Issue no 37, September 1998

Many farmsteads were adapted as technology advanced in the 18th-19th centuries, writes Paul Barnwell

The reality of farming in the 18th and 19th centuries can only be revealed by the study of surviving farm buildings. Farming literature of the period is surprisingly un-helpful, as it is largely concerned with one type of farming (mixed farming), and describes best practice rather than reflecting the situation on the ground.

Until recently, however, systematic studies of farm buildings have been few. Fortunately, despite enormous regional and local variations in building types and layout, many clues to former practices can still be seen.

In some parts of the country - particularly the southern half of England - a large number of buildings erected before about 1750 survive. Most are barns, where corn was stored and threshed. Barns have survived partly because of their size, which enabled them to be adapted when agriculture became mechanised, and partly because, as they housed the farm's most valuable product, they were durably built. Pre-18th century accommodation for animals survives less often: apart from horses, livestock was often kept outside or in temporary shelters.

In broad terms, there are three main types of agricultural system, each requiring different kinds of building and farmstead layout: hill farming in upland areas (sheep), mixed farming, generally in eastern Britain (cereals and beef-cattle), and dairying, largely in the West.

Hill farm buildings have changed little over the past 200 years. They tend to be modest, traditionally often only housing a few milk cows, poultry and pigs, and a small quantity of corn, all mainly for use by the farmer's household, and a few horses for transport. Roots and hay for feeding sheep could be stored outside, sometimes in temporary shelters. The buildings were often arranged in a single linear range, frequently attached to the house.

The only large-scale processes were lambing and the clipping and sorting of sheep. Such tasks were of short duration, and could take place either in temporary shelters or in one of the buildings, such as the barn, which was cleared for the purpose. The fields around the farmstead were often small, or were subdivided by hurdles to form holding and sorting pens.

In a mixed farming system, grain was grown as a cash crop, while the straw and chaff were used as cattle fodder and bedding. The cattle produced manure which enhanced the fertility of the fields, but were themselves a source of income. In most places sheep, another source of manure and income, were brought in from hill farms to be fattened.

The main buildings required were the barn, granary and stable. At first, cattle were kept outside, but in the mid-18th century they began to be kept in sheltered conditions, as people realised that a warm animal with restricted freedom of move-ment increases the proportion of fodder converted into meat. This led to a change in farm buildings. Cattle were still out of doors, but kept in a yard with the buildings of the farmstead arranged around them. The yard typically had its entrance, and most open side, facing south, with the tallest structure - usually the barn - at the north, providing shelter.

Gradually, cattle accommodation became more enclosed: parts of the yards might be provided with open-sided shelters, and, later, the entire yard might be roofed over. On some farms these develop-ments took place by the 1860s, but elsewhere change was more varied, depending on local climatic and economic conditions, and in some places estate policy. In South Lincolnshire many cattle yards still contain open-sided structures, while in Northumberland fully-roofed yards are more common.

Similar variation is found in the development of the barn. In parts of the South East, where labour was plentiful and hand-threshing continued, traditional timber-framed aisled barns were built until at least the 1820s. By then, however, the threshing machine (invented in 1786) had become widespread in much of the North and South West, and new types of barn evolved, extremely varied in style. In Lincolnshire, for example, the barn became a small room containing the machine within a multi-purpose range, while in the North East two-storey buildings are more common, where the threshing took place on the upper floor, with a large first-floor opening for taking in the unthreshed crop.

Machines were used not only for threshing but for chopping straw and roots, bruising oats, and other tasks, and were associated with buildings for the power source. These, usually attached to the back of the barn, include round or polygonal horse-engine houses (common in Cornwall and the North East), lean-tos and associated engineering works for water wheels, and engine houses with tall chimneys for fixed steam engines (in Northumberland and on large estate farms elsewhere). There was much experimentation with sources of power, and even within regions there was always variation depending on the availability of fuel, presence of suitable watercourses, and the level of investment justified by the size of a farm. Many engine-rooms survive but are now used as storage areas, or stand empty.

In other areas, including parts of the East Midlands, where mechanical processing was adopted slightly later, such fixed sources of power were seldom used, for by the middle of the 19th century mobile engines had become available. The barn had become a processing area with the engine standing outside; the straw could be stacked outside and the grain stored in a separate granary. Later still, processing itself was conducted outside, in the fields or stackyard - where the unthreshed crop was kept, sometimes raised on a framework supported by mush-room-shaped staddle stones - using big mobile threshing machines powered by portable steam or traction engines.

