Oct 01

History of Farming


By Jill Eddison

Farming on the Marsh through the Ages

  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 pastu re.