By the end of the eighteenth century industrialisation was an irreversible process; the population trebled from some six million to eighteen million between 1750 and 1850, the economic changes brought about by the process of industrialisation and the dramatic changes in agricultural methods resulted in an acceptance of exploitation of people and machines in return for power and wealth. This discussion focusses on the changes to the landscape brought about by industrialisation and agricultural change in Britain during the period and focusses on the Ashby Woulds on the border of North-West Leicestershire and South Derbyshire.
Prior to 1800, the Woulds had been the waste for the parish of Seale to the west and to Ashby de la Zouch to the east, with the Shellbrook (deriving from the word Seal) the approximate halfway point and dividing line. It had been used as common pasture, and for the collection of reeds for thatch, flooring and basketmaking and for the collection of plants for food and medicines. During this period of industrialisation and agricultural change, many significant landscape changes took place; not least of which was enclosure. Parliamentary enclosure had been an ongoing process since the mediaeval period but accelerated towards the end of the eighteenth century; between 1750 and 1830 some four thousand individual Parliamentary Acts of Enclosure were passed in England, about twenty per cent of the county’s surface area. The Ashby Woulds were enclosed by Act in 1800 following an application by Francis Rawdon-Hastings (1754-1826), 1st Marquis of Hastings and 2nd Earl of Moira in an award in which he was “entitled to the soil and minerals on or within the Common or Waste Ground”. The wording of this part of the award gives an idea of the nature of the soil on large parts of the Ashby Woulds; that it was largely unproductive as farmland and Rawdon-Hastings’ interests were in the mineral deposits.
The heavy clay soils of the Midlands acted to delay the process of enclosure as landholdings and field strips tended to be widely separated and when it did occur, enclosure could be a traumatic business involving depopulation of villages. The reasons behind the move towards enclosure are complex; starting with the late mediaeval agreements to enclose large areas for sheep pasture and moving into enclosure for political and personal gain. After 1750 individual Parliamentary Acts of Enclosure circumvented the difficulties especially associated with the heavy clays of the Midlands - namely that of disconnected land strips - by groups of landowners banding together to petition parliament jointly under a single Bill, or by more unilateral action of larger landowners, including members of the clergy. The ensuing survey and award were supervised by a commissioner to attempt to prevent penalisation of smaller landowners. It was clear from the start that anyone wishing to be allocated land would have to pay a share of the cost of enclosure and here we can see the start of a problem that has been debated ever since: how fair or unfair was Parliamentary Enclosure? Writing in 1813, the surveyor John Farey was clear on the subject: 'There cannot remain a doubt, but Inclosures have been and continue to be highly beneficial, in every point of view…'
Farey then goes on however, to relate a problematic story: 'The history which I heard, of the Inclosure of the Ashby Wolds, appeared to me to be very extraordinary. In the beginning of the first year of the Commissioners’ acting, they declared the extinction of the Common Rights, and after driving off the cattle, the Wolds lay entirely unoccupied, while the public Roads were fencing off; and during the next two years the Commissioners let the large fields thus formed, to be either grazed or ploughed, at the option of the Tenants; and 200 Acres were ploughed and cropped a second time with Oats, and the whole produce carried off, by those temporary Tenants, before the Allotments were made; altho’ as I was informed, the Valuation or Qualitying was done in the first year!'
There were others from all levels of society who were less enthusiastic about the scenic and social effects of enclosure; the poet John Clare wrote in 1821:
Inclosure, thou’rt curse upon the land,
And tasteless was the wretch who thy existence plann’d.
Or then there was a popular epigram that circulated widely at a time concomitant with Clare’s poem:
The fault is great in man or woman
Who steals a goose from off the common,
But what can plead a man’s excuse
Who steals a common from the goose?
Perhaps the act of vandalism at the Earl of Moira’s proposed new mine on December 4th 1800 was perpetrated by angry dispossessed commoners. Two large iron bars were wedged into the Earl’s deep trial shaft, sabotaging further work there: 'the Works at the shaft were completely stopped to the great injury of Lord Moira, the proprietors of the Ashby Canal and the country by preventing that speedy and expected supply of coal of which the trials at this mine afforded a confident prospect and which are greatly wanted in the country'.
