Wellmann Imre szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1971-1972 (Budapest, 1973)

Minchinton, Walter E.: The agricultural regions of England and Wales

topographically and climatically. To describe the variations in agricultural practice accurately and in detail, both historically and currently, a number of approaches have been employed. The simplest and crudest sub-division which has been adopted and one which continues to provide a useful starting point for discussions of differences in farming practice is that between lowland and highland England. By drawing a line from Teesmouth in the north-east to Weymouth on the south coast of England, the country can be divided into two parts. This division is based on a combination of geographical and climatic factors. By and large the north and west of England (and most of Wales) is an area of upland with poor thin soils and a cool wet climate while the south and east of England consists of undulating lowland with a richer deeper soil and a drier climate. Because of these differences highland England has tended to concentrate on pastoral farming while in lowland England arable cultivation has predominated. But the differences go beyond husbandry and embrace forms of landholding as well. In general the pastoral areas of highland England are areas where the land was never cultivated in open fields while in the main the arable areas of lowland England (with some exceptions in Kent and the new enclosed areas of East Anglia) retained the open-field system until the eighteenth or even the nineteenth century. Similarly in the pastoral areas the land tended to be divided among all the sons of the family on a system of partible inheritance while in lowland England primogeniture generally obtained. But although this broad division provides a starting point it is obviously too crude a basis for a detailed and precise examination of the variations in farming practice in England and Wales since within each sector there are areas which correspond more closely to the other part of the country than with adjacent areas within their own part. Other methods therefore need to be investigated. A second possibility is to base the agricultural regions on geographical features — highland and lowland, plains and marshes — since farming practice to a considerable extent takes account of topography. But this approach tends to exclude factors such as climate, farming practice and market considerations and to give rise to rather unwieldy regions. For example, while it is true the chalk hills stretch from Dorset to Yorkshire, this particular tract of country supports a number of different types of farming. Thus the geographical region does not permit very precise analysis. For some purposes the economic region is used. Based on the idea of a ^central place' which controls the agriculture of a region, its boundaries are determined by the pull of market forces and the available means of transportation. Tn the middle ages and before, when the population was largely selfsufficient and had to produce most of the agricultural products it needed locally, these regions were extremely limited in extent. But as towns grew and transport improved, some specialisation of function developed. In English experience the best-documented case is the growth of the London food market in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Over the years the tentacles of London demand spread over the provinces until by the middle of the seventeenth century they reached to Berwick, Cornwall and Wales for some