The lectures and stories on this page were written by my cousin, Neil Lewis (1957-2004). Neil was raised at the family farm in Monmouthshire, south east Wales, The Walks, which dates to the Elizabethan era. The farm was purchased by my great-great grandfather, Thomas Lewis and his wife, Rachel. One of his sons immigrated to America in the 1890s - that was my great grandfather, Edgar Lewis. His namesake, fast approaching 88, now runs the farm. The closest big town is Abergavenny (above). The farm is heaven. It is home. Thanksgiving Day, 2009
EDGAR LEWIS, CHRISTMAS 2008, PENRHOS, NR. RAGLAN, THE WALKS FARM, SOUTH WALES
FARMING IN PENRHOS IN THE 1800s
by
Neil Lewis
March 2002.
INTRODUCTION
Yes, I was once
a small boy, content in my own company, with a limitless playground of fields
and farm buildings. Discarded in
hedges, or just under the earth I'd occasionally come across a piece of waggon
wheel or a plough share from some secret past. And I used to carry a small brown holdall of books and sit
in a pear tree in the orchard digesting Tunnicliffe-illustrated Ladybirds on
the countryside, and pears, until they made me sick. And I'd read Enid Blyton and dream of one day finding a
treasure.
On Sundays in the fields I'm going to show you, my father and his friends would go off pheasant shooting without me. I'd sneak out later in my pheasant coloured bobble hat, and yes, I'm lucky to be alive.
I'm responsible for having all our muddy gateways stoned. I liked nothing better than wading through the middle, falling on my back and screaming "Dad!". I think it's then that I became intimately involved with the soil of Penrhos. My father and my ancestors sprang from it; I fell in it.
There are two
other defining moments I should mention.
In the 1970s we had a hole in the drive, roughly at the point where I
took this picture (71). You could
see white broken rubble at the bottom, and Dad told me the tale of Bob Philips
the stone-breaker, and Bill Davis' steam caterpilllar. Llantilio Court had been demolished
after the sale of its contents.
The Adam staircase was taken out immediately and sent to London, leaving
other first floor lots stranded.
Bill knocked a hole in the wall, and Bob bought the stone for roads, buildings
and our driveway foundations. I'd
never heard of the Court, albeit its remains were only 2 miles away. My adventures began with a bike trip,
and from then I discovered Bradney and Heath, and tithes and the census, had
many tingling moments of revelation, and explored further afield.
The second major moment came only a couple of years ago, and it's why we're here tonight. It amazes me to think that as a consequence of decisions made by my great grandfather in the mid-1800s we have all gathered here this evening, and none of us even knew him. If it wasn't for him a couple of hundred people wouldn't exist, and a brick wouldn't have fallen through the ‘dairy’ roof (still 71), to reveal a clerk’s wood and metal spike resting on a joist, on which were ~850 documents from the Penrhos of the late 1800s, a tangible legacy of Thomas Lewis. They reveal how he ran his farm, the Walks in Penrhos, and starkly, they show his death. They form the basis for the latter part of this talk.
In the period we'll be looking at there was no CAP, no ESAs, no Countryside Stewardship Scheme, no EU structural funds, nor Hill Livestock Compensatory Allowances, or Arable Area Payments Schemes, no British Cattle Movement Society, nor Cattle Tracing System, no NSAs, definitely no DEFRA and the term 'organic farming' had yet to be invented. But our agricultural forbears had other things to contend with, and some of the records they have left will help us to envision 'farming in Penrhos in the 1800s.'
Although that's the working title we'll be going to Luzerne County in Philadelphia to meet a house painter; Umbala in northern India to meet someone whose reason for being there currently escapes me; Jarrow in the North East of England looking for a barber's chair; Llanellen where we'll talk of manure, and Llanover to follow a life to its ultimate conclusion. We'll touch on corruption…… of language, walk horses and cattle to market at Abergavenny and meet a class of small children. We'll be travelling back and forth in time through a local landscape, and since my studies will last for my lifetime, this story remains a work in progress. So in the next three -and-a-half hours I hope to paint a broad-brush picture. To add spice to it all, I'll add a dash of sex and gossip, (anonymously I'm afraid - to spare my father's blushes), and then you'll understand why we have the 100 year release rule on the census, and fifty years on most Public Records Office documents.
KELLY’S DIRECTORY 1901
So to begin. Let's set some boundaries of time and place. Penrhos is here in the north east of the county (127). This is the area we are talking about (150). A hidden agricultural land, with no main roads, no famous ruins, no shops or pub, no out of town shopping development, just rolling farmland as it has been for centuries. So there's nothing to see? Well it's how you look and who you know. The parish is bounded by the river Trothy from Talycoed, through Llantilio to Wernyrheolyd in the north (44) (42), Llanarth estate to the west (35), a line from Tregare to Dingestow on the east (14), and Tregare parish and Llanarth estate on the south.
This is from Kelly' s Directory of 1901: "The soil is clay; subsoil, marl. The chief crops are wheat, barley, oats and turnips. The area is 2690 acres…the population in 1891 was 276".
We'll look at the landscape and the crops it grew later. It continues.."Penrhos parish is 3 miles north from Raglan station on the Coleford, Monmouth, Usk and Pontypool line of the GWR, 9 west from Monmouth and 10 south east from Abergavenny…..The living of the church of St Cadoc, is a vicarage….including 44 acres of glebe and residence, in the gift of the Dean and Chapter of Llandaff, and held since 1865 by the Rev William Feetham MA of St John's College Oxford. There is a Primitive Methodist chapel."
