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PITSTONE 1800-1850 PART 1

There are no fewer than nine moated farmhouses within a few miles of Pitstone at Wilstone, Cheddington, Gubblecote, Horton, Ivinghoe Aston, Edlesborough and of course one at Pitstone itself. Each is a little separated from its central village grouping, though not set right out into the fields as are the substantial brick farmhouses built after the parish enclosures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Park Hill and Gamnel Farm over to the west were built on two of the open fields of Tring after it was enclosed in 1804 and 1805, as was Town Farm, Ivinghoe, in the opposite direction. Northfield farm, however, which lies just below Pitstone Hill to the southwest, is situated on the old North Field of Aldbury although the parish was never enclosed by parliamentary act and the enclosures which have nevertheless taken place by consent and cumulative purchase of open field land.

The hedged fields are mainly smallish, roughly rectangular in shape. The disused airfields at Marsworth, west of Pitstone, is the only large unbroken area of green in the vale. The settlements are close together, the average distance between them being only two miles whereas in the hills it is greater, perhaps three or four miles. These settlements are not all true village centres. Until 1894, Wilstone was part of Tring parish; Ivinghoe, including Ivinghoe Aston, Horton and Seabrook in the plain and St Margaret's on the hills; Edlesborough contained Dagnell in the foothills, Northall on the plain and Hudnall, which was detached from the rest of the parish, in the hills; whilst Pitstone itself contains Pitstone Green where most of the cottages are situated.

These last three parishes are typical examples of the apportionment of land in the foothill situation - the same may be found, for example, in parts of the Yorkshire Dales. Each Icknield parish contains a fair acreage of heavy gault clay on the one hand and Chiltern scrub commons on the other, while in between lies a band of medium loam the most fertile and the most easily cultivated land in the area along a line of which is a series of springs. Pitstone itself is a typical case: long and thin, it straddles the Icknield Way, with its head - the village core - in the north west corner and its tail some 250 feet higher, among the bracken and beech trees. Until 1894 it extended seven miles into Nettleden, but the southern extremity of the parish was then lopped away and absorbed into adjacent Hertfordshire. "Four-horse ground", the low lying fields were called in Pitstone, meaning that they took as many as four horses to draw the plough along a single furrow in the clay, while the chalk fields were "Two-horse ground". William Ellis of Little Gaddesden said "five ponds will go as far as smith's bill in the vale as fifteen will go in Chiltern land" (Pehr Kalm in the Chilterns, W.R. Mead) for the flints take a heavy toll of agricultural whether it be simple or sophisticated.

In addition to being an area of sharp geological contrasts, this is also a place where boundaries collide. The old extended boundaries of Tring to the west represent a Hertfordshire salent protruding far into Buckinghamshire, whereas the old Nettleden part of Pitstone was a finger of Buckinghamshire pointing back into Hertfordshire. And. beyond Edlesborough, whose hill - sited church is just out of vision to the east, lies the border between Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire.

One feature of the modern landscape stand out as a anachronism which is in its way as aggressive as its neighbour the cement works: this is Pitstone Windmill, one of the oldest survivors of its kind in the country (1627 on one of its main timber), restored to working condition in 1963 to 1970 by local volunteers for the owners the National Trust, and now once more capable of grinding corn (?).

It tempts one to ask the question, how much has the landscape itself changed since say 1800 and how did those changes come about?

Firstly one must eliminate the most superficial evidence. Instead of the cement works, the open fields of Pitstone flowed up to the churchyard wall. The newly constructed canal, invisible in its deep cutting nearby but distinguishable in the distance beyond Pitstone as it made its way north towards Horton, would have been the first months of operation, but the fields either side of the cutting may still have borne to witness to the recent excavations as do motorway embankments today.

All signs and sounds of the railway would be absent, as would the internal combustion engine in all its forms - no cars, lorries, tractors, combine harvesters, aeroplanes.

There would have been no metallised as we know them today, although the parishes through which the Icknield way passed would have been responsible for its maintenance and gangs of labourers organised by the Surveyor of Highways, who was an unpaid parish official selected annually, were used to patch up the worst places with stones and gravel. In the vale the clay of the roadway baked hard into ruts and potholes in the summer and became a muddy morass when the rains came, while the drive roads up into the Chiltern Hill commons were often Holloway's in the raw chalk upon which it was difficult to keep a foothold in the bad weather.

