To find the female agricultural labourers of Northumberland we must move inland from the windswept coastal fishing villages and the grimy coal mining towns and villages, to where the Cheviot Hills slope down to the fertile valleys of the River Till and its tributaries. There, in Glendale and further east in Belford – the rural districts studied in most depth – we find women labourers in abundance. These labourers formed an essential part of farming in Northumberland, as they did in the East and West Lothians, Roxburgh and Berwickshire in southeastern Scotland and in Westmoreland, long after women had ceased to be an important part of the farming labour force in the southeast of England – though not, as once thought, in the west of England. They had experiences and self- images very different from those of fishing and mining women. These experiences can be linked to the economic, geographic and demographic structures of the area. We have found a similar congruence between the experience of women in mining and inshore fishing communities and the structural characteristics of their communities.

The key factor in the lives and work of agricultural women was the development in the late eighteenth century of advanced farming, an important part of which was the addition of turnips, sown grasses and potatoes to the cultivation of oats and barley.