We'll visit the chapel later, but here is Rev Feetham at St Cadoc's (8). The vicarage recently changed hands for ~£700,000, not having been used as such since the 1950s. The Feethams became the local gentry and built this, Pentwyn Manor (3) in ~1910 It was built by the firm of Collins and Godfrey of Tewkesbury under the watchful eye of Richard Feetham. He later became Justice Feetham, was involved in the 1922 Irish Risings, and when home on leave had a personal military guard. The Feethams did a lot of good works for the village including donating the land for the parish hall adjoining the school, and before the First World War, closing the pub, the Temple, more of which later. The family moved away at the start of the 1930s. At a sale of the house contents my grandfather bought a waggonnette, of which we still have the coach lamps. The manor is now the Lam Rim Buddhist Centre. The sloping ground is part of the Glebe Land, and the other house is known as David's House, built on ecological principles of use of materials, generation of energy and collection and use of water. The level fields (2) are ours and called the Old Lands. In Victorian times there were a cricket pitch, tennis court and swimming pool on the Glebe.
The chapel I referred to earlier is the Ebenezer Baptist chapel at Wernyrheolyd, the other village in the parish. Built around 1840, now semi-derelict, it has .planning permission to be made into a house - it also has a bit-part in the story of my great-grandfather's death.
Kelly's goes on to mention John Seabourne, the parish clerk. In the 1891 census he was a gardener living in a cottage called 'Pontyland' below the village. (68) Here, until 1867, had been the village school. It had been bought in 1856 by an Arthur Montagu Wyatt from William Prosser of Blaenavon for £60 (?). The next year he granted the freehold to the parish for £1 for a school for poor persons of and in the parish, to be under the control and management of the vicar in his incumbency. In 1867, the Feethams granted one rood of land on the Glebe near the church, and the new school was built to house 60 children. In 1901 it had 18. In the last war my aunt and uncle from London were evacuated here, and attended the school. My uncle wrote home about it, and about my father rabbiting and picking potatoes. He drew a picture of Spitfires over the church. As a small boy I used to go to the village Xmas party and try and guess which one of the local farmers was Father Xmas that year. It too is now private dwellings. Later I'll introduce you to a few of the school children.
After John Seabourne in Kelly's we read of the sub-postmaster, Reuben Edmunds. The post office remained in the family for some 50 years. He died aged 69 in 1930 and is buried in the churchyard overlooking the school. In its time the post office has had four homes, one of which is even to this day known as the Old Post Office. Here is an early one, a cottage called Croes Careg, (33) seen across our top field, Cae Corbel. Please note my expert use of Welsh there, for we will be looking at the language describing the landscape shortly. Only last summer we were sitting in the garden here at a barbecue, making plans for a Penrhos version of the Glastonbury Rock Festival, and my father's 80th birthday celebrations. It's called Croes Careg for the wayside cross that used to stand in the lane below the field, of which only the stump remains. In the days before cattle trucks, for my youthful father and those before him, this was the start of the route to market, down Dairy Farm lane, then Skipper Lan Lane (62) (corrupted Welsh there), through Wernyrheolyd (slide), right here, right at Llwyn Deri (37) and left (38), off up Richard Lewis' old turnpike road from Llantilio. Before the turnpike, this was the way to Wernrheolyd (41), up above the Trothy. On the 1847 tithe map for the parish this was still an active route. Here it is today, below Nantyderry Farm, a stream (48) (49), an old 'hollow way'. Here too, in 1911, (43) as transport further opened up the countryside, here was going to be built a single span railway bridge of red brick, carrying a GWR spur linking Dingestow to Penpergwm Stations. Why? You may ask. It could be that Sir Henry Mather Jackson of nearby Llantilio Court was chairman of the GWR, and there was to be a halt here - but the bill to have it built never passed through Parliament, although the course of the Trothy was altered to accommodate it near Talycoed..
I digress, the post office. At one time until 1977 it was on the site of the old pub, (Betty's picture) but now the village no longer has either. The Edmunds family were traditionally tree-fellers, and can be found in the 1891 census living on Comyn Road behind the village - 'remember Comyn'. Here too can be found the remaining village woods. This part (52) is known as the Poor's Wood for the rights afforded to the poor of the parish to gather firewood. Across the road and behind the Millennium Bench, (53) is the farm of Coed Poeth with adjoining woods, Coed Poeth meaning 'Burning Wood'. In our farm deeds in the 1870s, the landlord of the time owned arable land here that is now wooded. In the 1930s there were four active Edmunds, Robert, Charles, Tom and Reg. (you’ll find Tom in the churchyard). Local policy dictated that any timber bought from any local farm or estate, would be felled by them. They were also skilful in the barking of trees, especially oak, traditionally used in the process of tanning leather. A Monmouthshire agricultural survey of the early 1800s, which we'll talk more of in a moment, saw this rural 'industry' as under threat. Alternatives to oak bark were being experimented with, but at the same time, the writer one Charles Hassall, hoped that more oak trees might grow to maturity, a shortage of timber being a concern, because we still had a wooden navy, and were under threat from Europe - what's new? Quite locally of course, the industrial revolution was moving apace. The appetite of the coal and iron industries to the west of the county was voracious, devouring wood for pit props and for charcoal. Later in the century, the widespread use of coke instead of charcoal, and developments in metallurgy were to have a considerable impact on such woods, and the agriculture of parishes like Penrhos.
Before leaving Kelly's we should just glance down the list of local farmers and landowners and make the acquaintance of someone. There she is, sandwiched between Herbert Lewis of the Elms and Henry Matthews of the Bottom, my great-grandmother, Rachel Lewis, farmer, and widow of two years standing.
THE LANDSCAPE AS IT APPEARS TODAY, AND HOW IT IS DESCRIBED
Prior to looking through Charles Hassall's eyes at the state of farming in 1811 in the county and the Hundred of Raglan, we should first look at the landscape, some of its features, and how it's described. The name PENRHOS for instance is Welsh for 'head of the moor', and it aptly describes it. Our farm is on a hill above what would have been wetlands. Typically in the lower areas like here (12) (13), you find signs of wet. This is Nant Wechan brook, surrounded by reedy land and water-loving alders. The wet nature of the land is also reflected in the name of a nearby farm, called Werymellyn, or yellow alders, according to Bradney. If you read Coxe he suggests that 'wern' means watery meadow, and 'melin' can also be a mill. Here, there is a field that even today feels like a sponge when you cross it, and beneath it is peat. At one time in the early 1900s consideration was given to extracting it commercially.
