Agricultural History Review, Volume 63 Part 1 (2015), p. 178

After some historical and archaeological neglect, in the last decade there have been a number of valuable studies of the Exmoor, notably Mary Siraut’s 2009 volume in the ‘England’s Past for Everyone’ series. Hegarty and Wilson-North’s study adds considerably to this research, and ought to be of considerable interest to agrarian historians, particularly those concerned with upland agriculture.

Based on detailed analysis of vertical aerial photography, the study is organized into three sections. The first details the evolution of the landscape within the royal forest, and the effects of (legal) disafforestation in 1818, some of which is also covered in Siraut’s study. The second deals with exploitation and enclosure of the substantial area of commons that existed within and outside the royal forest, particularly after its bounds contracted to approximately half the geographical area of Exmoor from c.1300. The third provides a fascinating analysis, based on archaeology and analysis of aerial photography, of the importance of catch-meadow irrigation in upland pastoral farming.

While this volume includes information on Exmoor’s development over 8000 years, it is particularly concerned with investigating the changes wrought by the sale of the royal forest to the midland iron founder, John Knight, in 1819. Knight epitomized the optimism, but also the over-ambition, of early industrialization and the era of ‘high farming’. He schemed wholesale reclamation, enclosure and arable improvement, large-scale sheep ranching (rather like the demesne of a medieval lord), and planned roads, railways and even a canal to open up Exmoor’s agriculture to distant markets. His spending alarmed his family sufficiently that the bulk of the family fortune was willed away from him, leaving his son to make more modest, but still significant enclosures and irrigation improvements. The history of this industrial-scale exploitation and cultivation provides an interesting alternative to the current emphasis on promoting Exmoor’s ‘natural beauty’ as a National Park.

The Commons within and surrounding the old royal forest were also subject to substantial encroachment and enclosure, as well as providing a substantial resource for peat fuel. Indeed the authors suggest that Exmoor would probably not have harboured year-round settlement without the availability of peat. Aerial photography demonstrates that peat extraction was extensive but small scale, compared to the Somerset Levels or Norfolk Broads. The volume contains an interesting discussion of the different extraction methods of pit turf (which dried into coal-like lumps) and skin-turf (which was fibrous and quick-burning). Similarly, the discussion of the effects of Parliamentary enclosure (in the Knight era) makes very clear and effective comparisons between the mapped and physical landscapes. This produced two kinds of outcomes. In many places, open tracts were carved up into the classic rectangular fields, which often incorporated (but also diminished) existing landmarks, like barrows and hill forts. At Holdstone Down (seen on the book’s front cover), though, a different situation occurred. Here an extremely intricate grid of allotments was marked on the ground by boundary stones, but the land continued to be thrown together into an apparently undivided landscape (apart from the remnants of a failed late Victorian attempt to build a row of holiday villas!). This is a fascinating example of behaviour that probably happened elsewhere, particularly in earlier eras of ‘enclosure by agreement’.

The final section on farmland is, in many respects, the most valuable for agricultural historians. Its discussion of the intricate drainage systems necessary to irrigate upland ‘catch meadows’ is a worthy corrective to the historical emphasis on the ‘floating’ of water meadows in chalk downlands. The authors illustrate powerfully that these upland drainage schemes could be as complex as (and were often much larger in scale than) their lowland peers, and that they made dramatic improvements to the timing and volume of spring grass growth. Aerial photography comes into its own in this section to illustrate the extensive nature of these drainage channels on steeply sloping hillsides. By the time that these systems featured in the mid-Victorian agricultural literature, it was claimed that they resulted in earlier lambing, and better survival rates than had previously been the case in the unforgiving Exmoor climate.

While this research concentrates closely on its subject area, it will be worth reading as part of a contextual analysis of many upland regions in Britain. Its extensive use of aerial photography provides a template for future studies, particularly now that it can be enhanced relatively cheaply by large-scale LIDAR surveys as well. Such research breaks free of the limitations facing the earth-bound documentary historian, who stands to be frustrated by the scanty records surviving from the royal forest and its nineteenth-century purchasers. It provides a perspective that combines an important narrative of the ‘big picture’, with nuanced, detailed and effective local case studies, and is worth reading to enrich any trip to this much-visited location.