ABSTRACT
A number of regional studies have pointed to the continued social significance of smallholding after the period of the classic agricultural revolution, but few have considered their wider economic role. As labour-intensive, highly productive micro-holdings market gardens fit comfortably within taxonomies of the agricultural hierarchy. a very direct sense, agricultural production and urban markets were intertwined, and the agricultural regime suited the needs of farmers and their customers'. Smallholders generally fared well in the late Victorian agricultural depression ensuring their persistence into the twentieth century. Small farms were equated with agricultural backwardness, undercapitalisation and low intelligence. Numerous contemporaries could be cited to demonstrate the prejudice against small farmers exhibited by regional and national writers, but one shall suffice. Richard Latham's account book is one of the most remarkable documents of the English agricultural revolution and one that is easily misinterpreted.
