Page:The English Peasant.djvu/80

 II.

us see what the Parliamentary reports, from which we have already quoted, have to say about the dwellings of rural labourers in the Eastern Counties. We will select two as respectively types of the evils complained of—Lincolnshire, for the insufficient quantity; Norfolk, for the miserable quality of its cottages.

Lincolnshire is comparatively a new country. Before this century the greater part of the lowlands was given up to the wild goose and the bittern. Even the heights were only partially cultivated. There was a large tract of land, twenty miles north and twenty miles south of Lincoln, called the Heath, a dreary waste, so vast and featureless that it was thought necessary in 1751 to erect upon it a sort of land lighthouse. The result of this state of things was that the villages were built on the high roads, while the parishes extended for miles into the rear, composed of wild moor or fen according to the district. In our day everything is changed, and the whole country brought under cultivation. Dunston Pillar, a monument of former desolation, now stands surrounded by field after field of waving grain, or of turnips set in matchless order, upon which thousands of long-woolled sheep may be seen in winter-time feeding in their netted folds. Above the neatly-clipped hedgerows rise white farm buildings, surrounded by clusters of stacks. But where are the cottages? Everything has been provided for but the human machine, by whose labour all this wonderful change has been wrought. He must find his lodging miles away from the scene of his daily toil.

The report of 1867 says concerning the Heath district—"Two lines of villages, from four to seven miles apart, form its eastern and western boundaries, and between them there is not only an absence of villages, but almost of cottages too. The main feature of this district is that the labourers are all congregated into the larger towns." The report of 1864, speaking of North Lincolnshire, says there are "people, women as well as men, who take an hour's walk twice a day, starting in the dark and returning in the dark, to obtain the privilege of selling a day's hard work for