So far as the buildings were concerned, few of the houses, cottages or outbuildings would have been tiled, the steeply pitched roofs being mostly thatched with straw. Many of the buildings were of brick, since the north Chiltern area provided generous deposits of brick earth, but there were a number of timber-framed buildings as well, sometimes with brick noggin, sometimes in-filled with wattle and daub. Some of these high-roofed timber framed buildings are still in the landscape, little changed outwardly; others are there for those with sharp eyes to see, their timbering covered now with an outer skin of bricks. The flattening of the roofline betrayed by changes in the gable ends. The local flints, used centuries earlier for decoration on some of the churches, were also used for foundation work and for walling. Most of the cottages had gardens, if not, were allowed to make themselves gardens by the side of the roads and on waste ground. These could be seen on all the great roads through the county.

(Wm Marshall, report to the Bd of Ag. 1815)

A more radical difference would have been seen in the layout of the land itself. This was an area of late enclosures and none of the parishes in the immediate vicinity ( Albury, Tring, Marsworth, Cheddington, Pitstone, Slapton, Ivinghoe, Edlesborough) was enclosed by 1800, although each contained at least one demesne or manner farm and a nucleus of cottages, most of which had a croft or close attached. In addition, there had been some small enclosures (possibly medieval) made in the big fields, mostly with ready access to the village, and some enclosures of the waste. Generally speaking, however, it was a landscape of huge open fields divided, not by hedges, but by headlands or baulks into strips and furlongs. The manner of ploughing depended upon the quality of the land: soil having good natural drainage was ploughed "broadland" that is to say almost flat, whereas the heavy clay was ploughed into raised strips with water furrows between them, for better drainage. Where these "ridge & furrow" fields we turned over to permanent pastures after enclosure, which occurred over much of the Midlands, the rise and fall of the ground has been preserved and thaw conditions after a moderate snow fall can reveal very clearly the old pattern of furlong, headland and baulk contradicting the neat hedged fields and straight "enclosure" roads superimposed by the Commissioners. (Vicars Bell, To Meet Mr. Ellis).

But the most significant change, which has taken place, is the appearance of the deserted landscape. This used to be a rural scene which contained people. Instead of a single tractor humming its lonely way round a field, there would have been many men, many big shire horses, working a long day winter and summer to keep abreast of the seasonal work. In the summer, the women too, would have been in the field gleaning or leasing after the harvest: even the cows were milked by men (Wm Marshall, 1815). The most usual employment for women and children and some men was straw plaiting as they talked. Little boys were used to mind the grazing animals, and one might have sat on Pitstone Hill watching the sheep whilst others were employed as "crow stawing" or bird scaring in the fields.

While this is probably true, William James and Jacob Malcolm reported to the board of Agriculture in 1794, said that various local form of tenure operated against enclosure and against the improvement of agricultural methods generally; in many cases landlords were compelled to renew tenancies. Another factor was the non-existence of any other major landowner in the area and this, as much as the "dead hand" of the Duke of Bridgewater, caused the stagnation of the system. This is borne out by the fact that Marsworth and Cheddington, in which the Bridgewater family had little or no interest until well into the nineteenth century, were not enclosed until 1811 and 1857 respectively.

As mentioned earlier, Aldbury was never enclosed by Parliamentary Act and commoner's rights of grazing on open fields were only formally abandoned after 1900. Rights on the common, which is now owned by the National Trust, still include those of pasture, wood cutting, cutting of fern and gorse and the taking of chalk. Fallen wood is still a valuable source of fuel in the village today, and "wooding" expeditions with prams and carts are made almost every afternoon up the hill to collect it, emphasising the great hardship caused in enclosed villages to the cottagers on the withdrawal of these rights. Not only timber was precious, but roots and trimmings, bracken, gorse, wheat-straw, sawdust (sold by the bushel) and even fallen leaves (Bell).

