Animal husbandry in Lowestoft – 17th & 18th Century

Cattle

The amount of grassland of one kind or another revealed in the 1618 Manor Roll (about 170 acres), when compared with that discernible in the 18thcentury Tithe Accounts (about sixty-five acres of permanent pasture, or meadow, and an annual average of twenty-eight acres of the sown variety) may appear to suggest that fewer cattle were being kept in the parish by 1700 than had been the case one hundred years before. Such a notion, however, does not take account of the improved feeding capacity provided by the cultivation of turnips and clover at some point during the 17th century – innovations which would have allowed increased numbers of animals to be kept all the year round.

Altogether, only thirty-five of the 507 survivingLowestoft wills (1560-1730) make reference to cattle, and a mere nine of these were made either by husbandmen or yeomen. The rest are documents appertaining to quite a wide cross-section of the population of craftsman status and above: merchants, brewers, tanners, shipwrights and tailors all being represented. Twenty-six of the wills date from before 1650. This is partly due to the varying survival rate of the documents, but the bias also reflects the local economy becoming less mixed in nature as maritime specialism grew stronger. A similar variety is to be found in the probate inventories where, out of thirteen documents which mention cattle of one kind or another, only four are the lists of goods belonging to husbandmen or yeomen. The other nine relate to two merchants, a goldsmith, a brewer and his widow, a mariner, a mason, a tailor and a carter.

Given the fact that beast-keeping by such people does not seem to have been a primary interest, it becomes difficult to ascertain the true extent of cattle-rearing as part of a specialist farming enterprise. The possession of a single cow, in evidence in some of the probate material, probably means that the owner had the animal to produce milk (and milk-products) for the household. However, there are also examples of people having no obvious connection with farming who had considerably more stock – a fact which almost certainly reflects the mixed nature of the local economy. William Barnard (shipwright) had nine cattle to bequeath in 1580 (whether for milk or meat is not stated), while four years later the will of James Myhell (merchant) reveals ownership of seven cows – which would seem to suggest capacity for substantial milk production. When Stephen Phillipp (schoolmaster) died in December 1605, he left his oldest son, John, all his cattle – though, as in the case of William Barnard, the type of animal is not divulged. The will of Robert Hawes (vicar) is more specific, however: he left the beef cattle in his possession to his wife, Alice, in August 1639.

As far as recognised farmers are concerned, there is a little information in probate material to show that cattle-rearing was carried on for the production of both meat and milk, but there is no firm indication as to how many men were involved at any one time and no mention of the number of animals they were keeping. Nor do the Tithe Accounts (Norfolk Record Office, PD 589/80)afford much data – apart from the last two years of the short incumbency of the Revd. James Smith (1702-1708), who had his parish clerk, John Blaque, draw up a list of the people in the parish who owned cows. This was to enable the tithe of lactage (payment made on milk and milk-products) due to the minister to be collected – a levy which Smith’s successor, John Tanner, did not proceed with when he became Vicar. It is easy to understand why because, when reading the remarks appended by Blaque to the numbers of cows owned by each person, it can be seen that there was considerable resistance towards paying the charge.

In 1707, thirty parishioners are listed as having a minimum of sixty-nine animals (one man has nothing entered against his name), while the following year twenty-nine are seen to have had eighty-six. Altogether, nineteen men and four women are named in each of the two years, with a further thirteen people who appear in one year or the other (seven in 1707 and six in 1708). The four women were all widows, one of them having been married to a husbandman. Of the seven people mentioned only in 1707, two were widows – of a merchant and a yeoman, respectively. Of the six referred to only in 1708, one was a woman – the wife or daughter of a butcher. No one is shown as having a large number of cows, and there are only two examples of people who had ten or more – a number placed at the lower end of commercial herds in the heavier, clay lands of East Anglia. Of the thirty-six people named, eight were primarily concerned with farming as their way of making a living. The rest were composed of merchants, brewers, innkeepers, butchers, mariners and fishermen, cordwainers, carpenters, blacksmiths, carters and labourers.

The response of the owners of cattle to the vicar’s attempts to collect his entitlement varied a great deal. Some of them agreed to pay what was due, while others said that they would call on him and discuss the matter. Then there were those who either said that they had only just acquired the stock (and were therefore trying to postpone payment) or that they had no animals at all. One of the men, Robert Press (fisherman), reminded the clergyman that the latter owed him for a horse journey he had undertaken, while another, Abraham Hawker (husbandman), said that he would pay the tithe due on field crops but would not part with anything for lactage. Finally, there was the response of Thomas Salter (mariner and Nonconformist), who had one animal only. He refused payment and challenged James Smith in the following manner: “Do your worst or what you will!”

