Agricultural History Review, Volume 58 Part 1 (2010), p. 143

This book is one of the principal outcomes of the Scottish Farm Buildings Survey (SFBS), a ten-year project, initiated in 1993 by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) and the National Museums of Scotland (NMS) to sample and record farm buildings in a variety of areas of the country. The initial intention was to publish the results of the survey in a series of regional booklets. Fascicule-style reports on three of the first survey areas, East Central Scotland, Orkney and Sutherland, were published in 1998–9 but this format was subsequently abandoned in favour of one, comprehensive volume.

Inevitably, in a project of this scope and duration, there were changes in personnel during the course of the survey. This has resulted in an account written by Glendinning and Wade Martins with contributions from Peter Caunt of the Scottish Agricultural College and John Shaw of the NMS. Instances of disjuncture between text and illustrations, and repetition of content, can no doubt be attributed to this multiplicity of contributors. However, there is much more to celebrate than complain about in this publication, with the different fields of expertise represented by the team of contributors combining to produce a wide-ranging and informative study. Buildings of the land is more than an architectural study. It is an economic and social history of Scottish agriculture which focuses on the practical function of farms within the agricultural systems of its various regions. It is this grounding of the study within a broader agricultural context that extends its interest to a wider readership.

A diversity of agricultural regions is examined, ranging from the drier, arable east to the wetter, pastoral west, extending from the Highlands and Islands to the Lowlands and encompassing crofting and non-crofting areas. The narrative takes as its starting point the early phase of improvement which developed during the second half of the eighteenth century. Funded by rising grain prices, new farmsteads – whose regular, planned layouts placed an emphasis on Enlightenment principles of system and order – were built to serve individually tenanted holdings. These replaced the traditional infield, outfield farming regimes in which the old ‘toun’ communities engaged. Improvement came to maturity with Victorian high farming in the mid-nineteenth century, fuelled by an information environment of books such as Henry Stephens’ Book of the farm (1844) and journals, principally that of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland. Whilst retaining an emphasis on systems and order, scientific and technological advances in agriculture gave rise to farmsteads whose layout was dictated by the industrial processes of the regimes which they served rather than aesthetic notions of symmetry. The emphasis on livestock farming in Scotland during the depression years of the late nineteenth century was reflected in the adaptation of farm buildings, whilst mounting legislation and the globalization of agriculture in the twentieth century led to ever-increasing change and loss. The authors are to be commended for continuing their account into the present century, which they identify as a time when a new ‘global age of agricultural improvement’ is gaining pace. The diversity of regional experience within the over-arching story is clearly acknowledged in the second half of each chapter where the authors depart from the grand narrative to describe local variations in farm buildings and agricultural practice.

Throughout this book we are reminded of the part played by Scotland’s tenant farmers in shaping the nation’s farm buildings. Whilst in the early period of improvement tenants might provide farm buildings, receiving ‘ameliorations’ in their rents as recompense, the higher costs of building in the high farming era meant that the landowner was more likely to fund new buildings. However, tenant farmers retained their influence in this matter in so far as landowners, attempting to retain and attract suitable tenants, were responsive to their wishes. This is illustrated by the cycle of farm building improvements every 19–20 years on the Sutherland estate which had 19-year leases. Another familiar theme is the persistence of building in depression. The slow pace of innovation is graphically illustrated in the instance of the keeping of animals on slatted floors: this idea was recommended by a gentleman farmer in the Carse of Gowrie in 1813 but was not generally taken up until the 1950s.

Our appreciation and understanding of the interrelationship between Scotland’s land and its farm buildings is enhanced by the lavish colour photographs in the book. There are also black and white photographs, reproductions of eighteenth and nineteenth century maps and plans, isometric drawings and measured plans. A list of illustrations would have been helpful, as would a glossary of the Scottish terms which might be unfamiliar to the general reader. Otherwise the work is extremely well referenced, clearly indicating the wealth of historic sources which informed the survey. There is also a clear system of coding which allows reference to associated material deposited by the SFBS in the RCAHMS archive and listed in its database, Canmore, on its website (www. rcahms.gov.uk).