Agricultural History Review, Volume 65 Part 1 (2017), p. 155

This is the second parish history published by the recently established Victoria History of Hampshire group as part of the Victoria County History Shorts series, the first having been Mapledurwell, published in 2012. The book addresses the economic, social and religious lives of both the lords of the manor and the ordinary people of Steventon, which is also famous as the birthplace of the author Jane Austen who lived there for 25 years. Her depictions of rural society and the influence of the village on her writings are covered within the social history chapter.

The structure of this book is unsurprising coming from the VCH stable as it does. After an introduction to the parish, landscape and settlement, the topics of manors, economic history, social history, local government and religious history are covered. Written in the usual VCH narrative style, it presents the facts in a continuous torrent, albeit chronologically arranged. The detailed description of farming has been enhanced by the availability of the records of the Knight family who were lords of the manor during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These draw on a range of sources from the National Archives and the Hampshire Record Office.

Steventon lies on the chalklands of Hampshire and has a rich history, which provides examples of agricultural improvement and change. The importance of sheep in medieval times is demonstrated by an Inquisition Post Mortem of 1277 which recorded the lord of the manor possessing downland pastures for 300 sheep: further, in 1409, a member of the local gentry died leaving 417 sheep in Steventon. A survey of 1512 showed that some of the parish was already enclosed, but named the nine surviving open fields along with the sheep down.

The book records conflict in the parish in the 1590s and early 1600s arising from the estate management practices of the lord of the manor. Records of litigation from the Courts of Chancery and the Star Chamber have been used to illustrate how he was accused of stealing land, crops and animals from his tenants, until he was forcibly removed by his son, supported by the local tenants. A list of his possessions included £500-worth of grain, although it is not possible to determine how much had been misappropriated.

Later in the seventeenth century, butter, cheese and bacon were being produced and, whilst wheat and barley continued to be important, fodder crops of vetches, peas, oats and hay were also grown. In 1707, the manor became part of the Knight estate: the land was mainly enclosed, with only 236 acres found in three open fields: these were converted into part of a new leasehold farm in 1741. This was part of the restructuring of agricultural practices in the parish by the absentee Knight landlords: the purchase of other smaller estates, use of lease covenants and the management of the woods all added to change in the parish. Strict covenants in the farming leases specified that common land was to be ploughed up and spread with lime, that dung was to be used in good husbandry style and that all hay, straw and fodder were to be used on the land.

The records of the Knight estate provide much more detail about agricultural practices at the time. A report from 1839 shows that there was very poor husbandry with crops ‘poorish in quality, moderate in quantity’: the land was described as ‘susceptible of vast improvement’. In 1855, Edward Knight sold the estate he had inherited three years earlier to the second duke of Wellington but this had little impact on the parish. Property repairs were part-funded by Wellington and the woods were managed, but all was not well.

When Henry Harris bought the estate in 1877, he became the first resident landowner for 240 years. The estate underwent a programme of modernization: a new manor house and houses for estate workers were built, along with a new farmhouse and large brick barns for Bassetts Farm. Moving forward to the twentieth century, the estate changed hands several times: the main land uses were increasingly grazing and fodder crops as the cattle industry developed and cattle replaced sheep as the main livestock. By 1926, Bassetts Farm could house 70 cows and from 1939 specialized in Friesian cattle, which were later crossed with Holsteins.

The book is a high-quality production, marred only by three minor errors which this reader found: the use of ‘principle’ instead of ‘principal’ (p. 30), a double ‘had’ (p. 72) and an attempt to make 42, 2 and 6 add up to 51 (p. 48)! Overall, this is a very readable account of an agricultural parish in the south of England.