Scattered across the face of rural Britain at any one time during the nineteenth century were up to 200 training stables for thoroughbred racehorses. These provided the underpinning for the popular sport of horseracing and were also both a significant source of rural employment and a contribution to rural culture. Despite a growing recognition by rural historians that rural communities are composed of interlocking parts and linked social structures, and a regular focus on the parish, village, estate or farm, these microcommunities have remained largely ignored and undocumented. Equally, sports historians have concentrated largely on sports players to the exclusion of ancilliary staff. This article breaks new ground therefore in giving a more rounded picture of an important aspect of horseracing in its rural setting, beginning by examining the social and economic organisation of stable life and its power relationships, before showing the contribution of the stables firstly to the local economies, and secondly to the cultural life of the local communities in which they were set.

In the Yorkshire Dales, where the destruction of the rural setting is less advanced than in most other parts of England, countrysides frequently exist as historical palimpsests that incorporate elements from various earlier phases of colonisation and exploitation. The region is noted for the survival of antiquities of many kinds. In places, pollarded trees are significant components in the scenic pastiche, though prior to this survey there was no general recognition that their distribution is closely linked to the main themes that have conditioned the process of landscape development. The survey, which collected details on 186 ancient trees within a study area around 17 miles long by 8 miles wide, was undertaken according to the perspectives of landscape history. These not only seek to discover the evolution of landscapes, but also recognise that evidence is embedded in features like trees, fields, trackways and so on.

The 1880s saw the introduction of the half-tone as a means of reproducing photographs on the printed page in books and magazines. No editor could afford to ignore this technology and this article examines how it was introduced into magazines catering for a farming and rural readership. It considers the impact of new illustrated magazines and the demand for photographs for reproduction and gives some thought to how historians might profitably use these photographs as evidence.

The early organic movement was closely connected with the crusade for monetary reform, since it was felt that Britain's agriculture and rural life could not be revived without challenging the vested interests of banking and the import-export trades. This paper focuses on the work of the Economic Reform Club and Institute (ERCI) from the 1930s to the 1950s, revealing the major part played in its activities by leading organicists. First, it identifies various strands that were drawn together in the ERCI: the monetary reform theories of Kitson and Douglas; the ideas of the Irish agricultural organiser ‘AE’ (G. W. Russell); and Montague Fordham's Rural Reconstruction Association. It then looks at various speeches and conferences arranged by the ERCI, particularly during the Second World War, to demonstrate the importance given to the organic school's proposed agricultural policies. In the post-war years Jorian Jenks, who also edited the Soil Association journal, ran the ERCI's journal Rural Economy as another platform for organic ideas, arguing for a conception of ‘economy’ based on natural resources rather than money. The paper concludes by suggesting that the anti-semitism sometimes found in early organic writings may be attributable to the organicists' dislike of the international finance system.

Over the course of the nineteenth century children increasingly became social, economic and scientific concerns. Their physical and mental well-being was deemed intrinsic to the future development of Britain and its Empire, and thus maintaining healthy youngsters was, by the turn of the twentieth century, considered a national priority. This article explores the interconnectivity between poverty and the child residents of pauper lunatic asylums in England. It draws on a corpus of extant patient case files from four pauper lunatic asylums between 1851 and 1907 and engages with detailed information about the children and their mental conditions. Additionally, there will be a focus on understanding family backgrounds, parental occupations, the correlation between diagnoses and class, and methods of ‘treatment’ designed to equip children for independent working lifestyles. The overarching objective is to consider the socio-economic ramifications of child mental illness for parents and families and better understand how Victorian institutions accommodated this specific class of patient.

This article focuses on the mechanisation of agriculture in central Italy in the thirty years or so after 1945. This provides a particular way of examining the major changes in the rural landscape in this period, especially the end of the sharecropping system. Land in these regions had for centuries been predominantly farmed under sharecropping contracts, but for political, economic, and demographic reasons this system, which had inhibited modernisation, entered a rapid decline. Whereas labour supply had previously exceeded demand, the reverse became the case, allowing sharecropping families more freedom in how they operated. Mechanisation was not a ‘push’ factor, but as the agricultural labour force contracted it was a necessary response. The article uses individual testimony to illustrate how tenant farmers started to work outside the sharecropping contract, some becoming outside contractors with other farms and supplying tractor hire. The mechanisation of agriculture was slow and uneven, but marked an irreversible change in the relationship between farming families and their land.

