Agricultural History Review, Volume 70 Part 1 (2022), p. 146

Cows and curates is an engaging, comprehensive and well-documented study of estate and clergy management by Christ Church Oxford, a unique institution being both the cathedral for Oxford diocese and a college of the university. The estates have financed its educational and ecclesiastical functions from 1564 to today. Christ Church has excellent archival records of its work in 185 parishes and its landholdings across counties from Devon to Yorkshire and Montgomeryshire to Norfolk but with the majority in Oxfordshire and surrounding counties. Originally founded by Cardinal Wolsey in 1525 as Cardinal College, funded by the suppression of more than twenty monastic houses, it ceased to exist with Wolsey’s fall in 1529 but in 1546 Henry VIII re-established it as Christ Church.

Corporate landlords faced similar agricultural challenges of depression, prosperity and innovation but their management style was different. The wide dispersal of Christ Church’s estates made estate management challenging and, as a result, the dean and canons appeared remote from the farmers of their land. They made progresses but much land was tenanted by aristocracy and gentry whom subtenants regarded as their real landlords. Fixed rents meant that income was partly generated by fines on renewal of leases or copyholds, which compensated landlords for inflation, in a system known as beneficial leasehold. Being ‘hands-off’ landlords meant the dean and canons did not share the desire of many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century landlords to convert copyhold to leasehold tenure but rather appreciated their subtenants continuing to pay court dues. In common with other landlords, the dean and chapter realized the value of their timber for construction and ship building

Christ Church was disrupted by the seventeenth-century civil wars with many of its lands damaged by fighting. Charles I lived very expensively in the College in the 1640s replacing fee-paying students. The dual function as a university college saved it from abolition in 1646. After the Restoration the chapter clerk transcribed all deeds and lease registers into the Book of Evidences, described by Curthoys as Christ Church’s Domesday Book – a very valuable record still in the archives. However, a lack of terriers made it difficult to establish property boundaries and ownership. The dean and chapter needed more income to maintain college buildings and run the cathedral. Professional surveyors and land agents were employed to make terriers and accurate valuations of each property to justify increased renewal fines payable every seven or fourteen years by reluctant tenants. Beautifully drawn maps recorded the estate from c.1700, many of which are illustrated in the sixteen pages of excellent colour plates in this volume.

Students from the College were presented to the 100 parishes where Christ Church held the advowson and great tithes but many employed curates to perform the parish duties. Some parishes complained of neglect and argued this encouraged non-conformity. Parsonage houses were often in disrepair until improvements were made in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Similarly, many churches were almost rebuilt in the Victorian period. In 2020 Christ Church still had links to 80 incumbencies as widely dispersed as in 1546.

Enclosure on College lands mirrored what happened in the rest of England with Tudor enclosures for sheep pasture and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century enclosures for improved arable and stock rearing. Christ Church, like many colleges, was slow to embrace enclosure and never initiated the process. In some parishes tenants initiated enclosure without the knowledge of the College which then needed to protect tithes and ensure that increased yields led to raised renewal fines. In 1811 renewal fines were increased to one and a quarter times the real annual value of the property. If tenants failed to renew after 14 years the College ran out leases and issued a new lease at market or rack rent. Christ Church suffered the effects of Swing riots in 1830–31 against enclosure and agricultural mechanization.

In common with the crown and the church, colleges were slow to run out beneficial leases and embrace more profitable rack rents. Colleges from 1858 were encouraged to sell lands and convert to rack rents but by 1886 Christ Church had borrowed £200,000 (three times its revenue budget) to compensate for lack of entry fines while leases were run out and for repairing properties as tenants losing leases ceased to maintain them. Agricultural depression followed from 1870 when cheap imports of grain and livestock, combined with new cattle diseases, caused many tenants to default, but the College retained them as it lacked the resources to manage farms in hand.

Bequests of land and money alongside sales of some properties continued. They were given a farm in Arreton on the Isle of Wight in 1732 to found Portsmouth Grammar School, whose pupils could progress to Christ Church. Christ Church benefited from sales of land to canal and railway companies. After 1858 the College was able to offer long building leases and also profited from the construction of hotels for travellers. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Kentish Town was a farm but by 1850 Christ Church had 500 houses on long building leases in the area. Urban rents increased hugely averting bankruptcy for the College.

Increased horticulture, especially on College estates in the Vale of Evesham and vegetable crops compensated for falling prices for traditional produce, and improved transport and food preservation techniques facilitated delivery to urban centres. In 1913 agricultural land still contributed two-thirds of the College income. The College also profited a little until 1939 from leases to mine coal under its lands. Some colleges sold their land, but Christ Church still owned 10,500 acres in 2020 which are professionally managed and provide half the College’s income with commercial and residential property yielding more than rural. This book, as well as being a fascinating study of a unique institution, contributes to debates on the effectiveness of collegiate and ecclesiastical landlords.