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| Joseph Wilkes. |
Coal was the fuel of the Industrial Revolution and although relatively small scale production had been happening in the areas immediately beyond the Ashby Woulds since at least the Tudor period, (coal outcrops at Overseal, Measham, Ravenstone and on Gresley Common but lies in deep, relatively thick bands below the Ashby Woulds) it was with the opening of the Ashby Canal that exploitation of the area could begin in earnest. The canal was one of only a number of achievements of Joseph Wilkes (1733-1805) and his associates, local highly talented entrepreneurs determined to develop an integrated industrial community and Wilkes “must rank as one of the most outstanding community builders in the Midlands” during this period. Wilkes typifies the entrepreneurial spirit often connected with the age; he had interests in textile manufacture, brickmaking, mining, agricultural improvement, road building, banking, metal-working, canal building and river and waterway improvement, and tramway design, alongside cheese-making, animal breeding and farming.
Drainage problems in his coal mines had caused Wilkes to purchase steam engines to pump water from them but problems with underground faults meant that large scale production from his own mines was difficult. Surveys showed that substantial amounts of high-quality coal, ironstone and clay lay deep beneath the Woulds; indeed it is the geology of the coal and clay that make up so much of the Woulds that caused it to be such poor farming land. Contemporary description tells us that it was a 'tract of land absolutely waste of 2500 to 3000 acres, much of it cold land, with many rushes, some of it hilly'. The land was one of 'relative sterility, providing grazing for only a few wretched-looking sheep'.
Wilkes was concerned about the lack of large scale colliery development and from 1796 onwards he strongly urged the earl of Moira to open collieries on the Woulds. The Earl was not keen to act until the enclosure award was made as an earlier application had failed due to opposition on financial grounds by the Earl of Huntingdon. Incentives to the Earl of Moira were offered by Wilkes in the form of low-cost steam engines. One of these may have been the engine that was housed in the Earl of Moira’s blast furnace which he built on the Woulds at his newly built village of Moira.
The widespread introduction of industrial methods to production meant wholesale landscape changes although often with character that reflected the nature of the landscapes they were within; the fast flowing rivers of the north were ideal for operating mills, whereas the East Midlands, with its slower moving, meandering rivers, needed steam engines to power mills. The geology of an area obviously dictated where mines were dug and first canals and then later, railways, were built to transport coal and other goods in and out of the region.
Industrialisation necessitated good transport links and the provision for interconnected roads in the Acts of Enclosure demonstrate this. What it also did was standardise road widths and improve cartage and provide the basis for a national infrastructure. The development of regional centres and a self-conscious awareness of differences like dialect acted towards developing a uniformity of regional character. National governmental oversight of regional affairs accelerated the centralisation of political power and it is perhaps in the reformation of the poor laws in the 1830s and in the move towards enclosure through parliamentary acts from the 1750s that we see this 'meddling of central government' render the provinces ever more dependent upon Westminster. With the development of industrial centres came migration of workers, expansion of villages, towns and cities, and a general move away from an agrarian to a wage-based economic system; the agricultural depression towards the end of the nineteenth century saw huge numbers of people move from the land to the towns and cities- in the East Midlands this is particularly marked by the expansion of the major towns and cities and the South Derbyshire and Leicestershire coalfield. Expansion of the cities brought with it major environmental problems, the low quality of working class housing the foremost of these.
Industrial development of the Ashby Woulds necessitated housing for the influx of workers and their families and the Earl of Moira alongside men like Joseph Wilkes built new houses with bricks from their own brickyards (Wilkes being famous for a double sized brick known as 'Wilkes’ Gobs' which were intended in part to circumscribe the 1785 brick tax and also to speed up house building); Wilkes developed Measham from a village to a small town and the Earl built new housing close to his mining endeavours which became the village of Moira. Later in the century, as clay working developed into a major industry on the northern edge of the Woulds and in nearby Swadlincote, further settlements occurred; Albert Village was founded and the new village of Woodville grew up around the toll house on the turnpike road from Burton to Ashby-de-la-Zouch. After Wilkes’ death, and despite the best efforts of his successors, Measham went into decline as his creditors were repaid through sale of his business assets and by 1835 Wilkes’ empire had all but collapsed, the lifetime of work put in by Wilkes and his brothers to create a small economic miracle was undone within thirty years of his death.