This article does not purport to provide an exhaustive overview of the history of rural high school education in New Zealand. Such information can be readily obtained from a number of existing historical studies in education. Rather, it seeks to identify and analyse the complex ways whereby those associated most closely with these schools, the students, teachers, and parents, steadfastly and successfully resisted the determined and repeated efforts of the Department of Education, its Directors, and successive Ministers of Education to introduce and popularise a highly ‘practical’, non-academic, agriculturally oriented curriculum in New Zealand's rural (district) high schools on the grounds of education and social efficiency. What becomes abundantly clear is that the educational demands and expectations of rural communities were markedly different from the official discourse. Rural communities expected, and sought access to, the same high status knowledge and highly prized public school examinations that offered ambitious urban youth the opportunity to gain enhanced economic, geographical, social, and vocational mobility. Consequently, the elevated status of traditional academic subjects meant that preparation for examinations came to dominate, and quickly overshadow, the curriculum offerings of the district high schools and this persisted for more than a century.

One of the most important systems of sheep transhumance since the Middle Ages in Spain occurred between the mountains of northern Leon and the Extremadura Meadow lands – a 500-kilometre journey on foot. We analyse here an interesting collection of thirty letters, written at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, and sent by the shepherds responsible for the flock from the wintering land to the owner of the animals. The only connection with the owner for seven long months but also with their villages and families, were these letters.

This article identifies the social and cultural history of the early modern tidal water ferry, its skippers and passengers, by way of evidence from a northern Scottish rural coast. Evidence from the region's ‘firthlands’ reveals an amphibious communications network which transformed gradually prior to the early nineteenth century. The article argues that the defining local topography of coastal adjacency both influenced, and was influenced by, the people who lived their lives within and around the littoral. A system of short range communications over and between the estuaries and firths is highlighted from a Coastal History perspective, leading to the examination of a ‘pluriactive’ microhistorical space, linking south-east Sutherland, the eastern edges of Easter Ross and the Black Isle and the Nairnshire seaboard. The article thereby opens up possibilities for comparison with other peoples, places and periods, in which being ‘alongshore’ was integral to rural community construction, coalescence, dynamism and friction.

This article explores attitudes to the clothing of the rural poor in seventeenth-century England. It begins with an analysis of the representation of rural clothing in country themed ballads, showing how ‘homely’ country clothing was used to construct an image of a contented and industrious rural population. It then considers how such popular literary representations influenced the way that diarists Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn recorded their encounters with the rural poor. The final part of the article looks at attitudes of the rural poor to their own clothing, drawing on evidence from a range of documentary sources as well as the autobiographical writings of Edward Barlow. In contrast to the stereotypical depiction of the rural poor recorded by ballad writers and elite observers, the article will show that for the actual poor clothing could serve both as an expression of the ‘self’ and as a potent marker of social differences and moral and material inferiority.

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.

In 1833 in a small village in the eastern Netherlands, a school opened for training weavers in using a new technology imported from England: the flying shuttle. The school began by training boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 16; when that proved successful it opened its doors to all weavers sent by manufacturers from the greater region, which soon necessitated several branch schools. By far the majority who came were home-based workers and after their training, a matter of a few weeks for those not new to the task, they could take a new loom with them on a payment plan. Once home, they in turn trained others, while local carpenters learned to build new looms. As a result, weaving in the rural textile regions of Twente and the Achterhoek (see figures 1 and 2) was transformed rapidly so that by 1836 no more new pupils came, and the schools were closed.

An evidence-based time series on agricultural growth prior to 1850 only exists for very few German territories. Except for Saxony, there is no series available for the pre-1815 period. Based on sharecropping contracts from the estate of Anholt, we reconstruct the development of crop production for western Westphalia and the lower Rhineland c. 1740–1860. Our results show that parallel to Saxony, agricultural growth in this north-west German region was driven entirely by demand from a growing number of households engaged in proto-industrial and early industrial manufacture production. Fully commercialised land tenure systems dominated in Anholt from the beginning of the early modern period, and manorial institutions had little relevance for rural property relations. Hence, the radical French and Prussian agrarian reforms at the beginning of the nineteenth century had no effect on agricultural production. In a north-west European comparison, Anholt's sharecroppers performed rather well during this decisive formation period culminating in early industrialisation.

The emergence of factor markets during the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period was of crucial importance for long-term economic development. Despite Flanders and Brabant being situated in one of the most densely urbanised regions within Europe at the time, the current historiographical debate lacks a quantitative analysis of the market for land in the late medieval and early modern Low Countries. This article focuses on the transmission of rural property in the southern Low Countries from the 1400s up until the end of the eighteenth century. Using time-series data on the rural land market for a selection of case studies within Inland Flanders and Brabant has enabled me to present a long-run analysis of the changes in the market value of land, the market activity and the overall nature of the rural peasant land market. My findings show a tendency towards fewer but larger holdings being transferred on the land market. The path-dependent nature of this process had a significant impact upon the changing proto-capitalistic nature of agriculture within the southern Low Countries. As per capita market activity declined and the average transfer size increased, the farmers’ dependency on the lease market grew effectively speeding up the pauperisation processes in Inland Flanders.