At the opening of the nineteenth century, the proportion of the land Tax for which the Duke of Bridgewater was responsible a rough guide to the proportion of land he owned was 13% in Edlesborough, 27% in Slapton, 38% in Ivinghoe and 45% in Pitstone: he also owned the Manor and 35% of open fields and enclosed land in Albury. By 1851, when the Bridgewater influence has increased considerably throughout the area, one might expect to see a different of farm occupation in Marsworth, Cheddington, Slapton and Ivinghoe (enclosed) from that of Pitstone, Aldbury and Edlesborough, all still open: in fact, as will be demonstrated, such a distinction is not obvious.

The largest farms at the beginning of the century were in the region of 400 acres, and the average size, calculated by James and Malcolm (op. Cit.) was 170 acres, although they do not define the area below which a farm becomes a small holding: as late as 1851, the occupiers of as little as 7 acres were described as "farmers".

Most of the farms were tenanted, although an accurate assessment of the position is difficult as it was quite customary for land to be worked by a farmer in more than one parish, of some of which may be the owner and the rest the tenant. As an example, the Upper Furlong of Little Albury Field part of Hertfordshire parish adjacent to Pitstone was occupied (that is to say, rented) in 1803 by residents of Pitstone.

The majority of holdings in 1800 were very small, approximately one third of these being owner-occupied, little tofts and gardens big enough to house a pig and grow potatoes. Between this class of occupier and the smallest farmer came a group which contained; amongst others, some of the agricultural craftsmen coopers, cordwainers, wheelwrights and blacksmiths, together with brewers, millers and maltsters who owned or more often rented (but more often owned) small enclosures, orchards and paddocks, together with which might go one or two strips of common field. These strips ranged from half an acre to two or three acres, more probably in the case of millers and maltsters. There was progressive tendency towards the amalgamation of the open field holdings, adjacent strips being sold or exchanged to provide units of land which were economical to work.

The traditionally held view is that the small-holder and small farmer, often allotted something less than his original holdings when the new distribution of farms was made after enclosure, and rarely the best ground, deprived of his common rights of fuel and grazing, was soon forced to sell his land to his more fortunate neighbours and turned into a landless peasant. The largest landholders, on the other hand, usually emerged with a higher proportion of acreage in their possession than before the allotment, and this was the generally the case so far as the Bridgewater estate was concerned. The big farms grew bigger and the little farms fewer, amalgamation taking place in Pitstone, two other farms merging with Pitstone Green Farm (one Green Farm?), Aldbury (Church farm and another, the farmstead of which was replaced by eight cottages) and part of Ivinghoe, where Ward's Hurst and Ward's Combe absorbed a third farm in the area. Similar adjustments took place elsewhere; and it was not the case of owners being forced to sell but of fewer tenant farmers being required. On the other hand, by 1851 the Census recorded about the same number of farms in Edlesborough and Marsworth as there were at the beginning of the century; and in Cheddington and Slapton the number actually appeared to have risen and the size of the larger farms to have remained reasonably constant, seven holdings in these two villages being less that thirty acres. Being in the Vale, these may have been small dairy farms for whose products there was not only a great demand but also by the, a ready means of transport to London by canal or train. The opportunity to build up a good herd segregated from disease or sub-standard animals, was one of the main benefits resulting from enclosure and dairy farms increased steadily during the century, with rents for good grazing land rising accordingly the expansion of the Bridgewater influence during the first half of the century dates from the accession of the seventh Earl, who succeeded the Duke in 1803, when the style of the land management changed radically. In addition to rebuilding the mansion at Ashridge (finally completed 1814) the Earl acquired or rebuilt properties over a wide area ranging from large farms to labourer's cottages and took personal interest in the management of the home estate and in the states of his tenants. His agent, William Buckingham kept detailed diaries, three of which are housed at the record office in Hertford, covering the years 1813-15, 1820-22, 1823-27. These clearly show the Earl's pursuit of agricultural innovation (he was already in 1813, in possession of machines for threshing, haymaking and winnowing) and his connection with such pioneers as the Duke of Bedford, Lord Sumerville and Lord Coke. Whilst it was fashionable in that time to appear interested in agricultural affairs, the earl devoted a great deal of time to discussion of the estate management and took a real interest in its progress.

