Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/752

 A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK The woods of Suffolk alone show any appreciable decrease in 1798 on the valuation of former surveys^": there was no longer any scarcity of timber as in the preceding century,and the ship-building industry had declined. There is some direct evidence that improved agriculture brought about a shifting of population. Between 1770 and 1783 the population of Hawstead increased by one-fifth, the farmers employed double the num- ber of hands, and bestowed on the land double the former amount of cultivation."" If the agrarian history of Suffolk shows it in the i6th century in the forefront of the agricultural counties of England owing to the numbers of its inclosures, in the 17th century through its growing trade with London in corn and dairy-produce, in the i8th for the practice of scientific farming, to the 1 9th belongs characteristically the growth of its most important modern industry, the manufacture of agricultural implements and milling machinery. Already in Arthur Young's day much fertility in inventions of this kind had been shown : he mentions numerous experimental drills and ploughs which had been employed in various parts of the county, and a machine called the Bear for cleansing river-bottoms.'" The detailed history of the growth of the industry belongs elsewhere."'' The reigns of Elizabeth and James I, with their comparative security and growing prosperity, probably represent the golden age as regards the life of the Suffolk gentry : the evil days of the Civil War had not yet fallen on them : the attractions of London had not given rise to the complaint of a later date that Suffolk reaped no benefit of the revenues drawn from her soil."' Reyce writes of the great hospitality and neighbourliness, of the 'frequent interlacing in marriage ' of the county families, ' a practice much used at this day,' also of their improvidence and lack of foresight."* ' The multi- plicity of curious buildings ' strikes him, a great contrast to the low houses, thick stoiie walls, small windows, and round hearth with a hole in the roof to carry off the smoke, which the insecurity of life and property had formerly rendered necessary. The Suffolk houses of his day, three or four stories high, had thin walls of brick, stone, or timber, large light windows, square lofty rooms, many small chimneys, roofs ' square and so slender that they are enforced often to repair'"" — houses many of which at the present time are in the occupation of tenant-farmers."' The scarcity of timber"^ (in part owing to the custom which now prevailed of using nothing but oak in house-building "') obliged them to be ' spare of stuff,' and ' that workman that can do his work with most beauty and least charge (albeit not so strong) he is most required.' "' People began to set store by the nature of the soil, the healthiness of the situation, the beauty of the prospect : all these things have a definite market value in the many descriptions of property in Suffolk which belong to this period. Many rich "' Young, op. cit. 47. "* CuUum, op. cit. 168. '" Young, op. cit. 31. "' See V.C.H. Suff. ii, 281 et seq. '" Young, jlpf. to Gen. Surv. of Agric. (1794), 85. "* Breviary, 60. '« Ibid. 50. "• Cf. Suckling, Hist, of Suff. ii, 222. '" Reyce, Breviary, 33. "° Harrison, Descr. of Engl. (ed. Withington), 197. "* Rejrce, Breviary, 50. 67a