Deep mining for coal had dramatic transformative effects on the landscape beyond the immediate sinking of shafts and associated buildings, roads and canals (and later in the century the railways), it also had major consequences for forests and woodland. Coal mining requires large amounts of wood to provide props for underground road and roof support and the mines on the Ashby Woulds were no exception. Seale Wood and Grange Wood had been exploited for timber to supply the mines around Swadlincote and Measham for centuries but with the introduction of several new mines on the Ashby Woulds, Seale Wood was eventually reduced to nothing and replaced by low-grade farmland. The Ordnance Survey (OS) maps (and others) show this gradual reduction of the size of the Seale Wood over time.
Seale Wood was once connected to Grange Wood. The road passed through the wood. The OS map shows Seale Wood reduced in size, a separated part of it now called Short Wood. Netherseal Colliery is situated immediately to the south west of Seale Wood and contributed to its demise. Note the field boundaries, divided by enclosure acts into straight-edged packages and also the railway, built to transport coal from the railway to join the main line at Church Gresley. The older roads maintain their more sinuous course. Workers’ cottages are built in long terraces at Linton Heath.
The general quality of housing provided by the Earl of Moira for his burgeoning workforce has been considered to be of relatively high standard, each house had a parlour, kitchen, front room, two bedrooms and a large garden. None had a front door. Despite plans to turn one into a museum piece, none of his 'Stone Rows' survive; they were terraces of stone built cottages but in an ironic twist of history they were subject to severe mining subsidence and were demolished by British Coal in the 1980s.
The Earl of Moira and the Ashby Canal Company between them laid a complex series of pre-locomotive railway links. These horse drawn railways served to supply goods to and from the canal and the coal mines and to bring in limestone to the lime kilns at the Moira Furnace site. They were sold to the Midland Railway Company, along with the Ashby Canal Company in 1846.
The OS map covering the Ashby Woulds for 1900 shows a landscape of enclosed fields, areas of heavy industry, rows of workers’ houses and the straight roads so beloved by the enclosure surveyors. Francis Pryor comments on the nature of these roads: 'The Parliamentary commissioners […] seemed to prefer [straight] roads with wide verges. They certainly did not favour the narrow winding lanes that are such a distinctive feature of ancient landscapes. They have been criticised for this but I cannot see what else they could have done'. Pryor goes on to discuss the absurdity of adding touches of the Picturesque to working landscapes.
The Burdett map of 1791 shows the Woulds on the cusp of enclosure, a virtually trackless heath. Supposed improvers like the Wilkes family developed methods of burning off heath, (using coals from their own mines) improving land drainage and productivity of what they saw as waste or 'cold' land. Within fifty years heavy industry and transportation would change the face of the Woulds beyond recognition.
Industrialisation in England happened through a sequence of events, seemingly haphazard, which it is tempting to look back upon and present as an inevitable 'march of progress'. This is clearly not the case; many entrepreneurial ventures relied heavily upon the vigour and spirit of individuals, Wilkes’ endeavours failed shortly after his death, the Earl of Moira’s only succeeded after they were taken up by companies like the Moira Coal Company; he died abroad since he could not return to England to repay his creditors. Some improvers used methods we would today consider 'bad' science, and the destruction of swathes of woodland without careful management and a clear replanting programme is foolhardy. As many blind alleys were followed as clear routes to 'progression'. Acrimony and litigation between landowners could last decades.Wilkes' use of child labour in his Measham mills is rarely discussed, perhaps he and others like him thought that by providing dancing lessons halfway through the child labourers' long and arduous shift they would dance home of an evening, envigoured by the largesse of their employer.
Enclosure, for many reasons - not least of which was individual greed - divided up the land in a way not attempted before in Britain, resulting in the patchwork quilt of fields and hedgerows so beloved today.Industrial development created extended and new towns and villages, whilst others remained virtually unchanged; at the end of the seventeenth century Leicester numbered some five thousand people and was still the largest town between the Trent and the Thames, by 1801 that number had grown to 17,000 and by 1901 it was a staggering 211,600.Coalville in Leicestershire was an entirely new town, built around coal mining, whereas Swadlincote expanded but nearby Ashby de la Zouch remained relatively static by comparison.
The integrated approach favoured by many industrialists gave us many of the villages and towns we see today, along with the workplaces closely associated with them. By the early 20th century a scene of heavy industry, smoking chimneys, railways, roads and canal, cheek-by-jowl with villages and farms, all within a wider landscape of fields and hedgerows was commonplace. Between 1700 and 1900 industry impacted heavily upon the urban and rural landscape, creating squalor alongside remarkable improvements in living standards, riches beside incredible poverty and irrevocably changing the face of the English countryside.