His home farm contained both arable and meadow, and in addition to a milking heard, he grazed sheep and held a Sheep Sale in September. As well as the traditional crops of wheat, barley, oats beans and peas, he grew clover, vetches, turnips, potatoes and hops, and his enthusiasm for husbandry may have influenced the cropping pattern of the parishes around. Certainly clover, sanfoin and vetches had been widely introduced and it is obvious that some enlightened changes had taken place by common consent under the old open system. Although no detail is known about it, there was in fact, an Agricultural School (sic) at Ashridge in 1830. In the ten years of his administration, the seventh Earl is estimated to have acquired at least 3,700 acres in Buckinghamshire (theses) and by the time of his death had added the Lordship of the manors of Ivinghoe, Ivinghoe Rectory, to those of Pitstone, Albury which he had inherited. Trustees looked after the Estate on behalf of the Countess until she died in 1849, and durin her administration her late husband's policies of rebuilding properties and indulging in road works were carried on. One may regard the Grand Junction Canal as the outstanding Bridgewater innovation, although ironically the Duke was not involved in its promotion, the main instigator being the Duke of Buckingham. The family was however responsible for physically changing the appearance of the countryside in many ways. One feature was the appearance of a distinctive "Bridgewater" type farmhouse, either to replace the old farmsteads, as at Church Farm Albury and Pitstone Green Farm (c1820 and 1930 respectively) or in recently enclosed fields as in the case of Town Farm Ivinghoe and Horton Farm. Earlier building was carried out in pink bricks made at the Outwood Kiln on Albury Common, whilst those from about 1830 used yellowish bricks from Slapton. Slates were brought in by means of the Canal. The original accounts for the rebuilding of Pitstone Green farm page? These farms, foursquare and essentially practical, contained carefully planned separation of Kitchen and servant's room from the family quarters, thus emphasising the widening gap between the social standing of the farmer and labourers: the fact that residential farm servants were still in evidence in 1851 may reflect o paternalistic benevolence from above. The buildings may be recognised throughout the villages which fell under the Ashridge domination in the same way as the "Rothschild" housing may be distinguished (particularly by its individual chimneys) in the area around Tring, Halton and Mentmore or the "Bedford" housing in Woburn with its unmistakable plaques.

In addition to carrying out agricultural building, the Bridgewaters repaired cottages, repaired churches, and built schools although the introduction of formal education came very late to this area compared with much of the country. They also altered the course of the roads in the neighbourhood sometimes to the irritation of the local inhabitants, although a contemporary source (Paterson's Roads) suggests that some altruisms was involved: the projects, carried out at the Estate's expense, provided welcome employment for labourers at the time of great hardship. The Countess of Bridgewater set up a trust, the interest from which contributed to the extension of education in all the villages in the immediate area of Pitstone. Of necessity, the Bridgewater influence was also a major factor in the social structure of the villages around. Land tax assessments for the beginning of the century show that, even then, the great majority of the larger farmers were themselves tenants rather than owner-occupiers and because of this their influence in the parishes was less weighty than if they had been long established squires or even owners of their own farm cottages. For the Bucks parishes, the total number of resident gentry in a directory of 1853 was four, excluding the clergy. Nevertheless, in the absence of any substantial land owners, the farmers, together with the rector or vicar and, later, the schoolmaster, and one or two shop keepers or victuallers, comprised the decision-making body or Vestry, later to become the Parish Council.

Lord Bridgewater took an immediate interest in the parishes in which he was a major landowner, and by 1803, the year in which he succeeded his cousin, his agent was attending vestry meetings in Aldbury on his behalf; thereafter he made frequent personal attendances there and at Pitstone and Ivinghoe Vestries, in addition to his holding Manorial Courts. His agent was responsible at his instruction, for organising the preparation of lists or residents in connection with vaccination in 1813, an earlier attempt having been made seven years before. He also provided parishioners perambulating the bounds of Ivinghoe and Pitstone parishes (the boundaries ran though Ashridge park) with beer, bread and cheese, the farmers being invited to dine at the Hall.

Not withstanding the improvement in rural housing affected by the Bridgewater family, only about one third of the cottages in the area belonged to them or to other large land-owners; and, by the middle of the century, the Report of the Royal Commission on Children and Women in agriculture, referred to the "want of proper cottage accommodation" (1867-8). There had been a certain amount of speculative cottage building, some of which was of quite reasonable standard, and on the whole it was local "tradesman" who owned the majority of the cottages, often in blocks of two, four or more, one of which would have been their own home and the rest let at from a shilling or half a crown a week. Some building had, however, been carried out on the waste, and these cottages were of a very low standard. One particular group of sixteen cottages in Ivinghoe were noted: built into two sides of a rag pit, these hovels, each containing one bedroom, one living room and a back kitchen, had a common midden and housed no less than 75 persons.

