Agr Hist Rev 45 (2)

The authors estimate nutrient balances for a manorial demesne, to determine whether the nutrient status of the soil was declining in the century before the Black Death. They calculate the losses of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in the produce during 1320--1340, using information from the demesne accounts. The argue that main inputs of phosphorus and potassium would be from weathering of rock; these would probably have been enough to balance the losses of potassium but not of phosphorus. Potential inputs and non-produce losses of nitrogen are so large that the authors are unable to say whether the demesne was in balance for nitrogen. The paper thus points to phosphorus as the key element likely to have led to falling soil fertility at this time.

On the debate surrounding the survival of the small owner/occupier in the nineteenth-century countryside, seen through the study of a single parish. Within the context of a livestock-dominated economy, open-field tenants of Great Oakley had access to a number of enclosed grazing pastures, together with extensive common grazing in the forest of Rockingham, the relative importance of which is discussed. Following enclosure in 1784 and 1829 there was some dislocation among the cottager population, yet there remained available parcels of land for the smaller occupiers. Whereas there was a tendency for smaller freeholds to be purchased by large landowners before enclosure, this was not a prelude to dispossession, since many of those selling held rented land in adjacent parishes. The smaller occupier contributed little to the national economy, but remained significant at the local level from both a commercial and a social standpoint.