With butchery being a notable service trade in town,cattle reared for slaughter must have been of some significance in the farming economy – though there is no means of arriving at the number of beasts kept. And even after a decline in the number of individual butchers from 1650 onwards, meat production for local needs and for the provisioning of sea-going vessels was still important. The Mewse family (who operated a substantial butchery business for at least five generations) remained influential and a number of the yeomen and more substantial husbandmen slaughtered livestock themselves. If, at any time, the supply of bullocks was not sufficient from within the parish itself, stock could have been brought in from the hinterland; but with turnips and clover obviously well established as field-crops before the end of the 17th century, there is a good chance that at least some of the fodder produced was used to stall-feed bullocks during the winter (the manure produced thereby being useful to fertilise arable land). There were at least three or four slaughter-houses in operation at any one time throughout the 17th century and the first half of the 18thand this, together with the fact that the town had two tanneries producing leather, suggests that substantial numbers of cattle were being killed for meat.

Pigs and sheep

In view of ordinances passed in the Lowestoft annual manorial leet court in 1585 and 1620 regarding the nuisance caused by pigs, it may seem surprising that there is only one reference to them in the surviving will material (Bartholomew Howard, yeoman, bequeathed one to his wife in May 1608). They were obviously kept on quite a large scale and they were not without monetary value, as some of the inventories show, but they do not seem to have been considered worthy of constituting individual bequests. This may have been due to their comparatively humble nature, for they were very much creatures of the back-yard and people kept them for producing bacon, ham and sausages for the house. The value for a mature hog ranged from about 8s during the early 17th century to £2 by the second decade of the 18th .

They do not seem to have been very important where full-time farming was concerned and, in the first thirty or so years covered by the parish Tithe Accounts (1698-1730), only four men are shown to have surrendered the proverbial “tithe pig” to the vicar. Payment had obviously been commuted to a cash payment at some stage and 2s per animal was the going rate. The two farmers who feature most prominently are William Utting and John Peach (both described as yeomen, though the latter was also a brewer), who seem to have kept the animals on a modest scale as part of their respective enterprises, each paying his dues on about three or four animals annually. It may seem strange that the probate inventory of Robert Lilley (April 1711), who farmed at Smithmarsh, shows his having six pigs, yet there is no reference to him in the Tithe Accounts. Though the omission may have been due to his having been resident in the parish for only about one year prior to his decease, from smallpox in March.

There is also the case of Samuel Munds (merchant), a life-long resident of the parish, whose inventory of March 1711 shows him to have owned pigs to the value of £7. Farming was part of his enterprise, yet he does not seem to have paid any tithe on pigs. And the same is true of John Durrant (brewer), whose inventory was drawn up in November 1715. There must have been various local arrangements whereby some of the payments due to the vicar were both negotiable and convertible. Thus, as far as the population as a whole is concerned, there does not seem to have been any attempt by the incumbent to levy tithe on all pigs kept in the parish, in the same way that James Smith hadtried to do with milk cattle.

Sheep seem to have been of minor importance in Lowestoft, being referred to only twice in the whole of the probate material. Thomas Dameron (merchant) left his wife, Isabell, all his sheep in November 1574, though no idea is given as to the number of animals he had, while Edward Sparrow (yeoman) left each of his godsons a ewe and each of his god-daughters a lamb in August 1609. It is likely that these particular animals were kept on Sparrow’s land in the parish of Somerleyton, because the only property he owned in Lowestoft consisted of a dwelling-house and an inn called The Spreadeagle – the latter located where the former Triangle Market canopies once stood. In addition to the scarcity of references to sheep in probate documents (the surviving inventories do not mention them at all), there is also scant mention of them in the manor court minutes, either as causers of nuisance or because their owners were running too many of them on the common greens.

The Tithe Accounts, too, contain few references. William Utting, the yeoman mentioned three paragraphs above, paid 3s on thirteen lambs in 1722, but that is the only time such payment is recorded. The only person who apparently kept sheep on any scale during the 18th century did not even live in Lowestoft. William Woodthorpe (yeoman) had his residence in the adjoining parish of Gunton, but he was tithed on the number of sheep which he pastured on the Lowestoft dole-lands. These were located in the north-western sector of the parish and abutted onto the boundary with Gunton. In 1723 and 1725, he paid the sum of 2s 6d, while in 1724 he settled his debt by giving the Revd. John Tanner a fat pig. It may appear surprising that a parish on the Suffolk coastal strip (which was largely a sheep-corn farming area) did not have sheep-rearing on any scale, but that is the situation which prevailed. Both sheep and pigs, however, were slaughtered commercially for meat and evidence of their remains (and of cattle, too) have been found on land to the south of Rant Score – a location where the Mewsefamily operated one of their butchery enterprises,owning premises at what is now Nos. 70-71, High Street.

