Canwick Hall, near Lincoln, was the seat of the Sibthorps from 1730 to 1940. They represented the city in Parliament over several generations. The evolution of their estate village is seen here in contrast to the open village of Melbourn, in the context of the open-closed village model, and in comparison with two other estates of similar size and value (the Sneyds' estate at Keele, Staffordshire and the Fawkeses' estate at Farnley in Wharfedale). The Sibthorps were a ten thousand-acre and ten thousand pounds-a-year family for most of the nineteenth century, but the amount of attention they paid to Canwick varied considerably, depending on the individual circumstances and preferences of a succession of life-tenants.

This article examines three linked assumptions relating to English agriculture between 1850 and 1914. First, that the north devoted its energies to industrialisation. Second, that mechanisation made steady progress, based largely on southern initiatives. Third, that this took farming towards large, capital-intensive and steam-powered operations. This conventional wisdom is inherently weak given the high reputation of Northumbrian farming in 1850, its tight, expensive labour markets and easy access to coal, iron and engineering expertise, which contrasts with the south's cheap, plentiful labour, no coal and few engineering firms. A database of all implements advertised in a thousand farm sales from the relevant period in Northumberland, Durham and northern North Yorkshire reveals a regional agriculture that prospered by developing the traditional and highly effective mix of carts, harrows and ploughs. Mechanisation occurred very unevenly across departments, with harvesting very atypical. Large farms were neither more inherently machine-oriented than small ones, nor better users of machinery. Farmers are revealed as pragmatic about mechanisation, and not conservative when it paid. Steam played little part, whereas horses remained an ideal power source for the farming that suited these times.

A range of discourses on rural life, gender, and work accompanied the parallel expansion of mass garment manufacture and handicraft industries in north-west Ireland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Proponents of each frequently claimed that these two forms of production were sharply distinguished by scale, organisation and the ‘skills’ they required. However, these strategies for rural industrial development require a more integrated analysis. A close examination of the technologies of production, workers' earnings and experiences, and the stability of rural industrial initiatives, drawing on Parliamentary Papers and the Baseline Reports of the Congested Districts Board, challenges assumptions about the structure and status of women's industrial work in rural Ireland.

The article analyses the evolution in both the forms and changing social content of British Sheepdog trials, from the first recorded event at Bala, Wales in 1873 to the advent of their revival following the Second World War (during which they had been suspended). Contrary to popular myth, early trials were gentry sponsored and therefore heavily freighted with elite values concerning the nature of the shepherds' craft. Early trials accented speed, agility and obedience in the dog, as well as sheer entertainment value, arising often from debacles that might ensue in any given run. The trials, too, remained adjuncts to elite, Kennel-club style dog-shows, with their focus on conformation and the physical beauty of the animal. As the social prominence of the aristocracy and gentry receded after 1880, so too did their role in defining the nature of the sheepdog trial. With the founding of the International Sheepdog Society in 1906 by shepherds and farmers, the rules for such trials became transformed, reflecting more the actual work of the shepherd, and indirectly the larger shift within agriculture toward more specialised sheep production. These new rules gave the trial a rigorous aspect at once more modern than earlier prototypes, yet rooted in the craft traditions of rural artisans. At the same time, the shepherds and farmers, who made practical use of sheepdogs, assumed direction of the sport. The founding of the ISDS thus coincided with the new self-assertiveness of labour occurring nationally, reflected in the founding of the Labour party the very same year. Elements of the elite show-ring, however, would linger residually in ISDS trials, reflecting a degree of continuity, but these would gradually atrophy. ISDS trials would accent both the independent work of the dog and its ability to function as a working partner to the shepherd. The article thus deconstructs the complicated social evolution in the nature of a rural sport, which reflected in turn changes in the larger socio-economic environment, through a detailed analysis of the changing patterns of the trials themselves.

As the armed forces continued to siphon away labour from the land following the outbreak of the war, the Ministry of Agriculture's County War Agricultural Executive Committees were hard put to meet the demand for labour to sustain the plough-up campaign. While schoolchildren made a major contribution, there were few prisoners-of-war before the North African campaign and volunteers from all walks of life were sought to attend harvest camps, weekend farm clubs and other land-based activities. At the end of the war the Ministry of Agriculture turned to mainland Europe for volunteers to work towards the solution of the British and pan-European food shortages. They were supplemented by members of the Polish Resettlement Corps, German prisoners who had opted to defer repatriation and volunteers from the British zones of Austria and Germany. The article raises the issue of how far the enterprise promoted international understanding as was assumed at the time or, indeed, whether the home volunteer experience narrowed the so-called rural-urban divide as opposed to reinforcing entrenched prejudices.