Grain and Chaff from an English Manor

by Arthur Herbert Savory

We hear the blessed word "reconstruction" on every side, but the only official propositions for the permanent establishment of agricultural prosperity that I have heard are utterly inadequate. It is ridiculous to suppose that a few thousand acres of special crops, like tobacco, for instance, only possible in favoured spots, can in any way compensate for the loss of millions of acres of arable land under rotations of corn and green crops. Under present conditions nothing is more certain than the abandonment of arable land as such; and it is folly to talk of novel systems of transport for a dwindling output, or of building labourers' cottages at an unjustifiable cost, which are never likely to be wanted by a dying industry.

Among my experiences of abnormal weather, I have a note of a remarkable summer flood on July 21, 1875, when my hay was lying in the meadows beside the brooks, and had to be removed to higher ground in pouring rain to prevent its disappearance with the current. On the following day, July 22, the highest flood since 1845 occurred at Evesham.

October 14, 1877, was memorable for the most terrific south-west gale that happened in all the years I passed at Aldington; thirteen trees, mostly old apple trees and elms, were blown down, including the splendid veteran "Chate boy" pear tree at Blackminster, an exceedingly sad and irreparable loss. The gale blew hardest in special tracks, the course of which could be followed by the destruction of trees and branches in distinct lanes, cut through woods and plantations.

The winter of 1880-1881 was very severe, the mean temperature of January, 1881, being 27.8 degrees F., the coldest January since 1820. Ten years later, 1890-1891, another very prolonged winter occurred: the frost began on the 6th of December, and, with scarcely a break, continued till well into February. The feature of this frost was the fine settled weather, and the warmth of the midday sun in the brilliant air, when skaters could sit on the river banks and enjoy their rest and lunch in its rays. I took my elder daughter back to school at Richmond at the end of January, and in London we saw the Thames choked by huge hummocks of ice, on which people were crossing the river. An ox was roasted whole on the Avon at Evesham, and, when the frost broke up, the ice on our millpond was 17 inches thick.

Another great frost happened in 1894-1895, beginning late in December, and lasting till the end of February, with a single intervening week of thaw; and in March the ground, in places, was too hard to plough. It was the only time that I was completely at a loss to find work for my men; all the carting was finished in the early days of the frost, and all the thrashing possible followed; ploughing and all working of the land, or draining, were impracticable. The men, seeing that there would be no employment for them until the frost broke up, told me that if they might get what wood they could from fallen trees in the brook, and if I would lend them horses and carts to get it home, they would be glad to work in that way for themselves for a time. Just as they had cleared both brooks from end to end of the farm which occupied them about ten days, the thaw came and I was able to find them plenty to do.

We suffered very little from droughts at Aldington, the land was naturally so retentive of moisture, but 1893 was a dry year, not easily forgotten; no rain fell from early in March to July 13; the hay crop was the lightest in remembrance, and straw was so short and scarce that the hay-ricks of the following year, 1894, had to go unthatched until the harvest of that year provided the necessary straw.

The spring of 1895 was remarkable for a plague of the caterpillars of the winter-moth, due to the destruction of insect-eating birds by the great frost; the caterpillars devoured the young leaves of the plum-trees, so that whole orchards were completely stripped. The balance between insectivorous birds and caterpillar life was destroyed for a time, and the caterpillars conquered the plum-trees. In 1917, during the persistent north-east blasts of February, March, and part of April, the destruction of birds was terrible; all the tit tribe suffered greatly, and the charming little golden-crested wren, which here in the Forest was quite common, has scarcely been seen since. Caterpillars again were a plague in my apple trees that spring, but were not really destructive, and in the autumn the apples escaped their usual punishment from the birds and wasps. Tits are often very troublesome; they peck holes in the fruit, apparently in search of the larvae of the codlin moth, leaving an opening for wasps and flies. I find the berries of the laurel, which is a species of cherry, very attractive to blackbirds, and as long as there are any left they seem to prefer them to the apples. In 1895 cuckoos came to the rescue of my young plum orchard; there were dozens of them at work on the nine acres at once, and they must have cleared away an immense number of the grubs.

The most remarkable season we have had since I left Aldington was the great drought of 1911. There was no rain here worth mention from June 22, the Coronation of King George V., until August 30, and the pastures on this thin land were burnt up. On August 30 we had some friends for tennis, and we had not been playing long before a mighty cloud-burst occurred; the rain fell in torrents. "It didn't stop to rain, it tumbled down," as my men used to say, and in about half an hour the lawn was a sheet of water, the ground being so hard, that it could not soak away. It was all over in an hour, and a neighbour with a rain-gauge registered 0.66 of an inch of rain, equal to 66 tons on an acre, or 330 tons on my five acres.

One of my ambitions has always been to see a Will-o'-the-wisp, and I am still hoping; but that hot summer, had I known it at the time, they were quite common within an easy walk of my house in the New Forest. There was some correspondence on the subject in The Observer, and the following is extracted from one of the letters:

"As none of your correspondents seem to be aware of a comparatively recent instance, I write to say that there were enough indubitable Will-o'-the-wisps to convince the most incredulous during the extremely hot weather of July, 1911.