Innovation did not necessarily lead to a change of buildings, as the majority of farmers adapted existing buildings to new uses, particularly during the late 19th-century recession.

Dairy farming evolved in the 19th century through farmers' attempts to avoid the spread of infection between beasts in largely enclosed conditions, and to increase milk yields. Farmers also looked for more efficient ways of processing and distributing fodder to the cattle, and often planned new buildings with this in mind.

The building where fodder was processed, for example, was often sited next to the cow house, and the hay barn directly above to allow hay to be dropped through a trap-door. In this arrangement, the hay suffered from rising damp heat, but it was surprisingly persistent, as many farm-ers preferred to minimise labour costs rather than maintain the crop in its best condition. In planned farms crop storage and processing areas were also placed in a convenient position for access from fields where the crops were grown.

The dairy was usually sited in the house, both for cleanliness, and for the convenience of the women who worked there. Here, milk was stored or turned into butter or cheese, until the import of cheese from the colonies brought an end to farm cheese-making from around 1860. Another feature of the dairy farm - where cattle are kept in cleaner conditions than on a mixed farm - was the manure-heap, which was often surrounded by a cobbled causeway.

Similar considerations governed the design of mixed farms. In particular, barns were placed conveniently for crops to be taken to them from the fields, but also as close as possible to the cattle yards and stable, so that straw and fodder did not have to be carried far.

Many farmsteads, however, were not planned, but evolved slowly, and the relationship of buildings to each other was imperfect. Where labour was plentiful and there were many long-established farms, planned farmsteads are a rarity. Where labour was scarce or expensive and enclo-sure recent - leading to land-holding changes - as in the North East, they are more common.

Lowland Northumberland was carved up by big estates between 1800 and 1820 and many new farms were built, with old buildings swept away. Strangely, few of these farms survive as in the 1860s there was another clean sweep, with new buildings replacing the old, often in a similar plan. The reasons why this happened are not clear, although a general impression across the country is that many large 19th century farming estates invested - contrary to economic wisdom - at the beginnings of economic recessions, such as those of the 1820s and the 1860s.

Despite both the visual and historic importance of these buildings, many are under threat as the way of life for which they were constructed now lies in the past. New developments in mechanisation, automation and farming policy have transformed the countryside since the 1950s, fast rendering redundant an important part of the fabric of rural England. Very few farm buildings are listed - typically pre-1800 survivals and some large planned model farms - while many splendid Victorian structures, unable to house modern machinery, stand empty.

Dr Paul Barnwell leads architectural project work in the north of England for the English Royal Commission. He is co-author, with Colum Giles, of English Farmsteads 1750-1914 (RCHME, 1997), available from RCHME on 01793 414618.

Togidubnus and the Roman liberation

The historian Tacitus invented the `conquest' of Britain, claims Martin Henig

Histories of Roman Britain invariably begin with an account of the invasion of AD43 under the emperor Claudius, and the subsequent repression of the British tribes. But is this picture of the conquest of an unwilling people correct?

According to the only detailed account of the invasion, by the 3rd century Greek writer Dio Cassius, the Romans invaded following an appeal for help by an ejected British king, Verica of the southern Atre-bates. The traditional view, however, is drawn from the writings of Tacitus, son-inlaw of the late 1st century governor Agricola, whose Annals, Histories and Agricola tell a story of conquest, subjugation and enslavement. In the words of the British chieftain Calgacus, reported in the Agricola, the Ro-mans `create a desolation and call it peace'.

The broadcaster Alistair Cooke has suggested a useful riposte to deflate pundits who think they know everything about a country. One can reply: `But not in the South, I think'. In my view this applies to the so-called Roman `conquest' of Britain. All the evidence suggest that Britain's southern rulers were Romanised before the invasion, welcomed the invasion, and profited from it afterwards.

Not only was Verica's successor Togidubnus (or Cogidubnus) master of an expanded realm, building palaces and temples, but he and other contemporary leaders were fostering the growth of self-governing towns. Such actions were not imposed on them `as a feature of their enslavement', in Tacitus' words; they were avidly undertaken by Britons whose Roman citizenship placed them on an equal footing with members of the Senate itself.