Until gradually drained as agriculture was 'improved' through the 1800s, the land such as this (15) looking out over Coed Poeth to Tregare, would have been wet and of poor quality. This land below (56) (57) a farm called Coedygelli, built on what was once common land called Coedpenygelli is an extension of our lowlands, and is being allowed to revert somewhat, as it now forms part of a pheasant shoot. Ours are the very next fields, and drained, look like this (58). They are known as the Old Lands. The determination of the origins of their name illustrates just how careful you must be in your research. In this case it sounds English, but Lands may be a corruption of the Welsh 'lan' for ley land, or 'llan' for the nearby church. However, there is an old English word 'llaund'. It's first quoted use in the OED is in 1340, but in 1593 it appears in Shakespeare's Henry VI III I
"Through this laund anon the deere will come",
meaning an open space among woods. This you could believe, as other place names nearby contain the word 'coed' meaning wood. If you really want a flight of fancy I've also seen 'llaund' described as a deer park, after all, there was a castle at Penrhos in the 1200s that needed feeding, and White Castle and Llantilio, were an outlying deer park supplying Raglan Castle.
Above these fields lie Cadoc's Meadow (4), named after the church we imagine. This picture shows an interesting landscape feature, remains of channels dug for manure, to make spreading of it easier in the days before muck-spreaders. Beyond the orchard above this field is our farmstead. The house was built around the late 1500s to early 1600s, at a time that landscape historian WG Hoskins describes as the 'great rebuilding'. At this time too it is likely that our fields were enclosed from the common lands, until then being used as open sheep walks. Two large fields are called Upper and Lower Cae Walk for instance, a mix of English and Welsh, 'cae' being a field. In Cae Corbel earlier, this has corrupted when we speak to 'cow'. To add to the potential confusion there is a Welsh word 'corbwll' meaning whirlpool or puddle.
The fields described 'Walks' start at the right of this slide (70). The field in the foreground we call the Pleck. The OED defines pleck as 'a small piece or spot of ground, a plot or plat, a small enclosure. In our deeds of the 1700s it is referred to as 'a plock of land'. The dictionary first quotes its usage in 1379, and in Chambers Journal III of 1855 you will find:
"Cultivation is daily claiming, acre by acre, rushy moor and new dried pleck and plash". That neatly fits with wet Penrhos don't you think?
My father is one of few people around today who still has the traditional skill of plashing, and uses in his speech the derivative term to 'pleach' or lay a hedge. Such words, some of them dialect, are no longer in common use because many of them have to do with the rural way of life, and especially, with non-mechanized farming techniques. As this way of life, the techniques, and my father's generation disappear, so will the words that go with them. The dictionary description for this is 'lexical attrition'.
Deeds and tithe apportionements are useful sources of field names over time, and of course of occupants and proprietors of land. This is a copy of the apportionment showing the entry for our farm in 1847 (136) (137), the trouble is on this version, the writer got tired on page 5 and stopped putting field names in. Tithe maps and apportionments were usually triplicated, so I'll just have to find another one. From a title deed of 1878 you see this, (145) (147) and from the mortgage of 1913 when we bought the farm you see this (142) (140). Maps of course give us a great deal of landsape information, and the tithe map is useful in seeing boundary changes and road layout.
On the ground it is interesting to study hedges in an attempt to date enclosures. They have a structure (30) (31) (32), and Hooper and others in the 70s developed a theory of hedge dating through analysing the shrub species present.
The 1847 tithe map for Penrhos not only reveals a now extinct lane from Nantyderry, 'brook of the oaks', but shows some that are left as green lanes today. One I've shown you, Skipper Lan Lane, is a corruption of the Welsh 'ysgubor lan', or barn lane. Another (69) is 'heol-y-march', stallion's road which slopes down into a wet dip called 'rhydheol-y-march' or 'ford on stallion's road'. To the right of this picture are the ruins of an old blacksmith's cottage, and this spot is known as 'croes-y-march'. There are two other vanished lanes on the tithe map. One led off Comyn Road here (65) where there was also a dwelling, down to 'Martha's Lands'. Here's the village woods again (18) and a track down to these lands (19) (20). According to my father this was one of the village sites for nooky of old, but I can say no more or he'll shoot me. Well he won't, he gave his gun to Mike Wilson, one of the remaining ‘pleachers’ who lives in the Old Post Office. Are you beginning to see how things fit together in such rural communities? This lane used to go off in the direction of Dingestow, with a branch out to the modern lane near Offa's Dyke footpath. Here is that end (21) (22), but the branch fell out use before 1847, as it does not appear on the tithe map. Finally leading out of the north west of the parish is this (34).
So Penrhos is 'head of the moor', above wet ground, and reclaimed from Common Land. Two farm names illustrate this, the Comyn, obviously, once the home of the Prices who we'll meet later (6), and the Butts at the back of the village, on what in the census of 1891 was described as Comyn Road. (51). That's here. The good old OED describes butts as 'a small piece of ground disjoined in whatever manner from the adjacent lands. In this sense a small parcel of land is often called "the Butts" ' It gives as an example Fitzherbert Survey 39 of 1523 "If it be less than a rodde than call it a butt". Relatives of the Prices from the Comyn farm here today. The fields here are smaller than most in the parish and here too is where there was a large number of labourers cottages, the Edmunds for instance. Another indicator of the extent of the common lands in this district is a piece of scrub land on the way beyond Coed Poeth to Dingestow, still uncultivated, and called the Waste, accessed by the Waste Road on the OS map, passing a place on the way called Twyn-y-waste, 'hill on the waste' .
