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Amongst farm horses: the horselads of East Yorkshire
REVIEWS Cartography in the atlas reflects a similar lack of imagination. The attractive pastels used to show degrees of value in thematic maps, such as a range of percentages of population growth, do not follow an intuitive progression of tone, making it difficult to interpret area1 patterns. Maps are crowded with many layers of symbols, all of them fairly small. I found it tiresome to sort them out. The atlas could have included historical maps, such as estate plans, as well as original mapping of historical data at the scale of the pays and the village to give a more analytical perspective on local geography. And what a missed opportunity not to have attempted mapping the history of centralization and decentralization, given the immediate interest of that theme to Europeans today. University of Wisconsin, Madison
ANNE KELLY KNOWLES
STEPHENCAUNCE, Amongst Farm Horses: the Horselads of East Yorkshire (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1991. Pp. xii+243. f18.95)
Nothing appears more out of place in the intensely-mechanized countryside of the late twentieth century than the farm horse. Yet it is salutary to reflect that for weli over a century, heavy horses were an essential foundation of mechanical progress in agriculture. Even in the age of steam, increasing mechanization demanded additional horse power. As work by Thompson, Collins, and others has demonstrated, the farm horse reached its numerical zenith in Britain as late as the early decades of the present century. Caunce’s study represents the most authoritative analysis to date of the characteristics of the heavy horse economy and its associated culture at the regional level. While extensive use of horses was common to all arable districts, the old East Riding presents two features which make it unusually interesting as a case study, and Caunce’s interviews with former horselads, which form the bedrock of his analysis, a particularly appropriate approach to the theme. First, the area appears to have been relatively wellprotected from the effects of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century depression in the market for cereals. Caunce attributes this to the proximity of the West Riding towns, which provided a ready market for everything the great arable farms of the East Riding could produce, granting them a defence against the worst effects of foreign competition. Interviews conducted between 1972 and 1975 with onetime horselads who were then mostly in their sixties and seventies, therefore provide testimony of a pattern of work experience which appears to have been little altered by the pressures affecting the national agricultural scene during the period they describe. Second, the central feature of the horse economy of East Yorkshire was its dependence on living-in servants, hired on annual contracts, a survival unique in England’s arable zone at this time. The study therefore affords insights into the workings of a labour system which was formerly commonplace but had all but disappeared from English arable agriculture by this date. The essential features of the horselads’ lives are explored in a succession of short chapters, each dealing with a different facet of their experience. The technical aspects of the job are treated in full (“Learning the Job”; “Horse Feeding”; “Handling the Horses”), as too are the characteristics of the hierarchy which took the apt school-leaver from “least lad”, probably lumbered with the oldest, worst-matched and least-willing horses, through the ranks (“five?, “fourther”, “ thirdy”) to “waggoner” or “wag”, who not only had responsibility for keeping the others in order, but also represented the public face of the enterprise when he carried the farm’s produce to mill, market or railhead. The system of late-November hiring fairs which kept employers supplied with labour and servants with work is seen as acting in the best interests of both parties in that it equalized their bargaining positions as much as was possible. This was also the horselads’ holiday season. While reformers of the time could only regard as a threat to good order young people who had money in their pockets, time on their hands, and were not much
REVIEWS
accustomed to either, Caunce sees in the recreational dimension of the fairs not a recipe for chaos so much as a necessary release which kept chaos at bay the other 51 weeks of the year. In the course of the working year, there was little time or opportunity for leisure in the accepted sense. Sundays were often spent in horse-talk with lads on neighbouring farms. Much “leisure” time was spent trying to make one’s own horses objects of general admiration. Pilfering from employers’ stores to supplement horses’ rations brought into the horselads’ daily lives as much adventure as their routine normally allowed. Caunce finds little evidence that the system was viewed adversely by those whose adolescent years were spent within it. Dietary standards were on the whole superior to those which prevailed in the lads’ homes. Yet the system could not survive the various internal and external pressures which crowded in upon it during the 1930s and 1940s. Wartime rationing brought insuperable problems in the