An inscription from what must have been Togidubnus's capital at Chichester (Noviomagus) gives him the eastern-sounding title `Great King of Britain'. He almost certainly spent time in Rome, probably with princes such as Herod Agrippa, a friend of Claudius. He was probably a relative of Verica, whose Roman-style coinage implies profound contacts with classical culture and probably earlier residence in Rome. These two would not have been alone there. Not only do the coinages of other rulers, including Cunobelin north of the Thames, show acquaintence with the methods of Roman art and propaganda, but the 1st century BC/AD writer Strabo tells us that British kings dedicated offerings on the Capitol and had virtually made the island a Roman province.

At Fishbourne, outside Chichester, a complex of buildings excavated during the 1960s and since by Barry Cunliffe of Oxford University and others include a Claudian military stores depot, a substantial country residence probably dating from the reign of Nero (AD54-68) and a later 1st century palace. The military phase here together with other earlier 1st century military discoveries in the area lend support to Dio Cassius's report that the cause of invasion was the expulsion of whoever had invaded Verica's kingdom - and indeed that the main invasion took place here on the south coast and not in Kent, as traditionally thought.

The other buildings imply civilians living in luxury. Prof Cunliffe's surmise that he had found Togidubnus's palace at first attracted criticism. After all, would not a summer residence for the Governor, or some other powerful Roman, be more likely? However, the evidence does suggest a British foundation. A 1st century gold signet ring was recently found, inscribed with the name of a man called Tiberius Claudius Catuarus - a Briton granted citizenship by Claudius. The material of the ring shows he was of senatorial or equestrian rank - that is, a member of the Roman aristocracy - as they alone were entitled to wear the gold ring. It is very likely that the ring belonged to a close kinsman of Togidubnus.

Another Fishbourne find, from the original excavations, is the marble head of a youth. It is of a private individual, and must have been carved in southern Europe, perhaps Rome, as there was no marble-carving industry in Britain or northern Gaul. The head is datable on stylistic grounds to before the mid-1st century AD. Very possibly it is the image of King Togidubnus as he was to become, carved in the years around the invasion - or liberation - of the southern Atrebatic realm.

The first 20 years after the Roman arrival saw steady growth in the region. The old tribal centre on the coast at Selsey was abandoned for Chichester; in the north Silchester (Calleva) continued on the same site. Nor was local self-government confined to this kingdom, but a self governing municipium was established at the old Catuvellaunian centre of Verulamium (St Albans). For the inhabitants of these burgeoning cities and their hinterlands, good times must have seemed here to stay. Nothing prepared them for the disasters of the Boudiccan revolt in 60-61.

If this had started as a protest by some Britons at the arrogance of the legionary veterans in the new colonia at Colchester (Camulodunum), the savagery of Boudicca's followers was turned on the peaceful men, women and children of British Verulamium and on the mixed trading post of London. The governor Suetonius Paullinus was powerless by himself to control the situation. For Boudicca the strategy was obvious; to attack centres of Romanisation and cut lines of communication to the southern ports.

In the event neither Silchester nor Chichester were touched and the reason probably lies in the resolute action of Togidubnus and his followers. The survival of these towns suggests Boudicca's final stand may have been in the Thames valley, against a mixed force of Romans and Togidubnus's Britons.

For Togidubnus, the immediate result was the augmentation of his realm, as recorded by Tacitus, probably towards the West, including the lands around Bath. Here, major new buildings included a vastly expensive and unusual temple to Neptune and Minerva, with decorations that recall works in Rome and Athens. The temple's patron was a cultured man of huge wealth - much more likely the local king than a time-serving Roman military governor.

We do not know how long Togidubnus lived. If the Fishbourne head is his portrait, it implies he was only a boy in 43. He could have lived until the end of the century, when major changes occur in the great palace. It is not impossible that he was a personal friend of the Emperor Vespasian (69-79), who as commander of Legio II Augusta in 43 may have accompanied him from Rome to Britain, and later helped him build the second Fishbourne palace. His success is marked by the astonishing absence of Roman forts in arguably the most desirable parts of Britain - Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Berkshire, south Oxfordshire, and Wiltshire.

Towns continued to flourish in the South throughout the Roman period; so did villas. The inscription on a 4th century mosaic at Thruxton, Hampshire, which gives the Romano-British name, Quintus Natalius Natalinus, can stand for most of the others as attesting continuity of native ownership. Why has this aspect of a Roman Britain established by consent rather than conquest not received full recognition in the past? In part it is because many Roman scholars have been fascinated by the forts of the Wall region and Scotland as well as by the many inscriptions from the uplands.

