England's Villages: An Extraordinary Journey Through Time by Dr Ben Robinson

Author:Dr Ben Robinson [Robinson, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Architecture, history, General
ISBN: 9781786580979
Google: XIgxEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Kings Road Publishing
Published: 2021-09-16T23:28:41.451449+00:00

AGRICULTURAL VILLAGES IN AN AGE OF INDUSTRY AND REVOLUTION

A rapidly expanding industrial workforce, whether in cities or villages, could not feed itself. Industrialisation relied on farming villages, and so even villages a long way from the industrial centres were affected by their growth; agriculture itself had to became an industry, and rural communities became part of this industry. The path to the development of modern farming villages was every bit as extraordinary as the development of industrial villages.

The early years of the nineteenth century, immediately following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, were traumatic for the agricultural villages of England. The effects of widespread enclosure, the dispossession of access to common land, was causing severe hardship for those who had no land of their own. Rapid industrialisation and the concentration of manufacturing in specialist factory villages, towns and cities was wiping out the cottage industries formerly distributed across the countryside.

The huge cost of defeating Napoleon, effectively fighting a war across the globe, had depleted government reserves, increased taxation and had wrecked the economy. The new Corn Laws, which introduced trade tariffs and restrictions to protect British food production, greatly increased the price of bread, a vital staple for much of the rural population; fending off starvation became much harder.

Even nature, once again, had conspired to make things much grimmer in the countryside. The ‘Year Without a Summer’, 1816, was precipitated by a massive volcanic explosion in Indonesia. Volcanic ash in the atmosphere compounded the generally cooler conditions of the ‘Little Ice Age’, which had been ongoing since medieval times, to dramatically lower global temperatures. In Britain and across Europe, persistent rainfall and lack of sunlight caused failure of harvests and severe food shortages.

Luddite riots saw desperate hand weavers smashing up machines in the new textile factories of Lancashire, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. From 1830, ‘Swing Riots’ spread from Kent across southern and eastern England. Named after ‘Captain Swing’ (a made-up figurehead, contrived with an injection of gallows humour), farm labourers smashed the new threshing machines that had robbed them of hand-threshing employment.

Some of the character of dissatisfaction and insurrection across rural England is epitomised by the sorry saga of the Pentrich Rebellion. In June 1817, a few dozen rural workers from the villages of Pentrich and South Wingfield in Derbyshire equipped themselves with pikes, scythes and guns, and marched off with the aim of mobilising disaffected villagers from across the North and Midlands. They believed that tens of thousands of others were poised to join them. The intention was for this massive force to assemble in Nottingham, which would become their regional base, then march down to London to overthrow the government.

The would-be revolutionaries were not aware that an informant was among them. The Derbyshire villagers got within a few miles of Nottingham, where they were scattered by twenty mounted troops from the city barracks.

The punishments for involvement in this and other local rural rebellions were swift and severe: imprisonment, executions and transportation to Australia. The reprisals fuelled bitterness that resonated down the years.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.