The now extensive historiography of the ‘Captain Swing’ disturbances of 1830–1 contains two notable lacunae. Firstly, no thorough investigation has been undertaken of their first major episode, the ‘Sevenoaks Fires’ of summer 1830. Secondly, the overwhelming historiographical focus on Swing's perpetrators has ignored its victims almost entirely. This article therefore examines why particular farmers were singled out for incendiary attack in the area, what tactics they and the authorities employed in response and what that meant for social relations subsequently. The evidence reveals a trend towards greater accountability on the part of the elite and a growing confidence sometimes shown by the lower orders in challenging them. It does so, moreover, within an overarching framework of risk and risk transfer, since this provides an entirely new historiographical perspective on both the Fires and Swing generally. Finally, this approach is extended to suggest how it may have underpinned competing conceptions of Poor Law provision among the town's elite, post-Swing.

The gamekeeper was an important but controversial presence in the late Victorian and Edwardian countryside. Admired by some for his skills in woodcraft and deep understanding of nature, for others the keeper was much less benign: a destroyer of wildlife; a barrier against wider public access to the land; and the upholder of fiercely contested laws. At a time when debates about the land and its present and future use formed a major part of contemporary political discourse, and when an urbanising society was investing ever more meaning in its idea of the rural, consideration of the keeper takes us beyond the study of field sports towards broader histories of the English countryside and its attendant ruralist culture. Situating the keeper in a dual setting of material production and recreational service provision, the following examines both what he did and was expected to do, and the ways in which this was represented. Not only were keepers active agents in their own representation, eager to project themselves as skilled professionals, they might also elicit support from unusual quarters. As will be seen, keeper representation was as varied as his many roles.

A previous article in Rural History entitled ‘“Rustic and Rude”: Hiring Fairs and their Critics in East Yorkshire c. 1850–75’, examined a critique of hiring fairs and farm service mounted by the Church of England in the East Riding of Yorkshire during the mid-Victorian period. This discussion builds upon that article by offering a more detailed examination of the actual attempts to reform and abolish hiring fairs that emanated from that critique. The article examines three stages of reform and abolition stretching over the mid-Victorian period: a first stage that centred upon imposing a system of hiring based upon written characters; a second stage that focussed upon imposing segregated hiring for male and female servants, and a final abolitionist stage. The campaign's tactics and the various measures deployed against hiring fairs during each stage are detailed and their level of success evaluated and explained. The broader motivations of the campaign and the manner in which they signified deeper Church anxieties about the nature of the rural social order are also discussed in a concluding evaluation of the campaign's impact.

The theme of place guides much exploration in rural history and local history. Attempts have been made to create definitions and typologies of place, but these have had to contend with the diverse, complex and dynamic realities of historical pattern and process, local and regional. Nonetheless, historians and those in other disciplines have evolved different approaches to the concept. This study considers how these can inform the investigation of places existing in historical fact in particular periods in the past, and can do similarly for those places located contemporaneously in fictional constructions. Reference is made to various academic writings on place, including by the local historian, David Dymond. The analysis takes the work of the author of fiction, Bernard Samuel Gilbert. Gilbert, although relatively obscure now, incorporated a feature of special note into his later literary output, and one meriting greater attention. This was his personalised, reflective and explicitly articulated approach to forming and expressing place. Moreover, Gilbert’s ‘Old England’, with its imaginary district of 'Bly', can be recognised as corresponding to landscapes and communities existing more broadly in the years up to and through the First World War, and with creations by other authors of regional fiction.

The literature about the nutrition transition has been discussing the existence of different paths. The case of Uruguay is introduced as a different case of transition. We focus on the period 1900–70 when the country shifted from an agricultural-based economy to industrialisation through import substitution. We estimate the annual historical time series of per capita consumption of the main food items in the Uruguayan diet using the commodity flow approach complemented by the FAO’s Food Balance Sheets methodology. We identify the major trends in food consumption and discuss the main explanatory factors. We find that Uruguay showed a transition from a very high animal food-based diet towards a more diversified pattern with more milk, cereals, and vegetables. On top of that, we sustain that not only income is important to explain the major shifts in food diet, but also preferences, changes in relative prices, and productivity.

The collective management of irrigation is an essential factor in agrarian development, both present and past. However, the relationship of irrigation associations with the state remains underexplored, despite the increasingly important role played by water policies in the modern world. The present article examines this relationship in Spain over the last two centuries. Our results suggest that, first, the state played a decisive part in the emergence and evolution of irrigation associations, and this belies the assumption of the traditional origin of these institutions; second, that farmers, despite being subject to the regulatory framework, enjoyed substantial autonomy in the management of water resources; and, third, that the relationship between local associations and the state changed over time, in response to political regime changes and the transformation of irrigation agriculture. When the state tried to impose authoritarian policies upon irrigation users, these reacted by developing unprecedented forms of organisation.