Many cottages were reported to have insufficient accommodation "which does unquestionably affect morality, health and comfort of inmates", whilst elsewhere "some have only one bedroom for a family of seven or eight"

Among the less benevolent landlords there was a general reluctance to maintain or replace agricultural accommodation, particularly in areas where dairy farming was replacing arable. It was estimated that, whereas for or five cottages were required for each hundred acres on arable farms, only three or four were required for a similar area of mixed farmland, and less still on dairy farms, two of which, over a hundred acres, were only employing one man each in 1851.

It is interesting to look at the development of the seven adjacent villages during the first half of the eighteenth century, not only from the point of view of the prevailing agriculture, but as individual communities. There was no prime common focal centre to serve them all, which fact is emphasised when one learns that in 1853 the post reached Edlesborough via Dunstable, Pitstone via Ivinghoe, Dagnall via Hemel Hempstead, Slapton via Leighton Buzzard, Marsworth via Ivinghoe and Aldbury via Tring. For those with some pretensions to gentility, such as Mr Buckingham, the Ashridge agent, purchases of millinery, haberdashery, shoes, his wife's gowns and even special cheeses were made during regular visits to London, the journey being made in his Lordships carriage, changing horses at Watford. He went to Hemel Hempstead market to buy peas, beans and oats, however, - and people of Aldbury also went to Hemel Hempstead until their route was blocked by summary closure of part of the common by the Earl. Tring market, which specialised in plait as well as other goods, served Aldbury and Marsworth while those in Edlesborough probably went to Dunstable, at the junction of Watling Street and Icknield Way, also a plait town. Cheddington and Slapton were somewhat to far from either, and may have depended upon Leighton Buzzard to the North in Bedfordshire. The failure of Ivinghoe market may have been due to the fact that the Icknield Way was never turnpiked despite an attempt to revive it in the 1840's: its effectiveness declined steadily and it has ceased to exist.

To what extent were the villagers were dependent upon these larger centres, and which trades, crafts and trades did they provide for themselves? It is not easy to answer the questions precisely for the year 1800, the most helpful guide being the Posse Comitatus or "power of the country" a register of whom was prepared in 1798 for the county of Buckinghamshire; this embraced all men between 18 and 50 available for "home guard" duty in the case of an invasion by Napoleon, and be considered as something less than a perfect record. The census of 1851, which provides information at the other end of the period, is much more precise, although only the occupations of the householders have been used for this comparative purpose.

All seven parishes grew in population during the fifty years 1801 to 1851, unlike the grazing area a little north in the county where straw plaiting was hardly practised and where about a third of the parishes declined against a strong national trend of growth. Each did not, however, grow at the same rate, Slapton reaching a peak for the century in 1831,Ivinghoe and Edlesborough in 1851 and the Bucks parishes in 1871.

The last parish of 997 in 1801, together with Cheddington (273) and Aldbury (457) rose by over four-fifths during the half-century. Ivinghoe (151 in 1801) increased by two-thirds, and Pitstone (275) by almost as much; Marsworth (259) by about half and Slapton (228), which actually declined between 1801-11, and 1831-41-51, rose overall by one third. It had contained only one shop, a joiner and a shoemaker in 1798: to these were added baker, mill, inn, smith, bricklayer, lockkeeper, railway labourer and schoolmaster by 1851. It might have been expected that the nearness of the canal would bring more apparent benefit.

If this is true of Slapton, it is even truer of Marsworth. Poorly served at the beginning of the century, with no shops at all, merely a mill and an inn, a carpenter and two pepper-makers, one might look for an influx of enterprising shopkeepers on the heels of the canal "navigators" And yet, by 1851, there was still no shop in Marsworth, although a shoemaker and tailor had moved in to provide clothing at least for the canal overseer and clerk, lock-keeper, wharfinger, boatman, labourer and engine driver on the canal, railway labourer and engine driver and horse dealer, cattle dealer and coal merchant, all of whom were connected directly or indirectly with the advent of the canal and rail. The changes in Pitstone will be examined in much more detail further on (see page?). It is enough to say that, whereas there were no tradesmen in 1798, by 1851 the village was reasonably self-sufficient, although the tailor and the (horse) collar maker had left.

