Agricultural History Review, Volume 50 Part 1 (2002), pp. 25–50

The high level of farm service in the north of England in the mid-nineteenth century has previously been  seen as a 'survival' of an early modern rural social structure. In contrast, the prevailing interpretation of the decline of service in the south-east between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries suggests that this was a product of the spread of agrarian capitalism and improving agricultural regimes. This article explores the changing composition of the agricultural labour force in Lancashire between the mid-seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries. It is argued that farm servants only became a significant part of Lancashire's agricultural labour force in the last third of the eighteenth century in response to the increased labour demands of an improving farming system stimulated by the growth of towns and industry. Farm servants were thus intrinsic to agricultural development, not evidence of an ossified social structure. 

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