Agricultural History Review, Volume 67 Part 2 (2019), p. 322

This volume, the sixth in the New Forest Record Series, is based on the Exbury Estate book. Exbury, on the south coast of Hampshire, was the Mitford family’s estate in the New Forest in the eighteenth century. The estate book was started by William Mitford in 1725 but it was his son John who added the instruction that the book should be ‘kept and preserv’d for the use of the person … entitled to the freehold & inheritance of the Mannor of Exbury’. Thus, at the end of the twentieth century, its discovery in the archives of a legal company resulted in its return to the current owners of the Exbury Estate and manor, the Rothschilds.

The Estate book has been transcribed and edited by Emma Page: she has recently used the Exbury estate as a substantial case study in her DPhil thesis on the landed gentry of the West Solent region in the eighteenth century. In her short introduction of 19 pages to this volume she suggests that, as a London merchant, William Mitford was keen to join the ranks of the landed gentry. However, his first purchase of 291 acres near Lymington in 1711 was insufficient for him to become part of this social grouping. Clearly prepared to take a long view, Mitford then purchased two farms in 1718 extending to 476 acres and these formed the basis of the Exbury estate which was developed by the Mitfords during the rest of the century.

Page examines how these purchases were financed and notes that, whilst strip-farming was still practised in Exbury, with the related inconveniences, the upside was that land was less expensive. Enclosure in the Exbury area was more likely to be piecemeal than by Act of Parliament or any formal agreement. Thus, as well as larger farms, the Mitfords built up the estate through the purchase of individual smallholdings, fields or even strips in fields, as well as coppices and commons.

The topic of agriculture is addressed in less than two pages, but there are details in the transcriptions relating to various agricultural husbandry practices such as marling and the use and value of urban dung. The estate book provides an excellent insight into the conditions which formed part of the tenancy agreements under which the Exbury farms were let: for example, one tenant is to plough and sow no more than three successive crops of grain, to be followed by laying the land down to grass for three years before it is ploughed again (pp. 279–80). A number of the entries give details of the acreages of fields and their associated values.

Other aspects of farming activities from the first half of the eighteenth century include the conversion factor between statute and woodland acres and an indication of corn yields and prices as part of a tithe calculation for one of the estate farms. There are examples of sub-sub-letting (p. 174) and also the practice of the descent of land through the female line, for example, ‘18½ acres in Leap to the use of Henry Stempe & Mary his wife & to the heirs of the said Mary for ever’ (p. 176). As well as tenanted farms, the Exbury estate included a number of cottages, although the income from these would have been limited if the example of a cottage ‘paying yearly 200 Shrimps at Michaelmas if demanded’ (p. 124) was any sort of guide.

By 1747 however, more of Mitford’s income came from timber and salt production than from the rental of farms. The nearby port and dockyard of Portsmouth would have provided outlets for both products, along with the numerous other shipbuilding locations in the adjacent area on the Beaulieu river. The book contains information on both timber and salt: for example, on the relative profits to be made from growing firs rather than oak (p. 282), and the cost of building a salt works, including the costs of the boat for transporting the salt and the windmill required to power the works (pp. 133–6). There is also reference to riverine activities in terms of the rent for fishing on the Exbury river which amounted to the ‘ancient rent of 50s. & 10m oysters’ (i.e. 10,000 oysters, p. 201).

Emma Page notes that this source will be of interest to social, economic, agrarian, local and family historians: to that list can be added building historians. The book contains details of the cost of re-building Gilbury Farm (p. 100), as well as details of the materials and labour needed to build a large barn (p. 222).

In summary, this is a well-produced book, although, as with any transcription of historic documents, it is difficult to know whether what appears to be a typographical error is actually a faithful reproduction of the original source. In the opinion of this reviewer, the book would have been improved by the inclusion of a Mitford family tree, thereby obviating the need for the lengthy, somewhat confused, paragraph on page 10 linking the ‘Mitford sisters’ of the twentieth century with the Mitfords of the 1670s. The glossary provided is also lacking: for example, moot (both noun and verb) (p. 110), ayres or jeyens (p. 111), landshot (p. 113) and jesment sheep (p. 129) are some of the terms noted which are not included in what might have been better termed a ‘Select Glossary’. Despite this, the publication of this volume has brought to light the existence and contents of an estate book which contains much rich detail from the early part of the eighteenth century.