English Countryside and Population in the Eighteenth Century (Concluded--Second Instalment)

Wiltshire. The population of Wiltshire was denser than the average at the beginning, still denser in the middle, but less dense at the end of the century, and it increased only at half the average rate per cent during the first half and only one-third during the second half. The probable cause was the decline of the woolen industry which was shifting to the north of England. The north of the county was old enclosure and the southeast remained practically open field till the end of the century, being inclosed and consolidated into large farms during the Napoleonic Wars. The topographers divide the county into its three natural sections: the north wood and pasture where the Wiltshire cheese and bacon came from, Salisbury Plain with its sheep walk and cultivated parts after the fold, and the southern part fruitful in grass and corn. Celia Fiennes states that the country around Stonehenge was mostly champion and open at the end of the seventeenth century and pleasant for recreations, its husbandry being mainly corn and sheep. But there is no more travelers' information till Young passed through the county on his Southern Tour. He went from Bath to Devizes, thence to Salisbury and Romsey in Hampshire. At Devizes the grass was good, while on the road to Salisbury the farms were large, up to 800 acres plus some of the Plain, the lower land being arable, and from Salisbury to Romsey the land was generally inclosed. He confirms this information in his Eastern Tour when he traversed the county through Melksham, Devizes, Marlborough, and Hungerford. Between the first two were great dairies, while at Rundevey there was an open field in poor tilth, the rest of the trip being through much the same kind of tilth, although there were some watered meadows between Marlborough and Hungerford. A few years later Mrs. Powys, passing from Amesbury to Mr. Hoare's (Stourhead), says that the road was dreary over dismal uninhabited downs occupied only by large flocks of sheep, but Toldervy found some fields of wheat and barley on the plain before Young had seen it. Gilpin, seeking the picturesque, looked at the county from a different point of view. From Savernake the country soon degenerated into an open corn land; towards Hungerford, however, it recovered a little spirit and the road passed through close, pleasant lanes. He was one of the first of the aesthetes who would rather see a wild moor than a cultivated corn field. The country to the north of Salisbury was still dreary and uninhabited in 1802 and 1803, as for practical purposes it is today, but a little later the plough was encroaching on the Plain temporarily, at least, the journey from Wilton to Stourhead and so to Bristol being pleasant, and the latter section in particular like a garden. Dorset, a county of old enclosure, especially in the north, was nearly of the average density of population in 1700, but by 1800 it had only progressed slowly to a position where its density was some forty per square mile below the average. The north is flatter than the south from which it is divided by a range of hills; the former was full of timber and woods and good pasture and feeding for cattle

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