Crewood Hall & Cheshire Farming
caution !! this is an initial draft ...
these notes are on my server for safe keeping !!
In 1930 Crewood
Hall Farm near Crowton on the banks of the river Weaver was sold by the Leycester family to Mr Joseph Edgar Shaw: 266 acres for £7,900. This
was the first
time the estate had been sold for money after 650 years of Gerard and
Leycester ownership ... a 'giveaway', £7,900 was the farm's lowest
real value ever ... it followed a proud record of continuous innovative
success with the breeding of cows and the production of Cheshire cheese. So
what
happened to tarnish this jewel in Cheshire's agricultural crown?
Ormerod's history of Cheshire describes how, immediately after the conquest, the lands around Kingsley were quite exceptionally reserved for the old Saxon possessor, a guy called Dunning ... this was a solitary example of continuity in the Eddisbury Hundred. Perhaps this encouraged a 'can do' independent spirit which, some say, persists to the present day? Whatever the reason for this initial aberration the right was only enjoyed for a very short period before the Earl of Chester bestowed the lands to the ancestors of the Norman Baron Richard de Kingsley, Chief Forester of Delamere. The lands embraced Peel, Catton, Crewood & Kingsley and included the significant responsibilities for the Delamere Forest playground. The Royal Hunting pursuits were prestigious, the forest was renowned for sport & deer throughout the kingdom.
In the 13th century the irrepressible Anglo Saxon influence was re-established when William Gerard married Emma one Richard's five daughters. In this way the Gerard family genes were introduced into Kingsley. The Gerard name was associated with 'spear carrying' and was recorded in the Domesday Book. The Fitzgerrards of Bryn boasted an ancient ancestry going back to the times of Alfred the Great.
The Gerards originally resided at Catton Hall but after purchasing the Lancelyn Estate from Richard's second daughter, Agnes, they moved to Crewood Hall on higher ground.
Sir Alan Waterworth has told the story of the Gerards who farmed the rich lands of Kingsley for around four centuries, and where they pursued a relatively modest existence as minor gentry. But during this period, in 1604, a man of significance appeared, Gilbert Gerard of Crewood (1604-73). Gilbert was destined to play an interesting role in the religious, military and political developments of the 17th century.
When Gilbert died in 1673 the Gerard's let the farm of the first time, the tenant was John Williamson, a Quaker. This was a good deal; the traditional Quaker culture was hard work and innovation ... and it showed.
When Crewood Hall passed by marriage to the Leycester family in 1727 it was in good nick, producing scrumptious Cheshire cheese.
In 1930 when it was purchased by Joseph Edgar Shaw, a farmer from South Cheshire, the farm was struggling and on his death was sold to Sir Ernest Stacey, a Liverpool stockbroker. Then, Timothy Crook, a Kelsall farmer took over.
In 1966 Crewood Hall passed to Sir Alan who wrote his admirable history of Crewood in 1975.
But ownership titles tells us little about the economic activities on the land ... what was happening at the grass roots?
Crewood, like most of Cheshire was originally forest. And forests persisted longer than elsewhere in this neck of the woods because of the priorities of the the Royal hunting pursuits centred around neighbouring Delamere.
Eventually population pressures and the heavy plough made the clays of Crewood attractive for farmers ... and there was a convenient ford across the Weaver at Pickerings. For centuries subsistence farming was the norm with some surpluses available for the local market.
Then British farming became the marvel of world, and from 1688 England became the granary of Europe ... but grain was not for everyone, Cheshire and Crewood Hall led the way in cow husbandry.
Crewood was a superb example of innovative farming, no farm history better illustrated the success of the Cheshire agricultural revolution -
selective breeding
enclosures, drainage & recovery of wastes
new cropping systems, turnips, clover, rotation, wheat & barley and manures
cheese making technology & mechanisation
The productivity of the farm just got better and better - in 1750 the population working the land was 5.7 million, in 1850 a population 16.6 million but included only 22% in farming ... 3.6 million.
The country wide success of the agricultural revolution in England was capped by a pinnacle of technological innovation on the Cheshire farms ... the mass production of cheese for the London market and the Navy. Charles Foster suggested -
'In 1808, the whole of Cheshire was organised for cheese production', '11,500 tons were made in the county, but at least as much was made in the surrounding counties and identified as Cheshire', 'Stilton and Cheddar cheeses also reached London in the 18th century but only in small quantities, these cheeses were so scarce that even noblemen complained they could not get one' ...