organization of the lads’ feeding arrangements, denying the system a lingering death. Much of the force of Caunce’s treatment lies in the extent to which he allows the recorded testimonies to shape his argument. The extracts do give one a sense of being informed by those who really knew. But this is not to deny the importance of Caunce’s subtle and sensitive interpretative treatment of this material. Nor should one underplay the contribution of non-oral evidence, comprising both manuscript and printed sources, and, especially, the fine collection of 63 photographs which illustrate the volume. All the photographs are fully annotated, and many relate to people and places featured in the text, thereby adding additional weight to the oral material. This is a volume which contributes a touch of vividness and immediacy to the normally rather bland fare of agrarian history. It prompts the general thought that as the past is a matter of lived experience, then it would not offend if it were more often portrayed as such. University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
JOHN R. WALTON
FRANK MUSGROVE, The North of England: a History from Roman Times to the Present (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Pp. ix + 374. E19.95)
As this book has been produced at (in these times) an attractive price, and as its publishers appear to be pushing it hard, it should be emphasized very firmly at the outset that it is very bad indeed. It is ambitious, admittedly; but its ambition is uneasily founded in limited and unbalanced reading and the frequent substitution of assertion for argument. Its defects are likely to mislead and confuse students and to infuriate academics. At the outset Musgrove informs us that his purpose is “simply to tell a story: the history of a region”. But he then announces his great discovery: “The relationship between centre and perimeter seems to change every 200 years. For 200 years the relationship is close and the influence of the centre is pervasive; then for 200 years central control is relaxed and the provinces take more responsibility for their own affairs”. The rest of the book is organized on the basis of this Procrustean bed of mystic numbers, culminating in the expressed belief that since 1830 “we have experienced a period of accelerating central control which has squeezed out provincial initiatives”. The impending period of decentralization is heralded for Musgrove, without debate and with dazzling illogicality, by the privatization of nationalized industries. Musgrove’s agenda is shaped, above all, by high politics; and as a result he deals with a fluctuating frontier between north and south, which is capable of shifting between Northampton and the verge of Northumberland in a disconcertingly short time. But his North of England is above all north-eastern. Lancashire and Cumbria get short shrift, especially in the chapter on the Romans: a colleague with expertise in this field commented that, “He doesn’t seem concerned with the North-West at all”. Yorkshire is the heartland of Musgrove’s North, and the centre of his universe is the area around
ANNE KELLY KNOWLES
STEPHENCAUNCE, Amongst Farm Horses: the Horselads of East Yorkshire (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1991. Pp. xii+243. f18.95)
Nothing appears more out of place in the intensely-mechanized countryside of the late twentieth century than the farm horse. Yet it is salutary to reflect that for weli over a century, heavy horses were an essential foundation of mechanical progress in agriculture. Even in the age of steam, increasing mechanization demanded additional horse power. As work by Thompson, Collins, and others has demonstrated, the farm horse reached its numerical zenith in Britain as late as the early decades of the present century. Caunce’s study represents the most authoritative analysis to date of the characteristics of the heavy horse economy and its associated culture at the regional level. While extensive use of horses was common to all arable districts, the old East Riding presents two features which make it unusually interesting as a case study, and Caunce’s interviews with former horselads, which form the bedrock of his analysis, a particularly appropriate approach to the theme. First, the area appears to have been relatively wellprotected from the effects of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century depression in the market for cereals. Caunce attributes this to the proximity of the West Riding towns, which provided a ready market for everything the great arable farms of the East Riding could produce, granting them a defence against the worst effects of foreign competition. Interviews conducted between 1972 and 1975 with onetime horselads who were then mostly in their sixties and seventies, therefore provide testimony of a pattern of work experience which appears to have been little altered by the pressures affecting the national agricultural scene during the period they describe. Second, the central feature of the horse economy of East Yorkshire was its dependence on living-in servants, hired on annual contracts, a survival unique in England’s arable zone at this time. The study therefore affords insights into the workings of a labour system which was formerly commonplace but had all but disappeared