Ivinghoe offered butcher, grocer, inn, brewery, smith, joiner, glazier, shoemaker, tailor, wheelwright, cooper and collar-maker. After 50 years these had been joined by baker, miller, draper, carrier, painter, plumber, bricklayer, saddler, coal merchant, surveyor, teacher, herbal doctor, apothecary, bricklayer and lock keeper from the canal, and engine driver from the railway. Considering the size of the actual "town" this was a very comprehensive list of trades and services, although it does not compare with more sophisticated lists of other market towns such as Tring. Ivinghoe, St Margaret's, high in the Chilterns, was well supplied with craftsmen throughout the period, and these may have been employed on the home estate at Ashridge.

The remaining three villages, all with much the same growth, were nevertheless different in character. Cheddington, perhaps because of its distance from any other centre, offered baker, shopkeeper, inn, blacksmith, shoemaker and tailor when the century opened: by 1851 these had been augmented by bricklayer and wheelwright. There were also two straw dealers, but by this time they were also to be found in most of the hamlets as well as the villages, the exception being Slapton. The coming of the railway had introduced labourer, policeman, platelayer and clerk. On the whole, Cheddington, in spite of its smallness was remarkably self-contained.

For Aldbury there is no comparable information for 1800, as it lies in Hertfordshire. By 1851, however, although there was no butcher, it contained most of the trades and crafts to be found in any of the other villages and several others besides, although the only canal worker was a lock keeper. There was a wide variety of occupations connected with the railway, and the fact that Tring railway station was actually in Aldbury parish brought in many new inhabitants, not only in connection with the actual railway but also with the posting hotel which was built besides it, which employed, for example, no less than seventeen grooms.

Edlesborough, a very big parish that included Northall, Hudnell and Dagnall, contained butcher, baker (but no grocer shop), mill, inn, higlar, smithy, carpenter, stonemason, wheelwright and shovel maker, bricklayer, shoemaker, tailor and weaver, an abundance of craftsmen compared with tradesmen. However, shopkeepers had arrived by 1851, and a coal merchant, a rag trader, plait dealer, shirt maker and bricklayer (who presumably worked at Slapton.

Thus, it can be seen that, whereas the railways brought additional prosperity to Aldbury and Cheddington, the canal had a much smaller direct influence on the settlements near it; Edlesborough, unaffected by either water or rail transport, nevertheless achieved considerable growth which probably related to the Hemel Hempstead- Leighton Buzzard road which passed through it.

The reason why, despite the extensive building operations of the Bridgewater's, these villages did not contain more building craftsmen, and their actual numbers are low compared with other trades and crafts, id partly due to the fact that the Ashridge Estate employed its own sawers, joiners, bricklayers and plumbers, who were sent to carry out the work. The majority of these men would have lived in the area immediately around Ashridge House. The estate accounts show that casual labour and outside firms were nevertheless employed, and the Henley family of Ivinghoe, who have between them embraced the skills of painter, glazier and plumber for over a century, were employed on more than one occasion.

All in all, there is a notable rise within the class of "middle men", dealers in animals, straw, plait and coal. Every hamlet has a victualler or beer retailer, Edlesborough had no less than seven altogether, and correspondingly there are more maltsters and brewers. The beer-shops took too much of the labourers inadequate income, and as one of their wives remarked, "Sir, them alehouses are our curse" (Rep. Roy. Com., 1867-8). There were no weavers left, a further indication of the decline in the importance of wool in the area. The rise in the number of grocers and general shops bears out the contention made by Walker, in his general View of the Agriculture of Herts, that "groceries and other victuals passed through London, even when they came from the North, and the prices were higher than in London. Labourers brought their inferior bread at the little chandlers shop where even the bread was dear. The price of food had in fact, risen steadily throughout the period, firstly as a result of the war and secondly as demand grew from the rapidly mounting population.