To the west of the parish is its only other village, Wernyrheolydd. 'Wern' in the name again suggests alders or water meadow and wet, and 'heol' means a lane. These slides show the lowland nature of the area (59) (60) (61), and it is indeed damp. The 1847 tithe map here, shows us two things, land covered with ponds and field size. As expected, the fields are small around the village, but much larger as you sweep towards Llantilio.
THE WALKS – BUILT AS A TYPICAL YEOMAN’S HOUSE
So this landscape a couple of hundred years earlier, was being claimed from in part, wet, waste and common land. Along with land development this was the time of Hoskins' 'Great Rebuilding', improved housing in style for yeoman farmers. The Walks comes from this era, and is an example of a hall house. (128). Everything revolved around the main hall, with a fire in the middle, and smoke escaping out through a hole in the roof, called a solar. Such houses often had a stock building next to them with a passage between. In our case this is we think, why we have a footpath running through the kitchen and out of the back porch. At some stage of its development, a first floor was introduced leaving low-level hammer beams in the main bedroom. The fireplace would have been moved to the wall and a chimney created, from which in 2000, a brick could fall, leading to this talk! Here is the view from the back in Fox and Raglan (129). Compare it to today (73), similar. There are few external features to show the age of the place, but another rumour does suggest that we have a 'priest hole', and there is indeed a recess into the thick walls at the end of the house now a fitted wardrobe. An area I have yet to study in detail is the deeds that start around 1690. They give field names as I've said, inventories at various times, and they provide a wonderful collection of wax seals to examine (143).
HASSALL’S SURVEY OF MONMOUTHSHIRE FARMING - 1815
I have made reference already to Charles Hassall's Survey of the agriculture of Monmouthshire published in 1815, so let's look a little more at what he saw. This was one of a series of surveys conducted throughout the country for the Board of Agriculture (short-lived in its original version). It appeared at a time when the industrial revolution was speeding up, the population was growing, there was concern about war in Europe and the need for a strong navy, and worries over self-sufficiency in food. In agriculture, the buzzword at the time, rather like 'diversification' or organic farming' today, was 'improvement'.
The survey broke the county into its Hundreds, and allows us to focus somewhat on the Hundred of Raglan, where Penrhos is found. These, along with basic geology, it showed on this map (135) based on one by C Smith of London in 1801.
The county was of 316,000 acres split into 6 Hundreds, 'Ragland ' being 40,000 of these. Individual parishes were listed long with their principle proprietors, which served to show that most of the land was in the hands of a few landowners. This was still the time during which the landowning classes held the power in parliament, and in half a century it was to become a political hot potato. In Penrhos the major owners were the Duke of Beaufort, the Earl of Abergavenny who was Lord of the Manor, and Richard Lewis of Llantilio Court. Lewis in particular was responsible for some of the landscape we see today. As I mentioned earlier he was a turnpike commissioner involved in constructing today's B road from Monmouth to Abergavenny via Llantilio, and for re-routing some of the lanes around that village. For many years here, his family, formerly the Powells, had run a pack of hounds. They were descendants of Walter Powell the famous diarist in the time of the Civil War, Powell of Penrhos and Llantilio. In 1835, too old to hunt he gave the pack to a committee of gentlemen who founded with it, the Monmouthshire Hunt Club. The kennels at the Court were near the mill which we'll visit shortly. In a diary of June 1735 is an entry in the form of a letter, by Richard's mother, Mary Lewis, it reads
"The greatest part of our hounds were bit by a mad dog and bitch, James and Coone, the huntsman with Jacob George, the gardener agreed to take the pack and dip them in salt water. They will be home this evening". Today it looks like this (24) (25) (27) (26) and is simply known as the Monmouthshire Hunt that you see in Agincourt Square in Monmouth on New Year’s Day, and may never see again, for rural power no longer holds sway in parliament. There they go. This was a hunt 4 weeks ago around Penrhos.
Hassall's survey went on to identify that the tenant was heavily taxed and suffered high costs. He suggested that to encourage 'improving tenants', there should be more formal leases "..for no extensive or permanent improvement of the soil can be reasonably expected from a tenant at will. A lease for 21 years would encourage the farmer to advance his capital with confidence in draining, manuring and otherwise improving the land; and if the life of himself, his wife, or child were added, it would be still farther stimulus to his spirit and industry". This would have the added effect of increasing the number of freeholders who were allowed to vote at that time. The vote of course would be for the landowners at county elections. This would render the candidate "…thereby less dependent on the inferior class of voters, whose favour he is frequently obliged to court, in opposition to his feelings in rank and life".
Perhaps for a moment we should take a look at how the land ownership question came to a head in 1873. Traditional wisdom at the time, based on the 1861 census suggested that there were around 30,000 owners across the country, although defensive landowning politicians claimed it would be found to be in excess of 300,000. In a way, the survey showed they were not wrong.
The purpose of what became known as the 'New Doomesday Survey' was to allay the national concerns of land ownership being in the hands of a few privileged people.
It was to record various things
1. For property >1 acre, the number and names of owners of land, its acreage and gross estimated annual rental
2. For land <1 acre the number of owners, estimated aggregate acreage and rental, and
3. The extent of the wastes and common land.
The data already existed in the records of the Poor Law Unions for each parish, 15,000 of them representing 5,000,000 assessments. Data from other sources was used where appropriate and so made the whole exercise one fraught with errors and 'typos'. As parishes, I came across Telleck, Kellick and Trellick, Frostrey, Gwebelog, Grismont and Cromcarvon. Xantippe Hart and Chanianah Howells were probably real people, but my favourite were Messrs Snook and Butt Earl. You can almost see how the Welsh language might get corrupted when you read of Pentynnstu, Cefnrhychdir and Qaly Corld, unless Welsh is one big spelling mistake and not a language at all. The survey found Monmouthshire to be held by 4,970 owners of plots <1 acre, whereas only 2,841 held land >1 acre. Of this, Penrhos parish had 22 owners, the biggest being Henry Morgan Clifford of Llantilio Court, every bit a representative of the ruling gentry, as his memorial in Llantilio church shows today. (47).
