ABSTRACT
The observation that the mid-nineteenth-century farming landscape in Britain was not congenial to the introduction of agricultural machinery forms the point of departure in this inquiry. Certainly there is little novelty attached to this observation. Contemporary writers in the agricultural press frequently discussed the problems of using horse-drawn and steam-powered equipment in field operations where terrain conditions were ‘unsuitable’, and references to these difficulties dot the major scholarly works on the modernization of British agriculture. The admirable account of the 1846-1914 era provided by Christabel S. Orwin and Edith H. Whetham is, perhaps, rather unusual in going beyond mere mention of the subject to suggest that terrain conditions exerted a powerful influence upon the extent and the spatial pattern of farm mechanization. In reference to the situation that existed in Britain during the period immediately following repeal of the Corn Laws, Orwin and Whetham have written [ 1 ]:
Broadcast sowing, hand weeding, the sickle and the scythe were still generally used on many farms, especially where rough or stony soils shook to pieces the new-fangled inventions of the agricultural engineers. … To be effective and economic, the new implements required a new system of farming – large level fields with straight hedges and wide gateways, and with no boggy patches and land-fast stones. It is not surprising therefore that the new implements and the new type of farming were to be found mainly on the eastern side of the country, from Lincolnshire through Northumberland and the Lothians to Aberdeenshire, on the big fields newly created from marsh and stones, and farmed in large units.