Horses

While oxen were almost certainly used as draught animals during Late Medieval times, horses were the main means of pulling ploughs, wagons and carts in Lowestoft during the Early Modern period. The main animal employed was the Sorrel Horse, reddish brown in colour and lineal ancestor of the eponymous Suffolk Punch – which first emerged as a breed in its own right from a stallion belonging to Thomas Crisp of Ufford, which was foaled in the year 1768. There are a number of references to horses in both wills and inventories (including Sorrels), from which it is possible to infer their use in agriculture and in other trades and occupations. It is noticeable that, once yeomen and husbandman (and carters) have been allowed for, the possession of horses was concentrated in the wealthier levels of local society, especially among merchants and brewers. A number of animals, of varying breed and size, were used as personal mounts for local journeys and those made further afield and others to draw the light, two-wheeled carriages belonging to a handful of the most privileged families. They were probably fed on hay, clover and vetches, dross grain and bran, and there was ample grazing meadow available for them on the southern and western edges of town.

Poultry

There are no references in the will material to fowls of any kind, and only four in the inventories. In June 1591, Thomas Eache (cordwainer) had “certain poultry” in his yard, worth, 1s 8d, while in May 1606, Laurence Rooke (labourer) had two geese, a gander, ten goslings and a hen in his. The thirteen geese were valued at 6s 8d and the hen at 6d. In July 1610, John Gleason (the vicar) had a cockerel, six hens and three geese on his premises, but the fowls belonging to John Neale (husbandman) in April 1611 are simply described once again as “certain poultry”. In neither of the latter two cases is it possible to arrive at a value for the birds, because they were included with other types of livestock for the purposes of assessment.

There was probably considerably more poultry-keeping in the parish than probate documents suggest. Low value may well have been a possible cause for the lack of references in inventories generally and another consideration, in Lowestoft’s case, is the small number of farmers’ inventories which have survived (five, in all). Obviously, the name Goose Green for the piece of common immediately next to the town on its western edge (the St. Margaret’s Plain area of today)acknowledges the fact that geese were turned out to graze there, and it is interesting to note that an ordinance passed at the annual Leet Court of 1582 sought to prevent the townspeople from pasturing the birds on any other of the common greens – this, almost certainly being because they fouled whatever area they occupied with their droppings..

Among what may be termed the minority items recorded in the Tithe Accounts are two lists of people assessed for the payment of tithe on geese. The ledger is primarily concerned with payments due on crops and fishing catches, but other items appear periodically. There may have been another book for less important tithable products, which has not survived, with certain of these lesser objects being entered from time to time in the main accounts. Such practice was probably the result of chance or whim, but it is fortunate that it occurred – otherwise, a valuable (if limited) insight into certain aspects of the parish’s farming practice would have been lost.

The first list referred to above is dated 9 August 1711 and has the names of twelve people written down; the second is dated 17 September 1713 and has twenty names recorded. Both lists are in the handwriting of the parish clerk of the time, John Blaque, with additional comments appended by the vicar, John Tanner. A majority of the people were husbandmen, but a number of mariners and fishermen are detectable and one of them Abraham Page, owned the largest flock of geeserecorded: forty-eight birds. It seems to have been the custom to give the Vicar one goose for every twenty kept or to pay him 9d or 10d by way of commutation. In another part of the accounts, three of the more important farmers in the parish at the time, Robert Lilley (1710-11), John Peach (1710-1722) and William Utting(1714-1725), were also paying tithe on geese, while Lilley had to settle up for the number of ducks he was keeping, as well as for the eggs which they produced.

Lilley farmed briefly at Smithmarsh, an out-of-town holding, which lay in the south-western corner of the former South Field to the north of Lake Lothing (the farmhouse and yard being situated at the present-day junction of Rotterdam Road and Norwich Road). A good deal of this area was semi-marshland and ideally suited to the keeping of geese and ducks. An earlier name for Smithmarsh was Seethmarsh and, given the boggy nature of the ground through its proximity to Lake Lothing, the first element almost certainly referred originally to water (either at the edge of the lake itself or concentrated in pools) which was frequently agitated by the effect of the wind. Robert Lilley died in March 1711, during the town’s first smallpox outbreak, having only recently come to Lowestoft to take up the tenancy at Smithmarsh.

CREDIT: David Butcher