Cheshire was ahead of the game - farmers, warehousemen, factors, mongers, shippers & grocers had solved the transport & logistics problems and larger herds produced larger cheeses once the skewering and pressing technology had been developed ... the delectable 60lb Cheshire cheeses were the envy of the world ...
The industrial revolution in the cities would never have happened without the agricultural revolution on the Cheshire farms ... innovative agricultural surpluses were essential to feed the multiplying mouths in the cities ... this was a cooperative effort with wealth creating synergies ... Cheshire cheese was sold and Wedgewood's fine porcelain, Darby's pot & pans and Arkwright's cottons were purchased in the exchange markets everywhere ...
So why in 1930 was farming on its uppers?
Wise men said there would never be a living to be made again from farming in this country, farms up and down the country were lying idle for want of a tenant, there were onerous effects of taxation and dilapidated buildings & equipment reflected the low incomes ... and there was a world wide depression as corn prices fell ... farmers were distraught ...
Crewood only survived because Joseph Shaw and successors turned the farm into a factory ... larger herds, piped water, milking parlours, mechanisation and, after progress with disease control in large flocks, 25,000 Crewood Capons ... the innovations continued but what a struggle ...
The london times reported as early as December 1906 the ongoing decline in the agricultural population. Two 'causes' were identified. Firstly diminished demand for labour from cost cutting when farmers were confronted by lower produce prices. This had resulted in less arable farming with the plough and more land put down to grass and more labour saving mechanisation. Secondly there had been a reduction in supply of agricultural labour as more folk moved to the higher paid jobs in manufacturing which provided for growing aspirations for comforts and accommodation. 'Why should young enterprising men persevere in low paid farm work'? The decline was reported as a 'serious economic and social fact'. There was a call for subsidies and adaptation to new circumstances by moving to higher value fruit & vegetables and more poultry and dairy farming ... the so called 'other industries of a subsidiary character' ...
A little later on January 6th 1907 the new york times also reported on 'the deplorable state into which British agriculture had fallen'. 'No other country shows so marked a falling off' ...
What on earth was going on? ... no one seemed to think that the changes should be celebrated as an indication of economic success and progress ... but no one had a clue ... folk didn't seem to understand ... what was David Ricardo mumbling about, who was David Ricardo ... ?
Evolutionary Economics & Comparative Advantage @ Crewood Hall.
Some Christian business men, believed in a God who was not a control freak, and saw no conflicts whatsoever between God, markets & evolution, all were an inseparable whole.
The economic history of Crewood Hall & Cheshire agriculture could perhaps best be understood as a 'complex adaptive system' with intractable messes everywhere. Nobody got to live in a perfect world, the only hope was that with hard work, honesty & thrift a better alternative could be discovered.
Hard work, honesty & thrift changed change ... as it always had done. Innovative technologies first sparked an agricultural revolution producing product surpluses which then sustained an industrial revolution which then accumulated capital to fund a financial services revolution ... this sequence was powered by new ways of organising production technology; new ways which were not planned but discovered, most notably, in the manufactories of joint stock companies & in the diversity of free markets where people were free to choose for themselves ...
Hard thinking propelled some folk along a very personal road to epiphany from empathy, sympathy, compassion to love. But incredible complexity hurt the brain and polarised viewpoints ... positions which could seldom be resolved by Bishops, Princes, Generals nor bureaucratic majorities ... things were just too darned complex.
It was the complex, changing, conflicting nature of companies, markets & economics that polarised viewpoints -
A. 'Well done the joint stock company for creating wealth BUT it became clear to
me that the
market alone cannot bring love as markets are vulnerable to greed &
indifference to the poor, for example, Britain’s industrial wealth was built
on the poor of Lancashire'.
Perhaps this was the 'more love please' viewpoint of the bishops, reflecting the problem of selfishness & exploitation
by parasites & predators?
B. 'Well done the joint stock company for creating wealth YES it became clear to
me that the
market cannot function without love and markets are immune from greed and
inclusive of the poor, for example, Britain’s industrial wealth was built by
the poor of Lancashire'.
Perhaps this was the 'less selfishness please' viewpoint of the
businessmen, reflecting the
benefits of cooperation &
synergies and immunity from parasites & predators?
