Agricultural History Review, Volume 56 Part 2 (2008), p. 230

Farmers’ diaries take a variety of forms. At their simplest they are kept intermittently and consist of short notes about family, weather and prices, with an occasional aside about local events of more than usual importance. More elaborate journals are written up regularly, often with an entry for each day which may sometimes occupy several pages of manuscript. Published editions of farm diaries usually begin with an introduction containing substantial information about the diaries and their author, the area in which the diarist was farming and something about the historical significance of the diary. The farming journal of Randall Burroughs (1794–99) edited by Susanna Wade Martins and Tom Williamson and published by the Norfolk Records Society provides an excellent example.

The publication of Brewis’ diary follows none of the conventions. The book under review consists of extracts from fifteen diaries kept by William Brewis, a tenant farmer at Mitford in Northumberland, between 1833 and 1850 (the volumes for 1835 and 1836 appear not to have survived). An illustration of two pages of the diary, included in the book, demonstrates that the diary was written in copies of the annually issued Newcastle memorandum book and register of the northern counties, a local almanac and diary. The diaries are now in the Special Collections section of the Robinson Library at Newcastle University. Extracts had previously been separately transcribed by two scholars, Joan Foster and Dr Michael Smith, who drew the current editor’s attention to the diary. It is their extracts which, as she explains in the introduction, she has edited for publication. One consequence of this, as the illustrations show, is that the stated editorial convention of retaining original spelling and grammar has not been followed. A second is that no effort seems to have been made to provide any of the usual information about the diarist or his farming background. The short paragraph about him in the introduction is culled from the extracts and is only supplemented by the inclusion of a family tree and an epitaph given at the end of the book.

Much that might be useful to many historians has been lost by this process. Brewis was a tenant of the Mitford family whose estate covered several thousand acres in the neighbourhood of Morpeth, one of the two most important towns in Northumberland at that time and the location of an important livestock market. The farms that he tenanted were situated at Throphill on the north bank of the river Wansbeck approximately three miles west of Morpeth. Although the book contains illustrations of maps made of both farms in 1839 for the estate, no information about them is taken from the accompanying schedule of the acreage, rent or cropping systems. Similarly, no use has been made of other estate papers or of Tithe Commutation files. During the period covered by the diaries, two important articles on agriculture in Northumberland appeared in The Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. John Gray of Dilston’s was published in 1840 and William Colbeck’s in 1847. Both were noted authorities on farming in the county and provide important contextual information which apparently escaped the attention of the editor.

The publisher states that the ‘diaries give the reader a fascinating insight into farming, markets and fairs, weather, crops and livestock, sport, horses and hounds etc’, while what is really presented are randomly selected vignettes for the entertainment of a general reader. The thorough analysis of the work of one local farmer that would have been of considerable use to local and agricultural historians remains a desideratum.