2 - Durham Ox: Commercial Agriculture in North-East England, 1600–1800

Summary

Farming mattered as much as coal mining in the making of the British world. Agriculture furnished the food while coal provided the fuel for England's early industrialisation and subsequent Industrial Revolution. Despite unprecedented levels of urbanisation and a rising population, Britain largely fed itself during the eighteenth century. This national achievement rested upon regional specialisation in agriculture, and farming was integral to the economy and culture of early industrial north-east England. Hughes described Tyneside as England's ‘oldest industrial region’ with ‘an agricultural shell’. Across the north-east counties of Durham and Northumberland there was a graduated agriculture from hills to coast, orientated on feeding the working population in the industrialising districts on Tyneside and Wearside, as well as export. Commercial farming for a cash profit at market came to characterise even upland farming. A centralising and rationalising force, market-orientated farming was as prevalent on the upland fells reserved for summer grazing, with hay and fodder grown in newly enclosed fields on the valley floor, as it was on the richer loamy soils of the lowlands, enclosed to produce greater quantities of grain, particularly rye, oats and wheat, as well as specialist crops of rapeseed, mustard and flax. Farming for the urban-industrial market encouraged meat production, with affordable beef and cheap mutton from cattle and sheep selectively bred to suit regional soils and meet the consumption demands of a regionalised food market. These processes culminated in that wonder of the early 1800s, the Durham Ox. Yet the use of land and livestock for profit brought not only the exploitation of animals but the marginalisation of smaller landholders, as the creation of larger farms forced many to become dependent upon waged labour and purchase their food. Historians have tended either to celebrate the achievements or denigrate the consequences of commercial farming. As with coal mining, pride and regret are only partial routes to historical understanding. In their stead, we can investigate agriculture as a part of regionalised economies and cultures.

Agriculture and regionalization

The emergence of a market economy in agriculture contributed to the creation of an integrated region. Food supply created webs of connection between north Northumberland and south Durham; from the Pennine fells and Border hills to the North Sea coast.