The main reason, however, lies in the lasting influence of Tacitus. Why should this great writer and aristocrat have invented a conquest that did not take place? I believe he was contemptuous of upwardly-mobile Celts such as Togidubnus, and resentful of the fact that the British king had done more for Rome during the Boudiccan crisis than Tacitus's father-inlaw Agricola, who as military tribune in 60-61 had little influence on events. In building up the importance of Agricola he downplayed that of Rome's powerful British allies.

While Rome officially controlled power in Britain, de facto power and influence throughout the non-militarised south was held by the self-governing town councils made up of locals - a fact that may have rankled in Agricola's circle.

The climax of Agricola's career, according to Tacitus, was the battle of Mons Graupius, a pitched battle supposedly fought somewhere in the Grampian range in which Agricola was victorious. It is my contention that no such battle ever took place. Agricola's legionary fortress is known but otherwise there is no archae-ological evidence for a battle. Even in Tacitus, it is said that no legionaries were killed. In any case, the notion of a pitched battle in mountainous terrain seems inherently implausible. A battle in such a place has few witnesses and I suggest Agricola himself massaged the truth.

Tacitus, enraged by the prompt closure of Agricola's legionary fortress by the emperor Domitian, and the withdrawal of its troops to the south, wrote the absurd line: `Britain [was] thoroughly conquered and immediately let go'. Domitian's slight to Agricola was in fact a reasonable act, as the fortress would have been extremely costly to defend and supply.

One might even imagine that Togidubnus, now the grand old man of Roman Britain, tipped the Emperor off himself about the truth of the Mons Graupius claims, based on his intelligence of what was really going on. Certainly, Agricola was never again employed by the Roman state. If this were so, an intense personal animosity between Agricola and Togidubnus may easily have coloured the historian's interpretation of events.

Dr Martin Henig is a Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and author of The Art of Roman Britain (1995)

Thousands of miles of wartime ditches have been filled in and forgotten, writes William Foot

It seems extraordinary that in the Second World War, military defence still partly relied on something as basic as a ditch and rampart to protect the heartlands of Britain from a threatened enemy invasion.

For military historians, the anti-tank ditches constructed in Britain from June 1940 are unglamorous and have been little studied. Yet without doubt, these ditches formed the greatest defensive earthworks this nation has ever seen, and very probably the shortest lived. Hundreds if not thou-sands of miles of ditches were dug as part of the defensive `stop lines' which paralleled the coasts of Britain, surrounded major towns, and later ringed defended strong-points.

For large lengths of the stop lines, the ditches were the stop line, intended primarily as a defence against the advance of enemy tanks. Long lengths, away from the critical south-eastern and East Anglian coastal areas, might be left largely unsupported by other defences such as concrete obstacles and pillboxes.

Tests carried out by the British Army in May 1941 showed that the best and cheap-est obstacle to stop tanks was not the concrete blocks that had been designed and manufactured in a variety of sizes and shapes, but a V-shaped ditch, 9ft deep, 18ft wide at the surface, and supported either side by two 2ft high ramparts. In reality, anti-tank ditches were excavated in a variety of widths, depths and profiles. Before 1941, most of the ditches had a vertical revetted face on the defender's side, but with a more gradual slope, and a rampart, on the attacker's side. The rampart would have exposed the vulnerable underside of a tank to defensive fire.

The routes of stop lines incorporated rivers and other waterways wherever possible. Often, these waterways had to be `improved' in order to be converted into a natural anti-tank obstacle. This was achieved by cutting back the banks to make them vertical, then revetting them and sometimes adding an earth rampart on the attacker's side. Where natural waterways did not exist, or where they would not be a sufficient barrier even with improvement (for example, if the banks were not high enough), an artificial anti-tank ditch was excavated.

Artificial ditches were usually constructed in a zig-zag pattern, with sharply angled corners at the end of each length. This enabled individual sections to be defended separately by enfilading, or flanking, fire. Exactly the same technique can be seen in the construction of the Royal Military Canal on Romney Marsh during the Napoleonic Wars. In critical defensive areas pillboxes and concrete obstacles were constructed at key points in support of the ditch. Pillboxes were usually situated next to the ditch (sometimes on either side of it), or were placed with concrete obstacles and mines at points where the ditch was interrupted by major road crossings.

