally ploughed over) to be seen in many arable fields are due. The Totternhoe stone has been, and perhaps still is, quarried locally for building in some parts of the northern districts of the county.
13. Minerals--An Exhausted Industry.
Having referred in the last section to brick-making, lime, cement, and Totternhoe stone, very little remains for mention in the present one; as the absence of mines is one of the features of Hertfordshire and the adjacent counties.
Reference may, however, again be made to the so-called coprolite beds of the chalk-marl which were worked in the neighbourhood of Hitchin in the early part of the first half of last century as a source of phosphoric acid for agricultural manure. The irregularly shaped black nodules of phosphate of lime occur crowded together in a comparatively thin bed. They were dug out, and washed from the marl in which they were embedded on the spot in large circular tanks through which a wheel was made to revolve by horse-labour; and then carted away to be converted by a chemical process into superphosphate. After the excavation of the coprolite bed from one strip of a field, the marl from the next was thrown in, and the top soil replaced, so that the land was left in as good, or even better, condition than previously. The industry was continued till all the beds situated at or above a level which it paid to work were exhausted.
In winter there is a considerable local trade in gravel and shingle, dug mainly in the valleys. Twenty years ago this trade was much more extensive in some districts than is at present the case; this being due partly to the exhaustion of the deposits, partly to the fact that in districts served by the Midland Railway the use of syenite from Mount Sorrel and Charnwood Forest, in Leicestershire, has to a considerable extent replaced flint-gravel as road-metal on the main highways of the county and in the metropolitan districts. Formerly, very large quantities of gravel were sent from St Albans and Harpenden to the northern metropolitan suburbs such as Hendon and Child’s Hill; but most of that now dug is employed for road-metal on the local by-roads. Here it should be mentioned that in Hertfordshire phraseology the term “gravel” is used exclusively to denote the coarse big-stoned material used as road-metal; what is ordinarily denoted as “gravel”--that is to say the material employed for garden-paths--being locally known as “hoggin.” Flints picked from the fields of the chalk area have a higher value as road-metal than dug gravel, owing to their superior hardness; the so-called “quarry-water,” which is present in all dug gravel, having been long since dried out.
“Facing” flints for building purposes is an art much less commonly practised in the county than was the case in earlier days; and when buildings of faced flint are contemplated it is generally necessary to send to a distance in order to secure the services of an expert in the facing process.
14. History of Hertfordshire.
The history of Hertfordshire includes such a number of events of primary importance that it is somewhat difficult to make a selection of those most fitted to appear in the limited space available. It was in this county that the offer of the crown of England was made to William the Conqueror, and it was from here that the first petition for the redress of grievances was forwarded to Charles I; while several important battles have been fought within its limits.
To the two British tribes who inhabited this part of England previous to the Roman invasion, reference has been made in an earlier section. The first landing of Julius Caesar took place (in Kent) in 55 B.C., and the second and more successful in 54 B.C.; while a third Roman invasion took place under Claudius in 43 A.D., from which date the Roman legions held possession of the whole country till about the year 410 A.D. Whether Caesar himself ever visited Verulam does not appear to be definitely ascertained, but it was early in the history of that great city that the encounter between the British Queen Boadicea and the Romans took place. During the Roman period Hertfordshire, which then appears to have been a well-populated and wealthy district, formed a part of the province of Flavia Caesariensis.
The next great event was the Saxon Conquest, which in Kent was ushered in by the landing of a force in the year 449 A.D. During this part of its history the western, or larger portion of our county was included, as already mentioned, in the kingdom of Mercia, while the eastern and smaller section belonged to that of Essex. Of the numerous Mercian kings, the most renowned and most powerful was Offa, whose name survives in Offley, where he had a palace, and where he died about the year 796, while still engaged in building the Monastery and Abbey of St Alban. Mercia at this time made a bid for the supremacy of the petty kingdoms of this part of England, but was eventually beaten by Wessex under the able rule of Egbert.
