Farming at Leslie Hill

While agriculture has made dramatic progress in the twentieth century it was in the eighteenth century that the groundwork was laid. This brief account of farming at Leslie Hill will show how it was affected by events in Ireland, in Great Britain and in Europe, and by the character of the member of the family in occupation at different times.
To go back to the beginning, when William Leslie built his fortified house at Clogh Corr in the seventeenth century, Ireland was in a very unsettled state and agriculture had moved on little in the preceding one hundred years. Crops of wheat and corn would have been grown, the former well suited to the heavy land at Clogh Corr, and probably kale flax and a small acreage of potatoes. Livestock in the form of cattle, sheep and pigs would have been kept. Wool and cattle were important exports from Ireland to England, but because of commercial jealousy they were severely restricted by acts of the English Parliament.

The export of woolen goods to any country except England was prohibited in 1699 and as exports to England were already subject to very heavy duties, the woolen industry quickly withered away. Cattle were also excluded from the English market but traders found profitable markets for beef and other cattle products in
Flanders, France, Spain and Portugal. All was not gloom, however, because as a compensation for restricting the woolen industry the English parliament was ready to encourage the manufacture of linen. This was not a new industry in Ireland for flax had been grown, hand spun into yarn and woven into fabrics for hundreds of years but it was given a considerable boost with the arrival of Huguenot families from France. The industry was mainly concentrated in the North.
William of Prospect, as Clogh Corr is now called, died in 1698 having lived his life through a period of continuing civil unrest and it is hardly surprising that agricultural progress and prosperity was so limited during this time. However, the following century was to provide a longer period of internal peace than Ireland had ever enjoyed before.
The widespread changes which occurred in agriculture in the eighteenth century began very slowly at first, particularly in Ireland where agricultural methods in general use were far behind those of England. It took nearly a century before such significant inventions as Jethro Tull’s wheeled seed drill, which was the first machine of modem mechanisation, became widely used. Farmers were suspicious of such newfangled gadgets and few could afford them. Gradually the pace of change quickened, helped by the enthusiastic interest of “improving landlords”. Charles “Turnip” Townshend perfected the four course or Norfolk Rotation; Jethro Tull’s book “The New Horse Hoeing Husbandry, or an Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation” was published in 1731; Robert Bakewell and Coke of Norfolk greatly improved the breeds of cattle and sheep. The period was subsequently described as the Agrarian Revolution and one further important element was a great increase in enclosures which enabled landowners to pursue much more efficient methods.

In Ireland things proceeded more slowly but here too there were a few “improving landlords”. One such was James Leslie who had acquired the Townlands adjoining Prospect and had formed the estate of Leslie Hill very much as it is today.
We are fortunate to have a very complete record of farming at Leslie Hill in the 1770s because Arthur Young, who traveled extensively in England and France recording the agricultural scene, devoted eighteen pages of his book “A Tour in Ireland” to farming there. He describes in detail reclamation of bog, involving the digging of main drains no less than eight feet wide at the top, five feet deep and four feet wide at the bottom, with cross drains four feet wide and three feet deep. The crop rotation on the stiff clay which is still the main soil type was: 1) Fallow and lime; 2) Wheat; 3) Barley; 4) Oats; 5) Oats; 6) Clover for two years with the second crop ploughed in. He gives detailed costs and returns. He remarks on the crops of wheat which he describes as “the finest I had seen in Ireland, nor do I remember finer in England” and attributes this to extensive use of farmyard manure. and particularly of marle, soil consisting of clay
and carbonate of lime, which was burned in enormous heaps. It is interesting that an attempt was made to practise drill husbandry, which persevered for several years, a drill plough and horse-hoes being bought, but had to be abandoned; probably defeated by the heavy land. A bull was bought from Robert Bakewell. Young gives a good description of the Bell Barn (No.6 on yard map), which apart from its use as a granary for the wheat crop, would have housed the calves from Mr Bakewell’s bull. Dairy cows were housed in the Byre (Np. 9) where there were stalls for about twenty. Flax was also grown and Young points out that all the small farmers were weavers. It is clear from Young’s record that the James Leslie of the day was an up-to-date and enterprising farmer. He had also laid out his estate with considerable skill and had 100 acres of woodland. He employed 50 labourers and had 46 horses and 24 plough oxen. The men were paid at the Pay House (No. 3).
Agriculture continued to prosper into the nineteenth century with a growing population ensuring an increasing demand for food. Corn prices in particular reached very high levels as a result of the Napoleonic wars and were subsequently protected by the Corn Laws; indeed prices at this time reached a level which was not to be equaled again until the Second World War. The Corn Laws caused considerable hardship and were finally repealed by Sir Robert Peel in 1846.