The routes of the ditches were surveyed by the Royal Engineers, and cut by heavy earth-moving equip-ment, usually using a drag-bucket that could excavate deep below ground level. Three hundred yards of anti-tank ditch could be dug in a week by one machine. Contracts were awarded by the War Office to private contractors, the work being super-vised by Royal Engineers officers. One report in the Public Record Office records the exasperation of a Royal Engineers major, who describes a contractor's workmen digging a ditch to a width of 28ft instead of the prescribed 18ft, and making the sides vertical when a V-shaped section was required. Spoil was also being thrown out on the `wrong' side - presumably the attacker's, instead of the defender's side.

An interesting extra detail in this report is that wooden templates had been issued to the contractors by the Royal Engineers - but not used in this case - to help achieve the desired profile. This raises the question of whether military personnel in other ages used such devices to obtain the consistent dimensions of the ditches found by archaeology, from the Roman period and later. It is reasonable to imagine a Roman legion carrying wooden templates for such a purpose.

By the spring of 1941 the concept of static linear defence had been replaced by a plan of `defence in depth' based on a system of heavily defended areas or `nodal points' - strategically placed villages, cross-roads, important communication points, and the like. Many of the great lengths of stop lines with their anti-tank ditches became immediately redundant, although some sections of ditch were incorporated into the new system, and some extra lengths of ditch were dug. Some anti-tank ditches were still being excavated as late as mid-1942.

As soon as it was recognised, however, that the army no longer required most of the ditches, pressure began to be placed on the War Department for the redundant lengths of ditch to be filled in. There was a need to maximise wartime food production, and the ditches had severely disrupted agriculture. Farms had been divided in two, and although the military had erected numbers of prefabricated bridges to maintain access for workers, machinery and livestock to fields, a large number of farming businesses had been wrecked. The drainage system of many fields had been damaged, and the earth-works with their rampart spoil were a haunt of agricultural pests - both vermin and weeds - as well as a continuing danger to livestock and humans.

A War Office memorandum of November 1941 states a certain reluctance to fill in anti-tank ditches in case `defence plans changed'; there was also an awareness of possible public criticism of `wasted effort' in view of the very short period that the ditches had been required.

However, in response to pressure from the Ministry of Agriculture, from late 1942 the Army did agree to their filling in. As the earthworks were so vast, and beyond the ability of individual farmers to level, labour and resources were provided by the County War Agricultural Executive Committees, who were the Ministry of Agriculture's agents in the field for the wartime control of farming.

Every length of anti-tank ditch was surveyed by these Committees, in order to determine which should be filled in. Often, again, private contractors were used, this time to fill what they had perhaps dug only a couple of years earlier.

Although the majority of the artificial anti-tank ditches had been filled by the end of the war (that for Outer London, for example, was largely back-filled by the end of 1944), the work on some lengths, in particular where they crossed non-agricultural land, was not completed until the early years of the post-war period. Certain farmers requested that sections be left open as they could provide better drainage as well as providing desired boundary lines. In this way, some short lengths of ditch may be preserved in the modern landscape.

For the most part, the courses of the ditches are entirely lost. With very few exceptions, there is no known record of their exact positions. Often the ditches ran well in front of the other defences of the stop lines - such as pillboxes and gun emplacements - so even a knowledge of the course of the stop line will not provide the precise location of the ditch. As documentary records are very limited, it is to archaeology that we have to turn - a remarkable fact, given that the generation that built the anti-tank ditches has not entirely passed from us.

Aerial photography should show the ditches as crop marks where conditions are right. Certainly, their zig-zag pattern is most distinctive, although the circular ditches enclosing defended `nodal' points could be confused with older features. In woodland, and on marginal agricultural land and permanent pasture, some filled-in ditches may have settled, revealing their course by a linear hollow. Across arable lands, however, intensive ploughing has ensured that the ground surface has remained level.

All the debris associated with the ditches, including barbed wire, concrete obstacles, and rubbish from any nearby military occupation, was bulldozed in first. It may be, therefore, that as good a clue as any to the location of the anti-tank ditches that once defended Britain may be the recovery of coils of rusty barbed wire from the soil.

William Foot is the Records Officer for the Defence of Britain Project