One of the many possible routes to epiphany for the businessmen -
1. Wealth Creation was an evolutionarily stable survival strategy. Positive sum deals involved cooperative synergies, 2+2=5, and diversity & choice provided some immunity from inevitable parasites & predators.
Cooperative synergies and mutual benefits were involved ... Cheshire cheese from Crewood didn't get to London by dictate or gunpoint ... customers in the cities needed nourishing protein and Cheshire farmers wanted to exchange their surpluses for Wedgewood porcelain, Darby pots and Arkright cottons ... the industrial revolution was built on win win deals!
Immunity from iterative scams, cons, adulteration, price gouging & all manner of exploitations came from diversity & choice; if Cheshire cheese was not up to the mark there was a rich diversity of alternatives, Cheddar, Wensleydale, Caerphilly, Double Gloucester, Stilton, Red Leicester, all eager for satisfied customers. Folk simply voted with their feet (and their shillings), 'caveat emptor' was the behavioural norm, 'would you buy a second hand car from that man'?
The whole complex complexity was further complicated because nobody knew in advance -
which deals produced the most synergies
which deals went bankrupt as the cookie crumbled and
which deals involved parasites & predators
... it was all a woven web of inspired guesses.
2. Moral Sentiments underpinned the farmers markets as agricultural surpluses were traded. Innovative technological 'know how' from specialisation & scale produced the surpluses and the necessary exchange of specialised products from division of labour required cooperation & trust.
Wealth creating Cheshire cheese production required specialisation (no way could scrumptious cheese be made without the dairy & cheese farming technology?), specialisation required trade exchange (no point in specialised manufacturing of scrumptious cheese if it couldn't be traded for other goodies?), exchange in the markets required confidence & trust (no point in doing deals with a con man?).
The folk at Crewood Hall got on with the job while others became perplexed & envious. The giant thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment in Edinburgh mulled over the events south of the border and it was David Hulme's mate, Adam Smith, who explained the mechanisms of economic growth convincingly -
1759 'Theory of Moral Sentiments' - no trust, no cooperation = no deals !
1776 'Wealth of Nations' - no deals = no synergy, no wealth creation !
... Adam Smith was on the ball ... but his explanatory insights were rather counterintuitive -
sympathy, an innate unconscious emotional desire, 'an interest in the fortunes of others' led to social deals and a 'propensity to truck, barter & exchange', folk were social animals. (and an exchange of love was the most productive deal of all, perhaps this was God's work!)
This was not a fiendish plan, the Frodsham & London markets for Crewood cheese were happily bustling ...
freedom within the law, no one, not one, was free to harm others. The custom & practice of English Common Law worked well with social interactions and was widely acceptable as an alternative to fighting.
This was not laissez faire where selfish greed was a behavioural norm; hard work, honesty & thrift were involved in the run away success of Crewood Hall ...
technological 'know how', wealth was marketable goods & services and value was determined in free exchange markets.
This was not 'mercantilism' where wealth was accumulated gold acquired from others (stolen from the Spanish or expropriated by the kings!) Crewood Hall produced nourishing Cheshire cheese which commanded a high price in London markets ...
the invisible hand of supply & demand was 'not part of intention'. Markets & trade were free because distorted prices always resulted in expensive gluts or queues.
Rigged prices didn't clear markets. 'Real' prices & 'real' wages at Crewood Hall depended only on the quantity & quality of goods & services produced ...
3. Credit & Usury, 'money' (or 'credit') supercharged the deals in the companies & the markets but often participation was restricted; 'those with the promising ideas had no money, and those with money had no promising ideas' and usury was a sin.
Money was trust & confidence, meaningless without Adam Smith's moral sentiments; and money really helped the deals as it possessed miraculous properties as a unit of account, a store of wealth & a medium of exchange.
Usury was confirmed as a sin in The Act of Usury 1571, but 53 years later in 1624 the Bishops changed their minds? The question of money being lent at 'interest' for a 'guaranteed' return was one of the oldest moral & economic problems in Western Civilization. The English Parliament in 1624 argued that the rate of interest was important to the national economic well being. The issue of usury as a sin was left to the conscience of the lender. Slowly lending at interest with collateral became a beneficial norm, as did banking ... 'those with the money had no ideas and those with the ideas had no money' ... opportunities for synergy were everywhere.
But evolution never stood still and as the industrial revolution began to mature, triumph turned to tragedy ...
