Walking Histories, 1800-1914 by Chad Bryant Arthur Burns & Paul Readman

Author:Chad Bryant, Arthur Burns & Paul Readman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

In the light of such findings, it is interesting to speculate on the comments of those landlords who had spoken in such dismissive tones of the routine pedestrian exertions of agricultural labourers in the 1860s. Would they have been so cavalier had the deleterious effects of walking been better understood?

Conclusion

Walking, as a quotidian practice, was not discussed in its workaday incarnation in the countryside to the extent that it was as urban or rural recreation, whether exploration or exercise. Yet when it is examined more closely it does appear in different guises on and about the landed estate. By trying to recover some of the instances in which walking was explicitly referenced or discussed in this context, this chapter suggests that walking was integral to the operation of the estate not only in relation to the supply of labour, but also in relation to the surveillance of the holdings, both in its benign and intrusive forms. Workaday practices of walking in the countryside are easy to ignore; they are often invisible, and they are difficult for the historian to recover. But they are worth recovering. We should look more closely at their value and significance, not only to the landlords and farmers who employed labourers, but to the labourers themselves. After all, as Read suggested, withholding your labour by refusing to walk any great distance to work was a powerful means of subverting the traditional notion of walking as a burden which the labourer expected and had to endure.

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