ABSTRACT
The economic life of Britain in the 1770s and 1780s was dominated, as it had always been, by agriculture and its associated trades. Eighteenth-century England was a country of immense differences in wealth and influence between members of the rural community. In the north of England, by contrast, almost every article of dress worn by farmers, mechanics and labourers was made domestically, with the exception of shoes and hats. At the end of the eighteenth century, then, England was a country in which strong regional differences persisted, in regard to both agricultural production and the way of life of its inhabitants. From the 1750s the newly established Society of Arts offered premiums and prizes for agricultural improvements. The most important event of the farming year in arable and mixed-farming counties was the corn harvest. Once gathered, the grain was normally ground into flour by the village miller, and for families unable to make their own bread.