Nationally, the government was able to demonstrate that the country's land was in the possession of ~1,000,000 owners, some very small, but they also shot themselves in the foot, as it showed that 80% of it was owned by <7,000.
Oh yes, and Monmouthshire had commons and wastes extending to just 7,594 acres, illustrating just how much 'improvement' had been going on.
Back to Hassall. He describes the soil around Raglan as a clay of the "agrillaceous kind, with as little variety as can be expected in a country consisting of undulating lands", that's a strong clay in a landscape much as we see today. Old timber houses with thatch were still to be seen, but stone tiles had replaced it in new build as thatch used up straw,
"more importantly needed in dung, and because of the scarcity of wood, stone buildings are going up." He also observed
"cottages were typically built on frugal pattern and not larger than needed for a small family, with a garden for vegetables" (54) (55). Here's another defunct lane that led to Coedygelli Farm, and to the Halls' cottage, which is now this. In my father's youth the Halls received support from the parish, which included cider. If as a landowner you were providing it, it was the job of the last person up in the house to deliver it, and so late risers were termed the 'cider drawer'. In the early 1800s cow keeping by cottagers was minimal due to its cost and the risk of disease. Hassall advocated the encouragement of potato cultivation, especially for the poor, even to the extent of describing how to cook such things and to make them taste sweet. He also suggested it because of corn shortages in 1800 and 1801.
Farms were generally between 60-300 acres in extent, and 140 acres on average. Farm yards - like our Reckfold i.e rick yard, were scarce at this time, with any farm buildings spread out,
"…missing out on the opportunity of keeping stock warm and gathering dung. The increased quantity of dung produced by good farmyard management is the sheet anchor of the cultivator".
Now we should look at how he saw the crops and stock and farming methods. Herbicides and pesticides didn't exist and so methods had to be employed to minimise the effects of pests through good tillage, including the use of fallow and crop rotation. In the Hundred of Raglan he found this rotation to be widespread because of the nature of the soil (OHP of rotation). And in those days, if you wanted to dry a cow off when she was in calf you would change her diet and cut her liquid intake. So what is this modern thing called 'organic farming' then?
The supply of wheat was of particular concern,
"foreign supplies are scant, occasioned by the present deranged political state of Europe…" 1810 had a very hot summer and gave a limited crop, there was a plague of cockchafer bugs in the county attacking the cereal, and in some parts the crop was afflicted with smut. To feed the nation, supply from abroad was important, and Hassall exhorted the government to secure it.
'Improving' landlords and farmers generally knew the benefits of applying dung and lime to the fields. Lime had traditionally come from the Forest of Dean, but its use was limited by transport being by horse, the state of the roads still being poor. Road quality depended on what building materials were found locally, and thus Hassall reckoned that Monmouthshire's roads were poor. When the county's first Turnpike Act was brought before parliament, Valentine Morris of Piercefield was examined:
Q What sort of roads have you in Monmouthshire?
A None.
Q How do you travel?
A In ditches.
Of course in the West, railways and canals were beginning to make there mark, and the fastest agricultural 'improvement' appeared in the Abergavenny area. This was not just because of transport links, but because of the iron industry's waste product of basic slag that was found to be a great soil improver. This in turn led to a considerable increase in the cultivation of turnips in this part of the county. By the time of W Fothergill's examination of farming in Monmouthshire, published by the Royal Agricultural Society of England in 1870, the study of manure was a science, and a growth industry. In 1824, Justus Liebig, the father of agricultural chemistry began his work. In 1859 in directories such as Slater's here (OHP) advertisements were appearing regularly for purely chemical fertilisers like 'superphosphates'. Every type of agricultural waste was studied for its effect, including blood, and bone and ground up body parts. It's hard to imagine that if current EU legislation is adopted, farmers will not be able to use a great proportion of the manure their farms produce, as the whole country becomes classified as a Nitrate Sensitive Area. We are sold this idea of course as a means of water pollution reduction, whereas it might just be a back door means of reducing production levels! This conflicts with other EU regulation adopted a couple of years ago, where a ban on dumping sewage sludge at sea was imposed. So where does it all go now? Work is afoot at setting standards for the stuff to be spread on farmland, briquetted as a soil improver, and incinerated as a fuel.
Hassall has little to say about technology in agriculture, as farming methods had not yet been affected by the industrial revolution. Metallurgical developments would soon increase metal production however, and this would allow modern farm machinery to be invented. The threshing machine didn't come along until about 1830 for instance.
Thus wood was still an important commodity with many local uses including implement manufacture. Farm leases often included a requirement to plant a portion of timber. The navy was a greater customer than industry at this stage. Growing iron exploitation however, still used coppice wood of a size for making charcoal as fuel. Coxe in his Historical Tour of 1801 observed that
"5/11 furnaces in the valleys used charcoal".,
With the advent of coke of course, things changed and we'll see evidence of some of these changes through Thomas Lewis' documents.
Boots and gaiters, and shoes and horse harness all required leather, and oak bark was used in its tanning process, so a demand existed for the skills of the Edmunds family.
Hassall comments on three other tree-related issues, the fact that the county was famous for its walnut trees used in gun stocks by the gun makers of Birmingham, orchards, and thickets. He claimed the latter harboured birds and various insects :
"…which are injurious to the adjacent crops of corn. In all cases it is prudent to clear and cultivate the land to the fence". As the EU aims to reform the CAP, farm subsidies are gradually being replaced with support for environmental schemes such as the introduction of 'wildlife corridors', and overgrown field margins.
