A bleak view of upper dale life, by Jinny Howlett, Teesdale Mercury

n 1810 John Bailey published a book on the state of farming in County Durham for the Board of Agriculture. Actually its full title was ‘General View of the Agriculture of the County of Durham with Observations on the means of its Improvement. Drawn for the Consideration of the Board of Agriculture and General Improvement’. Well at least the buyer would know what the book was about without reading any of it. 

John Bailey’s book is long and well researched – after all he had been working on it since 1796. The book is also in places very technical – but it’s a great read.

John was born to a farming family between Startforth and Bowes and spent much of his early life at Cockfield with George Dixon and his wife – his aunt and uncle. The Dixon brothers were at the forefront of nearly everything that was going on at the time and that included innovations in farming practice. So, when collecting information, it’s natural that John should have made use of the farming families he had known in his younger days. 

John Bailey himself left Teesdale and went to live and work at Chillingham Castle in Northumberland where he ran the estate – that’s the place where there is a herd of wild cattle. 

As well as working the Chillingham Estate John was also a surveyor and a skilled engraver so his book contains maps and a number of fine pictures of cows and bridges and such like. 

He comments on the lack of a well-surveyed map of the county. John also included lots of pictures of ploughs accompanied by pages and pages of detailed descriptions of ploughs – not surprising really because John was something of an expert on farm machinery and had previously written a book on ploughs. 

The timing of this book was brilliant. By 1810 most of the commons of West Durham had been enclosed and turned over to cultivation. Attitudes were changing over the sort of crops grown and farmers were trying out new varieties of seed. And landowners in County Durham were actively engaged in the selective breeding of animals. This is the time of the ‘Ketton Ox’ that was bred by the Collings family at Barmpton near Darlington – and the book includes a picture by John Bailey of this famous animal.

There is so much information and detail in this book about the fields, the boundaries, houses, stock 

and crops as well as the people working the land that you can almost 

feel you are there, walking around the farms for yourself. 

We learn from the book that most farms were around 150 acres in size although those in the upland areas were often below 50 acres. There were exceptions of course, with a farm at Summerhouse of approximately 500 acres. 

Only very few farms in our area were really large, including a handful that were part of the Raby Estate and a couple in the West Auckland and Winston areas. John Bailey points out that it was difficult for small farmers to improve their crops or stock because of their lack of capital and also because their farms were usually held for such short terms of tenure. So if they improved their farm they were in danger of having their rent increased or even losing the property.

He paints a bleak picture of the life of farmers living in upper Teesdale. He points out that they had limited horizons with little education when young, their only chance for schooling being in the winter months after the harvest. And most farms did grow corn which in the higher lands wasn’t harvested until October or even November or December. Farmers’ families had little free time. John Bailey wrote: “Being thus enured to hard labour from their early youth, when they become farmers themselves, they continue still to work but with increased exertion, anxiety and care; and a farmer of this class is a much greater slave than any servant he keeps, being generally employed through the summer in some kind 

of work or other, from 4 o’clock in 

the morning till 8 at night; and in every other season of the year from twilight to twilight; and may truly be said to, ‘rise early, take rest late, and eat the bread of carefulness.’’

The type of cereal grown on the farms depended on the quality of the soil. In upper Teesdale oats were the main crop with sometimes a bit of rye. Evidently rye bread was the usual bread eaten in Durham. The bread was usually leavened and baked in outside ovens in the form of large loaves called simply ‘brown bread’. When it was baked in cakes about an inch thick it was called ‘sour bread’. Sometimes the bread was unleavened and thin and In 1810 this was called ‘tharf cakes’. Does anyone remember this name for bread? 

Oats were the common crop for most of Teesdale and had been so from ‘time immemorial’ – according to John Bailey. You could often get between 20 and 30 bushels per acre but in moor soils the yield was only around 15 bushels. The oat straw was used as fodder for the cattle and horses and horses mostly consumed the grain. However, a portion of the grain was made into oatmeal for making the hasty pudding and crowdy that was eaten for breakfast by dales farmers, especially in the winter when milk was scarce. Are there any recipes around for these foods?

This is only a glimpse of farm life as recorded in John Bailey’s book. Information about stock and roads and buildings we will leave to another time.