As the post-war depression gripped the country, a subsidiary agricultural occupation such as straw plaiting provided a minimal buffer between the family of the village labourers and starvation. Although an occupation for women and men, it was also adopted by some men, and soon after the middle of the century (Report. Royal. Comm. On Women in Ag, 1867-8) it was reported that, when the plait was good, plaiters were able to earn better money plaiting than employed in agriculture, that is, up to ten shillings a week, although, when the market was bad, ten or eleven hours work a day only brought in 2s.6d a week.

The type of straw grown in Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire border area was particularly suitable for making into fine plait, and an industry of sorts had existed thereabouts since the early seventeenth century: in the reign of Charles II it was necessary to limit the scale o f plait at Tring Market to Saturday mornings only, and reserve the afternoon for corn (V.C.H. Herts.). Plait dealers supplied the cottages in the more remote areas with straw and collected from them the completed plait to sell to the bonnet and hat manufacturers, but the best price could be obtained by walking at first light into the plait market in Tring, Dunstable or Ivinghoe, the earliest comers being likely to get the best prices. Local regulations were introduced in 1814 to prevent stallholders being " forestalled", some dealers at Dunstable selling their plait as early as two in the morning. (Luton & the Hat Industry, Chas. Freeman, Luton Mus.and art Gallery, and the history of Bedford. Joyce Godber, Beds C.C.)

It was reported that there was a "great want of chastity among the plait girls". "Male & female plaiters go about the lanes together in the summer engaged in work which was not even the wholesome correction of more or less physical exhaustion" (Report Royal Comm., 1867-8) Much of the plait however was produced by children from the age of three or four.

Farm wages, which rose slightly during the war years, fell back to subsistence level or below. Although they rose gradually in the 1840's, they were little higher at the middle than at the opening of the century, the labourer's pay being perhaps 10s a week in 1800 and eleven to thirteen shillings a week in 1867, with "Sunday-men", that is shepherds, cattlemen and carters, getting two shillings a week extra, and bonuses being paid for harvest work, with the additional benefit of free beer. Craftsmen might expect to earn nearly a pound a week by 1850 (Chaplain's Prisoners Character Book, 1854)

The benefits offered to labourers on the work carried out by the Earl of Bridgwater during the acute deflation of 1821-3 cannot be ignored, and boys were employed stone picking, dung spreading, drawing turnips and treading stitches, the raised strips of heavy land interspersed with drainage furrows. In 1830 wages paid on the estate were generally high: 24s a week for a smith, 36s a week (including allowances) for a foreman joiner and for a clerk, £2.7s for the head woodman (again allowances included) and over £7 for the Steward himself. The allowances mentioned were against rent, tax and coal, and in some cases, the keep of a cow and a horse. Sons of tenants were employed in various capacities: ("Young Newman came from Pightstone respecting a Ploughboy", Mr Buckingham notes in his diary.)

James and Malcolm reported in 1794 (op.cit.) that the habit of hiring farm servants by the year was fast disappearing, yet it persisted locally until 1851, many farmers, particularly those without many young sons, including farm labourers within their households.

The breakpoint for the poor was reached by 1830. The harvest of 1828, 1829 and 1830 were disastrous (Bucks advertiser, 1850) and many families were at starvation level. Riots which had smouldered in Kent and fanned out across the counties to Wiltshire and Dorset suddenly spread inland and flared up in Buckinghamshire, where they were directed as much against paper-making machinery in the Wycombe area as against threshing and other agricultural machines in other parts of the county. 136 prisoners were tried by the Special Commission at Aylesbury in January 1831, yet none for the Pitstone area, or from the "straw plait" area as a whole, although agricultural machinery was certainly in use by then, perhaps proving that the straw industry was indeed a cushion against economic disaster.

Measures introduced as a result of the reforms of 1834 and after did little to raise the actual level of wages, and as late as 1842 cases were being reported of farm workers with five or six children trying to remain alive on eight to nine shillings a week. (Records of the Berkhamstead Poor Law Union). In the more isolated rural areas, there were signs that agricultural workers were leaving the fields and moving to nearby towns to find work. The 1851 Census shows that, in towns like Tring and Luton, a large number of the inhabitants employed in canvas making or in the hat trade had been born in rural areas. This migration trend was stronger in villages which had no subsidiary crafts such as straw plaiting or lace making (found further north in Buckinghamshire) to supplement the agricultural wages.

