History of Farming

1. Land-use in the Saxon period must have been use of salt-marsh as pasture, which would have continued after parts of the Marsh had been ”inned”.

2. Around 1200, the demands of a dense and rising population meant that much of the Marsh was used as arable.

3. After the Black Death and later epidemics of the Plague, the Marsh reverted to pasture once again. This continued until the Second World War.

4. In World War II food was in short supply, and some of the Marsh was ploughed up. This showed how fertile the Marsh was.

5. As a result, from 1960 the Marsh was increasingly ploughed, so that now only about 10% remains as pasture.

Jill Eddison