Standing above Percy Rigg Farm in a biting wind is a fine way to appreciate just how bleak and precarious farming here must be. The farm, once known as View Hill or Viewley Hill Farm, and before that, with little charm, as Piggery Farm, likely came into existence thanks to the Enclosure Act of 1775. However, given its position beside Ernaldsti, the medieval track linked to the Percy family, it is possible that some form of settlement existed here long before that.
Percy Rigg Farm was, and probably remains, a tenanted farm. And what was life like for a tenant farmer on the Kildale Estate?
Fortunately, documents from the latter half of the 19th century survive, setting out in painstaking detail what was expected of those running local farms.
In 1874, John Dickenson of Woodend Farm agreed to take on Percy Rigg Farm—165 acres of it—for ÂŁ67 per year, replacing the outgoing tenant, Robert Hewison. By 1877, he had also signed the lease on Hallgarth Farm (also called Church House Farm), a mere 133 acres for ÂŁ238 per year. The contrast likely shines a light on the land’s fertility. Rent was due in four instalments on the 6th of July, October, January, and April.
The 1881 census recorded Dickenson still at Woodend Farm, but David White, a shepherd, and his family were living at Piggery. Perhaps Dickenson was running all three farms.
Tenants were not allowed to convert grassland to tillage without written permission and a charge of £20 per acre. They were also required to pay extra rent for any drainage work undertaken by the landlord, which, one assumes, was always deemed to “improve yields.” They were forbidden from growing two successive white corn crops on the same land or taking more than two crops of any kind without a fallow period. Potato-growing was kept to a strict two-acre limit. On top of this, at least 15 acres had to be properly tilled, cleansed, and fallowed, with all noxious weeds eradicated. Farming, it turns out, was not the free and unregulated occupation some might imagine. Still, this was a clear demonstration of crop rotation, a system refined during the Agricultural Revolution into the well-known four-fold model.
The lease also imposed strict rules on manure management. The tenant was required to spread “not less than Twenty Tons of well burnt Lime and Twenty Tons of good Town Manure” on the land each year. “Town Manure” was a polite term for night soil—the waste collected from the earth closets of nearby villages and towns, transported by cart or rail and liberally distributed across the fields. Furthermore, all manure produced on the farm had to remain there and be spread as directed.
Not everyone thought these lease conditions sensible. In 1844, the Stokesley Advertiser suggested that instead of, to use the modern term, micromanaging crop rotation, landlords would do better to regulate the number of livestock kept on a farm. A well-stocked farm with properly cared-for animals and no sale of straw or manure would naturally improve, the article argued. The suggested penalty for non-compliance was, predictably, a fine.
As moorland farmers, tenants also ran hefted flocks of sheep. If a tenant left the farm, he was required to leave behind up to 200 moor sheep in “the usual and fair proportions of Ewes, Wethers and young Sheep, all in a sound and healthy condition.”
And as if all this were not enough, the tenant at Percy Rigg had to provide “One Day’s Team Work per annum with 2 Horses and a Wagon, free from any charge, for the use of the Lessor, when and where he or his Agent shall direct.” A reminder, should one be needed, of who was really in charge.
Given that whinstone quarrying was already taking place in Kildale and that ironstone mining had begun in the Eston Hills in 1847 and Rosedale in 1856—enriching certain landowners—the Kildale Estate was careful to protect its own interests. The lease explicitly excluded mineral rights and gave the landlord the right to seize any part of the farm needed for a railway or tramway, public or private. If this happened, the tenant would be compensated, which no doubt made the prospect far more palatable.
Leave a Reply