Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 1 (2006), p. 166

This transcription of Eccleston’s memoranda books held in Lancashire Record Office at Preston provides an insight into the management of a relatively small (986 acres) estate and the life of its improving owner. Gritt and Virgoe’s thoroughly competent introduction provides the necessary biographical and topographical information needed to appreciate the background of its compiler, and the local and regional contexts of south-west Lancashire. They also offer thoughts on the potential importance of some of the issues and topics which the books cover. Two detailed indexes on people and subjects allow for easy identification of relevant passages within the text. It is a job well done.

As with all sources, however, the value of these books depends on what an individual researcher wishes to study. Not surprisingly, the majority of the entries are to do with Eccleston’s management of his agricultural land: relationships with tenants; the hiring of workers, including live-in servants; the nature of crops grown; the manuring and improvement of fields; crops, animals and produce. Gritt and Virgoe suggest (p. xii) that they are primarily important ‘because of the amount of quantitative data that they contain on agricultural affairs’. There is certainly a lot of detail on aspects which are rarely recorded otherwise such as the weight of individual animals and the prices obtained for specific parts of the carcass; prices obtained for produce sold off estate and the amounts retained for home consumption; and the amount of seed sown on individual fields. Sales of cheese and its purchasers, for example, are recorded almost every year, allowing for the construction of a fairly comprehensive picture of conditions and prices over a thirty-year period, demonstrating a rise from around 26s. a hundredweight in the 1760s to nearly 38–40s. by the late 1780s. But, as the editors also acknowledge, the books do not systematically record everything which occurred on the estate, while the lack of specific details about the weights or ages of animals sold, or the size of fields sown or harvested, makes it difficult to assess the importance of some of the data, and in particular Eccleston’s success as an improver. Eccleston’s assiduity and interests also varied considerably over the period making it difficult to piece together comprehensive indices of prices or yields. In some respects, therefore, the books’ value lies in illustrative detail of what was possible or what happened on specific dates or in specific places. Not all of these are strictly agricultural, but relate to matters as diverse as the rebuilding of the hall with its imported Riga timber door, the delays to mail caused by bad weather (1776), medicinal cures, the number of carol singers and Easter peace-eggers visiting in specific years – no fewer than 209 of the latter in 1767 –, and information on early methods of prospecting for coal in the area.

This, then, is not a book which can easily be assimilated or assessed at one reading. Its value lies in the diversity and eccentricity of its entries rather than its systematic analysis of agricultural trends, but it is no less important because of this.