The Express.
London, England, 1850-04-12 00:00:00

AGRICULTURAL DISTRICTS.

, Cirmuceetsaaataa, Aram 11.
row address you from a place surrounded
by some of the finest land in England, and of which
nearly as littlerproSt is made as it is possible to make.
It is a gems district, lying on the old red sandstone
formation, entirely devoted to dairy hastmodry. Here
are made the &mous skim cheeses, known as
Berkeley Ames; and the yearly produce of the dis-
trict, badly aa it is farmed, must be very considtrabl•
from the exuberant fertility of the soiL The greater
part of the lead requires to be drained, sad much of
it towards the beaks of the Bayern lies so nearly one a
level with the water of that river, that some general
draining works are necessary for completely laying
these fat meadows dry. The estate of Earl Fits.
hardinge, which surroands the town of Berkeley, and
extends to a considerable distance on every side of it,
offer as extraordinary example of neglected oppor-
tunities. Nature seems to have done her utmost,
while nue has dose the least he can possibly do to
avail hissed( of her bounty. Nay, more, the chief,
exercise of ingenuity visible in this district seems to'
have been applied to waste and spoil. In the first
place, Lord Fitshardiep's estates more completely
over-run with game than any property I ever saw.
Hares and pheasants swarm everywhere, and appear
to be so entirely lords of the sod that everything
gives place to them—they scarcely move oat of your
way. To the small quantity of grain grown in this
district them creatures must be utterly destructive,
and even the occupiers of the grass land complain
bitterly of the game. Then the fields are all very
small, few exceeding ten acres, a large proportion not.
being much more than half that size, and every hedge-
row is almost a continuous line of tall, straight
elm tress. How they ever make hay in these
meadows in a dripping summer is to me
a mystery. They certainly cannot make it in sun-
chine, for unless while the sun is nearly vertical, its
rays mast be intercepted by tries. Viewed from a
distance, this vale looks like a wood of meet luxuriant
elms; for finer and cleaner specimens of that tree I
never saw. The land is, for the most part, undrained,
and the sluggish brooks have deep deposits of rich
mud, which would render all attempts to drain the
lower and more level lands vain, without first clearing
out the mittens. The immense improvement effected
by draining may be seen in the fields near the town
occupied by the shrewd landlord of the Berkeley Arms
ma, who having been bred to farming in a less stag-
oast (mentally and physically) district, has not only)
drained his land, bat has succeeded in getting leave
to clear away a great deal of the timber by which,
like the rest of the land, it was originally encumbered.
So far the landlord is to blame for most culpable inat-
tention to improvement. But in the state and form
of the oowyerds, and the mismanagement of manure,'
landlord and tenants seem to vie with each other who
shall waste most. The co +yards of the vale of Berkeley
are model contrivances for keeping animals in dis-
comfort and throwing away manure. They are all on
the same plan; a scanty shed stands on the highest
part of the yard, which invariably slopes towards a
large pond or to a brook, generally both, and sundry
uncovered cribs for hay are placed around, and in dif-
ferent parts of the middle of the yard, which is
roughly pitched with stones. The inclination of the
slope is sufficiently gentle to secure about twelve
inches' depth of mad and manure around the feeding
places, and so great as to make it certain that all the
liquid portion of the manure shall drain away. In
one yard I inspected there was a well built stone
gutter, going from the lowest part of the cow-yard,
pairing by the pigsties, which were drained into it, and
then after receiving contributions from the drainage
lof the dense and the privies, poured a full stream of
manure into a running brook, which carried it at once
to the Severn. All this was most deliberately con-
trived, for the farm buildings and premises were alto-
gether superior to thane of racistofthe format the district;
and there was no reason, that I could see, why the
whole of this rich stream of manure might not have
been carried into the centre of the cowyard, there to
have remained until carried out upon the land. I
would undertake, with the assistance of a few mere
labourers, and at a coat not exceeding 201., to render
this homestead one in which all the manure made
should be preserved from all loss, except that arising
from evaporation. Then you never nee a manure
heap, which has been carried out of the cowyartla
placed anywhere but close beside a brook, to which
the same conveuient channel as I have noticed in the
yards, conveys all the liquid portion of the manure,
or that which is made liquid by rain. And as if the
manure thus weakened was likely to prove too strong,
the farmers of the vale of Berkeley carefully turn it
over at least once, so that when it comes to be spread
on the land, it has been reduced to the smallest
quantity, and to the lowest quality possible in the
time.

The buildings, too, are generally not only insuffi-
cient, but in very bad condition, and show manifest
signs of deterioration for some years past And this
is the more extraordinary, because a dozen or two of
the trees which comber the ground and diminish the
Taloa of the land, if cut down and sawn into boards,
would be sufficient to put all the cow-sheds of the
farm into good repair ; while a tenth part of the
1 noxious timber on each farm would furnish the means
either by its sale, or by direct use of it, for erecting
a complete set of buildings. Nowhere the deficiency
of buildings and the bad state of the actual
buildings are more conspicuous than on Lord Fitz-
hardinge's estate; and when I suggested to some of
his tenants that an earnest representation on the sub-
ject to his lordship would surely produce some
improvement, they marred me that all such repre-
sentations would be absolutely useless; that his
lordship would make any additional buildings,
and that even a slab could only be obtained by the
tenant. after 6 months' application. In several
instances good tenants had left his lord-
ship's farms because they could net obtain
accommodation in the form of additional buildings.
I must not, however, omit to state, that though the
rent-paying tenants' houses and buildings are mean
and dilapidated, the game-keepers' lodges and dwel- 1
ling-places are quite unexceptionable; being new,
substantial, and kept in the beet possible order. The
hunting stables and the kennels for fox-hounds also
appeared to be in perfect order. In short, the neg-
lect of the awful, and the ore and attention bestowed
on the appliances for sport and personal gratification,
which are unfortunately too frequently characteristic
of English landowners, are nowhere more conspicuous
than on the Berkeley estate. An instance of the
whimsical csprice of the lord of this domain is that
he requires the parish church clock to be kept two
hours too fast. In going oat for a drive this morning,
as I believed, at nine debar, I was alarmed, on par-
ing the church, to see that the clock was on the point
of striking eleven. How I had lost the two hours I
could not conceive, and on referring to my driver, I
was told, " his lordship always insists on keeping the
parish clock two hours faster than the real time, but
nobody knows his lordship's reason for so doing."
Adjoining the Berkeley estate to the east is as