from English arable agriculture by this date. The essential features of the horselads’ lives are explored in a succession of short chapters, each dealing with a different facet of their experience. The technical aspects of the job are treated in full (“Learning the Job”; “Horse Feeding”; “Handling the Horses”), as too are the characteristics of the hierarchy which took the apt school-leaver from “least lad”, probably lumbered with the oldest, worst-matched and least-willing horses, through the ranks (“five?, “fourther”, “ thirdy”) to “waggoner” or “wag”, who not only had responsibility for keeping the others in order, but also represented the public face of the enterprise when he carried the farm’s produce to mill, market or railhead. The system of late-November hiring fairs which kept employers supplied with labour and servants with work is seen as acting in the best interests of both parties in that it equalized their bargaining positions as much as was possible. This was also the horselads’ holiday season. While reformers of the time could only regard as a threat to good order young people who had money in their pockets, time on their hands, and were not much
REVIEWS
accustomed to either, Caunce sees in the recreational dimension of the fairs not a recipe for chaos so much as a necessary release which kept chaos at bay the other 51 weeks of the year. In the course of the working year, there was little time or opportunity for leisure in the accepted sense. Sundays were often spent in horse-talk with lads on neighbouring farms. Much “leisure” time was spent trying to make one’s own horses objects of general admiration. Pilfering from employers’ stores to supplement horses’ rations brought into the horselads’ daily lives as much adventure as their routine normally allowed. Caunce finds little evidence that the system was viewed adversely by those whose adolescent years were spent within it. Dietary standards were on the whole superior to those which prevailed in the lads’ homes. Yet the system could not survive the various internal and external pressures which crowded in upon it during the 1930s and 1940s. Wartime rationing brought insuperable problems in the organization of the lads’ feeding arrangements, denying the system a lingering death. Much of the force of Caunce’s treatment lies in the extent to which he allows the recorded testimonies to shape his argument. The extracts do give one a sense of being informed by those who really knew. But this is not to deny the importance of Caunce’s subtle and sensitive interpretative treatment of this material. Nor should one underplay the contribution of non-oral evidence, comprising both manuscript and printed sources, and, especially, the fine collection of 63 photographs which illustrate the volume. All the photographs are fully annotated, and many relate to people and places featured in the text, thereby adding additional weight to the oral material. This is a volume which contributes a touch of vividness and immediacy to the normally rather bland fare of agrarian history. It prompts the general thought that as the past is a matter of lived experience, then it would not offend if it were more often portrayed as such. University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
JOHN R. WALTON
FRANK MUSGROVE, The North of England: a History from Roman Times to the Present (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Pp. ix + 374. E19.95)
As this book has been produced at (in these times) an attractive price, and as its publishers appear to be pushing it hard, it should be emphasized very firmly at the outset that it is very bad indeed. It is ambitious, admittedly; but its ambition is uneasily founded in limited and unbalanced reading and the frequent substitution of assertion for argument. Its defects are likely to mislead and confuse students and to infuriate academics. At the outset Musgrove informs us that his purpose is “simply to tell a story: the history of a region”. But he then announces his great discovery: “The relationship between centre and perimeter seems to change every 200 years. For 200 years the relationship is close and the influence of the centre is pervasive; then for 200 years central control is relaxed and the provinces take more responsibility for their own affairs”. The rest of the book is organized on the basis of this Procrustean bed of mystic numbers, culminating in the expressed belief that since 1830 “we have experienced a period of accelerating central control which has squeezed out provincial initiatives”. The impending period of decentralization is heralded for Musgrove, without debate and with dazzling illogicality, by the privatization of nationalized industries. Musgrove’s agenda is shaped, above all, by high politics; and as a result he deals with a fluctuating frontier between north and south, which is capable of shifting between Northampton and the verge of Northumberland in a disconcertingly short time. But his North of England is above all north-eastern. Lancashire and Cumbria get short shrift, especially in the chapter on the Romans: a colleague with expertise in this field commented that, “He doesn’t seem concerned with the North-West at all”. Yorkshire is the heartland of Musgrove’s North, and the centre of his universe is the area around