It was in the reign of the last-mentioned sovereign that invaders of another nationality--namely the Danes--began to make their presence seriously felt in the south; but it was not till the time of his son and successor Aethelwulf that they landed on the east coast. Early in his reign a council of Mercians and West Saxons was held at Kingsbury, near St Albans, to devise means for repelling the invaders; while a second assembly was called for the same purpose at Bennington in the year 850. Neither seems to have resulted in effectual measures, for in 851 we find a large Danish fleet which had sailed up the Thames beating off one of the Saxon kings, who had marched to stop its progress; and after this event the county was harried and raided time after time, till it was eventually divided about the year 880 by a treaty executed at Wedmore between the Saxon sovereign Alfred and Guthrum the Dane by a boundary line running from the mouth of the Lea to its source, and thence straight across country to Bedford. A few years later, however, namely in 894, the Danish fleet sailed up the Lea to Hertford, where Alfred crippled it by cutting into the banks of the river, so that by loss of water the vessels became stranded, and the Danish force had to fight its way to the west of England. After numerous skirmishes and fights, and the building of forts at Hertford and on a small island near Bishop’s Stortford, the Danish invasion was practically crushed by King Edward, who died in 925. Much, however, still remained to be done by his son Aethelstan, who stoutly attacked the invaders after they had made a raid on St Albans in 930. A memorial of the Danish sojourn still exists in Dacorum, the name of the western hundred in which Tring is situated; there is also evidence to the same effect in the records of gifts to St Albans Abbey by Danes who had settled in the neighbourhood. The Mercian shire-system, which was probably instituted as an aid against the Danes, is known to have come into force by 957; but in place of Hertfordshire having a sheriff of its own, it shared one with Essex; an arrangement which remained in force till the reign of Elizabeth. This was in Edgar’s reign (957–975); but even then we do not reach the end of the Danish trouble, which did not cease till after Sweyn’s invasions between the years 1011 and 1014, which were worse than their predecessors, and included the pillage of Canterbury. About this time occurs the first mention of “Heorotford” as the name of the county.
Scarcely had the country recovered, in greater or less degree, from the Danish raids than it was conquered by the Normans under William I, who soon after the battle of Hastings marched through the country south of the Thames till he reached Berkhampstead in this county, where he built the castle whose foundations and earthworks remain to this day. By relentless severity against all who stood in his way on the march, William had succeeded in instilling a wholesome fear into the Saxon (or, as we now say, English) inhabitants of the country; and, although he is reported to have been successfully opposed by Frederic, Abbot of St Albans, he was finally tendered the submission of the people and the English crown at Berkhampstead.
To follow in detail the events of the troublous times which succeeded the conquest is here impossible; and it must suffice to state that at Christmas, 1116, Henry I paid a visit to St Albans for the purpose apparently of quelling trouble among the turbulent Norman barons who had now become the paramount lords. Stephen also held a court at St Albans in 1143 in connection with other troubles. With the bare mention that several Hertfordshire barons accompanied Richard I in his crusade to the Holy Land, we may pass on to the quarrel between King John and his barons, which has a very intimate connection with our county; among the opposing noblemen being Robert Fitzwalter, their leader, and the Earls of Essex and of Hertford. The barons advanced from Northampton to Bedford, while the main body of their army marched to Ware and thence to London. The signing of Magna Charta produced temporary peace; but this was soon succeeded by fiercer fighting than ever in this county. At the commencement of 1215 John himself was in St Albans, and also had possession of Hertford and Berkhampstead castles. In May of the same year Louis landed from France, and in due course besieged Hertford and Berkhampstead till they surrendered, and then proceeded to St Albans, where he was for some time defied by the abbot. At the departure of Louis the castles were restored to the king.
The next event is the looting of St Albans by Fulke de Breauté and his band in 1217.
The trouble with the barons continued into the reign of Henry III; and in the year 1261 the autumn parliament was held at St Albans. Up to 1295 the shires alone sent representatives to parliament but in the session held at St Albans in that year the cities, boroughs, and chief towns were each permitted to elect two parliamentary burgesses. During the reign of Edward II the county was considerably involved in the affairs of Sir Piers de Gaveston, who spent much of his time at King’s Langley, where Edward had a palace, and where Gaveston was buried after his execution in 1312. During that year the papal envoy met the barons at St Albans with a view to the settlement of their differences with the king; and in July, 1321, the barons marched through that city on their way to London. During the fourteenth century the county suffered severely from plague; but in spite of this Edward III spent much time at Langley; and in 1361 the king and queen came to Berkhampstead to take leave of the Black Prince (to whom the castle had been given) previous to his departure for Aquitaine.
In 1381, owing to exactions on the part of the king and the abbot of St Albans, there broke out the peasants’ revolt, in which Hertfordshire men took a large share. Indeed after the execution of Wat Tyler the king proposed to go himself to St Albans to punish the insurgents, but was persuaded to send a commission in his stead; although a short time later, after another riot, his majesty appeared in person in that city at the head of an armed force.