Westmorland agriculture, 1800-1900

Description

Westmorland is fell country — thin soil, hard weather, sheep — and between 1800 and 1900 nearly everything about farming it changed: the enclosures, the breeds, the drainage, the railways that took the stock to market, the collapse of grain prices after 1870 that emptied the land of men.Frank W. Garnett was a veterinary surgeon and knew the farms from the inside. He gives the breeds and their crossings, the tools and their names, the wages, the shows, the customs of hiring — the sort of detail that a historian working from parliamentary returns can never recover. Agricultural historians still quote him, and so do the people trying to bring the old Herdwick and Rough Fell flocks back. Illustrated.This is a faithful print-on-demand facsimile of the 1912 Kendal edition, reproduced in full from a library copy. The historical text is reproduced without modification; only the format, margins and legibility have been reset for modern printing.