Hassall observes that the Hundred of Raglan is favourable to the growth of apple trees, and produces more cider than the maritime hundreds. In 1995, Penrhos Farm in the north of the parish was bought by Bulmers. 96,000 trees of 10 different varieties were planted. By 2001 they were yielding 3230 tonnes a year, with the average crop on maturity expected to be ~6500 by 2007. At the Walks we had two orchards, one containing many cider apple trees (72) - these are Bramleys, The fruit used to be stored on the floor of the main bedroom around my father's bed when he was a lad, until being eaten or sold at Abergavenny market. Cider used to be made with a travelling cider mill, and in Penrhos this was by Arthur Price of the Comyn, later of the Butts.
As for animals, they were being improved too, South Down sheep had been successfully introduced at Abergavenny, and Cheviots up on the hills. Because of the nature of the soil in the Raglan area, cattle breeding was little practised, but most farmers kept milking cattle, the Glamorgan breed being thought to give the best profit in the dairy. Considerable quantities of butter and cheese were made to be sold at Abergavenny and Pontypool markets, and veal calves were sold at the same places. Most of the ploughing and cultivation work in the area was by teams of strong Herefordshire cattle, again due to the heaviness of the soil. Ploughmen though, usually preferred the nimbler Glamorgan ox. For the same reasons of heavy soil, Raglan Hundred reared few horses for ploughing at this time.
As later in the century, the payment of tithes were the bane of many farmer's lives. By the early 1800s, many of them had been commuted, although some instances of payment in kind still remained. There was considerable debate over improvement of the system, possibly to be based on a corn rent regulated by the price of corn in the parish. An area would be assessed to determine how many bushels it would produce and then the tithe would be set for 14 years based on the corn rent.
We'll come across tithes again shortly as they affected Thomas Lewis.
There we'll leave Hassall, and the county of Monmouthshire, in his opinion in considerable need of 'improvement', especially in grass quality, farmyard layout, drainage and the exploitation of local materials.
FOTHERGILL’S SURVEY OF FARMING ON MONMOUTHSHIRE, 1870
Another survey I would like to briefly examine is that of Fothergill that I mentioned earlier, and conducted around 1870. Before that it's worth taking a quick look at a 'timeline' of some historical events over the century we're interested in (OHP timeline)
Fothergill, unlike Hassall based his observations on the geological areas of the county. (OHP) Obviously his general descriptions were the same, and there appears to have been little change in the form of the landscape he saw, compared with the early 1800s. However roads had improved somewhat, as had the distribution of cottages - labour migrated to the towns and industrial areas, drawn by higher wages, and driven by the mechanisation of agriculture.
The crop rotations used were similar, but they were harvested by machine. The double-furrow plough was the invention of the day. Coleman's and Bentall's scufflers (OHP) had replaced the heavy drag cultivators, and the self-delivery reaper had appeared (OHP plus horse turners). Seed drills were being used optimising field use, and on several farms steam-power was in use for threshing, chaffing, grinding and sowing. Again, trade directory adverts serve to illustrate the change. (OHP) Frogmore works)
Stock had been improved to the extent that Herefords were the main beef cows and Ayrshires for milking. Cotswolds were the dominant breed of sheep, and the Berkshire was
"the most universally established breed of the county"
Fothergill claimed that the
"vast improvement apparent in late years in the farming of Monmouthshire may be attributed to the very great stimulus and encouragement given to all affairs " by agricultural shows such as Abergavenny, established in 1854, but sadly now defunct. He concludes by saying:
"Without doubt therefore, progress is broadly stamped upon the agricultural future of Monmouthshire".
TRADING DOCUMENTS OF THE LEWIS FAMILY AT THE WALKS IN THE LATE 1800s
The overall improvement in the state of agriculture in the 1800s, was reflected in a desire by some of the agricultural labouring classes to become farmers themselves. This is what my great-grandfather Thomas Lewis did, working first as a labourer and then renting parcels of land in Llanover, before moving to Penrhos and the Walks. It was his son, my grandfather, Reuben, who finally bought the place, and his son Edgar, my father, who farms it now. You could say we are of typical farming stock, and so for the final part of this talk, I will use us to illustrate the change in agriculture in Penrhos in the last quarter of the 19th century, and show what happened to such families.
The series of documents you are about to see came to light as I described earlier, when a brick fell through the dairy roof. In the dairy we used to make butter and cheese, and hang bacon, keep the meat safe, and store the barrels of cider. They were on this spike to a depth of about 3 inches, mouse eaten at the edges, and started with the most recent item dated 1892. Going back in time through the pile, I had many tingly moments.
They illustrate many of the aspects of farming we have already discussed and so I have put them into illustrative groups. I've also produced a slide converting the costs of the time into 2001 equivalents (OHP). Surprisingly not one of them refers to the sale or purchase of stock - perhaps all trade was done on a handshake. Although there is one, from John Edmunds the cobbler (108), look closely, for he was also the pig inseminator.
· Improvement of the land quality was still apparent as these show concerning manure (106), the receipt of lime from Bigsweir by train (105) and a seed bill (116).
· After threshing (97), corn was carried into the granary in Gopsil bags supplied by Gopsil and Brown (107), and were still in use in my Dad's youth.
· Milling was done at either Llantilio Mill (46) by Jarrold (99), or at Clawdd Mill (36) by Taylor (86).
· What provisions the family didn't grow themselves came from Edward Jones of Raglan (109) or were meat (117).
· Over time Thomas actively acquired farm machinery, a waggon (103), cart from James Watkins (95), a plough (104), and parts for the milk warmer (118).
· These of course needed repair in time from the saddler (90), and John Hicks the blacksmith at Llantilio (92). He was married to 'witch' Hicks. The sort of thing he made are illustrated here (130).