4. Comparative Advantage, different people, at different times, in different places have different skills & different 'know how' to ply their trades & contributions. Wealth creation was optimised when each person (and each country) specialised and then traded their contribution. Specialising in goods & services where there was a comparative advantage (not a absolute advantage) provided opportunities for everyone because everybody was different.
In 1817 David Ricardo, perhaps fruitlessly, tried to explain the difficult concept of comparative advantage, ‘a country possessing very considerable advantages in machinery and skill, and which may therefore be enabled to manufacture commodities with much less labour than her neighbours, may in return for such commodities, import a portion of the corn required for its consumption; even if its land were more fertile and corn could be grown with less labour than in the country from which it was imported’.
In 1836 James Wheeler, amongst many, had another go at explaining what was going on. The changes associated with the industrial revolution produced dramatic increases in national wealth. But an inevitable consequence of market choices was log normal distribution in incomes. Crewood Hall was a terrible casualty in Cheshire ... and later in rural India, Mahatma Ghandi built a national movement out of the plight of the rural cotton workers when confronted with imports from Manchester.
In the 19th century comparative advantage slowly ebbed away from Cheshire farming as the new industrial revolution focused innovative attention on mass production of high value manufactured products. The old innovations; selective breeding, enclosures, drainage & recovery of wastes, new cropping systems, turnips, clover, rotation, wheat & barley and manures, and even cheese making technology & mechanisation, were now old hat, everyone was in on the act ...
The Great Agricultural Depression of the last quarter of the 19th century was a consequence of the dramatic rise of real wages in the cities which were determined by the growing value of production ... but at the same time the price of corn was falling as determined by supply & demand in world markets and the strength of the pound sterling.
The know how of skilled English farmers had emigrated to the Empire where real wages were lower and agricultural profits higher ... corn was now produced in the new world ... and Irish cattle were arriving in Liverpool in droves ... how else could those overseas afford to buy English manufactured output?
Farm employment fell as productivity rose. Local production declined as imports rose ... in the end folk just found there were more better paid jobs in the cities ... so they enrolled. The industrial revolution required higher paid jobs in the factories ... otherwise folk would have stayed put in farming.
Of course it was the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1848 that exposed the farmers to falling prices but for sure, the customers everywhere loved it, their high wages went so much further!
The English success in the mass production of high value manufactured products sold overseas required a decline in local agriculture. A quid pro quo ...
In spite of the free trade breakthrough, the powers that be were always tempted to respond to powerful interest group pressure by protectionism and price fixing; tariffs, import & exchange rate controls and subsidies. All were desperate attempts too halt the inevitable decline of farm incomes as manufacturing incomes rose. Rigging the market was always problematic because distorted prices & regulation always produced expensive gluts & queues, costs and more costs ... who was going to pay? ... how were the books to be balanced?
It appeared England 'won' all the free trade legislative battles against the East India Company's monopoly in 1813, against Napoleon's 'Continental System' in 1815, and against the Corn Laws in 1848 ... but it seemed the battle of viewpoints still raged on as restraint of trade reappeared at every opportunity and state monopolies thrived ...
The decline in agriculture and cheese making at Crewood Hall provided salutary lessons but tragically the same lessons had to be painfully relearned as the decline in manufacturing during the 20th century energised new vested interests and confrontations with the new comparative advantage in financial services ... the old Luddites smashed machines, the new Luddites screwed the banks ... perhaps the problem was not with the machines nor the banks, perhaps the problem was with the parasites & predators?
In 1984 Robert Axelrod wrote, 'The Evolution of Co-operation', and described evolutionary 'tit for tat' strategies for the Prisoner's Dilemma game. Iterative market deals secured cooperative synergies and retaliation secured immunity from treachery.
In 1989 Norman Jones wrote, 'God and the Money Lenders' and suggested credit was of great benefit to national economic well being.
In 1998 an Open University tutorial on Economic Behaviour emphasised that Adam Smith was a moral philosopher who wrote first about moral sentiments in 1759, an essential prerequisite for the wealth creating markets he expounded in 1776. Adam Smith was a professor at the ancient university of Glasgow founded in 1451; this was my university so maybe I'm biased?
'Kingsley - the Story of a Cheshire Village' by W A Gibson & A W Waterworth, 1975.
Any corrections and additional information gratefully received contact john p birchall