In Ireland, the single most significant event was the famine caused by blight which ruined the potato crop in 1845. The potato formed the staple diet and about a million people died from starvation and disease and a further million emigrated, many to the United States. The failure of the potato crop was much less serious in the North and certainly in North Antrim where the population was not so dependent on it for sustenance as there was a much greater acreage of corn.
After the famine there followed a period of agricultural recovery but it was not maintained and a series of bad harvests in the early 1 860s caused widespread distress. There was a decrease in tillage and an increase in livestock and many agricultural labourers were deprived of employment. This was the situation in Ireland generally but Ulster provided a partial exception; manufacturing industry developed here in the same way as in Great Britain and gave work to the redundant rural population. Security of tenant farmers improved as a result of the tenant right movement, though again they had always been better off in Ulster and the Land Acts enabled them to buy the freehold by a form of hire-purchase.
In the field of agricultural machinery,
locomotive power and building materials there were significant changes. Wood as the most important industrial raw material was replaced by metal. The production of agricultural machinery was totally revolutionised and new machines began to appear. A reaper with a cutting bar working like mechanical scissors was invented in 1828 and developed by McCormick, an Ulsterman. Threshers, invented towards the end of the previous century, were improved and came into more general use and ploughs were further developed by such engineers as Ransome and Fowler. By the end of the century steam engines were widely used and mass produced fittings, galvanised iron and Portland cement transformed building construction. Some of the machines that you can see in the byre (No. 9) date from this time and there is a barn threshing machine, though in this case still driven by horses, in the Bell Barn (No. 6). In England “the golden age of English agriculture” as the 1850s were described did not last long; an economic depression in Europe and America coincided with a series of bad harvests in the seventies and a period of poor returns set in which did not improve until the Great War.

And so we come to the twentieth century with two World Wars precipitating enormous changes both in attitudes towards agriculture and its practical application. The need to produce more home-grown food was recognised during the First World War but forgotten shortly afterwards and another period of agricultural depression followed until relieved by the Second World War.

Steam power gave way to the internal combustion engine and tractors gradually replaced horses on the farm. At first tractors pulled implements behind them in the same was as horses but the invention of the hydraulic three point linkage system by another Ulsterman, Harry Ferguson, enabled the implement to become part of tractor and greatly simplified operations and improved efficiency. The reaper and binder, a further extension of McCormick’s reaper, was superceded by the combined harvester and huge improvements in the application of hydraulic power enabled draining, ditching and land reclamation to be carried out with great ease and speed, a far cry from the armies of men employed by James Leslie in 1770.

Farming at Leslie Hill continued much as it had done before, There was a labour force of about thirty and the farming was mixed ; small cows, all with horns and completely different to and much smaller than the ubiquitous black and white Fresian you see today; sheep, beef cattle and a few pigs, crops of corn, hay and turnips. Flax continued to be grown and there were dams for retting in two fields. A pedigree herd of Hereford cattle was built up by the present owner's grandfather and achieved some success in the show ring. As elsewhere, the period of the twenties and thirties was one economic depression and the condition of the land deteriorated.

By the time of the Second WOrld War, the proprietor was over seventy and his son being abroad, most of the land was let under the conacre system, this is a form of tenancy peculiar to Ireland where individual fields are let for the period required to crow the particular crop. The name derives from corn acre. The land by this time was in a poor state of fertility, ditches were blocked. field drains were unable to run and livestock had little difficulty in making their way through dilapidated fences and gates. Over a period of many years a programme of improvement was undertaken. Ditches were cleared, new field drains were made in every field on the place, miles of fencing was erected using estate grown timber such as the heart wood of larch and oak, and new gates were put up. Mains water was taken to every field to replace the hand pumps. Simultaneously more land was gradually taken in hand and a considerable acreage of spring barley was grown, fed to pigs, this formed a substantial enterprise to which was added a suckler cow herd and a flock of breeding ewes. Today the pig enterprise has gone and so have the suckler herd, but spring barley continues to be grown and occasionally crops of winter wheat as they were two hundred years ago.

There are two flocks of breeding ewes, one of pure bred Cheviots and another of Cheviot/Suffolk cross ewes producing finished lambs for the market. At the moment most of them go to the continent. After the disposal of the suckler herd purchased dropped calves were reared for several years and kept until ready to be sold as beef, but the beef enterprise at the moment is based on the purchase of store cattle. Silage is grown as the main winter feed and a small acreage of hay is usually made.

Agriculture is going through another difficult period, the transient advantages of entry to the European Community have evaporated, perhaps the events taking place in Eastern Europe will open new markets and herald another "golden age".