BAHS forums

Dear Barbara,
On wildfowling, see the chapter by John Martin in the book I edited in 2007, Our hunting fathers. Field sports in England after 1850.
RIchard

The literature is enormous. Much of it is contained in studies of individual monastic houses. I would suggest that you star with a good medieval economic history (so Chris Dyer, Making a living in the Middle Ages or Richard Britnell, Britain and Ireland 1050-1530. You could approach the question thr...

Dear Alan, To re-enter the fray on this after Catherine was talking about another contributor's recent post, I wondered whether you had looked at the online newspapers. Murrain does not come up very often in the Wiltshire papers, but there are reports of a disease of cattle and pigs in Somerset in t...

Dear Nutmeg - my thanks for this which is very interesting. Richard

I would start with P. S. Barnwell and Colum Giles, English Farmsteads 1750-1914 (1997) and then S. Wade Martins, Farmers, landlords and landscapes: rural Britain, 1720-1870 (2004). There are chapters on farm buildings in the Agrarian History of England and Wales.

Murrain at what date?

There are attempts to establish exchanges for agricultural servants at various points in the mid-19th century. A quick newspaper search shows that there was one in Gloucester c. 1841. I know of one which was launched at Chippenham (Wilts) c. 1859. The idea was to place the hiring of servants on a ne...

There are rule of thumb equivalents which can be used in stints. In the context here, I would have thought that a beast is a male animal and the followers are calves.

Perhaps a bit late to contribute to this, but have you see Arthur Young's discussion of it in Annals of Agriculture XXVII (1797), pp. 365-78 which draws together previous accounts, a letter written to Young on the subject and his own observations.

Are we talking about First World war or Second World War? I don't think that any of the WWI records were ever transferred to the ministry, so if they survive at all they will be found in County Council Records and probably treated as sub-committee of the council (or in private deposits). For WWII, t...