· Just like today, Thomas' business was licenced in various ways. There was a licence for a carriage (122), and an exemption for a farm dog (89). Farmers were licensed to brew beer if it was for their own consumption or by their workers (88). In Thomas' case barrels came from the Redbrook Brewery (87), and sometimes were supplied to the Temple as the letter shows. However, the back of the licence (121) gives its terms, and Mt Burgham was possibly encouraging Thomas to break the law.
· And just like today, Thomas business had taxes and other costs to pay. Tithes were payable to the estate of HM Clifford (84)/(115). There were Poor Law Union dues (112) and the rent. This was paid by guaranteed cheque (111), sometimes with the guarantor being a friend (114).
· Thomas' rent bills from his landlord, Richard Carpenter Crowe are quite revealing as Crowe usually added a letter. Crowe is also known to us through the deeds of course, and here's his seal (144). This letter by him (110) details the delapidations on moving into the farmhouse. Crowe as a landlord was an 'improving' landlord paying for manure, and into a fund for the school. He was also a little obsessed with death, or came from a particularly unhealthy family (113). Here, he refers to the chapel at Wernyrheolydd (93) (63) (64), and Thomas declining health (94). Crowe's address of 21 King Street still exists in Hereford, behind an estate agents, a short walk from the cathedral where he probably spent a lot of his time.
· Thomas was ill, and the doctors visited (OHP of costs). (100). When he died he was buried at Llanover Church (67), beneath a gravestone from Robert Price's in Abergavenny (91). Not far away is buried another Penrhos farmer, Joseph Silcock of Coedygelli (66) and Mike Wilson's Old Post Office. Thomas lies in a coffin (96) supplied by the same James Watkins who repaired carts. The funeral garb worn by the family probably came from here (101). A couple of the sons already had suits from Charles Daniel (102) and wore fob watches from Philips. That was that, and here's the death certificate by way of signing off a life (78).
THE LEWISES; A TYPICAL FARMING FAMILY OF THE LATE 1800s AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE IMPACT OF CHANGE
· But of course, that's not all. Thomas had a family (OHP family tree) and we'll now look at a few of them. Most farming families in the parish in the censuses of the late 19th century were seen to be this large, but mechanisation of farming meant fewer jobs, wages were better in industry, and their was the lure of foreign lands. The Lewises, a typical farming family of the time, can thus be used to illustrate the changes in the countryside at the end of the 19th century.
· On Thomas' death his wife Rachel took on the farm (82), and here she is with some of her children, wearing mourning garb, suits and fob watches perhaps. We'll concentrate on a couple of them.
· George (OHP) went to India for some reason, and died there at Umbala north of Delhi, and the setting of Kipling's Kim. He is memorialised on the Llanover gravestone. An elder brother William went off to Pontypool and became a landlord. His descendants live in that area still, and he too is buried at Llanover.
· Brother Edgar on his wedding day to Henrietta Grum (133) looked like this (132). We have their wedding invitation. He married in America and became an American citizen. We have his naturalisation papers too. Emigration was in full swing – remember the directory advert. In the Monmouthshire Beacon of the late 1800s adverts of shipping lines plying the emigration trade across the Atlantic appeared each week. Edgar had four children, three shown here (OHP) with middle names remembering home. That led to Doris (134) who died last year, and her daughter Georgeie who spent last Xmas with us. When I got married some years ago she gave me Edgar's wedding quilt as a gift. At Christmas she gave my father, also an Edgar, a sign reading ‘WET PAINT’ from his decorating business and store, showing that he had such a business and a sense of humour. In 1924 he came home on a visit, and here (123) he is with his sister Polly (real name Mary Ann) and brother William. Polly, seen here (124) with her mother married a Mr Bruten, and became the lady Mayoress of Monmouth. They lived at Bailey Pit Farm just out of town, and she lies buried in Osbaston cemetery. Edgar's return trip to the States in 1924, was aboard the Berengaria (OHP) in August. How do we know? Because he appears on the ships manifest (OHP) that can be seen on the Ellis Island website. However, Edgar probably first passed into the United States through the Castle Garden transit centre, the predecessor to Ellis Island. A description of how this worked was found in an 1865 edition of the Monmouthshire Beacon. I'm writing a piece on the mighty Atlantic liners for an American history magazine, and in my researches found that the Berengaria was scrapped in Jarrow, but its barber's chair was saved and used in an establishment in the area. I thought I might be able to find it and retrieve a lock of Edgar's hair for DNA study. He didn't visit again and in his later years looked like this (131) and died in the early 1950s. Cousin Georgeie is the last of this line.
MODERN LINKS AND ORAL HISTORY
So where does that leave us now? We have a direct link back to the late 1800 through my father, who when you show him an old photograph illustrates the importance of oral history, and the need that I have to record him. Show him a picture of the celebrations on the opening of the village hall (attached to the school we think) (126) and he'll name everyone, tell you where they lived, what their nicknames were and who married whom. Go back earlier in the 1920s and show him a photograph of Penrhos School pupils (83) and he'll point out his older brother and sister, tell you who everyone is, and show that most people were related to each other in some way, and still have relatives alive today. These are relatives who know us, and if I should recount to you some of the antics of their relatives, well, they would shoot either my father or me. Perhaps just one such tale before I finish. This is the census record for the Walks of 1891(OHP). You will see that at High House the Parrys are farming. My father used to buy and sell stock when he was a lad for the ageing Lewis Parry, and learned many of his selling skills this way. Their waggoner was one Uriah Morgan who is buried at Penrhos near my grandfather. When he died he was at the Pishty living as part of the family, the lady of which he had worked with in High House days when she was a farm servant. He died, sitting up in bed. To be fitted into the coffin he had to have his legs bent flat, only for him to pop up again as he was being carried down the awkward stairs, my father being a bearer, and Hampshires, the undertakers. Hampshire as a builder was also responsible for this (5), the Lytch Gate at Penrhos church
SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS:
In the past hour I have made a broad sweep over a century in a remote agricultural part of the county, less than 20 minutes drive from here. For over 200 years or more it's been in a state of change, a process that is still going on in ways beyond our control. If only we, and our lords and masters had the eyes to see, we could learn from history, and would cherish our resources before they are lost. The two documents I found which illustrate this most, and first brought me to the museum, are these, (OHP of medicine and notice). They concern cattle disease and have led me to a study of the national Rinderpest outbreak in the 1860s. If we had studied its history and applied it to the recent FMD crisis we could have prophesied so much, and reduced its impact. Culling, vaccination and burning were issues; there was a change of government early on, methods of spreading, and control were all of concern. There were even late, localised outbreaks, and riots over carcass disposal in landfill, and yet nobody studied their history.