Children that attended the plait schools, which sprang up in the villages, were offered education of a kind, the only education available in the areas at the beginning of the century. The schools, little more than workshops, were held in cottage kitchens, in the charge of a barely literate women, the primary object being to ensure that the children, who paid 2d or 3d a week, turned out the maximum amount of plait, while leaving their mothers free to plait at home. The children attended for six or seven hours a day, lengthening sometimes to nine or ten hours when plait was "good". The schools were "very close and offensive" thirty or forty children being packed in as closely as they could sit. Such teaching as there was consisted of the repartition of a few verses of the bible. (Report of the Royal Commission 1867-8)

During the first half of the century however, there was an upsurge of public interest in the question of education, and there was at last a good increase in the supply of schools in the area. Once again, the Bridgewater influence was felt and shortly before her death in 1849 the Countess set up an educational charity from which all the local parishes benefited, the interest ranging from £5 to £15 a years still being used into the twentieth century to assist in the maintenance of the schools.

By 1853 parish schools had been opened at Dagnall and Northall (80 and 40 children respectively), an infant school at Slapton (20 children) and National Schools at Cheddington (30 boys, 25 girls), Ivinghoe (60 children), Marsworth (20 children) and Slapton (15 children) (Directory, 1853). The National school in Aldbury was not built until 1856. There was also a Baptist Sunday school in Ivinghoe, together with a small boarding school for nine boys and three girls ranging in age from 6 to 15, the children being drawn mainly from the surrounding villages, including three small Hawkinses from Pitstone.

There were complaints that the labourers could not afford to send their children to school, and examples were heard of girls going to plait schools while their brothers went to day school, although the Vicar of Ivinghoe felt that there were "but few who could not afford to pay for their children's schooling if they were inclined" by 1867. There is no doubt, however, that village schools faced considerable competition both from the plait schools and from farm work, and in some cases plaiting had to be allowed in order to increase attendance. In 1855, a schoolmaster near Dunstable wrote; "I am aware it would take long before the school would be well attended, owing to the plait tradition ... this evil has been the main excuse why the school has been so badly attended hitherto." (Richard (Cumberland, schoolmaster, family letter.) There was also a varying attendance according to the weather, school attendance, particularly for boys, being higher in the winter.

The best interests of the children were not always served by the intense competition which took place in some areas between the protagonists of independent and Church schools, the former coming under great pressure in some parishes to be taken over by the local clergy and for the tuition to be reserved for the children of Church of England parishioners only", excluding the non-conformists (same source).

It was a matter for concern that, within the Poor Law Union of which Pitstone was a member parish, children in the Workhouse in 1837 received no teaching other than from the Matron, being forbidden to attend the Parochial School. Of those who had never attended the school, none could read a simple sentence and most could not even spell words of one syllable. (M.H. l2/4518 P.R.O) The general standard of literacy throughout rural Buckinghamshire was well below the national average, which was estimated by the Registrar General in 1838-9 to be 58% for men and 45% for women. In Ivinghoe, by contrast, these figures were 35%, and 15% respectively, assessed c1850 by those that could sign their name at the time of marriage.

So how, in this small rural area, had things changed by 1851, the year in which crowds flocked by train to London to see the splendid spectacle of the Great Exhibition? Perhaps it is true to say that, despite efforts at education and poor law assistance, the division in the country areas between the rich and the poor had grown greater, not less. The farmer had grown away from his labourer and, in four parishes out of seven, the cottager had lost his independent means of self-support so far as food and fuel were concerned. The cost of food had risen in excess of wages and the movement from country to town in search of higher standards had gained momentum, although the straw-plait villages were depopulating more slowly than others in the areas. One amongst many complex reasons for the sudden rise in population was an improvement in general health standards, as evidence by inoculation against smallpox, but larger families resulted in overcrowding in rural areas and there had been insufficient provisio of more houses and cottages.

The coming of the canal had increased trade between London and the Home Counties, and had brought in new building materials, while the railway had brought increases in size and prosperity to the villages affected. Farms were bigger, mechanical aids were introduced and agrarian improvements effected, albeit more slowly than in many places.

It was different. But was it better?

Continue to part 2

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