Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 1 (2006), pp. 79–92

This article continues the examination of women's work in the early nineteenth century drawing on two detailed logbooks kept on the estate of the Dixon family of Holton Hall, Lincolnshire, 1801-17. Some of the women working can be identified as the wives of labourers working on the estate. Others were girls, including the daughters of the same labourers. Female labour seems to have been drawn on most heavily in the first years of the century and diminished thereafter although later evidence is offered to show the practice continuing even in mid-century. Women were used most heavily in weeding, hay making and harvest work: there were occasions when they were employed in heavy work such as dung-spreading. 

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