Today we hear of diversification and organic farming - but what's new? Thomas Lewis was a diversified brewer and organic farmer. Was he way before his time? The government is promoting various schemes to help save agriculture and rural life, after almost two centuries of trying to 'improve' it
· 'Eat the View' - local produce eaten locally by local people,
· 'Virtual villages' working from home
· 'The Market Town initiative' making such places the focus for rural activities - like old-fashioned markets perhaps?
The big change has been in government, now dominated by urban MPs, where once rural ones held sway. We have a media that is urban based and urban biased. They create a Country Living picture of rural life that is set somewhere in the period that we've just looked at, but that never really existed. The richer people move out of the towns in search of this, and push up property prices, and convert old farm buildings, and the young locals are squeezed out.
The urban government keeps using debate on the ban on hunting with dogs to deflect attention from other issues. Is this in concern for cruelty to animals, or one final attack on a perceived dominance of the landed classes?
The 1873 issue of who owns the land is still of concern as we have become a "must have" and a "why can't I have what he's got" society. Another tier of owners would appear in the large landowners list if we were to repeat the survey, namely investment groups, and supermarkets.
Farmers are going out of business to meet CAP targets. The CAP is the EU's single greatest cost, and a millstone round its neck as it awaits the accession of 14 further members from agriculturally more backward nations than ours. Subsidies must change, and there is a move from headage payments to environmental schemes, in some ways the reverse of the old 'improvement' idea. Bring back the thicket they say. The reduction of production is now the aim with the introduction of quotas, incentives for the retirement of old farmers, and other hidden means of reduction through spurious pollution controls. It's truly tough in our idyllic landscape. Of course I'm biased, it's not like the miners and the shipworkers and the motor industry, we have a history, we're talking of the soil we've tended for over 200 years, managed and 'improved' as our skills have evolved. We have lived in the same place for over 125 years, where we've been born, hopefully will die, and where some are already buried.
---end----
Neil Lewis
Presented as the Keith Kissack lecture – 2002
to the Monmouth Field and History Society, 7pm, 15.3.02
REFERENCES
1. A history of Monmouthshire, Volume 2 Part 1, The Hundred of Raglan JA Bradney 1914. Repr. Academy Books, London, 1992
2. Monmouthshire Houses Part II. Sir C Fox & Lord Raglan, National Museum of Wales 1951-54. Repr. Merton Priory Press, 1994
3. A general view of the Agriculture of the County of Monmouth. J Fox. Brentford 1794.
4. General View of the Agriculture of the County of Monmouth. 1815. Charles Hassall for the Board of Agriculture. Sherwood, Neely & Jones, London. Sold by Tudor, & Heath in Monmouth at 7s6d.
5. Slater's Directory of Monmouthshire, 1850. MM Publications, Newmarket. 1999.
6. The Farming of Monmouthshire, W Fothergill in Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, Volume VI, second series, 1870.
7. Return of Owners of Land, 1873. Eyre and Spottiswode, London. 1875
8. Kelly's Directory of Monmouthshire, 1901
9. Agriculture and the 'Waste' in Monmouthshire from 1750 to the present day (1972). J Chapman. PhD thesis. Univ. of London 1972
10.Lewis Edmunds 1814-1903 (19th century diarist) in Gwent Local History. JAH Evans, 2000. Gwent Local History Society.
11.Walter Powell's Gwent. (17th century diarist) Christabel Powell. Self-published 1985. Printed by Starling Press, Risca.
7 Hidden Treasure, NS Lewis in Journal of Gwent FHS 57, March 2000
8 The Industrial Archaeology of farming in England and Wales. Nigel Harvey, 1980. Bt Batsford. London
9 History of British Agriculture 1846 - 1914. CS Orwin & EH Whetham. 1964. David & Charles, Newton Abbott.
10 Stephens Book of the Farm. H Stephens. 1889. Wm Blackwood & Sons. Edinburgh
11 Agriculture, the Science and Practice of British Farming. JAS Watson & JA More. 1933. Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh.
12 The International Farm Crisis. Ed D Goodman & M Redclift.1989. St Martin's Press. New York.
13 The Making of the English Landscape. WG Hoskins 1955. Repr. 1978, Pelican, London.
14 Hedges. E Pollard, MD Hooper, NW Moore. In New Naturalist Series. Collins. London. 1974.
15 Census returns 1841, 1871, 1891 - various sources.
16 Tithe Map & Apportionment for Penrhos, 1847. Monmouth County Archive. Ref. D506.
17 Private collection of deeds and trading documents for the Lewis family of Llanover and Penrhos, 1871 - 1891.
18 The dialects of England. P Trudgill. Blackwell, Oxford. 1990.
19 Pers. Comm. Messrs E Lewis, Penrhos, and Mr L Chilcott, Raglan, 2001
20 Website: http://www.multimap.com On-line aerial maps of the UK.
21 Website: http://eh.net/hmit Money values from 1600 - 1901 c.w 2001.
22 Website: www.ellisislandrecords.org Immigration into America after 1890 was through Ellis Island.
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